lawsuit

WASHINGTON — The Arlington County Board in Virginia filed a lawsuit Thursday opposing the construction of the Triumphal Arch, becoming the first governmental body to take legal action against President Trump’s planned monument.

The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, criticized the speed at which the project slated for Memorial Circle has moved without going through the full review process.

“The National Park Service, the agency responsible for projects on national park land such as Memorial Circle, is proceeding full-speed toward ground-disturbing construction,” the lawsuit said. “Although the agency has claimed that a final decision to construct the Arch has not yet been made and purports to be engaged in a routine decisional process, that rushed process appears to be a pretext designed to shore up justifications for building the Arch in accordance with the President’s repeated marching orders.”

The lawsuit asks that “the agency’s feverish pace toward construction of the arch” be halted to ensure that the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act be followed and proper analysis and testing be done.

“The Arlington County Board has filed this lawsuit because our community has the most to lose from this egregious and unlawful proposed project,” Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in a statement. He added that the county has acted in good faith in the review process, pointing out the “severe, unique, and wide-ranging negative impacts” the project will have on the county and its residents, only to see them ignored.

Memorial Circle sits on federal parkland west of the Potomac River across the Memorial Bridge and immediately adjacent to Arlington County.

The county is being represented in the lawsuit by legal advocacy group Democracy Forward.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the Trump administration and White House have been “fastidiously compliant with all procedural and legal requirements and are certain this meritless and dilatory lawsuit will be dismissed.”

The arch will become one of the world’s most iconic landmarks, he added. “It will enhance the visitor experience at Arlington National Cemetery for veterans, the families of the fallen, and all Americans alike.”

The lawsuit came a day after the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson expressed concerns that the 250-foot arch compounds multiple safety issues that she said have gone unaddressed since a deadly January 2025, crash over the Potomac River that killed 67 people. Nelson also criticized Trump’s plan to turn the arch into “a top grade military complex” able to host drones and snipers while storing ammunition.

Though the arch has received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all tapped by Trump, a group of three veterans and an architectural historian sued in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying the project needs to be approved by Congress. The judge in that lawsuit said the administration must give the court 48 hours before undertaking any activities related to or in preparation for construction of the arch.

The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he remakes the city, from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

The Democratic National Committee on Thursday filed a lawsuit alleging that President Trump’s administration secretly changed a postcard used by U.S. citizens overseas in a way that makes it harder to register to vote.

The lawsuit contends that the Department of Defense made the change by declaring an emergency, which allowed it to eliminate a specific box on the form. That box is typically checked by potential voters who acknowledge they are U.S. citizens but who have never lived in the United States.

They are usually the children of U.S. citizens, and 38 states allow them to cast ballots provided they have close family connections. Since 2013, the box has appeared on postcards sent to overseas voters.

Republicans have filed lawsuits in multiple states trying to prevent those voters, who typically support Democrats, from casting ballots. Thursday’s lawsuit contends that the administration simply made the change on its own without giving proper notice.

“These American citizens pay U.S. federal and state taxes, but now a years-old plan has culminated in a manufactured ‘emergency’ to justify impeding their right to vote in American elections and potentially disenfranchising them entirely,” the lawsuit states.

The Department of Defense, which administers the form, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The number of Americans overseas who have never lived in the United States yet cast ballots in the country was estimated at about 11,500 in 2016. The lawsuit contends the number has likely grown.

Some are already registered and are due to receive ballots for November. Others can opt to check other boxes saying they’re citizens who either intend to return to the U.S. or do not intend to return in order to receive ballots.

The move follows Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging members of the military to cast ballots en masse, implying they could out-vote Democratic jurisdictions, such as Detroit, if they all cast ballots. The same federal law that lets members of the military who live overseas cast ballots also requires that civilians who live overseas be given the same opportunity.

But as Democratic-leaning civilians overseas have out-voted Republican-leaning members of the military in recent years, the GOP hasstarted to target the law, known as the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. Republicans were able to win a court case forbidding the votes of overseas citizens who have never lived in North Carolina from being counted there, but have not yet succeeded in lawsuits in other states, including swing state Michigan.

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat is a U.S. citizen in Munich whose 28-year-old daughter also is a U.S. citizen who has never resided in the country but votes regularly. She said the administration’s move was alarming.

