politics

Feb. 1 (UPI) — The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza reopened on Sunday morning to limited traffic for the first time in more than two years.

Israeli officials announced that after a trial operation of the crossing it will officially reopen on Monday, first for people leaving Gaza for medical attention and then others will be permitted to leave and enter, a process that will include intense scrutiny of Palestinians who use the crossing, Al-Jazeera reported.

“The Rafah crossing has reopened for movement of people only,” the Israeli Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories said in a post on X. “The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow.”

Israel seized the Rafah crossing in May 2024 after officials alleged that Hamas had been using it to move terrorist operatives and materials in the area.

The seizure also made it more difficult to move supplies and aid into Gaza during Isarel’s war against Hamas after the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel.

Reopening the crossing was part of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas in October, but Israel had held off on reopening it until it all hostages taken by the terrorist group on Oct. 7 were returned — a process that was not completed until last week.

Israel has said the people leaving or entering Gaza would have to undergo intense screening about what they were doing and why, with 150 people permitted to leave and 50 permitted to enter, an Israeli security official told CNN.

Among those returning, Israeli officials said that Palestinians who left Gaza during the war will also be allowed to return home after they have undergone additional screening.

Although Israel had said that only people would be permitted to use the crossing, NBC News reported that trucks with humanitarian aid were photographed entering Gaza from Egypt’s side of the crossing.

Hospitals and ambulances on the Egyptian side of the crossing have been preparing to receive sick and injured Palestinians, who will be the first people given clearance to leave.

Reporting from Sacramento — Soda companies got a respite last week from battling local taxes on sugary beverages, after California lawmakers grudgingly passed a 12-year ban on cities and counties imposing the levies.

That reprieve might be short-lived.

Major healthcare groups announced Monday that they will pursue a statewide soda tax initiative on the 2020 ballot to pay for public health programs. And in another jab at the beverage industry, the initiative would enshrine in the California Constitution the right of local governments to impose soda taxes.

“Big Soda has been a major contributor to the alarming rise in obesity and diabetes,” said Dustin Corcoran, chief executive of the California Medical Assn., a principal backer of the initiative. “We need to address this crisis now, and this initiative gives voters a real opportunity to do that.”

The proposed 2-cents-per-fluid-ounce tax would mean an additional 24 cents tacked onto the cost of a 12-ounce can, or an extra $1.34 for a 2-liter bottle sold in the state.

The proposal sets the stage for a marquee statewide battle between health groups and the soda industry — a feud that has been simmering in California’s cities and counties for years and burst into full view in the state Capitol last week.

California bans local soda taxes »

With the battle lines forming for 2020, the soda industry has had little time to savor its recent victory.

The companies won a 12-year ban on local soda taxes from legislators in exchange for a promise from business groups to withdraw a ballot initiative that would have required cities and counties to get supermajority approval from voters to raise any new taxes. That initiative, which had qualified for the November ballot, panicked mayors and labor groups representing local government workers with the prospect of a higher vote threshold that could stymie efforts to collect new tax revenue for cities and counties.

Minutes after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill that contained the soda tax ban, proponents pulled their broader tax initiative from the ballot.

The eleventh-hour deal infuriated public health groups and a number of legislative Democrats, who likened the soda industry’s leverage play to “extortion.”

“We were disappointed that the American Beverage Assn., and their member companies, went to such great lengths to take away the right of Californians to vote for better health,” said Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Assn.

But the maneuver prodded the California medical and dental associations to respond. The initiative, according to proponents, would raise between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion in a statewide levy on soda and other sugary beverages, with money going toward programs to combat and prevent diabetes and obesity — both commonly linked to consumption of those drinks.

The tax would not apply to diet sodas, fruit and vegetable juices with no added sugar and drinks in which milk is the primary ingredient.

“Big Soda may have won a cynical short-term victory but, for the sake of our children’s health, we cannot and will not allow them to undermine California’s long-term commitment to healthcare and disease prevention,” Corcoran and Carrie Gordon, chief strategy officer of the California Dental Assn., said in a statement.

Brown of the American Heart Assn. said her group backs a statewide tax and efforts to roll back the local ban.

“We will be relentless in our work with communities across the state to improve public health through a statewide tax, and to restore the rights of Californians to vote for what they believe best supports health in their state,” she said.

The two organizations partnered with other public health groups, along with the Service Employees International Union, to successfully raise tobacco taxes by $2 per pack in 2016.

“Everyday grocery shoppers in California are struggling with affordability in the state — from housing to transportation to taxes. Rather than further driving up costs at the supermarket, we believe there is a better way for health advocates, government and California’s beverage companies to work together to help people reduce sugar consumption while at the same time protecting consumers’ pocketbooks and the small businesses that are so vital to our communities,” said William M. Dermody Jr., spokesman for the American Beverage Assn.

The soda industry has long fended off taxes at the state and local level. Berkeley became the first to pass a tax in November 2014 and since then, three other Bay Area cities — San Francisco, Oakland, and Albany — have imposed their own levies.

Until recently, the battle over a statewide soda tax had been fought — and won — by the industry in the Legislature. A recent legislative analysis counted proposals dating back to 1983 that had fizzled at some point during negotiations in Sacramento.

One recent effort was a 2013 bill by state Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) to impose a penny-per-ounce tax, half the size of the tax under the proposed initiative. Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) sought a 2 cent-per-ounce tax in two successive bills in 2015 and 2016; both measures failed to advance.

“These products are dangerous,” Monning said last week during Senate debate over the bill that now bans local soda taxes. “We label and tax tobacco because we know what it does. We should label and tax these products and let people have informed choice.”

Times staff writer John Myers contributed to this report.

Coverage of California politics »

melanie.mason@latimes.com

Follow @melmason on Twitter for the latest on California politics.

FORT WORTH — Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a reliably Republican state Senate district in Texas in Saturday’s special election, continuing a string of surprise victories for Democrats across the U.S. in the year since President Trump returned to the White House.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called it “a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas,” where the GOP controls every statewide office.

“Our voters cannot take anything for granted,” Patrick wrote on X, while noting low-turnout special elections are always unpredictable. “I know the energy and strength the Republican grassroots in Texas possess. We will come out fighting with a new resolve, and we will take this seat back in November.”

Rehmet, a labor union leader and veteran, easily defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist, in the Fort Worth-area district, which Trump had won by 17 points in 2024. With almost all votes counted, Rehmet was leading by more than 14 percentage points — a more than 30-point swing.

“This win goes to everyday working people,” Rehmet told supporters.

Rehmet’s victory added to Democrats’ record of overperforming in special elections so far this cycle, beginning in March — when they prevailed in a Pennsylvania legislative district made up of suburbanites and farmers that Democrats hadn’t held in a century — and continuing through November, when they dominated candidate and ballot contests from Maine to California. Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, was elected mayor of New York City, a Democratic stronghold that saw the highest voter turnout in a mayor’s race in 50 years.

The showings come as Trump’s approval ratings hover around or below 40%. A January AP-NORC poll found that a majority of U.S. adults disapprove of the way he’s handling foreign policy, trade negotiations and immigration, as well as the economy.

Democrats said Saturday’s results in Texas were further evidence that voters under the second Trump administration are motivated to reject GOP candidates and their policies.

Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder said Rehmet won by standing with working people and talking to Texans about the future.

“This win shows what is possible in Texas with strong organizing, great candidates and strategic investments,” he said in a statement. “People are noticing that Democrats have the workers’ backs and are delivering results.”

Democrats’ other recent state victories included wins for governor in Virginia and New Jersey and in special elections in Kentucky and Iowa. And, while Republican Matt Van Epps won a Tennessee special election for a U.S. House seat, the relatively slim margin of victory gave Democrats hope in the district for this fall’s midterms.

With that backdrop in mind, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have pushed states to redraw their political maps to Republicans’ advantage headed into those contests, which will determine partisan control in Washington. Some Democratic states — most notably California — have countered with their own redistricting efforts.

The Texas Senate seat was open because the four-term GOP incumbent, Kelly Hancock, resigned to take a statewide office. Hancock easily won election each time he ran for the office, and Republicans have held the seat for decades.

The district is redder than its home county, Tarrant. Trump won the county by 5 points in 2024, but Democrat Joe Biden carried it in 2020 by about 1,800 votes out of more than 834,000 cast.

Trump posted about the race on his social media platform earlier Saturday, urging voters to get out to support Wambsganss. He called her a successful entrepreneur and “an incredible supporter” of his “Make America Great Again” movement.

Rehmet had support from national organizations including VoteVets, a veterans group that said it spent $500,000 on ads. Rehmet, who served in the Air Force and works as a machinist, campaigned on lowering costs, supporting public education and protecting jobs.

Wambsganss warned her party not to be complacent.

“The Democrats were energized,” she said in a statement. “Too many Republicans stayed home.”

Rehmet’s victory allows him to serve until early January, and he will face Wambganss again in the November general election to try to keep the seat for a full four-year term. The Texas Legislature is not set to reconvene until 2027, and the GOP still will have a comfortable majority.

