TUCSON — Tucson migrant advocates have designed a new tool to help track immigration-related enforcement in and around the city as arrests surge under President Trump’s mass deportation initiative.
Tucson Migra Map allows people to document and visualize enforcement activities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. While revealing patterns, the tool also raises questions about safety, transparency and the limits of public tracking tools.
“It indicates the level of chaos and how disruptive it is to our community,” activist Lucia Vindiola said in a statement. Vindiola launched the mutual aid group La Bodega to provide groceries and other help to people affected by increased enforcement.
“We are seeing firsthand the impact on families, limiting them from shopping for groceries and supplies,” Vindiola said.
Since Trump took office, immigration-related detentions have more than tripled in fiscal year 2025 — surging from fewer than 200 in late 2024 to more than 800 by June 2025. The response in communities nationwide has been swift, with groups such as the Tucson Rapid Response network organizing to monitor and track federal immigration action on the street.
Geographer Dugan Meyer, one of the map’s creators, is a PhD student at the University of Arizona who volunteers with Tucson Rapid Response and related organizations.
“This project came out of the documentation work that Rapid Response is doing, but also around the city,” Meyer said. “It is a community research project, community mapping project.”
The data are pulled from spreadsheets maintained since January 2025 that tracks and documents federal enforcement actions in greater Tucson such as raids, vehicle stops and aerial surveillance.
Incidents on the map are vetted and classified as “confirmed” or “credible but unconfirmed” based on the level of evidence.
“If we have photographs of, say, an agent wearing a tactical vest that says ‘ICE,’ that’s confirmed,” Meyer said. “Credible unconfirmed, we’re very confident something happened.”
Meyer said a trained Rapid Response observer witnessing an event, even if they had not photographed it, would be an example of a credible unconfirmed event.
“Their testimony about that would be enough for us,” he said.
Hundreds of people, including noncitizens, have contributed their eyewitness accounts of immigration enforcement to the map and the database it draws from, according to the Tucson Migrant Map website. Information from the local news is included, along with reports collected by Rapid Response and other neighborhood networks such as Migra Watch, and information shared on social media and in WhatsApp groups.
Rapid Response member Steven Davis has documented five incidents, including one in which he was pepper-sprayed by law enforcement. He says having these incidents recorded and published furthers his efforts to better show people what ICE is doing in their community.
“The value of the observation is that we take this out of the shadows and get it out into the public,” Davis said. “The Migra Map is a public-facing map that makes visible this activity that is mostly behind the scenes.”
Davis said knowing the data he collects will be used for Migra Map makes it more important for him to document diligently.
“There’s the saying, garbage in, garbage out. I want to make sure that the information that I’m providing is the most accurate information that I can possibly provide,” Davis said.
Meyer said that as of late April, the team had reviewed around 562 incidents, with about 300 meeting the threshold to be included. The goal is to review reported incidents within a week, then add qualifying cases.
“We know that the map is an undercount by any estimation,” Meyer said.
The map also includes police facilities and immigration detention facilities, along with flight paths of various federal agencies’ surveillance flights.
The accuracy of the reporting has been confirmed as more data is gathered, said Meyer. For example, repeated vehicle reports often confirm instances of surveillance.
Meyer said he hopes that the map will ultimately become a platform for information accessible to the public.
He said he thinks the map “can show in a way that people may know intuitively already.”
“It really helps us think about directly when we can see these things in relation to each other,” he added.
Meyer said that makes it easier to identify trends and point out hotspots like El Super grocery store on Tucson’s south side, which is frequented by mostly Latino customers and has seen a high concentration of enforcement.
“It’s used as a hunting ground for that, but there are others as well,” Meyer said, such as specific apartment complexes targeted by ICE or other agencies.
The Tucson Migra Map was not the first of its kind.
Last year, an initiative called People over Papers was used nationally to track immigration enforcement before being shut down by its host site, Padlet, for violations of its content policy.
Federal officials have said such tracking puts officers at risk, and other tracking sites, including ICEBlock, were previously taken offline after the Trump administration called for their removal.
Meyer said that he hopes the Constitution’s protection of free speech will protect Migra Map from a similar fate, and that people in other places will be encouraged to launch their own initiatives.
Davis, the observer, said that unlike the earlier trackers, the Migra Map doesn’t attempt to alert people to events occurring in real time, but reports enforcement actions after the fact.
“It doesn’t tell you where ICE is active right now. It tells you where ICE has been active in the last months,” Davis said. “You could file a Freedom of Information Act for the Tucson District Office and get the exact same information that we’re providing on the map.”
Meyer also noted that he and the other developers have been public about the project.
“It’s not a crime to collect this information and share this information,” said Meyer.
Nonetheless, some contributors opt to report anonymously out of fear.
“I think that anyone paying attention is at the very least concerned” about the current administration, Meyer said. He said he feels privileged he can publicly associate with the project.
But he allowed that Migra Map is far from perfect.
“The important thing is that it doesn’t tell us a lot,” Meyer said. “While many people would like it to be a real-time alert system, this map can’t be that.”
Cuellar writes for Arizona Luminaria, where this story was originally published. It was distributed through a partnership with the Associated Press.
The White House’s newly released strategy for tackling the nation’s drug and addiction crisis calls for a number of ambitious public health approaches that some experts say are laudable but will be hampered by the administration’s own actions.
The sweeping 195-page National Drug Control Strategy, published May 4, advocates for making access to treatment easier than getting drugs, preventing young people from developing addictions in the first place, increasing support for people in recovery, and reducing overdose deaths.
Those broad goals are widely supported by public health researchers, addiction treatment clinicians, and recovery advocates.
Many components of the National Drug Control Strategy are “things that we would agree with and that we fully support,” said Libby Jones, who leads overdose prevention efforts at the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, a public health advocacy group.
But there are “disconnects in what the strategy says is important and then what they’re actually going to fund,” she said of the Trump administration. “Those inconsistencies feel particularly loud in this strategy.”
The White House’s National Drug Control Strategy, released every two years, is a touchstone document meant to lay out the federal government’s coordinated approach to what in recent decades has been one of the country’s defining problems.
Since 2000, more than 1.1 million people have died of drug overdoses. Although deaths have decreased recently, the numbers remain elevated compared with earlier decades, and research suggests overdose death rates among Black Americans and Native Americans are disproportionately high.
The strategy document published this week is the first of President Trump’s current term. In keeping with the administration’s approach to addiction issues, it places heavy emphasis on law enforcement efforts to reduce the supply of illicit drugs. The document repeatedly refers to the ongoing “war” against “foreign terrorist organizations” — the Trump administration’s term for drug cartels — and touts increased enforcement at U.S. borders.
It also outlines plans to implement artificial intelligence technologies to screen for illicit drugs brought into the country and wastewater testing to detect illegal drug use nationwide.
The second half of the strategy focuses on reducing the demand for drugs through public health prevention efforts, addiction treatment, and support for people in recovery. It promotes the role of religion in recovery and calls for the widespread use of overdose reversal medications, such as naloxone.
In a news release, the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy called the document a “roadmap” that will “continue dismantling the drug supply and defeating the scourge of illicit drugs in our country.”
The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment about how the strategy aligns with its other actions.
In December, Trump signed a reauthorization of the SUPPORT Act, which continues several grants related to treatment and recovery and the requirement for Medicaid to cover all FDA-approved medications for opioid use disorder. In January, he announced the Great American Recovery Initiative, including a $100-million investment to address homelessness, opioid addiction, and public safety.
However, few details have been provided about the initiative, and in January, about a month after the SUPPORT Act passed, billions of dollars in addiction-related grants were abruptly terminated and reinstated within a frantic 24-hour period.
That “whiplash” left “a sense of instability and uncertainty in the field,” said Yngvild Olsen, a national adviser with the Manatt Health consultancy. She led substance use treatment policy at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, under the Biden administration and left about six months into Trump’s second term.
That insecurity was exacerbated by the president’s 2027 budget request, which proposes cuts to several addiction and mental health programs and the consolidation of key federal agencies working on those matters. Jones’ group and nearly 100 others in the field have signed a letter asking Congress to reject the proposals, as it did with similar requests last year.
The national drug strategy adds new, potentially contradictory information to this confusing landscape.
Increasing Access to Treatment
One of the most significant public health goals in the strategy, mentioned at least half a dozen times, is to make it easier to get treatment than it is to buy illegal drugs.
National data underscores the necessity: More than 80% of Americans who need substance use treatment don’t receive it.
The administration’s actions on health insurance may make it difficult to improve that statistic.
Medicaid is the main source of healthcare coverage for adults with opioid use disorder. When implemented, the Medicaid work requirements in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act are projected to strip that coverage from about 1.6 million people with substance use disorders.
The last time Medicaid rolls were purged — after COVID-era protections expired — many people who had been receiving medication treatment for opioid addiction stopped it and fewer people started treatment, according to a study published last year.
Olsen, who is also an addiction medicine doctor, said she loves the strategy’s emphasis on making treatment readily available to anyone who wants it. But she said that’s “hard to really imagine when now people may have to pay for it themselves because they may be losing their Medicaid insurance coverage.”
One analysis estimated the upcoming Medicaid changes could lead 156,000 people to lose access to medications for opioid use disorder and result in more than 1,000 additional fatal overdoses per year.
People with private insurance may be affected too.
The Trump administration has refused to enforce Biden-era regulations aimed at bolstering mental health parity, the idea that insurers must cover mental illness and addiction treatment comparably to physical treatments. And recently, the administration said it would redo those regulations altogether, raising fears that addiction treatment could become increasingly unaffordable.
The administration did not respond to specific questions about how it reconciles its actions on Medicaid and parity with the goal of increasing treatment.
Prioritizing Prevention
The strategy highlights preventing addictions before they begin as one of the keys to reducing demand for drugs. It calls for “promoting a drug-free America as the social norm” and implementing school and community-based programs that are backed by science.
“Investing in primary prevention, before drug use starts, saves lives and resources,” it says, citing several studies about the cost-effectiveness of such programs.
Yet, the president’s budget proposes cuts to these types of programs, and federal layoffs have decimated the agencies that would implement such work.
“It’s not clear to me that they’re really going to be able to have the funds or the people to be able to carry that out,” Olsen said of the strategy’s prevention goals.
Another wrinkle appears in the strategy’s discussion of marijuana. The document points to marijuana use as one of the drivers of increasing drug use disorders and reports that “convergent evidence from multiple sources” suggests cannabis use increases the risk of psychosis. It calls for developing new tools to treat marijuana withdrawal and addiction.
