lawmakers

United States lawmakers have written to Andrew, Britain’s disgraced former prince, requesting that he sit for a formal interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a day after King Charles III formally stripped his younger brother of his royal titles.

Separately, a secluded desert ranch where Epstein once entertained guests is coming under renewed scrutiny in the US state of New Mexico, with two state legislators proposing a “truth commission” to uncover the full extent of the financier’s crimes there.

On Thursday, 16 Democratic Party members of Congress signed a letter addressed to “Mr Mountbatten Windsor”, as Andrew is now known, to participate in a “transcribed interview” with the US House of Representatives oversight committee’s investigation into Epstein.

“The committee is seeking to uncover the identities of Mr Epstein’s co-conspirators and enablers and to understand the full extent of his criminal operations,” the letter read.

“Well-documented allegations against you, along with your longstanding friendship with Mr Epstein, indicate that you may possess knowledge of his activities relevant to our investigation,” it added.

The letter asked Andrew to respond by November 20.

The US Congress has no power to compel testimony from foreigners, making it unlikely Andrew will give evidence.

The letter will be another unwelcome development for the disgraced former prince after a turbulent few weeks.

On October 30, Buckingham Palace said King Charles had “initiated a formal process” to revoke Andrew’s royal status after weeks of pressure to act over his relationship with Epstein – who took his own life in prison in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

The rare move to strip a British prince or princess of their title – last taken in 1919 after Prince Ernest Augustus sided with Germany during World War I – also meant that Andrew was evicted from his lavish Royal Lodge mansion in Windsor and moved into “private accommodation”.

King Charles formally made the changes with an announcement published on Wednesday in The Gazette – the United Kingdom’s official public record – saying Andrew “shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of ‘Royal Highness’ and the titular dignity of ‘Prince’”.

Andrew surrendered his use of the title Duke of York earlier in October following new abuse allegations from his accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, in her posthumous memoir, which hit shelves last month.

The Democrat lawmakers referenced Giuffre’s memoir in their letter, specifically claims that she feared “retaliation if she made allegations against” Andrew, and that he had asked his personal protection officer to “dig up dirt” on his accuser for a smear campaign in 2011.

“This fear of retaliation has been a persistent obstacle to many of those who were victimised in their fight for justice,” the letter said. “In addition to Mr. Epstein’s crimes, we are investigating any such efforts to silence, intimidate, or threaten victims.”

Giuffre, who alleges that Epstein trafficked her to have sex with Andrew on three occasions, twice when she was just 17, took her own life in Australia in April.

In 2022, Andrew paid Giuffre a multimillion-pound settlement to resolve a civil lawsuit she had levelled against him. Andrew denied the allegations, and he has not been charged with any crime.

On Thursday, Democratic lawmakers also turned the spotlight on Zorro Ranch, proposing to the House of Representatives’ Courts, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee that a commission be created to investigate alleged crimes against young girls at the New Mexico property, which Epstein purchased in 1993.

State Representative Andrea Romero said several survivors of Epstein’s abuse have signalled that sex trafficking activity extended to the secluded desert ranch with a hilltop mansion and private runway in Stanley, about 56 kilometres (35 miles) south of the state capital, Santa Fe.

“This commission will specifically seek the truth about what officials knew, how crimes were unreported or reported, and how the state can ensure that this essentially never happens again,” Romero told a panel of legislators.

“There’s no complete record of what occurred,” she said.

Representative Marianna Anaya, presenting to the committee alongside Romero, said state authorities missed several opportunities over decades to stop Epstein.

“Even after all these years, you know, there are still questions of New Mexico’s role as a state, our roles in terms of oversight and accountability for the survivors who are harmed,” she said.

New Mexico laws allowed Epstein to avoid registering locally as a sex offender long after he was required to register in Florida, where he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.

Republican Representative Andrea Reeb said she believed New Mexicans “have a right to know what happened at this ranch” and she didn’t feel the commission was going to be a “big political thing”.

To move forward, approval will be needed from the state House when the legislature convenes in January.

WASHINGTON — As the federal shutdown has dragged on to become the longest in American history, President Trump has shown little interest in talks to reopen the government. But Republican losses on election day could change that.

Trump told Republican senators at the White House on Wednesday that he believed the government shutdown “was a big factor” in the party’s poor showing against the Democrats in key races.

“We must get the government back open soon, and really immediately,” Trump said, adding that he would speak privately with the senators to discuss what he would like to do next.

The president’s remarks are a departure from what has largely been an apathetic response from him about reopening the government. With Congress at a stalemate for more than a month, Trump’s attention has mostly been elsewhere.

He spent most of last week in Asia attempting to broker trade deals. Before that, much of his focus was on reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and building a $300-million White House ballroom.

To date, Trump’s main attempt to reopen the federal government has been calling on Republican leaders to terminate the filibuster, a long-running Senate rule that requires 60 votes in the chamber to pass most legislation. Trump wants to scrap the rule — the so-called nuclear option — to allow Republicans in control of the chamber to push through legislation with a simple-majority vote.

“If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” Trump told the GOP senators and warned that with the rule in place, the party would be viewed as “do-nothing Republicans” and get “killed” in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump’s push to end the shutdown comes as voters are increasingly disapproving of his economic agenda, according to recent polls. The trend was reinforced Tuesday as voters cast ballots with economic concerns as their main motivation, an AP poll showed. Despite those indicators, Trump told a crowd at the American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday that he thinks “we have the greatest economy right now.”

While Trump has not acknowledged fault in his economic agenda, he has began to express concern that the ongoing shutdown may be hurting Republicans. Those concerns have led him to push Republicans to eliminate the filibusters, a move that has put members of his party in a tough spot.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has resisted the pressure, calling the filibuster an “important tool” that keeps the party in control of the chamber in check.

The 60-vote threshold allowed Republicans to block a “whole host of terrible Democrat policies” when they were in the minority last year, Thune said in an interview Monday with Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show.”

“I shudder to think how much worse it would’ve been without the legislative filibuster,” he said. “The truth is that if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that is essentially what we would be doing, we would own all the crap they are going to do if and when they get the chance to do it.”

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said last week he is a “firm no on eliminating it.”

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t,” Curtis said in a social media post.

As the government shutdown stretched into its 36th day Wednesday, Trump continued to show no interest in negotiating with Democrats, who are refusing to vote on legislation to reopen the government that does not include a deal on healthcare.

Budget negotiations deadlocked as Democrats tried to force Republicans to extend federal healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year. If those credits expire, millions of Americans are expected to see the cost of their premiums spike.

With negotiations stalled, Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by their demands to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to Trump demanding a bipartisan meeting to “end the GOP shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.”

“Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter to Trump.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats’ letter.

“The election results ought to send a much needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis,” Schumer told the Associated Press.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday signal that he is more interested in a partisan approach to ending the shutdown.

“It is time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that is to terminate the filibuster,” Trump told GOP senators. “It’s the only way you can do it.”

If Republicans don’t do it, Trump argued Senate Democrats will do so the next time they are in a majority.

Democrats have not signaled any intent to end the filibuster in the future, but Trump has claimed otherwise and argued that it is up to Republicans to “do it first.”

Nov. 1 (UPI) — Federal Aviation Administration officials on Friday night urged Congress to approve government funding as more air traffic controllers call in sick amid the shutdown.

The nation’s nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers and additional Transportation Security Administration agents are deemed essential, but they are not being paid during the government shutdown that started on Oct.1.

Now in its 32nd day on Saturday, the FAA said the strain on unpaid employees is causing many to call in sick due to other obligations, such as supervising children, and out of frustration, The Hill reported.

“A surge in callouts is straining staffing levels at multiple facilities, leading to widespread impacts across the [National Airspace System,” FAA personnel posted on X.

“Half of our Core 30 facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 80% of air traffic controllers are absent at New York-area facilities.”

The FAA post said the “shutdown must end” so that air traffic controllers can get paid and to ensure the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the country.

When experiencing staffing shortages, the FAA reduces the amount of air traffic to maintain safety, which could cause flight delays or cancellations, the post said.

Such staffing shortages caused delays at airports in Boston, Dallas, Nashville and Newark, N.J., among several others, according to ABC News.

The shutdown is the second-longest in U.S. history, but it is poised to exceed the current record-holder of 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019.

During that shutdown, air traffic controllers again worked without pay until the government reopened and they received back pay.