Hanna and Smyth write for the Associated Press.

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, who were detained by immigration officers in Minnesota and held at an ICE facility in Texas, have been released a day after judge’s order, which excoriated the Trump administration for its conduct in the case. They have returned to Minnesota, according to the office of Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro.

The two were detained in a Minneapolis suburb on Jan. 20. He and his father were taken to a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

Katherine Schneider, a spokesperson for Castro, a Democrat, confirmed that the two had arrived home. She said Castro picked them up from Dilley on Saturday night and escorted them home Sunday to Minnesota.

The Associated Press emailed the Department of Homeland Security for comment on the father and son’s release. There was no immediate response.

Images of the young boy wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack and surrounded by immigration officers drew outrage about the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minneapolis.

Neighbors and school officials say that federal immigration officers used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so that his mother would answer. The Department of Homeland Security has rejected that description. It said the father fled on foot and left the boy in a running vehicle in their driveway.

Castro wrote a letter to Liam while they were on the plane to Minnesota, in which he told the young boy he has “moved the world.”

“Your family, school and many strangers said prayers for you and offered whatever they could do to see you back home,” Castro wrote. A photo of the letter was posted on social media. “Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t your home. America became the most powerful, prosperous nation on earth because of immigrants not in spite of them.”

In a social media post, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) welcomed the boy back to Minnesota, saying that he “should be in school and with family — not in detention,” adding, “Now ICE needs to leave.”

SACRAMENTO — As massive federal cuts are upending the healthcare system in California, analysts and healthcare professionals are urging state lawmakers to soften the blow by creating new revenue streams and helping residents navigate through the newly-imposed red tape.

“It impacts not only uninsured but also Medicare and commercially insured patients who rely on the same system,” said Dolly Goel, a physician and chief officer for the Santa Clara Valley Healthcare Administration. “People will die.”

Goel was among more than a dozen speakers this week at a state Assembly Health Committee hearing held to collect input on how to address cuts enacted by a Republican-backed tax and spending bill signed last year by President Trump. The committee’s Republican members — Assemblymembers Phillip Chen of Yorba Linda, Natasha Johnson of Lake Elsinore, Joe Patterson of Rockin, and Kate Sanchez of Trabuco Canyon — did not attend.

The so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed by Republicans shifts federal funding away from safety-net programs and toward tax cuts and immigration enforcement. A recent report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises the state Legislature on budgetary issues, estimated this will reduce funding for healthcare by “tens of billions of dollars” in California and warned about 1.2 million people could lose coverage through Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program providing healthcare coverage to low-income Americans.

Congress allowed enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire, which is dramatically increasing the cost of privately-purchased health insurance. Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace, estimates hundreds of thousands of Californians will either be stripped of coverage or drop out due to increased cost.

Sandra Hernández, president of the California Health Care Foundation, said the federal legislation creates administrative hurdles, requiring Medicaid beneficiaries to meet new work or income requirements and to undergo the eligibility re-determination process every six months instead of annually.

“We are looking at a scenario where otherwise eligible working parents lose their coverage simply because they aren’t able to navigate a complex verification process in a timely way,” she said.

California should move aggressively to automate verification instead of putting the burden of proof on beneficiaries, Hernández said. She advised legislators to center new healthcare strategies around technology, like artificial intelligence and telehealth services, to improve efficiency and keep costs down.

“While the federal landscape has shifted, California has enormous power to mitigate the damage,” said Hernández. “California has had a long tradition of taking care of its own.”

Hannah Orbach-Mandel, an analyst with the California Budget and Policy Center, said legislators should establish new revenue sources.

“A common sense place to start is by eliminating corporate tax loopholes and ensuring that highly profitable corporations pay their fair share in state taxes,” she said, adding that California loses out on billions annually because of the “water’s edge” tax provision, which allows multinational corporations to exclude the income of their foreign subsidiaries from state taxation.

One proposal to raise money for state healthcare benefits already is raising controversy. Under the Billionaire Tax Act, Californians worth more than $1 billion would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total wealth. The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union behind the act, said the measure would raise much-needed money for healthcare, education and food assistance programs. It is opposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, among others.

During last week’s legislative hearing in Sacramento, other speakers stressed the importance of communicating clearly with the public, collaborating with nonprofits and county governments and bracing for an influx of hospital patients.

Those who lose health insurance will skip medications and primary care and subsequently get sicker and end up in the emergency room, explained Goel. She said this will strain hospital staff and lead to longer wait times and delayed care for all patients.

The federal cuts come at a time when California is struggling with its own budgetary woes. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the state will have an $18-billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year.

At the start of the hearing, Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda) criticized the federal government for leaving states in the lurch and prioritizing immigration enforcement over healthcare.

The Republican-led Congress and the president provided a staggering funding increase to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The agency’s annual budget has ballooned to $85 billion.

“The federal dollars which once supported healthcare for working families are now being funneled into mass deportation operations,” said Bonta, who chairs the committee. “Operations that resulted in tragic murders — this is where our healthcare funding is going.”

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gavin Newsom was in his element, moving and shaking amid the rich and powerful in Davos.

He scolded European leaders for supposedly cowering before President Trump.

He drew disparaging notice during a presidential rant and captured headlines after being blocked from delivering a high-profile speech, allegedly at the behest of the White House.

All the while, another governor and Democratic presidential prospect was mixing and mingling in the rarefied Swiss air — though you probably wouldn’t know it.

Flying far below the heat-seeking radar, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear leaned into the role of economic ambassador, focusing on job creation and other nutsy, boltsy stuff that doesn’t grab much notice in today’s performative political environment.

Like Newsom, Beshear is running-but-not-exactly-running for president. He didn’t set out to offer a stark contrast to California’s governor, the putative 2028 Democratic front-runner. But he’s doing so just the same.

Want someone who’ll match Trump insult for insult, over-the-top meme for over-the-top meme and howl whenever the president commits some new outrage? Look to Sacramento, not Frankfort.

“I think by the time we reach 2028, our Democratic voters are gonna be worn out,” Beshear said during a conversation in his state’s snowy capital. “They’re gonna be worn out by Trump, and they’re gonna be worn out by Democrats who respond to Trump like Trump. And they’re gonna want some stability in their lives.”

Every candidate enters a contest with a backstory and a record, which is condensed to a summary that serves as calling card, strategic foundation and a rationale for their run.

Here’s Andy Beshear’s: He’s the popular two-term governor of a red state that three times voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

He is fluent in the language of faith, well-liked by the kind of rural voters who have abandoned Democrats in droves and, at age 48, offers a fresh face and relative youth in a party that many voters have come to see as old and ossified.

The fact he’s from the South, where Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton emerged the last time Democrats experienced this kind of existential freak-out, also doesn’t hurt.

Beshear’s not-yet-candidacy, still in the fledgling phase, offers a mix of aspiration and admonition.

Democrats, he said, need to talk more like regular people. Addiction, not substance use disorder. Hunger, not food assistance.

And, he suggested, they need to focus more on things regular people care about: jobs, healthcare, public safety, public education. Things that aren’t theoretical or abstract but materially affect their daily lives, like the costs of electricity, car insurance and groceries.

“I think the most important thing we should have learned from 2024 is [Democratic voters are] gonna be looking for somebody that can help them pay that next bill,” Beshear said.

He was seated in the Old Governor’s Mansion, now a historic site and Beshear’s temporary office while the nearby Capitol undergoes a years-long renovation.

The red-brick residence, built in the Federal style and completed in 1798, was Beshear’s home from age 6 to 10 when his father, Steve, lived there while serving as lieutenant governor. (Steve Beshear went on to serve two terms as the state’s chief executive, building a brand and a brand name that helped Andy win his first public office, attorney general, in 2015.)

It was 9 degrees outside. Icicles hung from the eaves and snowplows navigated Frankfort’s narrow, winding streets after an unusually cold winter blast.

Inside, Beshear was seated before an unlit fireplace, legs crossed, shirt collar unbuttoned, looking like the pleasantly unassuming Dad in a store-bought picture frame.

He bragged a bit, touting Kentucky’s economic success under his watch. He spoke of his religiosity — his grandfather and great-grandfather were Baptist preachers — and talked at length about the optimism, a political rarity these days, that undergirds his vision for the country.

“I think the American people feel like the pendulum swung too far in the Biden administration. Now they feel it’s swung way too far during the Trump administration,” Beshear said. “What they want is for it to stop swinging.”

He went on. “Most people when they wake up aren’t thinking about politics. They’re thinking about their job, their next doctor’s appointment, the roads and bridges they drive, the school they drop their kids off at, and whether they feel safe in their community.

“And I think they desperately want someone that can move the country, not right or left ideologically, but actually forward in those areas. And that’s how I think we heal.”

Beshear doesn’t shy from his Democratic pedigree, or stray from much of the party’s orthodoxy.

