Politics

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is asking Congress to give it four additional months to complete the 2020 Census, blaming the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Census Bureau had previously halted its in-person outreach because of the virus’ spread, but it had maintained it would still be able to meet its legal obligation to present results to the president and Congress by Dec. 31.

In a conference call with members of Congress Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asked for legislation giving the bureau an additional 120 days to present the results.

Field operations, such as going door to door to collect information for those who did not respond to the census online or by mail, are now scheduled to resume June 1 and would last until Oct. 31, according to the bureau, which falls under the Commerce Department.

That means rather than have the data ready by Dec. 31, the bureau would need until April 30, 2021. Data used to redraw the country’s congressional district boundaries would be delivered to the states no later than July 31, 2021, rather than in March.

The existing deadlines are set in federal law, and it will take an act of Congress to move them.

President Trump on Monday said the bureau would need a “major delay” and questioned if 120 days was long enough. “Obviously they can’t be doing very much right now,” Trump said at a briefing on the coronavirus. “How can you possibly be knocking on doors for a long period of time now?”

The 2020 census was already unusually politically fraught after the administration attempted to include a question about citizenship on the form, a move that was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court. Critics said the effort was an attempt to suppress census response rates in blue states with large immigrant communities, like California.

Democrats said they would review the bureau’s request, but would also want to see detailed information supporting the need for a delay.

“The oversight committee will carefully examine the administration’s request, but we need more information that the administration has been unwilling to provide,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, in a statement. “The director of the Census Bureau was not even on today’s call, and the administration has refused for weeks to allow him to brief members of our committee, despite repeated requests.”

William Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution, said it makes practical sense to ask for a delay now, so Congress has time to consider it.

“It’s a fairly big deal to do this. But on the other hand, we’re in a fairly unusual situation,” Frey said.

For the first time this year, people can fill out the census online, and so far 48% of households have responded, according to the bureau. But millions of Americans don’t respond, prompting the need for a half million census workers to make in-person visits nationwide to ensure an accurate count.

But door-to-door canvassing is difficult to imagine at a time when governors in most states have ordered nonessential workers to stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus that has more than 500,000 positive U.S. cases already.

“People are pretty likely to be home, [so] it seems like a good opportunity to do the census. But it seems unlikely that people are going to feel safe doing that [door-knocking],” Menlo College Political Scientist Melissa Michelson said. “It’s another reminder that we are not living in normal times and a lot of things that would happen this year are not going to happen.”

There is some precedent to a delay. More than 100 years ago, the census director blamed the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, along with World War I and other things, for a five-month delay in delivering the results of the 1920 census.

The once-every-decade count of the country’s population is mandated by the Constitution and the results are used to redraw congressional districts so that each represents about the same number of people. A delay in the results could have a cascading effect, as they are also used to redraw state legislative districts, city council boundaries and even school board seats ahead of the 2022 election.

Michelson said a delay in providing the data to states would compress the time left to redraw those boundaries, and to litigate the court battles that occur in some states over whether the lines were fairly drawn, all before the 2022 primary elections begin.

The decision could have a pronounced impact on California, where a 14-member citizen’s redistricting commission will draw boundaries for congressional and legislative districts for just the second time since voters wrested the job from the California Legislature in 2008. By law, the panel — consisting of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters chosen through a lengthy public vetting process — must base its work on detailed census data.

In 2011, the citizens panel held extensive hearings across California seeking public input on how best to draw legislative and congressional districts with an eye toward fair representation. The commission’s final deliberations on the maps came in late July 2011.

But under the new proposed census schedule, that’s the month in 2021 that states would first receive the data. That delay could push the California commission’s work dangerously close to the 2022 election cycle and could potentially bleed into the time frame in which candidates file paperwork to run for those positions.

Times staff writer John Myers in Sacramento contributed to this report

Reporting from Washington — The FBI’s race to hack into the cellphone of slain San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was hindered by poor internal communication, but officials did not mislead Congress about their technological capabilities, according to an inspector general’s report released Tuesday.

After the December 2015 terror attack, the FBI waged a high-profile public fight to force Apple Inc. to unlock the iPhone, even going to court in a case that pitted national security against digital privacy.

The watchdog report opens a window into the shadowy units inside the FBI that try to hack into computers, and the internal tensions between technicians engaged in national security investigations and those working on criminal cases.

One official was unhappy after the bureau hired an outside technology company to help it unlock the phone, the report said, because that undercut the legal battle against Apple.

“Why did you do that for?” the report quotes the official as saying.

More than two years after the struggle over Farook’s phone, the FBI says the problem of encrypted devices is more difficult than ever. The method used to hack Farook’s iPhone 5c — which cost the FBI more than $1 million — quit working as soon as Apple updated the phones.

In 2017, the FBI was unable to access data on 7,775 devices seized in investigations, according to director Christopher Wray.

“This problem impacts our investigations across the board,” Wray said in January at a speech at a cybersecurity conference, calling it “an urgent public safety issue.”

On Dec. 2, 2015, Farook, a health department worker for San Bernardino County, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attacked a holiday party for Farook’s co-workers, killing 14 people and injuring many others. The couple was killed in a shootout with police.

The FBI, trying to figure out whether anyone else was involved in the plot, thought that Farook’s county government-issued cellphone might have the answer. In February, the bureau announced that its technicians were unable to get into the iPhone, which they feared had been set up with a security feature by Farook that would permanently destroy encrypted data after 10 unsuccessful login attempts.

The bureau asked Apple to write software that would disarm that security feature, allowing agents to keep trying codes until one worked, but the company refused. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, said such a backdoor could compromise security for Apple customers.

“[T]he U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create,” he said in a statement at the time.

The dispute ended up in federal court, as the government sought an order forcing Apple to comply.

Then-FBI Director James B. Comey, in testimony to Congress on Feb. 9 and March 1, 2016, said the bureau was unable to get into the phone without Apple’s help. Amy Hess, then the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the technology division, said the same thing in her testimony.

But inside the bureau, even though top officials had ordered a “full court press,” not everybody was working on the problem, the inspector general found.

The digital forensic experts at the bureau’s Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit had tried and failed to get into the phone. But the leader of another squad, the Remote Operations Unit, said he never learned about the issue until a staff meeting in February. He started contacting the unit’s stable of hackers to see whether anybody had a solution.

That supervisor said he believed he wasn’t asked for help sooner because the FBI had “a line in the sand” that blocked the unit’s classified hacking techniques from being used in domestic criminal cases.

“He said this dividing line between criminal and national security became part of the culture in [the technology division] and inhibited communication,” the report says. Other officials told the inspector general that no such line existed.

As it happened, the report found, one of the bureau’s hacking outfits had been working on cracking the iPhone for months and was close to a solution.

The FBI called off the court fight on March 28, saying it no longer needed Apple’s help.

The FBI eventually found that Farook’s phone had information only about work and revealed nothing about the plot.

After the outside vendor surfaced, the cryptographic unit chief “became frustrated that the case against Apple could no longer go forward,” the report says. Hess said the bureau had viewed the Farook phone as “the poster child case” that could help it win the larger political struggle to access encrypted devices.

The inspector general’s inquiry began after Hess reported concerns about the internal conflicts and said she was worried that FBI staff had deliberately kept quiet about their capabilities and allowed Comey and her to give false testimony to Congress.

That wasn’t the case, the inspector general found, because the bureau hadn’t figured out how to crack the phone at the time of those hearings. Through a spokesman, Hess, now special agent in charge of the FBI’s Louisville office, declined to comment.

The FBI said it agreed with the recommendations in the report and said it is now setting up a new unit to consolidate resources and improve communication between people working on encryption issues. Communications problems also were addressed through “a change in leadership” of the units involved, the bureau said.

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President Trump has united the Latino vote … in its disdain for the policies of his second term.

A new study from the Pew Research Center found that a majority of U.S. Latino adults disapprove of the job Trump has done since returning to the White House earlier this year.

Ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids throughout the country and continued economic turmoil have led many Latinos to grow upset with the politician — whose 2024 campaign centered on carrying out the “largest deportation operation in American history” and fixing the nation’s fledgling economy.

Pew’s findings revealed that 70% of Latinos disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president. When it came to immigration, 65% disapproved of the current administration’s approach to the issue. Regarding the economy, 61% said Trump’s policies have made economic conditions worse.

However, party affiliation still played a significant role in how Latinos graded Trump’s performance. Overall, 81% of 2024 Latino Trump voters approved of his job so far — an impressive level of support, though it has notably dipped from 93% since the onset of his second term.

Among Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris, Trump had a 4% approval rating in February, which has since plummeted to 0%. His approval rating with 2024 Latino nonvoters moved from 42% down to 27%. As a whole, the president’s approval rating among all Latino groups has slumped from 42% at the beginning of the year to 27% this fall.

In the Pew study, Latino voters also expressed pessimism about their future in the U.S. Of those surveyed, 68% said the situation for U.S. Latinos is worse today than it was a year ago, 9% responded that it was better and 22% felt it was about the same. Harris voters overwhelming felt the situation is worsening for Latinos at 89%; 66% of nonvoters agreed with that assessment; and 31% of Trump voters felt Latinos were worse off now than last year.

A plurality of voters who went red in 2024 — 40% — felt the situation for Latinos in the U.S. was about the same year over year. Additionally, 28% of that voting bloc believed U.S. Latinos are better off now compared with 2024.

This data set lines up with a recent Axios/Ipsos poll conducted in partnership with Noticias Telemundo.

Of the more than 1,100 people surveyed, 65% said that it’s a “bad time” to be Latino or Hispanic in the U.S.; when the poll was conducted in March 2024, that figure stood at 40%. When broken down by party, 84% of Democrats said it was a bad time, compared with 68% of independents and 32% of Republicans.

At 78%, a majority of those polled by Pew felt that Trump’s policies have been more harmful than helpful to the Latino community. Harris voters were once again united against Trump with 97% agreeing that his policies have negatively affected their community. Nonvoters were in agreement with 78% feeling the Republican president’s policies have had adverse effects on Latinos.

Trump voters were split on the issue with 41% saying Trump’s policies have been helpful to Latinos, 34% believing they’ve been harmful and 22% responding that they’ve had no effect.

These findings seemingly muddle the narrative that Latinos nationwide have made a rightward turn politically in recent years.

In the 2024 presidential election, Trump garnered 48% of the Latino vote compared with Harris’ 51% share and significantly jumped past the 36% clip that he got in the 2020 presidential election. Initial 2024 exit polls actually underestimated Latinos’ Trump support, with the Republican candidate tracking at 46% of the Latino vote on election day.