“If this works in slicing off a piece of the electorate,” said Dzieduszycka-Suinat, who is president of the U.S. Vote Foundation, “wait until the next emergency.”

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

A Black police officer asked whether a monkey was named “Tyrone,” to the laughter of a roomful of Latino and Asian colleagues.

A Latina cop described how to inflict maximum pain: “You hit Black people in the liver — I heard they got weak livers,” she said, according to an LAPD internal affairs report.

The report said their boss, an Asian sergeant, stood by as his employees used terms like “midnight” and “chocolate, chocolate” to describe people’s skin tones.

Those were among the comments that came to light last year after an LAPD whistleblower secretly recorded his colleagues in a unit that screens police recruits.

The scandal, which has seen new developments in recent weeks, is forcing department officials to reckon with a harsh reality: Years of efforts to make the LAPD more diverse have seemingly done little to stamp out prejudice in the ranks.

For much of its history, the LAPD was a white man’s department. Aggressive tactics in communities of color fueled racial uprisings in the 1960s and early 1990s, when the beating of motorist Rodney King led to the discovery of messages similar to those in the recruitment unit tapes, with officers referring to Black men as “Buckwheat” and bragging about “busting heads.”

Under pressure from lawsuits and consent decrees, police leaders pushed to recruit more Black, Latino and Asian officers, seeking to build up trust in minority communities.

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1. Los Angeles Police Department graduates a total of 22 recruits at the Los Angeles Police Academy in Elysian Park on Friday, September 18, 2026. 2. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Latinos now make up more than half of the 8,500-officer department. Black officers constitute less than 9% of the force, coinciding with a decline in the city’s Black population.

The officer who made the recruitment unit recordings, Daniel Flores, is Latino.

He recorded dozens of conversations over a six-month span in 2024, eventually handing them over to the department’s inspector general for investigation.

Last week, Flores filed a new lawsuit against the city, adding to a previous claim that alleged he faced retaliation from his bosses for documenting the offensive comments he heard while on the job.

According to his latest claim, department officials recommended that he be suspended for 22 days without pay. After initially seeking to keep his job with the LAPD, the 13-year department veteran said in the lawsuit that he recently decided to retire rather than endure an increasingly hostile work environment.

Flores also alleged LAPD officials were responsible for pushing a criminal case against him for violating a state eavesdropping law that prohibits recording conversations without consent. Initially alleging 16 felonies, Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has since reduced the charges to misdemeanors, likely allowing Flores to avoid jail time.

An LAPD spokesperson declined to answer questions about Flores’ case.

“The Department takes these allegations seriously,” Lt. Elpidio Orozco said in a statement. “Because the case and related personnel proceedings remain ongoing, we cannot discuss individual disciplinary actions or make comparisons to unrelated past incidents.”

The department’s defenders maintain that progress has been made toward rooting out bigotry.

Officers are required to undergo psychological screening and training aimed at teasing out unconscious biases. New recruits and seasoned officers alike take field trips to the Museum of Tolerance, where trainers extol the virtues of multiculturalism. The department has sent recruiters to historically Black colleges in the South and the East Coast.

But others, including civil rights attorney Connie Rice, say the latest scandal proves that the LAPD’s problems run deeper than the hateful actions of a few individuals.

The beating of Rodney King in 1991 forced a reckoning for the LAPD.

(George Holliday / Associated Press)

“Racism is like the herpes virus in the body of the LAPD: You can suppress it with a good chief, but as soon as they leave, it breaks out again,” Rice said.

A 2024 study by British researchers examined racial attitudes among members of the department’s vaunted Metropolitan Division.

The researchers found that LAPD officers were “shockingly defensive” when asked about systemic racism, taking a negative view of diversity hiring programs and insisting that left-leaning activists, elected officials and media outlets were stoking public outrage over racial profiling.

“The dismissive reactions … to a question on such an important issue highlight an unhealthy antagonism which prevents any organization from learning or developing its practice,” the researchers concluded. “It is a fundamental barrier that must be overcome.”

While hiring more officers from historically marginalized groups has long been pushed as a way to improve police practices and build trust in minority neighborhoods, studies have not necessarily borne that out, said Daniel Gascon, a sociology and criminology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

“Just because there’s more numbers of a given sort in a department doesn’t mean it’s going to change automatically,” said Gascon, who has studied the LAPD’s relationship with Latino communities.