Seeking reelection in 2023, he seized on the abortion issue and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade to batter and best his Republican opponent.

He’s walked the picket line with striking auto workers, signed an executive order making Juneteenth a state holiday and routinely vetoed anti-gay legislation, becoming the first Kentucky governor to attend an LGBTQ+ celebration in the Capitol Rotunda.

“Discrimination against our LGBTQ+ community is unacceptable,” he told an audience. “It holds us back and, in my Kentucky accent, it ain’t right.”

For all of that, Beshear doesn’t shrink from taking on Trump, which, essentially, has become a job requirement for any Democratic officeholder wishing to remain a Democratic officeholder.

After the president’s rambling Davos address, Beshear called Trump’s remarks “dangerous, disrespectful and unhinged.”

“From insulting our allies to telling struggling Americans that he’s fixed inflation and the economy is amazing, the President is hurting both our families’ financial security and our national security,” Beshear posted on social media. “Oh, and Greenland is so important he’s calling it Iceland.”

But Beshear hasn’t turned Trump-bashing into a 24/7 vocation, or a weight-lifting contest where the winner is the critic wielding the heaviest bludgeon.

“I stand up to him in the way that I think a Democratic governor of Kentucky should. When he’s doing things that hurt my state, I speak out,” Beshear said. “I filed 20 lawsuits, I think, and we’ve won almost all of them, bringing dollars they were trying to stop from flowing into Kentucky.

“But,” he added, “when he does something positive for Kentucky, I also say that too, because that’s what our people expect.”

Asked about the towel-snapping Newsom and his dedicated staff of Trump trollers, Beshear defended California’s governor — or, at least, passed on the chance to get in a dig.

“Gavin’s in a very different situation than I’m in. I mean, he has the president attacking him and his state just about every day,” Beshear said. “So I don’t want to be critical of an approach from somebody that’s in a very different spot.

“But the approach also has to be unique to you. For me, I bring people together. We’ve been able to do that in this state. That’s my approach. And in the end, I’ve gotta stay true to who I am.”

And when — or make that if — both Newsom and Beshear launch a formal bid for president, they’ll present Democratic voters a clear choice.

Not just between two differing personalities. Also two considerably different approaches to politics and winning back the White House.

How do you find the missing?

If you do find them, how can you help?

Oakland civil rights attorney James Cook has been on the ground in Minnesota for months figuring out answers to these question as he goes.

A fast-talking Minneapolis native who still lives in the Twin Cities part time, Cook is one of a handful of attorneys who have dropped everything to aid (for free) those caught up in the federal crackdown — protesters, immigrants and detained citizens — too many of whom have found themselves facing deportation, arrest or even been disappeared, at least for a time.

Civil rights attorney James Cook in the rear view mirror as he makes phone calls in his car in Minneapolis.

(Caroline Yang/For The Times)

“They are leaders that are on the ground really helping people through this process,” Minnesota school board member Chauntyll Allen told me.

She’s one of the protesters arrested inside a local church, charged with conspiracy to deprive others of their constitutional rights by Pam Bondi’s politicized Department of Justice, which also Friday arrested journalist Don Lemon for the same incident. Cook is one of the lawyers now representing Allen.

“It shows us that the judicial arm, or some of the judicial arm of our democracy, is willing to step up and ensure that our democracy stands strong,” Allen said of Cook and others like him.

While it’s the images of clashes in the streets that captivate media and audiences, it’s lawyers like Cook who are fighting an existential battle in the background to preserve the rule of law in a place where it is increasing opaque, to put it gently.

The legal work behind detentions has largely been an overlooked battlefield that will likely rage on years after ICE departs the streets, leaving in its wake hundreds if not thousands of long-and-winding court cases.

Beyond the personal fates they will determine, the outcome of the civil litigation Cook and others are spearheading will likely force whatever transparency and accountability can be pulled from these chaotic and troubling times.

It’s time-consuming and complicated work vital not just to people, but history.

Or, as Cook puts it, “I’ll be 10 years older when all this s— resolves.”

Federal agents stand guard against a growing wall of protesters on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, just hours after Alex Pretti was shot by federal agents.

(Caroline Yang/For The Times)

Cook told me this while on his way to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building where some detainees are being held, maybe. It’s hard to find out. A few years ago, when immigration enforcement in Minnesota ramped up under the first Trump term, activists tried to get the name of the building changed, arguing Whipple, the first Protestant Episcopal bishop in the state, had been an advocate of the marginalized and wouldn’t want his name associated with what the feds were up to.

It didn’t work, but the movement’s slogan, “What would Whipple do?” still has resonance in this town, where two American citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, have been fatally shot while protesting — incidents ugly enough that Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about them.

Cook is well aware that the guns carried by the federal agents are not for show, even without the Boss’ new ballad. Just a few days ago, one of the first times he drove his beat-up truck up to the gate, the federal guards at Whipple pointed their guns at him.

“I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m going to take my keys out of the ignition, drop them on the ground. So please don’t shoot,’” he said.

They lowered the guns, but Cook was scared, a feeling that doesn’t come easy.

Long before his law degree, when he was a punk-rock loving teen in the 1980s, fresh out of Southwest High, the public school not too far from Whipple, a former coach convinced him to give up college dreams and instead pursue a shot at making the first Muay Thai kickboxing team at the Olympics.

The martial art ended up not making it as an official Olympic sport, but the experience launched Cook into a professional boxing and kickboxing career that took him to competitions around the world, and taught him fear is not a reason to back down.

But, “Father Time is undefeated,” Cook said. “I got older and I started losing fights, and I was like, all right, time to get back to life.”

That eventually led him to obtaining a law degree in San Francisco, where after an intern stint as a public defender, he decided he wanted to be a trial attorney, fighting in court.

Civil rights attorney James Cook has been doing pro bono immigration work since the crackdown began in Minneapolis.

(Caroline Yang/For The Times)

He started cold-calling John Burris, another Bay Area lawyer who is an icon of civil rights and police misconduct cases. Burris, who has been called the “Godfather of Police Litigation,” was involved in the “Oakland Riders” case in 2000, when officers were discovered to have planted evidence. He also represented Rodney King, the family of Oscar Grant, and the family of Joseph Mann among many others.

But Burris, a boxing fan, didn’t respond to Cook’s calls until the young lawyer offered him free tickets to one of his fights, which he was still doing on the side.

“And then immediately I got a call back,” Cook said.

Burris said Cook’s history as a fighter intrigued him, but “I did say to James, you can’t be a fighter and lawyer. You can’t get punched in your head all the time.”

Cook did not take this advice.

Still, Burris said, “It was his persistence that I admired, because the type of work we’re involved in, you need people who are dedicated, who have some real commitment to the work, and he showed that kind of consistency and dedication.”

Cook’s been working with Burris more than 20 years now, but until recently, the labyrinth of the immigration system wasn’t his area of expertise. It’s been a crash course for him, he said, on the often arcane laws that govern who gets to stay in America and who doesn’t.

It’s also been a crash course on what a civil rights emergency looks like. Along with his work looking for locked-up immigrants, Cook spends a lot of time on the streets at protests, helping people understand their rights — and limitations — and seeing first hand what is happening.

“If you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany, now is the time,” he said. “Now is the time to do something. People are being interned.”

In the hours after Pretti was shot, Cook was at the location of the shooting, in the middle of the tear gas, offering legal help to anyone who needed it and bearing witness to conduct that will almost certainly face scrutiny one day, even if government leaders condone it now.

Law enforcement officers launch tear gas canisters as they work to push the crowd back and expand their perimeter in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.

(Caroline Yang/For The Times)

“The way the officers chase people down, protesters who were really just protesting lawfully and were beaten and pepper sprayed and gassed — all those are civil rights violations,” Burris said. “And so the law is the guardrails. So there has to be lawyers who are prepared to protect those guardrails and to stand as centurions, as I refer to us.”

Cook has tried to calm protesters, he told me, and prevent clashes. But people are mad, and resolute. His greatest fear is summer — when warm weather could bring even larger crowds if enforcement is still ongoing. He’s worried that the actions of the federal agents will spill over into anger at local cops enforcing local laws, leading to even more chaos.

“I’ve always supported cops as long as they do their job correctly,” Cook said.

For now, he’s taking it one day at a time, one case at a time, one name at a time.

Protesters raise an inverted American flag as law enforcement officers launch tear gas canisters in Minneapolis after Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents.

(Caroline Yang/For The Times)

Tuesday, Cook passed through the armed checkpoint at Whipple carrying a list of about seven people, folks who have been picked up by federal agents for one reason or another, or reasons unknown, and now cannot be located. They are not in the public online system that is meant to track detainees, and family and friends have not heard from them.

If he’s lucky, Cook will get information on one or two, that they are indeed inside, or maybe at a detention center in Texas, where many have been sent. But there will be more whose location remains unknown. He’ll make calls, fill out forms and come back tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that.