Additionally, 47% of naturalized citizens of all ethnic backgrounds voted for Trump in 2024, compared with 38% in 2020. In that same voting bloc 51% voted for Harris in 2024, a notable drop from the 59% who voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Latino naturalized citizens recorded a 12% bump in voting for Trump, jumping from 39% in 2020 to 51% in 2024.

SACRAMENTO — Republican Gov. George Deukmejian announced Thursday night that he intends to veto Democrat-backed anti-apartheid legislation, placing in jeopardy final passage of major unrelated legislation designed to overhaul the state’s unitary tax system.

Deukmejian, saying he shared the Democrats’ “repugnance” for South Africa’s racial policies, proposed in a counteroffer to issue an executive order asking the directors of the state pension funds to review their investments in companies doing business in South Africa or with the government of South Africa.

The order would be patterned after the selective investment policy adopted last June by the University of California Board of Regents.

Brown Not Satisfied

This did not satisfy Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), a UC regent who believes that the university’s policy is not strong enough, and the anti-apartheid bill’s author, Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

“I got no comment,” Brown said angrily when approached by reporters.

Democrats displayed their anger at Deukmejian’s decision by voting to bottle up in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee the unitary tax repeal legislation favored by Deukmejian. This put in serious doubt the fate of the bill since the Legislature will adjourn for the year today.

Waters’ bill goes substantially beyond the UC policy, carrying both civil and criminal penalties. It would prohibit new investments of state pension funds, or surplus treasury dollars, in companies with South African connections.

Waters said, “Obviously the governor’s ideas about sanctions are very different from my own ideas.”

The Los Angeles legislator added: “I don’t think they’re tough enough. I don’t think they’ll send a clear message that the state of California is on record in opposition to apartheid.”

The Speaker earlier in the day Thursday told Assembly lawmakers he would not allow a floor vote on the unitary tax repeal bill until Deukmejian indicated he would sign anti-apartheid legislation.

The South Africa issue, in Brown’s words, was the only major sticking point blocking final passage of the tax legislation.

The Speaker seemed optimistic that the issue could be resolved until a late afternoon meeting between Deukmejian and Waters in the governor’s office, in which the governor told the legislator he will veto her bill.

Sullivan Principles

In his statement, Deukmejian said his policy would exempt from sanctions companies that subscribe to the so-called “Sullivan principles,” a code that requires equal opportunity practices in South Africa.

“If the pension boards adopt the same approach as the University of California, the state will have joined the growing chorus of voices protesting the repressive system of apartheid in South Africa,” Deukmejian said.

“Such a message would be sent in a clear and responsible manner consistent with the legal and moral obligations that exist to those who depend upon the sound investment of their pension funds,” he declared.

The Speaker had expressed optimism to reporters earlier in the day that Deukmejian’s remarks Wednesday to the national convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in Anaheim, indicated the governor might be more agreeable to imposing state sanctions against South Africa. In the speech, Deukmejian said that further U.S. government sanctions against the Pretoria regime may be necessary because of that nation’s denial of “basic human rights and liberties” to blacks.

The heavily lobbied unitary bill, carrying an estimated $258 million in tax breaks for some of the world’s largest corporations, involves a bitter struggle between foreign-based multinational corporations and U.S. corporations.

Foreign Pressure

Foreign firms, particularly the Japanese, have provided the strongest push to pass the legislation. It would overhaul the state’s controversial unitary tax system, freeing foreign firms from state regulations requiring that they pay a corporate tax based on worldwide business operations. They claim the tax is discouraging them from investments in California.

Domestic companies claim the bill would give their overseas competitors an economic advantage.

But Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel), sponsor of the bill in the Assembly, called the unitary system “a dark cloud over California’s future.” He added, “There are companies in France and Canada, in Great Britain and Japan who are boycotting California.”

Waters told reporters she was worried that corporations would use money from the tax break to invest in South Africa. Her bill would prohibit state investments in any companies that make new investments in South Africa.

“I think it’s very relevant to be able to say that if you get this tax break we are going to ensure that there are going to be no new investments in South Africa,” she said.

Alarmed that two-thirds of $330 million in contributions to California ballot measures in 2006 were in amounts of $1 million or more, a political watchdog group proposed Friday to limit contributions to $100,000, to level the playing field.

The limit on contributions is one of several changes proposed by the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based nonpartisan group.

Other proposed changes include extending the period for circulating petitions to qualify initiatives from 150 days to 365.

— Patrick McGreevy

The new plan comes amid stalled trade talks between Ottawa and Washington.

Canada will offer more support to help the steel and lumber industries deal with United States tariffs and create a domestic market, as well as ramp up protections for steel and lumber workers.

Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined the new plan on Wednesday in a news conference.

Ottawa will reduce the quota for steel imports from countries that do not have a free trade agreement with Canada to 20 percent from 50 percent of 2024 levels, Carney said.

Countries with a free trade agreement (FTA) with Canada will see their quotas cut to 75 percent from 100 percent of the 2024 level. This does not include the US and Mexico, which are bound by the United States-Canada-Mexico free trade deal.

Canada will also impose a global 25 percent tariff on targeted imported steel-derivative products, and incorporate border measures to combat steel dumping.

In July, Ottawa set a quota of steel imports at 50 percent of the 2024 level from non-FTA countries in a bid to stop the dumping of foreign steel into Canada.

The measures are being tightened to open up the domestic market for Canadian-produced steel, said a government official.

The steel industry contributes more than 4 billion Canadian dollars ($2.8bn) to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs more than 23,000 people directly. It is, however, one of the two sectors hit hardest by US President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on steel imports from Canada.

Trump has imposed 50 percent tariffs on steel, and softwood lumber, long subject to US tariffs, is currently taxed at 45 percent after the Trump administration’s hike last month.

Carney said the decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship between Canada and the US is now over.

“As a consequence, many of our strengths have become vulnerabilities. Last year, more than 75 percent of our exports went to the United States. Ninety percent of our lumber exports, 90 percent of our aluminium exports, and 90 percent of our steel exports, all bound for a single market,” Carney said.

Ottawa will work with railway companies to cut freight rates for the inter-provincial transfer of Canadian steel and lumber by 50 percent, beginning in early 2026.

“We will make it more affordable to transport Canadian steel and lumber across the country by cutting freight rates,” Carney said.

The government said it would also support the use of locally made steel and lumber in homebuilding, and financial aid for companies dealing with tariff-related impacts, such as on their workforce, liquidity crunch, and for restructuring operations.

Trump tensions

Trump cut off trade talks with Canada last month after the Ontario provincial government ran television advertisements in US markets that criticised Trump’s tariffs by citing a speech by former US President Ronald Reagan.

Carney said he would be in Washington for the final draw on December 5 for the FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament. He said he would speak to Trump then and said he spoke briefly to the president on Tuesday.

“We are ready to re-engage on those talks when the United States wants to re-engage,” Carney said.

Carney’s announcement comes even as there is increased pressure on US businesses reeling from Trump’s tariffs.

Deere & Co, the maker of John Deere tractors, said on Wednesday that it expects a bigger hit from tariffs in 2026. The company expects a pre-tax tariff hit of around $1.2bn in fiscal 2026, compared with nearly $600m in 2025.

In a fiery rebuttal to allegations he’d criminally misrepresented facts in his mortgage documents, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Tuesday — accusing him of criminally misusing government databases to baselessly target President Trump’s political opponents.

“Pulte has abused his position by scouring databases at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — two government-sponsored enterprises — for the private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats,” attorneys for Swalwell wrote in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. “He then used those records to concoct fanciful allegations of mortgage fraud, which he referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”

They said Pulte launched his attack on Swalwell at a particularly inopportune time, just as Swalwell was launching his campaign for California governor.

Pulte’s attack, Swalwell’s attorneys wrote, “was not only a gross mischaracterization of reality” but “a gross abuse of power that violated the law,” infringing on Swalwell’s free speech rights to criticize the president without fear of reprisal, and violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which they said bars federal officials from “leveraging their access to citizens’ private information as a tool for harming their political opponents.”

Pulte, the FHFA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Pulte has previously defended his work probing mortgage documents of prominent Democrats, saying no one is above the law. His referrals have exclusively targeted Democrats, despite reporting on Republicans taking similar actions on their mortgages.

Swalwell’s lawsuit is the latest counterpunch to Pulte’s campaign, and part of mounting scrutiny over its unprecedented nature and unorthodox methods — not just from targets of his probes but from other investigators, too, according to one witness.

In addition to Swalwell, Pulte has referred mortgage fraud allegations to the Justice Department against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who have all denied wrongdoing and suggested the allegations amount to little more than political retribution.

James was criminally charged by an inexperienced, loyalist federal prosecutor specially appointed by Trump in Virginia, though a judge has since thrown out that case on the grounds that the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed. The judge also threw out a case against former FBI Director James Comey, another Trump opponent.

Cook’s attorneys slammed Pulte in a letter to the Justice Department, writing that his “decision to use the FHFA to selectively — and publicly — investigate and target the President’s designated political enemies gives rise to the unmistakable impression that he has been improperly coordinating with the White House to manufacture flimsy predicates to launch these probes.”

Schiff also has lambasted Trump and Pulte for their targeting of him and other Democrats, and cheered the tossing of the cases against James and Comey, calling it “a triumph of the rule of law.”

In recent days, federal prosecutors in Maryland — where Schiff’s case is being investigated — have also started asking questions about the actions of Pulte and other Trump officials, according to Christine Bish, a Sacramento-area real estate agent and Republican congressional candidate who was summoned to Maryland to answer questions in the matter last week.

Pulte has alleged that Schiff broke the law by claiming primary residence for mortgages in both Maryland and California. Schiff has said he never broke any law and was always forthcoming with his mortgage lenders.

Bish has been investigating Schiff’s mortgage records since 2020, and had repeatedly submitted documents about Schiff to the federal government — first to the Office of Congressional Ethics, then earlier this year to an FHFA tip line and to the FBI, she told The Times.

When Trump subsequently posted one of Schiff’s mortgage documents to his Truth Social platform, Bish said she believed it was one she had submitted to the FHFA and FBI, because it was highlighted exactly as she had highlighted it. Then, she saw she had missed a call from Pulte, and was later asked by Pulte’s staff to email Pulte “the full file” she had worked up on Schiff.

“They wanted to make sure that I had sent the whole file,” Bish said.

Bish said she was subsequently interviewed via Google Meet on Oct. 22 by someone from the FHFA inspector general’s office and an FBI agent. She then got a subpoena in the mail that she interpreted as requiring her to be in Maryland last week. There, she was interviewed again, for about an hour, by the same official from the inspector general’s office and another FBI agent, she said — and was surprised their questions seemed more focused on her communications with people in the federal government than on Schiff.

