I was a bit skeptical when an emailer suggested touring Torrance as a way to appreciate this South Bay hidden gem. As a San Gabriel Valley product, I’ve enjoyed excursions to the iconic Rose Bowl or the historic San Gabriel Mission.
But Torrance? Really?
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I’m a fan of the divine paradise cakes baked at two King’s Hawaiian locations in Torrance and am aware that Compton-based hip hop group N.W.A recorded “F— tha Police” in a city music studio.
Yes, that’s all fine and notable, but is this city of 140,000 actually tour worthy?
Debbie Hays, a resident and Torrance Historical Society docent, was up to the challenge of proving it certainly was when we met for a tour this week.
History meets Hollywood
We started at the Torrance Historical Society. Inside, visitors receive a quick lesson about the city’s creation, from a Spanish land grant to its founding by financial broker Jared Sidney Torrance in 1912.
A good portion of the talk centers on one of the city’s heroes, Louis Zamperini, known as the “Torrance Tornado.”
The Olympic and USC star, who competed in the famed 1936 Games, was a larger-than-life pillar captured in book and film, the latter the 2014 movie “Unbroken.”
“Louis was a bit of a misfit in his early days and his story is one of redemption and finding his purpose,” Hays said. “It started with track and of course he’s most known about his role in the war.”
“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays says.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Zamperini was a U.S. Army Air Force bombardier in 1943 when his B-24 Liberator went down in the Pacific on May 27 with 10 additional crew members.
Zamperini floated on a life raft for 47 days, battling sharks and hunger before being picked up by a Japanese patrol boat.
He was tortured for two years before he was finally freed.
Hays showed off heirlooms, trophies and files donated by the Zamperini family, including more than 60 pounds of notes and awards, used in production of the movie.
“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays said.
The ‘Ramen Capital of Southern California’
One of the more surprising details about Hays’ tour was the number of excursions the city offers.
You can take one of several self-guided tours of the city’s dozen or so microbreweries and craft beer tasting sites that highlight a burgeoning craft industry.
The most delectable tour, however, may be shown on the city’s Ramen Trail map, which declares Torrance the “Ramen Capital of Southern California.”
As for locales, the film and television map tour denotes more than 200 locations where movies like “Scarface,” “Boogie Nights” and “Horrible Bosses” and television sitcoms like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Barry” were filmed.
“We aren’t Hollywood, but we have many spots worth visiting,” Hays said. “All they’re all relatively close together.”
The Buffy home
One of her most popular excursions is the Fall Tour of Old Torrance, held annually in October.
Hays offers architectural and historic showings of Tudor, Mission and Spanish Colonial revival homes often butting up against each other. Most homes are over 100 years old.
“It’s a very eclectic tour that you don’t see every day in every town,” Hays said. “We’re not a cookie-cutter neighborhood.”
Yet, it’s the No. 4 spot on that tour, a 1914 Craftsman-style home at 1313 Cota Ave., that draws a pilgrimage year round.
The 2,296-square-foot home is forever known as “the Buffy home,” where the popular television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was filmed.
The four bedroom, two bathroom home served as the home of main character Buffy Summers, played by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar.
“I’ve led private tours to the home, with sometimes as many as 80 people,” Hays said. “Fans come to the house, they cry, they take pictures, they hug the tree. They love it.”
Paradise cakes, ramen noodles, craft beer and Zamperini memorabilia. You don’t have to love Buffy to appreciate Torrance.
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A pedestrian braves the rain in Venice Beach.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Olympic updates
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Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in the movie “Wicked: For Good.”
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As California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ponders a run for governor, he faces scrutiny for his ties to people central to a federal corruption investigation in Oakland and payments to private attorneys.
Bonta has not been accused of impropriety, but the questions come at an inopportune time for Democrat, who says he is reassessing a gubernatorial bid after repeatedly dismissing a run earlier this year.
Bonta said the decisions by former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla not to seek the office altered the contours of the race.
“I had two horses in the governor’s race already,” Bonta said in an interview with The Times on Friday. “They decided not to get involved in the end. … The race is fundamentally different today, right?”
Bonta said he has received significant encouragement to join the crowded gubernatorial field and that he expects to make a decision “definitely sooner rather than later.” Political advisors to the 54-year-old Alameda politician have been reaching out to powerful Democrats across the state to gauge his possible support.
Historically, serving as California attorney general has been a launching pad to higher office or a top post in Washington. Harris, elected to two terms as the state attorney general, was later elected to the U.S. Senate and then as vice president. Jerry Brown served in the post before voters elected him for a second go-around as governor in 2010. Earl Warren later became the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Bonta, the first Filipino American to serve as the state’s top law enforcement official, was appointed in March 2021 by Gov. Gavin Newsom after Xavier Becerra resigned to become U.S. Health and Human Services secretary. Bonta easily won election as attorney general in 2022.
Bonta was a deputy city attorney in San Francisco and vice mayor for the city of Alameda before being elected to the state Assembly in 2012. During his tenure representing the Alameda area, Bonta developed a reputation as a progressive willing to push policies to strengthen tenants’ rights and to reform the criminal justice system.
In his role as the state’s top law enforcement official, Bonta has aggressively fought President Trump’s policies and actions, filing 46 lawsuits against the administration.
Bonta also faced controversy this past week in what Bonta’s advisers say they suspect is an attempt to damage him as he considers a potential run.
“Political hacks understand it’s actually a badge of respect, almost an endorsement. Clearly others fear him,” said veteran Democratic strategist Dan Newman, a Bonta adviser.
On Monday, KCRA reported that Bonta had spent nearly $500,000 in campaign funds last year on personal lawyers to represent him in dealings with federal investigators working on a public corruption probe in Oakland.
On Thursday, the website East Bay Insider reported that as that probe was heating up in spring 2024, Bonta had received a letter from an Oakland businessman warning him that he might soon be subject to blackmail.
The letter writer, Mario Juarez, warned Bonta that another businessman, Andy Duong, possessed “a recording of you in a compromising situation.”
Duong was later indicted, along with his father David Duong and former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, on federal bribery charges. All have pleaded not guilty. An attorney for David Duong this week said that Juarez, who is widely believed to be an informant in the case against the Duongs and Thao, was not credible. Juarez could not be reached for comment.
Bonta said his legal expenditures came about after he began speaking with the U.S. Attorney’s office, who approached him because prosecutors thought he could be a victim of blackmail or extortion. Bonta said the outreach came after he already had turned over the letter he had received from Juarez to law enforcement.
Bonta said he hired lawyers to help him review information in his possession that could be helpful to federal investigators.
“I wanted to get them all the information that they wanted, that they needed, give it to him as fast as as I could, to assist, to help,” Bonta said. “Maybe I had a puzzle piece or two that could assist them in their investigation.”
He said he may have made “an audible gasp” when he saw the legal bill, but that it was necessary to quickly turn over all documents and communications that could be relevant to the federal investigation.
“The billing rate is high or not insignificant at private law firms,” Bonta said. “We were moving quickly to be as responsive as possible, to be as helpful as possible, to assist as as much as possible, and that meant multiple attorneys working a lot of hours.”
