news release

Officials announced Thursday that Los Angeles County has automated the process of notifying law enforcement agencies when people who violate restraining orders fail to comply with judges’ orders to hand their guns over to authorities.

Previously, court clerks had to identify which of the county’s 88 law enforcement agencies to notify about a firearm relinquishment by looking up addresses for the accused, which could take multiple days, Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II of the L.A. County Superior Court said during a news conference.

Now, “notices are sent within minutes” to the appropriate agencies, Tapia said.

“This new system represents a step forward in ensuring timely, consistent and efficient communication between the court and law enforcement,” he said, “helping to remove firearms from individuals who are legally prohibited from possessing them.”

According to a news release, the court launched the platform, which the Judicial Council of California funded with a $4.12 million grant in conjunction with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office, and the L.A. Police Department and city attorney’s office.

The court also rolled out a new portal for law enforcement that “streamlines interagency communications by providing justice partners with a centralized list of relevant cases for review” and allows agencies “to view all firearm relinquishment restraining order violations within their jurisdiction,” according to the release.

The new digital approach “represents a major enhancement in public safety,” Luna said.

“Each of those firearms,” he said, “represents a potential tragedy prevented or a domestic violence situation that did not escalate, a life that was not lost to gun violence.”

A new expanded edition of Maia Kobabe’s award-winning graphic memoir “Gender Queer” will be released next year.

Oni Press has announced that “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” will be available in May. The special hardcover edition of the seminal LGBTQ+ coming of age memoir includes commentary by Kobabe as well as other comic creators and scholars.

“For fans, educators, and anyone else who wants to know more, I am so excited to share ‘Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition,’” Kobabe said in the news release. “Queer and trans cartoonists, comics scholars, and multiple people who appear in the book as characters contributed their thoughts, reactions, and notes to this new edition.”

The new 280-page hardcover will feature “comments on the color design process, on comics craft, on family, on friendship, on the touchstone queer media that inspired me and countless other people searching for meaningful representation, and on the complicated process of self-discovery,” the author added.

Released in 2019, “Gender Queer” follows Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, from childhood into eir young adult years as e navigates gender and sexuality and eir understanding of who e is. The books is a candid look into the nonbinary author’s exploration of identity, chronicling the frustrations and joys and epiphanies of eir journey and self discovery.

A page from “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” by Maia Kobabe.

(Oni Press)

“It’s really hard to imagine yourself as something you’ve never seen,” Kobabe told The Times in 2022. “I know this firsthand because I didn’t meet someone who was out as trans or nonbinary until I was in grad school. It’s weird to grow up and be 25 before you meet someone who is like the same gender as you.”

Since the publication of “Gender Queer,” the political climate has been increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community. Right-wing activists and politicians have pushed for legislation to restrict queer and trans rights, including how sexual orientation and gender identity can be addressed in classrooms. Caught in the crossfire of this conservative, anti-LGBTQ+ culture war, “Gender Queer” has become one of the most challenged and banned books in the United States.

In addition to commentary by Kobabe, “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” will feature comments from fellow artists and comics creatives Jadzia Axelrod, Ashley R. Guillory, Justin Hall, Kori Michele Handwerker, Phoebe Kobabe, Hal Schrieve, Rani Som, Shannon Watters and Andrea Colvin. Sandra Cox, Ajuan Mance and Matthew Noe are among the academic figures who contributed to the new edition.

“It’s been almost seven years since I wrote the final words of this memoir; revisiting these pages today, in a radically different and less accepting political climate, sparked a lot of new thoughts for me as well,” Kobabe said in the news release. “I hope readers enjoy this even richer text full of community voices.”

A page from “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” by Maia Kobabe.

(Oni Press)

Rescuers in the rugged Eastern Sierra are searching for a Seattle man who has been missing since early September — and possibly longer — after climbing among some of California’s most remote and daunting mountain peaks.

Billy Pierson, an experienced alpinist, was in California getting in shape for an upcoming trip to Nepal, according to a comment his brother, Steve Pierson, left on Facebook.

On Aug. 9, the alpinist was hiking with a friend. “After their hike, he separated from that friend and is believed to have headed toward Inyo County,” the Inyo County Sheriff’s office said in a news release. “He was later reported missing on September 10, 2025.”

It was not immediately clear when Billy Pierson separated from his friend, or who was the person who reported him missing. The Inyo County Sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Billy Pierson, an experienced alpinist, was in California getting in shape for an upcoming trip to Nepal.

