Politics

In September, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, depicted as Lt. Col. Kilgore, the gung-ho warmonger memorably played by Robert Duvall in Francis Ford Coppola’s messy masterpiece, “Apocalypse Now” — except the graphic bore the title “Chipocalypse Now.”

Trump sent out the message as his scorched-earth immigration enforcement campaign descended on the Windy City after doing its cruelty calisthenics in Southern California over the summer. Two months later, the campaign — nicknamed “Operation Midway Blitz” — shows no sign of slowing down.

La migra has been so out of control that a federal judge issued an injunction against their use of force, saying what they’ve done “shocks the conscience.” Among other outrages, agents shot and killed an immigrant trying to drive away from them, ran into a daycare facility and dragged out a teacher and tear-gassed a street that was about to host a Halloween kiddie parade.

I had a chance to witness the mayhem it has caused last week — and how Chicagoans have fought back.

The University of Chicago brought me to do talks with students and the community for a couple of days, including with members of the Maroon, the school’s newspaper. Earlier in the week, Fox News put them on blast because they had created a database of places around campus where la migra had been spotted.

Good job, young scribes!

In Little Village, pocket Patton meets his match

After my speech at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, I noticed someone had hung whistles around the neck of a bronze bust. Whistles have become the unlikely tool of resistance in the city, I wrote in a columna — something that I argued Latinos nationwide had also employed metaphorically with their election night clapback at Republicans.

When I woke up Thursday morning at my tony hotel, the Chicago Tribune’s front page screamed “Use of Force Under Fire” and focused on the actions of commander-at-large Gregory Bovino. You remember him, Angelenos: he’s the pocket Patton who oversaw the pointless invasion of MacArthur Park in July and seemed to spend as much time in front of cameras as doing his actual job.

Bovino has continued the buffoonery in Chicago, where he admitted under oath to lying about why he had tossed a tear gas canister at residents in Little Village, the city’s most famous Mexican American neighborhood, in October (Bovino originally said someone hit him with a rock).

I Ubered to Little Village to meet with community activist Baltazar Enriquez so we could eat at one of his neighborhood’s famous Mexican restaurants and talk about what has happened.

I instead walked right into a cacophony of whistles, honks and screams: Bovino and his goons were cruising around Little Village and surrounding neighborhoods that morning just for the hell of it.

From L.A. to the rest of the country, and back

“Every time Trump or la migra lose in something, they pull something like this,” a business owner told me as she looked out on 26th Street, Little Village’s main thoroughfare. Customers were hiding inside her store. Over four hours, I followed Enriquez as he and other activists drove through Little Village’s streets to warn their neighbors what was happening.

The scene played out again in Little Village on Saturday shortly after I filed my columna, with Bovino holding a tear gas canister in his hand and threatening to toss it at residents, openly mocking the federal judge’s injunction prohibiting him from such reckless terrorizing (Monday, the Department of Homeland Security claimed agents had weathered gun shots, bricks, paint cans and rammed vehicles). And to top it off, he had his officers pose in front of Chicago’s infamous stainless steel bean for a photo, just like they did in front of the Hollywood sign (Block Club Chicago reported the funboys shouted “Little Village” for giggles).

Given ICE just received billions of dollars in funds to hire more agents and construct detention camps across the country, expect more scenes like this to continue in Chicago, boomerang back to Southern California and cut through the heart of Latino USA in the weeks, months and years to come. But I nevertheless left Chicagoland with hope — and a whistle.

Time for us to start wearing them, Los Angeles.

Today’s top stories

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) currently faces the lowest approval ratings of any national leader in Washington.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

The government shutdown

• Senators approved a deal that could end the shutdown on a 60-40 vote, a day after Senate Republicans reached a deal with eight senators who caucus with Democrats.
• Democrats in the House vowed to keep fighting for insurance subsidies.
• Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is facing pressure to step down as Senate Democratic leader after failing to prevent members of his caucus from breaking ranks.
• States are caught in Trump’s legal battle to revoke SNAP benefits after a federal judge ordered full funding.

A brief bout of summer weather

Courts protect LGBTQ+ rights

More big stories

Commentary and opinions

• California columnist Anita Chabria argues that Democrats crumbled like cookies in the shutdown fight.
• Gov. Gavin Newsom is still writing his path to the presidency. Columnist George Skelton points to Zohran Mamdani for inspiration.
• President Trump’s effort to rename Veterans Day flopped — and for good reason, argues guest contributor Joanna Davidson.

This morning’s must reads

Other great reads

For your downtime

(Andrew Rae / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

Question of the day: What’s one special dish your family makes for Thanksgiving?

Judi Farkas said: “An old Russian recipe that has descended through 5 generations of our family, Carrot Tzimmis was traditionally served as part of the Passover meal. It’s perfect with a Thanksgiving turkey. Tzimmis is sweet, as are so many of the Thanksgiving dishes, so I pair it with a Jalapeño Cornbread dressing and a robust salad vinaigrette so that no one gets overwhelmed. It connects me to my family’s heritage, but repurposed for the holidays we celebrate now.”

Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … the photo of the day

A person surfs at Salt Creek Beach on Sunday in Dana Point.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Juliana Yamada of a surfer at Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martin, assistant editor
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
June Hsu, editorial fellow
Andrew Campa, weekend reporter
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected].

TOPEKA, Kan. — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom.

Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the Marion County Record’s parent company, the paper’s publisher, newspaper employees, a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided, and the estate of the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, the paper’s co-owner, who died the day after the raid. An attorney for the newspaper, Bernie Rhodes, released a copy of the five-page signed agreement Tuesday.

Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told the Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future. Legal claims against the city and city officials have not been settled, and Meyer said he believes they will face a larger judgment though he doesn’t expect those claims to be resolved for some time.

“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”

The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan, lived with him and died of a heart attack that he blamed on the stress of the raid.

Three days after the raid, the local prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify it. Experts said Marion’s police chief at the time, Gideon Cody, was on legally shaky ground when he ordered the raid, and a former top federal prosecutor for Kansas suggested that it might have been a criminal violation of civil rights, saying: “I’d probably have the FBI starting to look.”

Two special prosecutors who reviewed the raid and its aftermath said nearly a year later that the Record had committed no crimes before Cody led the raid, that the warrants signed by a judge contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and the searches were not legally justified. Cody resigned as police chief in October 2023.

Cody is scheduled to go to trial in February in Marion County on a felony charge of interfering with a judicial process, accused by the two special prosecutors of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct. He had pleaded not guilty and did not respond to a text message Tuesday seeking comment about the county’s agreement.

Attorneys for the city and the county and the county administrator did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the Meyers by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.

The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.

A search warrant tied the raid — which was led by Marion’s police chief — to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record.

Meyer has said that he believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s work history.

Hanna and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it would investigate security at two liberal California bastions — the campus of UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley — after multiple people were taken into custody following clashes as protesters tried to shut down a Turning Point USA event.

“I see several issues of serious concern regarding campus and local security and Antifa’s ability to operate with impunity in CA,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, posted on X.

Conflict erupted when a large group of anti-fascist protesters showed up Monday afternoon to voice opposition to the conservative group’s event at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, which sits on the campus’ famed Sproul Plaza, ground zero of the historic 1960s campus free speech movement.

The event was Turning Point USA’s first in California since Charlie Kirk, the group’s founder, was shot and killed at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. It was also the final stop on the group’s “American Comeback Tour.”

As Kirk’s killing has intensified concerns about how colleges balance free speech and safety in an era of rising political intolerance and violence, Turning Point seized on the Berkeley protests to present the college as a case study of illiberal, leftist extremism.

“UC Berkeley currently looks like a war zone,” Frontlines TPUSA, a video journalism offshoot of Turning Point USA, posted on X Monday evening as it shared footage of a protester lighting a flare outside the event.

It then posted a stream of videos of protesters jostling metal barricades, a woman hurriedly herding two young women past a screaming crowd, and a protester pointing to his neck — a reference to the part of Kirk’s body that was shot — as he held a sign that said “Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences.”

Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley, initially downplayed the conflict that occurred as about 150 protesters gathered outside the event on the edge of campus.

About 900 people attended the Turning Point event, Mogulof said, and four people were arrested. The Berkeley Police Department arrested two people who fought with each other off campus, he said, and an additional two arrests were made on campus by university police.

“At this point, we’re aware of a single incident of violence between two individuals who fought with each other,” Mogulof said Tuesday morning. “And that was the arrest made by the city that happened, not on the campus, but on the streets.”

According to Mogulof, university police arrested a 48-year-old with no affiliation to the school and booked him into the Santa Rita jail for willfully resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer or peace officer and interfering with peaceful activities on campus. A 22-year-old current or former student was also cited for willfully resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer or peace officer and refusing to leave private property.

“Nearly 1,000 people went to the event,” Mogulof said. “It occurred without disruption. We don’t have a single reported incident of any member of the audience being injured or prevented from attending.”

But later Tuesday, Mogulof updated his account and said an injury had taken place: a 45-year-old man who arrived at Berkeley to attend the Turning Point event reported being struck in the head with a glass bottle or jar.

“The victim suffered a laceration to his head and was transported to Highland Hospital for further treatment,” Mogulof said.

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Dhillon, an attorney who ran a San Francisco law practice focused on free speech before she was appointed by President Trump, has long complained of UC Berkeley’s liberal bias.

In 2017, Dhillon filed a lawsuit against the university on behalf of two conservative groups — Berkeley College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation — after the college placed restrictions on hosting conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos on campus, citing security concerns.

“We saw all of this at Berkeley back in 2017,” Dhillon said on X. “@UCBerkeley was sued, and settled the case.”

Frontlines TPUSA depicted Monday’s nights protests as chaotic and out of control.

“An ANTIFA member just lit off a flare resulting in TPUSA event attendees being rushed inside,” the group posted on X. “A car then comes and starts backfiring visibly scaring multiple attendees who feared they were hearing gunshots.”

On Tuesday, Dhillon took to social media to warn the university and the city of Berkeley that they should expect correspondence from the Justice Department.

“In America, we do not allow citizens to be attacked by violent thugs and shrug and turn our backs,” Dhillon posted on X. “Been there, done that, not on our watch.”

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi also weighed in, saying that the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating Monday night’s “violent riots.”

“Antifa is an existential threat to our nation,” Bondi said. “We will continue to spare no expense unmasking all who commit and orchestrate acts of political violence.”

Since Trump issued a September executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, Bondi said, her agency has been working with law-enforcement partners to dismantle “violent networks that seek to intimidate Americans and suppress their free expression and 1st Amendment rights.”

Mogulof said the university would cooperate with any investigation but had yet to receive any communication from the Justice Department. He disputed Dhillon’s suggestion that the event was out of control.

“Was there a protest?” Mogulof added. “Yes, there was a protest. Were there isolated incidents of people misbehaving during the protest? Yes, there were. Did our police force react? Yes, it did.”

In the run up to the event, the anti-fascist group By Any Means Necessary handed out flyers dubbing Turning Point USA a “White Nationalist, Neofascist organization.”

“They have fooled people into thinking that what Charlie Kirk stood for was freedom of speech and open debate,” Haku Jeffrey, BAMN national organizer, said in a videotaped speech on Sproul Plaza ahead of the event. “But all Charlie Kirk and Turning Point stood for is organizing racist, bigoted violence to intimidate and bully us into silence. And we refuse to be silenced.”

As dusk fell Monday, Frontlines TPUSA posted footage of tense scenes on the edge of Berkeley’s campus.

In one video, a crowd banging pots and chanting “Fascists out of Berkeley” faced off with a line of police officers in helmets and wearing batons. A masked protester at the front of the crowd repeatedly veered toward the police line as he held up a placard.

Suddenly, the officers pulled the protester behind the police line. The crowd roared as they dragged the protester away.

Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, emphasized that a large group of conservatives defied the protesters to gather inside the Berkeley auditorium.

“Despite Antifa thugs blocking our campus tour stop with tear gas, fireworks, and glass bottles, we had a PACKED HOUSE in the heart of deep blue UC Berkeley,” Kolvet said. He shared a video on X of a crowd standing up, holding placards of Charlie Kirk’s face and chanting “Charlie Kirk! Charlie Kirk!”

Asked about reports of incendiary devices and the video showing protesters lighting flares outside the event, Mogulof said “the flames were not there for a long time.”

“The crowd was controlled, and the event happened without disruption,” Mogulof said.

Yet later Tuesday, Mogulof said that UC Berkeley would conduct a full investigation into the incident and work with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force to identify “outside agitators” who tried to disrupt the event.

“There is no place at UC Berkeley for attempts to use violence or intimidation to prevent lawful expression or chill free speech,” Mogulof said in a statement.

Ultimately, Mogulof stressed, efforts to shut down Turning Point on campus did not succeed.

“The University remains steadfast,” he said, “in its commitment to uphold open dialogue, respect, and the rule of law.”

Decision follows Senate vote to reopen the government, but legal saga has brought uncertainty to millions who need food assistance.

The highest court in the United States has extended a previous order allowing President Donald Trump to withhold food assistance to tens of millions of people in the US amid the government shutdown.

In a ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended a previous pause that it had granted the Trump administration after a lower court ordered the government to pay out about $4bn in food benefits for November.

Advocates have said that withholding the funds could have calamitous effects on people who depend on food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), although the issue could be made moot as the shutdown appears to be drawing to a close.

The Supreme Court decision comes one day after the Senate on Monday approved compromise legislation that would end the longest government shutdown in US history, breaking a weeks-long impasse that has disrupted food benefits for millions, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers unpaid and snarled air traffic as a lack of air traffic controllers forced cancellations.

The battle over SNAP benefits has underlined the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to slash government employment and roll back access to programmes that it had previously criticised under the auspices of the shutdown.

While it is common for some benefits and programmes to face delays or other issues during government shutdowns, food benefits ceased entirely at the start of November for the first time in the programme’s 60-year history.

The decision set off a series of legal challenges and several weeks of back-and-forth rulings that have kept those who rely on food assistance in a state of limbo.

A judge had ruled last week that the government must fully fund benefits for November, a decision the administration challenged. The Supreme Court had paused that order, but the stay was set to expire on Thursday.

TORONTO — Top diplomats from the Group of 7 industrialized democracies are converging on southern Ontario as tensions rise between the U.S. and traditional allies such as Canada over defense spending, trade and uncertainty over President Trump’s ceasefire plan in Gaza and efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said in an interview with the Associated Press that “the relationship has to continue across a range of issues” despite trade pressures as she prepared to host U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Anand also invited the foreign ministers of Australia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Korea, South Africa and Ukraine.

She said “15 foreign ministers are coming from around the world to the Great White North and funnily enough on the week of our first large snowfall.”

“The work that Canada is doing is continuing to lead multilaterally in an era of a greater movement to protectionism and unilateralism,” Anand said. “And in an era of economic and geopolitical volatility.”

Canada’s G-7 hosting duties this year have been marked by strained relations with its North American neighbor, predominantly over Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports. But the entire bloc of allies is confronting major turbulence over the Republican president’s demands on trade and various proposals to halt worldwide conflicts.

One main point of contention has been defense spending. All G-7 members except for Japan are members of NATO, and Trump has demanded that the alliance partners spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense. While a number of countries have agreed, others have not. Among the G-7 NATO members, Canada and Italy are furthest from that goal.

There have also been G-7 disagreements over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, with Britain, Canada and France announcing they would recognize a Palestinian state even without a resolution to the conflict. With the Russia-Ukraine war, most G-7 members have taken a tougher line on Russia than Trump has.

The two-day meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Lake Ontario near the U.S. border comes after Trump ended trade talks with Canada because the Ontario provincial government ran an anti-tariff advertisement in the U.S. that upset him. That followed a spring of acrimony, since abated, over Trump’s insistence that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney apologized for the ad and said last week that he’s ready to resume trade talks when the Americans are ready.