Bonta said the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission also has alerted him that it received a complaint against him. Bonta and his advisers believe is about the use of campaign funds to pay the legal expenses and suspect it was filed by the campaign of a current gubernatorial candidate.
“We’re not worried,” Bonta said. “That’s politics.”
Asked whether these news stories could create obstacles to a potential gubernatorial campaign, Bonta pushed back against any assertion that he may have “baggage.” He said he was assisting federal prosecutors with their investigation with the hopes of holding people accountable.
“That’s what I would expect anyone to do, certainly someone who is committed as I am to public safety.,” he said. “That’s my job, to assist, to support, to provide information, to help.”
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’ 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.
The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.
The court’s conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.
The order came about an hour after the state called on the high court to intervene to avoid confusion as congressional primary elections approach in March. The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.
The order was signed by Alito because he is the justice who handles emergency appeals from Texas.
Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer as part of Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year’s elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle.
The new redistricting map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.
If the ruling holds for now, Texas could be forced to hold elections next year using the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 based on the 2020 census.
Texas was the first state to meet Trump’s demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state’s new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats.
The redrawn maps are facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.
The Supreme Court is separately considering a case from Louisiana that could further limit race-based districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It’s not entirely clear how the current round of redistricting would be affected by the outcome in the Louisiana case.
Noah Zaitar allegedly ran a drug empire, producing and exporting narcotics, including the synthetic stimulant captagon.
The Lebanese army has detained the country’s most infamous drug lord, two years after he was sanctioned by the United States over suspected links to narcotics rings in Syria.
In a post on X on Thursday, the Lebanese army confirmed they had arrested a citizen with the initials “NZ”, and three security sources confirmed to the Reuters news agency that the individual in question was the fugitive Noah Zaitar.
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Following a “series of precise security surveillance and monitoring operations”, security forces arrested Zaitar in an ambush in the city of Baalbek in Lebanon’s eastern Baalbek-Hermel governorate, the Lebanese military said.
“The detainee is one of the most dangerous wanted individuals, pursuant to a large number of arrest warrants, for crimes of forming gangs operating across numerous Lebanese regions in drug and arms trafficking, manufacturing narcotic substances, and robbery and theft by force of arms,” the military said.
“He had also previously opened fire on army elements and facilities, as well as citizens’ homes, and kidnapped individuals for financial ransom. The investigation has commenced with the detainee under the supervision of the competent judiciary,” it added.
Zaitar allegedly ran a drug empire in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley area near the Syrian border, producing and exporting drugs including the synthetic stimulant captagon.
A military tribunal sentenced Zaitar – who had evaded arrest for years while living in his home village of Kneisseh surrounded by armed supporters – to death in 2024 for killing a Lebanese soldier.
He was also named in US Department of State sanctions in 2023 against the regime of ousted Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad and individuals connected to his lucrative captagon trafficking network.
The State Department said Zaitar was a “known arms dealer and drug smuggler”, with close ties to the Fourth Division of the Syrian Arab Army – an elite unit once central to the captagon trade.
It also said Zaitar was wanted for having “materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services” to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The arrest of Zaitar comes amid an ongoing crackdown by Lebanese authorities against drug traffickers in the country.
In a separate post on X on Wednesday, the Lebanese military said two soldiers, named as Bilal al-Baradi and Ali Haidar, were killed in clashes in Baalbek on Tuesday as they pursued fugitive narcotics suspects.
تنعى قيادة الجيش ـــ مديرية التوجيه، المعاون الأول الشهيد بلال البرادعي والعريف الشهيد علي حيدر اللذين استشهدا بتاریخ ١٨ /١١ /٢٠٢٥ نتيجة اشتباكات مع مطلوبين أثناء تنفيذ مديرية المخابرات سلسلة عمليات دهم بمؤازرة وحدة من الجيش في منطقة الشراونة – بعلبك. وفي ما يلي نبذة عن حياة كل… pic.twitter.com/aIw9IjiuYi
Translation: The Army Command – Directorate of Orientation, mourns the First Assistant Martyr Bilal al-Baradi and Corporal Martyr Ali Haidar, who were martyred on 18/11/2025 as a result of clashes with wanted individuals during the execution by the Intelligence Directorate of a series of raids backed by an Army unit in the al-Sharawna area – Baalbek.
The military said that another Lebanese citizen, referred to by the initials HAJ – and named by the local news outlet Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International as Hassouneh Jaafar – was shot and killed after opening fire on Lebanese security forces during that raid.
The fugitive was wanted in connection with the murder of four soldiers, as well as kidnapping, robbery, armed robbery and drug trafficking.
Lebanese authorities also arrested two other men – referred to only as FM and GQ – for “promoting drugs” and “possessing a quantity of weapons and military ammunition” in the Akkar governorate, north of Baalbek, close to the Syrian border.
The Trump administration filed a federal suit Thursday against California and its public university systems, alleging its practice of offering in-state college tuition rates to undocumented immigrants who graduate from California high schools is illegal.
The suit, which named Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the UC Board of Regents, the Cal State University Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors for the California Community Colleges, also seeks to end some provisions in the California Dream Act, which in part allows students who lack documentation to apply for state-funded financial aid.
“California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week — we will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”
Higher education and state officials were not immediately available to comment.
The tuition suit targets Assembly Bill 540, which passed with bipartisan support in 2001 and offers in-state tuition rates to undocumented students who completed high school in California. The law also offers in-state tuition to U.S. citizens who graduated from California schools but moved out of the state before enrolling in college.
Between 2,000 and 4,000 students attending the University of California — with its total enrollment of nearly 296,000 — are estimated to be undocumented. Across California State University campuses, there are about 9,500 immigrants without documentation enrolled out of 461,000 students. The state’s biggest undocumented group, estimated to be 70,000, are community college students.
The Trump administration’s challenge to California’s tuition statute focuses on a 1996 federal law that says people in the U.S. without legal permission should “not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state … for any post-secondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit … without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”
Scholars have debated whether that law affects California’s tuition practices since AB 540 applies to citizens and noncitizens alike.
Thursday’s complaint was filed in Eastern District of California, and it follows similar actions the Trump administration has taken against Texas, Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota.
More than a dozen TV shows were awarded production incentives for filming in California, including several that are relocating from other states, such as action series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and a reboot of “Baywatch.”
Together, the 17 series are expected to generate $1.2 billion in economic activity for the state. The shows are estimated to employ a collective 5,165 cast and crew members, as well as more than 35,000 background actors.
In total, the shows were awarded about $313 million in tax credits, with season 3 of the post-apocalyptic series “Fallout” receiving the largest credit ($166 million). “Baywatch,” which relocated from Hawaii, was awarded a credit of $21 million, while “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” returning from New York and Italy, was allocated nearly $80 million. The Netflix show “Forever” got nearly $63 million.
These shows are the second round of TV projects to receive incentive awards under the state’s revamped film and television tax credit program. Approved by state legislators and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year, the new program now has a cap of $750 million, up from $330 million.
Eligibility criteria was also expanded to allow more types of shows to apply.
The changes to the program came after intense lobbying from Hollywood unions, studios and other insiders amid an exodus of filming to other states and countries with more generous production incentives.