(Inyo County Sheriff)

It is believed Pierson was attempting the Palisades Traverse, a classic and technical mountaineering route along the Sierra crest that covers close to 20 miles and crosses the summits of five mountains taller than 14,000 feet.

In addition to climbing the challenging peaks, mountaineers also often have to navigate the Palisades Glacier, one of the last true glaciers remaining in California.

Steve Pierson said his brother’s plan was to begin, or end, his epic trip at Temple Crag, a familiar landmark to seasoned Sierra climbers and hikers that towers above the magnificent, glacier-fed Big Pine Lakes.

The Inyo County Sheriff’s office, working with Inyo County Search and Rescue, scoured the area around Temple Crag with no success.

Pierson is 5’9”, 165 lbs, and was last known to be carrying a large, navy blue or gray backpack. He was wearing black and yellow shoes and liked to hike in a baseball cap with a bandana underneath.

News that Pierson is missing follows several other incidents this summer in which hikers got dangerously lost or were found dead.

On Sept. 12, an Argentinian climber fell 2,000 feet to his death on Mt. Shasta. The 45-year old tech executive had summited successfully, but lost his way on the descent, winding up on the steep and icy Wintum Glacier. He attempted a controlled slide to reach the safety of a trail below, but lost control, collided with a boulder, and eventually slid the length of the glacier.

Also in September, a San Luis Obispo County man — Kirk Thomas-Olsen, 61 — was found dead in Yosemite National Park more than 20 days after he was expected to return from his solo hike.

In August, a boy scout troop hiking in the Emigrant Wilderness north of Yosemite National Park came upon a 78-year old man who had spent a night without food, water or shelter in the mountains. He had lost his pack and seemed incoherent when the scouts found him and escorted him to safety.

Donald Trump is waging war on California the way Rome did on Carthage.

He ordered the National Guard and the Marines to occupy parts of Los Angeles, over the objections of Gov. Gavin “Newscum” and Mayor Karen Bass. He’s demanding that my alma mater, UCLA, pay a $1-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism. His Justice Department has sued the state on issues including transgender athletes, big-rig emission standards and cage-free eggs.

Now, Trump is going after our history.

Last month, the White House issued a news release titled “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” flagging a grab bag of museum exhibits as offensive — basically anything that highlights racism or is sympathetic toward LGBTQ+ people and undocumented immigrants.

Buried in this trash heap of whines is a complaint that reflects how hell-bent Trump is on bending California to his will.

Describing a “Californio” family as losing their land to Anglo “squatters,” which the yet-to-be-built National Museum of the American Latino does on its website, is apparently a DEI thought crime, according to the news release.

My query to the White House, asking what exactly is so offensive about this characterization of the Mexicans who stayed in California after it became part of the U.S., was acknowledged yet not answered.

But the focus on “Californio” and “squatter” — and putting those words in quotes, as the news release did — suggests the underlying issue, said UC Santa Barbara history professor Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, who specializes in 19th century California.

“They’re trying to question the legitimacy” of the Californios, she said. “Who matters as an American? [To Trump], it’s not people who come from Mexico. It’s people who came from the East.”

“The level of minutiae on this — it’s not him,” she added of Trump. “He’s not a reader. It must be a vast team doing this.”

Worrying about scare quotes around two words in a White House news release might seem like distracting piffle compared with Trump’s other anti-California volleys.

But how the U.S. government frames our yesteryear is one of this administration’s main battlefronts and something I’ve repeatedly warned about in my columna. History is written by the victors, goes the cliche, allowing them to shape a people’s sense of self and decide who’s important and who isn’t.

That’s why Trump and his goons have tried to remake our nation’s past as a triumphalist, so-called Heritage American story, in which people of Western European heritage are always the main actors and the heroes. They’ve done it with the obsession of a pharaoh chipping away all mentions of his predecessors from obelisks.

Trump’s campaign started on Inauguration Day, when he signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has removed the name of LGBTQ+ hero Harvey Milk from a Navy ship and restored the names of Army bases that had honored Confederate officers. The Department of Homeland Security keeps posting images and artwork that celebrate Manifest Destiny — the idea that white people, and white people alone, saved this savage continent.

Next up: a review of exhibits at national memorials and monuments to ensure they don’t “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” an “extraordinary celebration” for this country’s 250th birthday and a National Garden of American Heroes to “reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism.”

In Trump’s mind, the United States has never done any wrong, and anyone who thinks so hates this country. It’s not surprising that casting Californios as victims of rapacious gringos might offend him or his lackeys. But this isn’t wokoso propaganda — it’s well-documented history.

