WASHINGTON — Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday that they support congressional reviews of U.S. military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 attack.
The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.
“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.
“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.
Turner said there are concerns in Congress about the attacks on vessels that the Trump administration says are transporting drugs, but the allegation regarding the Sept. 2 attack “is completely outside anything that has been discussed with Congress, and there is an ongoing investigation.”
The comments from lawmakers during news show appearances come as the administration escalates a lethal maritime campaign that it says is needed to combat drug trafficking into the United States.
On Saturday, President Trump said the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” an assertion that raised more questions about the U.S. pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Maduro’s government accused Trump of making a ”colonial threat” and seeking to undermine the South American country’s sovereignty.
After the Post’s report, Hegseth said Friday on X that “fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
“Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command,” Hegseth wrote.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
That was followed Saturday by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), asked about the Sept. 2 attack, said Hegseth deserves a chance to present his side.
“We should get to the truth. I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, ‘Kill everybody, kill the survivors,’ because that’s a clear violation of the law of war,” Bacon said. “So, I’m very suspicious that he would’ve done something like that because it would go against common sense.”
Kaine and Turner appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” and Bacon was on ABC’s “This Week.”
It’s the subversive act of simply identifying a need in the landscape or the community — maybe the community garden could use some soil revitalization, or the oak trees plagued with weevil pests could use some fumigation — and tending to it with cultural fire. No need for permission.
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California has made supporting Indigenous fire stewardship a priority in recent years to help address the state’s growing wildfire crisis. But burning freely across the landscape (with perhaps only a phone call to the local land manager or fire department to give them a heads up) is still a dream, a long way off.
California outlawed cultural burning practices at statehood in 1850 and in most cases, burning freely without permits and approvals is still illegal. Even recently, Burgueno, a cultural fire practitioner and citizen of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel in San Diego County, has seen local authorities arrest an elder on arson charges for using cultural fire in tending the land.
It’s a practice far older than prescribed burning, the intentional fires typically set and managed by U.S. government fire personnel.
With the tradition comes wisdom: Through joint trainings and burns, fire officials versed in prescribed fire are often delighted by the detailed knowledge of fire’s role in an ecosystem that cultural fire practitioners can nonchalantly drop — for example, the benefits of burning after bees pollinate.
While prescription burns carried out by the Forest Service often focus on large-scale management goals, cultural burns are an elegant dance, deeply in tune with the individual species on the landscape and the relationships they have with each other and fire. Burning is one of many tools tribes have to shape the ecosystem and help it flourish through the years.
“It is grounded in our creation stories, our sacred beliefs and philosophy,” Burgueno said. “It helps us understand how to be a steward of the land, which requires us to be a steward within ourselves — to have a healthy body, mind, and spirit.”
For Don Hankins, a Miwok cultural fire practitioner and a geography and environmental studies professor at Chico State, it’s this fundamental tie to culture that makes the practice unique.
The way willows grow back after fire, for example, “they’re long; they’re slender. They’re more supple than if they were not tended to with fire,” Hankins said. “As a weaver, those are really important characteristics.”
The state now sees its prohibitions, enforced with violence, as wrong and has taken significant steps in recent years to address the barriers it created to sovereign burning. In order to freely practice, tribes need access to land, permission to set fire and the capacity to oversee the burn. But the solutions, so far, are still piecemeal. They only apply to certain land under certain conditions.
Hankins, who started practicing cultural burning with his family when he was about 4, has made a practice of pushing the state and federal government out of their comfort zones. He, too, dreams of a day when a burn is defined solely by the needs of the land and its life.
“The atmospheric river is coming in, and we know that once it dumps the rain and snow … we close out the fire season — but what if we went out ahead of that storm, and we lit fires and worked through the ecosystems regardless of ownership?” he said. “That’s the long-range goal I have. In order to get fire back in balance, first we have to take some pretty bold steps.”
More recent wildfire news
At an October town meeting in Topanga, a fire official with the Los Angeles County Fire Department told residents that, during a wildfire, the department may order them to ride out the blaze in their homes. It’s part of an ongoing debate in California about what to do when an evacuation could take hours, but a fire could reach a town in minutes.
The Los Angeles City Fire Department is requesting a 15% increase in its budget to support wildfire response, my colleague Noah Goldberg reports. The request includes funding for 179 new firefighter recruits and a second hand crew specializing in wildfire response. LAFD’s union is also proposing a ballot measure for a half-cent sales tax to raise funds for new fire stations and equipment.
The U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed burns on more than 127,000 acres during the government shutdown, the Hotshot Wake Up reports, despite fears the disruption would severely limit the Forest Service’s ability to burn during optimal fall weather conditions.
A few last things in climate news
A proposed pipeline could end California’s status as a “fuel island,” connecting the golden state’s isolated gasoline and diesel markets with the rest of the country, my colleague Hayley Smith reports. The state is grappling how to balance consumer affordability with the transition to clean energy, with the upcoming closure of two major refineries.