“California’s creative economy isn’t just part of who we are — it helps power this state forward,” Newsom said in a statement. “And when we make smart investments like our film tax credit, we’re keeping talent here at home, supporting good-paying union jobs, and strengthening an industry that defines the California brand.”
“Baywatch” executive producer and showrunner Matt Nix noted that the wildfires in January encouraged him to want to film in the Golden State. He said in a statement that the fires nearly destroyed his home, but that the “heroism of the first responders who fought to save our community” inspired him.
“Baywatch was born in Los Angeles,” Nix said. “I’m so glad we can bring it home again.”
Hundreds of thousands of times each year in California, farmers and their contractors spray pesticides on fields and orchards in the state’s agricultural heartlands.
Farmworkers young and old can be exposed to dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals if they are not properly trained, left uninformed about when they can safely enter sprayed fields or exposed to pesticide applications — because of factors such as wind drift or operator error.
Yet California’s system of protecting farmworkers from pesticide dangers is anything but a tight safety net. Through interviews, public records and data analyses, an investigation by Capital & Main has found that:
Enforcement of pesticide safety rules is splintered among dozens of county agriculture commissioners, resulting in piecemeal citations. Companies that operate in multiple counties were not fined for hundreds of violations — many of them pertaining to worker safety.
County inspections to enforce pesticide safety are minimal in the state’s farm belt. In 2023, there was one inspection for every 146 times that pesticides were applied in eight of California’s top 11 producing counties, according to data provided by those counties.
In interviews, more than two dozen underage farmworkers and parents described feeling sick and dizzy or suffering from skin irritations after being exposed to pesticides. Although state law requires illnesses resulting from pesticide exposure to be reported to the state, experts and labor advocates say the number of cases is surely undercounted, in part because laborers fear retaliation from employers if they report unsafe working conditions.
Asked about these findings, state officials said the data does not reflect some of the broader actions they have taken to protect farmworkers. County regulators contend that their enforcement has improved safety conditions for laborers and noted that use of toxic pesticides has decreased significantly over the last decade. Yet groups that have researched pesticide enforcement say the state of California is not using its powers to fine repeat offenders for safety violations — and hold them accountable.
“It’s especially troubling because it means workers aren’t being protected,” said Anne Katten, director of the Pesticide and Work Health and Safety Project for theCalifornia Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Exposure to pesticides and laboring in extreme heat are problematic for all farmworkers, but the long-term effects on the neurological system and vital organs can be more pronounced for younger laborers, according to medical experts.
“Children are still developing, and so we don’t want to mess with that development,” saidDr. Jose Suarez, a physician and associate professor of public health at UC San Diego, who has researched the effects of pesticides on adolescents.
Araceli, who started working the fields of the Santa Maria Valley four years ago when she was just 13, said that some of her most disturbing experiences involved planting vegetables in fields that reeked of chemicals.
“Sometimes, it would be really, really pungent,” she recalled, adding that she’d get headaches and feel like throwing up.
At times, Araceli said, skin peeled off her fingers and they turned white.
Her mother, in a separate interview, said in Spanish that her “head began to hurt” after she entered a lettuce field where a tractor had sprayed liquid that smelled like chemicals.
A 17-year-old strawberry picker at one of the many berry fields in the Salinas Valley.
(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)
Unlike in other states, California’s system to protect farmworkers is split between local and state agencies.
Enforcement at the local level is the responsibility of55 county agricultural commissioners, who are appointed by their boards of supervisors and have a dual role of promoting agriculture and enforcing state pesticide safety laws. The stateDepartment of Pesticide Regulation enforces pesticide safety across California and provides guidance and training to agricultural commissioners.
In interviews, agricultural commissioners said the dual regulation system works because crops and growing seasons vary in each county and they can focus on the specific needs in their jurisdictions.
Yet when agricultural commissioners take enforcement action against a company for pesticide violations, they are not required by the department to check whether the firm has committed violations in other regions of California. In a statement, the department said that it “monitors compliance for repeat offenders as well as trends that may occur throughout the state.”
Capital & Main analyzed 40,150 records detailing pesticide enforcement actions across California from January 2018 through the first quarter of 2024.
According to the records, more than 240 businesses were cited for at least 1,268 violations of state pesticide laws in three or more counties. But for at least 609 of these violations — or 48% — the businesses paid no fines and received only notices or warnings.
Pesticide safety violations
Over six years, California cited more than 240 businesses across the state for at least 1,268 violations of pesticide safety laws in three or more counties.
But for nearly half of those violations the companies paid no fines and only received warnings or notices to correct the problems.
Analysis is from more than 40,000 state enforcement records from 2018 through early 2024.
Lorena Iñiguez Elebee LOS ANGELES TIMES
Craig Cassidy, a spokesperson for the Department of Pesticide Regulation, said in a written response that the number of violations with no fines “does not account for broader actions [that state and county regulators] may have taken to address the violations or to support compliance,” including warning letters or required training.
“Issuing fines is one tool in an effective enforcement program, which may be used in conjunction with other strategies to support compliance with statewide pesticide use laws and regulations,” he said.
Still, according to the data, there were repeated cases in which businesses were cited for multiple violations in separate counties but were never fined.
Agricultural contractor Nextcrop Inc., for example, was cited for 10 violations in four counties within a span of three years, but it was never ordered to pay a fine and received only warnings and notices to correct the problems, the records show.
All the violations pertained to requirements such as failing to provide pesticide safety training for workers, not posting information to inform employees about which pesticides were used on crops and failing to post information about when it was safe for workers to enter pesticide-sprayed fields.
The chief executive of Nextcrop and another company official did not respond to requests for comment.
Nutrien Ag Solutions, which is operated by a leading global supplier of agricultural services and products, is a company known to state regulators. In 2018, the firmagreed to pay $331,353 to U.S. officials in connection with 52 federal pesticide safety violations, some of them at seven facilities in the San Joaquin and Santa Maria valleys. The Department of Pesticide Regulation was involved in the investigation, according to federal regulators.
And from 2018 to 2022, agricultural commissioners cited the company for 35 separate violations of state law in 12 counties, the records show. They included failing to provide decontamination facilities and protective gear for workers, not following label instructions for pesticide use and failing to post emergency medical information in fields.
The firm paid fines for only 10 of the violations for a total of $14,700, according to the records.
In a statement, Nutrien Ag Solutions said that the violations “were resolved years ago, with prompt action taken at the time to address and correct them.”
“Nutrien upholds high standards in our operations,” the company said, “and remains dedicated to supporting farmers globally with the tools and expertise they need to produce safe and healthy crops.”
On two separate occasions, in 2018 and 2021, the Fresno County agricultural commissioner referred Nutrien Ag Solutions to the Department of Pesticide Regulation for enforcement action, the records show. Yet even after the second referral, the business continued to operate and was cited for 16 additional state violations in more than a half-dozen counties, the majority for which it was not fined.
The department said the case was referred to a regional office in Fresno County, but that it was never forwarded to headquarters in Sacramento for review.
“This was an error,” Cassidy said, “and we are looking into this matter.”
He added that the department is planning to propose regulations that would require agricultural commissioners to check a company’s statewide compliance history when taking enforcement actions, as well as justify the amount of their fines.