“The work that we are doing in the G-7 is about finding areas where we can cooperate multilaterally,” Anand said. “This conversation will continue regardless of other efforts that we are making on the trade side.”

Anand said she will have a meeting with Rubio but noted that a different minister leads the U.S. trade file. The U.S. president has placed greater priority on addressing his grievances with other nations’ trade policies than on collaboration with G-7 allies.

“Every complex relationship has numerous touch points,” Anand said. “On the trade file, there is continued work to be done — just as there is work to be done on the numerous touch points outside the trade file, and that’s where Secretary Rubio and I come in because the relationship has to continue across a range of issues.”

Anand said Rubio asked her during a breakfast meeting in Washington last month to play a role in bringing countries to the table to ensure that Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan has longevity.

U.S. officials said Rubio, who also may have meetings with other G-7 counterparts and at least one of the invited non-G-7 foreign ministers, would be focused on initiatives to halt fighting in Ukraine and Gaza, maritime security, Haiti, Sudan, supply chain resiliency and critical minerals.

Canada’s priorities include ending the war in Ukraine, Arctic security and security in Haiti. There will be a working lunch on energy and critical minerals that are needed for anything from smartphones to fighter jets. Canada has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.

Anand will probably try to use the meeting to improve the working relationship with Rubio, said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.

“Yet, a key factor shaping that relationship is beyond her control: President Trump’s mercurial behavior,” Béland said.

“The expectations are quite low, but avoiding drama and fostering basic common ground on issues like Ukraine and Russia would be helpful,” Béland said.

Gillies and Lee write for the Associated Press.

Nov. 11 (UPI) — Senate Republicans have signaled that they are willing to negotiate with Democrats on healthcare subsidies, but are demanding tighter abortion rules on insurance plans.

Senate Republican Leader John Thune described his party’s negotiating position to reporters before the chamber passed a bill on Monday to reopen the government, according to NBC News. Thune’s remarks set the stage for the next partisan fight over expiring health care subsidies that were at the center of the longest government shutdown on record.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sharply criticized the Republican proposal in a floor speech Saturday, calling it “a backdoor national abortion ban.”

“Democrats must dismiss this radical Trojan horse against women’s essential healthcare out of hand,” he said.

Senate Democrats earlier demanded that an extension of pandemic-era enhanced subsidies be included in any government-funding bill. That demand was left out of a funding bill that passed the Senate on Monday and is expected to pass the House.

With no extension of the subsidies in place, individuals who purchase health insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplaces will see steep premium rises — some by thousands of dollars a month — beginning next year.

Republicans have expressed a willingness to negotiate on the enhanced subsidies, but Thune said that in exchange for an extension of the subsidies, Republicans will ask for more stringent enforcement of longstanding restrictions on federal funding being used for abortion, known as the Hyde Amendment.

“A one-year extension along the lines of what [Democrats] are suggesting, and without Hyde protections — doesn’t even get close,” Thune said, according to NBC News.

Wyden said in his floor speech that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, already bars the use of taxpayer money for abortions.

However, Republicans want to block states from allowing people to access abortions through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces using state or other funding, NBC News reported.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., has indicated he’s open to extending the subsidies, but said Republicans won’t support it without the abortion restrictions.

A Virginia transportation security officer has accused the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of sex discrimination over a policy that bars transgender officers from performing security screening pat-downs, according to a federal lawsuit.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which operates under the DHS, enacted the policy in February to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring two unchangeable sexes: male and female.

The Associated Press (AP) news agency obtained internal documents explaining the policy change from four independent sources, including one current and two former TSA workers.

Those documents explain that “transgender officers will no longer engage in pat-down duties, which are conducted based on both the traveller’s and officer’s biological sex. In addition, transgender officers will no longer serve as a TSA-required witness when a traveller elects to have a pat-down conducted in a private screening area”.

Until February, the TSA assigned officers work consistent with their gender identity, based on a 2021 management directive. The agency told the AP that it rescinded this directive to comply with Trump’s January 20 executive order.

Although transgender officers “shall continue to be eligible to perform all other security screening functions consistent with their certifications” and must attend all required training, they will not be allowed to demonstrate how to conduct pat-downs as part of their training or while training others, according to the internal documents.

A transgender officer at Dulles international airport, Danielle Mittereder, alleged in her lawsuit filed on Friday that the new policy, which also bars her from using TSA facility restrooms that align with her gender identity, violates civil rights law.

“Solely because she is transgender, TSA now prohibits Plaintiff from conducting core functions of her job, impedes her advancement to higher-level positions and specialised certifications, excludes her from TSA-controlled facilities, and subjects her identity to unwanted and undue scrutiny each workday,” the complaint says.

Mittereder declined to speak with the AP, but her lawyer, Jonathan Puth, called the TSA policy “terribly demeaning and 100 percent illegal”.

TSA spokesperson Russell Read declined to comment, citing pending litigation. But he said the new policy directs that “male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on male passengers, and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on female passengers, based on operational needs”.

The legal battle comes amid mounting reports of workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees during Trump’s second administration. It is also happening at a time when the TSA’s ranks are already stretched thin due to the ongoing government shutdown that has left thousands of agents working without pay.

Other transgender officers describe similar challenges to Mittereder.

Kai Regan worked for six years at Harry Reid international airport in Las Vegas before leaving in July, in large part because of the new policy.

Worried that he would be fired for his gender identity, he retired earlier than planned rather than “waiting for the bomb to drop”.

Regan, who is not involved in the Virginia case, transitioned from female to male in 2021. He said he had conducted pat-downs on men without issue until the policy change.

“It made me feel inadequate at my job, not because I can’t physically do it but because they put that on me,” said the 61-year-old.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organisation that has repeatedly challenged the second Trump administration in court, called the TSA policy “arbitrary and discriminatory”.

“There’s no evidence or data we’re aware of to suggest that a person can’t perform their duties satisfactorily as a TSA agent based on their gender identity,” Perryman said.

The DHS pushed back on assertions by some legal experts that its policy is discriminatory.

“Does the AP want female travellers to be subjected to pat-downs by male TSA officers?” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin asked in a written response to questions by the AP. “What a useless and fundamentally dangerous idea, to prioritise mental delusion over the comfort and safety of American travellers.”

Airport security expert and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Sheldon H Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck, said that the practice of matching the officer’s sex to the passenger’s is aimed at minimising passenger discomfort during screening.

Travellers can generally request another officer if they prefer, he added.

Deciding where transgender officers fit into this practice “creates a little bit of uncertainty”, Jacobson said. But because transgender officers likely make up a small percent of the TSA’s workforce, he said the new policy is unlikely to cause major delays.

“It could be a bit of an inconvenience, but it would not inhibit the operation of the airport security checkpoint,” Jacobson said.

The TSA’s policy for passengers is that they be screened based on physical appearance as judged by an officer, according to internal documents. If a passenger corrects an officer’s assumption, “the traveller should be patted down based on his/her declared sex”.

For passengers who tell an officer “that they are neither a male nor female”, the policy says officers must advise “that pat-down screening must be conducted by an officer of the same sex” and contact a supervisor if concerns persist.

The documents also say that transgender officers “will not be adversely affected” in pay, promotions or awards, and that the TSA “is committed to providing a work environment free from unlawful discrimination and retaliation”.

But the lawsuit argues otherwise, saying the policy impedes Mittereder’s career prospects because “all paths toward advancement require that she be able to perform pat-downs and train others to do so”, Puth said.

According to the lawsuit, Mittereder started in her role in June 2024 and never received complaints related to her job performance, including pat-down responsibilities. Supervisors awarded her the highest-available performance rating, and “have praised her professionalism, skills, knowledge, and rapport with fellow officers and the public”, the lawsuit said.