The Department of Energy is breaking up or rebranding several key offices that support the development of clean energy technologies, Alexander C. Kaufman reports for Heatmap News. It’s unclear how the restructuring will impact the Department’s work.
During the COP30 climate conference in Brazil — which produced a last-minute incremental deal that did not directly mention fossil fuels — the South American nation recognized 10 new Indigenous territories, the BBC’s Mallory Moench and Georgina Rannard report. The hundreds of thousands of acres they span will now have their culture and environment legally protected. Although, the protections are not always enforced.
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.
Before I moved to L.A., I’d spent pretty much my entire professional life working for New York-based publications. One of the primary reasons I decided to take this job and transfer my life to the West Coast was because it seemed to me that California was at both the spear point of climate risk and the cutting edge of climate adaptation.
I didn’t expect the peril of climate change to rear its heads as quickly, and as close to my new home, as it did when the January fires became one of the biggest stories in the nation just a month after I started at The Times. I was less surprised to see how widespread a sophisticated understanding of climate issues was at the publication — an expertise borne out by the exemplary coverage of the fires and their aftermath.
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The same, I think, can be said for most of the people I know or have recently met who live in L.A.: There is very little sanguinity about what’s happening here, climate-wise, among Angelenos, regardless of where they work or come from.
So maybe I should have expected that an exhibit of recent work by L.A. artists would be similarly, logically, oriented toward these same (largely home-grown) anxieties around our place in a world increasingly shaped by the developing climate crisis.
Nevertheless, it struck me how many of the artists centered the interface between the built and “natural” environments at the Hammer Museum’s biennial “Made in L.A.” exhibition when I visited last weekend.
Many of the artists seemed to be grappling with how we situate ourselves in a climate-changed world.
From Alake Shilling’s uncanny cartoon bears driving buggies and mowing down weeping, humanoid sunflowers to Kelly Wall’s installation of glass swatches painted the color of toxic L.A. sunsets displayed, for tourist consumption, on an erstwhile pharmacy rack, the exhibition communicates Los Angeles as a place of largely unresolved conflict between human beings and whatever we define as “nature.”
Part of Kelly Wall’s installation, “Something to Write Home About.”
(Elijah Wolfson / Los Angeles Times)
I thought that as a climate journalist, I might just be primed to see such things, but Essence Harden, who co-curated the biennial, noted that “concerns around the environment are historical, they’re rooted. They’re not ahistorical. They don’t come from nothing or nowhere. I think art produced in Los Angeles has a relationship to the site specificity and the dynamic of architecture and history which grounds it.”
Harden said that she and her co-curator, Paulina Pobocha, didn’t seek out artists grappling with climate specifically for the seventh edition of Made in L.A. But after scouring dozens of local galleries, they found that climate and environmental anxieties permeated the scene.
Much of this Anthropocene-angst is “rooted in a sort of longer history of capital,” Harden said. Indeed, as a relative outsider, I have always sort of felt that L.A. wears its supposed climate excellence a little too loudly on its sleeves — or maybe, on its postcards and souvenir T-shirts. The iconic palm trees, for example, are transplants, forced to live in neighborhoods that don’t want them.
“The idyllic palm trees sight line of Los Angeles comes from these neighborhoods that were historically Black and Japanese and Latinx,” Harden said. “They are rooted in these places that people who are buying the product of Los Angeles don’t want to go.”
There are no palm trees in the Hammer biennial. At least, none that I remember. What there are instead are painted cinder blocks and hunks of glass, graffiti and rutted acrylic paint, twisted tubes of neon and roughly formed clay.
Anthropocene Landscape 3 by Carl Cheng
(Hammer Museum)
It was refreshing to see a show that grappled with the environment but was not didactic. Describing her curatorial process, Harden said she is mostly attracted to “people who are more ethereal and capture dreams and sensation.” If they also happen to be engaging with climate change, all the better.
More recent news and ideas on climate and culture
Writing for The Guardian, Beth Mead — a star forward on England‘s national soccer team for nearly a decade, with the all-time most assists in the history of the Women’s Super League — shared how climate change has changed the game she loves over the last decade. For professionals on her level, yes, but more importantly, for the many kids around the world who are now less likely to be able to regularly play what she calls “the world’s most accessible sport” thanks to extreme heat, droughts and flooding.
A “milk apocalypse” is coming for your burrata, reports Motoko Rich for the New York Times. Cheesemakers and dairy farmers in Italy, which produces and exports some of the most popular cheeses in the world, report a declining supply of milk, thanks to rising temperatures.
And if you wanted to pair your favorite Oregon pinot with that cheese … well, better do it now. The Willamette Valley has long had a nearly perfect climate for growing pinot noir — to the point where “Oregon wine” is often shorthand for the varietal. But as Branden Andersen reports for the local outlet Newsberg, thanks to changes in temperature and humidity, the region may need to rethink what’s been practically a vineyard monoculture.
