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SAN FRANCISCO — Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a trailblazing San Francisco Democrat who leveraged decades of power in the U.S. House to become one of the most influential political leaders of her generation, will not run for reelection in 2026, she said Thursday.

The former House speaker, 85, who has been in Congress since 1987 and oversaw both of President Trump’s first-term impeachments, had been pushing off her 2026 decision until after Tuesday’s vote on Proposition 50, a ballot measure she backed and helped bankroll to redraw California’s congressional maps in her party’s favor.

With the measure’s resounding passage, Pelosi said it was time to start clearing the path for another Democrat to represent San Francisco — one of the nation’s most liberal bastions — in Congress, as some are already vying to do.

“With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” Pelosi said in a nearly six-minute video she posted online Thursday morning, in which she also recounted major achievements from her long career.

Pelosi did not immediately endorse a would-be successor, but challenged her constituents to stay engaged.

“As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she said. “We have made history, we have made progress, we have always led the way — and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy, and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”

Pelosi’s announcement drew immediate reaction across the political world, with Democrats lauding her dedication and accomplishments and President Trump, a frequent target and critic of hers, ridiculing her as a “highly overrated politician.”

Pelosi has not faced a serious challenge for her seat since President Reagan was in office, and has won recent elections by wide margins. Just a year ago, she won reelection with 81% of the vote.

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However, Pelosi was facing two hard-to-ignore challengers from her own party in next year’s Democratic primary: state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), 55, a prolific and ambitious lawmaker with a strong base of support in the city, and Saikat Chakrabarti, 39, a Democratic political operative and tech millionaire who is infusing his campaign with personal cash.

Their challenges come amid a shifting tide against gerontocracy in Democratic politics more broadly, as many in the party’s base have increasingly questioned the ability of its longtime leaders — especially those in their 70s and 80s — to sustain an energetic and effective resistance to President Trump and his MAGA agenda.

In announcing his candidacy for Pelosi’s seat last month after years of deferring to her, Wiener said he simply couldn’t wait any longer. “The world is changing, the Democratic Party is changing, and it’s time,” he said.

Chakrabarti — who helped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) topple another older Democratic incumbent with a message of generational change in 2018 — said voters in San Francisco “need a whole different approach” to governing after years of longtime party leaders failing to deliver.

In an interview Thursday, Wiener called Pelosi an “icon” who delivered for San Francisco in more ways than most people can comprehend, with whom he shared a “deep love” for the city. He also recounted, in particular, Pelosi’s early advocacy for AIDS treatment and care in the 1980s, and the impact it had on him personally.

“I remember vividly what it felt like as a closeted gay teenager, having a sense that the country had abandoned people like me, and that the country didn’t care if people like me died. I was 17, and that was my perception of my place in the world,” Wiener said. “Nancy Pelosi showed that that wasn’t true, that there were people in positions of power who gave a damn about gay men and LGBTQ people and people living with HIV and those of us at risk for HIV — and that was really powerful.”

Chakrabarti, in a statement Thursday, thanked Pelosi for her “decades of service that defined a generation of politics” and for “doing something truly rare in Washington: making room for the next one.”

While anticipated by many, Pelosi’s decision nonetheless reverberated through political circles, including as yet another major sign that a new political era is dawning for the political left — as also evidenced by the stunning rise of Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist elected Tuesday as New York City’s next mayor.

Known as a relentless and savvy party tactician, Pelosi had fought off concerns about her age in the past, including when she chose to run again last year. The first woman ever elected speaker in 2007, Pelosi has long cultivated and maintained a spry image belying her age by walking the halls of Congress in signature four-inch stilettos, and by keeping up a rigorous schedule of flying between work in Washington and constituent events in her home district.

However, that veneer has worn down in recent years, including when she broke her hip during a fall in Europe in December.

That occurred just after fellow octogenarian President Biden sparked intense speculation about his age and cognitive abilities with his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June of last year. The performance led to Biden being pushed to drop out of the race — in part by Pelosi — and to Vice President Kamala Harris moving to the top of the ticket and losing badly to Trump in November.

Democrats have also watched other older liberal leaders age and die in power in recent years, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, another San Francisco power player in Washington. When Ginsburg died in office at 87, it handed Trump a third Supreme Court appointment. When Feinstein died in office ill at 90, it was amid swirling questions about her competency to serve.

By bowing out of the 2026 race, Pelosi — who stepped down from party leadership in 2022 — diminished her own potential for an ungraceful last chapter in office. But she did not concede that her current effectiveness has diminished one bit.

Pelosi was one of the most vocal and early proponents of Proposition 50, which amends the state constitution to give state Democrats the power through 2030 to redraw California’s congressional districts in their favor.

The measure was in response to Republicans in red states such as Texas redrawing maps in their favor, at Trump’s direction. Pelosi championed it as critical to preserving Democrats’ chances of winning back the House next year and checking Trump through the second half of his second term, something she and others suggested will be vital for the survival of American democracy.

On Tuesday, California voters resoundingly approved Proposition 50.

In her video, Pelosi noted a litany of accomplishments during her time in office, crediting them not to herself but to her constituents, to labor groups, to nonprofits and private entrepreneurs, to the city’s vibrant diversity and flair for innovation.

She noted bringing federal resources to the city to recover after the Loma Prieta earthquake, and San Francisco’s leading role in tackling the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis through partnerships with UC San Francisco and San Francisco General, which “pioneered comprehensive community based care, prevention and research” still used today.

She mentioned passing the Ryan White CARE Act and the Affordable Care Act, building out various San Francisco and California public transportation systems, building affordable housing and protecting the environment — all using federal dollars her position helped her to secure.

“It seems prophetic now that the slogan of my very first campaign in 1987 was, ‘A voice that will be heard,’ and it was you who made those words come true. It was the faith that you had placed in me, and the latitude that you have given me, that enabled me to shatter the marble ceiling and be the first woman speaker of the House, whose voice would certainly be heard,” Pelosi said. “It was an historic moment for our country, and it was momentous for our community — empowering me to bring home billions of dollars for our city and our state.”

After her announcement, Trump ridiculed her, telling Fox News that her decision not to seek reelection was “a great thing for America” and calling her “evil, corrupt, and only focused on bad things for our country.”

“She was rapidly losing control of her party and it was never coming back,” Trump told the outlet, according to a segment shared by the White House. “I’m very honored she impeached me twice, and failed miserably twice.”

The House succeeded in impeaching Trump twice, but the Senate acquitted him both times.

Pelosi’s fellow Democrats, by contrast, heaped praise on her as a one-of-a-kind force in U.S. politics — a savvy tactician, a prolific legislator and a mentor to an entire generation of fellow Democrats.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a longtime Pelosi ally who helped her impeach Trump, called Pelosi “the greatest Speaker in American history” as a result of “her tenacity, intellect, strategic acumen and fierce advocacy.”

“She has been an indelible part of every major progressive accomplishment in the 21st Century — her work in Congress delivered affordable health care to millions, created countless jobs, raised families out of poverty, cleaned up pollution, brought LGBTQ+ rights into the mainstream, and pulled our economy back from the brink of destruction not once, but twice,” Schiff said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Pelosi “has inspired generations,” that her “courage and conviction to San Francisco, California, and our nation has set the standard for what public service should be,” and that her impact on the country was “unmatched.”

“Wishing you the best in this new chapter — you’ve more than earned it,” Newsom wrote above Pelosi’s online video.

Originally published in December 2019

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The No. 3 UCLA women’s basketball team won its first game of the season, defeating feisty San Diego State 77–53 on Monday at the Honda Center.

The Bruins (1–0) built an eight-point lead in the first quarter, but the unranked Aztecs (0–1) managed to cut the deficit by three by the end of the period.

San Diego State struggled to score in the second quarter when UCLA went on a 12–2 run.

The scoring gap continued to increase as the Bruins extended their lead to 15 points, ending the first half with a 37–22 advantage.

UCLA center Lauren Betts scored 21 points and grabbed four rebounds, guard Gabriela Jaquez recorded a double-double with 15 points and 11 rebounds and guard Charlisse Ledger-Walker, who returned to the court after redshirting last season, contributed 12 points and five assists.

The Bruins opened the third quarter with a 16–0 run. Although the Aztecs fought hard to close the gap, the Bruins maintained control, ending the quarter with a 58–38 lead.

San Diego State pushed UCLA again in the fourth quarter, but the Aztecs couldn’t make a meaningful dent in their deficit.

Aztecs sophomore guard Kaelyn Hamilton came off the bench to lead her team with 11 points, while guards Nat Martinez and Nala Williams scored 10 points apiece.

UCLA will play its home opener Thursday against UC Santa Barbara.

When Elias Redlew was 14 years old and a freshman putting on football pads for the first time to try to impress his parents at home, he didn’t know what he was doing.

“I didn’t know how much range of movement I’d have or how it would affect my speed,” he said.

His father tried to help him.

“I walked outside and hit the door and he said, ‘You’re going to have to get used to the pads.’”

Redlew, 6 feet 2 and 185 pounds, has gotten as comfortable wearing pads as Superman wearing a red cape.