California agriculture has long depended on chemical-based pesticides to reduce crop damage and boost yields. Although organic farming has grown over the years, it accounts for less than 10% of all cropland statewide, far from the 20% goal by 2045 that California has adopted.
Commissioners in eight of California’s top 11 agricultural-producing counties agreed to provide estimates for the total number of times pesticides were sprayed in their jurisdictions — a figure they are not required by the state to track.
According to the estimates, pesticides were sprayed more than 687,000 times in the eight counties in 2023. That same year, 4,720 total inspections were performed in those counties — or less than 1% of the time that fields and orchards in those jurisdictions were sprayed with pesticides, according to enforcement records filed with the state.
Pesticide inspections
Agricultural commissioners provided estimates for the number of pesticide applications for 2023 in eight of the top 11 counties for agricultural production in California. The data and state enforcement records showed that these counties performed a small number of inspections compared with overall pesticide applications.
= 1,000 pesticide applications
Safety inspections were performed less than 1% of the time
Agricultural commissioners in Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Merced, Monterey, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara and Tulare counties and state pesticide enforcement records.
Lorena Iñiguez Elebee LOS ANGELES TIMES
In interviews, six agricultural commissioners said the pesticide regulatory system is too complex to be measured by a single metric, such as the number of inspections.
“I don’t think it’s a realistic way to gauge effectiveness,” said Melissa Cregan, the commissioner in Fresno County.
She and other commissioners pointed to illnesses from pesticide exposure as a key indicator of their success. Of the 859 cases reported in California in 2021, the most recent figures available, 210 — or 24% — were agricultural workers.
But experts and worker advocates say that such figures are probably undercounted, noting that more than half of the state’s farmworkers lack documentation.
“There are many, many cases that are not reported because the workers are afraid of being deported or retaliation from the employer,” United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said.
Commissioners also said that farmers are using less dangerous chemicals, citing a 56% increase in use of biopesticides over the last decade.
In the last 10 years, they said, use of carcinogenic substances has dropped by 20% statewide, groundwater contaminants have been reduced by 77% and the use of reproductive toxins has dropped by 45%.
Commissioners said that most of their field enforcement is focused on so-called restricted use pesticides, which represent a relatively small percentage of all pesticides used but have a higher potential to harm people, wildlife and the environment and include chemicals that can cause cancer.
Yet even by that measure, relatively few inspections are conducted.
The hands of this 17-year-old strawberry picker are a testament to the physical nature of the work.
(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)
In Monterey County, where 14-year-old Jose and his family labor in Salinas Valley strawberry fields, the number of all agricultural pesticide safety inspections in 2023 equaled just 3% of the total number of times that restricted-use pesticides were used, according to state records. That equates to just one inspection for every 35 times that the toxic chemicals were applied on farmlands.
From 2021 to 2023, the Monterey County agricultural commissioner approved more than 53,800 “notices of intent,” which businesses are required to file prior to applying restricted-use pesticides. That was the highest number of approvals among the top agricultural counties in California — and more than three times the number in the next-closest county, according to enforcement records.
Monterey County’s agricultural commissioner, Juan Hidalgo, said that, unlike other counties in the state, his jurisdiction has multiple growing seasons. He added that “we do review every single one of those notices of intent.”
The Salinas Valley stretches for about 90 miles across the county and is lined with rows of berries, lettuce, spinach, artichokes and cauliflower.
The valley is where, in 1970, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers launched their Salad Bowl strike, the largest farmworker labor action in U.S. history.
Today, the Salinas Valley’s biggest cash crop is strawberries, accounting for more than 20% of Monterey County’s$4.9-billion annual production value from agriculture.
A dozen minors interviewed in Monterey County described picking berries in fields that smelled of chemicals or working in fields where tractors had sprayed liquids with a strong chemical odor. Under state law, the amount of time that pickers are supposed to stay away from treated fields generally ranges from four hours to several weeks, depending on the pesticide.
Jose and his sister Raquel, 19, described entering a field in 2022 after a tractor had sprayed in rows next to where they were working.
“It smelled like chemicals, really strong … It made me dizzy,” said Raquel, who graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average and now attends college. She wants to become a nurse and work in the region, where she can use her Spanish and Mixteco language skills to help her community.
The California Strawberry Commission, which represents hundreds of growers, said that the state has the nation’s most stringent workplace safety laws and that protecting berry pickers is a top priority.
“The health and safety of farm workers is paramount in all aspects of production and prioritized by farmers and federal, state and local regulatory agencies,” Chris Christian, a vice president with the commission, said in a written response. “Farmers are also working in the fields, and their families live, work, and go to school in the communities where they farm.”
Hidalgo, the county agricultural commissioner, said worker safety is also his top priority.
He acknowledged that his 20 inspectors can’t cover all of the 314,000 acres in the county used to grow fruits and vegetables, but he said they know the growing cycles for different crops and when pesticides are most likely to be used.
“We just show up,” Hidalgo said, “and start doing an inspection.”
The inspections include a check of company records to confirm that workers receive required pesticide safety training. Yet underage workers don’t necessarily understand the documents they are told to sign, according to youths and their parents.
When she was 16, Raquel recalled, she was handed a stack of documents that had something to do with pesticides. “They just told us to sign it and to just get ready to work,” she said.
“I didn’t really know what it was because I was young,” she added, “but I signed it.”
Lopez is an independent journalist and fellow at the McGraw Center for Business Journalism. Data journalist Cherry Salazar analyzed state pesticide records for this report.
BILLINGS, Mont. — President Trump’s administration moved Wednesday to roll back protections for imperiled species and the places they live, reviving a suite of changes to Endangered Species Act regulations during the Republican’s first term that were blocked under former Democratic President Joe Biden.
The changes include the elimination of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “blanket rule” that automatically protects animals and plants newly classified as threatened. Government agencies instead would have to craft species-specific rules for protections, a potentially lengthy process.
Environmentalists warned the changes could cause years-long delays in efforts to save species such as the monarch butterfly, Florida manatee, California spotted owl and North American wolverine.
“We would have to wait until these poor animals are almost extinct before we can start protecting them. That’s absurd and heartbreaking,” said Stephanie Kurose with the Center for Biological Diversity.
The proposals come as extinctions have accelerated globally because of habitat loss and other pressures. Prior proposals during Trump’s second term would revise the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act and potentially bypass species protections for logging projects in national forests and on public lands.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the administration was restoring the Endangered Species Act to its original intent while respecting “the livelihoods of Americans who depend on our land and resources.”
The changes answer long-standing calls for revisions to the 1973 Endangered Species Act from Republicans in Congress and industries including oil and gas, mining and agriculture. Those critics argue the law has been wielded too broadly, to the detriment of economic growth.
Another change proposed Wednesday tasks officials with weighing potential economic impacts when deciding what habitat is crucial to the survival of a species.
“These revisions end years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach, delivering certainty to states, tribes, landowners and businesses while ensuring conservation efforts remain grounded in sound science and common sense,” Burgum said in a statement.
The Interior Department was sued over the blanket protection rule in March, by the Property and Environment Research Center and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. The two groups argued the rule was illegal and discouraged states and landowners from assisting in species recovery efforts.