Since the start of the year, a review of recruit graduation announcements shows the department has hired just seven new Black officers. By contrast, roughly 80% of the 241 officers to graduate from the police academy over the last nine months have been Latino.

The growing Latino presence in the LAPD has been reflected in police use-of-force numbers.

A Times analysis of police shootings since 2016 found that of the roughly 150 people who have been shot dead by the LAPD across the city, at least 94 were Latino men. In 3 out of every 4 of those shootings, at least one of the officers who fired was also Latino, the analysis showed.

LAPD Officer Daniel Flores, left, listens as his attorney Alan Jackson speaks to reporters at the Superior Court building.

(Libor Jany / Los Angeles Times)

Despite the increased diversity, interviews with current and former LAPD members indicate deep divisions are reflected in the way that Black and Latino officers see the department’s racial issues. Most agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

Several Black officers told The Times they still experience workplace hostility and racial dog whistles, such as fretting about the lowering of police recruit standards. The comments, they said, came from Black and Latino colleagues alike.

Too often, the Black officers said, Latinos who wear the uniform see themselves only as victims of discrimination, and not perpetrators.

Some Black officers said they avoid conversations about race entirely for fear of upsetting conservative colleagues — who feel emboldened by the divisive rhetoric coming from the White House.

The Latino officers who spoke to The Times said the department has for too long prioritized the promotion of Black members of the force to leadership roles while the representation of Latinos in the highest ranks has slipped.

Others argue that because society tends to lump Latinos of different backgrounds together, workplace discrimination against and within the community is often missed.

Officers from both groups said their race has been used against them when it comes to promotions. But both sides also say racism is a problem in society writ large, and not limited to the LAPD.

In a recent interview with The Times, Mayor Karen Bass said that although she is pleased that the department has increased the number of Latino officers to reflect the city’s demographics, its percentage of Black officers continues to dwindle as older African Americans are on the brink of retirement with very few young Black officers coming onto the job.

Bass, who was a young community organizer in South L.A. when the King beating happened, said it was foolhardy to believe that merely because the LAPD is more diverse, old problems cannot be repeated.

“Just because this happened 30 years ago and there are new policies that were put in place, that’s not enough,” she said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve gotta make sure that those policies are constantly updated.”

Times staff writers Andrea Flores and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

More state money to pay for arts teachers will reach local schools if legislation signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom works out as intended, but the new law will not resolve a lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles school district of misspending as much as $77 million in its share of the funding.

The aim of Assembly Bill 2440 is to encourage more school systems to use arts funding made available through Proposition 28, which voters passed in November 2022.

“The clear message we heard was that many school districts have been struggling to navigate legal ambiguity regarding compliance with Proposition 28,” said bill author Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates) in a recent statement to The Times. He said his goal was to provide “statewide guidance” so that all or most school systems could use the money without concern over violations of spending rules that could result in financial penalties.

Proposition 28 sets aside an amount equal to 1% of the state’s base education funding — close to $1 billion per year — to increase arts education. This extra funding is drawn down from the state’s general fund — so it adds to the total allotted for education.

The initial funding, nearly a billion dollars statewide, went out for the 2023-24 school year and has continued annually. But millions of dollars have not yet been spent, according to early reviews of the data.

Some local officials said they were holding back over concerns that they would inadvertently violate the rules for spending the money — and would then have to pay it back, creating significant financial risk.

This bill had backing from arts organizations, education and school district officials and the California Teachers Assn. No opposition was recorded in the legislative record; nor were there any opposing votes as the bill worked its way through the legislative process.

But then Austin Beutner — the author of Proposition 28 — learned of the measure and stepped forward with concerns. He contendedthe bill would make using the arts money easier, but in wrong ways. He said the bill would undermine the guarantee that new arts funding would reach every school. Also it would in effect eliminate the provision that campuses serving low-income communities receive higher levels of new funding. Moreover — and of key importance — the legislation would allow districts to use the new arts money to replace existing arts funding, leaving students no better off than before, he said.

Beutner had structured Proposition 28 precisely to prevent this supplanting of funds. Districts not willing to provide the required increased instruction at every school would, by design, lose access to the new arts money.

Beutner began to rally opposition, including United Teachers Los Angeles, L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman and San Diego school board President Richard Barrera, who is running for state superintendent of public instruction — and who has the endorsement of the California Teachers Assn.

Beutner also announced his attention to file litigation against the bill.