Air traffic controllers earn a median salary of $150,000 annually, but new hires are paid about $50,000, aviation industry labor expertJake Rosenfeld of Washington University in St. Louis told ABC News.

The Senate has failed 13 times to obtain the 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rule and fund the federal government while continuing to work on a 2026 fiscal year budget.

The Senate reconvenes on Monday, which is one day short of the record 35-day shutdown.

An Ohio panel adopted new U.S. House districts on Friday that could boost the GOP’s chances of winning two additional seats in next year’s elections and aid President Trump’s efforts to hold on to a slim congressional majority.

The action by the Ohio Redistricting Commission came as Virginia’s Democratic-led General Assembly advanced a proposed constitutional amendment that could pave the way for redistricting in the state ahead of the 2026 congressional elections. That measure still needs another round of legislative approval early next year before it can go to voters.

Trump has been urging Republican-led states to reshape their U.S. House districts in an attempt to win more seats. But unlike in other states, Ohio’s redistricting was required by the state constitution because the current districts were adopted after the 2020 census without bipartisan support.

Ohio joins Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers already have revised their congressional districts.

Democrats have been pushing back. California voters are deciding Tuesday on a redistricting plan passed by the Democratic-led Legislature.

The political parties are in an intense battle, because Democrats need to gain just three seats in next year’s election to win control of the House and gain the power to impede Trump’s agenda.

In a rare bit of bipartisanship, Ohio’s new map won support from all five Republicans and both Democrats on the redistricting panel. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee praised the Ohio Democrats “for negotiating to prevent an even more egregious gerrymander” benefiting Republicans.

Republicans already hold 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats. The new map could boost their chances in already competitive districts currently held by Democratic Reps. Greg Landsman in Cincinnati and Marcy Kaptur near Toledo. Kaptur won a 22nd term last year by about 2,400 votes, or less than 1 percentage point, in a district carried by Trump. Landsman was reelected with more than 54% of the vote.

National Democrats said they expect to hold both targeted seats and compete to flip three other districts where Republicans have won by narrow margins.

Ohio residents criticize new map

Ohio’s commission had faced a Friday deadline to adopt a new map, or else the task would have fallen to the GOP-led Legislature, which could have crafted districts even more favorable to Republicans. But any redistricting bill passed by the Legislature could have been subject to an initiative petition campaign from opponents seeking to force a public referendum on the new map.

The uncertainty of that legislative process provided commissioners of both parties with some incentive for compromise.

But Ohio residents who testified to commissioners Friday denounced the new districts. Julia Cattaneo, who wore a shirt saying “gerrymandering is cheating,” said the new map is gerrymandered more for Republicans than the one it is replacing and is not the sort of compromise needed.

“Yes, you are compromising — your integrity, honor, duty and to represent Ohioans,” she said.

Added resident Scott Sibley: “This map is an affront to democracy, and you should all — every one of you — be ashamed.”

Republican state Auditor Keith Farber, a member of the commission, defended the map during a testy exchange with one opponent. Because many Democrats live in cities and many Republicans in rural areas, he said there was no way to draw a map creating eight Republican and seven Democratic districts — as some had urged — without splitting cities, counties and townships.

Virginia Democrats point at Trump to defend redistricting

Virginia is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans. Democratic lawmakers haven’t unveiled their planned new map, nor how many seats they are trying to gain, but said their moves are necessary to respond to the Trump-inspired gerrymandering in Republican-led states.

“Our voters are asking to have that voice. They’re asking that we protect democracy, that we not allow gerrymandering to happen throughout the country, and we sit back,” Democratic Sen. Barbara Favola said.

The proposed constitutional amendment would let lawmakers temporarily bypass a bipartisan commission and redraw congressional districts to their advantage. The Senate’s approval Friday followed House approval Wednesday.

The developments come as Virginia holds statewide elections Tuesday, where all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are on the ballot. Democrats would need to keep their slim majority in the lower chamber to advance the constitutional amendment again next year. It then would go to a statewide referendum.

Republican Sen. Mark Obenshain said Democrats were ignoring the will of voters who had overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan redistricting commission.

“Heaven forbid that we actually link arms and work together on something,” Obenshain said. “What the voters of Virginia said is, ‘We expect redistricting to be an issue that we work across the aisle on, that we link arms on.’”

But Democratic Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, who has long championed the bipartisan redistricting commission, noted the panel still would be in charge of redistricting after the 2030 census.

“We’re not trying to end the practice of fair maps,” he said. “We are asking the voters if, in this one limited case, they want to ensure that a constitutional-norm-busting president can’t break the entire national election by twisting the arms of a few state legislatures.”

Indiana and Kansas could be next

Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun called a special session to begin Monday to redraw congressional districts, currently held by seven Republicans and two Democrats. But lawmakers don’t plan to begin work on that day. Although it’s unclear exactly when lawmakers will convene, state law gives the Legislature 40 days to complete a special session.

In Kansas, Republican lawmakers are trying to collect enough signatures from colleagues to call themselves into a special session on redistricting to begin Nov. 7. Senate President Ty Masterson says he has the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate, but House Republicans have at least a few holdouts. The petition drive is necessary because Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly isn’t likely to call a session to redraw the current map that has sent three Republicans and one Democrat to the House.

Lieb, Diaz and Scolforo write for the Associated Press. Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Mo.; Scolforo from Harrisburg, Pa.; and Diaz from Richmond, Va. John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., and Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.

WESTPORT, Conn. — A man contesting the handling of the will of the late U.S. Rep. Stewart B. McKinney disputes official reports that McKinney contracted AIDS from blood transfusions, saying that for five years he was the Connecticut congressman’s lover.

McKinney, 56, a liberal Republican who died in 1987 during his ninth term in Congress, left a car and a 40% share of his Washington house to the man, Arnold R. Denson, according to documents on file in Probate Court. Denson’s share of the estate is worth at least $59,200.

Denson displayed photographs, bills and other documents to support his claim.

Vic Basil, former executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, also said that Denson and McKinney were lovers. The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign Fund is the nation’s largest gay-lesbian political action group and lobbying organization.

McKinney’s wife, Lucie, denied that her husband was homosexual.

Denson, 34, a real estate agent, said the two lived together in McKinney’s Washington home. Lucie McKinney remained in Connecticut, where the congressman spent most weekends.

McKinney’s family learned of the affair when he was on his death bed, Denson says. He said he agreed not to reveal the relationship at the family’s request and was told that in exchange for his silence he would receive the property willed to him.

But Denson has not received his inheritance and is battling Lucie McKinney in Probate Court in Westport. He decided to speak publicly after a hearing Monday.

Cesar Caceres, McKinney’s physician, issued a statement the day of McKinney’s death on May 7, 1987, saying that McKinney had contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion he received after coronary bypass surgery in 1979.

When informed of Denson’s statement, Lucie McKinney on Monday again denied that her husband was homosexual.

Her attorney, Lawrence J. Halloran, also disputed Denson’s claim. He said that McKinney and Denson were friends and business associates, that McKinney lived alone in Washington and that Denson rented an apartment attached to McKinney’s home.

Denson, a divorced father of two, said he believes McKinney was already infected with AIDS when they met in 1982, and said two previous lovers of McKinney have died of AIDS.

Denson said he has recently tested negative for the virus that causes AIDS and has abstained from sex since McKinney’s death.

The estate could be wiped out by a claim filed by Lucie McKinney, who is an heir to the Procter & Gamble fortune as well as to an oil and railroad fortune. She testified Monday that her husband borrowed $432,552 from her trust fund and promised to pay her back.

For most of President Trump’s second term, Republicans have bent to his will. But in two Midwestern states, Trump’s plan to maintain control of the U.S. House in next year’s election by having Republicans redraw congressional districts has hit a roadblock.

Despite weeks of campaigning by the White House, Republicans in Indiana and Kansas say their party doesn’t have enough votes to pass new, more GOP-friendly maps. It’s made the two states outliers in the rush to redistrict — places where Republican-majority legislatures are unwilling or unable to heed Trump’s call and help preserve the party’s control on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers in the two states still may be persuaded, and the White House push, which has included an Oval Office meeting for Indiana lawmakers and two trips to Indianapolis by Vice President JD Vance, is expected to continue. But for now, it’s a rare setback for the president and his efforts to maintain a compliant GOP-held Congress after the 2026 midterms.

