Kawhi Leonard scored 33 points and James Harden added 22 points as the Clippers extended their winning streak to four games with a 119-105 victory over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday night.
The victory moved the Clippers (17-23), who were once 6-21, only a half-game behind Memphis for a play-in spot this postseason.
Yanic Konan Niederhauser scored 16 points and Jordan Miller added 11 points with 10 rebounds as the Clippers improved to 11-2 since Dec. 20 after starting the season 6-21.
The victory came without starting center Ivica Zubac (ankle) and starting forward John Collins (groin), while Leonard (ankle) was on a minutes restriction. Leonard finished seven of 11 from three-point range in 30 minutes.
Kyshawn George scored 23 points and Khris Middleton added 17 for the Wizards, who lost their fourth consecutive game and fell to 0-2 on a four-game trip.
Marvin Bagley III scored 15 points with 11 rebounds for Washington, which remained shorthanded after CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert were traded Friday and new addition Trae Young (knee, quad) remains out. Young will be reevaluated after the All-Star break.
The Wizards were further depleted when center Alex Sarr was ejected with 1:45 remaining before halftime after receiving his second technical foul of the game.
The Clippers led 37-22 after one quarter and were up by 20 at 54-34 with 6:47 remaining in the first half.
The Wizards went on a 30-13 run to open the second half and pull within 83-81 with 3:26 remaining in the third quarter. The Clippers pushed their advantage to 96-89 to start the fourth quarter.
Leonard scored 11 consecutive points for the Clippers early in the fourth quarter with his three-pointer with 6:14 remaining giving the Clippers a 110-95 lead.
The shots had stopped falling. The tension had started rising. Fresh off its worst loss of the Lindsay Gottlieb era, USC had, for the better part of three quarters, looked well on its way to a get-right win Tuesday, the sort that might help ease the embarrassment from a 34-point loss to bitter rival UCLA.
But over the course of the fourth quarter, as Oregon clawed its way back, the Trojans tightened up. The offense looked out of sorts. The defense looked out of breath. No. 21 USC (10-5, 2-2 in the Big Ten) missed its first eight shots of the quarter, just as Oregon (14-3, 2-2) exploded on that end, its worst fears coming to life out of the loss.
Over four minutes and 46 painful seconds, the Trojans went scoreless, unable to do much of anything but watch as Oregon stole a 71-66 victory Tuesday.
The loss was USC’s second in a row, marking the first time since January 2024 that the Trojans suffered consecutive defeats.
Even as Oregon mounted a late run, USC had its chances to shoot its way back into the game. Londynn Jones hit a three-pointer, and freshman Jazzy Davidson made a jumper, her only bucket of the second half, to give the Trojans a nine-point lead with just under five minutes remaining.
But those were the last two buckets USC would score. Oregon’s Ari Long hit a three-pointer, then drained another on the next possession. The Galen Center crowd groaned, seemingly knowing what was coming next.
With 32 seconds remaining, Oregon called a timeout. The Ducks found Long again coming out of the break, and she sank a third three-pointer, this one costly.
Kara Dunn did what she could to keep USC afloat, scoring 21 points and adding nine rebounds. Davidson struggled to find her shooting stroke, but still filled the stat sheet with 13 rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals to go with 14 points.
Jones even gave USC critical contributions throughout, as the Trojans were forced to play without sophomore Kennedy Smith, their best defender who has a leg injury, according to the team.
She was missed Tuesday, especially down the stretch, as Long torched the Trojans for nine of her 11 points in the final minutes.
Where USC goes from here remains to be seen, but the schedule doesn’t get any easier, with four more matchups against ranked teams before January is up.
It took nearly four minutes for USC to find the basket to start the game, its offense picking up right where it left off Saturday in its sluggish loss to UCLA. The Trojans missed nine of their first 10 shots, unable to find any semblance of a rhythm.
Then finally, Malia Samuels hit a corner three. Jones sank a three-pointer of her own. Then Dunn got in the party.
USC exhaled — and proceeded to finish the first quarter on a 16-0 run.
The defense did most of the heavy lifting from there, holding Oregon at arm’s length until the fourth quarter, when the Ducks flew out in front, dealing the Trojans another loss.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Lauren Betts scored 25 points and surpassed 1,500 career points in leading No. 4 UCLA to a 97-61 rout of Penn State on Wednesday.
Gianna Kneepkens added 17 points, Kiki Rice scored 16 and Sienna Betts 10 for the Bruins (13-1, 3-0 Big Ten), who won their seventh in a row after leading for all but 31 seconds.