Muratsuchi said he had no intent to undermine the goals of Proposition 28 — and a compromise soon emerged.

The final version — which has Beutner’s approval — clarifies that small schools or small school districts can pool their money to share an arts teacher, provided that every school gets the additional arts instruction. The bill also gives some legal protection for school districts against financial penalties if their arts funding decreases as a result of factors beyond their control, such as the expiration of a grant.

An LAUSD lawsuit continues

Beutner alleges that L.A. Unified has intentionally misused the new arts money.

Beutner pursued passage of Proposition 28 after serving as superintendent of L.A. Unified. His stint ended in mid-2021 with the expiration of a three-year contract.

“LAUSD has done exactly what the law prohibits,” Beutner alleged in an ongoing lawsuit filed in February 2025. “It has eliminated existing funding sources for existing art teachers, and replaced those funds with Proposition 28 funds, thereby violating the requirement that the funds supplement rather than supplant existing sources.”

The lawsuit lists 37 elementary schools with the same or reduced money for arts instruction from 2022-23 to 2023-24 — when the new funding first arrived — and alleges that most L.A. Unified schools faced a similar funding situation.

Before the lawsuit, but in response to growing criticism, L.A. Unified officials quietly added $30 million to the elementary school arts budget for the 2024-25 school year amid ongoing accusations from Beutner, union leaders and parents.

The district has defended its actions.

“We continue to follow implementation guidance as provided by the state of California to ensure that we are fully complying with the requirements of Prop. 28,” the district said in a statement at the time of the lawsuit, a contention that it has made repeatedly.

New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson had a “friendly and casual ‘friends with benefits’ sexual relationship” with the woman who is accusing him of raping and abusing her multiple times between 2018 and 2023, according to a court filing by the former Duke standout’s legal team.

A document submitted to Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday states that Williamson denies “each and every allegation” made against him by a Jane Doe in a second amended complaint filed in June.

Williamson’s filing describes the interaction between the former No. 1 overall draft pick and his accuser as “infrequent and sporadic.”

“All interaction among and between the Plaintiff and Defendant was pleasant and entirely consensual, with the Plaintiff initiating and communicating her desire to be intimate with the Defendant,” the document states, “and the Plaintiff herself decided to end the relationship because she became upset when she realized that the Defendant was focusing his time and energy on professional basketball and on being a father, and did not have sufficient time or interest to maintain a relationship with the Plaintiff.”

The second amended complaint lists the causes of action as assault, battery, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, domestic violence and stalking. The response from Williamson’s team states that the statute of limitations has expired on each cause of action.

The initial complaint, filed in May 2025, also included false imprisonment and conversion as causes of action, which are not included in the latest complaint.

The lawsuit provides details of two instances in 2020 during which Williamson allegedly raped his accuser in a Beverly Hills apartment he was renting at the time.

“These two incidents were not isolated,” the lawsuit states. “Defendant continued to abuse, rape, assault, and batter Plaintiff in California and other states, including Louisiana and Texas, until the relationship ended in 2023.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Williamson committed many other acts of violence against his accuser, including strangling her multiple times to the point that she lost consciousness, suffocating or smothering her, striking and kicking her “with great force,” threatening to kill her and her family members, and pointing a loaded firearm to her head.

Williamson “was either drunk or on cocaine” while allegedly committing many of those acts, the lawsuit states.

A jury trial has been scheduled for April 2028.

DES MOINES, Iowa — A judge on Wednesday dismissed President Trump’s lawsuit accusing the Des Moines Register and its former pollster of misrepresenting the state of the 2024 presidential race, rejecting the president’s claim that the newspaper’s poll coverage violated Iowa’s consumer fraud law.

Calling the case extraordinary, Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie said that allowing the lawsuit and its “faulty” claims to proceed could have a chilling effect that “can discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs.” He sided with pollster J. Ann Selzer and the newspaper, which described the lawsuit as a conspiracy theory and an affront to free speech protections.

The ruling Wednesday came hours after a judge heard arguments but did not rule from the bench in a case on Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds. Trump banned the three outlets beginning Friday, assailing what he called “fake news.”

Trump filed the lawsuit against Selzer, the Des Moines Register and the newspaper’s parent company in December 2024, accusing them of fraudulently publishing inaccurate poll results to damage him and help Democrats, saying coverage of polls is not protected speech.