“This is somebody who is really dedicated to her job and wants to make a career at TSA,” Puth said. “And while her gender identity was never an issue for her in the past, all of a sudden, it’s something that has to be confronted every single day.”

Being unable to perform her full job duties has caused Mittereder to suffer fear, anxiety and depression, as well as embarrassment and humiliation by forcing her to disclose her gender identity to co-workers, the complaint says.

It adds that the ban places an additional burden on already-outnumbered female officers who have to pick up Mittereder’s pat-down duties.

American Federation of Government Employees national president Everett Kelley urged the TSA leadership to reconsider the policy “for the good of its workforce and the flying public”.

“This policy does nothing to improve airport security,” Kelley said, “and in fact could lead to delays in the screening of airline passengers since it means there will be fewer officers available to perform pat-down searches”.

WASHINGTON — British political commentator Sami Hamdi is going to voluntarily leave the U.S. after spending more than two weeks in immigration detention over what his supporters say was his criticism of Israel. The Trump administration has accused him of cheering on Hamas.

Hamdi, who is Muslim, was on a speaking tour in the U.S. when he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 26. He had just addressed the annual gala for the Sacramento chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the day before his arrest.

In a statement late Monday, the organization said Hamdi had “chosen to accept an offer to leave the United States voluntarily.”

“It is this simple: Sami never should have spent a single night in an ICE cell. His only real ‘offense’ was speaking clearly about Israel’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians,” said the chief executive of CAIR’s California chapter, Hussam Ayloush, in a statement.

Hamdi’s detention was part of broader efforts by the Trump administration to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreigners in the United States who it says have either fomented or participated in unrest or publicly supported protests against Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

Those enforcement actions have been criticized by civil rights groups as violations of constitutional protections for freedom of speech, which apply to anyone in the United States and not just to American citizens.

Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, said Tuesday that the logistics of Hamdi’s departure were still being worked out but that it might happen later this week. Billoo said there were “no conditions to the voluntary departure” and that he’s not barred from seeking another U.S. visa in the future.

CAIR said Hamdi’s charging document in immigration court did not accuse him of criminal conduct or security concerns but only listed a visa overstay, which they blamed on the government revoking his visa.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement Tuesday that Hamdi had requested voluntary departure and “ICE is happily arranging his removal from this country.”

The State Department said due to “visa record confidentiality,” it could not comment on specific cases.

CAIR has said that Hamdi, 35, was detained in response to his vocal criticism of the Israeli government during a U.S. speaking tour.

The Department of Homeland Security said at the time of Hamdi’s arrest that the State Department had revoked his visa and that ICE had put him in immigration proceedings. Homeland Security later accused him of supporting the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel.

In a statement at the time, McLaughlin cited remarks he made in a video posted online shortly after the Hamas-led attack in which he asked: “How many of you felt it in your hearts when you got the news that it happened? How many of you felt the euphoria? Allah akbar.”

Hamdi said later his intent was not to praise the attacks but to suggest that the violence was “a natural consequence of the oppression that is being put on the Palestinians.”

The State Department has not said specifically what Hamdi said or did that initiated the revocation but in a post on X the department said: “The United States has no obligation to host foreigners” whom the administration deems to “support terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans. We continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity.”

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump and Republican lawmakers took a victory lap on Tuesday after securing bipartisan support to reopen the government, ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history without ceding ground to any core Democratic demands.

House members were converging on Washington for a final vote expected as early as Wednesday, after 60 senators — including seven Democrats and an independent — advanced the measure on Monday night. Most Democratic lawmakers in the House are expected to oppose the continuing resolution, which does not include an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits that had been a central demand during the shutdown negotiations.

The result, according to independent analysts, is that premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, rising from an average of $888 to $1,904 for out-of-pocket payments annually, according to KFF.

Democrats in the Senate who voted to reopen the government said they had secured a promise from Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, that they would get a vote on extending the tax credits next month.

But the vote is likely to fail down party lines. And even if it earned some Republican support, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has made no promises he would give the measure a vote in the lower chamber.

An end to the shutdown comes at a crucial time for the U.S. aviation industry ahead of one of the busiest travel seasons around the Thanksgiving holiday. The prolonged closure of the federal government led federal employees in the sector to call out sick in large numbers, prompting an unprecedented directive from the Federation Aviation Administration that slowed operations at the nation’s biggest airports.

Lawmakers are racing to vote before federal employees working in aviation safety miss yet another paycheck this week, potentially extending frustration within their ranks and causing further delays at airports entering the upcoming holiday week.

It will be the first time the House conducts legislative work in over 50 days, a marathon stretch that has resulted in a backlog of work for lawmakers on a wide range of issues, from appropriations and stock trading regulations to a discharge petition calling for the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

“We look forward to the government reopening this week so Congress can get back to our regular legislative session,” Johnson told reporters Monday. “There will be long days and long nights here for the foreseeable future to make up for all this lost time that was imposed upon us.”

To reopen the government, the spending package needs to pass the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority and Democrats have vowed to vote against a deal that does not address healthcare costs.

Still, Trump and Republican leaders believe they have enough votes to push it through the chamber and reopen the government later in the week.

Trump has called the spending package a “very good” deal and has indicated that he will sign it once it gets to his desk.

At a Veterans Day event on Tuesday, Trump thanked Thune and Johnson for their work on their work to reopen the government. Johnson was in the crowd listening to Trump’s remarks.

“Congratulations to you and to John and to everybody on a very big victory,” Trump said in a speech at Arlington National Cemetery. “We are opening back our country. It should’ve never been closed.”

While Trump lauded the measure as a done deal, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the chamber, said his party would still try to delay or tank the legislation with whatever tools it had left.

“House Democrats will strongly oppose any legislation that does not decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis,” Jeffries said in a CNN interview Tuesday morning.

Just like in the Senate, California Democrats in the House are expected to vote against the shutdown deal because it does not address the expiring healthcare subsidies.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi said the shutdown deal reached in the Senate “fails to meet the needs of America’s working families” and said she stood with House Democratic leaders in opposing the legislation.

“We must continue to fight for a responsible, bipartisan path forward that reopens the government and keeps healthcare affordable for the American people,” Pelosi said in a social media post.

California Republicans in the House, meanwhile, have criticized Democrats for trying to stop the funding agreement from passing.

“These extremists only care about their radical base regardless of the impact to America,” Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona said in a social media post.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) publicly called on Johnson to negotiate with Democrats on healthcare during the shutdown. He said in an interview last month that he thought there was “a lot of room” to address concerns on both sides of the aisle on how to address the rising costs of healthcare.

Kiley said Monday that he was proposing legislation with Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José) that proposed extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits for another two years.

He said the bill would “stop massive increase in healthcare costs for 22 million Americans whose premium tax credits are about to expire.”

“Importantly, the extension is temporary and fully paid for, so it can’t increase the deficit,” Kiley said in reference to a frequent concern cited by Republicans that extending the credits would contribute to the national debt.

Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve funding bill to re-open US federal government in coming days.

United States President Donald Trump has called the looming end of the government shutdown a “big victory” after the Senate passed a bill to fund federal agencies.

Trump congratulated Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday for the soon-to-be-approved funding bill.

“Congratulations to you and to John and to everybody on a very big victory,” Trump said, addressing Johnson at a Veterans Day event.

“We’re opening up our country — should have never been closed.”

The US president’s comments signal that he views the shutdown crisis as a political win for his Republican Party, which is set to end the budgeting impasse in Congress without meeting the Democrats’ key demand: extending healthcare subsidies.

The Senate passed the funding bill late on Monday in a 60-40 vote that saw eight members of the Democratic caucus backing the proposal.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to pass the budget in the coming days to end the shutdown, which has been the longest in US history. Assuming the House approves the bill, it will then go to Trump’s desk, and the president is expected to sign it into law.

In the US system, Congress is tasked with funding the government.

If lawmakers fail to pass a budget, the federal government goes into shutdown mode, where it stops paying most employees and sends non-essential workers home.

The current shutdown started on October 1.

Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, but their narrow majority in the Senate had previously prevented them from passing a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.

In the 100-seat Senate, major legislation must generally be passed with at least 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, a legislative procedure that allows the minority party to block bills it opposes.

The Democratic caucus holds 47 seats in the chamber, which allowed it to successfully wield the filibuster until this week’s divisive vote.

Until Monday, Democrats had largely been united in opposition to the Republicans’ funding bill. They had previously maintained they would only approve government funding if the bill included provisions to extend healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Those subsidies, Democrats argued, help millions of Americans afford their medical insurance.

But Trump had threatened to ramp up the pressure against Democrats by cutting programmes he associated with their party.

During the shutdown, for example, Trump tried to withhold food benefits for low-income families – a policy that is being challenged in the courts.

The shutdown crisis has also led to flight delays and cancellations across the country due to a shortage of available air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay.

Monday’s Senate vote paved the way for a resolution to the crisis. But it has sparked infighting amongst Democrats, with segments of the party voicing disappointment with senators who backed the bill.

The issue has also intensified criticism against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted against the proposal but failed to keep his caucus united in opposition to it.

“Sen. Schumer has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic Party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said in a social media post on Monday.

“Schumer should step down.”

Senator John Fetterman, one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, defended his vote on Tuesday.

“When you’re confronting mass, mass chaos, you know, I don’t think you should respond with more chaos, or fight with more chaos,” Fetterman told the ABC talk show The View. “It’s like, no, we need to be the party of order and logic.”

BALTIMORE — U.S. Catholic bishops elected Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley as their new president on Tuesday, choosing a conservative culture warrior to lead during President Trump’s second term.

The vote serves as a barometer for the bishops’ priorities. In choosing Coakley, they are doubling down on their conservative bent, even as they push for more humane immigration policies from the Trump administration.

Coakley was seen as a strong contender for the top post, having already been elected in 2022 to serve as secretary, the No. 3 conference official. In three rounds of voting, he beat out centrist candidate Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, who was subsequently elected vice president.

Coakley serves as advisor to the Napa Institute, an association for conservative Catholic powerbrokers. In 2018, he publicly supported an ardent critic of Pope Francis, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was later excommunicated for stances that were deemed divisive.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has often been at odds with the Vatican and the inclusive, modernizing approach of the late Pope Francis. His U.S.-born successor, Pope Leo XIV, is continuing a similar pastoral emphasis on marginalized people, poverty and the environment.

The choice of Coakley may fuel tensions with Pope Leo, said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

“In the long conflict between many U.S. bishops and Francis that Leo inherits, this is not a de-escalating step,” he said.

Half the 10 candidates on the ballot came from the conservative wing of the conference. The difference is more in style than substance. Most U.S. Catholic bishops are reliably conservative on social issues, but some — like Coakley — place more emphasis on opposing abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

The candidates were nominated by their fellow bishops, and Coakley succeeds the outgoing leader, Military Services Archbishop Timothy Broglio, for a three-year term. The current vice president, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, was too close to the mandatory retirement age of 75 to assume the top spot.

Coakley edged out a well-known conservative on the ballot, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota’s Winona-Rochester diocese, whose popular Word on Fire ministry has made him a Catholic media star.

In defeating Flores, Coakley won over another strong contender, who some Catholic insiders thought could help unify U.S. bishops and work well with the Vatican. Flores has been the U.S. bishops’ leader in the Vatican’s synod process to modernize the church. As a Latino leading a diocese along the U.S.-Mexico border, he supports traditional Catholic doctrine on abortion and LGBTQ issues and is outspoken in his defense of migrants.

Flores will be eligible for the top post in three years. His election as vice president indicates that the U.S. conference “may eventually, cautiously open itself to the church’s new horizons,” said David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture.

The bishops are crafting a statement on immigration during the annual fall meeting. On many issues, they appear as divided and polarized as their country, but on immigration, even the most conservative Catholic leaders stand on the side of migrants.

The question is how strongly the whole body plans to speak about the Trump administration’s harsh immigration tactics.

Fear of immigration enforcement has suppressed Mass attendance at some parishes. Local clerics are fighting to administer sacraments to detained immigrants. U.S. Catholic bishops shuttered their longstanding refugee resettlement program after the Trump administration halted federal funding for resettlement aid.

“On the political front, you know for decades the U.S. bishops have been advocating for comprehensive immigration reform,” Bishop Kevin Rhoades, of Indiana’s Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese, said during a news conference.

Rhoades serves on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, and he leads the bishops’ committee on religious liberty. He said bishops are very concerned about detained migrants receiving pastoral care and the sacraments.

“That’s an issue of the right to worship,” he said. “One doesn’t lose that right when one is detained, whether one is documented or undocumented.”

The bishops sent a letter to Pope Leo from their meeting, saying they “will continue to stand with migrants and defend everyone’s right to worship free from intimidation.”

The letter continued, “We support secure and orderly borders and law enforcement actions in response to dangerous criminal activity, but we cannot remain silent in this challenging hour while the right to worship and the right to due process are undermined.”

Pope Leo recently called for “deep reflection” in the United States about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that “many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”

Stanley writes for the Associated Press.

LONDON — President Trump’s threat to bring a billion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC has cast a shadow over the British broadcaster’s future, but it could also be a bluff with little legal merit.

The president’s lawyer sent the threat to the BBC over the way a documentary edited his Jan. 6, 2021, speech before a mob of his followers stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s history of suing news media companies — sometimes winning multimillion-dollar settlements — is part of a long-running grievance against the industry he describes as “fake news” that has often focused a critical eye on his actions.

But Trump faces fundamental challenges to getting a case to court, never mind taking it to trial. He would also have to deal with the harsh glare of publicity around his provocative pep talk the day Congress was voting to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.

“If he sues, he opens a Pandora’s box and inside is every damning quote he’s ever uttered about the ‘steal,’” said attorney Mark Stephens, an international media lawyer who practices in the U.S. and U.K.

The BBC documentary

The BBC’s “Panorama” series aired the hourlong documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The third-party production company that made the film spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the misleading edit that he said gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing.

From letter to lawsuit

A lawsuit in England is unlikely because the one-year deadline to bring one expired two weeks ago, experts said. If successful in overcoming that barrier, libel awards in the High Court rarely exceed 100,000 pounds ($132,000), experts said.

Trump could still bring a defamation claim in several U.S. states, and his lawyer cited Florida law in a letter to the BBC.

Filing a lawsuit and demanding money is one thing, but prevailing in court is much different. To succeed, Trump would have to clear many hurdles to get a case before a jury.

Before any of that could happen, Trump faces a more fundamental challenge: The BBC program was not aired in the U.S., and the BBC’s streaming service is also not available there. Americans could not have thought less of him because of a program they could not watch, Stephens said.

“The other ticklish problem for Trump’s lawyer was that Trump’s reputation was already pretty battered after Jan. 6,” he said. “Alleging ‘Panorama’ caused additional harm when your reputation is already in tatters … is a tough sell.”

Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting insurrection over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by some of his supporters, though he was acquitted by the Senate.

The demands

Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito threatened the BBC with a defamation lawsuit for “no less than” $1 billion. The letter spelled out the figure and used all nine zeros in numeric form.

The letter demanded an apology to the president and a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary along with other “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements” about Trump.

It also said the president should be “appropriately” compensated for “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”

The letter cites Florida’s defamation statute that requires a letter be sent to news organizations five days before any lawsuit can be filed.

If the BBC does not comply with the demands by 5 p.m. EST Friday, then Trump will enforce his legal rights, the letter said.

“The BBC is on notice,” it said.

While many legal experts have dismissed the president’s claims against the media as having little chance of success, he has won some lucrative settlements against U.S. media companies.

In July, Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a “ 60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump alleged that the interview was edited to enhance how Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, sounded.

That settlement came as the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation that threatened to complicate Paramount’s need for administration approval to merge with Skydance Media.