In Belém, Brazil, COP30 is coming to a close. I’ve always been drawn to the art and performance at past COPs, and was glad to see some examples from this year’s climate conference. But what was even more interesting to me was Spanish artist Josep Piñol’s performance piece, in which he was commissioned to produce a large-scale sculpture in Belém and then canceled, saving what he said would have been the emissions equivalent of 57,765 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
The past week in broader climate news
Melody Gutierrez has been in Belém reporting on COP30 for The Times, and this week, she wrote about an image that has come to represent the socio-economics of this year’s events: two gigantic diesel-powered cruise ships, used as temporary housing for the global elite that comprise much of the COP delegations, docked at the mouth of the Amazon River, whose rainforests and people have felt much of the brunt of fossil fuel-driven climate change.
Meanwhile, the California Air Resources Board is expected to vote today on new measures to address methane leaks and underground fires at landfills which — unsurprisingly — are more likely to impact poorer Californians. As my colleague Tony Briscoe reports, landfills are a climate change and environmental health menace, and updates to the rules governing California’s are long overdue.
Earlier this week, a U.S. appeals court put a hold on a California law set to go into effect in January that would require any company that makes more than $500 million annually and does business in the state to report, every two years, the financial impact of climate change.
Finally, there was a lot of talk this week about how the build-out of data centers is driving up energy costs across the U.S. I found this Pew Research article to be a useful one-sheet to get a feel for what we know to be real when it comes to AI’s impact on the energy sector, what is hyperbole and what we still don’t fully understand.
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.
Southern California lawmakers are demanding answers from U.S. Homeland Security officials following the deaths of two Orange County residents and nearly two dozen others while in federal immigration custody.
In a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Reps. Dave Min (D-Irvine) and Judy Chu (D-Pasadena) pointed to the deaths of 25 people so far this year while being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The number of in-custody deaths has reached an annual record since the agency began keeping track in 2018.
Two Mexican immigrants — who had long made their homes in Orange County and were sent to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center north of Hesperia — were among the deaths.
“These are not just numbers on a website, but real people — with families, jobs, and hopes and dreams — each of whom died in ICE custody,” the lawmakers wrote. “The following cases illustrate systemic patterns of delayed treatment, neglect, and failure to properly notify families.”
Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, died Sept. 22 about a month after being apprehended while working at the Fountain Valley Auto Wash, where he had worked for 15 years, according to a GoFundMe post by his family.
He had lived in Westminster since he was 4 years old, and had previously been protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The Times previously reported that his application for continued protection was not renewed in 2016.
Ayala-Uribe’s relatives and members of Congress have alleged that he was denied proper medical care after being taken into ICE custody in August. Adelanto detention staff members were aware of his medical crisis, according to internal emails obtained by The Times. But Ayala-Uribe initially was taken back to his Adelanto dorm room, where he waited for another three days before being moved to Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville.
ICE officials acknowledged that Ayala-Uribe died at the Victorville hospital while waiting for surgery for an abscess on his buttock. The suspected cause of the sore was not disclosed.
A second man — Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, who lived near Costa Mesa — died Oct. 23, about a week after being detained.
ICE said Garcia-Aviles was arrested Oct. 14 in Santa Ana by the U.S. Border Patrol for an outstanding warrant, and eventually sent to the Adelanto center. ICE said in a previous statement that he was only at the Adelanto facility for a few hours before he was taken to the Victorville hospital for “suspected alcohol withdrawal symptoms.”
His condition rapidly worsened.
The deaths have focused attention on the treatment of detained immigrants as well as long-standing concerns about medical care inside Adelanto, one of the largest federal immigration detention centers in California. The situation raises broader concerns about whether immigration detention centers throughout the country are equipped to care for the deluge of people rounded up since President Trump prioritized mass deportations as part of his second-term agenda.
“These deaths raise serious questions about ICE’s ability to comply with basic detention standards, medical care protocols, and notification requirements, and underscore a pattern of gross negligence that demands immediate accountability,” Min and Chu wrote in the letter to Noem and Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE.
The letter was signed by 43 other lawmakers, including Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), J. Luis Correa (D-Santa Ana), John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) and Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).
An ICE representative did not immediately respond to an email Saturday seeking comment.
The lawmakers stressed the need to treat the immigrants with humanity.
The lawmakers said Garcia-Aviles had lived in the U.S. for three decades. His family did not learn of his dire medical condition until “he was on his deathbed.” Family members drove to the hospital to find him “unconscious, intubated, and . . . [with] dried blood on his forehead” as well as “a cut on his tongue … broken teeth and bruising on his body.”
“We never got the chance to speak to him anymore and [the family] never was called to let us know why he had been transferred to the hospital,” his daugher wrote on a GoFundMe page, seeking help to pay for his funeral costs. “His absence has left a hole in our hearts.”
An Indiana lawmaker who has yet to make a decision on whether to back President Trump’s push to have Republicans redraw the state’s congressional boundaries was the victim of a swatting call that brought sheriff’s deputies to his home.