He has become a three-sport standout at San Pedro High with a 4.7 grade-point average. He was the City Section Open Division offensive player of the year as a junior receiver. This season, he has 60 catches for 1,150 yards and 13 touchdowns. He’s also a starting guard who dunks for the basketball team and is one of the favorites to win a City high jump championship after tying for second place last year.

He’ll be one of the players to watch when San Pedro plays host to Carson on Thursday night to decide the Marine League football championship.

“He never played football until high school,” coach Corey Walsh said. “His potential is super high. Each year, he’s continued to get better.”

Redlew’s intelligence combined with a personality that makes him unafraid to explore new experiences offers insights into an athlete not afraid to be uncomfortable at times.

“Experience brings you intellect,” he said. “If you step out of your comfort zone, it will build knowledge.”

San Pedro basketball coach John Bobich has known Redlew since he was 11. He was on a youth basketball team with his son.

“He is one the most humble and kindest athletes I’ve known,” Bobich said. “He definitely has the record for fist bumps as not a day goes by where Elias walks up with a fist bump and a smile saying, ‘Hello coach B!’”

Redlew has received one B in high school. He’s taking four advanced placement classes this semester.

“I’m down for the challenge,” he said. “In order to play sports, I had to hit the books. In middle school, I was always shy and thought I could do it on my own. I learned to ask for help. Teachers are never not going to help you.”

Redlew welcomes challenges on and off the field. He’s had several huge performances this season. He had six catches for 160 yards and two touchdowns against Wilmington Banning. He had 11 receptions for 217 yards and two touchdowns against unbeaten Laguna Beach. There were six catches for 212 yards and two touchdowns against Granada Hills Kennedy.

Receiver Elias Redlew of San Pedro has a 4.7 GPA.

(Jonathan Alcorn/For The Times)

Redlew said of playing receiver: “I really like how different it is. There’s so many unknown things you can do with the player guarding you . He doesn’t know your next move. You have the ability to affect the game as long as your team trusts you.”

San Pedro (5-4, 3-0) vs. Carson (6-3, 3-0) is always a big rivalry game. This one should be better than ever. Beside the league title being at stake, a Carson win might propel the Colts to the No. 1 seed in the City Section Open Division playoffs. Pairings will be revealed on Saturday. The atmosphere should be electric at San Pedro.

“I can’t wait for that game,” Redlew said. “Everybody will be there. Everybody knows that’s the biggest game of the year and is our senior night.”

If San Pedro wins, maybe he’ll do a dunk afterward in the gym or bring out the high-jump pit and try to clear his career-best 6-2.

Whatever happens, it’s OK to admire a teenager who gets A’s on his report card, plays three sports and has a desire to challenge his mind and body every day.

OAKLAND — President Trump said Thursday that he had called off a planned federal “surge” into San Francisco after speaking with Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city leaders — a detente that officials and activists in the East Bay said they were not welcomed into and viewed with some suspicion, as potentially enlarging the target on their own communities.

Trump’s announcement came amid protests at the entrance to the U.S. Coast Guard base across the bay in Alameda County, where the Department of Homeland Security has begun staging additional forces. It followed a similar announcement by Lurie, who said he had told Trump during a phone call late Wednesday that San Francisco is “on the rise” and that “having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”

Lurie said Trump agreed to call off any federal deployment to the city, and that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — who is in charge of federal immigration forces — had “reaffirmed that direction” in a conversation with him Thursday morning.

Trump said on social media that his administration had been planning a “surge” in San Francisco beginning Saturday, but that Lurie had asked him “very nicely” to “give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” and that other “friends” of Trump’s in the city had asked him to call it off because they believe Lurie is “making substantial progress.”

Trump said he told Lurie that he was “making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove,” but that he had ultimately agreed to pause the surge — in part because Lurie has the support of prominent business leaders Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.

During a Thursday morning briefing less than an hour after Trump’s post, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and other East Bay leaders said they had “no information” about such a stand-down in their communities, and were still bracing for increased federal immigration raids given the staging of forces at nearby Coast Guard Island, which is in the waters between Alameda and Oakland.

“The federal administration, of course, has escalated its rhetoric and its enforcement posture in the Bay Area. We know that Border Patrol agents are being stationed on Coast Guard Island,” Lee said. “But … we are fully prepared. We’re monitoring developments closely and we’ll keep our residents informed if there are any confirmed changes. Oakland is and will continue to be a welcoming city for our immigrants and our refugees.”

The Department of Homeland Security defended the deployment of its agents to the region, saying they would be “targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists.”

Alameda County Dist. Atty. Ursula Jones Dickson said the staging of immigration forces in the East Bay was part of an established Trump administration “playbook” to rile up communities with immigration actions and then use any unrest to justify further force — and called on East Bay residents not to fall for it.

“We know that they’re baiting Oakland, and that’s why San Francisco, all of a sudden, is off the table,” Jones Dickson said. “So I’m not going to be quiet about what we know is coming. We know that their expectation is that Oakland is going to do something to cause them to make us the example.”

Lourdes Martinez, co-director of the immigrant rights program at Centro Legal de la Raza, said communities are understandably scared given recent legal rulings that federal immigration agents can stop people based on factors such as the color of their skin, the language they are speaking and the job sectors they work in — and organizers expect more such stops given the latest deployments.

She called on immigrants and others to protect themselves by readying documentation and making sure that they and their families are familiar with their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney — and how to contact legal advocacy groups in case of trouble. She also urged community members to report any detentions, to “make sure that nobody disappears.”

“We know this is an uncertain and stressful time. However, this is a moment of unity and power, not panic,” she said.

Shortly after Lee’s event, about 40 protesters gathered near a bridge leading to Coast Guard Island.

Music was blasting. One person wore a blow-up animal costume, a trend that gained momentum amid similar protests in Portland recently. Coast Guard members in tactical gear stood in a line across from protesters who screamed at them.

“We knew there was going to be [an immigration enforcement] presence here and we wanted to disrupt in a peaceful way — to make it harder for them to abduct people,” said Lindsey Swanson, 32, a financial planner who lives in Oakland.

Swanson and others said they believed immigration enforcement would also ramp up in San Francisco, despite Trump and Lurie’s morning assurances, and would continue in the East Bay regardless.

“There’s East Bay — Oakland, Berkeley — so calling off San Francisco means nothing,” said Rachel Kim, a 28-year-old Berkeley resident who is training to become a therapist.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump’s conversation with Lurie was an example of how he is willing to work with Democrats and other states to “do the right thing and clean up America’s cities.”

“He is genuinely interested in this effort to make our streets safer, to make our cities safe and clean again,” she said.

The morning events followed days of growing tensions in the Bay Area over Trump’s plans for the region, after he repeatedly suggested that he would send federal forces into San Francisco — which he called a “mess” in desperate need of help, despite data showing decreasing crime and homeless encampments and surging positive sentiment.

On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed the staging of immigration agents in the area, and suggested it was the first move in a broader effort by Trump and his administration to stoke chaos and intimidate residents in yet another liberal part of the country.

“He sends out masked men, he sends out Border Patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving that by sending in the Guard,” Newsom said. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”

The response echoed those of leaders and activists in other cities where immigration forces and federal troops have been deployed, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland. It added to an already rancorous debate around Trump’s mass deportation initiative, which he campaigned on heavily, and the role of federal forces in American cities — something the founders of the nation limited to extreme circumstances.

Central to that debate has been Trump’s repeated and unprecedented decision to repeatedly send troops into American cities without the explicit support of state or local leaders. Federal judges have been divided on that issue, though it has so far been allowed to continue in Los Angeles by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

But even in the appellate court, there has been tense disagreement.

Liberal judges on the court recently called for the decision allowing the deployments to continue in Los Angeles, which was made by a three-judge panel, to be reheard before a larger, 11-judge panel. When that request was denied, several dissented Wednesday — excoriating the deployments as a clear breach of constitutional law and the separation of powers.

Judge Marsha Berzon, in a dissent joined by 10 fellow 9th Circuit judges, wrote that the smaller panel in its preliminary deference to Trump had “invited presidents, now and in the future, to deploy military troops in response to the kinds of commonplace, shortlived, domestic disturbances whose containment conventionally falls to local and federal law enforcement units.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

The Trump administration is sending federal agents to San Francisco following weeks of threats from the president to deploy the National Guard to the Bay Area.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement on X confirming and criticizing the agents’ upcoming arrival. He called deployment a “page right out of the dictator’s handbook” intended to create the conditions of unrest necessary to then send in the National Guard.

“He sends out masked men, he sends out Border Patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving that by sending in the [National] Guard,” said Newsom. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”

Around 100 federal agents, including members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, are en route to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Alameda base, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle. The Coast Guard and DHS did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Trump has suggested for weeks that San Francisco is next on his list for National Guard deployment, after the administration sent troops to Los Angeles and Chicago and is battling in court to send them to Portland, Ore.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox News, “We’re going to San Francisco and we’ll make it great. It’ll be great again.”

Trump has suggested that the role of the National Guard in San Francisco would be to address crime rates. However, the National Guard is generally not allowed to perform domestic law enforcement duties when federalized by the president.

In September, he said that cities with Democratic political leadership such as San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles “are very unsafe places and we are going to straighten them out.”

Trump said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training for our military, our national guard.”