However, just two weeks ago, the White House moved to reclassify medical marijuana to a lower tier of scheduled substances and is moving to hold a hearing to do the same for marijuana broadly.
“The administration, on the one hand, is moving in a direction of liberalizing access to cannabis,” Jones said, “but at the same time, in the strategy, it talks about the dangers of doing so.”
“There’s a disconnect there that just makes you question: Which one do you believe?” she added.
The administration did not respond to specific questions about its marijuana policies.
Stopping Overdose Deaths
One of the more surprising elements of the National Drug Control Strategy comes in the last paragraph of the final chapter. It focuses on public drug-checking programs, which often involve using test strips to help people who use drugs determine whether there are more-dangerous substances, such as fentanyl or xylazine, in the batch they bought. That helps them determine whether or how to safely use those drugs.
“Rapid test strips and similar technologies that detect fentanyl and other drugs are an important tool that should be legal,” the strategy document says.
However, SAMHSA announced in a recent letter that it would no longer pay for test strips, as part of the Trump administration’s “clear shift away from harm reduction and practices that facilitate illicit drug use.”
The administration has similarly attacked harm reduction programs in an executive order and its budgetrequests. It did not respond to specific questions about how this position interacts with the drug control strategy.
Regina LaBelle, a Georgetown University professor who served as acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Biden administration, wrote about the contradiction in a blog post: “It is the height of rhetoric over reality to champion a tool while simultaneously cutting off the funding used to acquire it.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.
A tourist on holiday in Spain shared an image from her sunbed, but it left people taken aback. It wasn’t the view that grabbed people’s attention as they couldn’t believe their eyes
10:32, 08 May 2026Updated 10:33, 08 May 2026
She shared the view from her sunbed in Spain (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)
When we’re abroad it’s common to feel the need to share the view from our sunbeds, but one tourist left people floored after showing what hers looked like. Spain is a popular holiday destination for many, but sometimes travel adventures don’t always go as you’d expect and one woman made this pretty clear.
The woman, who posts as The Kelly Family on TikTok, has been documenting her travels in Spain, but people were left stunned after she shared the view from her sunbed this week. While it’s normal to want to blog your experiences when you’re enjoying some time in the sun, it wasn’t the scenery that had people glued to their screens.
Posting from Majorca, she said people “refused” to move from the pool, but you needed to be prepared to sunbathe. This was because the weather was so cold, she considered a towel “a must” to stay outside.
Instead of greeting people with glorious sunshine, and a stunning view, she shared a clip of grey sky and her legs covered up with a towel. It wasn’t quite the holiday image you’d expect to see.
Alongside the clip, she wrote: “That glimmer of sun from this morning is long gone, and we’re using towels as blankets to stay sat on the sunbed longer.”
In previous videos, she also admitted the weather had been cold during their stay. She claimed it was “freezing” one day, which put her off going in the pool.
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Naturally, the video got people talking, as you usually go on holiday expecting to see some sunshine. People had very mixed opinions though.
One person said: “I’m here in three weeks. I’m praying for sun.” Another simply replied with laughing face emojis.
Under a different video, a third wrote: “What part is this? I’m meant to be going Saturday, and the weather looks absolutely miserable.”
A fourth also noted: “We arrive on Sunday. I’ve paid my money. Rain or shine, the kids will be in that pool morning, noon and night. I don’t want to hear ‘it’s freezing mummy’. It’ll toughen them up.”
Others pointed out it’s quite early in the season to see boiling hot weather though. Someone else wrote: “Early season. It’s to be expected.”
One more also said: “Early May? It’s Europe. When did we expect a heatwave?” The good news is, more recently, the weather seems to have improved for the family as they were also seen enjoying some time in the sun.
What people need to know
Generally, people visiting Majorca in May should expect warm, sunny and pleasant weather. The month tends to offer a perfect spring-to-summer transition, with average daytime temperatures usually coming in between 22°C and 25°C.
Tourists should expect around nine to 10 hours of daily sunshine, low rainfall and comfortable, mild evenings. However, good weather is never guaranteed anywhere, and you should always bear this in mind when travelling.
Majorca is one of the most popular holiday destinations in Spain and Europe, as it draws millions of tourists annually with its stunning beaches, mountains and nightlife. It is frequently ranked as a top Mediterranean destination.
Kyle Loftis, who started filming street racing with a point-and-shoot camera and went on to become a pioneer in car culture media, has died, his company confirmed Wednesday. He was 43.
“We are extremely saddened to share that Kyle Loftis, the founder of 1320video, passed away last night,” the company wrote in a statement posted on social media. “We are in a state of shock.”
No cause of death has been disclosed.
The Sarpy County Sheriff’s Office and Gretna Fire Department in Nebraska responded to Loftis’ home Tuesday night, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said in a statement emailed to The Times.
“Loftis was declared deceased; his death is not suspicious,” the spokesperson wrote. “Out of respect for privacy, we will not be releasing further details.”
According to his LinkedIn page, Loftis attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 2000-2005 and earned a bachelor’s degree in management of information systems.
It was there, Loftis said in a 2023 video on his company’s YouTube channel, that his interests in car stereos and photography evolved into a passion for street racing — in particular, capturing races in still photos and on video and making that media available to fans.
“I’m a hardcore ‘car nut’ that’s taken his love for cars and turned it into the most amazing ‘job’ of my life,” Loftis wrote on LinkedIn. “Through my business, 1320Video, I’m able to experience the craziest & best automotive events (fitting my tastes) and share them with millions of people around the world!”
Back in the early days, Loftis posted his work on message boards and sold it on DVDs. For nearly 10 years after college, he worked for PayPal while building his motorsports media business on his own time. He dedicated himself to 1320Video full time starting in January 2015.
Currently, 1320Video has nearly 4 million subscribers on YouTube, more than 6 million followers on Facebook and nearly 3 million followers on Instagram.
“Kyle’s passion for motorsports inspired millions of people around the world and we will never forget what he has done to grow our beloved sport,” 1320Video wrote. “Kyle was a beam of light at every gathering… his enthusiasm, kindness, and creativeness was contagious.
“Let us pray that Kyle is in a better place.”
Garrett Mitchell — the YouTuber and stock car racer known as Cleetus McFarland — posted a tribute to his longtime friend on Facebook.
“Completely shocked about the loss of Kyle,” Mitchell wrote. “The most influential person on my life. We’re crushed. Please pray for his Mother and close friends, they need it most.”
A noughties TV legend and star of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! has explained just why so many people refused to appear with him on television at the height of his career
Dom Joly has admitted that he struggled to get some people to appear with him on Trigger Happy TV(Image: PA)
Dom Joly has revealed that several people refused to appear alongside him on TV – all for the same reason. The comedian, 58, shot to fame when he began fronting Trigger Happy TV in 2000, and the format saw him going out in public to intentionally put himself in embarrassing situation, all to get a reaction.
When the programme first started, viewers and participants alike assumed the chaos, which was being caught on hidden cameras, was genuine and it became an overnight success. But as the series progressed and became more popular, members of the public became wise to when Dom was out and about filming.
The show came to an end in 2003, and now Dom, who went on to appear on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! alongside This Morning star Alison Hammond and eventual winner Stacey Solomon, has revealed that a considerable amount of people refused to be seen on camera because they were being unfaithful to their partners at the time, and couldn’t risk having that broadcast to the nation.
Speaking on the Remember Me? podcast, he told host Maisie Adam: “We got away with quite a lot but the main reason people didn’t sign consent forms – it’s not that they didn’t want to be on telly, it’s because they were having affairs.
“I can not tell you the amount of people we did, and when the second series went out, the guy would go ‘Oh my god, it’s Dom Joly! Am I being filmed? Oh! That’s not my wife.’ That was just the people we talked to!”
Dom’s most famous bit is, ironically, his least favourite – that enormous phone. Just days after the first episode aired in January 2000, he was on a train when he heard that now-familiar Nokia ring tone.
He said: “Three people stood up and shouted, ‘HELLO?! YEAH I’M ON THE TRAIN – IT’S RUBBISH!’ I was like, ‘f***. What is happening?’” It’s a catchphrase that has haunted him for 25 years.
“I swear there’s not a day where it doesn’t happen. Even on the way here, a bloke spotted me and shouted, ‘HELLO?!’ And 25 years later I still don’t have a good response to it! Like, ‘Yes, hello!’”
“So many scenes went wrong, but the worst we did was with Sarah Ferguson,. We were walking past the Duke of York barracks on King’s Road and there’s a party going on, so we go in and blag some free drinks. Suddenly we spot Fergie sitting in the corner on her own, so we say, ‘let’s do it’.
“We go right up to her, she looks panicky and I stick my microphone in her face and say, ‘Good morning Your Majesty, you are live on Good Morning Mexico – do you have anything to say to the people of Mexico?’
“She starts blabbering on into this tiny camera, and after a while I ask her to pause because we’ve gone to a commercial break, and could she absolutely freeze?
BEIRUT — A dozen U.S. Democratic Senators have called for the U.S. Central Command to answer questions about American coordination with Israel in declaring broad “ evacuation zones ” in Lebanon and Iran, alleging that the practice may violate international law.
The letter underlines how the Democratic Party — both its leaders and the base — has grown increasingly critical of Israel.
Since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, the Israeli military has regularly issued maps covering large areas of territory along with warnings telling all residents of the zones to flee. Israel had previously used a similar approach in Gaza.
The senators said the sweeping warnings have “been used to permanently displace people and destroy homes and towns” and that some civilians who refused to leave their homes in the areas have been killed by subsequent strikes.
The 12 senators led by Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, in a letter dated May. 4 to CENTCOM chief Adm. Brad Cooper that was provided to The Associated Press, state that Israel’s practice of unilaterally declaring mass evacuation warnings in Lebanon and Iran “likely contravene international laws the United States has helped develop around humane warfare.”
The other signatories include senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
The letter asked the CENTCOM chief whether U.S. forces have coordinated military targets with Israeli forces during the recent war with Iran, whether they provided assistance or intelligence helping Israel’s military to impose the evacuation zones in Lebanon and Iran, and whether CENTCOM signed off on U.S. military support for the targeting of people or infrastructure in the evacuation zones. It also asked whether the U.S. military has reviewed the legality of the practice.