Pio Pico State Historic Park in Whittier was home to its namesake, the last governor of California when it was part of Mexico.

(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)

In 1850, Sacramento’s sheriff and mayor died while attempting to remove white squatters, in what was quickly deemed the Squatter Riot. The following year, the U.S. government forced Californios to prove they owned the land they lived on, even though the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, had ensured their property rights. In the meantime, white settlers could largely claim rancho land as they pleased.

California’s most famous historians — Hubert Howe Bancroft, Kevin Starr and Robert Glass Cleland, to name a few — wrote extensively about so-called squatterism, with Bancroft describing what happened to the Californios as “oppressive and ruinous.”

A new generation of scholars has focused on the writings of Californios, including “The Squatter and the Don,” an 1885 novel by María Ruiz de Burton based on her family’s fight to keep their rancho in what’s now San Diego County.

This was the book described on the National Museum of the American Latino website, prompting the ignominious “Californio” mention in the White House news release.

Until now, “there’s never been much opposition, really” to the narrative of the Californios’ decline, Chavez-Garcia said, calling it “foundational” to the state’s mythology. She cited festivals in mission towns, such as Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta, where people dress up like the Californios of yore to remember a romanticized era that was destined to end badly.

“The thinking was that the state’s prosperity was never meant to happen” to Californios, she said. “They were meant to die off.”

As a high school student in San José, Chavez-Garcia knew none of this history — “we learned more about the Homestead Act in the Midwest,” she joked. At UCLA, when she finally learned about the Californios, she was “outraged” and questioned why her beloved high school history teacher “didn’t teach us this basic thing.”

“Many people … don’t know our history, so whatever the government tells them to read, they’re going to accept,” she said. “You can’t just let someone take an eraser and erase these histories willy-nilly lo que no le gusta [what someone doesn’t like] and then put in whatever the hell you want because it makes you feel good.”

It can’t fall only on scholars such as Chavez-Garcia and nerds such as me to push back against Trump’s ahistorical assault. All Californians need to stand up to people who not only want to remain willfully ignorant about the bad parts of our history but also want to stop others from learning about them. Speaking only about the good prevents us from doing better and leads to a juvenile worldview that’s sadly taken hold in the White House and beyond.

We must take the stance expressed by Doña Josefa Alamar, a protagonist of “The Squatter and the Don.”

At the end of the novel, she is living in exile in San Francisco. Her husband has died from the stress of trying to keep their rancho, her sons live in hardship and her daughter is married to a white man. A friend urges her to stay silent and not malign the “rich people” who caused her so much grief. But Doña Josefa refuses.

“Let the guilty rejoice and go unpunished, and the innocent suffer ruin and desolation,” she replies. “I slander no one, but shall speak the truth.”

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been released from the hospital and “is progressing well” after being injured when the vehicle he was riding in was struck from behind on a highway in New Hampshire, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The former New York City mayor, 81, was injured Saturday shortly after stopping “to assist a person in urgent need of help,” spokesman Ted Goodman said in a statement.

“He has since been discharged from the hospital and deeply appreciates the love, well wishes, and prayers he has received,” Goodman’s statement said. “The mayor also extends his gratitude to the New Hampshire State Police, paramedics, Elliot Hospital, and all of the physicians and nurses who provided him with outstanding care.”

Goodman was behind the wheel, with Giuliani as a passenger, when their rented Ford Bronco was struck from behind on Interstate 93 by a Honda HR-V driven by a 19-year-old woman, New Hampshire State Police said in a statement. Both vehicles hit the highway median and were “heavily damaged,” the statement said.

Goodman and the 19-year-old suffered “non-life-threatening injuries” and were taken to hospitals, the agency said.

Giuliani was taken by ambulance to a nearby trauma center for treatment of a fractured thoracic vertebra, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg, according to a statement posted on X by Michael Ragusa, Giuliani’s head of security. The thoracic vertebrae are part of the spine.

State police said the cause of the crash was under investigation. No charges were filed.

Prior to the accident, Giuliani and Goodman “were flagged down by a woman on the side of the road, just south of Exit 9N, who reported to them she had been involved in a domestic violence incident,” state police said in a news release. Goodman reported the incident to law enforcement and he and the former mayor remained at the scene until troopers arrived.

The reported domestic violence and crash were believed to be unrelated, investigators said.