PERC Vice President Jonathan Wood said Wednesday’s proposal was a “necessary course correction” from the Biden administration’s actions.
“This reform acknowledges the blanket rule’s unlawfulness and puts recovery back at the heart of the Endangered Species Act,” Wood said.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Federal agents have now arrested more than 250 people during a North Carolina immigration crackdown centered around Charlotte, the state’s largest city, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday.
The operation that began over the weekend is the latest phase of Republican President Trump’s aggressive mass deportation efforts that have sent the military and immigration agents into Democratic-run cities — from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Immigration officials have blanketed the country since January, pushing detention counts to all-time highs above 60,000. Big cities and small towns across the country are targeted daily amid higher-profile pushes in places such as Portland, Oregon, where more than 560 immigration arrests were made in October. Smaller bursts of enforcement have popped up elsewhere.
The push to carry out arrests in North Carolina expanded to areas around the state capital of Raleigh on Tuesday, spreading fear in at least one immigrant-heavy suburb.
The number of arrests so far during what the government has dubbed “ Operation Charlotte’s Web ” was about double the total announced by DHS officials earlier this week. The department said in a statement that agencies “continue to target some of the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens.”
Their targets include people living in the U.S. without legal permission and those who allegedly have criminal records.
Federal officials have offered few details about those arrested. They’ve also remained quiet about the scope of the enforcement operations across North Carolina and where agents will show up next, keeping communities on edge.
The crackdown in Charlotte has been met with pockets of resistance and protests.
About 100 people gathered outside a Home Depot store in Charlotte on Wednesday, where federal agents have been spotted multiple times since the surge started. Protest organizers briefly went inside the store with orange and white signs that read, “ICE out of Home Depot, Protect our communities.”
Arrests in Charlotte have created a chilling effect in immigrant neighborhoods — school attendance dropped, and small shops and restaurants closed to avoid confrontations between customers and federal agents.
Fear also spread in parts of Cary, a Raleigh suburb where officials say almost 20% of the population was born outside the U.S. At a shopping center home to family-run ethnic restaurants, there was little traffic and an Indian grocery store was mostly empty on Tuesday.
Just days after beginning the crackdown in North Carolina, Border Patrol agents were expected to arrive in New Orleans by the end of the week to start preparing for their next big operation in southeast Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and three people familiar with the operation.
Around 250 federal border agents are set to descend on New Orleans in the coming weeks for a two-month immigration crackdown expected to begin in earnest on Dec. 1.
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander tapped to head the Louisiana sweep, has been on the ground in North Carolina this week, leading the operation there as well. Bovino has become the Trump administration’s leader of the large-scale crackdowns and has drawn criticism over the tactics used to carry out arrests.
DHS has declined to comment on the operation. “For the safety and security of law enforcement, we’re not going to telegraph potential operations,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
Robertson writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Elliot Spagat, Erik Verduzco in Charlotte, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.
An Indiana lawmaker who has yet to make a decision on whether to back President Trump’s push to have Republicans redraw the state’s congressional boundaries was the victim of a swatting call that brought sheriff’s deputies to his home.
The call, in which someone reported a fake emergency at the Terre Haute home of state Sen. Greg Goode on Sunday, came hours after Trump criticized Indiana lawmakers for not moving forward with the plan and singled out Goode and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray. Trump has been trying to persuade Republican-led states across the country to aggressively redraw their congressional maps to help the GOP hold the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections.
Deputies were sent to Goode’s home after receiving an email “advising harm had been done to persons inside a home,” according to a statement from the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office.
“All persons were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’),” the statement said. The incident is under investigation.
Goode, a Republican, wrote on social media that the responding deputies were “under the impression of a domestic violence emergency.” He thanked the deputies for acting professionally.
“While this entire incident is unfortunate and reflective of the volatile nature of our current political environment, I give thanks to God that my family and I are ok,” Goode wrote.
Trump singled out Goode and Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray while demanding that Republicans move forward with a redistricting plan for Indiana. Republicans already hold a 7-2 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.
“Because of these two politically correct type ‘gentlemen,’ and a few others, they could be depriving Republicans of a Majority in the House, a VERY BIG DEAL!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
Bray, the Republican leader of Indiana’s Senate, announced Friday that his chamber will no longer meet to vote on redistricting, citing a lack of support from his members even after pressure from the White House. Vice President JD Vance has visited multiple times to make the case.
Goode, a Republican member of the Senate, has not publicly stated his position on redistricting and says he will not make a decision without seeing a map and legislation introduced for lawmakers’ review.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The goal of swatting is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to an address by making bogus claims of violence happening inside.
Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House next year, leading to Trump’s strong-arming of GOP-controlled states. Legislatures or commissions in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have adopted new maps to boost Republicans’ odds, while California and Virginia are poised to counter Trump’s push and redraw their own maps to benefit Democrats.
It looked like a message sent with a bullhorn, a move made with all the subtlety of an elbow to the ribs.
UCLA coach Mick Cronin sent regular starter Eric Dailey Jr. onto the court for tipoff Tuesday night alongside four players who are normally reserves.
The regular starters weren’t sick or injured, they just hadn’t given the effort their coach wanted in practice. So in their place, Cronin started a group of players who had drubbed their teammates by 20 points the previous day in a game that didn’t count except in the mind of the Bruins’ coach.
Given a bigger role, that new group set an unmistakably energetic tone against Sacramento State at Pauley Pavilion, scoring the game’s first 13 points on the way to the No. 19 Bruins’ 79-48 victory.
“They pay me to win games and I thought that was the lineup that was ready to play tonight,” Cronin said, disputing the idea that he was putting his regular starters on notice. “I don’t believe in messages, I don’t believe in doghouses.”
He does believe in extracting whatever his players have to give.
Trent Perry, Jamar Brown, Brandon Williams and Steven Jamerson II played scrappy defense and unselfish offense in helping their team build that big early lead. A Williams steal triggered a fast break ending in a Brown driving layup in which he was fouled. A Jamerson block started another fast break that led to another Brown driving layup. Perry added a rare four-point play after making a three-pointer in which he was fouled.
Before some fans had reached their seats, UCLA was ahead 13-0. Cronin didn’t insert three of his regular starters until nearly five minutes had elapsed, Skyy Clark, Tyler Bilodeau and Xavier Booker finally entering the game. They were joined a few minutes later by point guard Donovan Dent, the last regular starter checking into the game with 12 minutes 37 seconds left before halftime.
It took Dent only 10 seconds to make his presence felt, driving toward the basket before flinging a pass to Clark for a three-pointer.
Dailey was especially active, logging a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds to lead four players in double figures scoring. Booker added 12 points, Perry had 11 and Brown 10 for the Bruins, who held the Hornets to 24.1% shooting. Jamerson appeared on the way to a strong defensive game with three rebounds, two blocks and a steal in 10 minutes before twisting his ankle and never returning.
“Proud of the guys that started, proud of the guys that came in, too,” Dailey said. “They kept it going. So that just shows that our level of intensity has to be hard to start games off.”
This was UCLA’s most complete performance since its 30-point blowout of UC Irvine in an exhibition game late last month. The Bruins followed that with three flat performances against lesser competition before putting up a fight in a four-point loss to Arizona last week.