The call, in which someone reported a fake emergency at the Terre Haute home of state Sen. Greg Goode on Sunday, came hours after Trump criticized Indiana lawmakers for not moving forward with the plan and singled out Goode and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray. Trump has been trying to persuade Republican-led states across the country to aggressively redraw their congressional maps to help the GOP hold the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections.
Deputies were sent to Goode’s home after receiving an email “advising harm had been done to persons inside a home,” according to a statement from the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office.
“All persons were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’),” the statement said. The incident is under investigation.
Goode, a Republican, wrote on social media that the responding deputies were “under the impression of a domestic violence emergency.” He thanked the deputies for acting professionally.
“While this entire incident is unfortunate and reflective of the volatile nature of our current political environment, I give thanks to God that my family and I are ok,” Goode wrote.
Trump singled out Goode and Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray while demanding that Republicans move forward with a redistricting plan for Indiana. Republicans already hold a 7-2 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.
“Because of these two politically correct type ‘gentlemen,’ and a few others, they could be depriving Republicans of a Majority in the House, a VERY BIG DEAL!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
Bray, the Republican leader of Indiana’s Senate, announced Friday that his chamber will no longer meet to vote on redistricting, citing a lack of support from his members even after pressure from the White House. Vice President JD Vance has visited multiple times to make the case.
Goode, a Republican member of the Senate, has not publicly stated his position on redistricting and says he will not make a decision without seeing a map and legislation introduced for lawmakers’ review.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The goal of swatting is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to an address by making bogus claims of violence happening inside.
Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House next year, leading to Trump’s strong-arming of GOP-controlled states. Legislatures or commissions in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have adopted new maps to boost Republicans’ odds, while California and Virginia are poised to counter Trump’s push and redraw their own maps to benefit Democrats.
SANTIAGO, Chile — A hard-right former lawmaker and admirer of President Trump held the upper hand as Chile headed to a polarizing presidential runoff against a member of Chile’s Communist Party representing the incumbent government.
José Antonio Kast, an ultraconservative lawyer opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, appears to be in pole position after nearly 70% of votes went to right-wing candidates in Sunday’s first round. Many Chileans worry about organized crime, illegal immigration and unemployment in one of Latin America’s safest and most prosperous nations.
The father of nine, who pushed his traditional Catholic beliefs and nostalgia for aspects of Chile’s brutal dictatorship into the political mainstream after founding his own Republican Party in 2019, came in second with nearly 24% of the vote. He campaigned on plans to crack down on gang violence, build a giant border wall and deport tens of thousands of immigrants.
Jeannette Jara, a former labor minister in President Gabriel Boric’s left-wing government, eked out a narrower-than-expected lead with 27% of the vote. She wants to expand Chile’s social safety net and tackle money laundering and drug trafficking to stem organized crime.
Neither contender received more than 50% of the overall vote count, sending the poll to a second round of voting on Dec. 14.
‘Voters are upset’
The mood was ebullient at Kast’s campaign headquarters early Monday, where young Chileans wrapped in national flags drank beer and rolled cigarettes as workers took down the stage where Kast had pledged a radical transformation in the country’s security.
“We needed a safe candidate, someone with a firm hand to bring economic growth, attract investment, create jobs, strengthen the police and give them support,” said Ignacio Rojas, 20. “Chile isn’t safe anymore, and he’ll change that.”
The results seemed set to extend a growing regional shift across Latin America, as popular discontent with the economy simmers and right-wing challengers take over from leftist politicians who shot to power in the wake of the pandemic but largely failed to deliver on their lofty promises of social change and more equitable distribution of wealth.
“Economies are not growing, there are no new jobs, and people remember that 10 years ago they used to pay lower prices for almost everything,” said Patricio Navia, a Chilean analyst and professor at New York University.
“Voters are upset with governments all over the region,” he added.
Conservatives led the pack in Chile’s eight-candidate field, with populist businessman and celebrity economist Franco Parisi surprising pundits by securing 20% of the votes and third place, reflecting the power of his anti-establishment message.
He also ran a tough law and order campaign, vowing to plant land mines along Chile’s porous northern border to prevent people from crossing.
Another 14% of the votes went to Johannes Kaiser, a libertarian congressman and a former YouTube provocateur who campaigned as an even more radical alternative to Kast.
Chile’s traditional center-right coalition landed in fifth place, with establishment candidate Evelyn Matthei winning 12.5% of the vote.
Conservative runners-up endorse Kast
Not all of the divided right is guaranteed to go to Kast, whose conservative moral values have previously alienated voters concerned about the rollback of hard-won rights for women and LGBTQ+ community. His promise to cut up to $6 billion in public spending within his first 18 months has also been criticized by traditional conservative politicians as unrealistic. He has lost two presidential races before.