Typically, states redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts every 10 years, based on census data. But because midterm elections typically tend to favor the party not in power — and the GOP holds a razor-thin majority in the House — Trump is pressuring Republicans to devise new maps that favor their candidates.

Democrats need to gain only three seats to flip House control, and the fight has become a bruising back-and-forth.

With new maps of their own, multiple Democratic states including California are moving to counter any gains made by Republicans. The latest, Virginia, is expected to take up the issue in a special session starting Monday.

Opposition to gerrymandering has long been a liberal cause, but Democratic states are now calling for redistricting in response to Trump’s latest effort, which they characterize as an unprecedented power grab.

Indiana

Indiana, whose U.S. House delegation has seven Republicans and two Democrats, was one of the first states on which the Trump administration focused its redistricting efforts this summer.

But a spokesperson for state Senate Leader Rodric Bray’s office said Thursday that the chamber lacks the votes to redraw Indiana’s congressional districts. With only 10 Democrats in the 50-member Senate, that means more than a dozen of the 40 Republicans oppose the idea.

Bray’s office did not respond to requests for an interview.

The holdouts may come from a few schools of thought. New political lines, if poorly executed, could make solidly Republican districts more competitive. Others say they believe it is simply wrong to stack the deck.

“We are being asked to create a new culture in which it would be normal for a political party to select new voters, not once a decade — but any time it fears the consequences of an approaching election,” state Sen. Spencer Deery, a Republican, said in a statement in August.

Deery’s office did not respond to a request for an interview and said the statement stands.

A common GOP argument in favor of new maps is that Democratic-run states such as Massachusetts have no Republican representatives, while Illinois has used redistricting for partisan advantage — a process known as gerrymandering.

“For decades, Democrat states have gerrymandered in the dark of the night,” Republican state Sen. Chris Garten said on social media. “We can no longer sit idly by as our country is stolen from us.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, who would vote to break a tie in the state Senate if needed, recently called on lawmakers to forge ahead with redistricting and criticized the holdouts as not sufficiently conservative.

“For years, it has been said accurately that the Indiana Senate is where conservative ideas from the House go to die,” Beckwith said in a social media post.

Indiana is staunchly conservative, but its Republicans tend to foster a deliberate temperance. And the state voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

“Hoosiers, it’s very tough to to predict us, other than to say we’re very cautious,” former GOP state lawmaker Mike Murphy said. “We’re not into trends.”

The party divide reflects a certain independent streak held by voters in Indiana and Kansas and a willingness by some to break ranks.

Writing in the Washington Post last week, former Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, urged Indiana lawmakers to resist the push to gerrymander. “Someone has to lead in climbing out of the mudhole,” he said.

“Hoosiers, like most Americans, place a high value on fairness and react badly to its naked violation,” he wrote.

Kansas

In Kansas, Republican legislative leaders are trying to bypass the Democratic governor and force a special session for only the second time in the state’s 164-year history. Gov. Laura Kelly opposes mid-decade redistricting and has suggested it could be unconstitutional.

The Kansas Constitution allows GOP lawmakers to force a special session with a petition signed by two-thirds of both chambers — also the supermajorities needed to override Kelly’s expected veto of a new map. Republicans hold four more seats than the two-thirds majority in both the state Senate and House. In either, a defection of five Republicans would sink the effort.

Weeks after state Senate President Ty Masterson announced the push for a special session, GOP leaders were struggling to get the last few signatures needed.

Among the holdouts is Rep. Mark Schreiber, who represents a district southwest of Topeka. He told the Associated Press that he “did not sign a petition to call a special session, and I have no plans to sign one.” Schreiber said he believes redistricting should be used only to reflect shifts in population after the once-every-10-year census.

“Redistricting by either party in midcycle should not be done,” he said.

Republicans would probably target U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the Democrat representing the mostly Kansas City-area 3rd Congressional District, which includes Johnson County, the state’s most populous. The suburban county accounts for more than 85% of the vote and has trended to the left since 2016.

Kansas has a sizable number of moderate Republicans, and 29% of the state’s 2 million voters are registered as politically unaffiliated. Both groups are prominent in Johnson County.

Republican legislators previously tried to hurt Davids’ chances of reelection when redrawing the district, but she won in 2022 and 2024 by more than 10 percentage points.

“They tried it once and couldn’t get it done,” said Jack Shearer, an 82-year-old registered Republican from suburban Kansas City.

But a mid-decade redistricting has support among some Republicans in the county. State Sen. Doug Shane, whose district includes part of the county, said he believes his constituents would be amenable to splitting it.

“Splitting counties is not unprecedented and occurs in a number of congressional districts around the country,” he said in an email.

Volmert and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Volmert reported from Lansing, Mich., and Hanna from Topeka, Kan. AP writer Heather Hollingsworth in Lenexa, Kan., contributed to this report.

Group of 27 Congress members call for release of Mohammed Ibrahim, 16, held in Israeli detention for eight months.

A group of United States lawmakers have urged the Trump administration to secure the release of a 16-year-old Palestinian American who has been held in Israeli detention centres for eight months.

In a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, 27 members of the US Congress called for the release of Mohammed Ibrahim amid reports that he faces abusive conditions in detention.

“As we have been told repeatedly, ‘the Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens abroad,’” the letter, signed by figures such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Von Hollen, states. “We share that view and urge you to fulfil this responsibility by engaging the Israeli government directly to secure the swift release of this American boy.”

Mohammed’s detention, which has now lasted for more than eight months, has underscored the harsh conditions faced by Palestinians held in Israeli prisons with little legal recourse.

“His family has received updates from US embassy staff and former detainees who described his alarming weight loss, deteriorating health, and signs of torture as his court hearings continue to be routinely postponed,” the letter said.

Analysts and rights advocates also say the case is demonstrative of a general apathy towards the plight of Palestinian Americans by the US government, which is quick to offer support to Israeli Americans who find themselves in harm’s way but slow to respond to instances of violence or abuse against Palestinians with US citizenship.

“The contrast has been made clear: The US government simply does not care about Palestinians with US citizenship who are killed or unjustly detained by Israel,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel programme at the Arab Center Washington DC, told Al Jazeera.

During his time in prison, Mohammed’s 20-year-old cousin, Sayfollah Musallet, was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. US Ambassador Huckabee called for the Israeli government to “aggressively investigate” the murder, but no arrests have been made thus far, and Israeli settlers who carry out violent attacks against Palestinian communities rarely face consequences.

Musallet’s family have called for the Trump administration to launch its own independent investigation.

“Our government is not unaware of these cases. They are themselves complicit,” said Munayyer. “In many cases where Palestinian Americans have been killed, the government does nothing. This is not unique to the Trump administration.”

In testimony obtained by the rights group Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), Mohammed said that he was beaten with rifle butts as he was being transported and has been held in a cold cell with inadequate food. DCIP states that he has lost a “considerable amount of weight” since his arrest in February.

Israeli authorities have alleged that Mohammed, 15 years old at the time of his initial detention, threw stones at Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. He has not had a trial and denies the charge, and the letter from US lawmakers states that “no evidence has been publicly provided to support this allegation”.

Charges of stone throwing are widely used by Israeli authorities against Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli facilities are notorious for their mistreatment of detainees.

A DCIP investigation into the detention of Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank found that about 75 percent described being subjected to physical violence following their arrest and that 85.5 percent were not informed of the reason for their arrest.

“The abuse and imprisonment of an American teenager by any other foreign power should be met with outrage and decisive action by our government,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement about the case.

“The Trump administration must be America and American citizens first, and secure the release of Mohammed Ibrahim from Israel immediately. This 16-year-old from Florida belongs at home, safe with his family – not in Israeli military prisons notorious for human rights abuses.”

Turkey’s conservative government has proposed extreme and hateful reforms targeting the LGBTQIA+ community.

On 15 October, Turkish lawmakers shared a draft of their 11th Judicial Reform Package, which includes updates to existing laws that restrict trans and queer people.

Under the proposed legislation, “any person who engages in, publicly encourages, praises, or promotes attitudes or behaviours contrary to their biological sex at birth and public morality” could face one to three years in prison, per Türkiye Today.

Another portion of legislation would reportedly make the legal age for gender reassignment surgery change from 18 to 25.