“Thank you to all the people that have reached out since learning the news about my Father,” Andrew Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani’s son, wrote in a post on X. “Your prayers mean the world.”

The onetime Republican presidential candidate was dubbed “America’s mayor” in light of his leadership in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Giuliani later became President Trump’s personal attorney and was a vocal proponent of Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits claiming fraud, and numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error.

Two former Georgia elections workers later won a $148-million defamation judgment against Giuliani. As they sought to collect the judgment, the former federal prosecutor was found in contempt of court and faced a trial this winter over the ownership of some of his assets. He ultimately struck a deal that let him keep his homes and various belongings, including prized World Series rings, in exchange for unspecified compensation and a promise to stop speaking ill of the ex-election workers.

Thompson writes for the Associated Press.

United States immigration agents have detained prominent Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. and are working to deport him, with officials saying he has “an active arrest warrant in Mexico for his involvement in organized crime and trafficking firearms, ammunition, and explosives.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested Chávez, 39, in Studio City on Wednesday and are processing him for expedited removal from the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.

A Homeland Security news release said Chávez had been flagged as a public safety threat, but “the Biden administration indicated in internal records he was not an immigration enforcement priority.”

Last year in January, officials said, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested Chávez and he was charged with illegal possession of an assault weapon and manufacture or import of a short barreled rifle. He was later convicted of the charges.

Chávez’s manager, Sean Gibbons, told The Times they are currently “working on a few issues” following the boxer’s arrest but had no further comment.

Michael A. Goldstein, a lawyer who has worked with Chávez in previous cases, said his client “was detained outside of his residence by 25 or more ICE and other law enforcement agents.”

“They blocked off his street and took him into custody leaving his family without any knowledge of his whereabouts,” Goldstein said. “The current allegations are outrageous and appear to be designed as a headline to terrorize the community. Mr. Chavez is not a threat to the community.”

The son of Mexican boxing legend Julio César Chávez, widely regarded as the greatest boxer in his country’s history, Chávez Jr. faced off on Saturday against influencer-turned-fighter Jake Paul and lost.

Two weeks before the Anaheim bout against Paul, Chávez held a public workout in Maywood, where he spoke to The Times. He revealed that one of his trainers had skipped the training session out of fear of immigration enforcement.

“I was even scared, to tell you the truth. It’s very ugly,” Chávez said. “I don’t understand the situation — why so much violence? There are a lot of good people, and you’re giving the community an example of violence. I’m from Sinaloa, where things are really ugly, and to come here, to such a beautiful country with everything… and see Trump attacking immigrants, Latinos, for no reason. Not being with God makes you think you know everything. Trump made a bad decision.”

He added: “After everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t want to be deported.”

When U.S. officials announced the arrest Thursday, they referred to Chávez as an “affiliate of the Sinaloa cartel.” The Trump administration has designated the Mexican drug trafficking group as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

“Under President Trump, no one is above the law — including world-famous athletes,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

According to the Homeland Security news release, Chávez entered the country legally in August 2023, with a B2 tourist visa that was valid until February 2024. He had filed an application for lawful permanent resident status last year in April, officials said, based on his marriage to Frida Muñoz, a U.S. citizen, who U.S. officials said “is connected to the Sinaloa cartel through a prior relationship with the now-deceased son of the infamous cartel leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.”

El Chapo, a known fan of Chávez Sr. during his fighting days, is now serving a life sentence in U.S. federal prison after a 2019 conviction for his leadership role in the Sinaloa cartel.

Muñoz was previously in a relationship with Edgar Guzmán Loera, El Chapo’s eldest son, who was killed in Sinaloa in 2008.

The couple had a daughter, Frida Sofía Guzmán Muñoz. Following Edgar’s death, Muñoz distanced herself from the family and moved to the United States, eventually beginning a relationship with Chávez. Their daughter, Frida Sofía, has recently launched a music career and frequently attends her stepfather’s fights, including the most recent fight in Anaheim.

Chávez has faced criticism over alleged associations with figures linked to drug trafficking. In lengthy social media videos, he has claimed friendship with Ovidio Guzmán, another son of El Chapo who court records show has agreed to plead guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago.

Last year, on Dec. 17, according to the Homeland Security news release, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services made a referral to ICE that Chávez was “an egregious public safety threat.”

“However, an entry in a DHS law enforcement system under the Biden administration indicated Chávez was not an immigration enforcement priority,” the release stated.

According to the release, Chávez was allowed to reenter the country on Jan. 4 at the San Ysidro port of entry.