The Israeli military declined to comment when asked about the letter. CENTCOM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the past, Israel has said the evacuation maps aim to keep civilians out of harm’s way. It says Hezbollah has positioned fighters, tunnels and weapons in civilian areas across southern Lebanon, from which it has launched hundreds of drones and missiles — without warning — into northern Israel.
A shift in the party stance
Observers said the move is part of a larger shift in the stance of Democratic Party leaders on U.S. military assistance to Israel. Democrats have also been critical of the Trump administration’s entry into the war on Iran alongside Israel.
The letter came nearly three weeks after more than three dozen Democrats supported an effort by Sanders to block arms sales to Israel, signaling a growing discontent in the party with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the wars in Gaza and Iran.
The two resolutions to block U.S. sales of bulldozers and bombs to Israel were opposed by all Republicans and rejected 40-59 and 36-63.
Jon Finer, former deputy national security adviser under President Joe Biden, said the recent steps by Democratic senators reflect a “growing concern about Israeli conduct of various wars that cause civilian harm and U.S. complicity in that” across the spectrum within the Democratic Party.
Asked why the Democratic Party is taking these steps now and not at the time when the war in Gaza and the Israel-Hezbollah war broke out — when the Democratic Biden administration was in power — Finer said: “our operational integration with Israel appears to be growing, which is part of it, but the truth is the Democratic base has been moving in this direction for some time and Washington has been catching up.”
Andrew Miller, a former senior official on Israel and Palestinian Affairs at the State Department, said the letter “represents a shift among congressional Democrats moving from questions of the legality of Israeli military operations to concerns about the complicity of the U.S. military.”
“It demonstrates that Democrats are taking international law very seriously and that is a welcome development,” Miller said.
The evacuation zones
Israel has issued dozens of evacuation warnings in Lebanon since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war began on March 2. Over 1 million people in Lebanon have fled their homes during the war.
Israel has also issued similar warnings for Iranians, both during the 12-day Israel-Iran war last year and during the U.S.-Israeli war launched on Iran on Feb. 28. In one case last year they warned 300,000 people in Tehran, Iran’s capital, to evacuate.
On Wednesday, the Israel military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an evacuation warning to residents of 12 villages in southern Lebanon saying Hezbollah is using them to launch attacks. The warnings came despite a ceasefire that has been nominally in place since April 17, although Israel and Hezbollah have been carrying daily attacks since then.
The senators said the declaration of evacuation zones does not absolve Israeli and U.S. forces “from the absolute legal responsibility to determine that each individual person or civilian facility targeted by drones, jets, and gunfire is, in fact, a military target.” It said the use of the zones has been linked to “the deaths of thousands of civilians,” describing them as “kill zones.”
In response to questions by the AP last month, the Israeli military said it issues warnings by phone, text, radio broadcast, social media and leaflets dropped from the air, in accordance with the “principles of distinction, proportionality and feasible precautions” under international law.
Mroue writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Julia Frankel contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
Families need to be aware of how this could impact their flights home
Ryanair bookings need to be accurate at the time people head on holiday – especially people born in these three years(Image: GordZam via Getty Images)
Certain young people going on holiday with Ryanair this year could find themselves in trouble if they are booked to fly with the wrong ticket type. It can happen to anyone born in 2010, 2014, or 2024. Ryanair divides its passengers into four categories when assigning seats on planes: adults, teens, children, and infants.
The airline is clear online about who qualifies for specific ticket types when they are travelling abroad with the budget carrier. Outlining the policy online, Ryanair says: “For the purpose of defining our passenger types, adults are over 16 years of age, teens are between 12 and 15 years of age, children are between two and 11 years of age, and infants are those under two years of age.”
This applies from the “date of flight departure”. If families are heading abroad and celebrate a birthday, they need to be aware of how this could impact their flights home. Anyone born in 2010, 2014, or 2024 must comply with the rules.
If a child turns two, 12 or 16 between leaving the UK and returning home, they cannot be booked onto Ryanair flights without potentially facing extra charges. It is important for parents to be aware of this before booking their next holiday – or act now if the plans are already in place.
Ryanair adds: “If an infant turns two years of age or a child turns 16 years of age during your trip, you should purchase two one-way flights rather than a return ticket. You may then connect the bookings by contacting us.”
In terms of pricing, teens (aged 12-15) are treated the same as adults for pricing. They may, however, lose any free seat selection that is offered to under-12s.
The airline has a section on its website for customers who have already made a booking and need to change their passenger type. Changing passenger types may incur fees, and it is generally better to update this to avoid issues at boarding.
Generally, swapping a child or teen ticket to an adult is free when done online, but child passengers will lose their free seat selection privileges and have to pay for a new seat when ageing out of the free under-12s seating offer. The cost of doing this varies, depending on the flight service and the newly selected seat.
The page claimed the airline has announced routes to Barcelona that are “cheaper than dinner”. After making a quick check, you’ll see that some flights from the UK are pretty reasonable.
Events: Men’s baseball gold medal finals, women’s basketball gold medal finals, men’s soccer gold medal finals, swimming preliminary and tennis quarter final mixed doubles
Thoughts: ”My uncle made a spreadsheet. The tickets are for me, my uncle, friends and I’m hoping to take my nephew as well. I was 10 years old at the 1984 Olympics and got to go to gymnastics, swimming and closing ceremonies, and my nephew will be 10 in 2028. I know L.A. is going to have an amazing Olympics, we are Los Angeles! Ten million creative, beautiful people, always dreaming and we know how to wow people. I can’t wait and hopefully traffic is smooth, a glamorous sequel to ’84.”
This story includes spoilers for Episode 8 of “Daredevil: Born Again” Season 2.
By the end of “Daredevil: Born Again’s” first season, showrunner Dario Scardapane knew they were heading toward Matt Murdock’s big reveal in Season 2.
The second season finale of the Marvel series, out now on Disney+, sees Murdock (played by Charlie Cox) declare to the world that he’s the vigilante Daredevil.
“Coming in with Season 1, I wish I could say I knew exactly where we were going,” says Scardapane during a recent video call. “But I knew that moment in the courtroom where Daredevil outs himself, we were definitely heading towards that.”
Iain B. MacDonald, who directed Episodes 7 and 8, said that everybody involved understood that it “was going to be a super significant moment” while they were filming the scene.
“When that’s out, that’s out,” MacDonald says. “That moment clearly has a domino effect for the rest of the episode. … I’m super excited to just to see how that’s received by the fans … because as a director, you want to deal with big moments in what you direct, and that is, for me, one of them.”
A continuation of Netflix’s “Daredevil,” which initially concluded in 2018, “Born Again” has followed Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) rise from criminal kingpin to the supposedly reformed mayor of New York. Fisk’s authoritarian tactics and campaign targeting vigilantes pushes Daredevil underground to try to assemble allies in order to bring the Kingpin down.
Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) returned to the courtroom to make his case.
(JoJo Whilden / Marvel)
Their much anticipated showdown occurs in a courtroom in the season finale during the trial of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll).
“Myself and my DP [director of photography], Jeffrey Waldron, looked at a lot of courtroom dramas, just to really think about how we can tell those courtroom stories really well, and do it creatively and imaginatively … and in the language of ‘Daredevil,’ ” said MacDonald. “It was a challenge, for sure, [but] I really, really enjoyed shooting them.”
While Murdock may have triumphed in the courtroom, his revelation has consequences as teased in the episode. Scardapane says those consequences will be explored in Season 3.
“That last scene in Season 2 tells you where we’re going,” says Scardapane. “If the question is, are we doing a specific comic book run that is beloved by all, including me, I think that it’s pretty obvious what we’re doing in that last scene.”
The fallout for Murdock, as seen in the episode, is his arrest and imprisonment. In the final moments of the finale, the Man Without Fear is shown getting locked up at Rikers Island. Murdock appears to have accepted his fate, but a glimmer of smile hints that this is not the end of his story.
“Charlie and I talked about [the scene], and we knew that we wanted to end on that close-up of his face,” MacDonald says. “He said we can do two things here, one which is like acceptance of circumstances, like he’s resigned. He has made the sacrifice of outing himself to the world about who he really is [and] he has put himself away in service of the greater good … as well as have that little moment of a hint of a smile to say, this is a beginning. This is a new adventure. This is a new challenge.”
In a conversation edited for clarity and length, Scardapane discussed Murdock and Fisk’s arcs in Season 2, “Daredevil: Born Again’s” timely political themes and what to expect in Season 3.
Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) get a chance to celebrate in the “Daredevil: Born Again” Season 2 finale.
(JoJo Whilden / Marvel)
At what point did you know that what you were building toward in Season 2 would end with Matt Murdock in jail?
It’s kind of a process that snowballs. They had started before me. They were doing the Mayor Fisk run. It was much more procedural, much different tone. They did six episodes, and I came in, and we moved it more in line as a continuation of the Netflix series. When Fisk becomes the mayor of New York, you put the villain at a really, really elevated place. So, Season 1 was the rise of Fisk. Season 2 has got to be the rise of that which takes him down — the resistance.
That moment that Matt stands up in court and says, “I am Daredevil,” that’s like the record scratch. Everything has changed from this moment on. At the end of Season 1, beginning of Season 2, we knew we were heading toward that moment. That moment’s consequences, for Matt and for Fisk, are kind of the fodder for Season 3.
There are comic book runs that I shall not name — although they’ve been named — that take that dilemma that Matt put himself in and go to really great places with it. Coming in with Season 1, I wish I could say I knew exactly where we were going. But I knew at the very beginning, that moment in the courtroom where Daredevil outs himself, we were definitely heading toward that.
It felt significant that Matt and Fisk’s big showdown this season happened in a courtroom.
The fun of Daredevil since the comics started is here you have a lawyer who really believes in the justice system who goes out and breaks bones at night. He’s a vigilante lawyer. That’s such a dichotomy. When the villain takes power, when the villain is the police — this situation, the villain is the Anti-Vigilante Task Force — the villain has now become the power structure of New York and has become the justice system. How does Matt fight back? He fights back as a vigilante until it gets to a crucial moment where Karen is pulled into this flawed justice system. Now there’s nowhere he could go. He’s put in this place where both his personas have to integrate, have to kind of collide, for him to beat Fisk. I think that Charlie’s performance in that courtroom scene is his best courtroom performance in any episode of “Daredevil” ever. Building to that moment of Fisk and Matt facing off in court, it was pretty important because all four of them are in court there: Wilson Fisk, Kingpin, Matt Murdock and Daredevil are all there in that scene.
Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) ambitions are thwarted in “Daredevil: Born Again” Season 2.
