state

California may be losing two of the state’s most famed residents and generous political donors.

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg recently moved to New York and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is eyeing purchasing a new property in Florida, stirring speculation about whether their decisions are tied to a proposed new tax on California billionaires to fund healthcare for the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Although a handful of prominent conservatives who bolted out of California noisily blamed their departure on the controversial wealth tax measure, as well as the state’s liberal ways and what they describe as cumbersome business regulations, neither Zuckerberg nor Spielberg has given any indication that the tax proposal is the reason for their moves.

A spokesperson for Spielberg, who has owned homes on both the East and West coasts since at least the mid-1990s, said the sole motivation for Spielberg and his wife, actor Kate Capshaw, decamping to Manhattan was to be near family.

“Steven’s move to the East Coast is both long-planned and driven purely by his and Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York based children and grandchildren,” said Terry Press, a spokesperson for the prodigious filmmaker. She declined to answer questions about his position on the proposed ballot measure.

Director Steven Spielberg presents president Bill Clinton with the Ambassadors Humanity award at the 5th Annual Ambassadors for Humanity Dinner Honoring former President Bill Clinton to support the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation held at the Amblin theatre Universal Studios on February 17, 2005 in Los Angeles, California.

(Frazer Harrison / Getty Images)

On Jan. 1, Spielberg and Capshaw officially became residents of New York City, settling in the historic San Remo co-op in Central Park West. The storied building is among the most exclusive in Manhattan, having been home to Bono, Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, Tiger Woods and many other celebrities. On the same day, Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment opened an office in New York City.

Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, are considering buying a $200-million waterfront mansion in South Florida, the Wall Street Journal first reported this month. The property is located in Miami’s Indian Creek, a gated barrier island that is an alcove of the wealthy and the influential, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.

Representatives for Zuckerberg declined to comment.

The billionaires’ moves raised eyebrows because they take place as supporters of the proposed 5% one-time tax on the assets of California billionaires and trusts are gathering signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot. Led by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, they must gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24.

If approved, the tax would raise roughly $100 billion that would largely pay for healthcare services, as well as some education programs. Critics say it would drive the wealthy and their companies out of the state. On Dec. 31, venture capitalist David Sacks announced that he was opening an office in Austin, Texas, the same day PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel publicized that his firm had opened a new office in Miami.

The proposed ballot measure, if it qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters, would apply to Californians who are residents of the state as of 2026. But residency requirements are murky. Among the factors considered by the state’s Franchise Tax Board are where someone is registered to vote, the location of their principle residence, how much time they spend in California, where their driver’s license was issued and their cars registered, where their spouse and children live, the location of their doctors, dentists, accountants and attorneys, and their “social ties,” such as the site of their house of worship or county club.

It’s unclear whether the proposal will qualify for the November ballot, and if it does, whether voters will approve it. However, a mass exodus of a number of the state’s billionaires — more than 200 people — would have a notable effect on state revenue, regardless. The state’s budget volatility is caused by its heavy reliance on taxes paid by the state’s wealthiest residents, including from levies on capital gains and stock-based compensation.

“The highest-income Californians pay the largest share of the state’s personal income tax,” according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2026-27 budget summary that was published in January. “The significant share of personal income taxes — by far the state’s largest General Fund revenue source — paid by a small percentage of taxpayers increases the difficulty of forecasting personal income tax revenue.”

This reliance on wealthy Californians is among the reasons the proposed billionaires tax has created a schism among Democrats and is a source of discord in the 2026 governor’s race to replace Newsom, who cannot seek another term and is weighing a presidential bid. He opposes the proposal; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) campaigned for it Wednesday evening at the Wiltern in Los Angeles.

“I am not only supportive of what they’re trying to do in California, but we’re going to introduce a wealth tax for the whole country. We have got to deal with the greed, the extraordinary greed, of the billionaire class,” Sanders told reporters Feb. 11.

Zuckerberg and Spielberg are both prolific political donors, though it is difficult to fully account for their contributions to candidates, campaigns and other entities because of how they or their affiliates donate to them as well as the intricacies of campaign finance reporting.

Spielberg, 79, a Hollywood legend, is worth more than $7 billion, according to Forbes. He and his wife have donated almost universally to Democratic candidates and causes, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit, nonpartisan tracker of federal campaign contributions, and the California secretary of state’s office.

The prolific filmmaker, who won acclaim for movies such as “Schindler’s List,” “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park” and the “Indiana Jones” trilogy, was born in Ohio and lived with his family in several states before moving to California. He attended Cal State Long Beach but dropped out after Universal Studios gave him a contract to direct television shows.

Zuckerberg, 41, launched Facebook while in college and is worth more than $219 billion, making him among the world’s richest people, according to Forbes.

His largest personal federal political donation appears to be $1 million to FWD.us, a group focused on criminal justice and immigration reform nationwide, according to Open Secrets.

Zuckerberg, who is currently a registered Democrat in Santa Clara County, has donated to politicians across the partisan spectrum, including Democrats such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Republicans such as President Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he ran for the White House and Chris Christie during his New Jersey gubernatorial campaign.

Both men’s personal donations don’t include their other effects on campaign finances — Spielberg has helped countless Democratic politicians raise money in Hollywood; Zuckerberg’s company has made other contributions. Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee in December 2024. Zuckerberg later attended the president’s swearing in at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Zuckerberg, born in White Plains, N.Y., created an early prototype of Facebook while at Harvard University and dropped out to move to Silicon Valley to complete the social media platform, as depicted in the award-winning film “The Social Network.”

He still owns multiple properties in California and elsewhere, including a controversial, massive compound on Kauai that includes two mansions, dozens of bedrooms, multiple other buildings and recreational spaces — and an underground bunker that features a metal door filled with concrete, according to a 2023 investigation by Wired. The cost of land acquisition and construction reportedly has topped $300 million.

Meta is based in Menlo Park, Calif., though it has been incorporated in Delaware since Facebook’s founding in 2004.

Times staff writer Queenie Wong contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — As progressives seek to place a new tax on billionaires on California’s November ballot, a Republican congressman is moving in the opposite direction — proposing federal legislation that would block states from taxing the assets of former residents.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who faces a tough re-election challenge under California’s redrawn congressional maps, says he will introduce the “Keep Jobs in California Act of 2026” on Friday. The measure would prohibit any state from levying taxes retroactively on individuals who no longer live there.

The proposed legislation adds another layer to what has already been a fiery debate over California’s approach to taxing the ultra-wealthy. It has created divisions among Democrats and has placed Los Angeles at the center of a broader political fight, with Bernie Sanders set to hold a rally on Wednesday night in support of the wealth tax.

Kiley said he drafted the bill in reaction to reports that several of California’s most prominent billionaires — including Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — are planning to leave the state in anticipation of the wealth tax being enacted.

“California’s proposed wealth tax is an unprecedented attempt to chase down people who have already left as a result of the state’s poor policies,” Kiley said in a statement Wednesday. “Many of our state’s leading job creators are leaving preemptively.”

Kiley said it would be “fundamentally unfair” to retroactively impose taxes on former residents.

“California already has the highest income tax of any state in the country, the highest gas tax, the highest overall tax burden,” Kiley said in a House floor speech earlier this month. “But a wealth tax is something unique because a wealth tax is not merely the taxation of earned income, it is the confiscation of assets.”

The fate of Kiley’s proposal is just as uncertain as his future in Congress. His 5th Congressional District, which hugs the Nevada border, has been sliced up into six districts under California’s voter-approved Proposition 50, and he has not yet picked one to run in for re-election.

The Billionaire Tax Act, which backers are pushing to get on the November ballot, would charge California’s 200-plus billionaires a onetime 5% tax on their net worth in order to backfill billions of dollars in Republican-led cuts to federal healthcare funding for middle-class and low-income residents. It is being proposed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.

In his floor speech, Kiley worried that the tax, if approved, could cause the state’s economy to collapse.

“What’s especially threatening about this is that our state’s tax structure is essentially a house of cards,” Kiley said. “You have a system that is incredibly volatile, where top 1% of earners account for 50% of the tax revenue.”

But supporters of the wealth tax argue the measure is one of the few ways that can help the state seek new revenue as it faces economic uncertainty.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, is urging Californians to back the measure, which he says would “provide the necessary funding to prevent more than 3 million working-class Californians from losing the healthcare they currently have — and would help prevent the closures of California hospitals and emergency rooms.”

“It should be common sense that the billionaires pay just slightly more so that entire communities can preserve access to life-saving medical care,” Sanders said in a statement earlier this month. “Our country needs access to hospitals and emergency rooms, not more tax breaks for billionaires.”

Other Democrats are not so sure.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is eyeing a presidential bid in 2028, has opposed the measure. He has warned a state-by-state approach to taxing the wealthy could stifle innovation and entrepreneurship.

Some of he wealthiest people in the world are also taking steps to defeat the measure.

Brin is donating $20 million to a California political drive to prevent the wealth tax from becoming law, according to a disclosure reviewed by the New York Times. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and the chairman of Palantir, has also donated millions to a committee working to defeat the proposed measure, the New York Times reported.