Individuals looking to have the procedure would also need to be unmarried, receive a medical board report confirming that the procedure is “psychologically necessary” from a Ministry of Health-approved hospital; obtain four separate evaluations that are spaced three months apart; and have a court order amendment to their civil registry once the aforementioned medical report is approved.

Individuals with genetic or hormonal disorders would be the only ones exempt from the proposed regulations.  

Medical professionals who perform gender affirming surgery without going through the aforementioned archaic steps could face three to seven years in prison and fines.

In addition to severely limiting trans people’s accessibility to gender affirming care, the proposed reforms target same-sex couples.

If a couple is caught having an engagement or wedding ceremony, they can face between one and a half to four years in prison.

The penalty for “public sexual acts or exhibitionism” would also increase from six months to a year to one to three years.

As for the stated purpose for introducing the hateful amendments, the document claims that it’s “to ensure the upbringing of physically and mentally healthy individuals and to protect the family institution and social structure, per Türkiye Today.

While homosexuality is not banned in Turkey, and despite the country being home to numerous LGBTQIA+ associations, homophobia is widespread and anti-discrimination laws are nonexistent.

Over the last decade, events for the community – like Pride marches and other queer-focused gatherings – have faced censorship by government authorities. The conservative country has even opted out of competing in Eurovision due to the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ contestants.

In November 2024, Turkish authorities banned the screening of Luca Guadagnino’s drama Queer at Mubi Fest Istanbul, leading the organisation to cancel the event altogether.

WASHINGTON — A president looking to seize power beyond the executive branch. A Congress controlled by Republican lawmakers unwilling to directly defy him. And a minority party looking for any way to fight back.

The dynamic left Washington in a stalemate Thursday — the ninth day of the government shutdown — and lawmakers openly venting their frustration as they tried to gain traction without the trust that is typically the foundation of any bipartisan deal.

“To have good-faith conversations, you have to have trust. There’s a real challenge of trust,” said Rep. Brad Schneider, chair of the New Democratic Coalition, a pragmatic group of House Democrats.

Groups of lawmakers — huddled over dinners, on phone calls, and in private meetings — have tried to brainstorm ways out of the standoff that has shuttered government offices, kept hundreds of thousands of federal employees at home and threatened to leave them without a scheduled payday. But lawmakers have found themselves running up against the reality that the relationship between the two parties is badly broken.

The frustration was evident this week as House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, on separate occasions, engaged in tense exchanges in the Capitol hallways with members of the opposing party.

“We’re in an environment where we need more than a handshake,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who has engaged in talks with Republicans.

President Trump and Republicans have so far held to the stance that they will only negotiate on Democratic demands around health care benefits after they vote to reopen the government. They also say Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer is beholden to the left wing of his party and only staging the shutdown fight to stave off a primary challenge.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, told Punchbowl News in an interview that Democrats were winning the shutdown fight, saying, “Every day gets better for us.”

Republicans quickly seized on those comments, arguing it showed that Schumer is approaching the shutdown with purely political motives.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune stood on the Senate floor flanked by a poster printed with Schumer’s words.

“This isn’t a political game. Democrats might feel that way, but I don’t know anybody else that does,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican. “The longer this goes on, the more the American people realize that Democrats own this shutdown.”

Schumer, in his own floor speech, responded that it was Trump and Republicans who are “playing with people’s lives.”

“Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown, the worse it gets for Americans and the clearer it becomes who is fighting for them,” said the New York senator.

When a handshake deal is not enough

Democrats have insisted they can’t take Trump at his word and therefore need more than a verbal commitment for any deal.

Conflicts over spending power had already been raging before the shutdown as the White House pushed to assert maximum power over congressionally approved budgets. The White House budget office had canceled scores of government contracts, including cutting out the legislative branch entirely with a $4.9 billion cut to foreign aid in August through a legally dubious process known as a “pocket rescission.”

That enraged Democrats — and disturbed some Republicans who criticized it as executive overreach.

“I hate rescissions, to be honest with you, unless they’re congressionally approved,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

Matt Glassman, a fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, said the president’s use of rescissions was “blowing up the underlying dynamic of the bargaining” because it inserts intense partisanship into the budget appropriations process that otherwise requires compromise, particularly in the Senate.

Then, as the government entered a shutdown, Trump’s budget director Russ Vought laid out arguments that the president would have even more power to lay off workers and even cancel pay due to furloughed federal workers once the funding lapse is solved. Vought has also announced that the administration was withholding billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in states with Democratic senators who have voted for the shutdown.

Trump has cast Vought’s actions as the consequences of Democratic obstruction, even sharing a video that depicted him as the grim reaper. But on Capitol Hill, there has been an acknowledgment that the hardball tactics are making it harder to negotiate.

“I think with senators, carrots work better than sticks,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican.

One Democratic idea may win GOP support

Before they vote to reopen the government, Democrats’ main demand is that Congress take up an extension of tax credits for health plans offered on Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Trump has sounded open to a deal, saying that he wants “great health care” for Americans.

What’s received less attention is that Democrats also want new safeguards in the law limiting the White House’s ability to claw back, or rescind, funding already approved by Congress. While final appropriations bills are still being worked out, Republicans have been open to the idea.

“When you end the shutdown and get back to regular order within the appropriations bills, there’s very clear language about how we feel about rescissions,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “I think you’ll find hard, solid support from Republicans to see that what we agree to will be executed on.”

In the meantime, the main sticking point for lawmakers this week has been finding any agreement on extending the health care subsidies.

The consequences of an extended shutdown

As the shutdown drags on without sign of significant progress to ending the impasse, lawmakers are looking ahead to the dates when federal employees will miss a payday.

Active-duty military troops would miss a paycheck on Oct. 15. Some lawmakers are getting nervous about both the financial implications for the troops and the political blowback of allowing soldiers to go without pay.

As House Speaker Mike Johnson fielded questions on C-SPAN Thursday morning, one caller pleaded with him to pass legislation that would allow the military to get paid during the government shutdown.

The woman, identified as Samantha, said her husband serves in the military and that they “live paycheck to paycheck.”

She pleaded with Johnson to call the House back to Washington, saying, “You could stop this.”

Johnson said he was sorry to hear about her situation, blamed Democrats for refusing to pass a stop-gap spending bill and added, “I am angry because of situations just like yours.”

Groves, Jalonick and Brown write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

Published on
08/10/2025 – 18:10 GMT+2

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It’s a narrow win — but a win nonetheless — for the opponents of the controversial trade agreement reached with the Mercosur countries in December 2024.

A show of hands from European lawmakers on Wednesday saw 269 of them reject a paragraph of a resolution on the EU’s political strategy for Latin America that welcomed the conclusion of the Mercosur agreement — offering a preview of the showdown taking shape in the European Parliament over the controversial trade deal.

The Strasbourg vote was decided by just 10 votes, as 259 other MEPs voted in favour, reflecting a divided hemicycle over this controversial agreement.

“The European Parliament is once again expressing its scepticism about the trade agreement with Mercosur,” French MEP Pascal Canfin (Renew) wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

“The political signal is very clear: there are more MEPs who have profound doubts about the merits of this agreement than MEPs who want it adopted immediately.”

The European Commission, which had been at the helm during more than twenty years of negotiations for this agreement, submitted it for ratification to the Council and for its consent to the European Parliament on 3 September.

However, it remains uncertain whether the final step for the EU to conclude the agreement will proceed smoothly.

The deal, which liberalises trade between Mercosur countries — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — and the EU, reduces tariffs on many products, including some agricultural goods, raising concerns among European farmers about facing unfair competition from Latin American producers.

‘We will continue fighting’

In the Parliament, a group of lawmakers is preparing to submit a resolution to their colleagues calling for the EU Court of Justice to be seized to suspend the deal’s approval.

Opponents of the agreement also fear that Mercosur countries will not comply with European phytosanitary and environmental standards.

The agreement “abandons agriculture and livestock, harms the environment, fuels deforestation, rolls out the red carpet for extractive multinationals,” Spanish MEP Irene Montero (The Left), who prompted the vote on Wednesday, told Euronews.

“We will continue fighting to ensure that this agreement is not ratified and to stop the danger it poses to the environment and our primary sector.”

Supporters of the deal argue, on the other hand, that this text — which creates a free trade area of 700 million people — is necessary in the new global trade context to face Chinese competition in Mercosur countries and diversify trading partners, especially as the US is raising tariff barriers around its market.