(JoJo Whilden / Marvel)
Fisk, the villain, ultimately loses this battle. Can you speak a bit about his arc this season?
One of the joys of this job is working with Vincent D’Onofrio, full stop. He’s done such a good job of humanizing a monster. I don’t write Fisk as a villain. I don’t think Vincent plays him as a villain. And that’s where the fun comes in.
Building up a man whose appetite, whose isolation, whose just general hunger to dominate, making that character and then giving him this one lifeline to humanity in Vanessa — that’s all calculated. We knew in Season 1 when Foggy was killed that Vanessa was going to be the cost for Fisk. The idea that Vanessa set up Foggy to die using Bullseye, and Bullseye ended up inadvertently killing Vanessa, that was 100% in the DNA from jump. Vanessa passed away in the comic books in two different ways, but that takes Fisk now into a place where, for me, all bets are off. I think that the Fisk that Vincent is playing in Episode 6, 7 and 8 and beyond are a different animal entirely. We just finished a very special episode that is pretty much all Fisk in this new incarnation and it was pretty exciting. Vincent’s in rare form in Season 3.
I understand that the Anti-Vigilante Task Force stuff was shot before the the story and imagery became extremely timely.
It’s really strange because there’s footage in the finale that’s intentionally supposed to reflect certain events. One of the things that I really wanted to do with this story, when you’re dealing with politics and everything, is we’re living in a time where these values of mutual respect, mutual listening, mutual live and let live … what I would say, democratic values are being thrown out the window when you’re dealing with the other side. If somebody doesn’t share your beliefs, it’s free game. And I’ve never really seen a time like that. So we took that story, where the mayor’s side has no quarter for the vigilante side and the vigilante side has no quarter for the mayor’s side. When they storm the rotunda, it looks very familiar. That is intentional. I’m not going to dodge that. Because it’s the idea that everybody sees themselves as a hero of this story, where they’re treating the people on the other side horribly. There’s no lesson there. It’s just the idea that when mobs get involved, when large groups of people get involved, the higher morals and higher sense of humanity falls apart.
You’ve mentioned that in writing and filming this show, you were looking at history. But what was it like when the present started mirroring what you already made based on the past?
The sequence in Episode 2, when the bodega is raided and people are dragged away by the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, that was filmed before Los Angeles, before Minnesota — before all of it. The whole thing got really strange in that the real world started to feel cartoony, and I don’t mean that in a positive way.
I think we were, as writers and directors, tapping into an unease and a malaise that’s just out there. Having it look exactly like things that then happened on the news, that was chilling. It was really hard to get my head around it. It was hard for the people involved, the directors, the fact that some of those sequences in our show, of people being dragged away and thrown into vans, looked exactly like what we were seeing on the news.
There have been other touch points, like the affinity some Task Force officers have for the Punisher logo, that crosses from the fictional into reality.
I’ve been wrestling with this since working on “The Punisher.” The map of what you do when you want to be an autocrat: You form a militia, you empower them beyond, you target a group that you want to make scapegoats, you round them up. When Charles Soule was doing the Mayor Fisk run in the comic books, that’s what he was thinking about. S—, Tony Gilroy did it in “Andor.” When you build any kind of story about an autocrat, it follows the same script. Weirdly, the script’s now playing out outside our door, and that’s become really hard to deal with. The funny thing about this show in these times is, no matter what I say, somebody’s gonna get all like, “Oh, they put politics in our comics” and “they’re trying to teach us a lesson.” Nobody’s trying to teach you a lesson. We’re just laying out a story about a guy who’s a criminal who becomes a mayor and a guy who’s a lawyer who tries to take him down. But does that have echoes in what’s going on outside our window? Yes, it does.
There is a sect of the audience that gets very vocal about the MCU getting ”too woke” or comic books and superheroes ”becoming political.”
One thing that just broke me when we started Season 3, I posted a picture of our writers room, and it’s just some of the best genre writers in the television business. I posted it [on Instagram] and I said “so stoked to get into it with these guys.” The first comment was, “Looks like a pretty woke room. Don’t ruin the show.” How does a room look woke? Oh, so you’re looking at the makeup of the people in that room, and you’re saying that that is something you don’t like? I can’t help you [with that]. I’ve just got to go into that room and write stories.
It’s also not like superhero comic books haven’t had storylines about marginalized communities or interrogating people in power.
Guys, comic books are political. They’ve always been political. The first graphic novel that ever won a Pulitzer Prize was “Maus.”
Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) gets in on the action.
(JoJo Whilden / Marvel)
I think I’ve waited long enough to ask about Luke Cage, played by Mike Colter, showing up in the finale. How did all of that come together?
One of the things that I’ve said a bunch about this show is we lean into the idea that these characters have grown up. The time that has passed between the end of the Netflix shows and the beginning of this show, we acknowledge and we lean into. Their lives have matured. As anybody knows, in the comics, Luke and Jessica had a child, Danielle. Now for me, as a writer, that’s just great story. We have a family of two very interesting people who were made iconic by the performances of Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter. What does that little family look like moving forward? So that tease at the end has seeds for acres and acres of stories. There’s a world that I’m super interested in, that a lot of the characters from the Netflix shows live in, that I’d love to see go forward. A lot of that’s out of my hands. But Mike and Jessica and that family are important to these stories.
Can you say anything more about what Luke has been up to since audiences last saw him?
Luke went to do some work for Mr. Charles. That’s a little bit of an Easter egg, a storyline that will play out in the future. Mr. Charles’s interest in alternatively abled people, or people who can do special things, that interest has long tentacles. It touched Luke and Jessica. It touches Bullseye at the end of the season, and that moves forward.
I think everybody’s been curious since Charlie Cox’s return. Matt’s back. Now Jessica and Luke are back. Are we going to see all of the Netflix era heroes assembled?
The best way I can answer that question is that we take comic book runs, fan desires and unfinished business. On “Punisher,” we were planning for a Season 3. I know [“Daredevil” showrunner] Erik Oleson was getting ready to work on a Season 4. That all ended very abruptly. None of the shows really got an ending that brought it all together. I wouldn’t say that “Defenders” was an ending that brought it all together. There’s so much unfinished business in those Netflix shows. We definitely, definitely knew from way back, how the ending of the Mayor Fisk rise and fall, where that was going to go next. And it’s funny because I’m talking to you as we’re trying to end where it goes next, and we’re thinking about, “OK, now what happens after that?”
I’m just going to throw it out there that I’d like to see Misty Knight and Colleen Wing back also.
[Jessica Henwick, who plays] Colleen has already said that she is not in Season 3, and that’s a real sad thing for us. It was not for lack of trying. I want to do Daughters of the Dragon, come on! That was teed up in “The Defenders.”
I wish I could be more forthright, but I have to save some some secrets for Season 3. But I do believe that we set a launching pad at the end of Season 2 that takes us into some pretty fun places that we’re in right now, and I gotta go finish that.
While the specter of la migra continues to haunt the city, far more crushing are problems that affect everyone — affordability, housing, traffic, pollution. Maybe Soto-Martínez and his colleagues should double down on fixing those things first and sell their message better to voters instead of picking up a new issue?
I know the first-term council member comes from a good place. His parents were formerly undocumented, just like my dad, and he has been a fierce advocate for immigrants going back to his labor organizing days. I have friends without legal status and others in the DACA program for people who came to the U.S. illegally as children. I think giving them, as well as green card holders and others with papers, a chance to participate in elections is a righteous idea.
But to paraphrase the Book of Ecclesiastes, there’s a time and a place for everything. In 2026, Angelenos should be focused on electing people and approving initiatives that will improve the city for everyone, not a narrow plank benefiting a slice of the population.
So I called up Soto-Martínez and challenged him to convince this doubting Tomás.
He hopes his proposal will reach the City Council later this month for a vote on whether to place it on the November ballot. If voters pass the measure, it goes back to the council to decide when — if ever — to enfranchise the immigrants.
The proposal, already vilified in conservative media, isn’t as radical as it seems. Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections, but there’s a well-established history of their participation in local ones, including in Vermont and Maryland. They can already vote in L.A. neighborhood council elections, and in San Francisco school board elections if they have a child in the district.
Besides, L.A. has long led the way in weaving undocumented immigrants into the fabric of civic life.
This is a sanctuary city where Mayor Karen Bass has stood up to President Trump’s xenophobia. Where eight of the 15 council members are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Where LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho — himself formerly undocumented — has striven to make local schools as welcoming as possible (Carvalho is on paid leave after the FBI raided his home and office earlier this year). Even the LAPD learned decades ago that it’s better to embrace undocumented immigrants than castigate them for their lack of legal status.
“If you’re contributing to this economy, you should have the right to decide who represents you,” Soto-Martínez told me.
Fair point. But isn’t thumbing our noses at Trump asking for more of what he has already inflicted on L.A., making life even more miserable for undocumented immigrants? Could he use the noncitizen voter rolls as a list of whom to deport? Besides, doesn’t extending the franchise to noncitizens give fuel to his crazy conspiracies about stolen elections?
“You always hear, ‘Don’t poke the bear, don’t instigate them,’ but that’s not how you deal with a bully,” Soto-Martínez replied. “They’re coming at us already. While they’re removing people’s right to vote in the Supreme Court, we’re expanding it. … And it has nothing to do with Trump. It’s about fairness.”
Tell that to Trump.
I mentioned that Santa Ana — a city far more Latino than Los Angeles, though not as liberal — decisively rejected a similar measure in 2024. Soto-Martínez’s fellow Democratic Socialist council members, Ysabel Jurado and Eunisses Hernández, have voiced their support for his measure. But I wonder whether the full council will move it along to voters in a year when some members, including Soto-Martínez, are running for reelection.
I couldn’t get a comment from Bass. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who’s running against her, said in a statement that Soto-Martínez’s push “is worth taking seriously” but that it’s “critical to getting this right, and we must not make decisions lightly or quickly.”
“We’re going to have to organize,” Soto-Martínez acknowledged. “But we live in a political moment where it’s the right conversation to have about what this city stands for.”
Avance Democratic Club President Nilza Serrano at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights in 2022.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
He’s going to have to convince people like Nilza Serrano. She’s president of Avance, L.A. County’s largest Latino Democratic club, and heads the California Democratic Party’s Latino caucus. Serrano is no wokosa — she supported Rick Caruso in the last mayoral election and is now siding with Bass.