“They wanted to know if I had been talking to anybody else,” she said. “You know, what did I communicate? Who did I communicate with?”

Schiff’s office declined to comment. However, Schiff’s attorney has previously told Justice Department officials that there was “ample basis” for them to launch an investigation into Pulte and his campaign targeting Trump’s opponents, calling it a “highly irregular” and “sordid” effort.

The acting FHFA inspector general at the time Bish was first contacted, Joe Allen, has since been fired, which has also raised questions.

On Nov. 19, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) — the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — wrote a letter to Pulte denouncing his probes as politically motivated, questioning Allen’s dismissal and demanding documentation from Pulte, including any communications he has had with the White House.

Swalwell’s attorneys wrote in Tuesday’s lawsuit that he never claimed primary residence in both California and Washington, D.C., as alleged, and had not broken any laws.

They accused Pulte of orchestrating a coordinated effort to spread the allegations against Swalwell via a vast network of conservative influencers, which they said had “harmed [Swalwell’s] reputation at a critical juncture in his career: the very moment when he had planned to announce his campaign for Governor of California.”

They said the “widespread publication of information about the home where his wife and young children reside” had also “exposed him to heightened security risks and caused him significant anguish and distress.”

Swalwell said in a statement that Pulte has “combed through private records of political opponents” to “silence them,” which shouldn’t be allowed.

“There’s a reason the First Amendment — the freedom of speech — comes before all others,” he said.

Judges are reviewing the UK government’s decision to ban the activist group Palestine Action under counter-terror laws. Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego was at the court where police were arresting people for displaying pro-PA signs.

A high-ranking employee at the Department of Water and Power made staffers run personal errands for her, including purchasing tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert, according to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission’s director of enforcement.

Renette Anderson, who has worked as an executive assistant to the DWP’s general manager since 2002, asked subordinates to book a plane ticket for her personal travel, make physical therapy appointments for her, purchase party supplies for a non-work party at her home and make a service appointment at a Mercedes Benz dealership for her personal vehicle, wrote the enforcement director, Kenneth Hardy, in an accusation document dated Nov. 4.

Anderson’s requests to two DWP employees, Brian Johnson and Angenee Reygadas, were made during work hours in 2022 and 2023, and the employees used city resources to fulfill the requests, Hardy wrote.

On June 22, 2023, after the Snoop Dogg & Friends concert at the Hollywood Bowl was canceled, Anderson asked Johnson to request a refund, Hardy wrote.

Hardy accused Anderson of seven counts of misusing her city position to create a personal benefit for herself. If the parties do not come to an agreement, the Ethics Commission will hold a hearing and decide what penalties to impose. Each count comes with a potential $5,000 fine.

John Harris, an attorney for Anderson, did not respond to a request for comment.

Paola Adler, a spokesperson for the DWP, said the department cannot comment on personnel matters but that it takes accusations of unethical conduct seriously.

Anderson serves as director of Equal Employment Opportunity Services and reports directly to Chief People Officer Tracey Pierce. Anderson was appointed to her role by a previous general manager, not by Janisse Quiñones, who has been in the role since May 2024, the DWP said.

“She has been the primary voice on all matters related to Equal Employment Opportunity, workforce diversity, and the fair and equitable treatment of over 10,000 employees,” according to Anderson’s bio on the website of the Stovall Foundation, where she is a board member.

In less than five weeks, California voters will decide on Proposition 10, a ballot initiative that would allow cities and counties across the state to expand rent control.

Supporters of the measure say it will offer relief for tenants during a time of unprecedented housing affordability problems in California. Opponents contend it will stymie housing construction — the levels are already low — and further increase costs.

Here’s a rundown of some of the difficulties renters face and how Proposition 10 would affect them and broader affordability issues.

Just how dire is the situation for renters in California?

Very. Nine and a half million renters — more than half of California’s tenant population — are burdened by high rents, spending at least 30% of their income on housing costs, according to a recent analysis of U.S. census data by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.

Rents have jumped since the end of the last recession as many areas of the state have seen strong job growth but little housing production. In Los Angeles, the median one-bedroom rental is $2,370, according to real estate website Zillow — an increase of 43% over the last eight years. Similar rent hikes have hit San Francisco and the state as a whole.

Rents in California have far outpaced rents in the rest of the country. Nationwide, the median one-bedroom rent is $1,299, according to the Zillow data, increasing 25% over the same eight-year period.

High housing costs have left millions of Californians poor. Nearly 1 in 5 California residents lives in poverty when housing and other costs of living are considered, helping give the state the distinction of having the nation’s highest poverty rate.

As economic pressures on renters have increased, tenant activists have ramped up their promotion of rent control as a way to hold down costs.

Does rent control help with housing affordability?

Economists of different political stripes rarely agree on much. But there’s consensus, even among liberal economists, that rent control doesn’t help with housing affordability.

Economists generally believe that when government limits the price landlords can charge for housing, there will be fewer houses produced, which in turn drives up prices.

“When you have a price ceiling, it induces a shortage,” said Christopher Palmer, an MIT economist and coauthor of a study on rent control in Cambridge, Mass. “The common wisdom is that rent control reduces the quantity and quality of available housing.”

Instead of rent control, Palmer said, economic research contends the primary solution to housing affordability problems is to build lots more homes and have the new supply force prices down.

But what about California tenants who are struggling now?

By one estimate, developers in California need to build an average of about 320,000 new homes a year to address the state’s shortage and make a major dent in affordability problems — a rate roughly triple the current pace of construction. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said the state would need to increase subsidies by billions of dollars a year to finance enough low-income housing for those most in need.

But these goals will be very hard to achieve, and some researchers say rent control is necessary to protect tenants from the continued threat of rising prices. The UC Berkeley Haas Institute report contends that rent control is the only way cities and counties can keep costs down cheaply and immediately.

“This is really the one thing that can be implemented most quickly,” said Nicole Montojo, a coauthor of the report. “The building is not going to happen fast enough. It’s just not possible.”

Cities and counties can also tailor rent control rules to limit negative consequences for new construction and other potential downsides, said Manuel Pastor, a sociology professor at USC and author of a forthcoming review of existing rent control research.

“For the life of me, I can’t think why you would give up rent stabilization as a tool given the extent of the crisis,” Pastor said.

How would Proposition 10 work? And what is Costa-Hawkins?

Fifteen California cities have some form of rent control now. But local governments are hamstrung when it comes to implementing most new rent control policies because of a 1995 state law, the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

That law restricts city and county rent control efforts in three ways. Local governments are not allowed to:

• Implement rent control on single-family homes.
• Take away the right of landlords to charge what they want for apartments after a rent-controlled tenant moves out.
• Control rents on buildings constructed after 1995. The law also locked into place rules in cities with rent control when Costa-Hawkins passed. For instance, Los Angeles ties rent hikes to inflation on apartments built on or before Oct. 1, 1978, and is prohibited from applying its provisions to more recently constructed properties.

The 1995 law chilled cities’ and counties’ passage of new rent restrictions. In 2016, Mountain View and Richmond in the Bay Area became the first communities to implement new rent control rules in more than three decades.

Proposition 10 does not change existing rent control policies — it simply repeals Costa-Hawkins. So passage of the initiative would not, in most cases, immediately lead to new rent control rules. Instead, it would allow cities and counties to craft policies without restrictions.

Proposition 10 also would be hard to undo in the future. The initiative includes a provision that says any effort to implement statewide restrictions on rent control would have to be approved by California voters. The authors of Proposition 10 say they wrote the measure that way to prevent state lawmakers from undermining it. But the provision has faced criticism from those who contend any negative consequences from the measure would be very hard to fix.

How has rent control affected San Francisco?

Researchers at Stanford recently published a detailed examination of rent control’s effects in San Francisco, where the policy is restricted to apartments built on or before June 13, 1979.

Among the biggest beneficiaries: longtime tenants who would have been forced out of the city without renter protections. The study found rent control especially helped older and black and Latino tenants from being displaced.

Landlords who weren’t able to charge higher prices lost out. The study also found that landlords responded to rent control in San Francisco by converting their rental properties to owner-occupied condominiums, which decreased available apartments in the city and increased prices overall. The research contends that the system added to gentrification in San Francisco by increasing the number of older rental properties being made into units that were typically sold to wealthier residents.

“It may seem like a solution in the short run, but in the long run it really hurts renters and the rental market,” said Rebecca Diamond, an assistant professor of economics at Stanford and the study’s lead author.

Rent control supporters believe the study unfairly blamed the system for fueling gentrification and said the city could have worked to lessen some of the negative effects.

“Even though the costs they found are substantial, those costs could have been contained by the city of San Francisco having tighter controls on condominium conversions,” said Stephen Barton, a coauthor of the UC Berkeley Haas Institute study.

If Proposition 10 passes, what happens next?

Expect a lot of new local battles over rent control.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he wants to expand rent control in the city if Proposition 10 passes. And Berkeley voters will decide in November whether to bolster the city’s own rent control policies — the new rules would take effect at the same time as Proposition 10.

Fights at the city and county levels are likely to be long and contentious. Mountain View, which in 2016 passed a limited version of rent control that’s allowed under existing state law, has had a continuous struggle over rent control policies for the last three years with no end in sight.

Imagine this scenario if you can: A Democratic President nominates a liberal judge to the Supreme Court. This would-be justice then admits he or she had smoked marijuana while a student in college. Then all the conservative senators stand up and say, “Gee, we have no problem with that. We’re sure it was only a youthful indiscretion.”

WILLIAM CARROLL

North Hollywood

Reporting from Palm Desert — It was a cool and rainy day when elders of the Republican tribe recently gathered to honor one of their own.

The honoree, Stuart K. Spencer, was unmistakable in his white duck pants and a lime-green sport coat so bright it almost hurt to see. A reformed chain-smoker, he snapped merrily away on a wad of chewing gum.

The event marked Spencer’s 90th birthday, but the mood beneath the surface conviviality was unsettled and gray, like the clouds fringing the mountains outside.

If the occasion was intended as a personal celebration, it also had the feel of a wake for a time in politics long passed.

Spencer — savvy, irreverent, profane — spent decades as one of the most successful and admired consultants in the campaign business. The hundreds, both Democrat and Republican, who paid homage at a desert country club included the alumni of several past GOP administrations, in both Washington and Sacramento.

Along with former Vice President Dick Cheney and former California Gov. Pete Wilson, veterans of the Reagan years turned out in force. It was Spencer, more than anyone, who took a political long shot and washed-up B-movie actor and helped transform him into the Reagan of legend.

“This is the gang that could actually shoot straight,” said one longtime GOP operative, peering at the largely silver-haired assembly.