Last year, ABC News said it would pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos ’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury found that he was liable for sexually abusing her. Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to throw out that jury’s finding.

Litigation threat could leverage payout

London lawyer David Allen Green dismissed the litigation letter for failing to spell out any actual harm Trump suffered. But he said Trump’s willingness to use lawsuits as a form of deal making could leverage a payout because the edit was indefensible.

“Putting aside the theatrics of a bombastic letter with its senseless $1 billion claim, there is a power play here which Trump has done many times before,” Green said on the Law and Policy Blog. “The real mistake of the BBC (and the production company) was opening itself up to such a play of power.”

Stephens said if Trump were somehow to win billions from the BBC, it could crush the news organization that is mostly funded through a fee charged to all television owners in the U.K.

But he said that outcome was unlikely and the broadcaster should stand its ground. He recommended Trump take the public relations win and avoid the damage from revisiting the Jan. 6 events that would be dredged up at trial.

He said Trump was due an apology, which Shah offered, for the BBC not upholding high journalistic standards.

“The question is, ‘Did it cause harm in people’s minds?’” he said. “Because he was elected afterwards, it doesn’t appear it did.”

Melley writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump mentioned political correctness, President Joe Biden and renaming Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery after laying a wreath for the holiday.

Trump said he plans to rename the holiday celebrated on Nov. 11 as “Victory Day for World War I.”

“You know, I was recently at an event and I saw France was celebrating Victory Day, but we didn’t,” he said. “And I saw France was celebrating another Victory Day for World War II, and other countries were celebrating. They were all celebrating.

“We’re the one that won the wars. … And we could do for plenty of other wars, but we’ll start with those two. Maybe someday somebody else will add a couple of more, ’cause we won a lot of good ones.”

Veterans Day was originally named Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I. But it eventually became Veterans Day to celebrate all who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Since he took office, Trump has been on a renaming streak. He has renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” the Persian Gulf to the “Arabian Gulf,” Mount Denali to “Mount McKinley” and the Department of Defense to the “Department of War.”

“Under the Trump administration, we are restoring the pride and the winning spirit of the United States military,” he said at Arlington. “That’s why we have officially renamed the Department of Defense back to the original name, Department of War.”

He also complained about political correctness.

“We don’t like being politically correct, so we’re not going to be politically correct anymore,” Trump said. “From now on when we fight a war, we only fight for one reason: to win.”

He thanked American troops for their service.

“And we want to also say thank you for carrying America’s fate on your strong, very broad, and proud shoulders,” he said. “Each of you has earned the respect and the gratitude of our entire nation.

“We love you. We salute you, and we will never forget what you have done to keep America safe, sovereign, and free.”

Trump also used the speech to attack the Biden administration and its management of the Veterans Administration.

“And the other thing is, we fired thousands of people who didn’t take care of our great veterans,” he said. “They were sadists. They were sick people. They were thieves. They were everything you want to name. And we got rid of over 9,000 of them.

“And then, when Biden came in, he hired them back, many of them. But we got rid of them. And I think we got rid of them permanently. We replaced them with people who love our veterans, not people who are sick people.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs laid off more than 2,400 people in February.

LONDON — Britain’s government rallied to the defense of the BBC on Tuesday after allegations of bias from its critics and the threat of a lawsuit from President Trump over the way the broadcaster edited a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the national broadcaster faces “challenges, some of its own making,” but is “by far the most widely used and trusted source of news in the United Kingdom.”

With critics in media and politics demanding an overhaul of the BBC’s funding and governance, Nandy said that “the BBC as an institution is absolutely essential to this country.

“At a time when the lines are being dangerously blurred between facts and opinions, news and polemic, the BBC stands apart,” she said in the House of Commons.

Trump threatens to sue

A lawyer for Trump is demanding a retraction, apology and compensation from the broadcaster over the allegedly defamatory sequence in a documentary broadcast last year.

Fallout from the documentary has already claimed the BBC’s top executive, Tim Davie, and head of news Deborah Turness, who both resigned over what the broadcaster called an “error of judgment.”

The BBC has apologized for misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Broadcast days before the November 2024 U.S. election, the documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” spliced together three quotes from two sections of the speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

BBC chair Samir Shah said the broadcaster accepted “that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

The BBC has not yet formally responded to the demand from Florida-based Trump attorney Alejandro Brito that it “retract the false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements,” apologize and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused” by Friday, or face legal action for $1 billion in damages.

Nigel Huddleston, media spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, said the BBC should “provide a fulsome apology to the U.S. president” to avoid legal action.

Legal experts say Trump is likely too late to sue the BBC in Britain, because a one-year deadline to file a defamation suit has expired. He could still bring a defamation claim in several U.S. states, and his lawyer cited Florida law in a letter to the BBC, but faces considerable legal hurdles.

An embattled national institution

The publicly funded BBC is a century-old national institution under growing pressure in an era of polarized politics and changing media viewing habits.

Funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households who watch live TV or any BBC content, the broadcaster is frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.

Governments of both left and right have long been accused of meddling with the broadcaster, which is overseen by a board that includes both BBC nominees and government appointees.

Some defenders of the BBC allege that board members appointed under previous Conservative governments have been undermining the corporation from within.

Pressure on the broadcaster has been growing since the right-leaning Daily Telegraph published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines. As well as the Trump edit, Prescott criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.

Near the BBC’s London headquarters, some passersby said the scandal would further erode trust in a broadcaster already under pressure.

Amanda Carey, a semi-retired lawyer, said the editing of the Trump speech is “something that should never have happened.”

“The last few scandals that they’ve had, trust in the BBC is very much waning and a number of people are saying they’re going to refuse to pay the license (fee),” she said.

A growing number of people argue that the license fee is unsustainable in a world where many households watch little or no traditional TV.

Nandy said the government will soon start the once-a-decade process of reviewing the BBC’s governing charter, which expires at the end of 2027. She said the government would ensure the BBC is “sustainably funded (and) commands the public’s trust,” but did not say whether the license fee might be scaled back or scrapped.

Davie, who announced his resignation as BBC director-general on Sunday, acknowledged that “we have made some mistakes that have cost us.”

But, he added: “We’ve got to to fight for our journalism.”

Lawless writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.

Following the historic victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election, many Los Angeles-based admirers of the 34-year-old politician’s campaign and agenda have longingly wondered: When will a political spark plug like that happen in L.A.?

Looking at the mayoral landscape of L.A. County, there are two existing mayors that espouse similarly progressive ideologies as Mamdani: Burbank Mayor Nikki Perez and Cudahy Mayor Elizabeth Alcantar Loza. Both elected officials have worked with and been recommended by the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Nikki Perez

Perez was sworn in as Burbank’s youngest mayor in 2024 at the age of 30. She is also the first Indigenous and out LGBTQ+ mayor to serve the city. The politician was first voted onto the City Council in 2022.

She was raised by parents who emigrated from Guatemala and El Salvador to Burbank. Perez received her bachelor’s degree from UC Riverside and a master’s from UCLA.

Prior to becoming a council member, she worked as a social worker with the L.A. Unified School District, served in the state Assembly as the communications director and functioned as a development coordinator for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

A key issue for Perez — and a common rallying point for democratic socialists — was having sufficient affordable housing options in the Media Capital of the World. The City Council has a goal of constructing 12,000 new housing units in the municipality and has accepted plans on two projects that are expected to create about 200 housing units.

“From the point of view of our average residents, most people just really want to be able to live, to work and to play in Burbank, so that’s what my priorities are,” then-Vice Mayor Perez told her constituents in 2024. “I want my very first priority to be continuing our efforts of alleviating the housing crisis.”

Cognizant of the unstable job market for production, or below-the-line, workers in the entertainment industry, Perez has attempted to combat the shrinking creative job prospects in her city.

In July — while celebrating the expansion of California’s film and television tax credit program alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom — Burbank launched a task force made up of professionals and stakeholders from across the entertainment sector to identify challenges, explore new opportunities and shape policies that help retain and grow industry jobs in the city.