“This is what we do,” he said. “I’m always in it for the long run. I mean, you know, shoot, yeah, that’s kind of the way it works.”

ATLANTA — It is a goal spreading among anti-tax crusaders — eliminate all property taxes on homeowners.

Rising property values have inflated tax bills in many states, but ending all homeowner taxes would cost billions or even tens of billions in most states. It is unclear whether lawmakers can pull it off without harming schools and local governments that rely on the taxes to provide services.

Officials in North Dakota say they are on their way, using state oil money. Wednesday, Republicans in the Georgia House unveiled a complex effort to phase out homeowner property taxes by 2032. In Florida, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis says that is his goal, with lawmakers considering phasing out nonschool property taxes on homeowners over 10 years. And in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he wants to eliminate property taxes for schools.

Republicans are echoing those who say taxes, especially when the tax collector can seize a house for nonpayment, mean no one truly owns property.

“No one should ever face the loss of their home because they can’t pay rent to the government,” Georgia Republican House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington said Wednesday.

An election-year tax revolt

These audacious election-year efforts could be joined by ballot initiatives in Oklahoma and Ohio to eliminate all property taxes. Such initiatives were defeated in North Dakota in 2024 and failed to make the ballot in Nebraska that year, although organizers there are trying again. Another initiative in Michigan may also fail to make the ballot.

“We’re very much in this property tax revolt era, which is not unique, it’s not new. We’ve seen these revolts in the past,” said Manish Bhatt, vice president of state tax policy at the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that is generally skeptical of new taxes.

Previous backlashes led to laws like California’s Proposition 13, a 1978 initiative that limited property tax rates and how much local governments could increase property valuations for tax purposes.

The efforts are aimed at voters like Tim Hodnett, a 65-year-old retiree in suburban Atlanta’s Lawrenceville. Hodnett’s annual property tax bill rose from $2,000 to $3,000 between 2018 and 2024. He sees those figures starkly because he paid off his mortgage years ago, and he pays his taxes all at once instead of making monthly payments.

Hodnett said he is disabled and living on $30,000 a year. He is about to get a big property tax break, because seniors in Gwinnett County are exempt from school property taxes, about two-thirds of his bill. But he would love not to pay that other $1,000.

“It would be nice to be exempt from property taxes,” Hodnett said.

Will there be replacement revenue?

The question is whether local governments and K-12 schools should be expected to cut spending, or whether they will be allowed to make up revenue from some other source.

“I think the complete elimination of the property tax for homeowners is really going to be very difficult in most states and localities around the country, and undesirable in most places,” said Adam Langley of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a Massachusetts nonprofit that studies land use and taxation.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican, has been touring the state arguing that local governments are overspending, trying to show they don’t need the $19 billion in property taxes they collect from homeowners for whom the property is their primary residence. Local governments have been disputing those figures.

North Dakota is using earnings from the state’s $13.4-billion oil tax savings account to gradually wipe out homeowner property taxes. Last year, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature expanded its primary residence tax credit from $500 to $1,600 a year. Officials in December said the tax credit wiped out property taxes for 50,000 households last year and reduced bills for nearly 100,000 more. That cost $400 million in state subsidies for the 2025 and 2026 tax years.

“It works, and we know we can build on it to provide even more relief and get property taxes to zero for the vast majority of North Dakota homeowners,” Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong said.

The situation is murkier in Texas, which has been using state surplus funds to finance property tax reductions, and under the Georgia proposal, which calls for shifting taxes around.

A shift from property to sales taxes

Burns wants Georgia to wipe out $5.2 billion in homeowner property taxes — more than a quarter of the $19.9 billion in property taxes collected in 2024 — telling cities, counties and school districts to fall back on current or new sales taxes.

Not only will Burns’ plan need the Republican-led Senate to agree, but it will require Democratic support to meet the two-thirds hurdle for a state constitutional amendment and then voter approval in November.

While most property taxes go to schools, the majority of sales taxes don’t in some communities. It is unclear whether localities would redivide sales taxes. Also, local governments and schools would remain limited to a combined 5% sales tax rate, atop the state’s 4% rate. Some schools and governments might not be able to raise sales taxes enough to recover lost revenue.

Georgia would go from currently shielding $5,000 in home value from taxation to $150,000 in 2031 before abolishing most homeowner property taxes in 2032. The plan would limit yearly property tax revenue growth to 3% on other kinds of property.

Local governments would able to send homeowners a yearly bill for specified services such as garbage pickup, street lighting, stormwater control and fire protection, but lawmakers aren’t calling that a tax. Voters could also approve assessments for government or school improvements. Authors said they haven’t decided whether property owners could lose homes for unpaid assessments.

Burns also wants to spend about $1 billion to cut property tax bills in 2026, but it is unclear whether Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will agree. A spokesperson declined to comment.

Georgia previously tried to limit how much home values could rise for tax purposes, one common approach nationwide. But a majority of school districts and many other local governments have opted out. Georgia’s senators are still pursuing that approach, with a Senate committee on Wednesday voting to make the limit mandatory.

Amy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jack Dura in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this report.

Iran has announced that it now considers all European Union militaries to be ‘terrorist groups’. This follows the EU’s terror designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) over a deadly crackdown on protesters.

HOUSTON — Democrat Christian Menefee won a Texas U.S. House seat in a Saturday special election that will further narrow Republicans’ slim majority.

Menefee, the Harris County attorney, prevailed in a runoff against fellow Democrat Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member. He will replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor, who died in March 2025.

The seat representing the heavily Democratic Houston-based district has been vacant for nearly a year.

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t schedule the first round of voting until November. Menefee and Edwards were the top vote-getters in a 16-candidate, all-parties primary. They advanced to a runoff because no candidate won a majority of the vote.

Abbott argued that Houston officials needed the six months between Turner’s death and the first round of voting to prepare for the special election, but Democrats criticized the long wait as a move designed to give the GOP a slightly bigger cushion in the House for difficult votes. The 18th District is safely Democratic with minority residents making up most of the voters.

Menefee, 37, was endorsed by several prominent Texas Democrats including former presidential candidate and congressman Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Jasmine Crockett. He was joined Saturday by Crockett, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

“I”m looking to bring a fight to Washington, D.C., and I need your help to do it,” he said as he stood beside Crockett in a social media video.

Menefee ousted an incumbent in 2020 to become Harris County’s first Black county attorney, representing it in civil cases, and he has joined legal challenges of President Trump’s executive orders on immigration.

Edwards served four years on the Houston City Council starting in 2016. She ran for U.S. Senate in 2020 but finished fifth in a 12-person primary. She unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in the 2024 primary, and when Lee died that July, local Democrats narrowly nominated Turner over Edwards as Lee’s replacement.

Menefee finished ahead of Edwards in the primary, but Edwards picked up the endorsement of the third-place finisher, state Rep. Jolanda Jones, who said Edwards had skills “best suited to go against Trump.”

After Saturday, yet another election lies ahead in little over a month. Menefee and Edwards are on the ballot again on March 3, when they will face Democratic Rep. Al Green in another election — this one a Democratic primary in a newly drawn 18th Congressional District, for the full term that starts in 2027.

GOP lawmakers who control Texas state government drew a new map last summer for this year’s midterms, pushed by Trump to create five more winnable seats for Republicans to help preserve their majority.

Winter weather added to voters’ confusion, forcing local officials to cancel two days of advance voting this week, prompting civil rights group to go to court to win a two-day extension, into Thursday.

Hanna writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — Newly disclosed U.S. government files on Jeffrey Epstein have prompted the resignation of a top official in Slovakia and revived calls in Britain for former Prince Andrew to share what he knows with authorities about Epstein’s links to powerful individuals around the world.

The fallout comes a day after the Justice Department began releasing a massive trove of files that offers more details about Epstein’s interactions with the rich and famous after he served time for sex crimes in Florida.

The prime minister of Slovakia accepted the resignation Saturday of his national security advisor, Miroslav Lajcak, the country’s former foreign minister who once had a yearlong term as president of the U.N. General Assembly. Lajcak wasn’t accused of wrongdoing but left his position after photos and emails revealed he had met with Epstein in the years after the disgraced financier was released from jail.

The disclosures also have revived questions about whether longtime Epstein friend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, should cooperate with U.S. authorities investigating Epstein.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday suggested Mountbatten-Windsor should tell American investigators whatever he knows about Epstein’s activities. The former prince has so far ignored a request from members of the U.S. House Oversight Committee for a “transcribed interview” about his “long-standing friendship” with Epstein.

President Trump’s Justice Department said Friday it had released more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal the material it collected during two decades of investigations of Epstein, once a close friend of Trump.

The files, posted to the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein’s email correspondence with longtime Trump advisor and former White House aide Stephen K. Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and other prominent contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles, including billionaires Elon Musk — another former Trump advisor — and Bill Gates.

Other documents offered a window into various investigations, including ones that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and his accomplice and longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021, and an earlier inquiry that found evidence of Epstein abusing underage girls but never led to federal charges.