The Bruins, who entered averaging just over 95 points per game since their lone loss to the No. 2 Texas Longhorns on Nov. 27, found their offense immediately inside a quiet Rec Hall.
Lauren Betts finished 11 for 19 from the floor. She sunk a layup in the opening seconds to spark the first of a handful of lopsided runs for the Bruins.
Kneepkens and Rice added back-to-back three-pointers moments later before Kneepkens hit another long ball to put UCLA up 13-2 less than three minutes in.
Penn State (7-7, 0-3) responded with a pair of buckets, but Kneepkens drained her third three-pointer of the quarter and UCLA closed out the first on a 14-5 run shooting 58% from the floor.
The rout was on from there for the Bruins, who led by as many as 37 with 6:41 in the fourth quarter. They led 46-23 at halftime.
Gracie Merkle had 15 points and Kiyomi McMiller scored 13 for Penn State, which fell to 1-15 against AP top 10 teams since coach Carolyn Kieger’s first season in 2019.
Up next UCLA: vs. No. 17 USC at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday night.
Kawhi Leonard scored 33 points and the Clippers extended their winning streak to a season-best five games Tuesday night with a 131-90 victory over the Sacramento Kings.
James Harden had 21 points while John Collins and rookie Yanic Konan Niederhauser each added 16 for the Clippers, who have found a successful formula after not winning more than two consecutive games before their current run of success began.
Leonard’s productive night came after he scored a career-best 55 points in a victory over the Detroit Pistons on Sunday. He has averaged 37.8 points over the past five games.
The Clippers’ win streak started on the same night center Ivica Zubac went down with a left ankle sprain. Zubac has not played in any of the past four games.
Nique Clifford scored 18 points while Maxime Raynaud and Russell Westbrook each had 12 for the Kings, who fell to 3-12 since Nov. 26. Raynaud also grabbed 12 rebounds, but Sacramento lost its fifth consecutive road game.
Westbrook added four assists and a pair of three-pointers against his former team.
The Clippers left little doubt from the start. They led 34-20 after one quarter and were up by 36 in the second before taking a 70-43 advantage into halftime. They shot 57.1% from the floor in the second quarter while scoring 39 points, with Leonard delivering 18 of them.
Leonard had 30 points through three quarters as the Clippers led 100-71 and coasted from there.
The Clippers shot 51.1% from the field overall while posting its largest margin of victory this season. Sacramento shot 41% from the floor.
The Clippers committed just four turnovers while forcing the Kings into 19 that they turned into 28 points.
Up next for the Clippers: vs. the Utah Jazz at Intuit Dome on Thursday.
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of federal immigration judges in California have been fired, retired or quit since the start of the Trump administration.
The reduction follows a trend in immigration courts nationwide and constitutes, critics say, an attack on the rule of law that will lead to yet more delays in an overburdened court system.
The reduction in immigration judges has come as the administration scaled up efforts to deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Trump administration officials have described the immigration court process, in which proceedings can take years amid a backlog of millions of cases, as an impediment to their goals.
Nationwide, there were 735 immigration judges last fiscal year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the arm of the Justice Department that houses immigration courts. At least 97 have been fired since President Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges.
California has lost at least 35 immigration judges since January, according to Mobile Pathways, a Berkeley-based organization that analyzes immigration court data. That’s down from 132. The steepest drop occurred at the San Francisco Immigration Court, which has lost more than half its bench.
“A noncitizen might win their case, might lose their case, but the key question is, did they receive a hearing?” said Emmett Soper, who worked at the Justice Department before becoming an immigration judge in Virginia in 2017. “Up until this administration, I had always been confident that I was working in a system that, despite its flaws, was fundamentally fair.”
Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy
— Amber George, former San Francisco Immigration Court judge
The administration intends to fill some judge positions, and in new immigration judge job listings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere seeks candidates who want to be a “deportation judge” and “restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system.”
The immigration judges union called the job listings “insulting.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that he was elected to “remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that.”
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he added.
The National Assn. of Immigration Judges said it expects a wave of additional retirements at the end of this month.
“My biggest concern is for the people whose lives are left in limbo. What can they count on when the ground is literally shifting every moment that they’re here?” said Amber George, who was fired last month from the San Francisco Immigration Court. “Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy.”