It didn’t seem to matter who was in the game for UCLA (4-1) given the talent discrepancy with Sacramento State (3-3). The Hornets became even more depleted midway through the first half when guard Jeremiah Cherry, their leading scorer, suffered what appeared to be a serious knee injury and had to be helped to the locker room.
Cronin went with his normal starting lineup to start the second half but pivoted quickly. Perry replaced Clark after less than a minute when Clark committed a foul. Then, after the Hornets rolled off seven straight points, came more changes. Back into the game came Brown and Williams, replacing Dent and Booker.
“I gave the other guys a chance because they need to practice coming out of the locker room with more energy,” Cronin said, “and they didn’t get the job done.”
Cronin said his team logged 33 deflections — tipped passes, loose balls collected, steals and blocked shots — in the first half compared to only nine in the second, reflecting a dropoff in defensive effort.
Bilodeau was gone for good with seven minutes left, fouling out after only 18 minutes of playing time in which he collected six points, three rebounds and two steals. Dent had five points, seven assists, two steals and no turnovers in 24 minutes.
Cronin’s biggest concern was giving up 13 offensive rebounds, though that was partially a reflection of Sacramento State shooting so poorly and missing 41 shots.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Cronin said, “if we don’t get better on the defensive backboard.”
But will the coach go back to his normal starting lineup Friday against Presbyterian?
Depends.
“We’ll see how guys practice,” Cronin said. “Right now, we’re in a mode of trying to learn how to play hard enough to earn the jersey that they wear. I have great respect for the jersey. I left my hometown, coaching at my alma mater … because of how much respect that I have for UCLA basketball, and I try to demand that my players play with that kind of effort, show that same respect.”
The Mater Dei High girls’ volleyball team had a lot to play for after coming within one victory of a third consecutive Southern Section title.
The Monarchs quickly turned the page and set their sights on the state championship. Now they find themselves one win away from attaining that after upsetting No. 1 Sierra Canyon, 20-25, 25-16, 25-22, 25-16, in the Southern California Regional Open Division final Tuesday night in Chatsworth.
Outside hitter Westley Matavao led the way with 18 kills and afterward gave a shout-out to her cousin on the opposite side of the net, Missouri-bound setter and fellow junior Lucky Fasavalu.
“We’re family, I love her as a person, she comes to play every match and she knows how to run an offense,” said Matavao, an early commit to UCLA. “We wanted this so much after losing to them last time and we came out swinging tonight.”
A thunderous kill by Addison Coady ended the third set and Mater Dei opened a seven-point lead early in the fourth to ensure there would be no comeback by the home side.
“We played with so much confidence and our energy showed up,” Matavao added. “We have specific serving targets so we focused on that and were in great position on our blocking.”
Mater Dei will try to capture its third state Open Division title at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Santiago Canyon College in Orange, where the Monarchs (34-5) face Northern California champion Rocklin (37-4), which upset top-seeded Archbishop Mitty in five sets Tuesday.
Layli Ostovar had 14 and 21 digs, Emma Kingston had 10 kills and six blocks, Lizzy Robinson had 19 digs, Kalea Lee had 24 assists, Sam Capinpin had 17 assists and Jael Smith had six blocks.
The Monarchs not only avenged their loss in the section final, they snapped Sierra Canyon’s 19-match winning streak and handed the Trailblazers (41-4) their only defeat in California all season.
Mater Dei won its first nine head-to-head meetings with Sierra Canyon before losing in four sets in the Southern Section Division 1 final Nov. 8 at Cerritos College. It was the Trailblazers’ fourth section title and halted Mater Dei’s bid for a three-peat under head coach Dan O’Dell.
Mater Dei won its first state Open Division title in 2018 and its second in 2023.
WASHINGTON — A federal court has blocked Texas from moving forward with a new congressional map hastily drawn in recent months to net Republicans up to five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.
The ruling on Tuesday is a major political blow to the Trump administration, which set off a redistricting arms race throughout the country earlier this year by encouraging Texas lawmakers to redraw its congressional district boundaries mid-decade — an extraordinary move bucking traditional practice.
The three-judge federal court panel in El Paso said in a 2-1 decision that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” ordering the state to revert to the maps it had drawn in 2021.
Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who at Trump’s behest directed GOP state lawmakers to proceed with the plan, vowed on Tuesday that the state would appeal the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.
Californians responded to Texas’ attempted move by voting on Nov. 4 to approve a new, temporary congressional map for the state, giving Democrats the opportunity to pick up five new seats.
Initially, the proposal pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as Prop. 50, had trigger language that would have conditioned new California maps going into effect based on whether Texas approved its new congressional districts.
But that language was stripped out last minute, raising the possibility that Democrats enter the 2026 midterm election with a distinct advantage. The language was removed because Texas had already passed its redistricting plan, making the trigger no longer needed, said Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the maps for Prop. 50.
“Our legislature eliminated the trigger because Texas had already triggered it,” Mitchell said Tuesday.
Newsom celebrated the ruling in a statement to The Times, which he also posted on the social media site X.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom said. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”
The new Texas redistricting plan appears to have been instigated by a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who threatened Texas with legal action over three “coalition districts” that she argued were unconstitutional.
Coalition districts feature multiple minority communities, none of which comprises the majority. The newly configured districts passed by Texas redrew all three, potentially “cracking” racially diverse communities while preserving white-majority districts, legal scholars said.
While the Supreme Court’s rulings on redistricting have been sporadic, the justices have generally ruled that purely political redistricting is legal, but that racial gerrymandering is not — a more difficult line to draw in southern states where racial and political lines overlap.
In 2023, addressing a redistricting fight in Alabama over Black voter representation, the high court ruled in Allen vs. Milligan that discriminating against minority voters in gerrymandering is unconstitutional, ordering the Southern state to create a second minority-majority district.
The Justice Department is also suing California to attempt to block the use of its new maps in next year’s elections.
Times staff writer Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.
The majority on a federal court in El Paso, Texas, found that the new map used race to redraw congressional districts.
A panel of federal judges has ruled that Texas’s newly redrawn congressional districts cannot be used in next year’s 2026 midterm elections, striking a blow to Republican efforts to tilt races in their favour.
On Tuesday, a two-to-one majority at the US District Court for western Texas blocked the map, on the basis that there was “substantial evidence” to show “that Texas racially gerrymandered” the districts.
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Partisan gerrymandering has generally been considered legal under court precedent, but dividing congressional maps along racial lines is considered a violation of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics,” the court’s majority wrote in the opening of its 160-page opinion.
The ruling marked a major setback to efforts to redraw congressional districts ahead of the critically important midterms, which decide the composition of the US Congress.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs in that election. With Republicans holding a narrow 219-seat majority, analysts speculate that control of the chamber could potentially switch parties.
In June, news reports emerged that the administration of President Donald Trump had reached out to state officials to redraw the red state’s map, in order to gain five additional House seats for Republicans.
That inspired other right-leaning states, notably North Carolina and Missouri, to similarly redraw their districts. North Carolina and Missouri each passed a map that would gain Republicans one additional House seat.