The part of the resolution that was rejected welcomed the conclusion of the deal’s negotiations, highlighting “the fact that the agreement would be a real game changer for the relationship between the two regions.”

The deal “would be the largest trade agreement ever signed by the EU in terms of population, covering more than 700 million citizens, and the most significant in terms of its economic impact,” the resolution emphasised.

The resolution also stressed the “geopolitical value” of the deal, “as an essential tool for advancing the EU’s strategic interests in the current international context.”

The plenary vote on the Mercosur agreement itself has not yet been scheduled. A source familiar with the matter told Euronews that the European Parliament’s administration hopes it will be on the MEPs’ agenda by the end of the year.

SACRAMENTO — In a bid to stabilize struggling crude-oil refineries, state lawmakers on Saturday passed a last-minute bill that would allow the construction of 2,000 new oil wells annually in the San Joaquin Valley while further restricting drilling along California’s iconic coastline.

The measure, Senate Bill 237, was part of a deal on climate and environmental issues brokered behind closed doors by Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister). The agreement aims to address growing concerns about affordability, primarily the price of gas, and the planned closure of two of the state’s 13 refineries.

California has enough refining capacity to meet demand right now, industry experts say, but the closures could reduce the state’s refining capacity by about 20% and lead to more volatile gas prices.

Democrats on Saturday framed the vote as a bitter but necessary pill to stabilize the energy market in the short term, even as the state pushes forward with the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

McGuire called the bills the “most impactful affordability, climate and energy packages in our state’s history.”

“We continue to chart the future, and these bills will put more money in the pockets of hard-working Californians and keep our air clean, all while powering our transition to a more sustainable economy,” McGuire said.

The planned April 2026 closure of Valero’s refinery in Benicia will lead to a loss of $1.6 billion in wages and drag down local government budgets, said Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City), who represents the area and co-authored SB 237.

Wilson acknowledged that the bill won’t help the Benicia refinery, but said that “directly increasing domestic production of crude oil and lowering our reliance on imports will help stabilize the market — it will help create and save jobs.”

Crude oil production in California is declining at an annualized rate of about 15%, about 50% faster than the state’s most aggressive forecast for a decline in demand for gasoline, analysts said this week.

The bill that lawmakers approved Saturday would grant statutory approval for up to 2,000 new wells per year in Kern County, the heart of California oil country.

That legislative fix, effective through 2036, would in effect circumvent a decade of legal challenges by environmental groups seeking to stymie drilling in the county that produces about three-fourths of the state’s crude oil.

“Kern County knows how to produce energy,” said state Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield). “We produce 80% of California’s oil, if allowed, 70% of the state’s wind and solar, and over 80% of the in-state battery storage capacity. We are the experts. We are not the enemy. We can help secure energy affordability for all Californians while enjoying the benefits of increased jobs and economic prosperity.”

Environmentalists have fumed over that trade-off and over a provision that would allow the governor to suspend the state’s summer-blend gasoline fuel standards, which reduce auto emissions but drive up costs at the pump, if prices spike for more than 30 days or if it seems likely that they will.

Some progressive Democrats voted against the bill, including Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), the chair of the Legislative Progressive Caucus. The bill, Lee said, was a “regulatory giveaway to Big Oil” that would do little to stabilize gas prices or refineries, which are struggling because demand for oil is falling.

“We need to continue to focus on the future, not the past,” Lee said.

The bill also would make offshore drilling more difficult by tightening the safety and regulatory requirements for pipelines.

Lawmakers also voted to extend cap-and-trade, an ambitious climate program that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allows large polluters to buy and sell unused emission allowances at quarterly auctions. Lawmakers signed off on a 15-year extension of the program, which has been renamed “cap and invest,” through 2045.

The program is seen as crucial for California to comply with its climate goals — including reaching carbon neutrality by 2045 — and also brings in billions in revenue that helps fund climate efforts, including high-speed rail and safe drinking water programs.

Also included in the package was AB 825, which creates a pathway for California to participate in a regional electricity market. If passed, the bill would expand the state’s ability to buy and sell clean power with other Western states in a move that supporters say will improve grid reliability and save money for ratepayers.

Opponents fear that California could yield control of its power grid to out-of-state authorities, including the federal government.

SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers on Friday advanced a plan that would allow California colleges to offer preferential admission to students who are descended from enslaved people, part of an ongoing effort by Democrats to address the legacy of slavery in the United States.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 7, would allow — but not require — the University of California, Cal State and private colleges to give admissions preference to applicants who can prove they are directly related to someone who was enslaved in America before 1900.

If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the effort could put the Golden State on yet another collision course with the Trump administration, which has diversity initiatives and universities in its crosshairs.

“While we like to pretend access to institutions of higher learning is fair and merit-based and equal, we know that it is not,” said Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who authored the bill, before the final vote Friday. “If you are the relative or the descendant of somebody who is rich or powerful or well connected, or an alumni of one of these illustrious institutions, you got priority consideration.”

But, Bryan said, “There’s a legacy that we don’t ever acknowledge in education … the legacy of exclusion, of harm.”

The bill is a top priority of the Legislative Black Caucus, which introduced 15 bills this year aimed at addressing the lingering effects of slavery and systemic racism in California.

Although California entered the Union as a “free state” in 1850, slavery continued in the Golden State after the state Constitution outlawed it in 1849. Slavery was abolished nationwide by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865 after the Civil War.

California voters barred colleges from considering race, sex, ethnicity or national origin in admissions nearly three decades ago by passing Proposition 209. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found that affirmative action in university admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Bryan and other backers stressed that the language of the bill had been narrowly tailored to comply with Proposition 209 by focusing on lineage, rather than race. Being a descendant of a slave is not a proxy for race, they said, because not all enslaved people were Black, and not all Black Americans are descended from slaves.

“The story of our country is such that people who look like me and people who do not look like me could be descendants of American chattel slavery,” said Bryan, who is Black, during a July debate over the bill.

Supporters of the measure say that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurrence in the 2023 affirmative action case that refugees and formerly enslaved people who received benefits from the government after the Civil War were a “race-neutral category, not blacks writ large,” and that the term “freedman” was a “decidedly underinclusive proxy for race.”

Andrew Quinio, an attorney for the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, told lawmakers during earlier debates on the bill that lineage is, in fact, a proxy for race because being a descendant of an American slave is “so closely intertwined” with being Black.

Instead, he said, the bill could give colleges a green light to give preference to “victims of racial discrimination in public education, regardless of race,” which would treat students as individuals, rather than relying on “stereotypes about their circumstances based on their race and ancestry.”

Were California “confident in the overlap of students who have experienced present discrimination and students who are descendants of slaves, then giving preference based on whether a student has experienced present discrimination would not exclude descendants of slaves,” he said.

Earlier this week, the Democratic-led Legislature also passed Senate Bill 518, which would create a new office called the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery. That bureau would create a process to determine whether someone is the descendant of a slave and to certify someone’s claim to help them access benefits.

The legislature also approved Assembly Bill 57, by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne), which would help descendants of slavery build generational wealth by becoming homeowners.

The bill would set aside 10% of the loans from a popular program called California Dream for All, which offers first-time home buyers a loan worth up to 20% of the purchase price of a house or condo, capped at $150,000.

The loans don’t accrue interest or require monthly payments. Instead, when the mortgage is refinanced or the house is sold, the borrower pays back the original loan, plus 20% of its increase in value.

McKinnor said during debates over the bill that the legacy of slavery and racism has created stark disparities in home ownership rates, with descendants of slaves about 30 percentage points behind white households.

The Legislature also passed McKinnor’s AB 67, which sets up a process for people who said they or their families lost property to the government through “racially motivated eminent domain” to seek to have the property returned or to be paid.

Nonpartisan legislative analysts said that the bill could create costs “in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars,” depending on the number of claims submitted, the value of the properties and the associated legal costs.

California became the first state government in the country to study reparations after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national conversation on racial justice.

Newsom and state lawmakers passed a law to create a “first in the nation” task force to study and propose remedies to help atone for the legacy of slavery. That panel spent years working on a 1,080-page report on the effects of slavery and the discriminatory policies sanctioned by the government after slavery was abolished.

The report recommended more than 100 policies to help address persistent racial disparities, including reforms to the criminal justice system and the housing market, the first of which were taken up last year by the Legislature’s Black Caucus.