Newsom urged Californians to remain peaceful in the face of the arrival of federal agents.

“President Trump and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller’s authoritarian playbook is coming for another of our cities, and violence and vandalism are exactly what they’re looking for to invoke chaos,” said Newsom on X.

The sending of federal agents to San Francisco comes as the Trump administration continues to crack down on immigration across the nation in an attempt to carry out what the president has proclaimed is the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.

Oct. 18 (UPI) — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has apologized for backing President Donald Trump possibly sending the National Guard to San Francisco, where the tech company is based.

Benioff had complained about crime problems outside the company’s annual Dreamforce conference in downtown San Francisco from Tuesday through Thursday, which drew about 45,000 attendees.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told The New York Times on Tuesday, noting he had the pay for several hundred off-duty law enforcement to help patrol the Moscone Center.

On Friday, he changed his stance.

“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” Benioff wrote in a post on X in a post on X.

“My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution around the event, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused. It’s my firm belief that our city makes the most progress when we all work together in a spirit of partnership. I remain deeply grateful to Mayor [Daniel] Lurie, SFPD, and all our partners, and am fully committed to a safer, stronger San Francisco.”

The Trump administration already has deployed the National Guard to Portland, Ore.; Memphis, Tenn., and Chicago in a crackdown on illegal immigration and crime. Lower courts blocked the deployments of the troops.

On Tuesday, Trump told in the Oval Office that “we have great support in San Francisco” for sending troops to the city, apparently a reference to Benioff. He urged FBI Director Kash Patel to make San Francisco “next” for deployment.

Benioff’s suggestion was condemned by politicians, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, investors and those associated with the company.

Newsom, who was mayor of San Francisco, is a friend of Benioff and appeared at last year’s company convention.

More than 180 Salesforce workers, alumni and community members wrote an open letter on Friday that was published online. They said his comments have “revealed a troubling hypocrisy.”

“Salesforce was built on empowering communities — not deploying the National Guard into them,” they wrote. “Last week, that’s exactly what you endorsed.’

The letter added: “Walking back your words doesn’t undo the damage.”

Startup investor Ron Conway resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation on Thursday. Conway told Benioff in an email that their “values were no longer aligned,” according to the New York Times.

Conway donated around $500,000 to at least two funds tied to Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful 2024 presidential election campaign.

Benioff has donated to both political parties but has supported Harris, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president. He attended a state dinner by King Charles for Trump at Windsor Castle in England on Sept. 15.

His family and Salesforce have given more than $1 billion to Bay Area causes, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Benioff, who acquired Time magazine in 2018, has a net worth of $8.8 billion, ranking 381st in the world, according to Forbes.

Laurene Powell Jobs, a pre-eminent philanthropist, criticized Benioff for his remarks.

“When wealth becomes a substitute for participation, giving is reduced to performance art — proof of virtue, a way to appear magnanimous while still demanding ownership,” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “That’s the quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy: the ability to give as a license to impose one’s will. It’s a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest.”

Conservatives have rallied behind the Salesforce CEO.

Venture capitalist David Sacks, who is now Trump’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar, wrote on X : “Dear Marc @Benioff, if the Democrats don’t want you, we would be happy for you to join our team. “Cancel culture is over, and we are the inclusive party.”

Benioff has previously complained about crime in the city. In 2023, he threatened to relocate Dreamforce to Las Vegas over concerns about drug use, crime and homelessness.

Salesforce has attempted to get on the good side of the Trump administration as the company seeks regulatory approval for its proposed $8 billion acquisition of Informatica, an AI-powered cloud data management company.

Salesforce a few weeks ago announced a new line of business, Missionforce, for more revenue from defense, intelligence and aerospace agencies.

The New York Times also reported that Salesforce has offered its services to increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s capabilities.

Salesforce is a cloud-based software company founded in 1999 by Benioff, a former Oracle executive.

The company has a market capitalization of $238 billion with $38 billion in revenue in 2025 and 76,453 employees. The public company is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

SAN FRANCISCO — About 24 hours after President Trump declared San Francisco such a crime-ridden “mess” that he was recommending federal forces be sent to restore order, Manit Limlamai, 43, and Kai Saetern, 32, rolled their eyes at the suggestion.

The pair — both in the software industry — were with friends Thursday in Dolores Park, a vibrant green space with sweeping views of downtown, playing volleyball under a blue sky and shining autumn sun. All around them, people sat on benches with books, flew kites, played with dogs or otherwise lounged away the afternoon on blankets in the grass.

Both Limlamai and Saetern said San Francisco of course has issues, and some rougher neighborhoods — but that’s any city.

“I’ve lived here for 10 years and I haven’t felt unsafe, and I’ve lived all over the city,” Saetern said. “Every city has its problems, and I don’t think San Francisco is any different,” but “it’s not a hellscape,” said Limlamai, who has been in the city since 2021.

Both said Trump’s suggestion that he might send in troops was more alarming than reassuring — especially, Limlamai said, on top of his recent remark that American cities should serve as “training grounds” for U.S. military forces.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate at all,” he said. “The military is not trained to do what needs to be done in these cities.”

Across San Francisco, residents, visitors and prominent local leaders expressed similar ideas — if not much sharper condemnation of any troop deployment. None shied away from the fact that San Francisco has problems, especially with homelessness. Several also mentioned a creeping urban decay, and that the city needs a bit of a polish.

But federal troops? That was a hard no.

A range of people on Market Street in downtown San Francisco on Thursday.

“It’s just more of [Trump’s] insanity,” said Peter Hill, 81, as he played chess in a slightly edgier park near City Hall. Hill said using troops domestically was a fascist power play, and “a bad thing for the entire country.”

“It’s fascism,” agreed local activist Wendy Aragon, who was hailing a cab nearby. Her Latino family has been in the country for generations, she said, but she now fears speaking Spanish on the street given that immigration agents have admitted targeting people who look or sound Latino, and troops in the city would only exacerbate those fears. “My community is under attack right now.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said troop deployments to the city were “completely unnecessary” and “typical Trump: petty, vindictive retaliation.”

“He wants to attack anyone who he perceives as an enemy, and that includes cities, and so he started with L.A. and Southern California because of its large immigrant community, and then he proceeded to cities with large Black populations like Chicago, and now he’s moving on to cities that are just perceived as very lefty like Portland and now San Francisco,” Wiener said.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, defended such deployments and noted crime reductions in cities, including Washington, D.C., and Memphis, where local officials — including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat — have embraced them.

“America’s once great cities have descended into chaos and crime as a result of Democrat policies that put criminals first and law-abiding citizens last. Making America Safe Again — especially crime-ridden cities — was a key campaign promise from the President that the American people elected him to fulfill,” Jackson said. “San Francisco Democrats should look at the tremendous results in DC and Memphis and listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Bowser and welcome the President in to clean up their city.”

A police officer shuts the door to his car after a person was allegedly caught carrying a knife near a sign promoting an AI-powered museum exhibit in downtown San Francisco.

A presidential ‘passion’

San Francisco — a bastion of liberal politics that overwhelmingly voted against Trump in the last election — has been derided by the conservative right for generations as a great American jewel lost to destructive progressive policies.

With its tech-heavy economy and downtown core hit hard by the pandemic and the nation’s shift toward remote work, the city has had a particularly rough go in recent years, which only exacerbated its image as a city in decline. That it produced some of Trump’s most prominent political opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris — has only made it more of a punching bag.

In August, Trump suggested San Francisco needed federal intervention. “You look at what the Democrats have done to San Francisco — they’ve destroyed it,” he said in the Oval Office. “We’ll clean that one up, too.”

Then, earlier this month, to the chagrin of liberal leaders across the city, Marc Benioff, the billionaire Salesforce founder and Time magazine owner who has long been a booster of San Francisco, said in an interview with the New York Times that he supported Trump and welcomed Guard troops in the city.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff said, just as his company was preparing to open its annual Dreamforce convention in the city, complete with hundreds of private security officers.

The U.S. Constitution generally precludes military forces from serving in police roles in the U.S.

On Friday, Benioff reversed himself and apologized for his earlier stance. “Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he wrote on X.

He also apologized for “the concern” his earlier support for troops in the city had caused, and praised San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for bringing crime down.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, also called for federal intervention in the city, writing on his X platform that downtown San Francisco is “a drug zombie apocalypse” and that federal intervention was “the only solution at this point.”

Trump made his latest remarks bashing San Francisco on Wednesday, again from the Oval Office.

Trump said it was “one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” but “now it’s a mess” — and that he was recommending federal forces move into the city to make it safer. “I’m gonna be strongly recommending — at the request of government officials, which is always nice — that you start looking at San Francisco,” he said to leading members of his law enforcement team.

Trump did not specify exactly what sort of deployment he meant, or which kinds of federal forces might be involved. He also didn’t say which local officials had allegedly requested help — a claim Wiener called a lie.

“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver,” Trump said, before adding that sending federal forces into American cities had become “a passion” of his.

Kai Saetern, 32, was playing volleyball in Dolores Park on Thursday. Saetern said he has never felt unsafe living in neighborhoods all over the city for the last 10 years.

Crime is down citywide

The responses from San Francisco, both to Benioff and Trump, came swiftly, ranging from calm discouragement to full-blown outrage.