Elizabeth Alcantar Loza

Before joining the City Council of her hometown of Cudahy, Alcantar Loza worked with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, to organize and educate community members about immigration issues. In November 2018, she was elected to the City Council and served as vice mayor of Cudahy.

She then served as Cudahy’s first Latina mayor beginning in 2020, when she led the southeast L.A. County city during the 2020 Delta jet fuel dump and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In November 2023, Alcantar Loza was a City Council member when Cudahy became the first city in Southern California to support the Palestinian people of Gaza with a resolution that not only called for a cease-fire, but declared Israel’s government as “engaging in collective punishment” in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants. The resolution passed on a 3-1 vote after hours of public comments and deliberation.

Last year, she was reinstated as the largely Latino city’s mayor, and in December, she led the City Council to vote to divest from investments that contribute to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and what it considers genocide in Gaza. The five-member council voted unanimously to divest city funds from all arms and weapons manufacturing industries.

“As a progressive leader representing one of our SELA cities, I am committed to ethical governance that prioritizes integrity, accountability, and the trust of the people I serve. Every decision I make is guided by a deep responsibility to transparency and equity in every policy we enact, with a commitment to rejecting backroom deals and self-serving politics,” she wrote in a social media post about her political ideologies.

“True leadership is not just about upholding the highest ethical standards but actively building a government that serves the people — not special interests or the politically connected. I look forward to collaborating with other progressive elected officials across our region who share these values, working together to transform the experience of our residents and redefine the narrative of Southeast L.A.”

Following Mamdani’s win, Alcantar Loza expressed joy for a national recognition that progressive ideals are popular.

“It’s an exciting time to see someone that is so like-minded, that is talking about the issues that matter most to our communities, actually win and win big for our communities and have a plan that will hopefully support folks that are very similar to our folks here,” Alcantar Loza told The Times.

While her city doesn’t have the same monetary sway or resources as New York City, the 32-year-old mayor noted that Cudahy is working with its limited funds to address the needs of as many citizens as possible.

“We often hear the phrase that a city’s budget is a list of the city’s priorities, and it’s something that rings really true,” she said. “In Cudahy, we’re really pushing forward with advancing programs that support the community.

“We’re so used to funding certain programs over for others. It’s often thought that every budget is touchable, except police and fire services. Those are important services to fund, but so are community program services ensuring that our kids have somewhere to go after school so that they’re not engaging in violent activity or activities they shouldn’t be participating in.”

One of Alcantar Loza’s main concerns is ensuring renters’ rights and that their needs are taken care of as over 80% of housing units in Cudahy are rentals.

“It’s important for us to fund programs and staff that support the renter community in knowing their rights and knowing what they can and cannot do, just how to keep folks housed because we should be catering to the needs of our of our most vulnerable folks,” she added.

The fight for rent stabilization is one that Alcantar Loza has been fighting for over half a decade now. She first tried to push it forward in 2019, but it lacked the votes on the City Council and it failed to pass again in 2021, despite a robust campaigning effort. In 2023, Cudahy’s City Council was able to get a Latina majority and advanced rent stabilization.

Additionally, the city established a minimum threshold for eviction in October in cases where a tenant has missed rent. Under the ordinance, a landlord may only initiate an eviction if the amount of rent missed exceeds one month of the fair market rent for the Los Angeles metro area, as determined annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

One obstacle that Alcantar Loza has noticed in her work has been with citizens envisioning what progress looks like in their day-to-day life.

“It’s difficult to help others visualize the opportunities in their community,” she said. “It’s easier for folks to imagine business as usual because it’s been happening for so long. They do not know how to visualize something new.

“Gifting people the opportunity to visualize something new, to think about other ways to support their community is a very powerful tool that we’ve been able to implement and show folks there are other ways to do policy other than what we’re used to.”

US airlines cancel 1,200 flights, marking five days of disruptions caused by the prolonged government shutdown.

Airlines in the United States have cancelled nearly 1,200 flights, marking the fifth consecutive day of mass delays and cancellations sparked by the country’s longest-ever government shutdown.

In addition to cancellations on Tuesday, passengers continued to face long wait times, as more than 1,300 domestic and international flights were delayed in the morning.

New York’s LaGuardia Airport, in particular, is seeing significant hold-ups, with average delays of one hour and 40 minutes, according to FlightAware — a platform that tracks flight disruptions worldwide.

On Monday, there were more than 2,400 cancelled flights to, from and within the US, along with over 9,500 delayed flights, according to the same tracker.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week instructed airlines to cut 4 percent of daily flights from Friday at 40 major airports due to air traffic control staffing shortages. Reductions rose to 6 percent on Tuesday, then 8 percent on Thursday, and are expected to reach 10 percent by November 14th.

Airlines and the FAA are in talks over whether these cuts will be eased as a record-setting 42-day government shutdown draws to a close.

An end to the shutdown appears to be in sight. On Monday, the Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government. It now heads to the House of Representatives and, if approved, will go to President Donald Trump’s desk for signing. Once signed, the bill would reopen the government.

Despite progress on Capitol Hill, the president has urged air traffic controllers across the country to return to work, warning that their pay could be “docked” if they do not comply. He also claimed that those who remained on duty during the shutdown would receive a $10,000 bonus.

On Wall Street, airline stocks are taking a hit amid persistent cancellations. As of 11am in New York (16:00 GMT), Delta Air Lines had fallen 1.26 percent since the market opened on Tuesday. United Airlines was down 1.7 percent, while American Airlines had tumbled more than 1.8 percent.

Budget carriers are also being hit hard. New York-based JetBlue has dropped by more than 2 percent, Dallas-based Southwest by 1.8 percent, and Alaska Airlines is down roughly 2.1 percent.

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah judge on Monday rejected a new congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers, adopting an alternate proposal creating a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Republicans hold all four of Utah’s U.S. House seats and had advanced a map poised to protect them.

Judge Dianna Gibson ruled just before a midnight deadline that the Legislature’s new map “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats.”

She had ordered lawmakers to draw a map that complies with standards established by voters to ensure districts don’t deliberately favor a party, a practice known as gerrymandering. If they failed, Gibson warned she may consider other maps submitted by plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led her to throw out Utah’s existing map.

Gibson ultimately selected a map drawn by plaintiffs, the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government. It keeps Salt Lake County almost entirely within one district, instead of dividing the heavily Democratic population center among all four districts, as was the case previously.

The judge’s ruling throws a curveball for Republicans in a state where they expected a clean sweep as they’re working to add winnable seats elsewhere. Nationally, Democrats need to net three U.S. House seats next year to wrest control of the chamber from the GOP, which is trying to buck a historic pattern of the president’s party losing seats in the midterms.

The newly approved map gives Democrats a much stronger chance to flip a seat in a state that has not had a Democrat in Congress since early 2021.

“This is a win for every Utahn,” said state House and Senate Democrats in a joint statement. “We took an oath to serve the people of Utah, and fair representation is the truest measure of that promise.”

In August, Gibson struck down the Utah congressional map adopted after the 2020 census because the Legislature had circumvented anti-gerrymandering standards passed by voters.

The ruling thrust Utah into a national redistricting battle as President Trump urged other Republican-led states to take up mid-decade redistricting to try to help the GOP retain control of the House in 2026. Some Democratic states are considering new maps of their own, with California voters approving a map last week that gives Democrats a shot at winning five more seats. Republicans are still ahead in the redistricting fight.

Redistricting typically occurs once a decade after a census. There are no federal restrictions to redrawing districts mid-decade, but some states — more led by Democrats than Republicans — set their own limitations. The Utah ruling gives an unexpected boost to Democrats, who have fewer opportunities to gain seats through redistricting.

If Gibson had instead approved the map drawn by lawmakers, all four districts would still lean Republican but two would have become slightly competitive for Democrats. Their proposal gambled on Republicans’ ability to protect all four seats under much slimmer margins rather than create a single-left leaning district.