Inevitably, private conversation turned to the current occupant of the White House, a member, nominally, of the same political party as those Republicans present.

Feelings ranged from horror to perplexity. Not from jealousy; most of those in attendance had long ago held the reins of power and were comfortably settled in their memories. Rather, it was the startling dysfunction of the fledgling Trump administration.

Yes, said one veteran of the Reagan White House, there was infighting and jockeying early on then too, but not the public knife-fighting of competing Trump factions.

“We weren’t going on the Sunday TV shows to grandstand,” he said, requesting anonymity, still finding it uncomfortable to criticize a fellow Republican on the record. “We were nose to the grindstone, focused on policy” — which grew out of Ronald Reagan’s deep-seated philosophy, not the whims of a blustery, seemingly improvisational president.

When the time came for testimonials, there was plenty of impertinent humor and fond reminiscing: about midnight phone calls from Nancy Reagan, drinking North Carolina moonshine, and the time Spencer dropped an F-bomb in the Oval Office to advise President Ford to stick to the Rose Garden and not try to out-campaign Jimmy Carter.

“Stu called them as he saw them,” said former Gov. Wilson, dryly.

Jerry Lewis, not the comedian but a former congressman from the Inland Empire, offered one of several elegies.

Once among the most powerful members of Congress, he was known during 30-plus years representing Riverside and San Bernardino counties for a willingness to work across the partisan aisle, a facility — along with a desire to legislate and not just obstruct — that now seems almost quaint.

“I’d love to see us return to a time when people actually talked to each other,” Lewis said, to a ripple of applause.

Taking his turn at the microphone, Spencer was funny and poignant.

The thing he really likes about living a long life, he said, is that all of his enemies are now dead. Then he saluted some of them: liberals like Jesse Unruh, the legendary Assembly speaker, and Phillip Burton, the formidable San Francisco congressman, who fiercely battled Reagan and his policies. They were men of honor and principle, Spencer said, and he misses them.

His brand of Republicanism — support for legal abortion, certain gun controls and, most urgently, a need to reach out to voters who are not white or conservative — has grown largely out of fashion in the political party to which he devoted his life. He spent 70 years laboring on behalf of the GOP only to be called a RINO, or Republican In Name Only, Spencer said with wonder.

Among the behaviors he models is discretion — Spencer is one of the few insiders who didn’t cash in on his Reagan years — and an abiding respect for the political process and its practitioners. Though no fan of President Trump, he was measured in his critique.

“Today, half of America is holding its breath,” he said. “I’m one of them.”

He warned against lashing out in anger, or turning disappointment into hatred, even as he challenged some of Trump’s more preposterous claims, including the falsehood that he was victimized by millions of illegal votes cast for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“You need to win with class and lose with class,” Spencer said.

He took particular umbrage at those wrapping Trump — another political amateur who improbably made his way to the White House — in the Reagan mantle. The late president “had class and a totally different belief system,” Spencer said.

He wished Trump well. But, he said, “he is President Trump, not President Reagan.”

There was no audible dissent.

The program ended with a Sinatra impersonator singing a customized version of “My Way.” Then the guest of honor quietly slipped out the sliding glass doors, riding past Gerald Ford Drive as he made his way home.

[email protected]

@markzbarabak on Twitter

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LONDON — President Trump’s efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war closely mirrors the tactics he used to end two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas: bold terms that favor one side, deadlines for the combatants and vague outlines for what comes next. The details — enforcing the terms, guaranteeing security, who pays for rebuilding — matter less.

“You know what the deadline is to me? When it’s over.” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Tuesday.

The formula has worked so far in the tense Middle East, though its long-term viability remains in question. Trump got his moment to claim credit for “peace” in the region from the podium of the Israeli parliament. Even there, he made clear that next on his priority list was resolving the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

“Maybe we set out like a 20-point peace proposal, just like we did in Gaza,” U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told Yuri Ushakov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser in a phone call the day after Trump’s speech, on Oct. 14. A recording of that call leaked to Bloomberg News.

They did just that, issuing a 28-point plan heavily tilted toward Russia’s interests that set off alarms in Europe, which had not been consulted. Trump insisted Ukraine had until Nov. 27 — Thanksgiving in the U.S. — to accept it.

But by Tuesday, Trump had eased off the hard deadline. It seemed clear, even to Trump, that the Israel-Gaza model doesn’t fully apply in Russia and Ukraine as long as Putin refuses to be flattered, pushed or otherwise moved to take the first step of a ceasefire, as Israel and Hamas consented for different reasons on Oct. 9. Making the point, Putin launched waves of bombings on Ukraine Tuesday and Wednesday even as American negotiators renewed Trump’s push to end the war.

“I thought (a Russia-Ukraine deal) would have been an easier one, but I think we’re making progress,” Trump said during the annual White House turkey pardon to mark the Thanksgiving holiday. Hours later, he told reporters that the 28-point plan actually “was not a plan, just a concept.”

The president’s goal may not be a formal, long-lasting peace treaty, one expert said.

“Trump’s approach emphasizes the proclamation of a ceasefire, not its observance,” Mariia Zolkina, a political analyst at the Kyiv-based Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, wrote on Liga.net, a Ukrainian news outlet, adding: “Donald Trump is not interested in whether the ceasefire will be sustainable.”

Similarities to the tactics and style used in the Israel-Gaza talks

Fresh off the Gaza deal and coveting the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump named his next priority before he’d even left the Israeli Knesset.

“If you don’t mind, Steve, let’s focus on Russia first, All right?” Trump said, turning to Witkoff.

Where the Gaza ceasefire agreement had 20 points, the Russia-Ukraine proposal would start with 28 items and include more detail on who would pay for reconstruction. They envision “peace” boards headed by the president to lead and administer the aftermath. Both lack detail on incentives for complying and enforcement. And both depend on a ceasefire.

Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the Brussels-based European Policy Centre think tank, said the proposals for Gaza and Ukraine show a kind of “naivete by believing that by intervening at that level, by imposing your will on something like this, that you will reach some form of long-term conclusion.”

He said both proposals reflect Trump’s political and personal self-interest.

“In the end, the focus is solely on what Trump thinks he will get out of this in terms of reputation and money,” Zuleeg said.

Each Trump administration plan to end the wars heavily favor one side.

The Trump plan for Gaza leans to Israeli terms. It makes disarming Hamas a central condition for any progress in rebuilding the devastated territory. It also lays out no strict timetable for a full Israeli troop withdrawal, making it conditional on deployment of an international security force.

For Russia and Ukraine, Witkoff looked to open peace plan talks with terms skewing toward Russia. He quietly hosted Kirill Dmitriev, a close ally of Putin’s, for talks in south Florida to help launch the plan that opened talks in Geneva, according to a senior administration official and a U.S. official familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The White House insists that the plan was U.S.-authored with input from both the Ukrainians and Russians.

But that’s where the similarities end. The differences are buy-in — and Putin

The draft that was formally presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decidedly favored the Russians, with no European input. In contrast, the Gaza ceasefire talks got buy-in from Egypt, Qatari, Jordanian, Saudi and other regional powers.

The 28-point Russia-Ukraine plan called for Ukraine to give up land in the industrial Donbas region that the Russians currently don’t control and dramatically shrink the size of its military. It also effectively gave Russia oversight of both NATO and EU expansion. The draft has narrowed by a few points since it was first presented, and Trump is sending his envoys on a bit of shuttle diplomacy to “sell it,” as he said. He said Witkoff will visit Moscow next week — perhaps joined by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was also involved in the Gaza plan. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will meet with the Ukranians.

European leaders worried that Trump is leaving them out of high-level discussions and vulnerable to Russian aggression.

“He appears perfectly ready to sacrifice Ukraine’s security and Europe’s in the process,” Hannah Neumann, a German member of the European Parliament, said of Trump on Tuesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resisted Trump’s pressure to agree to a ceasefire, for a time. But Putin refuses to concede anything on Ukraine.

He’s appeared to be considering the matter, notably when Trump rolled out a red carpet for the Russian leader at a summer summit in Alaska — an old front line of the Cold War. Trump left without an agreement from Putin to end the bloodshed. The Russian leader walked off with long-sought recognition on the world stage.

To the horror of Ukraine and the vexation of Trump, Putin has stood firm.

As the envoys flew home from Geneva last week without any agreement, the White House scrambled to explain. One U.S. official argued that the 28-page plan, which calls on Ukraine to cede the Donbas region and bar Ukraine from joining NATO, represents considerable concessions from Putin because he would be agreeing to give up on his claim, once and for all, that all of Ukraine should be part of Russia.

Putin, the official noted, has long grumbled that the West doesn’t respect Russia’s position in the global world order. The official added that the Trump White House in its approach is not affirming Putin’s position but trying to reflect the Russian perspective is given its due in the emerging peace plan.

It’s not for the administration to judge Putin’s positions, the official said, but it does have “to understand them if we want to get to a deal.”

Kellman, McNeil and Madhani write for the Associated Press. McNeil reported from Brussels and Madhani from Washington. AP writer Lee Keath in Cairo contributed to this report.

British Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the latest budget on Wednesday, setting out sweeping tax hikes which are projected to raise 26.1 billion pounds ($34.4bn) for the public purse by 2030.

The budget had been highly anticipated as a “make or break” moment for the UK’s governing Labour party, which has grappled with poor polling over the past year. Earlier this year, an opinion poll by YouGov found that if an election were to be held now, the far-right Reform UK Party, which takes a hard line on immigration, would come to power.

In an embarrassing turn, the country’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published its economic outlook as a result of the budget on its website two hours before the announcement – something it never normally does until afterwards. Reeves called the blunder “deeply disappointing” and a “serious error”.

Reeves acknowledged that the tax rises – to be paid in large part by freezing existing income tax thresholds, meaning more people will pay higher tax as their incomes rise with inflation – would adversely affect working people. This breaks a key pledge Labour made in its manifesto before last year’s general election.

“We are asking everyone to make a contribution,” Reeves told parliament.

However, she said the tax rises would help pay for nearly 22 billion pounds ($28.9bn) in fiscal headroom within five years. Reeves also said government borrowing would fall each year. Borrowing in 2025-26 is expected to be 138.3bn pounds ($183bn), falling to 112.1 billion pounds ($148.3bn) the year after and to 67.2 billion pounds ($88.9bn) by 2031.

While the UK’s budget deficit is forecast at 28.8 billion pounds for the financial year 2026/2027, Reeves said this would move to surplus in 2028 and forecast a 24.6 billion pound ($32.55) surplus for 2030/2031.

That will pay for welfare spending and means there “will be no return to austerity measures”, Reeves said.