But it’s also unlikely that many voters who supported Kaiser’s plans to deport migrants who entered the country illegally to prison in El Salvador, or Matthei’s plans to consider bringing back the death penalty, would vote for a lifelong member of Chile’s hard-line Communist Party, which supports autocratic governments in Venezuela and Cuba.
There were no other left-wing front-runners, as all six parties in Chile’s governing coalition threw their weight behind Jara.
After learning of the election results late Sunday, Matthei rushed to Kast’s party headquarters to profess her support for her right-wing rival. “Chile needs a sharp change of direction,” she said.
Kaiser also promised to back Kast, saying his libertarian party would “ensure that a sound doctrine and defense of freedom are not abandoned.”
Parisi was coy after the results came out, saying, “We don’t give anyone a blank check.”
“The burden of proof lies with both candidates,” said the political outsider, whose voters eschew elites on the left and right. “They have to win people over.”
The region is trending right
Economic travails and fervent anti-incumbent sentiment appear to have fueled a gradual pendulum swing away from the left-wing leaders who were ascendant across the region just a few years ago.
In Argentina, radical libertarian President Javier Milei, elected in late 2023 on a vow to break with years of left-leaning populism, has doubled down on his close bond with Trump and reshaped Argentina’s foreign policy in line with the U.S.
Elections during the last year in Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama have kept right-wing leaders in office, while in Bolivia, restive voters outraged over a currency crisis punished the Movement Toward Socialism party and elected a conservative opposition candidate for the first time in nearly 20 years last month.
Gains for the right could buoy the U.S. as it competes for regional influence with China, some analysts say, with a new crop of leaders keen for American investment. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and home to vast reserves of other minerals key to the global energy transition.
Like many hopeful leftists four years ago, Boric, a young former student activist elected on the heels of Chile’s 2019 mass protests over widening inequality, saw his ambitions to raise taxes on the rich and adopt one of the world’s most progressive constitutions run into major legislative opposition.
Analysts warned that Kast could face the same fate if he caved to his most radical allies or pushed morally conservative measures. Although early legislative election results indicated that right-wing parties would hold a majority in the 155-member lower house of Congress, left-wing parties appeared to hold a slight edge in the Senate on Monday.
“There is a path forward for Kast,” Navia said. But “if he tries to govern as a radical right-winger, he will hit a wall, just like outgoing President Gabriel Boric did.”
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers seeking to force the release of files related to the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein are predicting a big win in the House this week with a “deluge of Republicans” voting for their bill and bucking the GOP leadership and President Trump, who for months have disparaged their effort.
The bill would force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. Information about Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations would be allowed to be redacted.
“There could be 100 or more” votes from Republicans, said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), among the lawmakers discussing the legislation on Sunday news show appearances. “I’m hoping to get a veto-proof majority on this legislation when it comes up for a vote.”
Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) introduced a discharge petition in July to force a vote on their bill. That is a rarely successful tool that allows a majority of members to bypass House leadership and force a floor vote.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had panned the discharge petition effort and sent members home early for their August recess when the GOP’s legislative agenda was upended by the clamoring for an Epstein vote.
Democrats also contend that the seating of Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was stalled to delay her becoming the 218th member to sign the petition and gain the threshold needed to force a vote. She became the 218th signature moments after taking the oath of office last week.
Massie said Johnson, Trump and others who have been critical of his efforts would be “taking a big loss this week.”
“I’m not tired of winning yet, but we are winning,” Massie said.
The view from GOP leadership
Johnson seems to expect the House will decisively back the Epstein bill.
“We’ll just get this done and move it on. There’s nothing to hide,” the speaker said. He continued to deride the Massie-Khanna effort, however, asserting that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been releasing “far more information than the discharge petition, their little gambit.”
The vote comes at a time when new documents are raising fresh questions about Epstein and his associates, including a 2019 email that Epstein wrote to a journalist that said Trump “knew about the girls.” The White House has accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the Republican president, though lawmakers from both parties released emails last week.
Johnson said Trump “has nothing to hide from this.”
“They’re doing this to go after President Trump on this theory that he has something to do with it. He does not,” Johnson said.
Trump’s former friendship and association with Epstein is well-established, and the president’s name was included in records that his Justice Department released in February as part of an effort to satisfy public interest in information from the sex-trafficking investigation.
Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise. Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, also had many prominent acquaintances in political and celebrity circles besides Trump.
Khanna voiced more modest expectations on the vote count than Massie. Still, Khanna said he was hoping for 40 or more Republicans to join the effort.
“I don’t even know how involved Trump was,” Khanna said. “There are a lot of other people involved who have to be held accountable.”
Khanna also asked Trump to meet with some of Epstein’s victims. Some will be at the Capitol on Tuesday for a news conference, he said.
Massie said Republican lawmakers who fear losing Trump’s endorsement because of how they vote will have a mark on their record if they vote “no,” which could hurt their political prospects in the long term.
“The record of this vote will last longer than Donald Trump’s presidency,” Massie said.