Lurie did not respond directly, but his office pointed reporters to his recent statements that crime is down 30% citywide, homicides are at a 70-year low, car break-ins are at a 22-year low and tent encampments are at their lowest number on record.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Lurie said. “But I trust our local law enforcement.”

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins was much more fiery, writing online that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had turned “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” and that she stood ready to prosecute federal officers if they harm city residents.

Attendees exit the Dreamforce convention downtown on Thursday in San Francisco.

“If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day,” she said.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — whose seat Wiener is reportedly going to seek — said the city “does not want or need Donald Trump’s chaos” and will continue to increase public safety locally and “without the interference of a President seeking headlines.”

Newsom said the use of federal troops in American cities is a “clear violation” of federal law, and that the state was prepared to challenge any such deployment to San Francisco in court, just as it challenged such deployments in Los Angeles earlier this year.

The federal appellate court that oversees California and much of the American West has so far allowed troops to remain in L.A., but is set to continue hearing arguments in the L.A. case soon.

Trump had used anti-immigration enforcement protests in L.A. as a justification to send troops there. In San Francisco, Newsom said, he lacks any justification or “pretext” whatsoever.

“There’s no existing protest at a federal building. There’s no operation that’s being impeded. I guess it’s just a ‘training ground’ for the President of United States,” Newsom said. “It is grossly illegal, it’s immoral, it’s rather delusional.”

Nancy DeStefanis, 76, a longtime labor and environmental activist who was at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday to complain about Golden Gate Park being shut to regular visitors for paid events, was similarly derisive of troops entering the city.

“As far as I’m concerned, and I think most San Franciscans are concerned, we don’t want troops here. We don’t need them,” she said.

Passengers walk past a cracked window from the Civic Center BART station in downtown San Francisco.

‘An image I don’t want to see’

Not far away, throngs of people wearing Dreamforce lanyards streamed in and out of the Moscone Center, heading back and forth to nearby Market Street and pouring into restaurants, coffee shops and take-out joints. The city’s problems — including homelessness and associated grittiness — were apparent at the corners of the crowds, even as chipper convention ambassadors and security officers moved would-be stragglers along.

Not everyone was keen to be identified discussing Trump or safety in the city, with some citing business reasons and others a fear of Trump retaliating against them. But lots of people had opinions.

Sanjiv, a self-described “techie” in his mid-50s, said he preferred to use only his first name because, although he is a U.S. citizen now, he emigrated from India and didn’t want to stick his neck out by publicly criticizing Trump.

He called homelessness a “rampant problem” in San Francisco, but less so than in the past — and hardly something that would justify sending in military troops.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “It’s not like the city’s under siege.”

Claire Roeland, 30, from Austin, Texas, said she has visited San Francisco a handful of times in recent years and had “mixed” experiences. She has family who live in surrounding neighborhoods and find it completely safe, she said, but when she’s in town it’s “predominantly in the business district” — where it’s hard not to be disheartened by the obvious suffering of people with addiction and mental illness and the grime that has accumulated in the emptied-out core.

“There’s a lot of unfortunate urban decay happening, and that makes you feel more unsafe than you actually are,” she said, but there isn’t “any realistic need to send in federal troops.”

She said she doesn’t know what troops would do other than confront homeless people, and “that’s an image I don’t want to see.”

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

For L.A.-based musician, composer and artist San Cha, the Spanish language is a creative gold mine. “One of my favorite Spanish words is ‘embriágame,’ which I think the direct translation is ‘make me drunk’ or ‘intoxicate me,’” she says. “I love that word. I think there’s a song by Thalía that has that word, it’s called ‘Piel Morena,’ and every time she said that, I’m like — ‘That’s it!’”

San Cha is speaking of her latest work, “Inebria me,” ahead of its Los Angeles premiere Thursday at REDCAT, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. “Inebria me” is a 90-minute experimental opera that expands on her critically acclaimed 2019 ranchera fusion album, “La Luz de la Esperanza.” San Cha stars as Dolores, a humble bride to the much wealthier Salvador, whose jealousy turns deadly; enter Esperanza, a genderless spirit of empowerment, who helps light Dolores’ path to freedom.

Having gone from singing rancheras in the restaurants of Mexico City to experimenting in underground drag scenes in the Bay Area, San Cha has developed a knack for synthesizing disparate influences that result in visually arresting and thought-provoking work. Born Lizette Gutierrez in San Jose to Mexican immigrant parents, San Cha grew up offsetting her intense Bible study by binging on telenovelas after school. It shows in “Inebria me,” where she employs the classic narrative structure of the telenovela, but with a queer twist. “I wanted to hold [onto] the queerness of [the story] and the religious aspects of it,” she says.

The opera is the latest of San Cha’s collaborative efforts. She’s previously linked up with an array of artists — including La Doña, Rafa Esparza, Yesika Salgado and even country singer Kacey Musgraves, who featured San Cha in a pivotal moment from her 2021 visual album, “Star-Crossed.” Darian Donovan Thomas also stars in “Inebria me,” alongside Stefa Marin Alarcon, Lu Coy, Kyle Kidd, Carolina Oliveros and Phong Tran.

In our latest interview, she discusses developing her music for the stage and what it took to build the confidence to advocate for her original vision on her own.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

San Cha performs with Darian Donovan Thomas on Sept. 5 at the Winningstad Theatre in Portland, Ore.

(Jingzi Zhao)

When did the idea to adapt “La Luz de la Esperanza” come to you?
It actually came to me in 2023 or 2024 when I partnered with the National Performance Network for this grant. I started talking with the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, which was already on board, and the Performance Space New York. Like, what would I do to adapt this work?

Did you have experience in traditional theater growing up?
No, I didn’t. And I also didn’t watch too many movies. I missed out on a lot of those very American experiences. People would be like, “Do you know this movie?’ And “It’s like a classic,” and it’s like “No.” I was really sheltered, you know, “I’m over here in Bible study” kind of s—.

Has anyone in your family seen this piece? If so, what was their feedback?
My parents saw a trial version of this piece in San Jose, my hometown. They saw the PG-13 version, which is what I’d like to say, and my mom was confused; I don’t even know how my dad felt. My mom’s one comment was, “You didn’t sing rancheras. Everyone wants you to sing rancheras.” And I was like, “Oh, my God.” So they also came to the closing night with a big group, and I sang the rancheras for them at the end.

How would you relate “Inebria me” to what’s considered a “traditional” opera?
I would say it has a very clear narrative … everything is sung, except for the parts [where] the Man [is] talking or speaking.

I sing rancheras [and] that kind of blends into operas. I didn’t grow up being an opera singer, or wanting to be an opera singer, but somehow it developed in that direction. In this, we get to be all the things: a little hardcore, a little pop, a little mix with opera.

Where did the idea to bring in telenovelas come from?
I wanted to make a telenovela set to music. And because I’d never seen a queer telenovela … I just was like, I want to make the telenovela and set it to disco music … something electronic, glamorous. It [speaks to] the illusion of glamour, underneath everything is ugly and twisted.

What was your first memory of watching a telenovela?
There are so many. I’d watch the kid telenovelas. But there’s one in particular … it’s one where Lucero, a big pop star in Mexico, plays three versions of herself, so she’s a triplet. And there’s one [version] that is so evil. I still remember, [the characters] would get very BDSM … like locking people up! As a kid, I was feeling like … “Why am I watching this? I’m a child!”

“I didn’t grow up wanting to be an opera singer, but somehow it developed in that direction,” says San Cha of “Inebria me.”

(Jingzi Zhao)

You’ve talked about how drag queens were instrumental, especially early in your career. Queer and drag culture have come into mainstream pop and youth culture on the one hand, but remain demonized on the other. How do you reconcile those two extremes in your work?
I guess visibility doesn’t always mean safety or acceptance. I remember being in San Francisco and seeing drag that wasn’t as polished and more on the fringe side of it.

I was … kind of hating it when I got to L.A. and how polished everyone was. But when I saw “RuPaul’s Drag Race” reruns on VH1, I was like, “This is literally life-changing.” And how cool that this is becoming mainstream!

In a previous interview, you discussed sin and guilt as the themes of this work. Many artists have explored this theme in various ways across different cultures and times. Why do you think ideas around guilt and sin hold such power over us?
You’re made to do what you don’t want to do by [people] making you feel shame for the ways you act. And in [“Inebria me”], the sisters each have a confession, and I wanted to make that a focal point — with the nun, the religious person.

In telenovelas, there’s always a priest [they] talk to when they have troubles, you know? And I think in the [Catholic practice of] confession, it is important to relieve yourself of the shame and guilt. But it’s almost like you relieve yourself and then you feel shame, you know? And that’s the part that stops growth, evolution and freedom.

For someone whose first impression of “Inebria me” is that it’s not for them, what do you think they would be surprised to discover or an element they would enjoy?
Everyone in this piece is a star, everyone’s a diva. I think they all really shine on their own, and they really bring it with the acting. Their voices are all incredible, and their stage presence. Maybe they could be into the scene design by Anthony Robles — it’s super minimal, but it does so much for the space in creating this oppressive world. I think there is something for everyone. It’s a story that can relate to a lot of people.