“I said there would be no return to austerity, and I meant it. This budget will maintain our investment in our economy and our National Health Service. I said I would cut the cost of living, and I meant it. This budget will bring down inflation and provide immediate relief for families. I said that I would cut debt and borrowing, and I meant it,” Reeves said.

Here are five key takeaways from this budget.

1. Labour broke its promise not to raise taxes for working people

Reeves raised taxes by about 40 billion pounds ($52.6bn) in last year’s budget – the biggest hike in revenue-raising measures in decades – in what she said would be a one-off needed to put the government’s finances on an even keel.

This time around, while she did not increase income tax or National Insurance Contributions for working people, she did extend a freeze on the income thresholds at which tax must be paid.

This means that more people will be dragged into higher tax brackets as their income rises with inflation. The move will pull 780,000 more people into paying basic-rate income tax for the first time by the 2029-2030 fiscal year along with 920,000 more higher-rate taxpayers and 4,000 additional-rate payers.

“This ‘fiscal drag’ means that hundreds of thousands will start paying income tax for the first time, and all existing taxpayers will face higher liabilities,” Irem Guceri, associate professor of economics and public policy at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, said.

The previous Conservative government had already frozen these thresholds until 2028. Reeves, who was highly critical of that action at the time – saying it hurt working people – now plans to extend that to 2031.

“I know that maintaining these thresholds is a decision that will affect working people,” she said. “I said that last year, and I won’t pretend otherwise now.”

“I can confirm that I will not be increasing National Insurance, the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax or VAT [value added tax]”, the chancellor added.

Reeves said she will also target wealthier people via a “mansion tax” on those who own property worth more than 2 million pounds ($2.65m) and is reducing the amount of tax relief some higher earners can obtain on pension contributions. She also announced a 2 percentage point increase in tax rates on rental income, dividends and capital gains.

Nigel Green, chief executive of the financial advice firm DeVere, said these moves will have wider “behavioural impacts”. “People make long-term decisions about where to work, where to build wealth and where to retire,” he said.

“When rules around pensions tighten sharply, it undermines confidence in the broader system. Wealth moves where governments show stability over decades, not sudden extractions,” he added.

Following the announcement, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative party, described Reeves decision to raise taxes, despite promising not to do so again, as “a total humiliation”.

2. Labour will spend money on welfare

One of the highly anticipated announcements of the budget was the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap from April 2026. Currently, parents can only claim special tax credits worth about 3,455 pounds ($4,571) per child for their first two children. The cap was imposed by the previous Conservative government. Reeves said this would lift thousands of children out of poverty.

“The removal of the two-child limit in child benefit is likely to provide significant support to families currently living in poverty,” Guceri said.

Experts said the move would appeal strongly to Labour Party backbenchers. “The two-child benefit cap is widely despised among rebellious Labour MPs as a major contributor to child poverty,” said Colm Murphy, senior lecturer in British politics at Queen Mary University, London. “Repeal was critical for Reeves to have any chance of political survival.”

Gregory Thwaites, research director at Resolution Foundation (RF), a British think tank that focuses on improving living standards, also said the move was a positive step towards reducing child poverty in the UK.

“That’s something that we’ve been campaigning for RF for some time, and we’re very pleased to see that. And then there are some welcome reforms to the tax system, as well. So, for example, charging the people who own very expensive properties a bit more money that will, that’s very welcome, as well,” Thwaites told Al Jazeera.

“Ultimately, budgetary responsibility should not just be seen in terms of fiscal balance but also measures of broader wellbeing,” said professor Jasper Kenter, professorial research fellow at Aberystwyth Business School. “Lifting the two-child benefit cap is important in this regard.”

GMB workers’ union General Secretary Gary Smith welcomed Reeves’s decision to tax wealth and to increase welfare spending, calling this budget the “final nail in the coffin for the Conservatives’ failed austerity project”.

“Key public services, essential national infrastructure, and communities across the UK suffered deep wounds because the Tories made the wrong economic choices – we must never go back to those dark days,” a statement from Smith read.

“The challenge for Labour is to grip the task of rebuilding our economy and country, lock in essential investment to create growth, and start bringing a bit of hope to people,” the statement added.

3. UK’s hated ‘rape clause’ will be scrapped

Reeves said she would scrap the so-called “rape clause”, which exempts women from the two-child benefit cap policy if they can prove their child was conceived non-consensually.

She described the exemption requirement as “vile, grotesque, dehumanising, cruel”.

“I’m proud to be Britain’s first female chancellor,” Reeves told parliament. “I take the responsibilities that come with that seriously. I will not tolerate the grotesque indignity to women of the rape clause any longer.”

4. Slower-than-expected economic growth forecast

In response to the budget, the OBR upgraded its forecast for economic growth for this year from 1 percent to 1.5 percent.

However, it downgraded economic growth for the following four years. GDP growth in 2026 is now expected to be 1.4 percent (down from 1.9 percent), while the OBR has downgraded its forecast for each of 2027, 2028 and 2029 to 1.5 percent (down from approximately 1.8 percent).

Much of the downgrade stems from lower expectations for productivity growth. Reeves insisted the sluggish outlook was the legacy of the previous Conservative government, however.

Reeves also announced a freeze on fuel duty and rail fares, as well as support with energy bills, causing the OBR to revise inflation down by 0.4 percentage points for next year, Guceri said. However, the OBR revised up its forecast for this year to 3.5 percent, “reflecting stronger real wage growth and persistent food price pressures”, she added.

5. The pound and financial markets responded positively

Sterling rose by 0.3 percent against the dollar to $1.3213 just in advance of the budget announcement, before settling back to roughly where it started by the end of it.

London’s blue-chip FTSE index and the FTSE 250 index rose by about 0.6 percent each in the wake of the budget.

“So far, markets showed little reaction to the Budget – something the Chancellor will view as a success,” Guceri said.

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys wants his constituents to know that white supremacy is not a plank in his platform, no matter what the World Wide Web suggests.

Levine and other politicians in California and across the nation have felt compelled in recent weeks to take political stands they normally would consider unnecessary — denouncing racism, bestiality and the conversion of women’s breast milk into cheese — because someone has registered Web sites in their names and directed the traffic to politically unpopular organizations.

Levine, a freshman Democrat, learned last week about the existence of a site called lloydlevine.com. Initially, the Internet address pointed to the National Assn. for the Advancement of White People, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a hate group founded by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. By Tuesday, lloydlevine.com had become a gateway to the Raelians, a religious organization that recently claimed to have cloned a human.

“I would hate for one of my constituents to enter my name into a search engine … and think I in any way condone any of the views espoused here,” Levine said. “My name is Lloyd Levine, and I ought to have full control of it.”

The Legislature’s lawyers are trying to determine whether lawmakers have that right.

Claiming responsibility for these cyber-shenanigans is Jeremy Stamper, who calls himself president of the Seattle-based Council on Political Accountability.

Stamper says he has registered Web domains in the names of more than 100 governors, members of Congress and state legislators from California, Florida, New York and nine other states.

Stamper’s group is selling the domains on EBay and invites political activists — not the politicians — to “use them to criticize, to sound off, to hold politicians accountable … use your imagination.” The EBay page for the sale promises that 25% of the proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society.

Stamper said his group launched the “act of protest” this month to “make a statement about racial politics in the United States.”

“Republicans and Democrats are both complicit in fostering an atmosphere of bigotry,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Times.

Besides, Stamper said, people in the public eye should know to protect their identity online.

“The fact that these politicians didn’t have the foresight to register their own domain names makes me wonder whether they’ll have the competence necessary to jump-start the economy and safeguard our future,” he said.

At $99, the asking price, Levine’s name is a steal compared with colleagues whose Web addresses are listed at $149. Domains for several U.S. representatives and senators are priced at $499. As of Tuesday afternoon, there had been no bids.

An EBay spokesman said any lawmaker feeling maligned can ask to have his name pulled off the auction block.

Speaking for the National Assn. for the Advancement of White People, Vice President Rich Faraone said the group does not condone the confusion Stamper has created.

“We would never do something like that,” he said. “We would never mislead people like that.”

It has been a whiplash-inducing month for the American rancher, one of United States President Donald Trump’s most steadfast voting blocs.

Starting with an October 19 quip from Trump that the US would increase beef imports from Argentina to the ensuing rancher backlash against the announcement of an investigation into the hyperconsolidated US meatpacking industry and the dropping of tariffs on Brazilian beef, ranchers have found themselves caught between the president’s desires to appease both them and the American consumer in the face of high beef prices.

US ranchers have enjoyed rising cattle prices, largely the result of the lowest herd numbers for beef cattle since the 1950s. Other factors constricting supply include the closure of the Mexican border to live cattle due to concerns over screwworm and steep tariffs on foreign beef.

Cattle prices paid to ranchers are separate from consumer beef prices, which, as of September, were $6.32 for a pound (453 grams) of ground beef, an 11 percent rise from September 2024 when they were $5.67 a pound. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release economic data, including the consumer price index for last month, because of the government shutdown.

Trump had no patience for the typically loyal ranchers objecting to his plan to import more Argentinian beef, which they saw as a threat to their recent economic gains.

“If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that,” Trump wrote in an October post on his Truth Social platform.

While Corbitt Wall, a commercial cattle manager and market analyst, is clear that he “totally supports Trump and everything he does”, he also saw hubris and a misunderstanding of the cattle industry by the president.

“There was not a person in the cattle business on any level that was not insulted by that post,” he told Al Jazeera.

Wall religiously follows prices across the cattle trade from ranch to slaughterhouse and has watched the futures market for cattle slide down by more than 15 percent since Trump’s October 21 announcement.

Futures prices dictate what ranchers can expect to sell cattle for down the line and sway current sale prices as well. For ranchers’ sake, Wall said he hopes Trump leaves the cattle market alone.

“He doesn’t live in this world, in this cattle world, and doesn’t realise the impact that a statement can make in our business,” Wall said.

Years of rough seasons

Oregon rancher David Packham said that while cattle prices have jumped in ranchers’ favour, many are still struggling in the face of years of rough seasons.

Years of drought across the country raised feed costs for all and pushed some ranchers to sell off cattle. Sticker prices on farm equipment from tractors to pick-up trucks have ballooned as well, especially on the back of supply chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, and are expected to rise further on account of Trump’s tariffs.

Packham said he has regularly sold cattle at a loss and doesn’t want consumers to think ranchers are living high off the hog.

“I’m looking at a 40-year-old tractor that I use on a daily basis just to keep putting off replacing it, making repairs, although it’s difficult to find parts for now, just to keep it limping along because I couldn’t afford $100,000 for a new tractor,” Packham said. “When I say we’re not really making a whole lot of money, it’s because we have all this loss carryover.”