Slovakian official resigns

Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, said Saturday that he had accepted Lajcak’s resignation.

Lajcak hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, but emails showed that Epstein had invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.

The records also include a March 2018 email from Epstein’s office to former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler, inviting her to a get-together with Epstein, Lajcak and Bannon, the conservative activist who was Trump’s White House strategist in 2017.

Lajcak said his contacts with Epstein were part of his diplomatic duties. Pressure mounted for his ouster from opposition parties and a nationalist partner in Fico’s governing coalition.

Draft indictment detailed Epstein’s abuse

The FBI started investigating Epstein in July 2006 and agents expected him to be indicted in May 2007, according to the newly released records. A prosecutor wrote up a proposed indictment after multiple underage girls told police and the FBI that they had been paid to give Epstein sexualized massages.

The draft indicated prosecutors were preparing to charge not just Epstein but also three people who worked for him as personal assistants.

According to interview notes released Friday, an employee at Epstein’s Florida estate told the FBI in 2007 that Epstein once had him buy flowers and deliver them to a student at Royal Palm Beach High School to commemorate her performance in a school play.

The employee, whose name was blacked out, said some of his duties were fanning $100 bills on a table near Epstein’s bed, placing a gun between the mattresses in his bedroom and cleaning up after Epstein’s frequent massages with young girls, including disposing of used condoms.

Ultimately, the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alexander Acosta, signed off on a deal that let Epstein avoid federal prosecution. Epstein pleaded guilty instead to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18 and got an 18-month jail sentence. Acosta was Trump’s first Labor secretary in his first White House term.

Epstein offers to set Andrew up on a date

The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles, commented on his policies or gossiped about him and his family.

Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times, including in Epstein’s private emails. In a 2010 exchange, Epstein appeared to set him up for a date.

“I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with,” Epstein wrote.

Mountbatten-Windsor replied that he “would be delighted to see her.”

Epstein, whose emails often contain typographical errors, wrote later in the exchange: “She 26, russian, clevere beautiful, trustworthy and yes she has your email.”

Concerns over how Justice Department handled records

The Justice Department is facing criticism over how it handled the latest disclosure.

One group of Epstein accusers said in a statement that the new documents made it too easy to identify those he abused but not those who might have been involved in Epstein’s criminal activity.

“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy,” it said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, pressed the department to let lawmakers review unredacted versions of the files as soon as Sunday. He said in a statement that Congress must assess whether the redactions were lawful or improperly shielded people from scrutiny.

Department officials have acknowledged that many records in its files are duplicates, and it was clear from the documents that reviewers took different degrees of care or exercised different standards while blacking out names and other identifying information.

There were multiple documents where a name was left exposed in one copy but redacted in another.

Epstein’s ties to powerful on display

The released records reinforced that Epstein was, at least before he ran into legal trouble, friendly with Trump and former President Clinton. None of Epstein’s victims who have gone public has accused Trump or Clinton of wrongdoing. Both men said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.

Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being indicted.

In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of Epstein’s underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence. She was recently relocated to a less-restrictive lockup in Texas, which has drawn additional criticism of the Trump administration.

U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse. One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sued Mountbatten-Windsor, saying she had sexual encounters with him starting at age 17. The now-former prince denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

Giuffre died by suicide last year at age 41.

The Associated Press is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from Versant, CBS and NBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

Sisak, Kirka and Finley write for the Associated Press and reported from New York, London and Washington. AP journalists from around the country contributed to this report.

The talks come just a day before a second round of US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi.

United States special envoy Steve Witkoff has said he held “productive and constructive meetings” with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida, as President Donald Trump’s administration presses to end Russia’s nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

“We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine,” wrote Witkoff in a post on X following Saturday’s talks.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and White House adviser Josh Gruenbaum also attended the talks.

Neither side released details of what was discussed.

Dmitriev also met Witkoff and Kushner in January on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He also held talks on the Ukraine war with US negotiators in a visit to Miami in December.

Saturday’s meeting comes before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are expected to hold a second round of talks with US mediators in Abu Dhabi to discuss a US-backed plan to end Russia’s war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later appeared to suggest that the meeting would not take place on Sunday, saying in his nightly address that Ukraine was waiting for more information from the US about further peace talks and expected new meetings to take place next week.

A first US-mediated meeting was held in the United Arab Emirates’s capital last week, marking the first direct public negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv since the early weeks of the war.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week that he believes “we are getting close” to a deal to end the war.

Trump announced on Thursday that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had agreed to his request not to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week amid extreme cold weather, which he said was “very nice” of the Russian president.

The Kremlin confirmed on Friday that Putin had received the request, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling Sky News the Russian leader had “of course” agreed to the proposal.

Zelenskyy wrote on X that the issue of a ceasefire on energy infrastructure attacks had been discussed during last week’s talks, and that he expected the agreements to be implemented. “De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war,” he added.

On Friday, the Ukrainian leader said in his nightly address that neither Moscow nor Kyiv had conducted strikes ⁠on energy targets from Thursday night onwards.

Several sticking points over the US-backed plan to end the war remain, including Russia’s demand for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from about one-fifth of the Donetsk region, and the potential deployment of international peacekeepers in Ukraine after the war.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Saturday that he has instructed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to tell agents not to intervene in protests occurring in cities led by Democrats unless local authorities ask for federal help amid mounting criticism of his administration’s immigration crackdown.

On his social media site, Trump posted that “under no circumstances are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help.”

He provided no details on how his order would affect operations by Customs and Border Protection personnel or that of other federal agencies, but added: “We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.”

Trump said that, in addition to his instructions to Noem, he had directed “ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property.”

The Trump administration has already deployed the National Guard or federal law enforcement officials in a number of Democratic-led cities, including Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Ore. But Saturday’s order comes as opposition to such tactics has grown, particularly in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region.

Minnesota Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul have challenged a federal immigration enforcement surge in those cities, arguing that Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections.

A federal judge ruled Saturday that she won’t halt enforcement operations as the lawsuit proceeds. State and local officials had sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Justice Department lawyers have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”

The state, and particularly Minneapolis, has been on edge after federal officers fatally shot two people in the city: Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24. Thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the federal immigration presence in Minnesota and across the country.

Trump’s border advisor, Tom Homan, has suggested the administration could reduce the number of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota — but only if state and local officials “cooperate.” Trump sent Homan to Minneapolis following the killings of Good and Pretti, seeming to signal a willingness to ease tensions in Minnesota.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Ali Larijani says efforts to get a framework for negotiations are advancing, as a US naval deployment in the Gulf fuels concerns.

Iran’s top security official has said progress is being made towards negotiations with the United States, even as the Iranian foreign minister again accused Washington of raising tensions between the two countries.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said in a social media post on Saturday that, “unlike the artificial media war atmosphere, the formation of a structure for negotiations is progressing”.

Larijani’s post did not provide further details about the purported framework for talks.

Tensions have been rising between Iran and the US for weeks amid US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to attack the country over a crackdown on recent antigovernment protests, and his push to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme.

The Trump administration has also deployed a naval “armada” to Iran, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, escalating fears of a possible military confrontation.

Senior Iranian leaders have said they are open to negotiations with Washington, but only once Trump stops threatening to attack the country.

Earlier this week, Trump said the US vessels being sent to Iran were ready to use “violence, if necessary” if Iran refused to sit down for talks on its nuclear programme.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) also warned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Friday over its plans to hold a two-day naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, a Gulf maritime passage that is critical to global trade.

“Any unsafe and unprofessional behavior near US forces, regional partners or commercial vessels increases risks of collision, escalation, and destabilization,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi hit back on Saturday, saying in a social media post that the US military, operating off Iran’s shores, “is now attempting to dictate how our Powerful Armed Forces should conduct target practice on their own turf”.

“CENTCOM is also requesting ‘professionalism’ from a national military the U.S. Government has listed as a ‘terrorist organization’, all while recognizing the right of that same ‘terrorist organization’ to conduct military drills!” Araghchi wrote.

The US designated the IRGC, an elite branch of the Iranian military, as a “terrorist” organisation in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.

Araghchi added, “The presence of outside forces in our region has always caused the exact opposite of what is declared: promoting escalation instead of de-escalation”.

Reporting from the Iranian capital, Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the situation remains “quite fragile and delicate” amid the US military buildup in the region.

Still, he said that Saturday’s statement by Larijani, the Iranian security official, about progress being made on efforts to hold negotiations was a “positive” sign.

“Diplomatic [efforts] are [on]going,” Asadi said, noting that senior Iranian officials have held talks with allies in recent days amid a push to prevent a confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani met with Larajani in Tehran on Saturday to discuss “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”.

Sheikh Mohammed reiterated Qatar’s “support for all efforts aimed at reducing tensions and achieving peaceful solutions that enhance security and stability in the region”, the ministry said of the talks in a statement.