Texas’s actions also sparked a Democratic backlash. California Governor Gavin Newsom spearheaded a ballot campaign in his heavily blue state to pass a proposition in November that would suspend an independent districting commission and instead pass a partisan map, skewed in favour of Democrats.
Voters passed the ballot initiative overwhelmingly in November, teeing up Democrats to gain five extra seats in California next year.
The state redistricting battle has sparked myriad legal challenges, including the one decided in Texas on Tuesday.
In that case, civil rights groups accused the Texas government of attempting to dilute the power of Black and Hispanic voters.
Judges David Guaderrama, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Jeffrey V Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority decision in favour of the plaintiffs.
A third judge — Jerry Smith, appointed under Ronald Reagan — dissented from their decision.
Writing for the majority, Brown said that Trump official Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four congressional districts in the state were “unconstitutional” because they had non-white majorities.
The letter Dhillon sent containing that assertion helped prompt the Texas redistricting fight, Brown argued.
The judge also pointed to statements Texas Governor Greg Abbott made, seeming to reference the racial composition of the districts. If the new map’s aims were purely partisan and not racial, Brown indicated that it was curious no majority-white districts were targeted.
Tuesday’s ruling restores the 2021 map of Texas congressional districts. Currently, the state is represented by 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats in the US House.
Already, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to appeal the ruling before the US Supreme Court.
“The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas,” Paxton wrote in a statement posted to social media.
He expressed optimism about his odds before the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. “I fully expect the Court to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”
California’s new congressional map likewise faces a legal challenge, with the Trump administration suing alongside state Republicans.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Federal immigration authorities will expand their enforcement action in North Carolina to Raleigh as soon as Tuesday, the mayor of the state’s capital city said, while Customs and Border Protection agents continue operating in Charlotte following a weekend that saw arrests of more than 130 people in that city.
Mayor Janet Cowell said Monday that she didn’t know how large the operation would be or how long agents would be present. Immigration authorities haven’t spoken about it. The Democrat said in a statement that crime was lower in Raleigh this year compared to last and that public safety was a priority for her and the city council.
“I ask Raleigh to remember our values and maintain peace and respect through any upcoming challenges,” Cowell said in a statement.
U.S. immigration agents arrested more than 130 people over the weekend in a sweep through Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city, a federal official said Monday.
The movements in North Carolina come after the Trump administration launched immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles and Chicago. Both of those are deep blue cities in deep blue states run by nationally prominent officials who make no secret of their anger at the White House. The political reasoning there seemed obvious.
But why North Carolina and why was Charlotte the first target there?
Sure the mayor is a Democrat, as is the governor, but neither is known for wading into national political battles. In a state where divided government has become the norm, Gov. Josh Stein in particular has tried hard to get along with the GOP-controlled state legislature. The state’s two U.S. senators are both Republican and President Trump won the state in the last three presidential elections.
The Department of Homeland Security has said it is focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.
But maybe focusing on a place where politics is less outwardly bloody was part of the equation, some observers say.
The White House “can have enough opposition (to its crackdown), but it’s a weaker version” than what it faced in places like Chicago, said Rick Su, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who studies local government, immigration and federalism.
“They’re not interested in just deporting people. They’re interested in the show,” he said.
The crackdown
The Trump administration has made Charlotte, a Democratic city of about 950,000 people, its latest focus for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime — despite local opposition and declining crime rates. Residents reported encounters with immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Border Patrol officers had arrested “over 130 illegal aliens who have all broken” immigration laws. The agency said the records of those arrested included gang membership, aggravated assault, shoplifting and other crimes, but it did not say how many cases had resulted in convictions, how many people had been facing charges or any other details.
The crackdown set off fierce objections from area leaders.
“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color,” Stein said in a video statement late Sunday. “This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.”
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said Monday she was “deeply concerned” about videos she’s seen of the crackdown but also said she appreciates protesters’ peacefulness.
“To everyone in Charlotte who is feeling anxious or fearful: You are not alone. Your city stands with you,” she said in a statement.
The debate over crime and immigration
Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County have both found themselves part of America’s debates over crime and immigration, two of the most important issues to the White House.
The most prominent was the fatal stabbing this summer of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light-rail train, an attack captured on video. While the suspect was from the U.S., the Trump administration repeatedly highlighted that he had been arrested previously more than a dozen times.
Charlotte, which had a Republican mayor as recently as 2009, is now a city dominated by Democrats, with a growing population brought by a booming economy. The racially diverse city includes more than 150,000 foreign-born residents, officials say.
Lyles easily won a fifth term as mayor earlier this month, defeating her Republican rival by 45 percentage points even as GOP critics blasted city and state leaders for what they call rising incidents of crime. Following the Nov. 4 election, Democrats are poised to hold 10 of the other 11 seats on the city council.
While the Department of Homeland Security has said it is focusing on the state because of sanctuary policies, North Carolina county jails have long honored “detainers,” or requests from federal officials to hold an arrested immigrant for a limited time so agents can take custody of them. Nevertheless, some common, noncooperation policies have existed in a handful of places, including Charlotte, where the police do not help with immigration enforcement.
In Mecklenburg County, the jail did not honor detainer requests for several years, until after state law effectively made it mandatory starting last year.
DHS said about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored since October 2020, putting the public at risk.
For years, Mecklenburg Sheriff Garry McFadden pushed back against efforts by the Republican-controlled state legislature to force him and a handful of sheriffs from other urban counties to accept U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.
Republicans ultimately overrode a veto by then-Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper late last year to enact the bill into law.
While McFadden has said his office is complying with the law’s requirement, he continued a public feud with ICE leaders in early 2025 that led to a new state law toughening those rules. Stein vetoed that measure, but the veto was overridden.
Republican House Speaker Destin Hall said in a Monday post on X that immigration agents are in Charlotte because of McFadden’s past inaction: “They’re stepping in to clean up his mess and restore safety to the city.”
Last month, McFadden said he’d had a productive meeting with an ICE representative.
“I made it clear that I do not want to stop ICE from doing their job, but I do want them to do it safely, responsibly, and with proper coordination by notifying our agency ahead of time,” McFadden said in a statement.
But such talk doesn’t calm the political waters.
“Democrats at all levels are choosing to protect criminal illegals over North Carolina citizens,” state GOP Chairman Jason Simmons said Monday.
Verduzco, Sullivan and Robertson write for the Associated Press. Sullivan reported from Minneapolis and Robertson from Raleigh, N.C. AP writers Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.
Political assassinations have long punctuated Mexico’s democratic trajectory, often surfacing at moments when institutional fragility becomes impossible to ignore. The murder of Uruapan’s mayor is therefore not an unprecedented shock but the latest manifestation of a recurring pattern in which local political authority collapses under the weight of criminal power. The country has witnessed similar moments in past electoral cycles, in rural municipalities, and along contested economic corridors. What is different today is the increasing regularity and visibility of these attacks, signalling not just isolated episodes of violence but a systemic erosion of governance. The killing of Carlos Manzo crystallises a truth that communities in Michoacán, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Sinaloa, Zacatecas and beyond have recognised for years: insecurity has metastasised into a political condition.