Packham was a registered Republican until Trump’s first term. The president’s Argentina comments and the subsequent chaos for the cattle industry have propped open a door for ranchers critical of Trump, but they represent a minority within the community, he said.

“I’m noticing more and more of them [ranchers] that had been cautiously neutral, that are now kind of like me and just saying, ‘You know what? No. This is bulls***. He’s a train wreck,’” Packham said.

‘Perennial issue’

One action ranchers can support, however, is Trump’s November 7 announcement of a Department of Justice investigation into the big four US meatpackers – Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef – “for potential collusion, price fixing and price manipulation”.

Historically, ranchers looking to sell cattle have held little negotiating power as the four companies control more than 80 percent of the market.

However, a prior Department of Justice investigation into meatpacker price-fixing was started under the first Trump administration in 2020 due to a gulf created by falling cattle prices and rising consumer beef prices. The investigation continued under President Joe Biden’s administration but was never publicly concluded. According to Bloomberg News, the investigation was quietly closed with no findings just weeks before Trump announced the November antitrust probe.

James MacDonald, a research professor in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland, views the administration’s antitrust investigation announcement as “entirely for political consumption”.

“It is a perennial issue that p***es off ranchers, and you can gain some political ground by attacking the packers,” MacDonald said.

Packham would prefer the new investigation to come at a different time and said that given the squeeze from the tight cattle market, packers are operating under slimmer margins and not from a position of absolute power.

On Friday, Tyson announced the closure of a Nebraska beef-processing plant that employed more than 3,000 people. MacDonald called the decision a “shock” indicative of the depths of the US beef shortage. The current low cattle inventory in the US came from years of drought, which wiped out grazing lands and slowed herd rebuilding. Replenishing the cattle supply chain is a years-long process.

“That’s sort of a fact and a fundamental, and it’s not going to change for a while,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald also doesn’t believe the increased Argentina imports will ease this shortage or lower prices as the country largely sends lower-grade, lean beef to the US, accounting for only 2 percent of imports. He expected that while the reintroduction of largely lean Brazilian beef will impact the import market, it holds less weight on overall beef supply.

McDonald also cited heifer retention numbers, which indicate how many female cattle that ranchers hold back to produce future herds years down the line, which are still low.

Tyson likely factored in these numbers when making the decision to shutter its Nebraska plant, and it doesn’t seem like the industry is expecting herd numbers to rebound either, McDonald told Al Jazeera.

“It’s Tyson saying we don’t think cattle supplies are going to recover anytime soon,” MacDonald said.

While the actual mechanisms of Trump’s recent policies might not budge consumers’ bottom lines or change the cattle market for the time being, Wall is more concerned about the ripple effects from the news cycle, saying ranchers “live and die” by the cattle markets. While his faith is shaken, Wall regardless believes that ranchers, conservative as ever, will show up for Trump when election time comes around.

“You look at what the other side has to offer, and there’s no way people are going to go for that,” Wall said. “So in the long run, they’ll stick with him.”

WILLOWS — As hospital staff carted away medical equipment from abandoned patient rooms, Theresa McNabb, 74, roused herself and painstakingly applied make-up for the first time in weeks, finishing with a mauve lipstick that made her eyes pop.

“I feel a little anxiety,” McNabb said. She was still taking multiple intravenous antibiotics for the massive infection that had almost killed her, was unsteady on her feet and was unsure how she was going to manage shopping and cooking food for herself once she returned to her apartment after six weeks in the hospital.

But she couldn’t stay at Glenn Medical Center. It was closing.

The hospital — which for more than seven decades has treated residents of its small farm town about 75 miles north of Sacramento, along with countless victims of car crashes on nearby Interstate 5 and a surprising number of crop-duster pilots wounded in accidents — shut its doors on October 21.

McNabb was the last patient.

Registered nurse Ronald Loewen, 74, checks on one of the last few patients. Loewen, a resident of Glenn County and a former Mennonite school teacher, said the hospital closing is “a piece of our history gone.”

Nurses and other hospital workers gathered at her room to ceremonially push her wheelchair outside and into the doors of a medical transport van. Then they stood on the lawn, looking bereft.

They had all just lost their jobs. Their town had just lost one of its largest employers. And the residents — many of whom are poor— had lost their access to emergency medical care. What would happen to all of them now? Would local residents’ health grow worse? Would some of them die preventable deaths?

These are questions that elected officials and policymakers may soon be confronting in rural communities across California and the nation. Cuts to Medicaid funding and the Affordable Care Act are likely rolling down from Washington D.C. and hitting small hospitals already teetering at the brink of financial collapse. Even before these cuts hit, a 2022 study found that half of the hospitals in California were operating in the red. Already this fall: Palo Verde Hospital in Blythe filed for bankruptcy and Southern Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine sought emergency funds.

But things could get far worse: A June analysis released by four Democrats in the U.S. Senate found that many more hospitals in California could be at risk of closure in the face of federal healthcare cuts.

“It’s like the beginning of a tidal wave,” said Peggy Wheeler, vice president of policy of the California Hospital Association. “I’m concerned we will lose a number of rural hospitals, and then the whole system may be at risk.”

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1. Medical assistant Kylee Lutz, 26, right, hugs activities coordinator Rita Robledo on closing day. Lutz, who will continue to work in the clinic that remains open, said through tears, “It’s not going to be the same without you ladies.” 2. Rose Mary Wampler, 88, sees physician assistant Chris Pilaczynski at the clinic. Wampler, who lives alone across the street from Glenn Medical Center, said, “Old people can’t drive far away. I’m all by myself, I would just dial 9-1-1.”

Glenn Medical’s financing did not collapse because of the new federal cuts. Rather, the hospital was done in by a federal decision this year to strip the hospital’s “Critical Access” designation, which enabled it to receive increased federal reimbursement. The hospital, though it is the only one in Glenn County, is just 32 miles from the nearest neighboring hospital under a route mapped by federal officials — less than the 35 miles required under the law. Though that distance hasn’t changed, the federal government has now decided to enforce its rules.

Local elected officials and hospital administrators fought for months to convince the federal government to grant them an exception. Now, with the doors closed, policy experts and residents of Willows said they are terrified by the potential consequences.

“People are going to die,” predicted Glenn County Supervisor Monica Rossman. She said she feared that older people in her community without access to transportation will put off seeking care until it is too late, while people of all ages facing emergency situations won’t be able to get help in time.

Kellie Amaru, a licensed vocational nurse who has worked at Glenn Medical Center for four years, reacts after watching a co-worker leave after working their final shift at the hospital.

But even for people who don’t face a life or death consequence, the hospital’s closure is still a body blow, said Willows Vice Mayor Rick Thomas. He and others predicted many people will put off routine medical care, worsening their health. And then there’s the economic health of the town.

Willows, which sits just east of I-5 in the center of the Sacramento Valley, has a proud history stretching back nearly 150 years in a farm region that now grows rice, almonds and walnuts. About 6,000 people live in the town, which has an economic development webpage featuring images of a tractor, a duck and a pair of hunters standing in the tall grass.

“We’ve lost 150 jobs already from the hospital [closing],” Thomas said. “I’m very worried about what it means. A hospital is good for new business. And it’s been hard enough to attract new business to the town.”

Dismantling ‘a legacy of rural healthcare’

From the day it started taking patients on Nov. 21,1950, Glenn General Hospital (as it was then called) was celebrated not just for its role in bringing medical care to the little farm town, but also for its role in helping Willows grow and prosper.

“It was quite state-of-the-art back in 1950,” said Lauren Still, the hospital’s chief administrative officer.

When the hospital’s first baby was born a few days later — little Glenda May Nieheus clocked in at a robust 8 pounds, 11 ounces — the arrival was celebrated on the front page of the Willows Daily Journal.

But as a small hospital in a small town, the institution struggled almost immediately. Within a few years, according to a 1957 story in the local newspaper, the hospital was already grappling with the problem of nurses leaving in droves for higher-paying positions elsewhere. A story the following year revealed that hospital administrators were forcing a maintenance worker to step in as an ambulance driver on weekends — without the requisite chauffeur’s license — to save money.

In a sign of how small the town is, that driver was Still’s boyfriend’s grandfather.

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1. A customer walks into Willows Hardware store. 2. Cheerleaders perform during Willows High School’s Homecoming JV football game against Durham at Willows High School. 3. The press box at Willows High School’s football field is decorated with previous Northern Section CIF Championship wins.

Still, the institution endured, its grassy campus and low-slung wings perched proudly on the east end of town. Generations of the town’s babies were born there. As they grew up, they went into the emergency room for X-rays, stitches and treatment for fevers and infections. Their parents and grandparents convalesced there and sometimes died there, cared for by nurses who were part of the community.

“They saved my brother’s life. They saved my dad’s life,” said Keith Long, 34, who works at Red 88, an Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Willows that is a popular lunch spot for hospital staff.

Glenn Medical’s finances, however, often faltered. Experts in healthcare economics say rural hospitals like Glenn Medical generally have fewer patients than suburban and urban communities, and those patients tend to be older and sicker, meaning they are more expensive to treat. What’s more, a higher share of those patients are low-income and enrolled in Medi-Cal and Medicare, which generally has lower reimbursement rates than private insurance. Smaller hospitals also cannot take advantage of economies of scale the way bigger institutions can, nor can they bring the same muscle to negotiations for higher rates with private insurance companies.

Across California, in the first decades of the 20th century, rural hospitals were running out of money and closing their doors.

T-Ann Pearce, who has worked at Glenn Medical Center for six years, sits in the medical surgical unit during one of her last shifts with only a few remaining patients left to care.

In 2000, Glenn Medical went bankrupt, but was saved when it was awarded the “Critical Access” designation by the federal government that allowed it to receive higher reimbursement rates, Still said.

But by late 2017, the hospital was in trouble again.

A private for-profit company, American Advanced Management, swooped to the rescue of Glenn Medical and a nearby hospital in Colusa County, buying them and keeping them open. The Modesto-based company specializes in buying distressed rural hospitals and now operates 14 hospitals in California, Utah and Texas.

The hospital set about building back its staff and improving its reputation for patient care in the community, which had been tarnished in part by the 2013 death of a young mother and her unborn baby.

“We’ve been on an upswing,” Still said, noting that indicators of quality of care and patient satisfaction have risen dramatically in recent years.