Trump and his team have filed several lawsuits against media organizations accusing them of bias, calling into question the boundaries of free speech protections, particularly for press. Some of those lawsuits have ended in settlements.

In dismissing the case in Iowa state court, Beattie wrote that Trump’s suit sought to “stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.” After hearing the arguments, the judge concluded the constitutional protection “is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.”

Beattie said the case would have to be dismissed even if, solely for the purpose of deciding the motions, he accepted the Trump team’s allegations that the poll was intentionally skewed and its results fabricated.

“Even with this assumption, each of the three counts still fails,” the judge wrote, because the lawsuit did not meet the legal requirements for fraud or consumer deception. He made clear that the poll and coverage of it are constitutionally protected political speech and not a commercial product.

The White House referred questions to the president’s personal lawyers, who did not immediately respond to messages.

U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former Iowa state Sen. Brad Zaun, both Republicans, joined the lawsuit. Selzer and her co-defendants wanted the case moved to federal court but, after a year of legal proceedings, the first hearing took place this year in state court.

The poll, conducted by Selzer’s company in the final days of October and released just days before election day in 2024, showed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presidential nominee, capturing 47% of Iowa likely voters, to Trump’s 44%.

Trump ultimately won the support of 56% of the nearly 2 million Iowans who voted.

Trump, Miller-Meeks and Zaun alleged the misleading coverage diminished their reputations, valuable time in the final days of the campaign, and campaign funds and resources.

Selzer’s case was taken up by the free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In separate filings, the Iowa pollster and the Register, with its parent company, Gannett Co., argued that courts never have considered polls or newspapers covering them to be commercial speech even though they may be sold for a profit.

They said the poll coverage, whether right or wrong in capturing the state of the race, was constitutionally protected political speech.

They also disputed the consumer fraud claim, emphasizing the poll and coverage of it were not connected to transactions between the companies and Trump, Miller-Meeks or Zaun.

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.

Trump later reacted to news of the lawsuit, calling the news organisations “Third Rate Clowns” and “Crooked and Corrupt Press” that “trivialise and demean” his achievements.

“Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

He added that “almost without question” his team will file an appeal.

The First Amendment forbids the government from “abridging” the freedom of the press – language that courts have traditionally interpreted as preventing the government from discriminating against the media based on the content of their coverage.

The statement from CNN, Politico and MS NOW said: “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting.

“Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The media organisations filed the lawsuit on Monday in US District Court in Washington, asking a judge to quickly rule Trump’s ban unconstitutional and prevent his aides from enforcing it.

On Monday morning, major US TV networks pulled out of White House pool duties, which sees media organisations share material with each other to save on costs and space when broadcasting presidential events to the American public.

Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who currently holds a rotating role helping to organise media TV crews covering the White House, wrote in an email seen by the BBC that “effective today, the TV pool will not be covering designated as pool coverage” of President Trump.

The message said the move followed the White House “preventing” CNN from fulfilling its pool duties for Trump’s trip to New York and that “there will be no replacement pool put in place”.

CNN – one of only five US news outlets in the White House press pool for live television – was originally due to cover Trump’s trip to the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday and Tuesday.

But on Monday morning, the five-seat CNN booth in the basement of the White House press area – typically manned throughout the day from the early hours of the morning – was empty and closed. Screens and monitors inside were turned off.

Instead, a CNN crew was outside the secured area of the White House grounds, broadcasting live from a public pavement.

Five TV networks, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, issued a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government.

“No administration should restrict a news organisation because it objects to its reporting.”

Those five networks are considered the only ones with the money and infrastructure to distribute live coverage from the White House and presidential events.

For now, the White House media slot has remained vacant and instead the conservative TV outlet, Real America’s Voice, was listed as “secondary” crew on Trump’s trip to New York, where he will meet Mayor Zohran Mamdani and French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.

California Atty. General Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison have reached an agreement to end the state’s antitrust fight, paving the way for Ellison to complete his $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, said a person familiar with the matter.

The two sides have agreed to resolve antitrust claims that Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general brought in late July, said the source, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the settlement.

As part of the deal, Paramount agreed to pay a penalty if the company fails to make good on a promise to distribute 30 films per year in theaters and to spend $1.5 billion on film production in Hollywood over the next five years, said the source who was not authorized to comment.

Representatives of Paramount and Bonta did not respond to a request for comment.