While Serrano thinks Soto-Martínez is on to something, she said that voting rights for noncitizens are a nonissue for the people she’s trying to get to the polls for the June primary and November general elections. The economy and Trump’s deportation deluge are more on their minds.
I asked if Soto-Martínez’s proposal would cheapen citizenship for people like her. Serrano and her family came here legally from Guatemala in the 1980s before becoming U.S. citizens, a process that took years.
“Not for me,” she replied. “But it’s hard to say for others. I’d have to do a little bit more research.”
“Isn’t San Francisco already doing it?” the Navy veteran cracked.
I thought Hernandez would go on an anti-liberal rant, but.…
“I believe there’s a strong argument,” he said, “that if someone has established residency and is a member of the community and suffered the consequences of whatever local policies will be enacted, they should have a say in who gets elected.”
Did the ghost of Joaquin Murrieta, California’s original avenging Latino, suddenly possess Hernandez? To make sure I was hearing right, I asked again if noncitizens voting in L.A. elections is a good thing.
How could he support that, as a Trump-voting Republican?!
“We have to be pragmatic,” he replied. He approves of noncitizens voting in L.A. neighborhood council elections, because that’s true local control.
He understands that allowing them to vote in municipal elections might come off as an insult to the memory of civil rights activists who lost their lives fighting for that right for Black Americans. But U.S. citizens are already taking it for granted, he noted — turnout in the November 2022 L.A. mayoral election was a pitiful 44%.
“Maybe noncitizens will appreciate voting more than citizens,” he said.
I’m still not fully convinced that Soto-Martínez’s push is wise right now, but I like that he’s being careful.
“We need to get in the weeds of this,” he said of the City Council’s deliberations, which he characterized as attempting to ensure maximum benefit and minimum fallout.
People heading to Yosemite to escape urban congestion fumed this weekend as they waited in a seemingly endless line of cars at the park entrance.
Inside, they circled aimlessly around full parking lots, scanning for empty spots instead of majestic views.
Near the summit of Half Dome, on the infamous steel cables hikers use to ascend the final stretch of bare granite, another traffic jam formed, trapping people hundreds of feet in the air, according to social media posts.
Even before the summer rush, California’s most visited national park is seeing big crowds — the most people in a decade, according to National Park System data.
Critics of the free-for-all are blaming the influx on the Trump administration for abandoning a reservation requirement that, for the last few years, has helped control the number of visitors and preserve a sense of natural tranquility.
California’s nine national parks drew a record 12 million visitors in 2025, up more than 800,000 from the previous record set in 2019. Yosemite accounted for more than a quarter of those visits.
This year, the pace continues, with more than half a million visits to Yosemite so far. In March, the park recorded 236,000 visits, up more than 45% from the same month a year earlier.
Yosemite National Park is enormous, covering more than 1,100 square miles on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Even at the height of summer, an adventurous soul willing to hike a bit can spend weeks in the park and rarely see another person.
But Yosemite’s most famous and Instagrammable vistas — the towering, 3,000-foot granite wall of El Capitan, the thundering spectacles of Yosemite and Bridalveil falls — can be enjoyed from parking lots and picnic benches in the relatively cramped confines of Yosemite Valley.
Visitors don’t even have to get out of their cars to gaze in wide-eyed wonder at sights they will probably remember for the rest of their lives.
And that’s the problem.
Traffic in the valley, especially on summer weekends, had become legendary by the end of the 2010s, inspiring think pieces with headlines such as “Inside Yosemite’s Traffic Meltdown” and “The Siege of Yosemite Valley.”
In June 2020, to limit crowds in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the park introduced a controversial system requiring a reservation before entering.
That left a lot of would-be visitors frustrated, but those lucky enough to snag a reservation were treated to the most peaceful, serene Yosemite Valley experience in years.
Since then, the reservation system has been tweaked repeatedly as administrators searched for a sweet spot between welcoming more visitors and retaining the peace of the great outdoors.
In February, the Trump administration, which had already slashed the national park system’s staff by about 25%, scrapped the reservation system and replaced it with “targeted management” of crowds.
“We are committed to visitor access, safety, and resource protection, and will continue active traffic management strategies to ensure a great visitor experience,” Yosemite Supt. Ray McPadden said at the time. “While reservation systems are one valuable management tool, our data demonstrates that a season-wide reservation requirement is not the most effective approach for the coming season.”
A crowd of tourists gather to take pictures of the Yosemite Valley on March 23, 2025, in Yosemite National Park.
(George Rose / Getty Images)
But the new approach is already getting harsh reviews, and the busy season hasn’t even begun.
During “Firefall” in February — an annual phenomenon when sunlight lands on the water cascading from Horsetail Fall, making it glow orange and red, like molten lava — the crowds were reportedly nightmarish.
“I spent over an hour stuck in traffic leaving the park, and exiting felt more like leaving a major sporting event than it did visiting a national park,” Mark Rose, a senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Assn., a nonprofit devoted to protecting the park system, wrote in a blog post.
“I saw an ambulance stuck in standstill traffic announcing over a megaphone for pedestrians and vehicles to move out of the way,” Rose wrote. “The views were incredible, but I don’t think I’d ever go back without a reservation system in place.”
It left Rose worried about a return to the bad old days of Yosemite traffic, when visitors would wait forever just to get to the gate, pay the $35 entrance fee and then run into road blocks, with signs turning them away because the valley was too crowded.
“That was not an unusual situation,” Rose said. “To wait in line for close to two hours to get into the park and then just be stuck driving around for hours trying to find any parking at any location within the park.”
Over the weekend, the wait in traffic to simply get through the park entrance was an hour and a half, according to Lorena Calvillo from Fresno, who posted pictures and video of the traffic on Yosemite National Park’s official Facebook page.
And once she got in?
“Gridlock. Cars everywhere. People everywhere. No parking. No space,” Calvillo wrote.
“This all comes right after the reservation system was lifted … and honestly, it showed,” she added. “Officials were literally telling people to avoid the Valley.”
Another visitor, Richard Smekal, posted about the conga line of climbers who packed onto the cables leading to the Half Dome summit. He shared a photo of the cables empty when he arrived at 9 a.m., and another taken two hours later.
“After I got down, I turned around and took the second photo,” he wrote. “The line was a continuous stream of people, barely moving — basically at a standstill.”
The cables can be deadly, especially in thunderstorms, when they become a slippery lightning rod. Being stuck there in a human traffic jam is a nightmare many experienced hikers and climbers would do anything to avoid.
A spokesperson for Yosemite did not respond to requests for comment.
Traffic is at a standstill on the Yosemite Valley floor in the summer of 2017 while a bus lane is empty and off-limits to visitors at Yosemite National Park.
An all-you-can-eat restaurant in Spain is introducing a “vomit fee” for diners who eat until they are sick on the premises. Sushi Toro, located in Gelves near Sevilla, said it had experienced a growing number of incidents in recent months involving customers “eating until they burst” and then vomiting.
The restaurant said the problem had affected tables and bathrooms, creating difficulties for staff and raising concerns over hygiene and customer service. In a statement shared on social media, restaurant staff said: “We have had many customers who keep ordering non-stop and eat until they burst, until they vomit. We have had vomit on the tables and in the bathrooms.”
They added that “the only solution” was to start charging vomiting fees. The restaurant, which promotes a fusion of “tradition and innovation”, offers a buffet menu featuring dishes prepared using fresh ingredients and specialist techniques. Prices range from €16.90 (£14.40) to €23.90 (£20.30), depending on the day and time of dining.
Sushi Toro bosses said their staff “strive hard to get orders out on time and maintain good hygiene” throughout all service periods. They urged diners to “order what you can eat” and apologised for any inconvenience caused by the new policy.
Demand for sushi has been surging in Spain in recent years, with diners increasingly opting for Asian seafood dishes over traditional Spanish fish fare.
Such is the case with Burney Falls, a Northern California waterfall whose loveliness became such a siren song to costume-wearing Instagram mermaids, selfie-taking TikTok tour guides and off-the-beaten-track road trippers that crowds grew and grew, until the natural wonder just couldn’t handle it any more.
Crowds in recent years have damaged trails, trampled plants and clogged rural roads.
Now, as part of a pilot program to reduce overcrowding, the California Department of Parks and Recreation will require advance reservations to visit the Shasta County waterfall on many days this summer.
“Burney Falls is a crown jewel of the California State Park System, and we want all visitors to have an enjoyable and memorable experience when visiting this one-of-a-kind destination,” State Parks Director Armando Quintero said in a statement. “By allowing visitors to make a reservation in advance, we can help keep crowds manageable and not push the park’s resources past the breaking point.”
The reservations, which can be purchased online, will be required to visit the falls Fridays through Sundays and on holidays during peak visitation season, from May 15 through Sept. 27.
On those days, McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park will offer 103 parking passes for 8 a.m. to noon, an additional 103 passes for 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 35 passes for the entire day.
The day use passes will cost $11 per vehicle, according to State Parks, with discounts for seniors and people with disabilities.
California State Parks annual pass holders will pay no additional charge but must make reservations. Visitors with overnight campground or cabin reservations will not need additional passes for day use.
The 129-foot waterfall — a wide curtain of white water cascading from a basalt cliff face — generates its own rainbow and once was dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Visitors often endure long lines to get a selfie at Burney Falls. Here, Rachel Brussbau poses with her 1-year-old daughter, Sage, and Crysten Michol in July 2023.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
But for much of its history, it “experienced limited visitation due to its rural location … and lack of publicity,” the State Parks department said in a statement.
“For generations of visitors, it had the reputation of a small, family-oriented park and one of California’s best-kept secrets,” the department said. “However, over the past decade, and especially with the growth of social media, that secret is now world-famous.”
Crowds swelled during the COVID-19 pandemic, when indoor public spaces closed.
A State Parks spokesperson told The Times in an email Monday that in 2015, Burney Falls had 121,495 visitors. Numbers “have steadily risen since that time, peaking at 322,192 visitors in 2020 during the pandemic,” the spokesperson said.
Since then, about 220,000 people have visited the park each year.
The spokesperson said the numbers account only for people who come in through the official entrance and not those who park illegally on the side of the road and enter off-trail.
Because so many people have veered off established trails, the park in recent years has experienced increased erosion and damage to sensitive vegetation and sacred tribal land, according to the State Parks department. Heavy traffic and illegal parking also have created unsafe conditions along State Highway 89, one of the heavily forested county’s main thoroughfares and a critical fire evacuation route.
“Campers with reservations are hesitant to leave the park, knowing that it may take up to two hours to re-enter on busy days,” the department statement read.