Then came the letter from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. On April 23, the federal agency wrote Glenn Medical’s management company with bad news: A recent review had found that Glenn Medical was “in noncompliance” with “distance requirements.” In plain English, federal officials had looked at a map and determined that Glenn Medical was not 35 miles from the nearest hospital by so-called main roads as required by law — it was just 32. Nor was it 15 miles by secondary roads. The hospital was going to lose its Critical Access designation. The hit to the hospital’s budget would be about 40% of its $28 million in net revenue. It could not survive that cut.

At first, hospital officials said they weren’t too worried.

“We thought, there’s no way they’re going to close down hospitals” over a few miles of road, Still, the hospital’s chief executive, said.

Especially, Still said, because it appeared there were numerous California hospitals in the same pickle. A 2013 federal Inspector General Report found that a majority of the 1,300 Critical Access hospitals in the country do not meet the distance requirement. That includes dozens in California.

Still and other hospital officials flew to Washington D.C. to make their case, sure that when they explained that one of the so-called main roads that connects Glenn Medical to its nearest hospital wasn’t actually one at all, and often flooded in the winter, the problem would be solved. The route everyone actually used, she said, was 35.7 miles.

“No roads have changed. No facilities have moved,” administrators wrote to federal officials. “And yet this CMS decision now threatens to dismantle a legacy of rural health care stability.”

Without it, the administrator wrote, “lives will be lost for certain.”

But, Still said, their protestations fell on deaf ears.

In August came the final blow: Glenn Medical would lose its Critical Access funding by April 2026.

The news set off a panic not just in Glenn County but at hospitals around the state.

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1. A bicyclist passes by Glenn Medical Center. First opened to patients on November 21, 1950, the center was called Glenn General Hospital then. 2. A member of the staff signs a farewell board on closing day at Glenn Medical Center on October 21, 2025.

At least three other hospitals got letters from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid saying their Critical Access status was under review, Wheeler said: Bear Valley Community Hospital in Big Bear Lake, George L. Mee Memorial in Monterey County and Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital in Solvang. The hospitals in Monterey and Big Bear Lake provided data demonstrating they met the requirements for the status.

Cottage Hospital, however, did not, despite showing that access in and out of the area where the hospital is located was sometimes blocked by wildfires or rockslides.

Cottage Hospital officials did not respond to questions about what that might mean for their facility.

Asked about these situations, officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said the law does not give the agency flexibility to consider factors such as weather, for example, in designating a critical assess hospital. They added the hospital must demonstrate there is no driving route that would make it ineligible based on driving distances included in the statute.

Jeff Griffiths, a county supervisor in Inyo County who is also the president of the California Assn. of Counties, said he has been following the grim hospital financing news around the state with mounting worry.

The hospital in his county, Southern Inyo, came close to running out of money earlier this year, he said, and with more federal cuts looming, “I don’t know how you can expect these hospitals to survive.”

“It’s terrifying for our area,” Griffiths said, noting that Inyo County, which sits on the eastern side of the Sierra, has no easy access to any medical care on the other side of the giant mountain peaks.

‘This is the final call’

In Willows, once word got out that the hospital would lose its funding, nurses began looking for new jobs.

By late summer, so many people had left that administrators realized they had no choice but to shutter the emergency room, which closed Sept. 30.

Helena Griffith, 62, one of the last patients, waves goodbye as patient transport Jolene Guerra pushes her wheelchair down the hallway on October 20, 2025.

Through it all, McNabb, the 74-year-old patient receiving intravenous antibiotics, remained in her bed, getting to know the nurses who buzzed around her.

She became aware that when they weren’t caring for her, many of them were trying to figure out what they would do with their lives once they lost their jobs.

On the hospital’s last day, nurse Amanda Shelton gifted McNabb a new sweater to wear home.

When McNabb gushed over the sweetness of the gesture, Shelton teared up. “It’s not every day that it will be the last patient I’ll ever have,” she told her.

As McNabb continued to gather her things, Shelton retreated to the hospital’s recreation room, where patients used to gather for games or conversation.

With all the patients save McNabb gone, Shelton and some other hospital staff took up a game of dominoes, the trash talk of the game peppered with bittersweet remembrances of their time working in the creaky old building.

Registered nurse Ronald Loewen, 74, looks out the window on closing day at Glenn Medical Center on October 21, 2025. Loewen, who grew up and attended school in Willows, had four children delivered at Glenn Medical, two of them survived, and took care of former classmates at this hospital, says the hospital closing is, “a piece of our history gone.”

Shelton said she is not sure what is next for her. She loved Glenn Medical, she said, because of its community feel. Many people came for long stays or were frequent patients, and the staff was able to get to know them — and to feel like they were healing them.

“You got to know people. You got to know their family, or if they didn’t have any family,” you knew that too, she said. She added that in many hospitals, being a nurse can feel like being an extension of a computer. But at Glenn Medical, she said, “you actually got to look in someone’s eyes.”

The building itself was in dire shape, she noted. Nothing was up to modern code. It didn’t have central air conditioning, and it was heated by an old-fashioned boiler. “I mean, I have never even heard of a boiler room” before coming to work there, she said.

And yet within the walls, she said, “It’s community.”

Bradley Ford, the emergency room manager, said he felt the same way and was determined to pay tribute to all the people who had made it so.

At 7 p.m. on the emergency room’s last night of service, Ford picked up his microphone and beamed his voice out to the hospital and to all the ambulances, fire trucks and others tuned to the signal.

He had practiced his speech enough times that he thought he could get through it without crying — although during his rehearsals he had never yet managed it.

“This is the final call,” Ford said. “‘After 76 years of dedicated service, the doors are closing. Service is ending. On behalf of all the physicians, nurses and staff who have walked these halls, it is with heavy hearts that we mark the end of this chapter.”

Nurses and other staff members recorded a video of Ford making his announcement, and passed it among themselves, tearing up every time they listened to it.

In an interview after the hospital had closed, Ford said he was one of the lucky ones: He had found a new job.

It was close enough to his home in Willows that he could commute — although Ford said he wasn’t sure how long he would remain in his beloved little town without access to emergency medical care there.

Rose Mary Wampler, 88, waits to have blood drawn at the lab beside a cordoning off, signaling the closure of the hospital side of Glenn Medical Center, on October 22, 2025. Wampler lives alone across the street from the hospital.

Rose Mary Wampler, 88, has lived in Willows since 1954 and now resides in a little house across the street from the hospital. Her three children were born at Glenn Medical, and Wampler herself was a patient there for two months last year, when she was stricken with pneumonia and internal bleeding. She said she was fearful of the idea of driving more than 30 miles for healthcare elsewhere.

She looked out her window on a recent afternoon at the now-shuttered hospital.

“It looks like somebody just shut off the whole city, there’s nowhere to go get help,” she said.

Glenn Medical Center patient Richard Putnam, 86, closes the window in his hospital room. A month shy of it’s 75th year, the hospital closed on Oct 21, 2025.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Times photographer Christina House contributed to this report.

The Los Angeles Fire Department is requesting a budget of more than $1 billion for the coming year, arguing that the additional funding is necessary to be prepared for wildfires like the one that devastated Pacific Palisades in January.

The request, which represents a more than 15% increase over this year’s budget, includes money for 179 new firefighting recruits and a second crew dedicated to fighting wildfires, as well as helitanker services to battle fires from the air.

In the immediate aftermath of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, top LAFD officials blamed a lack of resources and extraordinarily high winds for their failures in combating the flames.

United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, the union that represents the city’s firefighters, has long argued that the department is severely underfunded and is pushing for a half-cent sales tax that, if approved by voters, would generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Fire Chief Jaime Moore, who was appointed to his post earlier this month, wrote in a memo to the Board of Fire Commissioners last Friday that “the proposed budget will reinforce and accelerate operational enhancements implemented following the devastating Palisades wind-driven vegetation fire in January 2025.”

Moore’s request is the first step in a lengthy process to hammer out a city budget that requires approval by the City Council and the mayor. This year, the city had to close a nearly $1-billion shortfall caused largely by rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy.

City department heads often request amounts far higher than they eventually receive. With the city still in a budget crunch, the outlook for the LAFD’s request is unclear.

“The budget process is in its early stages. Reforms must continue to be implemented at the department and Mayor Bass looks forward to working with Chief Moore to strengthen the city’s emergency preparedness,” said Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass.

Genethia Hudley Hayes, who heads the civilian Board of Fire Commissioners, said Tuesday that she had not yet seen the request but that she generally supports a 15% increase in the LAFD budget.

“We need it,” she said. “The smart thing would be to let the public know what you are going to do with that money.”

In the days leading up to Jan. 7, LAFD officials decided not to order firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift — which would have required paying them overtime — and staffed just a few of the more than 40 engines available to aid in battling wildfires, despite warnings of life-threatening winds, a Times investigation found.

Then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said that commanders had to be strategic with limited resources while continuing to handle regular 911 calls.

An LAFD after-action report released last month cited “financial constraints” as a factor in pre-deployment decisions.

The Times also found that an LAFD battalion chief ordered firefighters to leave the site of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, despite firefighters’ complaints that the ground was still smoldering. That fire later reignited into the Palisades fire.

Moore’s budget memo tied many of his requests to the Palisades fire.

The second wildland hand crew, which would include 32 positions for $2 million, would supplement a hand crew formed this year, after the Palisades fire. The crew’s 26 recruits, who are trained in wildfire fighting and management, establish fire lines to stop flames from spreading. Throughout the year, they do brush clearance around the city.

The helitanker lease, costing slightly less than $1 million, would support aerial attacks of flames that are difficult for crews on the ground to reach.

Moore’s budget request includes the reinstatement of the LAFD’s emergency incident technicians, who help coordinate responses to fires — positions that were cut in the last budget cycle. The after-action report described the LAFD’s disorganized response to the Palisades fire, citing major issues with staffing and communications.

In the fire’s aftermath, the LAFD’s budget was a subject of public debate, with some saying that Bass had reduced it. The 2024-25 budget actually increased slightly after firefighters received raises and the city invested in new firetrucks and other purchases. The budget increased again in 2025-2026.

Bass said she has committed additional resources to the Fire Department in each year she has been mayor.

The half-cent sales tax proposed by the firefighters union would go before city voters as a ballot measure next November.

By 2050, the sales tax would raise at least $9.8 billion, funding at least 30 new fire stations and new fire trucks, as well as adding 1,400 Fire Department employees, according Doug Coates, the acting president of UFLAC, and Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes Pacific Palisades.

As the Liberty Van rolled into the Home Depot, its driver slowed, lowered the window and waved at day laborers standing around the parking lot.

It had rained all morning and the overcast clouds trapped a chill in the air. Still, on a recent Friday, day laborers milled around even as it began to drizzle again. A pastor, a Navy veteran, an immigration lawyer and cameraman got out of the Liberty Van — camioneta de la libertad in Spanish — and greeted the day laborers while offering them water and snacks.