Hamstrung by a budget deficit, lawmakers passed 10 of 14 bills in the reparations package last year, which reform advocates felt were lackluster.

How Californians feel about reparations depends on what is under discussion. A poll by the L.A. Times and the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies in 2023 found that voters opposed the idea of cash reparations by a 2-to-1 margin, but had a more nuanced view on the lasting legacy of slavery and how the state should address those wrongs.

Most voters agreed that slavery still affects today’s Black residents, and more than half said California is either not doing enough, or just enough, to ensure a fair shake at success.

California banned slavery in its 1849 Constitution and entered the Union as a “free state” under the Compromise of 1850, but loopholes in the legal system allowed slavery and discrimination against formerly enslaved people to continue.

California passed a fugitive slave law — rare among free states — in 1852 that allowed slaveholders to use violence to capture enslaved people who had fled to the Golden State. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, ratified after the end of the Civil War.

Census records show about 200 enslaved African descendants lived in California in that year, though at least one estimate from the era suggested that the population was closer to 1,500, according to the report drafted by the reparations task force.

The California Legislature on Thursday passed a pair of bills to prohibit on-duty law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from masking their faces and to require them to identify themselves.

Senate Bill 627, written by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), includes exceptions for SWAT teams and others. The measure was introduced after the Trump administration ordered immigration raids throughout the Los Angeles area earlier this year.

Federal officers in army-green neck gaiters or other face coverings have jumped out of vans and cars to detain individuals across California this summer as part of President Trump’s mass deportation program, prompting a wave of criticism from Democratic leaders.

Representatives for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defend the face coverings, arguing that identifying officers subjects to them to retaliation and violence.

If supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the law would apply to local and federal officers, but not state officers such as California Highway Patrol officers. Wiener, when asked about that exemption on the Senate floor, declined to elaborate.

Leaders in Los Angeles County are exploring a similar measure to ban masks despite some legal experts’ view that the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law.

The bill’s backers argue that permitting officers to disguise themselves creates scenarios where impostors may stop and detain migrants, which undermines public trust and ultimately hinders legitimate law enforcement operations.

“The idea that in California we would have law enforcement officers running around with ski masks is terrifying,” Wiener said in a brief interview. “It destroys confidence in law enforcement.”

Wiener’s bill allows exceptions for masks, including for undercover officers. Medical coverings are also allowed. .

Senate Bill 805, a measure by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra) that targets immigration officers who are in plainclothes but don’t identify themselves, also passed the state Legislature on Thursday.

Her bill requires law enforcement officers in plain clothes to display their agency, as well as either a badge number or name, with some exemptions.

SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers approved a bill Monday that would ban online pet dealer websites and shadowy middlemen who pose as local breeders from selling dogs to California consumers — the latest move to curtail the pipeline from out-of-state puppy mills.

Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) said Assembly Bill 519 will help ensure buyers aren’t misled about where their puppies come from after a Times investigation last year detailed how designer dogs are trucked into California from out-of-state commercial breeders and resold by people claiming to be small, local operators.

“AB 519 would close this loophole that allows this dishonest practice,” Berman said.

California became the first state in the nation with a 2019 law to bar pet stores from selling commercially bred dogs. That retail ban, however, did not apply to online pet sales, which grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Berman’s bill would ban online marketplaces where dogs are sold by brokers, which is defined as any person or business that sells or transports a dog bred by someone else for profit. That would include major national pet retailers such as PuppySpot as well as California-based operations that market themselves as pet matchmakers. AB 519, which now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his consideration, applies to dogs, cats and rabbits under a year old.

Puppy Spot opposed the bill, writing in a letter to lawmakers that it would dismantle a system they say works for families — particularly those seeking specific breeds for allergy concerns. PuppySpot CEO Claire Komorowski wrote to Berman in May that their online marketplace maintains internal breeder standards that exceed regulatory mandates.

“We believe this bill penalizes responsible, transparent operations while doing little to prevent the underground or unregulated sales that put animal health and consumer trust at risk,” PuppySpot CEO Claire Komorowski wrote to Berman in May.

The bill does not apply to police dogs or service animals and provides an exemption for shelters, rescues and 4H clubs.

“This measure is an important step in shutting down deceptive sales tactics of these puppy brokers and lessening the financial and emotional harm to families who unknowingly purchase sick or poorly bred pets,” Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in a letter of support for the bill. “By eliminating the profit incentive for brokers while preserving legitimate avenues for Californians to obtain animals, AB 519 protects consumers, supports shelters and rescues that are already at capacity, and advances California’s commitment to the humane treatment of animals.”

Two other bills stemming from The Times’ investigation are expected to pass the Legislature this week as lawmakers wrap up session and send a flurry of bills to the governor. The package of bills has overwhelming bipartisan support.

AB 506 by Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) would void pet purchase contracts involving California buyers if the pet seller requires a nonrefundable deposit. The bill would also make the pet seller liable if they fail to disclose the breeder’s name and information, as well as medical information about the animal.

The Times’ investigation found that some puppies advertised on social media, online marketplaces or through breeder websites as being California-bred were actually imported from out-of-state puppy mills. To trace dogs back to mass breeding facilities, The Times requested Certificates of Veterinary Inspection, which are issued by a federally accredited veterinarian listing where the animal came from, its destination and verification it is healthy to travel.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture has long received those health certificates from other states by mistake — the records are supposed to go to county public health departments — and, in recent years, made it a practice to immediately destroy them. Dog importers who were supposed to submit the records to counties largely failed to do so.

The Times analyzed the movement of more than 71,000 dogs into California since 2019, when the pet retail ban went into effect. The travel certificates showed how a network of resellers replaced pet stores as middlemen while disguising where puppies were actually bred. In some cases, new owners discovered that they were sold a puppy by a person using a fake name and temporary phone numbers after their new pet became sick or died.

After The Times’ reporting, lawmakers and animal activists called on the state agriculture department to stop “destroying evidence” of the decepitive practices by destroying the records. The department began preserving the records thereafter, but has so far released the records with significant redactions.

SB 312 by state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange) would require pet sellers to share the travel certificate with the state agriculture agency, which would then make them available without redactions to the public. An earlier version of the bill required the state department to publish information from the certificates online, but that was removed amid opposition.

“Given the high propensity for misleading consumers and the large volume of dogs entering the state, the health certificate information is in the public interest for individual consumers to review to confirm information conveyed to them by sellers and to also hopefully be helpful to humane law enforcement agencieds as they work to investigate fraud and malfeasance,” said Bennet said Monday in support of Umberg’s bill.

SACRAMENTO — Responding to the Trump administration’s aggressive and unceasing immigration raids in Southern California, state lawmakers this week began strengthening protections for immigrants in schools, hospitals and other areas targeted by federal agents.

The Democratic-led California Legislature is considering nearly a dozen bills aimed at shielding immigrants who are in the country illegally, including helping children of families being ripped apart in the enforcement actions.

“Californians want smart, sensible solutions and we want safe communities,” said Assemblymember Christopher Ward (D-San Diego). “They do not want peaceful neighbors ripped out of schools, ripped out of hospitals, ripped out of their workplaces.”

Earlier this week, lawmakers passed two bills focused on protecting schoolchildren.

Senate Bill 98, authored by Sen. Sasha Renée Peréz (D-Alhambra), would require school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.

Legislation introduced by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates), AB 49, would bar immigration agents from nonpublic areas of a school unless they had a judicial warrant or court order. It also would bar school districts from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant.

A separate bill by Sen. Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), SB 81, would bar healthcare officials from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace, or giving access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics, to immigration authorities without a search warrant or court order.

All three bills now head to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his consideration. If signed into law, the legislation would take effect immediately.

The school-related bills, said L.A. school board member Rocio Rivas, provide “critical protections for students, parents and families, helping ensure schools remain safe spaces where every student can learn and thrive without fear.”

Federal immigration agents have recently detained several 18-year-old high school students, including Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz, who was picked up last month while walking his dog a few days before he started his senior year at Reseda Charter High School.

Most Republican legislators voted against the bills, but Peréz’s measure received support from two Republican lawmakers, Assemblymember Juan Alanis (R-Modesto) and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa). Muratsuchi’s had support from six Republicans.

“No person should be able to go into a school and take possession of another person’s child without properly identifying themselves,” Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) said before voting to support the bill.