“Following multiple fraudulent statements on his application to become a Lawful Permanent Resident, he was determined to be in the country illegally and removable on June 27,” the Homeland Security release stated.

Chávez has been in the boxing spotlight since childhood, often walking to the ring alongside his father. He began his professional career in 2003 and reached the pinnacle in 2011 when he won the WBC middleweight title against Sebastian Zbik. He defended the belt three times before losing it to Sergio Martínez in 2012.

However, his career has been plagued by discipline issues, substance abuse, and struggles with making weight. In 2017, he faced fellow Mexican star Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez, suffering a lopsided unanimous decision loss that marked a turning point in his career’s decline.

Nicknamed “El Hijo de la Leyenda” (“Son of the Legend”) or simply “JR,” Chávez Jr. has had legal and personal troubles in recent years. He was arrested on suspicion of weapons possession and later entered a residential rehab facility. His battle with addiction has frequently played out in the public eye, including viral social media disputes with his father, one of his most vocal critics, yet also his most steadfast supporter.

According to Homeland Security, Chávez was convicted in 2012 of driving under the influence of alcohol and was sentenced to 13 days in jail and 36 months of probation.

Goldstein, Chávez’s lawyer, noted that his client is a public figure who has been living and working in the U.S. without issue in recent weeks. Goldstein pointed to his recent fight, saying, “His workouts were open to the public and afforded law enforcement countless opportunities to contact him if he was indeed a public threat.”

“He has been focused on his own personal growth and mental health,” Goldstein said. “He is in full compliance with his mental health diversion and all court obligations. For this reason, we fully expect his only pending case to be dismissed as required by statute.”

In 2023, according to Homeland Security, a judge in Mexico issued an arrest warrant for Chávez “for the offense of organized crime for the purpose of committing crimes of weapons trafficking and manufacturing crimes.”

The release said the warrant was for “those who participate in clandestinely bringing weapons, ammunition, cartridges, explosives into the country; and those who manufacture weapons, ammunition, cartridges, and explosives without the corresponding permit.”

Mexican authorities, who typically do not reveal the full names of suspects in criminal cases, said Thursday that federal prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for Julio “C” in March 2023 for organized crime and arms trafficking. A news release from Mexico’s equivalent of the attorney general’s office said U.S. officials had started the process of turning him over to face justice.

Mexico City bureau chief Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this report.

Nearly five months after a firestorm laid waste to a wide swath of Pacific Palisades, Mayor Karen Bass announced Friday that the global infrastructure firm AECOM will help develop a master plan for rebuilding the area, as well as a plan for reconstructing utilities and other infrastructure.

The firm will work alongside both the city and Hagerty Consulting, which Bass tapped as a recovery contractor in early February, according to the mayor’s office.

Hagerty, an Illinois-based disaster recovery firm, has a yearlong contract with the city for up to $10 million but has faced persistent questions about the specifics of its work.

The mayor’s office did not immediately answer when asked Friday whether Hagerty’s role was being scaled back.

In late January, the mayor, along with four council members and other city officials, heard presentations from Hagerty, AECOM and a third firm also seeking to be the city’s disaster recovery contractor.

After Bass selected Hagerty in February, she said the city was still in discussions with AECOM about a separate contract.

“An unprecedented natural disaster requires an unprecedented, all-hands-on-deck response — all levels of government, philanthropy, the private sector and educational institutions coming together to support the community and rebuild as quickly and safely as possible,” Bass said in a written statement Friday. “AECOM’s expertise in long-term infrastructure planning and design will only further expedite our work to get families home.”

The mayor’s office also did not immediately respond when asked whether the city now has a contract with AECOM, or what the specifics of that contract, including the compensation, are.

Steve Soboroff, a longtime local developer and Bass’ former chief recovery officer, publicly criticized Bass’ decision to choose Hagerty over AECOM as the city’s initial disaster recovery contractor. In an interview in mid-April as he was leaving his post, Soboroff raised questions about Hagerty’s role and said he thought AECOM should have been hired instead.

Along with developing a comprehensive rebuilding master plan and supporting the Palisades’ infrastructure reconstruction, AECOM will help coordinate broader public and private rebuilding efforts.

The company will work on a “logistics plan for materials management in coordination with local builders and suppliers” as well as a master traffic plan as more homeowners leap into the rebuilding process, according to a news release.

AECOM is also the “official venue infrastructure partner” for the 2028 Olympic Games, according to a March news release from LA28.