A federal judge must approve the agreement. Paramount would then be poised to quickly finalize its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery — a blockbuster combination that will reshape Hollywood by collapsing two historic film studios with rights to Batman, Harry Potter, “Top Gun,” and Bugs Bunny and by combining the HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming services.

In addition to CBS, Paramount would own dozens of cable television channels, including CNN, TBS, HGTV, Food Network and Comedy Central.

The road to a resolution was fraught. Bonta abruptly canceled a negotiation session with Paramount in late August after potential deal terms leaked. Then, after talks restarted and the settlement began taking shape, several powerful Bonta allies, including New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong, signaled their displeasure with proposed deal terms.

They felt the deal points didn’t go far enough to mitigate the potential clout Paramount would wield over the film and television industries if it was allowed to swallow its larger industry rival, according to three people familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment.

Ellison’s goal had long been to complete the Warner takeover by the end of September — before midterm Congressional elections and prior to a key deadline for Paramount to increase its payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders. Ellison received a boost from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for California governor, who pressed Bonta to end the dispute rather than take the case to trial in Oakland in March.

Newsom said he took “seriously” Paramount’s threat to leave the state. He advocated for a settlement behind the scenes, according to two people close to the matter who were not authorized to comment.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta in 2025. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Ellison was highly motivated to strike a deal because his company’s expenses will soon accelerate. Beginning Oct. 1, Paramount is on the hook to pay Warner investors a “ticking fee” of 25 cents per quarter, per share until the deal closed. That obligation is expected to add $7 million a day to the cost of the $31 a share that Paramount agreed to pay Warner shareholders when it won the bidding war back in February.

Paramount’s takeover will be heavily leveraged. The company’s bankers have lined up nearly $80 billion in debt to finance the merger. Ellison’s father, billionaire Larry Ellison, late last year agreed to backstop the $47-billion in equity needed to complete the acquisition. Royal families from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to chip in $24 billion for an equity stake by assuming some of Ellison’s financial commitments.

Late last week, the Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s request to allow the foreign investors to own nearly 50% of the merged company. The Ellison family, however, will retain its voting control.

Paramount has promised Wall Street that it would make more than $6 billion in cost cuts. A recent Los Angeles County economic report predicted the merger could lead to an estimated 4,500 workers in the Los Angeles region losing their jobs as Ellison works to combine the two companies.

The truce comes after Paramount received clearances from regulators around the world, including the European Commission, Canada and the U.S. Justice Department.

But despite those approvals, Paramount spent weeks over the summer wrangling with Bonta and applying political pressure. Ellison threatened to move his studio from its historic Melrose Avenue address to Texas or Tennessee.

Larry Ellison separately announced plans to switch the headquarters of his software behemoth Oracle to Nashville from Austin, Texas (after Oracle relocated from Silicon Valley six years ago).

Paramount also enlisted major Hollywood unions, the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and prominent cinema chains to drop their opposition to the deal.

Bonta’s suit had leaned heavily into potential harms to theatrical distribution and lawyers for the states had been banking on theater executives’ testimony at trial.

The parties also were facing a key court hearing Thursday. Paramount was poised to ask U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland to make the states and the Writers Guild of America post a $1.88-billion bond that would cover some of Paramount’s delay-related deal costs should the company eventually prevail.

The states and the WGA, which also sued to block the merger, have balked at the request, which was designed by Paramount to create fissures within the coalition of states by raising doubts about the strength of their case.

Paramount’s high-profile lobbying campaign reached a crescendo in late August after Paramount called out activist-actor Mark Ruffalo, accusing him of resorting to “antisemitic tropes” to argue against the merger.

Prominent Jewish groups rushed to Paramount’s aid. Ruffalo, who frequently works with HBO, denied the allegation, saying he had a 1st Amendment right to speak against the deal as well as Oracle’s business ties to Israel. Numerous Jewish artists came to Ruffalo’s defense, saying his free speech rights were being squelched.

Bonta abruptly canceled a settlement conference, accusing Paramount of leaking confidential information.

“If you want to have an adult, legitimate, serious settlement discussion — no problem,” Bonta said during an Aug. 25 appearance in Los Angeles. “But if you want to play games, we’ve got better things to do.”

The states’ 37-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, claimed the Paramount-Warner combination would violate the U.S. Clayton Act, a century-old antitrust law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and raise costs for consumers.