Longtime rivals Sylmar and San Fernando are set to meet on Saturday at the Coliseum in a tripleheader for high school football.

The junior varsity teams will play at 2:30 p.m., followed by a girls flag football game at 5 p.m. and the varsity 11-man game at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 and available for purchase at each school this week, with $12 going back to the schools. Tickets also will be available at the Coliseum on Saturday.

San Fernando is an eight-time City Section champion with a rich history that includes its wishbone teams of the 1970s featuring the late Charles White, who won the Heisman Trophy at USC. Sylmar won City titles in 1992 and 1994 under coach Jeff Engilman.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our student-athletes, families, alumni and the broader community to come together and celebrate the legacy and rivalry of two proud programs in a truly iconic venue,” Sylmar athletic director Wilquin Garcia said.

It will be a Valley Mission League game, with Sylmar 4-3 and 1-2 in league and San Fernando 5-2 and 2-1. In flag football, San Fernando is 7-6 and Sylmar is 4-5.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

Marc Benioff has become the latest Silicon Valley tech leader to signal his approval of President Trump, saying that the president is doing a great job and ought to deploy the National Guard to deal with crime in San Francisco.

The Salesforce chief executive’s comments came as he headed to San Francisco to host his annual Dreamforce conference — an event for which he said he had to hire hundreds of off-duty police to provide security.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they [National Guard] can be cops, I’m all for it,” he told The New York Times from aboard his private plane.

The National Guard is generally not allowed to perform domestic law enforcement duties when federalized by the president.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s use of National Guard soldiers in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act — which restricts use of the military for domestic law enforcement — and ordered that the troops not be used in law enforcement operations within California.

Trump has also ordered the National Guard to deploy to cities such as Portland, Ore., and Chicago, citing the need to protect federal officers and assets in the face of ongoing immigration protests. Those efforts have been met with criticism from local leaders and are the subject of ongoing legal battles.

President Trump has yet to direct troops to Northern California, but suggested in September that San Francisco could be a target for deployment. He has said that cities with Democratic political leadership such as San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles “are very unsafe places and we are going to straighten them out.”

“I told [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training for our military, our national guard,” Trump said.

Benioff’s call to send National Guard troops to San Francisco drew sharp rebukes from several of the region’s elected Democratic leaders.

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins said she “can’t be silent any longer” and threatened to prosecute any leaders or troops who harass residents in a fiery statement on X.

“I am responsible for holding criminals accountable, and that includes holding government and law enforcement officials too, when they cross the bounds of the law,” she said. “If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents, use excessive force or cross any other boundaries that the law prescribes, I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) also took to X to express indignation, saying “we neither need nor want an illegal military occupation in San Francisco.”

“Salesforce is a great San Francisco company that does so much good for our city,” he said. “Inviting Trump to send the National Guard here is not one of those good things. Quite the opposite.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office offered a more muted response, touting the mayor’s efforts to boost public safety in general, but declining to directly address Benioff’s remarks.

Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor, noted that the city is seeing net gains in both police officers and sheriff’s deputies for the first time in a decade. He also highlighted Lurie’s efforts to bring police staffing up to 2,000 officers.

“Crime is down nearly 30% citywide and at its lowest point in decades,” Lutvak said. “We are moving in the right direction and will continue to prioritize safety and hiring while San Francisco law enforcement works every single day to keep our city safe.”

When contacted by The Times Friday night, the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vociferously opposed the deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, did not issue a comment in response to Benioff.

Benioff and Newsom have long been considered friends, with a relationship dating back to when Newsom served as San Francisco’s mayor. Newsom even named Benioff as godfather to one of his children, according to the San Francisco Standard.

Benioff has often referred to himself as an independent. He has donated to several liberal causes, including a $30-million donation to UC San Francisco to study homelessness, and has contributed to prior political campaigns of former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Hillary Clinton.

However, he has also donated to the campaigns of former House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain, both Republicans, and supported tougher-on-crime policies and reducing government spending.

Earlier this year, Benioff also praised the Elon Musk-led federal cost-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

“I fully support the president,” Benioff told the New York Times this week. “I think he’s doing a great job.”

SAN JOSE — Matt Mahan didn’t set out to be a scold and pain in Gavin Newsom’s backside.

He doesn’t mean to sound like a wrathful Republican when he criticizes one-party rule in Sacramento. Or a disgruntled independent when he assails a Democratic establishment that’s become, as he sees it, “a club of insiders who take care of each other” and mostly go along to get along.

Maybe because that’s “my diagnosis of it,” said the 42-year-old San José mayor, “I have tried very consciously to not fall into that trap of just wanting to be liked.”

He is, Mahan insists, a Democrat to his core, his roots sunk deep in the loamy soil of working-class Watsonville, where, over the mountains and light years from Silicon Valley, he grew up the son of a mail carrier and a high school teacher.

That makes his candor all the more bracing, and refreshing, at a time when Democrats are struggling nationally to regain their footing and find a meaningful way forward.

“We have become so caught up in our own rhetoric of helping the little guy that we’ve stopped actually checking to make sure that we are doing that,” Mahan said over lunch at a cantina downtown.

Results, he said, are what matter. Not good intentions.

And certainly not the performative pugilism that some, including the hyper-online Newsom, pass off as leadership. “A sugar high,” Mahan called it.

“I think a lot of Democrats are frustrated and feel powerless, and so that rhetoric has this cathartic effect,” he said. “But I don’t know that it actually, over time, moves us toward success, and I mean not just success in society, but even political success, because ultimately, if you’re not offering solutions, I think you can have a hard time getting to a majority position.”

Mahan comes by his outsider status naturally.

In high school, he rode the bus four hours a day — from Watsonville to San José and back again — to attend a college prep academy on a work-study scholarship. (“My golden ticket,” he called it.) He worked on the grounds crew to help pay his way, and continued on to Harvard, where his dorm mates included Mark Zuckerberg. (The two hung out in college and still talk occasionally.)

After a year in Bolivia, helping family farmers, and a stint teaching middle school, Mahan co-founded a social media company that focused on civic engagement and raising money for nonprofits. He was elected to the San José City Council in 2020. Even before his first term was completed, Mahan launched an upstart bid for mayor.

The front-runner was a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, a former San José vice mayor and longtime civic leader. Waging a nothing-to-lose campaign — “we had no endorsements, we had much less money” — Mahan knocked on thousands of doors. He asked voters what they had on their minds.

It turned out to be rudimentary stuff. Potholes. Public safety. A sense they were paying a whole lot of taxes and getting very little in return.

The experience impressed two things upon Mahan: a need for accountability and the importance of voters’ lived experience, as opposed to vague promises, abstract notions and politically fashionable statements.

“I think ultimately political success and policy success comes from offering better ideas and demonstrating impact,” Mahan said, sounding very much like the technocrat he calls himself.

Mahan won the mayor’s race — narrowly, in a major upset — and was reelected two years later in a November 2024 landslide. (The year Mahan was elected, San José voted to shift its mayoral contest to correspond with presidential balloting, which cut his first term in half.)

Soon enough, Mahan found himself at odds with some major Democratic constituencies, including powerful labor unions, which pushed back over wages and a return-to-office policy, and homeless advocates who bristled at Mahan’s focus on short-term housing and threat to arrest homeless people who refused multiple offers of shelter.

“Homelessness can’t be a choice,” Mahan said at a spring news conference announcing the move.

His heresies don’t end there.

Mahan broke with many Democrats by vigorously supporting Proposition 36, the 2024 anti-crime measure that stiffened penalties for repeated theft and crimes involving fentanyl. Despite opposition from Newsom and most of the state’s Democratic leadership, it passed with nearly 70% support; Mahan has since criticized Newsom and the Democratic-run Legislature for stinting on funds needed for implementation.

But his most conspicuous breach involves the governor’s Trumpy transformation into a social media troll.

While the mockery and memes may feel good as snickering payback and certainly stoke the Democratic base — boosting Newsom’s presidential hopes — Mahan suggested they are ultimately counterproductive.

“If we don’t have a politics of solutions and making people’s lives better, I just don’t know where we end up,” he said, as his enchiladas sat cooling before him. “It’s politics practiced in bad faith, where we just … tell people things that test well because they sound nice, and then we just blame the other side for being evil, incompetent, corrupt. … It’s just a race to the bottom.”

He took particular issue with Newsom’s taunting reaction after Bed Bath & Beyond recently announced it won’t open or operate new stores in California.

It wasn’t “a reasoned argument,” Mahan wrote in a scathing opinion piece in the San Francisco Standard. The tart headline: “How about less time breaking the internet and more time fixing California?”

“‘Breaking the internet’ doesn’t solve real-world problems — quite the opposite,” Mahan wrote. “More often than not, it’s just political theater that serves to excuse inaction and ineffective policies.”

He elaborated over lunch.

“You have an employer who’s pointing out real issues that everybody else who’s watching thinks are real issues. Talking about business climate, cost of doing business, public safety issues, retail theft, untreated addiction and mental illness,” Mahan said.

“When we start turning on constituents because we don’t agree with their ideology, or attacking Trump is more important than actually solving problems or listening to the criticism … I think we’re heading down a dangerous road.”

Inevitably, there’s the question: To what end all this poking of thumbs in his fellow Democrats’ eyes?