Imagine if a candidate for, say, the California Assembly appeared at a political event and delivered the following remarks:

“No to kosher meat. No to yarmulkes. No to celebrating Easter. No, no, no.”

He, or she, would be roundly — and rightly — criticized for their bigotry and raw prejudice.

Recently, at a candidates forum outside Dallas, Larry Brock expressed the following sentiments as part of a lengthy disquisition on the Muslim faith.

“We should ban the burqa, the hijab, the abaya, the niqab,” said the candidate for state representative, referring to the coverings worn by some Muslim women. “No to halal meat. No to celebrating Ramadan. No, no, no.”

Brock, whose comments were reported by the New York Times, is plainly a bigot. (He’s also a convicted felon, sentenced to two years in prison for invading the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. No to hand-slaughtered lamb. Yes to despoiling our seat of government.)

Brock is no outlier.

For many Texas Republicans running in the March 3 primary, Islamophobia has become a central portion of their election plank, as a longtime political lance — illegal immigration — has grown dull around its edges.

Aaron Reitz, a candidate for attorney general, aired an ad accusing politicians of importing “millions of Muslims into our country.”

“The result?” he says, with a tough-guy glower. “More terrorism, more crime. And they even want their own illegal cities in Texas to impose sharia law.” (More on that in a moment.)

One of his opponents, Republican Rep. Chip Roy — co-founder of the “Sharia-Free America Caucus” — has called for amending the Texas Constitution to protect the state’s tender soil from Islamification by “radical Marxists.”

In the fierce GOP race for U.S. Senate, incumbent John Cornyn — facing a potentially career-ending challenge from state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton — has aired one TV spot accusing his fellow Republican of being “soft on radical Islam” and another describing radical Islam “as a bloodthirsty ideology.”

Paxton countered by calling Cornyn’s assertions a desperate attack “that can’t erase the fact that he helped radical Islamic Afghans invade Texas,” a reference to a visa program that allowed people who helped U.S. forces — in other words friends and allies — to come to America after being carefully screened.

There hasn’t been such a concentrated, sulfurous political assault on Muslims since the angst-ridden days following the Sept. 11 attacks.

In just the latest instance, Democrats are calling for the censure of Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine after he wrote Sunday on X: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” He’s since doubled down by posting several images of dogs with the words “Don’t tread on me.”

In Texas, the venom starts at the top with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s waltzing toward reelection to an unprecedented fourth term.

In November, Abbott issued an executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations — the latter a prominent civil rights group — as terrorist organizations.

Not to be out-demagogued, Bo French, a candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, called on President Trump to round up and deport every Muslim in America. (French, the former Tarrant County GOP chair, gained notoriety last year for posting an online poll asking, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” The choice: Jews or Muslims.)

Much of the Republican hysteria has focused on a proposed real estate development in a corn- and hayfield 40 miles east of Dallas.

The master-planned community of about 1,000 homes, known as EPIC City, was initiated by the East Plano Islamic Center to serve as a Muslim-centered community for the region’s growing number of worshipers. (Of course, anyone could choose to live there, regardless of their religious faith.)

Paxton said he would investigate the proposed development as a “potentially illegal ‘Sharia City.’ ” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last week jumped in with its own investigation — a move Abbott hailed — after the Justice Department quietly closed a probe into the project, saying developers agreed to abide by federal fair housing laws. That investigation came at the behest of Cornyn.

The rampant resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment hardly seems coincidental.

For years, Republicans capitalized on the issues of illegal immigration and lax enforcement along the U.S. -Mexico border. With illegal crossings slowed to a trickle under Trump, “Republicans can’t run on the border issue the way [they] have in the past,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

What’s more, cracking down on immigration no longer brings together Republicans the way it once did.

General support for Trump’s get-tough policies surpasses 80% among Texas Republicans, said Henson, who’s spent nearly two decades sampling public opinion in the state. But support falls dramatically, into roughly the high-40s to mid-50s, when it comes to specifics such as arresting people at church, or seizing them when they make required court appearances.

“Republicans need to find something else that taps into those cultural-identity issues” and unifies and animates the GOP base, said Henson.

In short, the fearmongers need a new scapegoat.

Muslims are about 2% of the adult population in Texas, according to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study, completed in 2024. That works out to estimates ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 residents in a state of nearly 32 million residents.

Not a huge number.

But enough for heedless politicians hell-bent on getting themselves elected, even if it means tearing down a whole group of people in the process.

LANSING, Mich — In a stunning victory that gave a major boost to his presidential candidacy, the Rev. Jesse Jackson overwhelmed Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis Saturday in the Michigan Democratic presidential caucuses.

Running strongly in white and black areas, Jackson got nearly twice as many popular votes as Dukakis, and also appeared to be winning considerably more delegates than Dukakis, based on the popular vote in the 18 congressional districts.

With 85% of the vote in, Jackson had 101,037 votes or 54% of the total, to 53,041 votes or 28% for Dukakis.

Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who had said he had to win in Michigan to remain a strong candidate, was running a distant third with 23,732 or 13%. Aides said he would meet today with family and advisers before announcing whether he will pull out of the race and run for reelection to Congress.

Simon and Gore Trail

Far behind were Sens. Paul Simon of Illinois and Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee with about 2% of the vote each. Neither had campaigned hard in Michigan.

Preliminary calculations by the Associated Press gave Jackson 61 national convention delegates, Dukakis 43, Gephardt 22, and 12 undecided among the 138 at stake in Michigan.

These results tightened the overall delegate race a bit. By the AP count, Dukakis had 596.55, Jackson had 584.55, Gore had 362.8, Gephardt 178, Simon 171.5, and 371.6 were uncommitted. To win the nomination, a candidate needs 2,082 delegates.

Jackson, meanwhile, was already about 200,000 popular votes ahead of Dukakis nationally before his big triumph Saturday.

It was a big victory for Jackson–who finished third here in 1984–because this was the party’s first test in a major industrial state in which no favorite son was on the ballot.

And it dealt a blow to Dukakis’ recent argument that he was moving inevitably toward the Democratic nomination with his steady accumulation of delegates. Eleven days ago, he had finished third in Illinois behind favorite sons Simon and Jackson.

“This is the first major test where everyone was on the visiting team,” said Joel Ferguson, chairman of Jackson’s Michigan campaign. “No one was on his home turf.”

“You cannot minimize or denigrate Jackson’s victory in Michigan, and anyone who does is missing what is going on out there,” said Los Angeles attorney Mickey Kantor, a longtime adviser to many Democratic candidates.

“Jesse Jackson has proved that if you have a message and a natural constituency it makes a great deal of difference,” added Kantor, who has provided informal advice to the Gore campaign.

Dukakis had hoped in Michigan to have the edge in delegates–and declare that a victory–because 90 of the 138 delegates are apportioned by congressional district, and the governor expected Jackson’s strength to be largely confined to two predominantly black districts in Detroit.

Won 10 of 18 Districts

Instead, Jackson won the popular vote in 10 of the 18 districts, many of them with a low percentage of blacks.

For all of Jackson’s surprising statewide strength, it was the black vote–particularly in Detroit–that gave him his landslide. More than 42% of Jackson’s total vote came in the two majority black districts. And blacks apparently turned out strongly in other districts.

Jackson defied conventional wisdom on two counts here: He ran well all over the state and he won despite what party officials considered a high turnout–about 200,000 caucus-goers.

The reasoning before today was that a high turnout would benefit Dukakis because much of it would be whites newly attracted to the process. But clearly Jackson won many of those whites.

Wins University Towns

Jackson won the majority-white congressional districts containing the cities of Saginaw, Flint, Pontiac, Lansing, Kalamazoo and Muskegon. He also won in the university towns of Ann Arbor (University of Michigan) and East Lansing (Michigan State).

In the congressional district that includes the city of Flint and its heavily unionized auto plants, Jackson beat Dukakis by more than 2 to 1, an indication that many workers were remembering that Jackson had stood with strikers and the unemployed in a number of areas around the country.

But Jackson also did respectably in middle and upper Michigan, areas with few blacks and union members.

“We felt if we took Jesse around the state and people heard what he had to say, we would win,” said Ferguson.

Picking Front-Runner

Then, in a reference to a statement by Democratic National Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. that the party should soon unite behind a front-runner, Ferguson added:

“If we are going to get behind a consensus front-runner, that means we ought to get behind Jesse Jackson.”

As the outcome became clear Saturday evening, Dukakis acknowledged that it was Jackson’s night.

“It looks as if Rev. Jackson has won the popular vote in Michigan,” the Massachusetts governor said late Saturday in Milwaukee, where he was already campaigning for Wisconsin’s April 5 primary. “I congratulate Jesse on this. He’s run a good campaign, an exciting campaign.”

‘Nothing Inevitable’

When asked about his own prospects for winning the nomination, Dukakis said: “There’s nothing inevitable about anything in American politics.