Because of limited parking, the gates often close for several hours each day.
“If lucky enough to gain entry, visitors inside the park are met with extreme overcrowding, long restroom lines, and overflowing trash cans instead of a peaceful, rejuvenating experience at one of the nation’s most awe-inspiring natural landmarks,” State Parks said.
In the summer of 2024, State Parks closed all access to the waterfall for the season to repair trails and slopes damaged by heavy crowds and storm erosion.
The department said it will evaluate the day use reservation system at the end of the summer and make adjustments if necessary for future peak visitation periods.
State Sen. Megan Dahle (R-Bieber), whose district includes Shasta County, said the pilot program “is likely to disrupt some trips” until word spreads.
“Unfortunately, for several years it has been clear something needs to change at Burney Falls,” Dahle said. “I hope this is an interim measure on the way to longer-term fixes to accommodate visitors.”
SACRAMENTO — The debate over immigration issues has reached a fever pitch nationwide, and Angelica Salas said it’s putting her employees at risk.
Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said her staff experiences harassment and death threats.
“They ask themselves, what if someone who disagrees with our work can find where I live, will my family be safe?” Salas said, addressing state lawmakers at a recent legislative hearing.”People begin to self-censor; they step away from their work and some leave the field entirely.”
Salas was speaking in support of Assembly Bill 2624, which would provide privacy protections for those facing harassment for working or volunteering with organizations that offer legal and humanitarian aid to immigrants. The bill would create an address confidentiality program, like the one already offered to reproductive healthcare workers, and prohibit people and businesses from selling or posting images or personal information about the protected individuals on the internet.
The measure has drawn ire from Republicans, who argue it could have a chilling effect on free speech and the media. Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) dubbed it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” and said it would prevent right-wing social media influencers like Shirley from conducting immigrant-related investigations in California.
Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who authored the legislation, said the proposed law would help keep people safe — but several 1st Amendment experts this week told The Times the bill could have unintended consequences.
“There could be grounds for concern,” said Jason Shepard, a media law and communications professor at California State Fullerton. “It reflects a legitimate and important state interest in protecting people from harassment and threats. But at the same time, this bill punishes the publication of information.”
The legislation defines “personal information” as anything that identifies, describes or relates to the protected individuals, including their names, addresses, telephone numbers, physical descriptions, driver’s licenses, financial information, license plate numbers and places of employment.
Shepard said the potential new law could be applied unevenly, and the language could have a chilling effect on investigative journalism.
Given the polarized political environment, Shepard said the legislation also could prompt other groups to request similar protections, as those working in a range of professions are facing increasingly heated rhetoric or attacks.
“This is not unique to people who are working in immigration support services; this really could apply to anybody engaged in public debate today,” he said.
Carolyn Iodice, the policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE, said the organization has noted an uptick in laws nationwide implementing privacy protections for those in certain professions.
She pointed to a statute enacted a few years ago in New Jersey that protects the addresses of judges, prosecutors and police officers. The law was used in 2023 to block an editor with New Brunswick Today from publishing an article about the police chief living two hours outside of the city.
“It was obviously newsworthy, but this officer was able to wield the law against this journalist, and that is the kind of thing we are worried about,” Iodice said. “When you think about handing what could be a huge number of people the ability to just block anything from being posted about them online — it could easily be abused.”
David Loy, the legal director for the nonpartisan First Amendment Coalition, said the measure would censor the free speech of all citizens, not just those who defamed or threatened immigrant aid workers.
“Someone might have a legitimate dispute with them and wants to refer to it online,” he said. “But they could then basically silence [that person] from referring to them on a Yelp review or Facebook posts that has nothing to do with threatening them — and that is going way beyond the narrow exceptions of the 1st Amendment.”
Loy said the coalition reached out to Bonta’s office and hopes to help tweak the bill.
Meanwhile, the legislation continues to face scrutiny from Republicans.
“We exposed CA Democrats for the ‘Stop Nick Shirley’ Act that silences citizen journalists who expose their fraud and corruption,” DiMaio wrote this week on social media.
Shirley released a viral video last year alleging fraud in Somali-run immigrant daycare centers in Minneapolis. He recently shared videos of himself in Sacramento confronting Democrats who support Bonta’s bill.
“The enemy is truly within,” Shirley wrote on Instagram. “When our politicians would rather protect fraudsters and illegal migrants, it’s time for us to stand up or face mass oppression from the traitors.”
Bonta dismissed the assertion that the bill is intended to deter journalists, stating in a news release that “right-wing agitators” and “ineffective legislators” were intentionally spreading misinformation.
Bonta spokesperson Daniel McGreevy said the bill has a straightforward goal of protecting immigrant service providers. He said the office is working to refine the legislation to address concerns and welcomes good-faith dialogue.
The bill is progressing through the state Legislature and most recently was referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
When my husband and I bought our home, my dad recommended that I avoid sharing the name of our new city.
“Don’t tell people you’re in Goleta,” he said with a smirk.
I grew up in Santa Barbara, and despite my proximity to the little ag town of Goleta just 10 miles north, I knew little about it. But after enjoying its relaxed vibe, wide-open spaces and tight-knit community, I realized what I’d been missing.
Goleta might not have the glitz of its more famous neighbor, the one Angelenos frequently visit for its picturesque palm tree skyline, Spanish architecture and coastal resort vibes, but it deserves its own spotlight. And it’s been getting one lately: Goleta’s Monique Limon is making waves in the California Senate, the Austrian national soccer team will call the city home for the FIFA World Cup 2026, a renovation of the Ritz-Carlton Bacara welcomed chef Danny Grant’s new restaurant Marisella, and the debut of a full-scale train station is expected by summer.
Still, it can feel like there are more acres of walnut and lemon groves in Goleta than people — that’s part of the charm. Called the Good Land, a nickname pulled from obscurity by the late historian Walker A. Tompkins, Goleta largely remained dedicated to farming well into the 1900s. The city itself didn’t incorporate until 2002, though UC Santa Barbara had made Goleta its home 50 years earlier and the Santa Barbara Airport technically sat on Goleta land.
“We are a very young town and the longtime locals still have a very rural mindset,” says small business owner and lifetime Goleta resident Tom Modugno.
I’ve come to appreciate the blend of agricultural history and buzzy new developments in Goleta, but more than that, I love the small-town feel and running into friends wherever I go. That might be on the trails alongside the beach at Ellwood Mesa Open Space, at the new beachfront restaurant the Ellwood, at Lake Los Carneros while freshwater fishing or at the outdoor dining hall featuring local restaurants like On the Alley and Los Agaves. This list of great things to do is nowhere as comprehensive as it gets, but I hope it shows you a bit of why I’m proud to call Goleta home.
According to pest control, people should routinely check their luggage for warning signs
Travellers are advised to check their bags and suitcases (stock photo)(Image: Getty)
Many people will be heading home today after a bank holiday weekend getaway. While travellers often take great care when packing, it’s quite common to spend far less time unpacking – simply tipping the contents of your suitcase straight into the wash.
Throwing your clothes in the washing machine as soon as you arrive home is a sensible idea. However, there is another crucial step everyone is urged to take when emptying their luggage. Holidaymakers are advised to check their suitcases carefully for signs of any unwelcome guests, such as bed bugs.
The advice comes from James Rhoades, the founder of ThermoPest, a pest control firm specialising in bed bug treatment and registered with the British Pest Control Association. James says frequent travellers should check their suitcase as part of their routine whenever they return from a holiday.
The tip could help to prevent issues year-round, but it could be especially helpful for travellers to get into the habit now, ahead of the summer holidays. He explained: “During hot weather, bed bugs become more active and need to feed more frequently.
“They get all their hydration from blood, so a warm, humid summer gives them the perfect opportunity to bite. With people wearing lighter sleepwear or using thinner sheets, there’s less of a barrier between the bugs and their food source – us.
“There’s also typically a rise in cases after holiday periods, as bed bugs can easily be brought back hidden in suitcases or laundry. Once inside, they spread quickly, so early detection and prevention are key.”
Fortunately, there are steps people can take to minimise the risk when they arrive at their holiday and when they return home. “Hotels, guest houses, and short-term rentals can become hotspots for bed bugs during peak travel periods. Before unpacking, check the seams of the mattress, headboard, and upholstered furniture for telltale signs such as tiny rust-coloured spots or shed skins.
“Keep luggage elevated on racks rather than placing it directly on the floor to reduce the chance of bed bugs crawling into your belongings. You could also store clothes in sealed bags inside your suitcase for added protection and to make it harder for bugs to hitch a ride home,” says James.
When it is time to return home, it’s recommended that you unpack your clothes straight into the machine and carefully inspect your suitcase. James claims: “Returning home is one of the most common times for bed bugs to be introduced into your living space. As soon as you arrive back, unpack directly into the washing machine and wash everything on a hot cycle.
“Visually inspect your suitcase inside and out, paying close attention to pockets, seams, and linings for any signs of bed bugs such as dark spots, shed skins, or live insects. If you travel frequently, making this a routine step can help you spot potential issues early before they spread.”
In 1995, when the L.A. Metro system was in its most nascent stage, Ken Karagozian — then an amateur photographer in an Owens Valley, Calif., workshop — found his way underground to document the subterranean marriage between downtown L.A. and Westlake through Metro’s Red Line, now called the B Line.
From that came a feature in Life magazine, but more importantly, a driving principle: Karagozian believed that the construction workers, engineers and electricians who were subject to the whims of a city indecisive on the subway project were deserving of intimate documentation. The invisible many who built the pyramids and New York’s skyline never got that chance, he said, but the people who contributed to the historically controversial Metro D Line from Koreatown to Westwood would, if he had a say.
“When I did take photography workshops, they always said, ‘Do a project close to your home,’” Karagozian said on a call from his Agoura Hills residence. “I wrote a letter to [L.A. Metro], which said, ‘How can I get permission to photograph?’”
Days before the fires ravaged L.A. in 2025, Altadena-based historian and author India Mandelkern had a phone call with Karagozian, who was interested in collaborating on a project about the D Line. After publishing a book on the art and politics of street lighting in Los Angeles, Mandelkern worked on the L.A. Metro blog, soliciting interviews from Angelenos who seemed desperate for a line to the Westside.
A Karagozian photo shows a group of workers during the Section 2 breakthrough during the underground construction of the Metro D Line.
(Ken Karagozian)
A photo by Karagozian shows sunlight filtering underground into the Wilshire/Fairfax site during construction.