Mahan has drawn wide notice, in particular from the more pragmatic wing of the party. His back-to-basics approach has yielded some measurable success. A recent study called San José the safest major city in the country and, while the overall homeless population grew slightly, there’s been progress moving people off the streets into city shelters.

He considered plunging into the race for governor, but the timing wasn’t right. Mahan has two small children and a wife who’s flourishing in her career as an educator. Besides, Mahan said, he’s quite content being mayor of California’s third-most populous city.

“I have a wonderful marriage,” Mahan said. “I have two wonderful kids. I loved working in the private sector. I’ve got a lot of great friends. I’m doing this because I genuinely want to make our city better, and I love the job. But it’s not who I am, and I can separate myself from the job.”

That grounding and perspective, so different from those politicians oozing ambition from every pore, may be Mahan’s best commendation for higher office.

If and when.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — San Diego police fatally shot and killed a man on Tuesday who was reportedly found armed outside of an elementary school.

The California Attorney General’s Office has since launched an investigation into the incident under a police accountability law. But the involvement of the attorney general raises additional questions about the incident.

Police received a call at around 6:43 a.m. PDT that a man was sitting on the campus of Fay Elementary School who had a “gun next to him” and was holding a knife, according to department spokesperson Lt. Travis Easter, who described the incident in two brief videos posted to Facebook.

Officers contacted the man and used de-escalation techniques that included firing less-lethal bean bag rounds and using and an officer K-9, Easter told KNSD.

However, police opened fire on the man after their efforts were unsuccessful. Officers performed life-saving measures on the wounded man, but he died at the scene. No officers were injured.

Police have not offered details on the incident, including how many officers were involved, the number of shots fired, the name of the man and his possible motive. Easter said in a video that the incident will be investigated by the California Department of Justice.

“I was having my coffee this morning and then I heard like nine shots and usually people are popping off fireworks but it didn’t sound like that,” resident David Corpus told KNSD. “I went to the top of the alley and then I saw a body at the top of the street.”

The man was homeless and holding a sharp object, witnesses told KFMB-TV.

“As soon as I was coming in, I just got a call from the prime time teacher there just stating not to bring the kids, that an incident happened,” parent Johanna Vargas told the station. “And I asked her, ‘What happened?’ And she just said that a homeless man came in through the door where the parents have access, and had, like, a sharp object. I don’t know if she said it was a knife or what, but that he was making signs, like, if he was going to stab someone.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta confirmed the investigation in a press release. It stated that the investigation was being pursued under Assembly Bill 1506, a 2020 state law that mandates state prosecutors investigate when police fatally shoot an unarmed civilian and bring charges against the officer if justified.

Police said the man was fleeing from the school and the time of the shooting, reported Uptown News. Neither police nor Bonta’s office responded to the news outlet’s questions about why the investigation was launched when the man was reportedly armed.

However, KFMB-TV reported that a gun that appeared to have an orange tip was found near the man’s body. The state’s definition of “unarmed” can include someone with a fake weapon, according to the station.

Sept. 22 (UPI) — A magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit Berkeley, Calif., early Monday morning, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The quake, which struck at 2:56 a.m. PDT, initially had a magnitude of 4.6, and its epicenter was just a few blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus. It’s depth was about 4.8 miles.

More than 21,000 people reported having felt it on the USGS site within the first hour. Berkeley and Oakland felt it the strongest, and San Francisco and Vallejo felt it slightly less. Reports from people in Salinas and Stockton said residents felt it there, too.

So far, there are no reports of injuries or damage.

USGS Seismologist Sarah Minson said this is what they consider a small earthquake even though it woke people up all over the Bay Area.

“Shaking is variable and it depends a lot on your location, what kind of building you’re in, what kind of land you’re standing on,” Minson told ABC7 News. “However, this being such a small magnitude earthquake, shaking from it is going to be pretty low everywhere, certainly enough to be impactful for people, for them to feel it, for it to be upsetting, potentially even to knock over things very close to the epicenter. But in general, we wouldn’t expect to see, for example, structural damage from an earthquake this small.”

The epicenter was near the Hayward Fault, which runs along the eastern side of the Berkeley campus and bisects its football stadium.

“UC Berkeley is the only major university in the world that has a dangerous earthquake fault running through its campus,” wrote Horst Rademacher, a researcher at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory in his 2017 walking tour of the Hayward Fault on the campus.

Marquez’s latest victory means he can clinch a seventh MotoGP world title at the next race in Japan in a fortnight.

Ducati’s Marc Marquez resisted a spirited challenge from Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi to win the San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday, taking his revenge after crashing out of the lead in Saturday’s sprint, and inching closer to the MotoGP title.

Bezzecchi had inherited victory in the sprint when Marquez crashed out. This time, however, the determined Spaniard overtook the Aprilia rider on lap 12, having started on the second row of the grid, and never looked back.

Marquez’s 11th race victory of the season takes him to 512 points – a record tally for a MotoGP rider in a single season – and he celebrated his victory by unzipping his leathers and holding his red suit up on the podium like a matador.

Gresini Racing’s Alex Marquez finished a distant third, and brother Marc, with a 182-point lead, can clinch his seventh title at the Japanese Grand Prix this month.

“Today I gave everything I had. It’s true that the mistake from yesterday gave me extra concentration, extra power, extra energy,” an exhausted Marc Marquez said.

“I was just there following him [Bezzecchi], trying to push him always super close, because it’s impossible to do 27 laps without any mistake. And in the end, he did a small mistake on turn eight, and then I led the race.

“Super important for Ducati; I felt the pressure this weekend.”

Six more rounds remain, but Marc Marquez can now win his first title since 2019 if he outscores brother Alex by just three points in Japan.

Superb launch

At the start, Marc had a superb launch off the line and he veered to the outside to quickly move up to second behind polesitter Bezzecchi while Alex was pushed down to third.

As the top three streaked away, Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo found it difficult to maintain that pace, and he was soon battling with KTM’s Pedro Acosta, who eventually found his way past the former champion to chase the leading pack.

But Acosta’s hopes of fighting for the podium went up in smoke when he retired with a broken chain, with the young Spaniard furiously wagging his finger at the bike after he stopped on the side of the track.

Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia had another race to forget in a nightmare season for the twice champion, who crashed out of seventh place, his third place in the championship now seriously under threat from Bezzecchi.

Up front, Marc continued piling the pressure on Bezzecchi, and the Aprilia rider finally buckled on lap 12 when he was a breath late on the brakes and went wide, opening the door for the red Ducati to ease past him and into the lead.

Unrelenting Bezzecchi

Bezzecchi gave chase, unrelenting and eager to reclaim the lead. But Marc remained calm and the Spaniard was in no mood to crash out of the lead twice in one weekend.

Bezzecchi shook his head in frustration with six laps left as Marc set the fastest lap of the race.

Marc tried his best to shake off the younger Italian, who found an extraordinary late race pace to challenge for the lead. But the Ducati rider responded once again as they traded fastest laps and left third-placed Alex more than six seconds behind.

“Besides [missing out on] the victory, this is maybe the best race of my life, because I was super competitive all weekend – pole position, sprint win, second place,” Bezzecchi said.

“I was close to Marc, who is at the moment the strongest on the grid. I’m very happy, I gave my all, I’m destroyed!”

VR46 Racing riders Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Di Giannantonio finished fourth and fifth, respectively, while Gresini’s Fermin Aldeguer was sixth.

SANTA CLARA — Denis Bouanga finished with a hat trick after Son Heung-min scored in the first minute and LAFC beat the San José Earthquakes 4-2 on Saturday night at Levi Stadium.

Son gave LAFC (12-7-8) the lead when he used passes from rookie Artem Smolyakov and Mark Delgado to score 54 seconds into the match. It was Son’s second goal in five matches since transferring from Tottenham Hotspur. He ties for the third fastest goal in club history. Smolyakov’s assist was his first in his 19th appearance and Delgado’s was his career-high eighth.

Bouanga took over from there — scoring in the ninth, 12th and 87th minutes for his third career three-goal effort in regular-season play. Bouanga, who won the Golden Boot Award in 2023, has 18 goals on the season — three behind league leader Sam Surridge of Nashville SC.

Preston Judd scored in the 18th minute for the Earthquakes, whose final tally came on an own goal by LAFC defender Sergi Palencia in the 90th minute. Judd’s netter was his career-best seventh. Palencia had assists on two of Bouanga’s goals.

Hugo Lloris saved three shots for LAFC (12-7-8).

Daniel De Sousa Britto totaled two saves for the Earthquakes (9-13-8).

LAFC pulls one point behind the fourth-place Seattle Sounders in the Western Conference with the top four seeds earning home-field advantage in the best-of-three first round.

LAFC travels to play Real Salt Lake on Wednesday. The Earthquakes host St. Louis City on Saturday.

Food delivery app DoorDash is setting its sights on a new destination to test out flying drone deliveries: San Francisco.

The tech company leased a warehouse in the Mission District last month that will serve as a research and development space to advance its autonomous delivery technology, a June letter sent to San Francisco Zoning Administrator Corey Teague shows.

“This project reflects a broader commitment to reinvesting in San Francisco’s innovation economy and creating pathways for local employment in emerging technologies,” the letter said.