“It’s a marathon,” he said. “We’re really only at the midpoint. I don’t think I did very well in Michigan today. I did reasonably well, but I don’t think I did spectacularly well.”

Dukakis’ national political coordinator, Alice Travis, took a more strategic approach to the Michigan result, attempting to portray the race now as one between a Democrat who could be elected in November, Dukakis, and one who she and others do not think could be elected, Jackson.

‘A Two-Man Race’

“It’s a two-man race,” Travis said in Lansing as the returns came in. “Only two candidates are running national campaigns. We’ve always said first or second place would be good in Michigan and we’ve gotten a lot of delegates around the state.”

But the best face Dukakis could put on the Michigan result was that it apparently eliminated Gephardt as a serious candidate, leaving only Gore as a serious white alternative to Dukakis.

Gephardt, who had tried to restart his presidential campaign in Michigan, planned to meet with family and advisers today before announcing whether he will pull out of the race and run for reelection to Congress, aides said.

“He’s going to go home (to Washington), meet with his family Sunday and look at the numbers,” campaign press secretary Ali Webb said. “He’ll have something to say Monday.”

Bitter Medicine

Speaking in Milwaukee Saturday night, Gephardt appeared resigned to the inevitable, and spoke of his campaign in the past tense.

“My campaign has had its successes and its setbacks,” he said. “But at heart, our greatest victory has been to call the Democratic Party back to its essential role as an agent of fundamental change.”

Tuesday is the deadline for Gephardt to file as a candidate for reelection to Congress from Missouri. Although aides said he could file for reelection and remain a candidate for President, his showing in Michigan increased the chances he will drop out of the presidential contest.

Staff writers Robert A. Rosenblatt in Lansing and Robert Shogan in Milwaukee contributed to this story.

As a child, I spent nearly every weekend with my best friend shooting hoops and jumping fences throughout Hollywood.

It was always amusing seeing tourists — especially foreigners — line up around buildings and outside nightclubs and lounges that held no meaning to me, at the time.

These monuments I ignored as a youngster became the must-see places of my teenage years and early 20s.

It was at the Viper Room where a 20-year-old me was tossed out of line trying to crash the same venue where Pearl Jam had played.

I was first scandalized by the price of a drink for a date’s $10 cocktail at the Troubadour in West Hollywood (I think I was making $6.50 an hour at the time). But I had to visit one of Jim Morrison’s favorite haunts.

So I was delighted when The Times entertainment team compiled its list of 26 legendary music sites in L.A.

It was fun to see favorites, but more importantly, to read about new places and legends.

Hopefully, there’s a spot that intrigues you. Let’s take a look at a few selections.

Capitol Records (Hollywood)

The most famous tower in all of music was never overtly intended to look like a stack of LPs and a stylus needle.

“The building was not designed as a cartoon or a giggle. To have it trivialized with the stack-of-records myth is annoying and dismaying,” architect Louis Naidorf has said of his Capitol Records Building. “There’s not a thing on the building that doesn’t have a solid purpose to it.”

That was no obstacle for it becoming emblematic of both Los Angeles and the record business. It’s still home to one of the most renowned recording studios on Earth, and its silhouette remains a Hollywood icon and a symbol of Los Angeles on par with the Hollywood sign nearby.

(Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times)

Elliott Smith Wall (Silver Lake)

The beloved singer-songwriter Elliott Smith posed at the swooping mural outside Solutions speaker repair in Silver Lake for the cover of his LP “Figure 8” in 2000.

After he died by suicide in 2003, the wall became an unofficial memorial for Smith, where fans left touching notes, song lyrics and nips of liquors mentioned in his songs.

While the wall has been cut out in spots to make room for various restaurants — and it’s often covered in more flagrant tagging — it’s still a living connection to one of the city’s most cherished voices.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Chaplin Studio (Hollywood)

John Mayer calls it “adult day care”: the historic recording studio behind the arched gates on La Brea Avenue where famous musicians have been keeping themselves — and one another — creatively occupied since the mid-1960s.

Known for decades as Henson Studios — and as A&M Studios before that — the 3-acre complex in the heart of Hollywood has played host to the creation of some of music’s most celebrated records, among them Carole King’s “Tapestry,” Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” Guns N’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion” and D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah.”

Charlie Chaplin, who was born in London, began building the lot in 1917 in a white-and-brown English Tudor style; he went on to direct some of his best-known films, including “Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator,” on the property.

The Lighthouse Cafe (Hermosa Beach)

The Lighthouse Cafe might seem familiar from its cameo in the Oscar-winning movie “La La Land,” but this jazz cafe was once instrumental in shaping the West Coast jazz scene.

The beachside spot first opened as a restaurant in 1934 and was changed into a bar by the 1940s. It first started to play jazz in 1949 when the owner let bassist Howard Rumsey host a recurring jam session. The jams quickly began to draw both a vivacious crowd of listeners and a core group of budding jazz musicians.

Over the years, musicians like Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis and Max Roach all made regular appearances at the Lighthouse. Today, the venue still hosts jazz brunches every Sunday and other musical gigs throughout the week.

For more, here is the entire list.

The week’s biggest stories

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles news

Trump administration policies and reactions

Milan-Cortina Olympic Games

Crime, courts and policing

What else is going on

Must reads

Other meaty reads

For your downtime

(Illustrations by Lindsey Made This; photograph by Rony Armas)

Going out

Staying in

L.A. Affairs

Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

The Israeli government has approved a proposal to register large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property,” for the first time since the Israeli occupation of the territory in 1967.

Israeli public broadcaster KAN on Sunday said the proposal was submitted by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Defence Minister Israel Katz.

“We are continuing the settlement revolution to control all our lands,” said Smotrich.

Most Palestinian land is not formally registered because it is a long, complicated process that Israel stopped in 1967. Registration of land establishes permanent ownership. International law states an occupying power cannot confiscate land in occupied territories.

The Palestinian Presidency slammed the Israeli government’s decision, calling it a “serious escalation” and saying the Israeli move effectively nullifies signed agreements and clearly contradicts resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, Wafa news agency reported.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Katz described the move as an “essential security and governance measure designed to ensure control, enforcement, and full freedom of action for the State of Israel in the area”, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported.

Last week, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved measures promoted by Smotrich and Katz that further facilitate the unlawful seizure of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts describe it as a de facto annexation of the Palestinian territory, warning that it will profoundly reshape its civil and legal landscape by eliminating what the Israeli ministers called longstanding “legal obstacles” to the expansion of illegal settlements there.

Speaking from Ramallah, political analyst Xavier Abu Eid told Al Jazeera Israel is “packing annexation into some sort of a bureaucratic move”. He said the International Court of Justice in 2024 said the Israeli actions amount to annexation of the occupied West Bank.

“People should understand this is not just a step towards annexation, we are experiencing annexation as we speak today. What the Israeli government is doing is implanting their political programme – a policy that has already been presented,” he said.

Palestinian landowners are going to face more threats and intimidation from Israeli settlers supported by the Israeli government, he warned.

Feb. 14 (UPI) — The U.S. military struck dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria while conducting retaliatory strikes for the deaths of two soldiers and their interpreter.

CentCom said it conducted 10 strikes on more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria from Feb. 3 through Thursday to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”

The strikes over the past 1.5 weeks targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage facilities with precision munitions sent by fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft, CentCom officials said.

The aerial strikes continued U.S. Central Command’s Operation Hawkeye Strike attacks after the Islamic State’s ambush on Dec. 13 that killed two Iowa National Guard reservists, Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, and their civilian interpreter, Ayad Mansoor Sakat, 54, who was from Michigan.

Three members of Syria’s security forces also were wounded in the ambush.

“There is no safe place for those who conduct, plot, or inspire attacks on American citizens and our warfighters. We will find you,” CentCom Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said in a statement after U.S. forces killed Al-Qaeda-affiliated Bilal Hasan al-Jasim in January.

CentCom also carried out five strikes against an ISIS communications site, logistics node and weapons storage facilities from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2.

The strikes over the past two months have killed or captured more than 50 ISIS militants struck more than 100 ISIS infrastructure sites with hundreds of precision munitions, according to CentCom.

Syrian forces have helped the U.S. military stop ISIS from rebuilding its infrastructure and capabilities and on Friday transported 5,700 detainees to Iraq, where they will be tried in a court of law.

The move occurred as the U.S. military is lowering its troop count in Syria by evacuating a military base in al-Tanf after a 10-year deployment there.

It’s time to pay tribute to Birmingham High senior Henry Aslikyan, who makes his bid for a fourth consecutive City Section wrestling championship on Saturday night at Roybal. No Birmingham athlete has won four individual titles.

He has continued to get stronger, bigger and better from the time he arrived as a freshman. He’s been dominating the City lower weight classes while becoming a two-time state champion.

He’ll be competing in perhaps the toughest weight class in the state — 120 pounds. He’s a Michigan commit. There’s likely to be three state champions in that weight class in two weeks in Bakersfield.

Birmingham has already won City titles in boys’ and girls’ duals competition. This time he is qualifying for the state championships in Bakersfield and individual titles.