“He also stressed the need for concerted efforts to spare the peoples of the region the consequences of escalation and to continue coordination with brotherly and friendly countries to address differences through diplomatic means,” the statement added.

SAN ANTONIO — A 5-year-old boy and his father must be released by Tuesday from the Texas center where they’ve been held after being detained by immigration officers in Minnesota, a federal judge ordered Saturday in a ruling that harshly criticized the Trump administration’s approach to enforcement.

Images of Liam Conejo Ramos, with a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack being surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, have been a rallying point in the outcry over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. It also led to a protest at the Texas family detention center and a visit by two Democratic members of Congress.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, an appointee of President Clinton, said in his ruling that “the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

Biery had previously ruled that the boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, could not be removed from the U.S., at least for now.

In his order Saturday, Biery wrote: “Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence,” suggesting the Trump administration’s actions echo those that Thomas Jefferson enumerated as grievances against England.

Biery also included in his ruling a photo of Liam Conejo Ramos and references to two lines in the Bible: “Jesus said, ’Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,’” and “Jesus Wept.”

He’s not the only federal judge who has been tough on ICE recently. A Minnesota-based judge with a conservative pedigree said this week that ICE had disobeyed nearly 100 court orders in the last month.

Stephen Miller, the White House chief of staff for policy, has said there’s a target of 3,000 immigration arrests a day. It’s that figure that the judge seemed to describe as a “quota.”

Spokespersons from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Neighbors and school officials say that federal immigration officers in Minnesota used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so that his mother would answer. The Department of Homeland Security has called that description of events an “abject lie.” It said the father ran off and left the boy in a running vehicle in their driveway.

The government says the elder Arias entered the U.S. illegally in December 2024. The family’s lawyer says he has a pending asylum claim that allows him to remain in the country.

During a visit Wednesday to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, by U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett, the boy slept in the arms of his father, who said Liam was frequently tired and not eating well at the detention facility housing about 1,100 people, according to Castro.

Detained families report poor conditions including worms in food, fighting for clean water, and poor medical care at the detention center since its reopening last year. In December, a report filed by ICE acknowledged it held about 400 children longer than the recommended limit of 20 days.

The Coordination Framework said that selecting a PM is an internal constitutional matter and should take place without foreign interference.

Iraq’s main Shia alliance, which holds a parliamentary majority, has reiterated its support for reinstating Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister, despite United States President Donald Trump threatening to end US support to the country.

The Coordination Framework said in a statement on Saturday that it “reiterates its support for its nominee, Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, for the premiership.”

“Choosing the prime minister is an exclusively Iraqi constitutional matter … free from foreign interference.”

Earlier this week, Trump warned Iraq that if al-Maliki were chosen as Iraq’s next prime minister, then Washington would withdraw support, the latest in a growing list of interventions in the politics of other nations made by Trump or members of his administration.

Al-Maliki rejected Trump’s threat on Wednesday in a post on X, condemning the “blatant American interference in Iraq’s internal affairs” and insisting that he would not withdraw his candidacy for the top job.

Trump has been running a campaign to curb the influence of Iran-linked groups in Iraq, which has long walked a tightrope between its two closest allies, Washington and Tehran.

Al-Maliki, 75, is a senior figure in the Shia Islamic Dawa Party. His tenure as prime minister from 2006 to 2014 was a period marked by a power struggle with Sunni and Kurdish rivals, accusations of corruption and growing tension with the US.

He stepped down after ISIL (ISIS) seized large parts of the country in 2014, but has remained an influential political player, leading the State of Law coalition and maintaining close ties with Iran-backed factions.

The US wields key leverage over Iraq, as the country’s oil export revenue is largely held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York in an arrangement reached after the 2003 US invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

MINNEAPOLIS — Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents initially claimed Alberto Castañeda Mondragón had tried to flee while handcuffed and “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall,” according to court documents filed by a lawyer seeking his release.

But staff members at Hennepin County Medical Center determined that could not possibly account for the fractures and bleeding throughout the 31-year-old’s brain, said three nurses familiar with the case.

“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about,” said one of the nurses, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall.”

The explanation from ICE is an example of recent run-ins between immigration officers and healthcare workers that have contributed to mounting friction at Minneapolis hospitals. Workers at the Hennepin County facility say ICE officers have restrained patients in defiance of hospital rules and stayed at their sides for days. The agents have also lingered around the campus and pressed people for proof of citizenship.

Since the start of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, ICE officers have become such a fixture at the hospital that administrators issued new protocols for how employees should engage with them. Some employees complain that they have been intimidated to the point that they avoid crossing paths with agents while at work and use encrypted communications to guard against any electronic eavesdropping.

Similar operations have been carried out by federal agents in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities, where opponents have criticized what they say are overly aggressive tactics. It’s not clear how many people have required hospital care while in detention.

Injuries appeared inconsistent with ICE account

The AP interviewed a doctor and five nurses who work at Hennepin County Medical Center who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about Castañeda Mondragón’s case and conditions inside the hospital. The AP also consulted with an outside physician who affirmed his injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall or running into a wall.

ICE’s account of how he was hurt evolved during the time that federal officers were at his bedside. At least one ICE officer told caregivers that Castañeda Mondragón “got his [expletive] rocked” after his Jan. 8 arrest near a St. Paul shopping center, the court filings and a hospital staff member said. His arrest happened a day after the killing of Renee Nicole Good, the first of two fatal shootings in Minneapolis by immigration officers.

The situation reached a head when ICE insisted on using handcuffs to shackle his ankles to the bed, prompting a heated encounter with hospital staff, according to the court records and the hospital employees familiar with the incident.

At the time, Castañeda Mondragón was so disoriented he did not know what year it was and could not recall how he was injured, one of the nurses said. ICE officers believed he was attempting to escape after he got up and took a few steps.

“We were basically trying to explain to ICE that this is how someone with a traumatic brain injury is — they’re impulsive,” the nurse said. “We didn’t think he was making a run for the door.”

Security responded to the scene, followed by the hospital’s chief executive and attorney, who huddled in a doctor’s office to discuss options for dealing with ICE, the nurse said.

“We eventually agreed with ICE that we would have a nursing assistant sit with the patient to prevent him from leaving,” the nurse said. “They agreed a little while later to take the shackles off.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Castañeda Mondragón’s injuries. A deportation officer skirted the issue in the court documents, saying that during the intake process at an ICE detention center, it was determined he “had a head injury that required emergency medical treatment.”

Gregorio Castañeda Mondragón said his older brother is from Veracruz, Mexico, and worked as a roofer. He has a 10-year-old daughter living in his hometown he helps support.

According to his lawyers, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón entered the U.S. in 2022 with valid immigration documents. Minnesota incorporation filings show he founded a company called Castañeda Construction the following year with an address listed in St. Paul.

He appears to have no criminal record. His lawyers told a court that Castañeda Mondragón was racially profiled during the crackdown, and that officers determined only after his arrest that he had overstayed his visa.

“He was a brown-skinned, Latino Spanish speaker at a location immigration agents arbitrarily decided to target,” his lawyers wrote in a petition seeking his release from ICE custody.

Eight skull fractures

Castañeda Mondragón was initially taken to an ICE processing center at the edge of Minneapolis. Court records include an arrest warrant signed upon his arrival by an ICE officer, not an immigration judge.

About four hours after his arrest, he was taken to a hospital emergency room in suburban Edina with swelling and bruising around his right eye and bleeding. A CT scan revealed at least eight skull fractures and life-threatening hemorrhages in at least five areas of his brain, according to court documents. He was then transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center.

Castañeda Mondragón was alert and speaking, telling staff he was “dragged and mistreated by federal agents,” though his condition quickly deteriorated, the documents show.

The next week, a Jan. 16 court filing described his condition as minimally responsive and communicative, disoriented and heavily sedated.

AP shared the details of Castañeda Mondragón’s injuries with Dr. Lindsey C. Thomas, a board-certified forensic pathologist who worked as a medical examiner in Minnesota for more than 30 years. She agreed with the assessment of hospital staff.

“I am pretty sure a person could not get these kinds of extensive injuries from running into a wall,” Thomas said, adding that she would need to see the CT scans to make a more definitive finding.

“I almost think one doesn’t have to be a physician to conclude that a person can’t get skull fractures on both the right and left sides of their head and from front to back by running themselves into a wall,” she said.

ICE officers stay with hospitalized detainees for days

ICE officers have entered the hospital with seriously injured detainees and stayed at their bedside day after day, staffers said. The crackdown has been unsettling to hospital employees, who said ICE agents have been seen loitering on hospital grounds and asking patients and employees for proof of citizenship.

Hospital staff members said they were uncomfortable with the presence of armed agents they did not trust and who appeared to be untrained.

The nurses interviewed by AP said they felt intimidated by ICE’s presence in the critical care unit and had even been told to avoid a certain bathroom to minimize encounters with officers. They said staff members are using an encrypted messaging app to compare notes and share information out of fear that the government might be monitoring their communications.