Because immigration courts operate under the Justice Department, their priorities typically shift from one presidential administration to the next, but the extreme changes taking place have renewed longtime calls for immigration courts to become independent of the executive branch.
The Trump administration recently added 36 judges; 25 of them are military lawyers serving in temporary positions.
This summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice. That took place after the department changed the requirements for temporary immigration judges, removing the need for immigration law experience.
The Department of Justice did not respond to specific questions, but said judges must be impartial and that the agency is obligated to take action against those who demonstrate systemic bias.
Former judges say that, because terminations have happened with no advance notice, remaining court staff have often scrambled to get up to speed on reassigned cases.
Ousted judges described a pattern: In the afternoon, sometimes while presiding over a hearing, they receive a short email stating that they are being terminated pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. Their names are swiftly removed from the Justice Department website.
Jeremiah Johnson is one of five judges terminated recently from the San Francisco Immigration Court.
Johnson said he worries the Trump administration is circumventing immigration courts by making conditions so unbearable that immigrants decide to drop their cases.
The number of detained immigrants has climbed to record levels since January, with more than 65,000 in custody. Immigrants and lawyers say the conditions are inhumane, alleging medical neglect, punitive solitary confinement and obstructed access to legal counsel. Requests by immigrants for voluntary departure, which avoids formal deportation, have surged in recent months.
Many of those arrests have happened at courthouses, causing immigrants to avoid their legal claims out of fear of being detained and forcing judges to order them removed in absentia.
“Those are ways to get people to leave the United States without seeing a judge, without due process that Congress has provided,” Johnson said. “It’s a dismantling of the court system.”
A sign posted outside the San Francisco Immigration Court in October protests enforcement actions by immigration agents. The court has lost more than half of its immigration judges.
(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
The judges in San Francisco’s Immigration Court have historically had higher asylum approval rates than the national average. Johnson said grant rates depend on a variety of circumstances, including whether a person is detained or has legal representation, their country of origin and whether they are adults or children.
In November, the military judges serving in immigration courts heard 286 cases and issued rulings in 110, according to Mobile Pathways. The military judges issued deportation orders in 78% of the cases — more often than other immigration judges that month, who ordered deportations in 63% of cases.
“They’re probably following directions — and the military is very good at following directions — and it’s clear what their directions are that are given by this administration,” said Mobile Pathways co-founder Bartlomiej Skorupa. He cautioned that 110 cases are a small sample size and that trends will become clearer in the coming months.
Former immigration judges and their advocates say that appointing people with no immigration experience and little training makes for a steep learning curve and the possibility of due process violations.
“There are multiple concerns here: that they’re temporary, which could expose them to greater pressure to decide cases in a certain way; and also they lack experience in immigration law, which is an extremely complex area of practice,” said Ingrid Eagly, an immigration law professor at UCLA.
Immigration courts have a backlog of more than 3 million cases. Anam Petit, who served as an immigration judge in Virginia until September, said the administration’s emphasis on speedy case completions has to be balanced against the constitutional right to a fair hearing.
“There are not enough judges to hear those cases, and this administration [is] taking it upon themselves to fire a lot of experienced and trained judges who can hear those cases and can mitigate that backlog,” she said.
Complementary bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House this month by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) would prevent the appointment of military lawyers as temporary immigration judges and impose a two-year limit of service.
“The Trump administration’s willingness to fire experienced immigration judges and hire inexperienced or temporary ‘deportation judges,’ especially in places like California, has fundamentally impacted the landscape of our justice system,” Schiff said in a statement announcing the bill.
The bills have little chance in the Republican-controlled Congress but illustrate how significantly Democrats — especially in California — oppose the administration’s changes to immigration courts.
Former Immigration Judge Tania Nemer, a dual citizen of Lebanon and the U.S., sued the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi this month, alleging that she was illegally terminated in February because of her gender, ethnic background and political affiliation. In 2023, Nemer ran for judicial office in Ohio as a Democrat.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, seen here at the White House in October, has dismissed complaints by a former immigration judge who alleged she was fired without cause.
“Most recently, yesterday, I was sued by an immigration judge who we fired,” she said Dec. 2. “One of the reasons she said she was a woman. Last I checked, I was a woman as well.”
Other former judges have challenged their terminations through the federal Merit Systems Protection Board.
Johnson, of San Francisco, is one of those. He filed his appeal this month, claiming that he was not given cause for termination.
“My goal is to be reinstated,” he said. “My colleagues on the bench, our court was vibrant. It was a good place to work, despite all the pressures.”