Adelaida Fernandez of Birmingham is trying for her third straight City title in girls’ wrestling. Greg Torosian and Arno Vardanyan are also seeking third titles for the Patriots in boys.

In the heavyweight division, Monroe’s Abraham Datte is a two-time City champion.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif. — Mike and Patricia McCoy answered the door of their cozy cottage in Imperial Beach, a short stroll from crashing waves and several blocks from the Tijuana River Estuary, where California meets Mexico and the hiking trails are named for them.

They offered me a seat in a living room filled with awards for their service and with books, some of them about the wonders of the natural world and the threat to its survival. The McCoys are the kind of people who look you in the eye and give you their full attention, and Patricia’s British accent carries an upbeat, birdsong tone.

A sign shows coastal conservationists Mike and Patricia McCoy as young adults “Making a Difference” at the estuary.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

In the long history of conservation in California, few have worked as long or as hard as the McCoys.

Few have achieved as much.

And they’re still at it. Mike at 84, Patricia at 89.

The McCoys settled in Imperial Beach in the early 1970s — Mike was a veterinarian, Patricia a teacher — when the coastal protection movement was spreading across the state amid fears of overdevelopment and privatization. In 1972, voters approved Proposition 20, which essentially laid down a hallmark declaration:

The California coast is a public treasure, not a private playground.

Four years later, the Coastal Act became state law, regulating development in collaboration with local government agencies, guaranteeing public access and protecting marine and coastal habitats.

During that time, the McCoys were locked in a fight worth revisiting now, on the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act. There had been talk for years about turning the underappreciated Tijuana River Estuary, part of which was used as a dumping ground, into something useful.

Mike McCoy knew the roughly 2,500-acre space was already something useful, and vitally important. It was one of the last major undeveloped wetlands in Southern California and a breeding and feeding site for 370 bird species, along with fish, reptiles, rabbits, foxes, coyotes and other animals.

In McCoy’s mind, it needed to be restored, not repurposed. And certainly not as a giant marina, which would have destroyed a habitat that was home to several endangered species. At a 1977 Imperial Beach meeting packed with marina supporters, Mike McCoy drew his line in the sand.

The Tijuana Estuary in Imperial Beach is seen on Friday.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

“I went up there,” McCoy recalled, pausing to say he could still feel the heat of the moment, “and I said, ‘You people, and I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to put a marina in that estuary. That’s sacrosanct. You don’t mess with that. That’s a fantastic system, and it’s more complex than you’d ever believe.’”

The estuary won, but the McCoys weren’t done. As I began talking with them about the years of advocacy that followed, Patricia’s modesty blushed.

“We don’t want to be blowing our own trumpet,” she said.

They don’t have to. I’m doing it for them, with the help of admirers who were happy to join the symphony.

Patricia went on to become a member of the Imperial Beach City Council and served for two years on the Coastal Commission, which oversees implementation of the Coastal Act. She also helped Mike and others take the estuary restoration fight to Sacramento, to Washington, D.C., and to Mexico.

“This is what a real power couple looks like,” said Sarah Christie, legislative director of the Coastal Commission. “They wield the power of nature and the power of the people. You can’t overstate their contribution to coastal protection.”

The McCoys’ signature achievement has been twofold, said Jeff Crooks, a San Diego wetlands expert. They helped establish the estuary as a protected wildlife refuge, and they also helped build the framework for the estuary to serve as a research center to monitor, manage and preserve the habitat and collaborate with other managed estuaries in the U.S.

“It’s been a living laboratory for 40-some years,” said Crooks, research coordinator for the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Sewage and debris flow from Tijuana are an ever-present threat and decades-long source of frustration and anger in Imperial Beach, where beaches have been closed and some residents have planted “Stop the Stink” yard signs. Crooks said there’s been some progress on infrastructure improvements, with a long way to go.

Coastal conservationist Mike McCoy looks at a new interpretive sign at the Tijuana Estuary in Imperial Beach on Friday.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

But “even though we’re beating it up,” Crooks said of the pollution flowing into the estuary, it’s been amazingly resilient in part because of constant monitoring and management.

Chris Peregrin, who manages the Tijuana Estuary for the state park system, said the nonprofit Tijuana Estuary Foundation has been a good partner, and the president of the foundation board is guess who:

Mike McCoy.

The foundation ”fills gaps that the state cannot,” Peregrin said. “As one example, they run the research program at the reserve.”

For all their continued passion about the mission in their own backyard, the McCoys fret about the bigger picture — the alarming increase in greenhouse gases and the biodiversity decline. Through the estuary window, they see a planet in peril.

“They both think big like that,” Crooks said. “Mike especially comes from the mindset that this is a ‘think globally and act locally’ kind of thing.”

“Restoration is the name of the game, not intrusion,” Mike told me, and he wasn’t talking just about the estuary.

On the very week I visited the McCoys, the Trump administration delivered a crushing blow to the environmental movement, repealing a government finding that greenhouse gas pollution is a threat to the planet and public health. He called those claims, backed by overwhelming scientific consensus, “a giant scam.”

It’s easy to throw up your hands at such knuckle-dragging indifference, and Mike told me he has to keep reaching for more stamina.

But Serge Dedina, a former Imperial Beach mayor who was inspired by the McCoys’ activism as a youngster, sees new generations bringing fresh energy to the fight. Many of them work with him at Wildcoast, the international coastal conservation nonprofit he founded, with Patricia McCoy among his earliest collaborators.

“I wouldn’t be a conservationist and coastal activist without having worked with Patricia and Mike and being infused with their passion,” said Dedina. ”I think sometimes they underestimate their legacy. They’ve had a huge impact on a whole generation of scientists and conservationists and people who are doing work all along the coast.”

We can’t underestimate the legacy of the citizen uprising of 1972, along with the creation of an agency dedicated to coastal conservation. But it’s only fair to note, on the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act, that not everyone will be reaching for a party hat.

The Coastal Act has been aggressively enforced, at times to a fault in the opinion of developers, homeowners, commercial interests and some politicians. Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed the act into law, once referred to Coastal Commission agency staffers as “bureaucratic thugs” for tight restrictions on development.

There’s been constant friction, thanks in part to political pressure and the clout of developers, and one of the many future threats to the core mission is the need for more housing throughout the state. The balance between new construction and continued conservation is sure to spark years of skirmishes.

Coastal conservationists Mike and Patricia McCoy on a trail named after them at the Tijuana Estuary Visitor Center in Imperial Beach.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

But as the Coastal Commission website puts it in marking the anniversary, the major achievements of the past 50 years include the “wetlands not filled, the sensitive habitats not destroyed, the access trails not blocked, the farms and ranches not converted to urban uses, the freeways and gated communities and industrial facilities not built.”

In the words of the late Peter Douglas, who co-authored Proposition 20 and later served as executive director of the Coastal Commission, the coast is never saved, it’s always being saved.

Saved by the likes of Mike and Patricia McCoy.

I had the pleasure of walking through the estuary with Mike, past the plaque dedicated to him and his wife and “all who cherish wildlife and the Tijuana Estuary.” We also came upon one of the new interpretive signs that were to be dedicated Friday, including one with a photo of Mike and Patricia as young adults “Making a Difference.”

Mike pointed a finger here and there, explaining all the conservation projects through the year. We saw an egret and a rabbit, and when I heard a clacking sound, Mike brightened.

“That’s a clapper rail,” Mike said, an endangered bird that makes its home in the estuary.

The blowing of the trumpet isn’t just for the McCoys.

It’s a rallying call to those who might follow in their footsteps.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

The Trump administration has unveiled a sweeping set of regulatory proposals that would substantially change health plan offerings on the Affordable Care Act marketplace next year, aiming, it says, to provide more choice and lower premiums.

But it also proposes sharply raising some annual out-of-pocket costs — to more than $27,600 for one type of coverage — and could cause up to 2 million people to drop insurance.

The changes come as affordability is a key concern for many Americans, some of whom are struggling to pay their ACA premiums since the Republican-led Congress allowed enhanced subsidies expired at the end of last year. Initial enrollment numbers for this year fell by more than 1 million.

Healthcare coverage and affordability have become politically potent issues in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.

The proposed changes are part of a 577-page rule that addresses a broad swath of standards, including benefit packages, out-of-pocket costs and healthcare provider networks. Insurers refer to these standards when setting premium rates for the coming year.

After a comment period, the rule will be finalized this spring.

It “puts patients, taxpayers, and states first by lowering costs and reinforcing accountability for taxpayer dollars,” Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, said in a news release Monday.

One way it would do so focuses heavily on a type of coverage — catastrophic plans — that last year attracted about only 20,000 policyholders, according to the proposal, although other estimates put it closer to 54,000.

“This proposal reads like the administration has found their next big thing in the catastrophic plans,” said Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Such plans have very high annual out-of-pocket costs for the policyholder but often lower premiums than other ACA coverage options. Formerly restricted to those under age 30 or facing certain hardships, the Trump administration allowed older people who lost subsidy eligibility to enroll in them this year. It is not known how many people did so.