The 34,325-square-foot building at 1960 Folsom St. is roughly two miles away from DoorDash’s headquarters. About 200 people are expected to be employed at the site.

DoorDash confirmed on Wednesday that the company will use the facility to test autonomous delivery technology and support research and development for its robotics and automation arm. The company didn’t immediately answer questions about whether California residents will soon be able to get food delivery via a drone.

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported on DoorDash’s drone delivery plans.

Most of the testing would happen inside the warehouse but some of it will also occur outdoors during normal business hours in a gated area. The property includes a big outdoor area with surface parking, the letter said.

DoorDash has been piloting drone deliveries in other states including Texas, Virginia and North Carolina as well as Australia. DoorDash has partnered with aviation companies Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Flytrek, an Israeli drone delivery company.

Drone delivery companies have also teamed up with other businesses, including Amazon and Walmart.

The expansion of drone delivery highlights how automation and robotics, powered by artificial intelligence, could reshape the future of work. Companies have been experimenting with drone delivery as a way to get food to customers’ doorsteps within minutes.

DoorDash and Flytrek launched drone delivery in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, in June. The drones delivered from restaurants such as Papa Johns and The Brass Tap and could carry up to 6.6 pounds, according to a news release about the partnership.

In the letter sent to Teague, a San Francisco attorney writes she’s reaching out on behalf of a “leading technology company focused on last-mile delivery solutions” to confirm their client is permitted to use the site as “research and development (R&D) space for autonomous delivery technologies.”

Even though the attorney doesn’t name DoorDash in the letter, the building’s lease has been linked to the company.

“The test flights outdoors are anticipated to be up to approximately 150 feet above ground. No more than two drones would be operated at the same time, and no individual flight would exceed 30 minutes in duration,” the letter said.

DoorDash has also been expanding other types of delivery, including a partnership with Coco Robotics in which boxy robots with wheels deliver food throughout Los Angeles and Chicago.

While San Francisco is a leading hub for technology and innovation, city officials have also encountered safety concerns from residents concerned about running into robots as they take up space on sidewalks. In 2017, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to restrict delivery robots.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Transportation in August proposed a new rule that would make it easier for companies to fly drones over longer distances. A DoorDash spokesperson said the company is encouraged by the steps taken “towards making drone delivery a scalable, safe, and reliable option for more communities across the country.”

As of December 2024, roughly 42 million people used DoorDash monthly, according to the company’s full-year financial results.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Dakota Smith giving you the latest on city and county government during a short week.

When Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, the San Fernando Valley refused to take part.

Valley homeowners, fearing traffic and development, successfully blocked any Olympic competitions from taking place in the Sepulveda Basin. Environmentalists also objected to using the basin, a 2,000-acre flood plain that’s home to an array of birds.

Business owners, who had hoped for a surge from international visitors, lost out. Many tourists didn’t come across the hill, and some Valley locals stayed home to watch the Olympics on television, rather than shop, The Times reported in August 1984.

Now, the Olympics are coming to L.A. and the Valley, with BMX, skateboarding, 3×3 basketball and modern pentathlon planned for temporary venues at the Sepulveda Basin.

L.A. City Council members and business leaders are planning for a flurry of activity, including Olympics watch parties, youth sports clinics and pin-trading parties where athletes and fans swap pins and other Olympics memorabilia.

They are also hoping that stores, restaurants and other businesses in the Valley can benefit from the Games.

“During ’84, I remember being this young girl in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and feeling completely disconnected [from the Olympics],” said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez at a Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce event Thursday.

Rodriguez and four other council members who represent San Fernando Valley neighborhoods (Bob Blumenfield, John Lee, Nithya Raman and Adrin Nazarian) weighed in on Olympics planning and other city issues during the panel, hosted by journalist Alex Cohen. (Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who represents the central and eastern Valley, was absent.)

Rodriguez said her father worked at a Los Angeles Fire Department station near USC and the Olympic Village, and would come home with stories about the festivities.

Blumenfield, whose district includes Reseda, Woodland Hills and Tarzana, recalled sneaking into a men’s gymnastics final in 1984 by walking the wrong way through an exit door. (His seats were very good: actor John Travolta was a few rows in front of him, he told The Times.)

During the 2028 Games, Blumenfield is planning watch parties in his district, with locals and visitors enjoying the Games on a big screen. He hopes visitors will take the G Line to Olympic events at the basin, and stop at stores and restaurants along the way.

“We want the Olympics to be part of the whole city, including the West Valley,” Blumenfield said in an interview.

Resistance to the ’84 Olympics wasn’t isolated to the Valley: Many Angelenos feared traffic from swarms of visitors and the threat of terrorism following the murders of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team by a Palestinian militant group at the 1972 Munich Summer Games.

Still, the pushback by Valley residents traced to another event: Mayor Tom Bradley‘s effort in 1978 to move the Hollywood Park racetrack from Inglewood to the Sepulveda Basin. Dozens of homeowners and business groups fought the proposal, and Bradley eventually dropped it.

The same opponents coalesced again when Bradley supported swimming, archery, rowing and biking events in the basin.

Renee Weitzer was president of the Encino Homeowners Assn. during planning for the ’84 Games and helped fight the Hollywood Park project. But she later broke with those opponents and backed Olympic venues in the Valley.

Peter Ueberroth, head of the committee that brought the Games to Los Angeles in 1984, also lived in Encino at the time and told Weitzer that the committee couldn’t afford a long fight over Valley venues.

Ueberroth said, “ ‘I don’t have time for this. I am pulling out of the Valley,’ ” Weitzer said in a recent interview.

Ueberroth also claimed that anti-Olympic Valley residents threw poisoned meat to his dogs at his home.

Today, Weitzer thinks the Valley lost a big opportunity to transform the Sepulveda Basin with swimming pools and other venues that the committee would have paid for.

“It would have been fabulous, and it would have served the Valley well,” she said.

Bob Ronka, then a city council member from the northeast San Fernando Valley, led the effort to put a charter amendment on the ballot in 1978 to ensure that taxpayers didn’t foot the bill for the Olympics.

In the end, the ’84 Games generated a profit of more than $250 million dollars.

“He thought it would be a financial disaster for Los Angeles,” said Rich Perelman, former vice president of press operations for the L.A. Olympic organizing committee that Ueberroth chaired.

“So we didn’t put anything [in the Valley]. Why row the boat uphill?” said Perelman, who today runs The Sports Examiner, an online news site dedicated to Olympic sports.

Nor did Bradley want a fight with Valley council members over Olympic venues, recalled Zev Yaroslavsky, who was a council member representing the Westside and part of Sherman Oaks at the time.

“The Valley was left out of any part of the Games,” said Yaroslavsky. “Most people would probably say it was a mistake.”

While the Valley didn’t host any events, Birmingham High School in Van Nuys got a new synthetic-surface running track so Olympic athletes could train. (The school is now called Birmingham Community Charter, and the neighborhood is referred to as Lake Balboa.)

Nailing down venues in the Valley isn’t the only pressure faced by LA28, the private committee paying for and overseeing the Games.

Like other parts of L.A., the Valley today is far more ethnically, racially and culturally diverse than in 1984. Rodriguez, whose district includes Mission Hills, Sylmar and Pacoima — neighborhoods with large Latino populations — has repeatedly questioned whether Latinos will be adequately represented.

LA28’s “Los Angeles” portion of the closing ceremonies and handover event at the Paris Olympics included Billie Eilish, H.E.R., Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snoop Dogg, as well as appearances by Tom Cruise and Olympic athletes, sparking criticism on social media about the lack of Latino participants.

A coalition of Latino and Asian organizations also highlighted the dearth of diversity in a September 2024 letter to LA28 chair Casey Wasserman and Mayor Karen Bass.

At last week’s Ad Hoc Committee for the 2028 Olympics, Rodriguez asked LA28 leaders about the “glaring omission of the Latino community in the flag transfer ceremonies” during the 2024 Paris Games.

“I’ll be damned if that happens again with these Games, especially in light of what our community is going through,” Rodriguez said last week, referring to the recent federal immigration raids in L.A. that have overwhelmingly targeted Latinos.

State of play

— SETBACK FOR TRUMP: Mayor Karen Bass and other California political leaders cheered a federal judge’s decision Tuesday barring soldiers from aiding in immigration arrests and other civilian law enforcement in the state. The 9th Circuit or the Supreme Court could reverse the order.

— UP, UP, AND AWAY?: The price tag for the proposed Los Angeles Convention Center expansion keeps rising and is now an estimated $2.7 billion — an increase of $483 million from six months ago. The project would connect the two existing convention halls with a new building and add massive digital billboards, including some facing the freeways.

—BAD OWNER: City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto announced that the city is settling several lawsuits over alleged illegal short-term rentals and party houses in Hollywood. Among them is Franklin Apartments, a rent-stabilized building that turned 10 units into short-term rentals, and later, an underground hotel.

— MEET THE TRASHERS: Bass launched Shine LA to clean city streets in time for the 2028 Olympics. Meet the San Fernando Valley group whose members — mostly retirees in their 60s and 70s — are already volunteering their time.