A MAGA split
On the Republican side, three Republicans joined with Massie in signing the discharge petition: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
Trump publicly broke with Greene last week and said he would endorse a challenger against her in 2026 “if the right person runs.”
Greene, a MAGA stalwart throughout her time in Congress, attributed her fallout with Trump to the Epstein debate. “Unfortunately, it has all come down to the Epstein files,” she said, adding that the country deserves transparency on the issue and that Trump’s criticism of her is confusing because the women she has talked to say he did nothing wrong.
“I have no idea what’s in the files. I can’t even guess. But that is the question everyone is asking: … ‘Why fight this so hard?’” Greene said.
Even if the bill passes the House, there is no guarantee that Senate Republicans will go along. Massie said he just hopes Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) “will do the right thing.”
“The pressure is going to be there if we get a big vote in the House,” said Massie, who thinks “we could have a deluge of Republicans.”
Massie appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” Johnson was on “Fox News Sunday,” Khanna spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Greene was interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
During the last government shutdown six years ago, the main narrative when it came to public lands was the damage caused by unsupervised visitors. Trash cans and toilets overflowed with waste. Tourists reportedly mowed down Joshua trees to off-road in sensitive areas of Joshua Tree National Park.
This time around, national parks were directed to retain the staff needed to provide basic sanitation services, as I reported in a recent article with my colleague Lila Seidman. But meanwhile, something bigger and more coordinated was unfolding behind the scenes, said Chance Wilcox, California Desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“We’re not seeing Joshua trees getting knocked down, things getting stolen, damage to parks by the American people, but we are seeing damage to parks by this presidential administration on an even larger scale,” Wilcox told me last week before lawmakers struck a deal to reopen the government.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Wilcox and other public lands advocates allege that President Trump’s administration used the shutdown to expedite an agenda that prioritizes extraction while slashing resources dedicated to conservation and education. What’s more, they fear the staffing priorities that came into sharp relief over the past 43 days offer a preview of how these lands will be managed going forward, especially in the aftermath of another potential mass layoff that could see the Interior Department cut 2,000 more jobs.
When I asked the Interior Department about its actions during the shutdown, a spokesperson responded via email that the administration “made deliberate, lawful decisions” to protect operations that sustain energy security and economic stability. “Activities that continued were those necessary to preserve critical infrastructure, safeguard natural resources, and prevent disruption to key supply chains that millions of Americans rely on,” the spokesperson wrote.
As a resident of the Mojave Desert on the outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park, I’ve taken particular interest in this topic. Out here, summer days can top 110 degrees, a trip to the grocery store is an hours-long excursion and there are rattlesnakes. Lots of rattlesnakes. But one huge bonus is the proximity to public lands: We’re surrounded by the park, the Mojave National Preserve and hundreds of miles of Bureau of Land Management wilderness.
These spaces not only provide endless entertainment for residents like my 3-year-old daughter, who would rather be turned loose in a boulder field than a jungle gym, but they play a key role in drawing visitors from around the world who support the stores, restaurants and other establishments that underpin our local economy.
Sentinel Rock in Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
In short, the health of our community depends on the health of these landscapes. Now, their future seems increasingly uncertain.
During the shutdown, roughly 64% of National Park Service employees were furloughed, according to a Department of the Interior contingency plan. At Joshua Tree National Park, those sidelined included Superintendent Jane Rodgers, along with most of the staff responsible for scientific research, resource management and educational and interpretive programs, according to a source at the park who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation.
Over at the BLM, roughly 26% of staffers were furloughed. Among those who were allowed to keep working: employees responsible for processing oil, gas and coal permits and leases, along with items related to other energy and mineral resources, according to the contingency plan, which cited the president’s declared national energy emergency as rationale. As a result, the federal government issued 693 new oil and gas drilling permits and 52 new oil and gas leases on federal lands during the shutdown, according to tracking by the Center for Western Priorities.
And in Utah, the BLM is now reconsidering an application, which has been rejected seven times, to build a four-lane highway through desert tortoise habitats in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.
There’s real fear among federal employees and advocates that this dynamic — an emphasis on developing public lands, as stewardship and research efforts languish — will become the new reality, said Jordan Marbury, communications manager for Friends of the Inyo. What’s more, he said, is that some worry the administration will point to the shutdown as proof that public lands never really needed all that staffing in the first place.
“It could get to the point where conservation is totally an afterthought,” he said.
Homes sit in the shadow of the Inglewood Oil Field.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Five California tribes have established an intertribal commission to co-manage Chuckwalla National Monument, marking a historic step toward tribal sovereignty over sacred desert lands. Times environment reporter Tyrone Beason examines how this will work — and why it’s a big deal.
President Trump has tapped former New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce to lead the BLM — which manages about 10% of land in the U.S. — after his first pick, oil and gas lobbyist Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her name from consideration in the wake of reporting on comments she made criticizing Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Industry trade organizations are praising Pearce’s nomination, while environmental groups allege that the former Republican Party of New Mexico chair is a climate change denier with a record of supporting expanded oil and gas drilling on public lands and shrinking national monuments, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.