The payment rule cements this move by making anyone eligible if their income is below the poverty line ($15,650 for 2026) or if they’re earning more than 2½ times that amount but lost access to an ACA subsidy that lowered their out-of-pocket costs. It also notes that a person meeting these standards would be eligible in any state — an important point because this coverage is now available in only 36 states and the District of Columbia.

In addition, the proposal would require out-of-pocket maximums on such plans to hit $15,600 a year for an individual and $27,600 for a family, Keith wrote this week in Health Affairs. (The current out-of-pocket max for catastrophic plans is $10,600 for an individual plan and $21,200 for family coverage.) Not counting preventive care and three covered primary care doctor visits, that spending target must be met before a policy’s other coverage kicks in.

In the rule, the administration wrote that the proposed changes would help differentiate catastrophic from “bronze” plans, the next level up, and, possibly, spur more enrollment in the former. Currently, the proposal said, there may not be a significant difference if premiums are similar. Raising the out-of-pocket maximum for catastrophic plans to those levels would create that difference, the proposal said.

“When there is such a clear difference, the healthier consumers that are generally eligible and best suited to enroll in catastrophic plans are more motivated to select a catastrophic plan in lieu of a bronze plan,” the proposal noted.

However, ACA subsidies cannot be used toward catastrophic premiums, which could limit shoppers’ interest.

Enrollment in bronze plans, which have an average annual deductible of $7,500, has doubled since 2018 to about 5.4 million last year. This year, that number likely will be higher. Some states’ sign-up data indicate a shift toward bronze as consumers left higher-premium “silver,” “gold” or “platinum” plans following the expiration of more generous subsidies at the end of last year.

The proposal also would allow insurers to offer bronze plans with cost-sharing rates that exceed what the ACA law currently allows, but only if that insurer also sells other bronze plans with lower cost-sharing levels.

In what it calls a “novel” approach, the proposal would allow insurers to offer multiyear catastrophic plans, in which people could stay enrolled for up to 10 years, and their out-of-pocket maximums would vary over that time. Costs might be higher, for example, in the early years, then fall the longer the policy is in place. The proposal specifically asks for comments on how such a plan could be structured and what effect multiyear plans might have on the overall market.

“As we understand it thus far, insurers could offer the policy for one year or for consecutive years, up to 10 years,” said Zach Sherman, managing director for coverage policy and program design at Health Management Associates, a health policy consulting firm that does work for states and insurance plans. “But the details on how that would work, we are still unpacking.”

Matthew Fiedler, senior fellow with the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution, said the proposed rule included a lot of provisions that could “expose enrollees to much higher out-of-pocket costs.”

In addition to the planned changes to bronze and catastrophic plans, he points to another provision that would allow plans to be sold on the ACA exchange that have no set healthcare provider networks. In other words, the insurer has not contracted with specific doctors and hospitals to accept their coverage. Instead, such plans would pay medical providers a set amount toward medical services, possibly a flat fee or a percentage of what Medicare pays, for example.

The rule says insurers would need to ensure “access to a range of providers” willing to accept such amounts as payment in full. Policyholders might be on the hook for unexpected expenses, however, if a clinician or facility doesn’t agree and charges the patient the difference.

Because the rule is so sweeping — with many other parts — it is expected to draw hundreds if not thousands of comments between now and early March.

Pennsylvania insurance broker Joshua Brooker said one change he would like to see is requiring insurers that sell the very high out-of-pocket catastrophic plans to offer other catastrophic plans with lower annual maximums.

Overall, though, a wider range of options might appeal to people on both ends of the income scale, he said.

Some wealthier enrollees, especially those who no longer qualify for any ACA premium subsidies, would prefer a lower premium like those expected in catastrophic plans, and could just pay the bills up to that max, he said.

“They’re more worried about the half-million-dollar heart attack,” Brooker said. It’s tougher for people below the poverty level, who don’t qualify for ACA subsidies and, in 10 states, often don’t qualify for Medicaid. So they’re likely to go uninsured. At least a catastrophic plan, he said, might let them get some preventive care coverage and cap their exposure if they end up in a hospital. From there, they might qualify for charity care at the hospital to cover out-of-pocket costs.

Overall, “putting more options on the market doesn’t hurt, as long as it is disclosed properly and the consumer understands it,” he said.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Feb. 13 (UPI) — Two people are dead and a third is wounded following a shooting on the campus of South Carolina State University, officials said.

The shooting occurred Thursday night in an apartment at the Hugine Suites student residential complex on the university’s campus in Orangeburg, located about 75 miles northwest of Charleston.

The university issued a campus lockdown at about 9:15 p.m., according to officials, who said in a statement that they have asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to investigate.

SLED investigators are on site and investigating the crime, the university said.

Little information about the shooting was immediately available.

“Stop what you’re doing and pray,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said in a statement posted to her personal X account following reports of the shooting.

“Join us in prayer for the students, staff and their families. God bless our brave law enforcement responding tonight.”

The identities of the victims have yet to be confirmed, the school said.

As of early Friday, the campus remained on lockdown.

School officials said Friday’s classes were canceled and counselors would be made available to students.

The shooting is the latest at the school since Oct. 4, when one person was killed and a second person was wounded in separate shootings on the historically Black university’s Orangeburg campus.

The deceased victim from one of the October shootings was identified as 19-year-old Jaliyah Butler.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked a Trump administration order slashing $600 million in federal grant funding for HIV programs in California and three other states, finding merit in the states’ argument that the move was politically motivated by disagreements over unrelated state sanctuary policies.

U.S. District Judge Manish Shah, an Obama appointee in Illinois, found that California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota were likely to succeed in arguing that President Trump and other administration officials targeted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for termination “based on arbitrary, capricious, or unconstitutional rationales.”

Namely, Shah wrote that while Trump administration officials said the programs were cut for breaking with CDC priorities, other “recent statements” by officials “plausibly suggest that the reason for the direction is hostility to what the federal government calls ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ or ‘sanctuary cities.’”

Shah found that the states had shown they would “suffer irreparable harm” from the cuts, and that the public interest would not be harmed by temporarily halting them — and as a result granted the states a temporary restraining order halting the administration’s action for 14 days while the litigation continues.

Shah wrote that while he may not have jurisdiction to block a simple grant termination, he did have jurisdiction to halt an administration directive to terminate funding based on unconstitutional grounds.

“More factual development is necessary and it may be that the only government action at issue is termination of grants for which I have no jurisdiction to review,” Shah wrote. “But as discussed, plaintiffs have made a sufficient showing that defendants issued internal guidance to terminate public-health grants for unlawful reasons; that guidance is enjoined as the parties develop a record.”

The cuts targeted a slate of programs aimed at tracking and curtailing HIV and other disease outbreaks, including one of California’s main early-warning systems for HIV outbreaks, state and local officials said. Some were oriented toward serving the LGBTQ+ community. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said California faced “the largest share” of the cuts.

The White House said the cuts were to programs that “promote DEI and radical gender ideology,” while federal health officials said the programs in question did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”

Bonta cheered Shah’s order in a statement, saying he and his fellow attorneys general who sued are “confident that the facts and the law favor a permanent block of these reckless and illegal funding cuts.”

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Lauren Betts had 22 points, seven rebounds and five assists and No. 2 UCLA pushed its winning streak to 18 games by thumping No. 13 Michigan State 86-63 on Wednesday night.

Kiki Rice finished with 18 points and seven rebounds for the Bruins (24-1, 14-0 Big Ten). Gabriela Jaquez added 13 points, all in the first half, and Gianna Kneepkens chipped in 12.

UCLA now has nine wins over ranked opponents, six in conference play.

Rashunda Jones scored 15 points and Emma Shumate had 12 for the Spartans (20-5, 9-5), who have dropped three of their last four games. Grace VanSlooten and Kennedy Blair, the team’s top scorers entering the game, were held to a combined 18 points on six-for-25 shooting.

UCLA, which led by 31 points, outscored Michigan State 56-22 in the paint and had a 48-28 rebounding advantage.

Their matchup last season in Los Angeles wasn’t decided until late in the game, when the Bruins pulled out a 75-69 victory. Betts missed that game with a foot injury but the Spartans couldn’t avoid her imposing 6-foot-7 presence this time.

Coming off a hotly contested 69-66 victory over No. 8 Michigan on Sunday, the Bruins were in total control from the start.

UCLA scored on its six first possessions while powering to a 44-20 halftime lead, capped off by Jaquez’s three-pointer. Betts had 13 points by the break, while the Spartans were unable to get anything going in halfcourt sets or transition.

Michigan State hasn’t defeated a top-two team at home since 2005.

SACRAMENTO — David Crane is a gifted investment banker who shared his expertise with government until he was dumped from a state board that invests teacher retirement funds.

Lawmakers bounced him from the board, one of the biggest players on Wall Street, after he repeatedly questioned whether state pension funds could earn enough to keep paying retirement benefits to teachers and other politically powerful employees.