(Ken Karagozian)
After Mandelkern connected with Karagozian, their project had solid form: a photo book, titled “Wilshire Subway: The Making of the D Line Subway Extension,” about the history, conflict and people behind the scenes and underground ahead of the May 8 opening of the subway expansion along Wilshire Boulevard. (New stations will be added at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega. In the future, stations in Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood will open.)
A related photo exhibition, “Wilshire Subway: Photographed by Ken Karagozian,” is on view through May 14 at the 1301PE art gallery on Wilshire Boulevard.
This week, we chatted more with Karagozian and Mandelkern about their project.
After writing a book about the social history of street lighting, what brought you underground?
Mandelkern: Well, a couple different reasons. First, I was very interested in Metro just because I had worked there as the blog editor, and in that role, I got to explore so many different stories. I thought Wilshire Boulevard was one of the most interesting places, the stories of this rail-building ambition that persisted for so many different years, and what that says about Angelenos. Second, I think that we talk about L.A. as a horizontal city, and that’s certainly true. If you go somewhere like Tokyo, you instantly see that this is what a vertical city is, but I wanted to bring a little bit of that to L.A. There is so much history buried beneath the ground that we seem to forget, and once you start tunneling, you realize that it’s always been there and it hasn’t disappeared. It’s just pushed beneath us.
In support of their new project, writer India Mendelkern, left, and photographer Ken Karagozian appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April.
(Ken Karagozian)
Of all the people you spoke to for this book, which one most influenced the way you understood what the D Line could provide for the city?
Karagozian: This was a joint venture between three contractors, and they each had their specialty. It was Skanska, Traylor [Bros.] and Shea. With Traylor, they were brothers and they were doing the tunneling. Richard McLane [chief mechanical engineer of Traylor Bros.] was very helpful in telling me a little bit about the history of Wilshire Boulevard and facts of tunneling. … All these different contractors impacted the project in some way.
Mandelkern: I always say Ken is one of the best construction photographers out there, but his specialty is really people. When I interviewed some of these individual workers, a whole different story came to light, and I realized that many of these workers came to L.A., started at the bottom of the totem pole, and through working on the subway have risen through the ranks, gotten promotions, become leaders, and their kids now work in construction. … It’s just so amazing that so many of these individuals are doing all this work behind the scenes that creates infrastructure that connects all of us.
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1.Carpenter Jenna Dorough poses for a portrait by Karagozian during the underground construction of the Metro D Line.2.A concrete supervisor photographed by Karagozian at the La Cienega Boulevard station.(Ken Karagozian)
There are many portraits in the book of the builders who created the D Line. India referred to the short lifespans of the workers compared to the marvelous structures they craft: Was it intentional that you documented most of the D Line’s visual history through the people who built it?
Karagozian: When I go down underground and after the stations are completed, to me, it’s the people that built it that should tell the story. I didn’t just want to get a shot of them from behind. I really like to photograph their faces. … When I photographed the workers from the Red Line, some of these workers from the middle ’90s are still working on the Purple Line. I’ve known them for years, and now their children are working in construction; it becomes a family issue. … Going down and photographing the tunnels with that lighting in that perspective, it’s always been so interesting.
Mandelkern: That just reminded me of one of the quotes in the book from John Yen, who is the VP of operations at Skanska. He said, “In construction, we work ourselves out of a job.” I always found it really interesting that, as we build, the whole point is to kind of disappear. It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes in the essay, when James [Rojas] writes [that] when the stations are open, they’ll be shiny and new, but that will kind of erase all the memories and all the work of the people who’ve been doing this for all this time. This book really became a way to sort of remember all of these different people that have been working on these projects for decades and decades, even if they’re not really remembered in the official record.
As the D Line prepares to open, does it somehow feel like the end of a journey?
Mandelkern: This just [started] so many other things for me. Afterwards, I decided I really want to learn about the geology of L.A., and I found an interest in paleontology, too. I hope with any book that it just gets people curious, and it gets them to start asking questions. I think that “Wilshire Subway” does accomplish that. L.A. is just this bowl with all these different salad layers, and as we penetrate down, we learn more and more about our history.
Karagozian: It does a little bit. With May 8 being the grand opening, and as the stations are complete and they’re testing the trains underground, it almost feels like it’s graduation time. Time to celebrate the journey of going through high school, college, whatever. I am still continuing to photograph the [Purple Line extension], which is Rodeo or Beverly [Hills] station … Now it’s just the accomplishment of celebrating all the work that I’ve put into this project and going down almost once a week and photographing the process for so many years.
Art exhibition
‘Wilshire Subway’ exhibition
“Wilshire Subway: Photographed by Ken Karagozian” is a new exhibition based on a new photo book by Karagozian and writer India Mandelkern.
Where: 1301PE art gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
When:Through May 14.
Hours: The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. (There’s an opening reception and book signing from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday.)
For teenagers dreaming of playing in the NFL, former Corona Centennial high defensive back Camryn Bynum has first-hand knowledge of what it takes. It involves more than a star ranking or posting videos on social media.
“It’s a simple formula to make it to where you want to go,” said Bynum, who recently signed a $60-million contract with the Indianapolis Colts and will be holding a youth camp at his alma mater on May 23.
“It’s just hard to stay on the right track and do every single thing to the best of your ability and consistently do everything the right way,” he said. “You play a few good years of high school ball, you’ll get a chance to play college ball. If you become a starter, maybe one or two years and play well enough, you’ll get a chance at the league, whether you get drafted in the first round, like everybody wants to, or you you’re an undrafted free agent. If you get your foot in the door, there’s hundreds of stories about people getting in.”
Bynum says there’s a big sacrifice that many teenagers are unwilling to accept. It’s called avoiding distractions at all costs. At least it worked for him. He didn’t start on varsity until his junior year. He became a four-year starter at Cal, was a fourth-round draft pick of the Vikings, who immediately told him he’s switching from cornerback to safety. He was ready for anything.
“I think the best way to reach the point where you want to go is to stay distraction free,” he said. “Stay working towards that goal and don’t let anything come in between. That’s been the biggest part of my journey, my faith, and being able to just trust that God will put me exactly where I need to be, but also putting in the work myself knowing that if I want to play college ball, I need to keep my grades up in high school, stay away from all the distractions, the parties, the drinking, the drugs, like a lot of people unfortunately fall into.”
His first major test was dealing with adversity. He started on JSerra’s freshman team, then transferred back home to Centennial. He said he was fifth string on the JV team. “I was literally not playing,” he said. He gave serious consideration to leaving. But Centennial coach Matt Logan and others made it clear he had to earn his playing time.
Detroit Lions tight end Sam LaPorta (87) is tackled by Minnesota Vikings safety Camryn Bynum in 2024.
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
“Coach Logan, he’s like, ‘No, you gotta work. You gotta work, figure it out and grind. You’re good. You’re plenty good enough, but you have to earn your spot.’ And I remember a few other coaches telling me, ‘It’s all up to you, if you want to put the work in and you want to compete, This is a competitive program, you got to figure out how to earn your playing time.’”
Bynum went to a private coach and started training morning and night. He became stronger, faster and more confident. As a junior, he became a standout. He still uses that same private coach, Jordan Brown, in his training.
Bynum, born to a Filipino mother, now lives in the offseason with his Filipino wife and young daughter on the outskirts of Manila.
Asked if Manila traffic is worse than Los Angeles traffic, he said, “They’re both pretty bad. They’re just bad in different ways.”
His first youth camp will help raise funds for his foundation that is supporting causes such as teaching flag football in the Philippines. The camp will be for youth and high school-age players and provide a vehicle for exposure along with football development.
“We want it to be a learning environment and a competitive environment to help kids get recruited and be seen more,” Bynum said.
Just remember the path is simple but the road blocks are many to overcome.
Every two years for more than a decade, Melani Candia has gotten approved to stay in the U.S. with her husband and two cats and — more recently — continue to work in special education in Florida.
But this year, delays in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that has shielded her and hundreds of thousands of others from deportation, led to her missing her renewal deadline, losing her job and fearing detention in the country she has called home since she was 6 years old.
She said that as an immigrant in the U.S., fear has become her “new baseline.” “But now, having a new level of vulnerability, it was a very quick increase in the fear,” said Candia.
Renewal wait times for the Obama-era program that allows people who were brought to the U.S. as children to temporarily remain in the country and work have increased to levels not seen since 2016 when there were significant technical issues.
Some of the program’s more than 500,000 beneficiaries, often referred to as “Dreamers,” have waited months for an answer only to see their deadline pass without a decision. Now they’re stuck in a type of limbo in which their work authorization disappears, oftentimes along with their driver’s license, and their ability to stay in the U.S. is at risk.
“It’s not just anecdotal; it’s happening at a larger scale than we’ve ever seen before,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led network.
No numbers were available on how many people have recently missed their renewal deadline despite applying 120 to 150 days before their DACA lapses, which is what U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, recommends.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, USCIS is safeguarding the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens, which can lengthen processing times,” Zach Kahler, an agency spokesperson, said in a statement.
Wait times nearly 5 times longer
DACA grants those who qualify two-year, renewable permits to live and work in the U.S. It does not confer legal status but is meant to offer protection from deportation.
From October 2025 through the end of February 2026, the median wait time for renewals was about 70 days, compared with about 15 days in fiscal year 2025, according to USCIS. This is the longest median wait time since 2016, when it was about 79 days, according to the agency’s data, which did not include 2020 because of the pandemic.
The Department of Homeland Security attributed the 2016 delays to technical issues that emerged as it transitioned to fully processing DACA renewals in its electronic immigration system.
At the end of April, USCIS was reporting that the majority of renewal requests were being completed within about 122 days. That marked a two-week increase from the processing times listed earlier that month.
Federal lawmakers and immigrant groups say some applicants recently have had to wait six months — about 183 days — or longer.
“The delays that people are concerned about used to be sort of a matter of weeks at a time,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said in an interview. “Now it’s from a few months to many, many months.”
He is one of dozens of lawmakers behind letters sent to federal agencies that question the inflated wait times and whether people who have missed their renewal deadline are being targeted for arrest or deportation.
More than five months after Elsa Sanchez submitted her DACA renewal request, she is still waiting for an answer. When the deadline passed at the beginning of April, she was put on leave at her job at a healthcare IT company and now, as a single mother of a college freshman, has no income.