The Trump administration plans to allow new oil and gas drilling off the California coast, but energy companies may not be interested in battling the state’s strict environmental rules to try and tap into limited petroleum reserves, our climate policy reporter Hayley Smith writes. Citing these obstacles, some experts told Hayley the move may be politically motivated: It’s likely to set up a fight with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said that any such proposal will be dead on arrival.
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at the COP30 Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil, on Tuesday.
(Alessandro Falco)
Speaking of Newsom and Trump, the California governor is in Belém, Brazil, for the annual United Nations climate policy summit, which the Trump administration is sitting out. My colleague Melody Gutierrez, who’s also there, looks at how California hopes it can fill in the gap left by America’s absence as Newsom positions himself for a 2028 presidential run.
Meanwhile, diplomats have accused top U.S. officials of threatening and bullying leaders from poorer or small countries to defeat a historic deal to slash pollution from cargo ships that was slated by be approved by more than 100 nations, according to a bombshell New York Times report. Federal representatives denied that officials made threats but “acknowledged derailing the deal and repeated their opposition to international efforts to address climate change,” the paper reported.
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MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys in the case of a man charged with killing a top Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband said Wednesday that prosecutors have turned over a massive amount of evidence to the defense, and that his lawyers need more time to review it.
Federal prosecutor Harry Jacobs told the court that investigators have provided substantially all of the evidence they have collected against Vance Boelter. He has pleaded not guilty to murder in the killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and to attempted murder in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Some evidence, such as lab reports, continues to come in.
Federal defender Manny Atwal said at the status conference that the evidence includes more than130,000 pages of PDF documents, more than 800 hours of audio and video recordings, and more than 2,000 photographs from what authorities have called the largest hunt for a suspect in Minnesota history.
Atwal said her team has spent close to 110 hours just downloading the material — not reviewing it — and that they’re still evaluating the evidence, a process she said has gone slowly due to the federal government shutdown.
“That’s not unusual for a complex case but it is lot of information for us to review,” Atwal told Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster.
Jacobs said he didn’t have a timeline for when the Department of Justice would decide whether to seek the death penalty against Boelter. The decision will be up to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.
Foster scheduled the next status conference for Feb. 12 and asked prosecutors to keep the defense and court updated in the meantime about their death penalty decision. She did not set a trial date.
Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot by a man who came to their suburban homes in the early hours of June 14, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.
Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle late the next day. He faces federal and state charges including murder and attempted murder in what prosecutors have called a political assassination.
Boelter, who was wearing orange and yellow jail clothing, said nothing during the nine-minute hearing.
Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case. But the Trump administration is pushing for greater use of capital punishment.
Boelter’s attorney has not commented on the substance of the allegations. His motivations remain murky and statements he has made to some media haven’t been fully clear. Friends have described him as a politically conservative evangelical Christian, and occasional preacher and missionary.
Boelter claimed to the conservative outlet Blaze News in August that he never intended to shoot anyone that night but that his plans went horribly wrong.
He told Blaze in a series of hundreds of texts via his jail’s messaging system that he went to the Hoffmans’ home to make citizen’s arrests over what he called his two-year undercover investigation into 400 deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine that he believed were being covered up by the state.
But he told Blaze he opened fire when the Hoffmans and their adult daughter tried to push him out the door and spoiled his plan. He did not explain why he went on to allegedly shoot the Hortmans and their golden retriever, Gilbert, who had to be euthanized.
Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said when she announced Boelter’s indictment on state charges in August that she gave no credence to the claims Boelter had made from jail.
In other recent developments, a Sibley County judge last month granted Boelter’s wife a divorce.
However, there is also plenty of strife, messy politics and difficult decisions. (My inbox reflects the high emotion. I get hate and love mail, just like other reporters.)
Take a saga I’ve been writing about for more than a year concerning a plan by federal wildlife officials to shoot up to nearly half a million barred owls over three decades to save spotted owls in California, Washington and Oregon. Even someone who knows nothing about the matter can guess it’s controversial.
Since the strategy was approved last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, animal rights groups have fought to stop it, gaining traction with some U.S. lawmakers. Bipartisan legislators signed onto letters urging the Trump administration to cancel it, citing costs they said could top $1 billion. Then, this summer, Republicans in the House and Senate introduced resolutions that, if successful, would overturn the plan for good.
It was a nightmare scenario for environmental nonprofits, which acknowledge the moral quandary involved with killing so many animals, but say the barred owl population must be kept in check to prevent the extinction of the northern spotted owl, which is being muscled out of its native territory by its larger, more aggressive cousin. They also dispute that ten-figure price tag.