— PADILLA TARGETED: A group of residents in City Councilmember Imelda Padilla‘s district on Tuesday filed a notice of their intention to seek her recall. The residents — some of whom have a connection to the Lake Balboa Neighborhood Council — didn’t respond to requests for comment. Padilla’s chief of staff, Ackley Padilla, told The Times that her office is “focused on the work at hand, improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods, keeping our youth, seniors and families safe.”

—GARCETTI REEMERGES: Former Mayor Eric Garcetti, in an email fundraising pitch for U.S. House of Representatives candidate Eileen Laubacher, who is trying to unseat Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, confirmed that he is now a Valley resident after returning from India, where he served as U.S. Ambassador. Garcetti, who spent some of his childhood in Encino, wrote that it’s “great to be home in our house in the San Fernando Valley (where my LA story began).”

Zine exits. Who didn’t see this coming?

Former City Councilmember Dennis Zine last week abruptly withdrew from consideration to serve on the commission tasked with changing L.A.’s charter.

Zine, a former LAPD sergeant who is now a reserve officer, served on a similar charter commission in the late 1990s. He is known as a bomb thrower who regularly skewers some city council members by referring to them as the “Crazy Train” in his CityWatch column.

Zine wrote in CityWatch that he met with two council members, including Ysabel Jurado, ahead of his nomination hearing and concluded that he could not work with a “hostile and anti-LAPD body of elected officials.”

In an interview, Zine said he has no ill will toward Jurado — who is among the council’s most progressive members — and plans to have lunch with her. Other council members relayed to him that the full council wouldn’t support his nomination, Zine said.

“I didn’t want to see a split vote on the council floor,” he said. “I didn’t want to see a dogfight.”

Zine, who represented the West Valley when he was a council member, said he is staunchly against some proposals pushed by advocates, including expanding the size of the City Council.

Blumenfield, who nominated Zine for the commission, mistakenly told him that the appointment didn’t need council approval, Zine said.

Blumenfield said he hadn’t anticipated the “difficult process” and said the former council member would have added “immense institutional memory and experience regarding how the city works.”

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? Inside Safe, Bass’ program to shelter homeless people, visited Skid Row this week, a Bass spokesperson said.
• On the docket next week: The City Council is expected to consider a vote on the Convention Center expansion. On Sept. 10, the council’s Transportation Committee will hear an update on transit plans for the 2028 Olympics.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Hirving Lozano and Anders Dreyer scored, and San Diego FC spoiled the home debut of LAFC forward Son Heung-min with a 2-1 victory Sunday night.

After Dreyer got the tiebreaking goal in the 66th minute, Western Conference-leading San Diego held on against a barrage of LAFC chances to extend its unbeaten streak to six matches in MLS play.

Denis Bouanga scored in the first half for LAFC, but the French star and Son both failed to convert golden scoring chances in the final minutes of expansion San Diego’s first trip 120 miles north to BMO Stadium. CJ Dos Santos made three saves for the visitors, including a diving stop on Son in second-half injury time.

Son was given a hero’s welcome in his first match in Los Angeles, taking the field nearly four weeks after LAFC announced the landmark signing of the South Korean star following his decade at Tottenham. Son played his first three matches on the road for LAFC, scoring a goal and immediately energizing the offense while his new club went unbeaten.

The sellout crowd serenaded Son from the moment he stepped on the field for warmups in Los Angeles, which has the world’s largest Korean population outside Korea. With thousands of fans wearing his jerseys for club and country, Son repeatedly waved to those cheering him on, and he exhorted the crowd into a frenzy right before kickoff.

Bouanga put LAFC ahead in the 15th minute with a beautiful chip volley into San Diego’s net off an excellent pass from teenager David Martínez. Bouanga’s goal was his 15th of the season, all in his last 19 matches.

But Lozano answered in the 33rd minute with a strike from the middle of the box for his ninth MLS goal. The Mexican national team star celebrated by taunting the famously raucous North End supporters’ section.

Dreyer put San Diego ahead with an individual effort by the Danish star, slipping behind LAFC’s back line to collect Jeppe Tverskov’s pass and juking two defenders before firing a left-footed shot for his 14th goal.

LAFC controlled play for long stretches, but couldn’t even it.

Son hit a screamer toward the far top corner in the 45th minute, but Dos Santos made a superb leaping save.

Hugo Lloris’ long pass put Son in a one-on-one break in the 74th minute, but he couldn’t get a shot off.

Son then hit the post in the 78th minute with a shot from the top of the box.

Bouanga got alone on the keeper in the 82nd minute, but waited too long to take a shot.

Son’s hard shot in the 92nd minute was saved by a diving Dos Santos.

Francisco Longoria, a San Bernardino man who was driving his truck when a masked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer shot at it, has been arrested and charged by federal authorities. They allege he assaulted immigration officers during the incident.

In a statement, Longoria’s attorneys said Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived at the Longoria household at 4:18 a.m. Thursday, with an armored personnel carrier, a type of military vehicle, and deployed more than a dozen “fully armed and armored” agents to swarm the home, breaking the locks on his gate. An agent called out to Longoria to come out, using a bullhorn, as agents stood at each door and pointed their rifles at the door and at the occupants inside, the attorneys said.

“These are the type of tactics reserved for dangerous criminals such as violent gang members, drug lords, and terrorists,” the attorneys said. “It was clearly intended to intimidate and punish Mr. Longoria and his family for daring to speak out about their attempted murder by ICE and CBP agents on August 16th.”

On that day, federal immigration officers stopped Longoria in San Bernardino. During the encounter, Longoria, who was in his truck with his 18-year-old son and 23-year-old son-in-law, feared for his safety and drove off after masked officers shattered his car window, his attorneys said.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said officers were injured during the encounter when Longoria tried to “run them down.” Longoria’s attorneys dispute their client injured the officers or attempted to hit them, and earlier this week they called for an investigation of the shooting.

On Friday morning, the U.S. attorney’s office confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Longoria the day before. Word of his arrest was earlier reported by the San Bernardino Sun.

Ciaran McEvoy, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said Longoria made an initial appearance before a U.S. District Court judge in Riverside, and is set to be arraigned on Sept. 30. The federal magistrate judge ordered him released on a $5,000 bond.

Longoria was being held at the San Bernardino County jail, in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, as of Thursday afternoon, McEvoy said in an email.

“Since Longoria is an illegal alien, ICE has a detainer on him,” he said. Longoria’s attorneys said their client was transferred into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as of Friday.

An unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed federal agents arrested Longoria at his home.

“CBP and ICE remain committed to enforcing the law, protecting officers, and keeping dangerous criminals off America’s streets — even as local officials in California undermine those efforts,” the official said.

According to a criminal complaint submitted by a Homeland Security Investigations agent, whose name is redacted, Longoria is facing a charge of assault on a federal officer with a deadly/dangerous weapon.

In the complaint, the agent, who interviewed the officers who stopped Longoria, said the officers had stopped Longoria’s GMC pickup truck to conduct “an immigration check.” Two of them were ICE officers and the other two were CBP officers.

The complaint states that the officers were identifiable by their visible clothing marked with “police.”

After they stopped Longoria’s truck, the complaint states, he refused to comply with the demands to turn off his vehicle and roll down the window. One of the CBP officers, identified as J.C., decided to break the window after Longoria refused the commands, and was allegedly struck by the driver’s door on his left elbow and left calf. The passenger side window was also shattered by agents during the encounter.

Another CBP officer was allegedly struck by the front bumper/fender of the truck on his right leg. “The Truck kept pushing Officer S.T., and Officer S.T. shot at the Truck, afraid for his life,” according to the complaint.

Longoria’s attorneys had previously released surveillance video of the incident, which appears to dispute a key claim by Homeland Security — that Longoria drove his truck toward officers and injured them.

In the surveillance video, the moment Longoria drives away, officers on both sides of the truck remain in sight of the video, and they then pile into their vehicles and pursue Longoria’s truck down a side street.

After Longoria drove off, the family called 911. While San Bernardino police were questioning Longoria, the immigration officers arrived, and family members identified the one they believed had shot at the truck.

At the initial court appearance, the judge questioned the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Cory Burleson, about the government’s claim that it was conducting an “immigration check,” a term he couldn’t clarify when asked by the court, according to Longoria’s attorneys. Burleson also claimed Longoria was stopped due to a traffic violation, but couldn’t identify the violation, his attorneys said. When the judge asked Burleson to identify the alleged injuries of the officers, Burleson said he was “not aware of any injuries,” Longoria’s attorneys said.

Longoria’s attorneys said their client was granted bond, but because of the ICE hold, has since been transferred into ICE custody, which they believe is the “true purpose of this false and baseless charge.”

“No reasonable prosecutor could believe that a conviction would be secured against Mr. Longoria for the August 16th stop, when every video supports Mr. Longoria’s version of events and directly contradicts DHS’ story,” his attorneys said. “Yet [the Department of Justice] will not drop the charges; it has been their practice during this Administration to pursue charges based on unsubstantiated and false affidavits in order to arrest individuals and then turn them over to ICE.”

His attorneys said they intend to continue advocating for Longoria, his son and son-in-law.

“We are in contact with local and State authorities and are encouraging a state investigation and criminal charges against the ICE/CBP agents,” the attorneys said.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.