Democratic legislators, who receive millions in campaign donations from teachers unions and other government labor groups, said it wasn’t Crane’s job to meddle in investment forecasts. California’s numbers are in line with those of other states, they note, and its pension investments have beat projections over the last 20 years.

But Crane, a close friend of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, represents a cadre of market gurus who see investment profits flattening. They worry that state pension systems are heading down the same path as corporate retirement plans that hit trouble after failing to meet rosy earnings projections.

Several government pension plans are already deep in the red. Standard & Poor’s reported in February that 13 states are likely to have less than 75% of the cash needed for promised benefits.

In Crane’s corner are such financial heavyweights as investor Warren Buffett; John C. Bogle, founder of investment giant Vanguard Group Inc.; and William Bernstein, author of “The Four Pillars of Investing.”

The stakes are huge — especially for California, which has more than $350 billion in retirement funds covering teachers and other public employees. Falling short of the nearly 8% return that state money managers project for those funds could create deficits of tens of billions of dollars.

Taxpayers would have to ante up; retirees’ benefits are locked in by contract. Elected officials could be forced to raise taxes, cut services or borrow money. California’s teacher retirement fund already has a projected $20-billion shortfall.

“It is a very real problem,” Bogle said. “The financial consequences are staggering.”

A decade of returns at the rate Buffett has set for retirement plans at his companies — 6.4% — would leave California short more than $90 billion. That is more than the entire state budget for health and human services this year, and several times what the state is spending on its university system.

The Legislature has spurned such restrained forecasts.

Lawmakers in June rejected Crane’s appointment to the teacher retirement board by Schwarzenegger, after he had served almost a year. State Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) said the job of trustees is “only to protect members’ benefits” — not to worry about the long-term effects of the benefits on the state budget.

Crane, who helped build a San Francisco investment firm that has arranged $250 billion in financings, said at his confirmation hearing: “Bless them if they can make it” to 8%. “I would assume a lower number. And I think there is a lot of evidence to back up my view.”

Bogle said he thinks California officials “are dreaming.”

Opponents of Crane, a Democrat, called him the operative of an administration eager to undermine the political power of public employee unions. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, campaigned last year to eliminate pensions for all new government workers and replace them with 401(k)-style accounts. The unions fought him, and he dropped the issue.

Many labor leaders and pension officials characterize as bogus the alerts being raised about the funds’ soundness.

“This is another way that folks who would like to see these benefits go away can undermine the plans,” said Pat Macht, spokeswoman for the California Public Employee Retirement System.

Macht notes that state pension investments have yielded returns averaging 9.2% over the last decade. That includes the 12 months that ended June 30, when profits on state investments exceeded 12%.

Stanford University professor William F. Sharpe, who won a Nobel Prize in economics, helped California develop its forecasts. And the state’s assumptions are in line with the predictions of economist Roger Ibbotson, whose predictions over the last 30 years have been uncannily accurate.

But author Bernstein, who is also a portfolio manager for wealthy individuals, is troubled that those who question the state’s numbers are brushed aside as partisans.

“This is not a right- or left-wing issue,” said Bernstein, a Democrat. “This is an issue of whether or not you can add.”

Bernstein notes that as the outlook for domestic stocks dims, California and other states are moving more of their money into risky places, such as high-tech start-ups, real estate and hedge funds. Returns on such investments are erratic, he said, and could easily fall short of standard stock market index funds over time.

Meanwhile, as corporate America has scaled back retirement benefits in recent years, California has headed in the opposite direction, enhancing benefits through legislation and contract negotiations with public employee unions. The result is the most generous public pensions of any state.

Under former Gov. Gray Davis, who received millions in campaign donations from unions, retirement packages for state workers were sweetened.

Davis signed legislation that based the pensions for many California workers on the highest annual income they earn while government employees; other states use an average of the top three years of earnings.

In addition, the age at which some employees could begin collecting was dropped to 50, and annual retirement payments were increased substantially.

When Schwarzenegger ousted Davis in the 2003 recall election, he made changing the pension system a centerpiece of his agenda, highlighting what he characterized as runaway costs.

Yet the 18 labor contracts negotiated by his administration have left in place most of the benefits the governor said the state can’t afford; the few concessions that union officials traded for pay increases did little to lower future retirement costs.

Long-serving state employees in California “can receive more annual income in retirement than when they worked,” according to a legislative report released last year.

The report said that when Social Security payments are factored in, “It takes just 20 to 30 years of work (that is, less than a full career) to have retirement income … equal to working pay.”

A typical 55-year-old government employee who earns $60,000 and has worked for the state for 20 years is entitled to $25,000 a year, plus Social Security and lifelong healthcare benefits. In most other large states, the pension for the same employee, if eligible at 55, would be less than $15,000 a year — thousands less in some states — plus health benefits.

Defenders say the state is well positioned to cover these costs.

“Reasonable people disagree about what the markets can do long-term,” said John Meier, a managing partner at Strategic Investment Solutions, a San Francisco firm that helps the state make projections.

Forecasts are made through a collaboration of actuaries, economists and investment experts from state government and private firms. They gauge the historical returns of various investment types, the outlook for growth in those places and the assumptions being used by other institutional investors.

“Our organization and a lot of other organizations believe that

Arizona and Virginia project an 8% return. Colorado and Pennsylvania anticipate 8.5%.

That’s all fine, said Zvi Bodie, a professor at Boston University School of Management, but there are no guarantees — and there’s the rub. Some experts are predicting a period of long-term market instability, he notes, and the state can’t afford to be off by a percentage point or two.

“Every study we have of stock market behavior says one thing we know for sure is: We don’t know for sure,” he said. “It is risky. There is no free lunch here.”

Bodie says the pressure for state number-crunchers to project strong earnings indefinitely is intense.

Optimistic projections free lawmakers from having to pull billions of dollars out of other state programs to increase the taxpayer contribution to the pension funds.

Meanwhile, officials at the California State Teachers Retirement System announced at a recent meeting that they are poised to raise investment in such risky areas as high-tech start-ups by roughly 67%.

“If they lose money, someone is going to have to bear that risk,” said Olivia S. Mitchell, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School’s Pension Research Council. “Politicians today have promised benefits without explaining what will happen down the road if the system runs short.”

Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this report.

California and three other states sued the Trump administration Wednesday over its plans to slash $600 million from programs designed to prevent and track the spread of HIV, including in the LGBTQ+ community — arguing the move is based on “political animus and disagreements about unrelated topics such as federal immigration enforcement, political protest, and clean energy.”

“This action is lawless,” attorneys for California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota said in a complaint filed in federal court in Illinois against several Trump administration departments and officials, as well as President Trump himself.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding had been allocated to disease control programs in all four states, though California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said California faces “the largest share” of the cuts.

That includes $130 million due to California under a Public Health Infrastructure Block Grant, which the state and its local public health departments use to fund their public health workforce, monitor disease spread and respond to public health emergencies, Bonta’s office said.

“President Trump … is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda. Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again,” Bonta said in a statement.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the named defendants, has repeatedly turned his agency away from evidence-backed HIV monitoring and prevention programs in the last year, and the Trump administration has broadly attacked federal spending headed to blue states or allocated to initiatives geared toward the LGBTQ+ community.

The White House justified the latest cuts by claiming the programs “promote DEI and radical gender ideology,” but did not explain further. Health officials have said the cuts were to programs that did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”

Neither the White House nor Health and Human Services immediately responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the cuts would derail an estimated $64.5 million for 14 different county grant programs, resulting in “increased costs, more illness, and preventable deaths,” the department said.

Those programs focus on response to disasters, controlling outbreaks of diseases such as measles and flu, preventing the spread of diseases such as West Nile, dengue and hepatitis A, monitoring and treating HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, fighting chronic illnesses such as diabetes and obesity, and supporting community health, the department said.

Those cuts would also include about $1.1 million for the department’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project, which is focused on detecting emerging HIV trends and preventing outbreaks.

Dr. Paul Simon, an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School and former chief science officer for the county’s public health department, said slashing the program was a “dangerous” and “shortsighted” move that would leave public health officials in the dark as to what’s happening with the disease on the ground.

Considerable cuts are also anticipated to the City of Long Beach, UCLA and nine community health providers who provide HIV prevention services, including $383,000 for the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s community HIV prevention programs, local officials said.

Leading California Democrats have railed against the cuts. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the move was an unlawful attempt by Trump to punish blue states that “won’t bend to his extremist agenda.”

“His message to the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV is clear: their lives are not a priority, political retribution is,” Padilla said in a statement.

The states argue in the lawsuit that the administration’s decision “singles out jurisdictions for disfavor based not on any rational purpose related to the goals of any program but rather based on partisan animus.”

The lawsuit asked the court to declare the cuts unlawful, and to bar the Trump administration from implementing them or “engaging in future retaliatory conduct regarding federal funding or other participation in federal programs” based on the states exercising their sovereign authority in unrelated matters.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Wednesday to provide $90 million to Planned Parenthood, a move intended to help offset the losses from recent federal cuts targeting abortion providers.