Then, at the eleventh hour, there was an upset in alliances. Logging advocates said canceling the plan could hinder timber sales in Oregon, and threaten production goals set by the Trump administration. That’s right: Loggers were now on the same side as conservationists, while right-wing politicians were aligned with animal welfare activists. Talk about unlikely, uncomfortable political bedfellows.
The loggers’ plea may have tipped the scales. Louisiana Republican John Kennedy, who spearheaded the Senate resolution, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — whose portfolio includes timber — personally asked him to abandon the effort. Kennedy, in colorful terms, declined to back down. He called the planned cull “DEI for owls” and said Burgum “loves it like the devil loves sin.” The resolution didn’t pass, splitting the Republican vote almost down the middle.
You don’t have to go to Washington, D.C., to find epic battles over wildlife management.
In California, there’s been much discussion in recent years about the best way to live alongside large predators such as mountain lions and wolves.
Wolves in California were wiped out by people about a century ago, and they started to recolonize the state only 14 years ago. The native species’ resurgence is celebrated by conservationists but derided by many ranchers who say the animals are hurting their bottom line when they eat their cattle.
State wildlife officials recently euthanized four gray wolves in the northern part of the state that were responsible for 70 livestock losses in less than six months, my colleague Clara Harter reported, marking the latest flashpoint in the effort to manage them.
“Wolves are one of the state’s most iconic species and coexistence is our collective future,” said Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But that comes with tremendous responsibility and sometimes hard decisions.”
Even hulking herbivores such as wild horses stir passionate disagreement.
In the Eastern Sierra last month, I walked among dozens of multi-colored equines with members of local Native American tribes, who told me of their deep connection to the animals — and their heartbreak over U.S. government plans to send them away.
Federal officials say the herd has surged to more than three times what the landscape can support, and pose a safety hazard on highways, while also damaging Mono Lake’s unique geologic formations. Under a plan approved earlier this year, hundreds are slated to be rounded up and removed.
A coalition that includes local tribes — which have cultural ties to the animals that go back generations — disputes many of these claims and argues that the removal plan is inhumane.
“I wish I had a magic wand and could solve it all,” Beth Pratt, of the National Wildlife Federation, told me after my article on the horses was published.
Stay tuned. I’ll be writing this newsletter about once a month to dig into important wildlife stories in the Golden State and beyond. Send me feedback, tips and cute cat photos at [email protected].
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Speaking of wolves: The Trump administration ordered Colorado to stop importing gray wolves from Canada as part of the state’s efforts to restore the predators, a shift that could hinder plans for more reintroductions this winter, according to the Associated Press’ Mead Gruver. The state has been releasing wolves west of the Continental Divide since 2023.
More than 17,000 acres of ancestral lands were returned to the Tule River Indian Tribe, which will allow for the reintroduction of Tule elk and the protection of habitat for California condors, among other conservation projects, my colleague Jessica Garrison reports.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called it “the largest ancestral land return in the history of the region and a major step in addressing historical wrongs against California Native American tribes.”
One year after the discovery of golden mussels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, dense colonies cling to boats and piers, threatening water for cities and farms — and there’s no help on the way, reports CalMatters’ Rachel Becker. State agencies have prioritized protecting other areas in the state from the infested Delta, the hub of the state’s water supply.
Will traditional holiday fare such as crab cakes be on the menu this year? As fellow Times reporter Susanne Rust writes, the need to protect humpback whales in California’s coastal waters, combined with widespread domoic acid contamination along the northern coast, has once again put the brakes on the Dungeness crab commercial fishery and parts of the recreational fishery this fall.
A few last things in climate news
My colleague Ian James wrote about a big shift in where L.A. will get its water: The city will double the size of a project to transform wastewater into purified drinking water, producing enough for 500,000 people. The recycled water will allow L.A. to stop taking water from creeks that feed Mono Lake, promising to resolve a long-running environmental conflict.
California’s proposed Zone Zero regulations, which would force homeowners to create an ember-resistant area around their houses, have stirred backlash. One provision causing consternation may require the removal of healthy plants from within five feet of their homes, which some say isn’t backed by science. Those in favor of the rules say they’re key to protecting dwellings from wildfires. Now, as The Times’ Noah Haggerty explains, state officials appear poised to miss a Dec. 31 deadline to finalize the regulations.
Clean energy stocks have surged 50% this year, significantly outpacing broader market gains despite Trump administration policies targeting the sector, Bloomberg reports. Demand for renewable power to fuel artificial intelligence data centers and China’s aggressive clean-tech expansion are driving the rally.
If you’re not quite ready to let go of the Halloween mood, I have good news. November generally marks the end of tarantula mating season. As I reported, male tarantulas strike out every year from their burrows in search of a lover. Finding one can be fatal, whether she’s in the mood or not. Females are known to snack on their suitors. Gulp.
While the arachnids inhabit areas such as the Angeles National Forest and Santa Monica Mountains year-round, mating season — when the males are on the move — offers the best opportunity to spot one. Through the month of November, you can also gaze at them at the Natural History Museum’s spider pavilion.
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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.