The hospital reminded employees that ICE officers are not permitted to access patients or protected information without a warrant or court order.

“Patients under federal custody are first and foremost patients,” hospital officials wrote in a bulletin outlining new protocols. The hospital’s written policy also states that no shackles or other restraints should be used unless medically necessary.

“We have our policies, but ICE personnel as federal officers don’t necessarily comply with those, and that introduces tension,” said a doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment for the hospital.

Hospital spokeswoman Alisa Harris said ICE agents “have not entered our facilities looking for individuals.”

On Saturday, more than two weeks after Castañeda Mondragón was arrested, a U.S. District Court judge ordered him released from ICE custody.

“We are encouraged by the court’s order, which affirms that the rule of law applies to all people, in every corner of our country, including federal officers,” said Jeanette Boerner, director of Hennepin County Adult Representation Services, which filed the lawsuit on Castañeda Mondragón’s behalf.

To the surprise of some who treated him, Castañeda Mondragón was discharged from the hospital Tuesday. A hospital spokeswoman said she had no information about him.

The Justice Department filed court documents this week affirming Castañeda Mondragón is no longer in custody. Prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment on the man’s injuries.

Castañeda Mondragón has no family in Minnesota and co-workers have taken him in, the man’s brother said. He has significant memory loss and a long recovery ahead. He won’t be able to work for the foreseeable future, and his friends and family worry about paying for his care.

“He still doesn’t remember things that happened. I think [he remembers] 20% of the 100% he had,” said Gregorio Castañeda Mondragón, who lives in Mexico. “It’s sad that instead of having good memories of the United States, you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth about that country because they’re treating them like animals.”

Brook, Mustian and Biesecker write for the Associated Press and reported from Minneapolis, New York and Washington, respectively. AP reporters Steve Karnowski and Sarah Raza in Minneapolis; Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas; and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

Following United States forces’ abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a new set of questions is emerging as to how far Donald Trump is prepared to go in pushing US power abroad through direct intervention.

But is this a real break with past policy – or the latest iteration of the US’s longstanding interventionist power play in Latin America?

And with Cuba back in the administration’s sights, will Trump push for further action in the region?

This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive, Peter Kornbluh.

A judge in the United States has declined to order President Donald Trump’s administration to halt its immigration crackdown in Minnesota, amid mass protests over deadly shootings by federal agents in the US state.

US District Judge Kate Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Attorney General Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

She said state authorities made a strong showing that immigration agents’ tactics, including shootings and evidence of racial profiling, were having “profound and even heartbreaking consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans”.

But Menendez wrote in her ruling that, “ultimately, the Court finds that the balance of harms does not decisively favor an injunction”.

The lawsuit seeks to block or rein in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operation that sent thousands of immigration agents to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, sparking mass protests and leading to the killings of two US citizens by federal agents.

Tensions have soared since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good in her car on January 7.

Federal border agents also killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in the city on January 24, stoking more public anger and calls for accountability.

Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called “border czar”, told reporters earlier this week that the administration was working to make the immigration operation “safer, more efficient [and] by the book”.

But that has not stopped the demonstrations, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets of Minneapolis on Friday amid a nationwide strike to denounce the Trump administration’s crackdown.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from a memorial rally in Saint Paul on Saturday, city councillor Cheniqua Johnson said, “It feels more like the federal government is here to [lay] siege [to] Minnesota than to protect us.”

She said residents have said they are afraid to leave their homes to get groceries. “I’m receiving calls … from community members are struggling just to be able to do [everyday] things,” Johnson said.

“That’s why you’re seeing folks being willing to stand in Minnesota, in negative-degree weather, thousands of folks marching … in opposition to the injustice that we are seeing when law and order is not being upheld.”

Racial profiling accusations

In their lawsuit, Minnesota state and local officials have argued that the immigration crackdown amounts to retaliation after Washington’s initial attempts to withhold federal funding to try to force immigration cooperation failed.

They maintain that the surge has amounted to an unconstitutional drain on state and local resources, noting that schools and businesses have been shuttered in the wake of what local officials say are aggressive, poorly trained and armed federal officers.

Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, also has accused federal agents of racially profiling citizens, unlawfully detaining lawful residents for hours, and stoking fear with their heavy-handed tactics.

The Trump administration has said its operation is aimed at enforcing federal immigration laws as part of the president’s push to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history.

On Saturday, Menendez, the district court judge, said she was not making a final judgement on the state’s overall case in her decision not to issue a temporary restraining order, something that would follow arguments in court.

She also made no determination on whether the immigration crackdown in Minnesota had broken the law.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi called the judge’s decision a “HUGE” win for the Department of Justice.

“Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota,” she wrote on X.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he was disappointed by the ruling.

“This decision doesn’t change what people here have lived through — fear, disruption, and harm caused by a federal operation that never belonged in Minneapolis in the first place,” Frey said in a statement.

“This operation has not brought public safety. It’s brought the opposite and has detracted from the order we need for a working city. It’s an invasion, and it needs to stop.”

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge says she won’t halt the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota as a lawsuit over it proceeds.

Judge Katherine M. Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

It argued that the Department of Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections. The lawsuit sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”

The ruling on the injunction focused on the argument by Minnesota officials that the federal government is violating the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government’s powers to infringe on the sovereignty of states. In her ruling, the judge relied heavily on whether that argument was likely to ultimately succeed in court.

The federal government argued that the surge, which it calls Operation Metro Surge, is necessary in its effort to take criminal immigrants off the streets and because federal efforts have been hindered by state and local “sanctuary laws and policies.” State and local officials argued that the surge is political retaliation after the federal government’s initial attempts to withhold federal funding to try to force immigration cooperation failed.

“Because there is evidence supporting both sides’ arguments as to motivation and the relative merits of each side’s competing positions are unclear, the Court is reluctant to find that the likelihood-of-success factor weighs sufficiently in favor of granting a preliminary injunction,” the judge said in the ruling.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi lauded the ruling Saturday on social media, calling it “another HUGE” legal win for the Justice Department.

Federal officers have fatally shot two people on the streets of Minneapolis, Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.

WASHINGTON — President Trump moved quickly this week to negotiate with Democrats to avert a lengthy government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding, a sharp departure from last year’s record standoff, when he refused to budge for weeks.

Some Republicans are frustrated with the deal, raising the possibility of a prolonged shutdown fight when the House returns Monday to vote on the funding package. But Trump’s sway over the GOP remains considerable, and he has made his position clear at a moment of mounting political strain.

“The only thing that can slow our country down is another long and damaging government shutdown,” Trump wrote on social media late Thursday.

The urgency marked a clear shift from Trump’s posture during the 43-day shutdown late last year, when he publicly antagonized Democratic leaders and his team mocked them on social media. This time, with anger rising over shootings in Minneapolis and the GOP’s midterm messaging on tax cuts drowned out by controversy, Trump acted quickly to make a deal with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

“Trump and the Republicans know that this is an issue where they’re on the wrong side of the American people and it really matters,” Schumer told reporters Friday after Senate passage of the government funding deal.

Crisis after Minneapolis killings

Senators returned to work this week dealing with the fallout from the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal immigration officers, as well as the killing of Renee Good in the city weeks earlier.

Republicans were far from unified in their response. A few called for the firing of top administration officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, the White House chief of staff for policy. Most GOP senators tried to strike a balance, calling for a thorough investigation into Pretti’s killing while backing the hard-line immigration approach that is central to Trump’s presidency.

But many agreed that the shootings threatened public support for Trump’s immigration agenda.

“I’ve never seen a political party take its best issue and turn it into its worst issue in the period of time that it has happened in the last few weeks,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “Some things have to change.”

Democrats quickly coalesced around their key demands.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said there “was unanimity” around core principles of enforcing a code of conduct for immigration officers and agents, ending “roving patrols” for immigration enforcement actions and coordinating with local law enforcement on immigration arrests.

It helped that Trump himself was looking for ways to de-escalate in Minneapolis.

“The world has seen the videos of those horrible abuses by DHS and rogue operations catching up innocent people, and there’s a revulsion about it,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said.

“The White House is asking for a ladder off the ledge,” he added.

The painful politics of shutdown

Republicans are also trying to promote their accomplishments in office as they ready for the November midterms and the difficult task of retaining control of both chambers of Congress.

But the prospect of a prolonged shutdown shifted attention away from their $4.5-trillion tax and spending cuts law, the centerpiece of their agenda. Republicans had hoped the beginning of this year’s tax season on Monday would provide a political boost as voters begin to see larger tax refunds.

Republicans are also mindful of the political damage from last year’s shutdown, when they took a slightly larger portion of the blame from Americans than Democrats, according to polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“The shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” Trump told Republican senators at the White House in November.

On a practical level, this funding standoff threatened to destroy months of bipartisan work, including long hours over the holiday break, to craft the 12 spending bills that fund the government and many priorities back home.