The ruling came minutes before midnight on the day the state’s top election official said was the latest possible date to enact a new congressional map so county clerks would have enough time to prepare for candidate filings for the 2026 midterms.

Republicans have argued Gibson does not have legal authority to enact a map that wasn’t approved by the Legislature. State Rep. Matt MacPherson called the ruling a “gross abuse of power” and said he has opened a bill to pursue impeachment against Gibson.

Gibson said in her ruling she has an obligation to ensure a lawful map is in place by the deadline.

Schoenbaum writes for the Associated Press.

BELGRADE, Serbia — Thousands of protesters in Serbia symbolically formed a human shield Tuesday around a bombed-out military complex, vowing to protect it from redevelopment as a luxury compound by a company linked to President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Youth-led protesters drew a red line as they encircled the sprawling buildings in the capital, Belgrade that were partially destroyed in a 1999 NATO bombing campaign. The site faces demolition and redevelopment under a plan backed by the populist government of President Aleksandar Vucic.

The $500-million project to build a high-rise hotel, offices and shops at the site has met fierce opposition from experts at home and abroad, as well as the Serbian public. But last week Serbian lawmakers passed a special law clearing the way for the construction despite legal hurdles.

Vucic’s pro-Trump government says the project would boost the economy and ties with the U.S. administration, which has imposed tariffs of 35% on imports from Serbia. It has also sanctioned Serbia’s monopoly oil supplier, which is controlled by Russia.

However, critics say the building is an architectural monument, seen as a symbol of resistance to the U.S.-led NATO bombing that remains widely viewed in the Balkan country as an unjust “aggression.”

Serbia’s government last year stripped the complex of protected status and signed a 99-year-lease agreement with Kushner-related Affinity Global Development in the U.S. But the redevelopment project came into question after Serbia’s organized crime prosecutors launched an investigation into whether documents used to remove that status were forged.

The buildings are seen as prime examples of mid-20th century architecture in the former Yugoslavia. The protesters demanded that the protected heritage status for the complex be restored, and the buildings rebuilt.

“This is a warning that we will all defend these buildings together,” one of the students said. “We will be the human shield.”

The issue has become the latest flashpoint in yearlong street protests that have shaken Vucic’s firm grip on power. Protesters have accused his government of rampant corruption in state projects. The protests started after a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad after renovation, killing 16 people.

Tens of thousands of people marked the tragedy’s anniversary on Nov. 1 in Novi Sad.

Serbia was bombed in 1999 for 78 days to force then-President Slobodan Milosevic to end his crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Anti-NATO sentiment remain strong in Serbia, and the U.S. role in revamping the military buildings is particularly sensitive among many Serbians.

Earlier this year, the government in Albania, another Balkan country, approved a $1.6 billion plan from Kushner’s company for a project to develop a luxury resort on a communist-era fortified island on the Adriatic coast.

Gec writes for the Associated Press.

HONG KONG — Vaishnavi Srinivasagopalan, a skilled Indian IT professional who has worked in both India and the U.S., has been looking for work in China. Beijing’s new K-visa program targeting science and technology workers could turn that dream into a reality.

The K-visa rolled out by Beijing last month is part of China’s widening effort to catch up with the U.S. in the race for global talent and cutting edge technology. It coincides with uncertainties over the U.S.’s H-1B program under tightened immigrations policies implemented by President Trump.

“(The) K-visa for China (is) an equivalent to the H-1B for the U.S.,” said Srinivasagopalan, who is intrigued by China’s working environment and culture after her father worked at a Chinese university a few years back. “It is a good option for people like me to work abroad.”

The K-visa supplements China’s existing visa schemes including the R-visa for foreign professionals, but with loosened requirements, such as not requiring an applicant to have a job offer before applying.

Stricter U.S. policies toward foreign students and scholars under Trump, including the raising of fees for the H-1B visa for foreign skilled workers to $100,000 for new applicants, are leading some non-American professionals and students to consider going elsewhere.

“Students studying in the U.S. hoped for an (H-1B) visa, but currently this is an issue,” said Bikash Kali Das, an Indian masters student of international relations at Sichuan University in China.

China wants more foreign tech professionals

China is striking while the iron is hot.

The ruling Communist Party has made global leadership in advanced technologies a top priority, paying massive government subsidies to support research and development of areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors and robotics.

“Beijing perceives the tightening of immigration policies in the U.S. as an opportunity to position itself globally as welcoming foreign talent and investment more broadly,” said Barbara Kelemen, associate director and head of Asia at security intelligence firm Dragonfly.

Unemployment among Chinese graduates remains high, and competition is intense for jobs in scientific and technical fields. But there is a skills gap China’s leadership is eager to fill. For decades, China has been losing top talent to developed countries as many stayed and worked in the U.S. and Europe after they finished studies there.

The brain drain has not fully reversed.

Many Chinese parents still see Western education as advanced and are eager to send their children abroad, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

Still, in recent years, a growing number of professionals including AI experts, scientists and engineers have moved to China from the U.S., including Chinese-Americans. Fei Su, a chip architect at Intel, and Ming Zhou, a leading engineer at U.S.-based software firm Altair, were among those who have taken teaching jobs in China this year.

Many skilled workers in India and Southeast Asia have already expressed interest about the K-visa, said Edward Hu, a Shanghai-based immigration director at the consultancy Newland Chase.

With the jobless rate for Chinese aged 16-24 excluding students at nearly 18%, the campaign to attract more foreign professionals is raising questions.

“The current job market is already under fierce competition,” said Zhou Xinying, a 24-year-old postgraduate student in behavioral science at eastern China’s Zhejiang University.

While foreign professionals could help “bring about new technologies” and different international perspectives, Zhou said, “some Chinese young job seekers may feel pressure due to the introduction of the K-visa policy.”

Kyle Huang, a 26-year-old software engineer based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said his peers in the science and technology fields fear the new visa scheme “might threaten local job opportunities”.

A recent commentary published by a state-backed news outlet, the Shanghai Observer, downplayed such concerns, saying that bringing in such foreign professionals will benefit the economy. As China advances in areas such as AI and cutting-edge semiconductors, there is a “gap and mismatch” between qualified jobseekers and the demand for skilled workers, it said.

“The more complex the global environment, the more China will open its arms,” it said.

“Beijing will need to emphasize how select foreign talent can create, not take, local jobs,” said Michael Feller, chief strategist at consultancy Geopolitical Strategy. “But even Washington has shown that this is politically a hard argument to make, despite decades of evidence.”

China’s disadvantages even with the new visas

Recruitment and immigration specialists say foreign workers face various hurdles in China. One is the language barrier. The ruling Communist Party’s internet censorship, known as the “Great Firewall,” is another drawback.

A country of about 1.4 billion, China had only an estimated 711,000 foreign workers residing in the country as of 2023.

The U.S. still leads in research and has the advantage of using English widely. There’s also still a relatively clearer pathway to residency for many, said David Stepat, country director for Singapore at the consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates.

Nikhil Swaminathan, an Indian H1-B visa holder working for a U.S. non-profit organization after finishing graduate school there, is interested in China’s K-visa but skeptical. “I would’ve considered it. China’s a great place to work in tech, if not for the difficult relationship between India and China,” he said.

Given a choice, many jobseekers still are likely to aim for jobs in leading global companies outside China.

“The U.S. is probably more at risk of losing would-be H-1B applicants to other Western economies, including the UK and European Union, than to China,” said Feller at Geopolitical Strategy.

“The U.S. may be sabotaging itself, but it’s doing so from a far more competitive position in terms of its attractiveness to talent,” Feller said. “China will need to do far more than offer convenient visa pathways to attract the best.”

Ho-Him writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Fu Ting in Washington and researchers Yu Bing and Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

Undated video circulating on social media shows Russian troops moving through dense fog in Pokrovsk as Moscow steps up efforts to reinforce positions. Ukraine says around 300 Russian soldiers are in the town and are trying to push north to encircle the area.