The healthcare bill follows a surge in cancellations for health appointments as immigrants stay home, fearing that if they go to a doctor or to a clinic, they could be swept up in an immigration raid.

California Nurses Assn. President Sandy Reding said that federal agents’ recent raids have disregarded “traditional safe havens” such as clinics and hospitals, and that Newsom’s approval would ensure that people who need medical treatment can “safely receive care without fear or intimidation.”

Some Republicans pushed back against the package of bills, including outspoken conservative Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), who said that the raids that Democrats are “making such hay over” were triggered by the state’s “sanctuary” law passed in 2018.

The state law DeMaio attacked, SB 54, bars local law enforcement from helping enforce federal immigration laws, including arresting someone solely for having a deportation order, and from holding someone in jail for extra time so immigration agents can pick them up.

The law, criticized by President Trump and Republicans nationwide, does not prevent police from informing federal agents that someone who is in the country illegally is about to be released from custody.

“If you wanted a more orderly process for the enforcement of federal immigration rules, you’d back down from your utter failure of SB54,” DeMaio said.

Chino Valley Unified School Board President Sonja Shaw, a Trump supporter who is running for state superintendent of public instruction, said that the bills about school safety were “political theater that create fear where none is needed.”

“Schools already require proper judicial orders before allowing immigration enforcement on campus, so these bills don’t change anything,” Shaw said. “They are gaslighting families into believing that schools are unsafe, when in reality the system already protects students.”

But Muratsuchi, who is also running for superintendent, said the goal of the legislation is to ensure that districts everywhere, “including in more conservative areas,” protect their students against immigration enforcement.

A half-dozen other immigration bills are still pending in the Legislature. Lawmakers have until next Friday to send bills to Newsom’s desk before the 2025 session is adjourned.

Those include AB 495 by Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez (D-San Fernando), which would make it easier for parents to designate caregivers who are not blood relatives — including godparents and teachers — as short-term guardians for their children. An increasing number of immigrant parents have made emergency arrangements in the event they are deported.

The bill would allow nonrelatives to make decisions such as enrolling a child in school and consenting to some medical care.

Conservatives have criticized the bill as an attack on parental rights and have said that the law could be misused by estranged family members or even sexual predators — and that current guidelines for establishing family emergency plans are adequate.

Also still pending is AB 1261, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), which would establish a right to legal representation for unaccompanied children in federal immigration court proceedings; and SB 841 by Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), which would restrict access for immigration authorities at shelters for homeless people and survivors of rape, domestic violence and human trafficking.

Aug. 31 (UPI) — Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said Sunday the government will make some changes — specifically to compensation officials receive — in an effort to appease protesters concerned with rising cost of living and unemployment rate.

The announcement comes after about a week of protests across the nation, some of which have turned violent. Some rioters have targeted lawmakers’ homes with looting and vandalization, The New York Times reported.

The demonstrations started after members of parliament received an increase of $3,030 in housing allowances, many times the country’s minimum wage.

At least five people have died and hundreds have been injured. In Jakarta, a 21-year-old ride-sharing driver was killed by a police vehicle during a demonstration Thursday, the BBC reported, adding a denunciation of police brutality to protesters’ list of grievances.

Subianto said Sunday that federal lawmakers would receive a cut in their allowances. He said he understood the public’s concerns about the economy.

Amid the protests, Subianto canceled a trip to a security conference Saturday in China.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers on Friday announced a landmark deal with Uber and Lyft to allow hundreds of thousands of rideshare drivers to unionize and bargain collectively while still being classified as independent contractors.

The compromise between labor unions and the Silicon Valley companies, backed by Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, would advance a collective bargaining bill through the Legislature along with a bill backed by Uber and Lyft that would significantly reduce the companies’ insurance requirements.

The deal is a major development in the years-long tussle between organized labor and Silicon Valley over rights for independent contractors.

Labor leaders from Service Employees International Union California, a powerful union that has been working for years to organize app-based drivers, said the deal is the largest expansion of private sector collective bargaining rights in California history.

“Labor and industry sat down together, worked through their differences, and found common ground,” Newsom said in a statement. The agreement, he said, will “empower hundreds of thousands of drivers while making rideshare more affordable for millions of Californians.”

With support from Rivas and McGuire, both bills are expected to sail through the Legislature before the session ends in mid-September. The agreement does not apply to other types of gig workers, including those who deliver food through apps like DoorDash.

The two bills “represent a compromise that lowers costs for riders while creating stronger voices for drivers,” said Ramona Prieto, Uber’s head of public policy for California, in a prepared statement.

The deal marks a new chapter in nearly a decade of tension between technology companies and state lawmakers over the employment status of the tens of thousands of Californians who do gig work for app-based companies.

“This moment has been a long fight for over a decade in the making,” said Tia Orr, the executive director of SEIU California.

After the California Legislature in 2019 rewrote employment law in 2019, clarifying and limiting when businesses can classify workers as independent contractors, Uber and Lyft went to the ballot in California to exempt their drivers.

When California voters passed Proposition 22, the ballot measure funded by Uber and Lyft, in 2020, drivers were classified as independent contractors and, under federal law, do not have the right to organize. Prop. 22 also explicitly barred drivers from collectively bargaining over their compensation, benefits and working conditions.

But SEIU California argued that court decisions over Prop. 22 left an opening for the state Legislature to create a process for drivers to unionize.

Earlier this year, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) introduced the collective bargaining bill, AB 1340, which Uber and Lyft initially opposed.

The bill allows drivers to negotiate their pay and other terms of their agreements with the companies and exempts workers from the state and federal antitrust laws that normally prohibit collective action by independent contractors.

Under federal law, employees in the U.S. can unionize by holding an election or reaching a voluntary agreement with their employers for a specific union to represent them.

The process for California Uber and Lyft drivers would be somewhat different. The bill says drivers can select a bargaining representative by collecting signatures from at least 10% of active drivers, then petitioning the state’s Public Employment Relations Board for a certification.

That path to collective bargaining mirrors a ballot initiative approved by Massachusetts voters last fall that was also backed by SEIU, which allowed drivers to form a union after collecting signatures from at least 25% of active drivers in the state.

Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine who studies the effect of technology on workers, said the compromise reached by California lawmakers may not be strong enough to ensure that drivers can reach a fair contract.

The bill does not clarify whether drivers would be protected if they collectively protested or went on strike, she said, and doesn’t require that the companies provide data about wages.

“These are the crux of what makes a union strong and the very, very bottom line of what members need and want,” Dubal said. “That they couldn’t achieve those things — that’s a win for Uber.”

Uber driver Margarita Peñalosa, 45, of Los Angeles, said she realized she needed a union after being temporarily deactivated from the app, and losing three days of income, when a passenger who reeked of marijuana left behind a lingering smell in her car that other riders then complained about.

“That experience made me realize how powerless we can be,” she said. She said she hoped that a collective bargaining process would create a “clear, fair appeals process” for rider complaints.

A Southern California group that counts some 20,000 drivers as members said they had lobbied for provisions to strengthen the bill — including protections that would give drivers the right to strike and more enforcement resources for the state board tasked with overseeing the process — but had been largely shut out of negotiations.

“We were not invited into conversations about this, and we were banging on the door,” said Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United.

Representatives from SEIU and Wicks’ office met multiple times with Rideshare Drivers United about their proposals and discussed why some weren’t included, said someone familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly. For example, that person said, strike protections could open up the bill to attack for potentially violating antitrust laws.

“While we always give fair consideration to suggested amendments, not all are ultimately viable,” Wicks said. She added that her office heard from dozens of constituents and advocates over months of public debate, and “any suggestion otherwise is disingenuous.”

Despite the weaknesses in the law, Moore said, she still hopes that it will help, since right now, she said, drivers “have no labor rights and our wages are in the dungeon.”

“We will do what we can with duct tape and a few paper clips and a little extra wax to actually wage a fight,” she said.

The insurance bill, backed by Uber and Lyft and introduced by state Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-Yolo), would reduce the amount of insurance that companies like Uber and Lyft are required to provide for rides.

Currently, the companies must carry $1 million in coverage per rideshare driver for accidents caused by other drivers who are uninsured or underinsured. The companies have argued that current insurance requirements are so high that they encourage litigation for insurance payouts and create higher costs for passengers.

The agreement instead calls for $60,000 in uninsured motorist coverage per rideshare driver and $300,000 per accident.