The states, which also included Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey and New Mexico, had argued the tie-up of two legacy movie studios would give Paramount-Warner too much marketshare in two categories — wide-release movies and potential blockbusters.

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has pressed to get his blockbuster deal done before his company must make higher payouts to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders and before the mid-term elections, which could change the makeup in Congress.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

The states also said Paramount-Warner would control nearly 30% of the cable television channel space with more than 50 networks.

Paramount has been facing a June 4 deadline to complete the deal — or owe Warner Bros. Discovery a $7-billion breakup fee. Paramount has already paid $2.8-billion to cover a termination fee paid to Netflix after the streamer withdrew from the auction in February.

MIAMI — Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.

The lawsuit lists Walter, Delaware Life Insurance Co., Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Walter’s Guggenheim Partners investment firm as defendants.

Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June,

Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.

TWG Global didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.

TWG Global Holdings is the holding company through which Walter controls Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. and his stake in Guggenheim Partners. TWG Global denied any wrongdoing involving the probe in a statement last month.

Walter and co-owner Todd Boehly sold their stakes in English Premier League club Chelsea this week. Last month, Walter agreed to sell the Lakers in a surprise move less than a year after buying the NBA franchise from the Buss family. The deal is under review by the league.

The Dodgers have been adamant that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.

SACRAMENTO — The California Primary Care Assn. and five clinics filed a civil lawsuit in federal court Friday accusing SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West and its president, Dave Regan, of racketeering and using ballot initiatives to “shake down” community health centers.

The association alleges that Regan and his union orchestrated a “multi-year campaign of coercion, threats, and economic pressure” to “extort” what the lawsuit describes as “valuable property rights” and “labor-organizing terms” from CPCA and the health centers the association represents in California, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Times.

The suit says Regan pushed Proposition 44, which if approved by voters in November will restrict spending at nonprofit community health clinics, as political leverage against the industry. Regan then offered to call off the measure if CPCA agreed to support the union’s efforts to unionize 25,000 industry workers, the lawsuit states.

In the complaint, CPCA estimates that 25,000 new union members would generate $2.37 million in monthly revenue from dues paid to UHW.

“This is about Dave Regan and UHW in particular adopting a strategy to create harmful legislation and harmful ballot initiatives to force people to the table to negotiate favorable agreements that will benefit them financially and then when those agreements don’t go through, they allow these initiatives to go through to create punishment for the organizations that can’t come to terms, and then they keep coming back, over and over and over again,” said Brandon Thornock, chief executive of plaintiff Shasta Community Health, echoing claims in the lawsuit.

“It’s a complete waste of resources and it’s amoral.”

A spokesperson for UHW did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. In an interview in July, Regan denied asking the clinics to support his unionization efforts in exchange for dropping Proposition 44.

“We wanted to construct a relationship with the clinic association that prioritized appropriate funding of the community clinics in California, including restoring the healthcare cuts that were introduced by the ‘One Big [Beautiful] Bill,’” Regan said previously. “It was a strategic relationship where we’re working in a mutually cooperative way to properly fund the healthcare system to respect workers, and they were not interested in that.”

Regan is a powerful figure in California politics who has a history of using the ballot box to try to force the healthcare industry to unionize. The union leader has come under scrutiny this year over claims about his extreme political tactics, intimidating behavior toward and threats against women, and an allegation of assault more than 15 years ago, all of which he denies.

Regan is also the architect of California’s billionaire tax, a proposal on the November ballot to apply a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires that has splintered labor and divided Democrats.

The CPCA lawsuit, in the federal court in the Eastern District of California, alleges that Regan’s political tactics are not designed to win initiatives, “but to subjugate and terrify.”

The union, the lawsuit states, has filed dozens of punitive ballot measures in California “targeting hospitals and dialysis providers with the implied threat or directly stated purpose of coercing health care providers into acquiescing to their union organizing or bargaining demands.” UHW has spent over $216 million, the suit says, on measures to “harm patients, destroy services, and drive providers out of business.” The vast majority of the UHW-backed measures have been withdrawn, usually after the industry agrees to concessions, the suit states.

“No other singular entity or individual has engaged in such widespread corruption of California’s initiative process,” the suit states.

Proposition 44 requires that community clinics spend 90% of revenue on patient services, which Regan has said ensures that money is aligned with the mission of the health centers.