Since June in Los Angeles, federal immigration agents have destabilized daily life by raiding neighborhoods, worksites and Home Depots — popular gathering spots for day laborers who often lack U.S. citizenship. In turn, several “rapid-response” organizations have surged into action to aid those targeted in the raids, and document their treatment.

One of these organizations is the Save America Movement, which runs the Liberty Vans and includes a bipartisan leadership that is far more politically connected than that of many grassroots organizations. The group was founded by Steve Schmidt, a former top aide to Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and Mary Corcoran, a longtime public relations specialist, with a steering committee that includes law professors, pastors and strategists.

On this particular Friday, Fabian Núñez — a member of that steering committee who previously served as speaker of the California Assembly — was one of those who hopped out of the Liberty Van. He chatted with a day laborer who stopped by to grab a snack, and explained they were there to film any interactions with federal agents, as part of their national rapid-response effort.

The day laborer said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have previously detained other workers at the Panorama City Home Depot and have returned frequently. “Many times,” he said. “Five or six.”

Despite the repeated raids, the laborer said workers like himself have little choice but to keep showing up.

“They have to keep coming,” he said. “One has to pay the bills.”

The Save America Movement launched the vans first in L.A. and then in Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., where federal immigration agents were raiding heavily Latino areas. The motivation behind the project was to provide support and help people understand the impact of the daily immigration raids, Corcoran said in an interview. Outside California, she said, many people don’t get it.

“If they did, I believe there would be much more urgency around what’s happening,” she said.

The vans were inspired by the Liberty ships and Victory ships during World War ll that provided supplies and other relief to the U.S. and its allies.

The teams that run the vans document and record video, with the footage published online so the public can watch the enforcement actions and hear testimonies from affected local residents, she said.

For months, the Trump administration has argued that it is merely enforcing the law — and fulfilling a campaign promise — by detaining and deporting immigrants who lack documentation. But some enforcement actions by ICE and Border Patrol agents have resulted in U.S. citizens being detained. Others have been criticized for being unnecessarily violent and traumatizing.

Fabian Núñez, a Save America Movement steering committee member who previously served as speaker of the California Assembly, talks with a laborer who stopped by the Liberty Van for some snacks in the parking lot of a Panorama City Home Depot on Nov. 21, 2025.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

In Los Angeles, the Save America Movement first launched its vans in MacArthur Park in September, just two months after immigration agents on horses and armored vehicles descended on the area carrying rifles and tactical gear.

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez — whose district spans from Highland Park, Chinatown and south to Pico-Union — welcomed the group’s effort, which she described as a tool in a movement of resistance.

Alejandro Maciel, the L.A. bureau chief for the organization and a former Los Angeles Times journalist, takes the van out roughly five times a week, starting around 6 a.m. and wrapping up late into the afternoon. Maciel and volunteers drive to Home Depots across Southern California, going north to Ventura County, east to the Inland Empire and south to Orange County.

On Friday, the van ride included the Rev. Madison Jones McAleese, Navy veteran Brian Kelly and immigration lawyer Juan Jose Gutierrez, who can offer legal support to families or offer “know your right” basics to laborers. And to capture it all was cameraman René Miranda, who started covering raids when a large protest broke out in Paramount, where he lives.

For McAleese, she said she felt it was her duty to be part of the effort to stand against the raids because of what she views as unlawful actions being taken by ICE enforcement. McAleese carries holy water and offers to pray with any one who seeks prayer.

“I don’t feel like I have a choice,” she said. “God is reflected in the face of every immigrant, documented and undocumented.”

As they headed to the next location, Maciel pulled up on his phone StopIce.Net, a website on which people submit reports of ICE activity. Just the day before, there was a raid in Long Beach, later confirmed by local media reports, and nine people were detained by masked agents, an L.A. County official said.

The San Fernando Valley was quiet that Friday, but Maciel said it has been important to establish and maintain relationships with both workers and organizers who have created rapid response networks. When he drives the van to a site, he said, he greets such organizers and makes sure the laborers understand they are there to help.

Ernesto Ayala, the site coordinator at the Van Nuys Day Labor Center in the Home Depot parking lot, said ICE agents have been to the site several times, as recently as a few weeks ago. At the Van Nuys Home Depot, volunteers monitor each entry point of the parking lot and alert the center of any suspicious vehicles that could contain federal agents.

“It’s very traumatic,” Ayala said of the continuing raids. Ayala himself was detained and sprayed with an irritant by agents after they held him down and accused him of interfering. He was arrested but never charged with any crime, he said.

Organizations such as the Save America Movement help with videos and other documentation that could be used in potential litigation against ICE in the future, Ayala said. He said his arrest was recorded from a distance by a witness.

In October, the organization said video by a Save America Movement photojournalist in Chicago recorded federal agents deploying tear gas against protesters and pointing weapons at journalists, which at the time violated a federal court order. The organization made that footage available online with time stamps and annotations.

Along with documenting interactions, Núñez said, the group hopes to remind ICE agents of the human impact and make them question their actions, and to move viewers. Such footage, he said, could help Americans see “that these Gestapo-like tactics are happening and they’re being utilized with our tax dollars.”

“We think we can convince them to move, to think more compassionately about people and think: Is this the America I signed up for?”

California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom recently convened a meeting that might rank among the top sweat-inducing nightmare scenarios for Silicon Valley’s tech bros — a group of the Golden State’s smartest, most powerful women brainstorming ways to regulate artificial intelligence.

Regulation is the last thing this particular California-dominated industry wants, and it’s spent a lot of cash at both the state and federal capitols to avoid it — including funding President Trump’s new ballroom. Regulation by a bunch of ladies, many mothers, with profit a distant second to our kids when it comes to concerns?

I’ll let you figure out how popular that is likely be with the Elon Musks, Peter Thiels and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.

But as Siebel Newsom said, “If a platform reaches a child, it carries a responsibility to protect that child. Period. Our children’s safety can never be second to the bottom line.”

Agreed.

Siebel Newsom’s push for California to do more to regulate AI comes at the same time that Trump is threatening to stop states from overseeing the technology — and is ramping up a national effort that will open America’s coffers to AI moguls for decades to come.

Right now, the U.S. is facing its own nightmare scenario: the most powerful and world-changing technology we have seen in our lifetimes being developed and unleashed under almost no rules or restraints other than those chosen by the men who seek personal benefit from the outcome.

To put it simply, the plan right now seems to be that these tech barons will change the world as they see fit to make money for themselves, and we as taxpayers will pay them to do it.

“When decisions are mainly driven by power and profit instead of care and responsibility, we completely lose our way, and given the current alignment between tech titans and the federal administration, I believe we have lost our way,” Siebel Newsom said.

To recap what the way has been so far, Trump recently tried to sneak a 10-year ban on the ability of states to oversee the industry into his ridiculously named “Big Beautiful Bill,” but it was pulled out by a bipartisan group in the Senate — an early indicator of how inflammatory this issue is.

Faced with that unexpected blockade, Trump has threatened to sign a mysterious executive order crippling states’ ability to regulate AI and attempting to withhold funds from those that try.

Simultaneously, the most craven and cowardly among Republican congresspeople have suggested adding a 10-year ban to the upcoming defense policy bill that will almost certainly pass. Of course, Congress has also declined to move forward on any meaningful federal regulations itself, while technology CEOs including Trump frenemy Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Zuckerberg and many others chum it up at fancy events inside the White House.

Which may be why this week, Trump announced the “Genesis Mission,” an executive order that seemingly will take the unimaginable vastness of government research efforts across disciplines and dump them into some kind of AI model that will “revolutionize the way scientific research is conducted.”

While I am sure that nothing could possibly go wrong in that scenario, that’s not actually the part that is immediately alarming. This is: The project will be overseen by Trump science and technology policy advisor Michael Kratsios, who holds no science or engineering degrees but was formerly a top executive for Thiel and former head of another AI company that works on warfare-related projects with the Pentagon.

Kratsios is considered one of the main reasons Trump has embraced the tech bros with such adoration in his second term. Genesis will almost certainly mean huge government contracts for these private-sector “partners,” fueling the AI boom (or bubble) with taxpayer dollars.

Siebel Newsom’s message in the face of all this is that we are not helpless — and California, as the home of many of these companies and the world’s fourth-largest economy in its own right, should have a say in how this technology advances, and make sure it does so in a way that benefits and protects us all.

“California is uniquely positioned to lead the effort in showing innovation and responsibility and how they can go hand in hand,” she said. “I’ve always believed that stronger guardrails are actually good for business over the long term. Safer tech means better outcomes for consumers and greater consumer trust and loyalty.”

But the pressure to cave under the might of these companies is intense, as Siebel Newsom’s husband knows.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent the last few years trying to thread the needle on state legislation that offers some sort of oversight while allowing for the innovation that rightly keeps California and the United States competitive on the global front. The tech industry has spent millions in lobbying, legal fights and pressure campaigns to water down even the most benign of efforts, even threatening to leave the state if rules are enacted.

Last year, the industry unsuccessfully tried to stop Senate Bill 53, landmark legislation signed by Newsom. It’s a basic transparency measure on “frontier” AI models that requires companies to have safety and security protocols and report known “catastrophic” risks, such as when these models show tendencies toward behavior that could kill more than 50 people — which they have, believe it or not.

But the industry was able to stop other efforts. Newsom vetoed both Senate Bill 7, which would have required employers to notify workers when using AI in hiring and promotions; and Assembly Bill 1064, which would have barred companion chatbot operators from making these AI systems available to minors if they couldn’t prove they wouldn’t do things like encourage kids to self-harm, which again, these chatbots have done.

Still, California (along with New York and a few other states) has pushed forward, and speaking at Siebel Newsom’s event, the governor said that last session, “we took a number of at-bats at this and we made tremendous progress.”

He promised more.

“We have agency. We can shape the future,” he said. “We have a unique responsibility as it relates to these tools of technology, because, well, this is the center of that universe.”

If Newsom does keep pushing forward, it will be in no small part because of Siebel Newsom, and women like her, who keep the counter-pressure on.

In fact, it was another powerful mom, First Lady Melania Trump, who forced the federal government into a tiny bit of action this year when she championed the “Take It Down Act”, which requires tech companies to quickly remove nonconsensual explicit images. I sincerely doubt her husband would have signed that particular bill without her urging.

So, if we are lucky, the efforts of women like Siebel Newsom may turn out to be the bit of powerful sanity needed to put a check on the world-domination fantasies of the broligarchy.

Because tech bros are not yet all-powerful, despite their best efforts, and certainly not yet immune to the power of moms.