Cabaldon said that the changes would eliminate “outsized insurance requirements that don’t apply to any other forms of transportation, such as taxis, buses, or limos.”

Aug. 23 (UPI) — Lawmakers in the Netherlands on Saturday rejected a motion that would recognize an independent Palestinian state and measures that would sanction Israel.

The punitive measure would have banned the importation of products made in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and banned the Dutch government from buying Israeli-made weapons, Politico reported.

A majority of ministers voted to ask the Israeli government to allow journalists into Gaza and to apply “maximum pressure” on nations that condone the actions of Hamas leaders.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has reported the deaths of about 61,000 Gazans after Hamas and other militants attacked and killed about 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped another 250, about 50 of whom remain in captivity or have died inGaza.

The casualty figures reported by Hamas do not separate civilian deaths from Hamas deaths and have been challenged by Israel and others.

Saturday’s vote came a day after Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp on Friday night resigned to protest the government’s refusal to sanction Israel over conditions in Gaza.

The resignations occurred after the Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification on Friday declared a famine in Gaza.

Several members of the Netherlands’ New Social Contract Party likewise resigned on Friday — two months after the conservative Party for Freedom quit the Dutch government over differences arising from immigration concerns.

Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders demanded that the government greatly reduce the number of immigrants allowed to enter the Netherlands and resigned from the government, along with other party members, in early June.

Snapelections are scheduled on Oct. 29, and a caretaker government is in place until a new one is formed after the October election.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday promised to quickly sign off on a new, Republican-leaning congressional voting map gerrymandered to help the GOP maintain its slim majority in Congress.

“One Big Beautiful Map has passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk, where it will be swiftly signed into law,” Abbott said in a statement. The bill’s name is a nod to President Trump’s signature tax and spending bill, as Trump urged Abbott to redraw the congressional districts to favor Republicans.

Texas lawmakers approved the final plans just hours before, inflaming an already tense battle unfolding among states as governors from both parties pledge to redraw maps with the goal of giving their political candidates a leg up in the 2026 midterm elections.

In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved a special election in November for voters to decide whether to adopt a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more House seats next year.

Meanwhile, Trump has pushed other Republican-controlled states, including Indiana and Missouri, to also revise their maps to add more winnable GOP seats. Ohio Republicans were also already scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan.

In Texas, the map includes five new districts that would favor Republicans.

Democrats vow to challenge it in court

The effort by Trump and Texas’ Republican-majority Legislature prompted state Democrats to hold a two-week walkout and kicked off a wave of redistricting efforts across the country.

Democrats had prepared for a final show of resistance, with plans to push the Senate vote into the early morning hours in a last-ditch attempt to delay passage. Yet Republicans blocked those efforts by citing a rule violation.

“What we have seen in this redistricting process has been maneuvers and mechanisms to shut down people’s voices,” said state Sen. Carol Alvarado, leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, on social media after the new map was finalized by the GOP-controlled Senate.

Democrats had already delayed the bill’s passage during hours of debate, pressing Republican Sen. Phil King, the measure’s sponsor, on the proposal’s legality, with many alleging that the redrawn districts violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting voters’ influence based on race.

King rejected that accusation, saying, “I had two goals in mind: That all maps would be legal and would be better for Republican congressional candidates in Texas.

“There is extreme risk the Republican majority will be lost” in the U.S. House of Representatives if the map does not pass, King said.

Battle for the House waged via redistricting

On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority. The incumbent president’s party usually loses seats in the midterms.

The Texas redraw is already reshaping the 2026 race, with Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation, announcing Thursday that he will not seek reelection to his Austin-based seat if the new map takes effect. Under the proposed map, Doggett’s district would overlap with that of another Democratic incumbent, Rep. Greg Casar.

Redistricting typically occurs once a decade, immediately after a census. Though some states have their own limitations, there is no national impediment to a state trying to redraw districts in the middle of the decade.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that the Constitution does not prohibit partisan gerrymandering to increase a party’s clout, only gerrymandering that’s explicitly done by race.

Other states

More Democratic-run states have commission systems like California’s or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, cannot draw new maps until 2028, and even then only with voter approval.

Republicans and some Democrats championed a 2008 ballot measure that established California’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, along with a 2010 one that extended its role to drawing congressional maps.

Both sides have shown concern over what the redistricting war could lead to.

California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican minority leader, said Trump was “wrong” to push for new Republican seats elsewhere. But he warned that Newsom’s approach, which the governor has said is an effort to “fight fire with fire,” is dangerous.

“You move forward fighting fire with fire, and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”

Vertuno, Cappelletti and Golden write for the Associated Press and reported from Austin, Washington and Seattle, respectively. AP writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

As the Trump administration continues to ramp up immigration enforcement actions, a group of lawmakers is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement for placing restrictions on detention center visits — obstructing Congress’ role in overseeing government functions.

Twelve House Democrats filed a lawsuit challenging new guidelines that require advance notice for oversight visits and render certain facilities off-limits. “No child should be sleeping on concrete, and no sick person should be denied care,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles). “Yet that’s exactly what we keep hearing is happening inside Trump’s detention centers.”

These lawmakers are right to seek access to detention facilities. Detention centers have long been plagued by poor conditions, so the need for oversight is urgent. With record numbers of migrants being detained, the public has a right to know how people in the government’s custody are being treated.

The U.S. operates the world’s largest immigration detention system, at a cost of $3 billion a year. This money is appropriated by Congress — and comes with conditions.

Under existing law, none of the funds given to Homeland Security may be used to prevent members of Congress from conducting oversight visits of “any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.” In addition, the law states that members of Congress are not required to “provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility.” So ICE’s attempt to place limits on oversight appears to be illegal.

The restrictions are also problematic because they claim to exempt the agency’s field offices from oversight. However, migrants are being locked up in such offices, including at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, and 26 Federal Plaza in New York City. In the former, one detainee reported being fed only once a day, at 3 a.m. In the latter, as many as 80 detainees have been crammed into a single room amid sweltering summer temperatures. These offices were never set up to house people overnight or for days or weeks. If they are functioning as de facto detention centers, then they must be subject to inspections.

Congressional oversight of immigration detention is vital right now. The current capacity for U.S. detention facilities is 41,000. Yet the government was holding nearly 57,000 people as of July 27. That means facilities are far over capacity, in a system that the Vera Institute of Justice describes as “plagued by abuse and neglect.”

No matter who is president, conditions in immigrant detention are generally abysmal. Migrant detention centers have been cited for their lack of medical care, poor treatment of detainees, and physical and sexual violence. In 2019, the federal government itself reported that conditions in detention were inhumane. At least 11 people have died in detention since January. This reality cries out for more transparency and accountability — especially because Homeland Security laid off most of its internal watchdogs earlier this year.

The ranks of detainees include asylum-seekers, teenagers, DACA recipients, pregnant women, journalists and even U.S. citizens. Most of the detainees arrested lately have no criminal convictions. These folks are often arrested and moved thousands of miles away from home, complicating their access to legal representation and family visits. A visit by a congressional delegation may be the only way to ensure that they are being treated properly.

In response to the lawsuit by House Democrats, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, said: “These members of Congress could have just scheduled a tour. Instead, they’re running to court to drive clicks and fundraising emails.” She added that ICE was imposing the new limits, in part, because of “obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”

McLaughlin might have been referring to a May scuffle outside a Newark, N.J., detention center that led to charges being filed against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and the arrest of the city’s mayor. But this incident would not have occurred if immigration officials had followed the law and allowed lawmakers inside to survey the facility’s conditions.

Indeed, the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, told a congressional hearing in May that he recognized the right of members to visit detention facilities, even with no notice. And the notion that any government agency can unilaterally regulate Congress runs afoul of the Constitution. The legislative branch has the right and obligation to supervise the executive branch. Simply put, ICE cannot tell members of Congress what they can or cannot do.

The need for oversight in detention facilities will only become greater in the future, as Congress just approved $45 billion for the expansion of immigrant detention centers. This could result in the daily detention of at least 116,000 people. Meanwhile, 55% of Americans, according to the Pew Center, disapprove of building more facilities to hold immigrants.

ICE’s new policies violate federal law. No agency is above oversight — and members of Congress must be allowed full access to detention facilities.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. X: @RaulAReyes; Instagram: @raulareyes1