“These cuts were designed to attack and assault Planned Parenthood,” said Newsom, speaking at a news conference near the Capitol. “They were not abortion cuts; they were attacks on wellness and screenings and they were attacks on women’s healthcare.”

The Republican-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed last year by President Trump, blocked federal Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood. More than 80% of the nearly 1.3 million annual patient visits to Planned Parenthood in California were previously reimbursed by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

Sen. John Laird, who authored the legislation for the funding, Senate Bill 106, said the measure showed that California won’t back down. “This is us standing up to the immediate cut that was in that bill,” said Laird, (D-Santa Cruz). “This is how we are fighting back.”

Jodi Hicks, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, thanked legislators for their support and said the organization could not survive without support from the state. She said Planned Parenthood would always fight against federal attacks but “needed an army” this time to stand beside them.

During the news conference, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom expressed frustration with reporters for asking off-topic questions and said the media should be more concerned about women’s issues.

“All of these questions have really been about other issues,” she said. “This happens over and over and over again — (and we) wonder why we have such a horrific war on women in this country.”

Planned Parenthood offers a range of services, including abortions, birth control, cancer screenings and testings for sexually transmitted diseases. A coalition of states, including California, filed a lawsuit last year against the Trump administration over the cuts to the nonprofit. The states argue in the ongoing lawsuit that the measure violates the spending powers of Congress by singling out Planned Parenthood for negative treatment.

Senate Bill 106 has drawn ire from Republicans, who question why funding is going to Planned Parenthood when many hospitals in the state need more financial support.

“For rural Californians, this conversation is about access to care,” Sen. Megan Dahle (R-Bieber) said in a statement from the Senate Republican Caucus. “Hospitals are cutting services or facing closure, forcing families to drive hours for life-saving treatment. State lawmakers should prioritize stability for these communities.”

Is Mike Johnson stupid?

The five-term Louisiana congressman earned a law degree and maneuvered his way to become speaker of the House. That requires a certain mental aptitude.

However, wanting that job, which entails bowing and scraping to President Trump while herding an unruly GOP conference with an eyelash-thin majority, does tend to land on the stupid side of the scale.

But maybe Johnson isn’t stupid. Maybe he’s just willfully ignorant, or uninformed. Perhaps he simply doesn’t know any better.

How else to explain his persistent claim there’s something sinister and nefarious about the way California casts and counts its election ballots?

Just last week, Johnson once again repeated one of the sophistries the president uses to dump all over the country’s elections system and explain away his oft-verified loss in the 2020 presidential campaign.

With an apparent eye toward rigging the 2026 midterm election, Trump suggested Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least “15 places,” which, presumably, would all be Democratic strongholds. Johnson — bowing, scraping — echoed Trump’s phony claims of corruption to justify the president’s latest treachery.

“In some of the states, like in California, for example. I mean, they hold the elections open for weeks after election day,” Johnson told reporters. “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. … It looks on its face to be fraudulent.”

Fact check: There was no hocus-pocus. No “holding open” of elections to allow for manipulation of the result. No voting or any other kind of fraud.

California does take awhile to count its ballots and finalize its elections. If people want a quicker count, then push lawmakers in Sacramento to spend more on the consistently underfunded election offices that tally the results in California’s 58 counties.

That said, there are plenty of reasons — none involving any kind of partisan chicanery — that explain why California elections seems to drag on and vote totals shift as ballots are steadily counted.

For starters, there are a lot of ballots to count. Over the last several decades, California has worked to encourage as many eligible citizens as possible to invest in the state and its future by engaging at election time and voting.

That’s a good thing. Participatory democracy, and all that.

More than 16 million Californians cast ballots in the last presidential election. That number exceeds the population of all but 10 states.

Once votes are cast, California takes great care to make sure they’re legitimate and counted properly. (Which is exactly what Trump and Johnson want, right? Right?)

That diligence takes time. It may require looking up an individual’s address or verifying his or her signature. Or routing a ballot dropped off at the wrong polling location to its appropriate county for processing.

In recent years, California has shifted to conducting its elections predominantly by mail. That’s further extended the counting process. The state allows those ballots to arrive and be counted up to seven days after the election, so long as they are postmarked on or before election day. Once received, each mail ballot has to be verified and processed before it can be counted. That prolongs the process.

County elections officials have 30 days to tally each valid ballot and conduct a required postelection audit. That’s been the time frame under state law for quite some time.

What’s changed in recent years is that California has had several closely fought congressional contests — a result of more competitive districts drawn by an independent redistricting commission — and the nation has had to wait (and sometimes wait and wait and wait) for the results to know the balance of power in a narrowly divided Congress.

“For that reason, we get an outsized amount of criticism for our long vote count, because everyone’s impatient,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation.

As for why the vote in congressional races has tended to shift in Democrats’ favor, there’s a simple, non-diabolical explanation.

Republican voters have generally preferred to cast their ballots in person, on election day. Democrats are more likely to mail their ballots, meaning they arrive — and get counted — later. As those votes were tallied, several close contests in 2024 moved in Democrats’ direction.

(In 2022, in Riverside County, Democratic challenger Will Rollins led Republican Rep. Ken Calvert for several days after the election before a batch of Republican votes erased Rollins’ lead and secured Calvert’s reelection. You didn’t hear Democrats raise a stink.)

There are plenty of reasons to bash California, if one is so inclined.

The exorbitant cost of housing. Nightmarish traffic. High rates of poverty and homelessness.

But on the plus side, a comprehensive study — the 2024 Cost of Voting Index, published in the Election Law Journal — ranked California seventh in the nation in the ease of casting a ballot. That’s something to be proud of.

As for Johnson, the evidence suggests the speaker is neither dumb nor uninformed when it comes to California and its elections. Rather, he’s scheming and cynical, sowing unwarranted and corrosive doubts about election integrity to mollify Trump and thwart a free and fair election in November.

Which is much worse than plain old stupidity.

WASHINGTON — Public health experts warned Tuesday that $600 million in cuts to federal public health funding announced by the Trump administration would endanger one of California’s main early-warning systems for HIV outbreaks, leaving communities vulnerable to undetected disease spread.

The grant terminations affect funding for a number of disease control programs in California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, but the vast majority target California, according to congressional Democrats who received the full list of affected programs Monday. The move is the latest in the White House’s campaign against what it called “radical gender ideology” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“These cuts will hurt vital efforts to prevent the spread of disease,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “It’s dangerous, and it’s deliberate.”

Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC has increasingly turned away from evidence-backed HIV monitoring and prevention programs, claiming they “undermined core American values.”

The stoppage will derail $1.1 million slated for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project, according to the president’s budget office.

The program is a “critical” tool used to detect emerging HIV trends, prevent outbreaks before they spread and reduce HIV incidence, said Dr. Paul Simon, an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School and former chief science officer for the county’s public health department.

“Without this program, we’re flying blind. The first step in addressing any public health threat is understanding what’s happening on the ground,” Simon said. “With HIV in particular, people often have no symptoms for years and can unknowingly spread the virus.”

The White House gave little explanation for the move but claimed the programs it targeted “promote DEI and radical gender ideology.”

Simon pushed back on the claim, calling the move “dangerous” and “shortsighted.”

“It’s particularly dangerous to put your head in the sand and pretend there’s not a problem,” Simon said. “The success we’ve had over the past decades comes from finding cases early. … By treating people early, we can prevent transmission.”

Several local front-line service providers were targeted for cuts including the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which is set to lose $383,000 in investments for community HIV prevention programs.

The LGBT Center has not received official notice of the elimination but said the cuts would disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ communities and other underserved populations.

“These decisions are not guided by public health evidence, but by politics — and the consequences are real,” said LGBT Center spokesperson Brian De Los Santos. “Any reduction in funding directly affects our ability to provide care, prevention and lifesaving services to the people who rely on us.”

The Trump administration’s announced cuts are likely to face challenges from states and grant recipients.

The LGBT Center succeeded last year in blocking similar grant cancellations stemming from the president’s executive orders. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction ruling the administration could not use executive orders to “weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds” to bypass statutory funding obligations.

“We stand ready to bring more litigation against this administration if it is required in order to protect our community,” De Los Santos said.

The White House has repeatedly pushed to halt the flow of billions of dollars to California and other states led by Democrats, a strategy that has sharpened partisan tensions and expanded the scope of California’s legal fight against the administration.

In January, administration officials said they would freeze $10 billion in federal child care, welfare and social services funding for California and four other states, but a federal judge blocked the effort.

Trump later said he would begin blocking federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions such as California and Los Angeles, which have long opposed cooperation with federal immigration agencies.

Last year, the administration made broad cuts to federal funding for minority-serving institutions, leaving California colleges scrambling to figure out how to replace or do without the money. Federal officials argued that such programs were racially discriminatory.

In June, California congressional Democrats demanded the release of $19.8 million in frozen HIV prevention grants to the L.A. County Department of Public Health. That freeze forced the county to terminate contracts with 39 community health providers and nearly shut down HIV testing and other services at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

The administration reversed course after sustained pressure from Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Burbank) and 22 fellow House Democrats.