It’s made her worried about everything from traveling to spending money on pricier household products like shampoo and detergent.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t know, maybe I can cut down on that. Maybe I don’t need this,’” she said. “Because I’m saving every penny.”
Sanchez said something similar happened about a decade ago, but this time she’s scared of the possible repercussions amid Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Since DACA’s introduction in 2012, it’s faced myriad legal battles, including two that made it to the Supreme Court. And now, though the government is still approving renewals, a 2025 federal court decision means it isn’t processing first-time applications and has left the door open for another possible trip to the Supreme Court.
Hundreds of ‘Dreamers’ arrested
In the first 11 months of 2025, more than 250 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 deported, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said earlier this year. She said the majority of those arrested had “criminal histories,” without indicating the nature of the crimes or if they were arrests, charges or convictions.
In a separate response to a Democratic congresswoman’s inquiry, Homeland Security reported conflicting numbers, saying that 270 were arrested and 174 DACA applicants were removed in the first nine months of 2025.
Their eligibility is dependent in part on not having a felony conviction, a significant misdemeanor or three misdemeanors. Previously, if their status was in jeopardy, they would get a warning and still have the chance to fight it before immigration officers detained them and began efforts to deport them.
Kahler of USCIS said that DACA recipients are not automatically protected from deportation.
“Any illegal alien who is a DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons — including if they committed a crime,” he said, using an outdated term for immigrants widely considered disparaging.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about whether DACA beneficiaries were being targeted after missing their renewal deadlines.
But federal lawmakers have recently noted people picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after their DACA lapsed.
Their protections may have been further eroded with a precedent decision recently in which the Board of Immigration Appeals determined that DACA status alone is not enough to stop deportation.
Losing DACA eligibility, and a job
Experts have suggested the longer wait times could be related to the restarting of biometric appointments, which were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. Some may also not be getting approved by their deadline because they’re not sending it in by the recommended time.
Maria Fernanda Madrigal is an immigration attorney and DACA recipient who submitted her renewal application about a month and a half before the deadline because she said that’s all the processing time that’s been needed in the past. She said she was also waiting for her job to hold a DACA workshop so she could get the more than $550 fee for renewal waived.
Her DACA lapsed recently, and the mother of three was let go from her job.
“My first concern was my cases, to be honest, because I knew I was going to have to hand off everything, and my team is already overworked,” said Madrigal.
Immigration attorneys have also said that USCIS has paused processing renewals for people from dozens of countries the agency described in recent policy memorandums as “high-risk” following presidential proclamations. The National Immigration Law Center estimated that as many as 3,000 to 4,000 people could be impacted.
“This process that has no timeline is leading to people from certain countries experiencing a pause. And we don’t know how long that pause will be in place,” said Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, attorney at the National Immigration Law Center.
Every day, Candia checks on her renewal. She said she’s most afraid of being locked up in bad conditions in an ICE detention facility, but also thinks about what it would be like returning to Bolivia after more than 25 years.
“If God forbid that happened, it would break my heart because I’ve been in this country since I was 6,” she said. “My entire life is here.”
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Spirit Airlines, an impish upstart that shook the industry with its irreverent ads and deep discount fares, announced Saturday that it has gone out of business after 34 years.
The ultra-low-cost airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately.”
Although Spirit had gone bankrupt twice before, the company said high oil prices, which have been rising because of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, made it impossible to stay aloft.
The airline said on its website that all flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available.
“We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry over the last 34 years and had hoped to serve our guests for many years to come,” the announcement said.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that Spirit had a reserve fund set up for customers who bought directly from the airline to get refunds. People who bought from third-party vendors such as travel agents would have to seek refunds from them. He had a stark message for people flying with Spirit.
“If you have a flight scheduled with Spirit Airlines, don’t show up at the airport. There will be no one here to assist you,” Duffy said.
He said United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest were offering $200 one-way flights for people who could confirm that they had Spirit confirmation numbers and proof of purchase for a limited time. Duffy also said other airlines would help with Spirit employees who might be stranded and would offer them a preferential application process as they look for work.
Spirit said in a statement that it was working to get more than 1,300 crew members to their home bases and that the final Spirit flight landed early Saturday at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
The company advised customers that they could expect refunds but there would be no help in booking travel on other airlines.
The Trump administration had considered a government bailout for the cash-strapped business to keep it from going under, but a deal was not reached. Of the potential bailout, Duffy said Saturday that “we oftentimes don’t have half a billion dollars laying around.”
President Trump had floated the idea of a bailout last week after the airline found itself in bankruptcy proceedings for the second time in less than two years with jet fuel prices soaring since the start of the Iran war.
‘They get you there’
Five Spirit flights were still showing as “on time” on Saturday morning on the departure board in Atlanta. A trickle of passengers who hadn’t heard the news were still showing up.
“What!?” exclaimed Taylor Nantang as she, her husband and four children arrived for a Saturday afternoon Spirit flight from Atlanta to Miami for a spur-of-the-moment vacation. The family had driven down from Tennessee to the Atlanta airport.
“So the whole airline at every airport is out of business?” asked Nantang. “Oh my, that’s crazy.”
Other passengers wondered whether the airline would still answer its customer service phone, or when the refunds for canceled flights might arrive on their credit cards.
Joshua Sigler, who had bought a ticket Friday for a flight Saturday to Miami, said he would just return home after learning of the cancellation rather than try to take advantage of deals other airlines were offering to stranded Spirit passengers. He said he had gotten no communication from Spirit, which he had flown multiple times in the past.
“They get you there,” he said of his Spirit travels. “It was cheap.”
Waking to the news
Former Spirit flight attendant Freddy Peterson was on a Spirit flight from Detroit that arrived in Newark, N.J., around 11 p.m. Friday. He said that despite rumors flying on social media Friday, things seemed kind of normal, with more than 200 passengers on the plane.
“All our aircraft were packed,” he said.
Peterson, 60, said he set his alarm clock for 3 a.m. Saturday to check the company website at the hour of the rumored shutdown and learned all Spirit flights were canceled. He said Delta Air Lines brought him and another flight attendant back to Atlanta on Saturday morning, with Peterson leaving from there to drive to his home in Shellman in southwest Georgia.
“I’ll probably do my boo-hoo crying and all that other stuff once I get in the car.”
Peterson said he had been a flight attendant with Spirit for 10 years and the company has “done wonders for me.” He said the airline’s reputation for bargain-basement chaos was largely undeserved, but he did fault management for not communicating with the employees in the closing days, saying a promised employee town hall was canceled.
Bailout fizzles
As late as Friday afternoon, Trump had said his administration was looking at a bailout for Spirit and had given the budget carrier a “final proposal” for a taxpayer-funded takeover.
Spirit proudly disrupted the penny-pinching portion of the airline industry with its no-frills, low-cost flights and provocative ads like its “Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches” campaign after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, referencing suntan oil but alluding to the massive spill of crude along the Gulf Coast.
But Spirit has struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, weighed down by rising operating costs and growing debt. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.
The budget carrier sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025, when it reported having $8.1 billion in debts and $8.6 billion in assets, according to court filings.
White House blames Biden
The White House had blamed the Biden administration for Spirit’s tenuous financial situation, noting that President Biden opposed a proposed merger between Spirit and JetBlue in 2023. On Saturday, Trump administration officials took to social media to amplify voices of conservative critics who faulted that decision.
On Saturday, Duffy concentrated blame on Biden as well as Duffy’s predecessor, Pete Buttigieg. “Many at the time said that this was a disaster. This merger should have been allowed,” he said.
Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the Trump administration also bears responsibility, arguing that the airline’s latest crisis reflected a chain reaction of policy missteps rather than a single decision. He pointed specifically to Trump’s decision to strike Iran as “bad foreign policy,” noting the conflict drove up jet fuel prices and therefore Spirit’s operating costs.
“They were already in trouble,” DeHaven said, describing the situation as “a compounding effect in terms of policy.”
Supporters of a rescue including labor unions representing Spirit’s pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers said a collapse would put thousands of Americans out of work and hurt consumers by reducing airline competition and increasing airfares. About 17,000 jobs could be impacted, according to Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner.
Budget-conscious and leisure travelers are likely to feel Spirit’s absence the most, especially in places where the airline has a big footprint such as Las Vegas and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.
The carrier flew about 1.7 million domestic passengers in February, roughly half a million fewer than during the same month a year earlier, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Spirit also has sharply reduced its capacity; about half as many seats had been available this month as in May 2024.
Madhani, Yamat, Amy and Catalini write for the Associated Press and reported from West Palm Beach, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Morrisville, Pa., respectively. AP writer Josh Funk in Omaha contributed to this report.
The city attorney’s office is charged with prosecuting a wide array of misdemeanors, including drunk driving, public intoxication, petty theft, trespassing and other lower level crimes.
Roy, 34, has promised to place a heavy emphasis on the legal process known as diversion, which allows defendants to avoid incarceration and instead obtain court-supervised social services, such as anger management or addiction counseling. In cases involving nonviolent crimes, diversion is more likely than jail to keep people from becoming repeat offenders, she said.
“It makes not only the person whole, but the community safer,” she said.
Ashouri, 43, said she is the only candidate to work within the city attorney’s criminal branch, handling cases involving guns, drunk driving and domestic violence. During a one-year stint as a reserve deputy city attorney, she concluded that too many minor cases were heading to trial.
“We need to focus on cases that are harming people,” she said. “Los Angeles is the capital of hit-and-runs. The city doesn’t take vehicular crimes seriously.”
McKinney, 58, pointed to his lengthy history prosecuting felony offenses, many of them homicides. In an interview, he argued that the city is not properly prosecuting quality-of-life crimes, which has in turn left the city feeling less safe.
“It looks dirty. It looks dingy. It looks chaotic. It feels chaotic,” he said.
McKinney criticized Feldstein Soto for dismantling specialized units in her office, including those focused on domestic violence and gangs and guns.
Feldstein Soto, 67, cast those changes in a different light, saying she carried out “a strategic rebalancing” of the criminal branch that redistributed the office’s workload. She said the office’s gang unit “lost its primary mission” in 2021, because of a legal settlement that effectively ended enforcement of the city’s 46 gang injunctions.
On the campaign trail, Feldstein Soto has highlighted her work fighting sex trafficking on the city’s notorious Figueroa Corridor and, more recently, nearby Western Avenue. She said the city has shifted emphasis away from arresting sex workers and toward the prosecutions of the johns.
The city attorney said she also has worked to expand “restorative justice” programs, including one that holds outdoor court proceedings on Skid Row.