“We saw what happened in the last government shutdown in regards to how it hurt real, hardworking Americans,” said Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “I don’t want that to happen again.”

A two-week funding battle begins

The agreement reached this week, if passed by the House, would avoid a prolonged shutdown and fund nearly every federal department through the end of the budget year in September. But it would not resolve one of the most difficult issues for Congress and the White House: Homeland Security funding.

Instead of a full-year deal, funding for the department was extended for just two weeks, giving lawmakers little time to bridge the deep divides over immigration enforcement.

Democrats are pressing for changes they say are necessary to prevent future abuses, including requiring immigration agents to wear body cameras, carry clear identification, end roving patrols in cities and coordinate more closely with local law enforcement when making arrests. Many Democrats also want tighter rules around warrants and accountability mechanisms for officers in the field.

Those demands have met stiff resistance from Republicans. Some are opposed to negotiating with Democrats at all.

“Republicans control the White House, Senate and House. Why are we giving an inch to Democrats?” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) wrote on social media.

Republican senators said they would take the fight to Democrats by introducing their own bills, including restrictions on “sanctuary cities,” to show their support for Trump’s policies. That term is generally applied to state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

“We’ve let the issue get away. We’re not leading. We’re trying to avoid losing rather than winning,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who held up the spending bills until Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) agreed to give him a vote on his sanctuary cities bill at a later date.

Thune acknowledged the difficulty of the next two weeks, saying that there are “some pretty significant views and feelings.”

“We’ll stay hopeful,” Thune told reporters about the upcoming fight. “But there are some pretty significant differences of opinion.”

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

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass did something this week that would have been unthinkable three years ago — she took an unprompted swipe at her counterparts in L.A. County.

Bass, while weighing in on L.A.’s so-called “mansion tax,” dinged the county for creating what she called a “bureaucratic” homelessness agency, saying it threatened to undermine the city’s progress on the crisis.

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath hit back hard, telling Bass on X that the county created the new agency because the existing one — which is partly overseen by Bass appointees — was incapable of tracking its spending.

“The County is fixing the problems you’ve ignored,” Horvath said.

Things have been bad between Bass and Horvath for more than a year, with the two Democrats taking veiled, and sometimes not-so-veiled, swipes at each other. But could they become adversaries in the truest sense of the word — as head-to-head rivals in this year’s mayoral election?

Horvath, who has spent months lining up endorsements for her own reelection campaign, has until Saturday to decide whether to enter the mayor’s race, challenging Bass’ bid for a second term. She told The Times she is seriously weighing a run — and “spending the weekend in deep reflection” with friends and family.

“From a young age, my faith has guided me through the most important moments of my life,” said Horvath, who is Catholic. “This is one of those moments.”

Bass, who is running in the June 2 primary for a second term, is already facing challenges from reality television star Spencer Pratt, former school superintendent Austin Beutner and community organizer Rae Huang, who has focused heavily on housing issues. Still, a Horvath bid would reshape the contest dramatically.

Beutner has not campaigned publicly since Jan. 5, one day before his 22-year-old daughter died of undetermined causes. Real estate developer Rick Caruso opted on Jan. 16 to stay out of the race, after sharply criticizing Bass for more than a year.

On paper, a Horvath mayoral bid looks somewhat risky. If she takes the plunge, she would no longer be permitted to seek reelection to her supervisorial seat, representing about 2 million people on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley. Bass has been raising money for more than a year and has locked up key endorsements, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

If she runs, Horvath would face questions about the county’s difficulties, including a $4-billion legal payout over sexual abuse that has been marred by fraud allegations and a screwup surrounding Measure G, the 2024 ballot measure that will expand the number of county supervisors but also is on track to inadvertently repeal a criminal justice reform measure.

On top of that, there’s the secret $2-million payout to the county’s top executive.

Horvath said she’s seen recent polling that makes clear that “there’s an appetite for change” among Angelenos. Community leaders, residents of her supervisorial district and “those longing for a better Los Angeles” have been asking her to run, she said.

“I am listening carefully and seriously both to those who are urging me to enter this race, and to those who are eager to continue the work we have begun together at the County,” she said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Bass campaign said he does not comment on prospective candidates. Pratt, for his part, said he’s rooting for Horvath to jump in so that “voters can see two career politicians calling each other out for the failed policies they both promoted.”

“Lindsey Horvath and Karen Bass are both responsible for the decline of our city, and the more they talk about each other, the more the public will see why we need a complete reset,” he said in a statement.

Even if Horvath doesn’t run, it looks like her relationship with the mayor will be rocky for the foreseeable future. The first-term supervisor has emerged as one of Bass’ most outspoken critics, highlighting an array of issues at City Hall.

Earlier this month, Horvath told The Times that she hears regularly from Angelenos who complain that they’re not getting basic services. She said that support within City Hall for Inside Safe, the mayor’s program to combat homelessness, is eroding.

Horvath has also taken aim at the city’s response to the Palisades fire, pointing out in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom that the Fire Department’s after-action report was watered down and then disavowed by its author. A day later, she told CBS2 that Bass was not being truthful about the county’s new homelessness agency.

Bass also has her own bully pulpit. On Friday, she stood outside federal court and railed against the indictment of independent journalist Don Lemon, calling it an “assault on our democracy.” Prosecutors have accused Lemon of violating federal law while reporting on a protest inside a Minnesota church.

The strained relations between Bass and Horvath are noteworthy given the mayor’s heavy focus on collaboration early on in her administration, when she triumphantly declared she was “locking arms” with a wide array of elected officials — including county supervisors — in the fight against homelessness.

Bass has attempted to stay above the fray, mostly avoiding direct conflict with other politicians — at least in public. But the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead, showed things weren’t always amiable behind the scenes.

Two weeks after the fires, Horvath and Bass were at odds over their joint public appearances, with Horvath complaining via text message that the mayor’s approach didn’t feel “very ‘locked arms.’”

Months later, Horvath and her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors voted to pull hundreds of millions of dollars from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, moving the money to the new county homelessness agency.

Horvath said the change was urgently needed in the wake of highly damaging reports about LAHSA’s financial oversight. Bass, in turn, warned the move would create a “monumental disruption” for the city’s effort to bring unhoused residents indoors.

Last month, Bass published an opinion piece in the Daily News criticizing the county, pointing out that its new homelessness agency was already proposing cuts to programs that have served the city’s unhoused population.

Bass echoed that criticism in a recent interview, saying the cuts were proposed a year after voters approved a half-cent sales tax to fund homeless services.

Those reductions, if enacted, would scale back the operations of A Pathway Home, the county’s counterpart to Inside Safe.

“We are going to do the best we can without a full partner in the county,” Bass said.

Horvath, for her part, said she wants to scale back A Pathway Home because it is too costly — and is not achieving the success that county officials want.

State of play

— BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: City Councilmember Nithya Raman fell short in her attempt to send voters a ballot proposal rewriting Measure ULA, the tax on property sales of $5.3 million and up. Councilmembers said they did not even want to discuss the idea until it had been vetted by her committee.

— PIT BULL PAYOUT: The city paid more than $3 million last year to a woman who adopted a dog from the South L.A. animal shelter, only to have it attack her two days later. She later found out the dog had bitten a grandmother’s face. The case is raising questions about the way some shelter dogs are promoted on Instagram and other platforms.

— HEADING TO TRIAL: After a weeklong hearing, a judge ruled on Wednesday that the criminal case against Councilmember Curren Price can proceed to trial. Price, who has been charged with embezzlement, perjury and violations of conflict-of-interest laws, is slated to leave office in December. His lawyer said he did not act with “wrongful intent.”

— CLEARING CASES: Los Angeles police solved more than two thirds of homicides citywide in 2025, in a year that ended with the fewest number of slayings in six decades, according to figures released Thursday.

— GIVING TO GIBSON DUNN: The council signed off on a $1.8-million increase to its legal contract with Gibson Dunn, which is representing the city in the seemingly endless L.A. Alliance case. The increase, which passed on a 9-4 vote, brings the contract to nearly $7.5 million.

— PAYOUT PAUSE: Los Angeles County will halt some payments from its $4-billion sex-abuse settlement, as prosecutors ramp up their probe into allegations of fraud.

— LAPD VS. PROTESTER: A tense exchange between an LAPD captain and one of the Police Department’s most outspoken critics has gone viral.

— BATTLING TRUMP, PART 1: President Trump signed an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without obtaining “unnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive” permits. The order, which is likely to be challenged by the city and state, was immediately derided by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said Trump should provide FEMA relief.

— BATTLING TRUMP, PART 2: Trump also vowed to fight the construction of new low-income housing in the Pacific Palisades burn area. L.A. officials say no projects are planned.

Quick hits

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to fight homelessness went to the area around Gage Avenue at St. Andrews Place, located in the South L.A. district represented by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
• On the docket next week: Bass delivers the first of her two State of the City speeches, which has been billed as a “unifying celebration of Los Angeles.”

Stay in touch

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