“These grants save lives,” Friedman said of recent terminations. “They connect homeless people to care, they support front-line organizations fighting HIV, and they build the public health infrastructure that protects my constituents. Just like I did last time the Trump Administration came after our communities, I won’t stop fighting back.”

In a letter to Kennedy last year, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said that the Cabinet secretary has a history of peddling misinformation about the virus and disease.

Kennedy’s motivations are “grounded not in sound science, but in misinformation and disinformation you have spread previously about HIV and AIDS, including your repeated claim that HIV does not cause AIDS,” Garcia wrote.

Gov. Gavin Newsom called President Trump’s latest threats to public health funding “a familiar pattern,” and shed doubt on their long-term legal viability.

“The President publicly claims he will rip away public health funding from states that voted against him, while offering no details or formal notice,” Newsom said. “If or when the Trump administration takes action, we will respond appropriately. Until then, we will pass on participating in his attempt to chase headlines.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a political hero among liberals and populists, next week will formally kick off the campaign to place a new tax on billionaires on California’s November ballot.

The controversial proposal, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of the state’s wealthiest residents, is critical to backfilling federal funding cuts to healthcare enacted by the Trump administration, Sanders said in a statement.

“This initiative would provide the necessary funding to prevent over 3 million working-class Californians from losing the healthcare they currently have — and would help prevent the closures of California hospitals and emergency rooms,” he said. “It should be common sense that the billionaires pay just slightly more so that entire communities can preserve access to life-saving medical care. Our country needs access to hospitals and emergency rooms, not more tax breaks for billionaires.”

The independent senator from Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats in the nation’s Capitol, will appear Feb. 18 at the Wiltern in Los Angeles alongside prominent musical acts. Sanders has a deep base of support among California Democrats, winning the state’s 2020 presidential primary over Joe Biden by eight points, and narrowly losing the 2016 primary to Hillary Clinton. In both elections, he won the votes of more than 2 million Californians, who were also a major source of the small-dollar donations that fueled his insurgent campaigns.

The tax proposal, which Sanders previously endorsed on social media, is proposed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. The supporters need to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24 for the measure to qualify for the November ballot. They began gathering signatures in January.

Supporters of the tax argue it is one of the few ways the state can backfill major federal cuts to healthcare services for California’s most vulnerable residents. Opponents warn it would kill the innovation that has made the state rich and prompt an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs.

More than 200 billionaires in Californians would be affected if the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved. Some prominent billionaires have already left the state, notably PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.

Both men were major supporters of President Trump.

Democrats are divided about the issue. Notably, Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is among a dozen candidates running in November to replace the termed-out governor, oppose the proposal.

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers on Monday approved a one-time infusion of $90 million for Planned Parenthood and other women’s health clinics, a direct respond to the Trump administration’s cuts to reproductive healthcare and access to abortion providers.

“Trump is tearing down healthcare and increasing costs,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said in a statement. “Democrats are building it up — investing millions in women’s health and maternal care, because families come first in California.”

The legislation providing the funding, SB 106, carried by Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), is intended to help offset the losses from federal cuts that targeted abortion providers. The Republican-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed last year by President Trump, prohibited federal Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood.

The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

California and a coalition of other Democrat-led states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last year over the provision. More than 80% of the nearly 1.3 million annual patient visits to Planned Parenthood in California previously were reimbursed by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, which provides healthcare coverage to low-income Americans.

Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Clovis) voiced opposition to the legislation Monday.

“Why does Planned Parenthood get a $90-million grant when right now over 60 hospitals in the state of California are on the verge of shutting down?” Tangipa asked, speaking on the Assembly floor. “Hospitals across our state that deliver high quality care to women are on the brink of closure.”

Planned Parenthood offers a range of services, including abortions, birth control and cancer screenings.

A federal judge on Monday struck down a new California law that banned federal immigration agents and other law enforcement officers from wearing masks in the state, but an effort already is underway to revive the statute.

U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder in Los Angeles ruled that the No Secret Police Act does not apply equally to all law enforcement officers because it excludes state law enforcement, and therefore “unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”

But, Snyder said, the ban does not impede federal officers from performing their federal functions, indicating that a revised law that remedies that discrimination may be constitutional.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the author of the legislation, on Monday proposed a new prohibition on mask-wearing by all law enforcement officers in California, a change he argued would bring the ban into compliance with Snyder’s ruling.

Wiener said he will immediately file his updated bill in order to unmask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents conducting unconstitutional enforcement in the state as soon as possible.

“We will unmask these thugs and hold them accountable. Full stop,” Wiener said, calling Snyder’s ruling a “huge win.”

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who sued California to block the law from taking effect, cast the ruling in starkly different terms, as a win for the federal government and immigration agents doing a difficult job under intense scrutiny.

“ANOTHER key court victory thanks to our outstanding [Justice Department] attorneys,” Bondi wrote on X.

“Following our arguments, a district court in California BLOCKED the enforcement of a law that would have banned federal agents from wearing masks to protect their identities,” Bondi wrote. “These federal agents are harassed, doxxed, obstructed, and attacked on a regular basis just for doing their jobs.”

Wiener helped push two new California laws last year — the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act — in the wake of intense and aggressive immigration enforcement by masked ICE and other federal agents in California and around the country.

The No Secret Police Act banned local law enforcement officers, officers from other states and federal law enforcement personnel from wearing masks except in specific circumstances — such as in tactical, SWAT or undercover operations. It did not apply those restrictions on California’s state law enforcement officers.

The No Vigilantes Act required any law enforcement officer operating in California to visibly display identification, including the name of their agency and their name or badge number, except in undercover and other specific scenarios.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measures into law in September, though the state agreed to not enforce the measures against federal agents in the state while the Justice Department’s challenge was heard in court.

In her ruling Monday, Snyder blocked only the ban on masking by federal agents, and on seemingly narrow grounds.

Snyder said that the court “finds that federal officers can perform their federal functions without wearing masks. However, because the No Secret Police Act, as presently enacted, does not apply equally to all law enforcement officers in the state, it unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”

“Because such discrimination violates the Supremacy Clause, the Court is constrained to enjoin the facial covering prohibition,” she wrote.

Weiner said it was “hard to overstate how important this ruling is for our efforts to ensure full accountability for ICE and Border Patrol’s terror campaign.”

Wiener said he and colleagues had crafted the No Secret Police Act in consultation with constitutional law experts, but had “removed state police from the bill” based on conversations with Newsom’s office.

“Now that the Court has made clear that state officers must be included, I am immediately introducing new legislation to include state officers,” Wiener said. “I will do everything in my power to expedite passage of this adjustment to the No Secret Police Act.”

He said ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers were “covering their faces to maximize their terror campaign and to insulate themselves from accountability. We won’t let them get away with it.”

Wiener is also pushing new legislation — called the No Kings Act — that would allow people in California to sue federal agents for violating their rights. Democrats in Congress are also demanding that immigration agents stop wearing masks as a condition for extending Department of Homeland Security funding.

In response to Wiener’s suggestion that he had removed state officers from the bill based on conversations with the governor’s office, Newsom’s office posted on X that Wiener “rejected our proposed fixes to his bill” and “chose a different approach, and today the court found his approach unlawful.”

In a separate statement, Newsom hailed Snyder’s upholding the identification requirement for officers as “a clear win for the rule of law.”

“No badge and no name mean no accountability. California will keep standing up for civil rights and our democracy.”

Bondi said her office would continue defending federal agents from such state action.

“We will continue fighting and winning in court for President Trump’s law-and-order agenda — and we will ALWAYS have the backs of our great federal law enforcement officers,” she said.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has endorsed Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) for California governor, the Swalwell campaign and a Schiff spokesperson said Monday.

Schiff, one of the state’s most prominent Democrats, previously served with Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee, where they riled Republicans by investigating President Trump during his first term.

They also both worked to impeach Trump during his first term, with Schiff serving as the lead manager of Trump’s first impeachment and Swalwell as a manager of Trump’s second impeachment.

Schiff, in a statement, said Swalwell “has the vision and strength to take on our state’s biggest challenges and make real progress, from lowering costs for families to protecting our democracy from Donald Trump.”

“Congressman Swalwell and I worked together to investigate Trump during his first presidency, and Eric played a leadership role in the impeachment trial after the President incited a violent mob to attack the capitol on January 6th,” Schiff said. “What I saw then, and what I know now, is that Eric is fully prepared to get things done and deliver for the Golden State, even as he will fight to protect our values, rights and freedoms.”

Swalwell announced in November his bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is termed out next year — entering a crowded field of candidates without a clear front-runner.

Both Swalwell and Schiff have been targeted by Trump and the Trump administration with allegations of committing mortgage fraud. They have both denied those accusations — calling them part of a political retribution campaign against Trump’s critics and chief political opponents.

Swalwell has sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte over the accusations, accusing him of of criminally misusing government databases to target Trump’s political opponents.