CPCA and health centers say restricting the funding would dramatically reduce money for other essential services and leave some clinics at risk of closing their doors.

The CPCA lawsuit alleges that Regan’s demands on Proposition 44 were sent in an email in January from a legislative staff member on behalf of the union. The offer, presented as a joint submission from UHW and two union affiliates, included a requirement that community health centers “hold elections for at least 5,000 employees in each of five years the agreement would be in effect, resulting in elections for 25,000 employees over the five-year period.”

The complaint says the email also disclosed that UHW said it would drop the initiative if CPCA agreed to the terms.

“The e-mail unambiguously shows that UHW and the Union Affiliates — bullied and instructed by Regan — agreed and intended to participate in an endeavor to abuse the ballot initiative process to extract valuable labor concessions from CPCA and CHCs, in violation of federal and state law,” the complaint states.

Negotiations to withdraw the measure fell apart on June 24, the day before the deadline to rescind initiatives from the statewide ballot.

The lawsuit alleges that the union offered a new deal that same day.

“UHW would withdraw the Clinic Penalty Initiative if, in exchange, CPCA reversed its opposition to UHW’s billionaires’ wealth tax initiative and took the funds it raised to oppose the Clinic Penalty Initiative and instead used that money to assist UHW in passing its wealth tax,” the lawsuit alleges. “The next morning, Regan, through an intermediary, offered the same ‘deal.’ CPCA refused to entertain such discussions.”

The lawsuit states that California’s community health centers served 6.7 million people in 2025 and 67% are enrolled in Medi-Cal, state subsidized healthcare coverage for low-income Californians. In many rural areas, health centers are sometimes the only source of primary care.

Thornock said Shasta Community Health has patients who travel more than an hour to get care and provides a program that transports them to health facilities. Under Proposition 44, the program would not be considered patient services.

“It was designed to create for us what becomes an existential crisis in many cases,” he said.

The CPCA lawsuit states that Regan and the union began seeking to extort unionization from nonprofit hospitals through ballot measures in 2011 and used the same strategy to try to grow their membership among dialysis center workers beginning in 2017. In early 2022, they began targeting CPCA and health centers through legislation, the lawsuit stated.

The suit also alleges that Regan and UHW are in violation of a California law that prohibits a proponent of a ballot initiative from seeking, soliciting, bargaining for, or obtaining any money or a thing of value from any person or entity for abandoning or preventing an initiative from moving forward.

A week before the lawsuit became public, The Times reported that independent investigators hired by SEIU found in a report that Regan had tried to “extort” an SEIU state council endorsement of the billionaire tax from other California union leaders. An outside law firm that investigated internal charges against Regan found that he suggested to David Huerta, then president of SEIU California, that the state council could be investigated for “governance issues” if the council did not endorse the billionaire tax on the November ballot. The state council later voted to remain neutral on the measure.

The law firm’s investigation, which was paid for by Service Employees International Union, substantiated an allegation that Regan threatened Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California, over the council’s position on the ballot measure. The SEIU probe found an allegation that Regan also assaulted one of Orr’s predecessors in the job, Courtni Pugh, in 2009, to be credible.

A second investigation conducted by an outside law firm hired by SEIU California found sufficient evidence to substantiate a complaint that Regan bullied Jessica Bartholow, the council’s government relations director.

In interviews with investigators hired by the union and with The Times, Regan admitted to swearing at a staff member for SEIU California and adamantly denied bullying, threatening and assaulting women or seeking to force the state council to back his measure.

Regan remains in his job and alleges that he’s being unfairly targeted over his advocacy for the billionaire tax. SEIU, the national umbrella organization that represents local SEIU affiliates, has not taken any disciplinary action against him while an internal administrative review process moves forward.

Sources involved in negotiations over the billionaire tax said Regan also asked for concessions to grow his union in exchange for rescinding the measure from the ballot this year, which The Times previously reported.

Regan’s list of demands included union contracts with two private hospitals and a health clinic, an organizing neutrality agreement with healthcare clinics statewide, recognition of his union from dialysis clinics and for billionaires to remove measures they launched in response to his tax, according to two sources familiar with the talks who were granted anonymity to share details of the discussions.

The union leader called the allegation “categorically false” and denied that he asked for concessions for his union in exchange for removing the billionaire tax from the ballot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Santana writes for the Associated Press.