Michoacán has long been a barometer for national security. The state’s geography, agricultural wealth, and fragmented political networks have made it a battleground for groups competing for control. Yet the recent escalation in places like Uruapan signals a worrying transformation. Local reports of extortion, blockades, and increasingly public displays of force reflect criminal organisations behaving as de facto authorities. Entire communities have adapted to a logic of survival shaped by invisible borders, curfews, and negotiated coexistence with whoever wields power at any given moment. The assassination of public figures in such an environment is not simply a political act but a show of ownership over territory, demonstrating that the real lines of authority do not run through government offices but through armed structures with the capacity to enforce their will.
What is unfolding today is not an isolated deterioration but a worsening trend that has become more explicit during the last two federal administrations. The promise that security would be reimagined through social policy and a rejection of past militarised models never materialised into real control of territory or a coherent strategy for dismantling criminal governance. While the language changed, the underlying problem deepened. The country saw more regions where the state operates only partially or symbolically, where elections proceeded under intimidation, and where local authorities lacked the means or autonomy to resist the pressures around them. The result is an increasingly fragmented political geography in which criminal groups influence candidate selection, determine which campaigns can operate, and regulate economic flows at the community level.
Under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the narrative of moral regeneration through social investment was presented as a long-term answer to entrenched violence. Yet the gap between discourse and reality widened every year. Homicides remained persistently high, disappearances continued to haunt families, and entire municipalities came under the shadow of armed groups. The federal government’s insistence that security indicators were improving often clashed with the everyday experience of citizens navigating threats, extortion, and territorial disputes. Even as official statistics were reinterpreted to show progress, the lived reality in regions such as Michoacán, Guerrero, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato suggested that criminal organisations had consolidated their presence more deeply than before.
It is against this backdrop that Claudia Sheinbaum assumed the presidency, carrying forward a security model that was already failing. Her early months in office reveal how far the government still is from containing the expanding insecurity. Despite official claims of reduced violence, these figures jar with how people actually experience their lives. A majority of citizens continue to feel unsafe, and communities in high-risk states report no perceptible change. Her reliance on social prevention ignores how firmly criminal networks have embedded themselves in local political and economic systems. In several regions, armed groups continue to operate openly, even during federal visits, reinforcing the perception that national security strategy is more rhetorical than practical. The dissonance between optimistic messaging and deteriorating public trust reveals a government that has yet to confront the structural nature of the problem. In doing so, it risks turning its security agenda into little more than political theatre rather than a meaningful plan to reassert state authority.
Federal responses, while immediate and visible, reveal a deep structural weakness. Large-scale deployments, announcements of multi-sector investment packages and public proclamations of institutional coordination have become the standard repertoire of crisis management. These interventions create the appearance of control but rarely alter the conditions that allow criminal groups to flourish. The persistent challenges of corruption, politicised policing, fragmented prosecutorial capacity and limited municipal autonomy remain largely unresolved. Without addressing these deficits, security operations risk becoming cyclical performances rather than durable solutions.
National security trends further complicate the picture. Although certain aggregate indicators suggest stabilisation or marginal declines, the broader trajectory reflects a shift towards diversified criminal governance. Extortion, territorial control, interference in municipal administration and the permeation of legitimate industries reflect forms of violence that escape simple statistical capture. Thus, a focus on homicide figures alone obscures the structural deterioration of Mexico’s security landscape. The issue is not merely how many people are killed or disappeared, but how violence shapes political participation, economic activity and civic behaviour.
The deterioration of security in Mexico is inseparable from the erosion of its democratic foundations. Criminal groups no longer just threaten individuals — they infiltrate political processes, influence elections, and shape economic life. Municipalities under their sway become more than battlegrounds; they become laboratories of parallel governance. Political pluralism suffers when competition is skewed by coercion; the meaningful choice of leaders erodes when citizens know that certain voices are too dangerous to raise. Freedom of expression, too, is undermined. Journalists, activists, and community leaders operate in climates where challenging criminal-political alliances can entail serious risks. Self-censorship becomes a survival strategy, and public debate narrows under the weight of unspoken fear. When participation becomes dangerous, political representation becomes illusory.
This is not how democratic life is supposed to function. Institutions — from city halls to courts — ought to guarantee protection, justice, and participation. Yet in many places, the real source of power lies outside constitutional structures, in the hands of groups that command both arms and economic influence. This isn’t a temporary crisis; it is a systemic breakdown: when violence is structural, the response must be institutional.
Civil society responses illustrate both the potential and the limits of civic resistance. The mobilisation of Generation Z represents an important shift: a young, digitally connected cohort demanding accountability, transparency and meaningful security reform. These demonstrations are grounded in lived experience. For many young people, insecurity is not an abstract policy concern but an organising principle of daily life. Their protests reflect a rejection of narratives that normalise violence, minimise institutional failure or reduce insecurity to political rhetoric. Yet their activism also highlights a worrying reality: younger generations increasingly turn to extra-institutional forms of political expression because formal channels appear unresponsive.
The erosion of freedom is not only visible in the public sphere but in private life. Decisions that should be routine — attending a festival, organising a community meeting, even taking certain roads — have become political acts shaped by calculations of risk. This gradual internalisation of fear constitutes a subtle but profound form of democratic regression. When citizens adapt their behaviour to avoid harm, the space for free expression, open debate and community participation contracts. Democracy loses not through abrupt authoritarian shifts but through the slow, everyday retreat of civic life.
Addressing this crisis requires an institutional response that moves beyond episodic militarisation. Prosecutorial structures must be capable of pursuing cases that reveal networks rather than producing symbolic arrests. Municipal police forces must be professionalised, insulated from political interference and equipped with oversight mechanisms. Transparency must also be central in any reform. Citizens need access to clear, verifiable information about investigations, budget allocations, and the performance of security institutions. Without this, trust will remain a casualty of rhetorical solutions. Economic regulation must prevent criminal control of supply chains, especially in high-value sectors. Without reform of these foundational elements, any security strategy will be short-lived and vulnerable to the next surge in criminal activity.
At the national level, political leadership must recognise that security, democracy and economic development are interdependent. Reducing violence without strengthening democratic institutions will merely shift the form that insecurity takes. Conversely, institutional reforms that ignore security realities will remain aspirational. The state must rebuild public trust not through proclamations but through transparent evidence of institutional effectiveness.
International cooperation can play a supporting role, particularly in intelligence and financial tracing, but it cannot substitute for domestic institution-building. Sovereignty requires the capacity to govern effectively; reliance on external actors to fill institutional gaps risks reinforcing perceptions of state weakness.
Mexico stands at a juncture where insecurity threatens more than physical safety. It challenges the very conditions that make democratic life possible. The murder of Uruapan’s mayor is therefore not simply another entry in a long record of violence but a sign of cumulative democratic decay. If unchecked, this trajectory will entrench parallel systems of governance in which criminal groups continue to expand their authority while formal institutions recede.
The country’s future depends on rejecting this drift. A more honest political narrative is needed — one that acknowledges institutional failure, confronts criminal power directly and recognises that democracy cannot coexist indefinitely with pervasive fear. The question is whether political leaders will choose the difficult path of structural reform or continue to rely on reactive measures that mask, rather than resolve, the crisis.
Mexico cannot allow political assassination to become an unremarkable feature of its democratic life. Public institutions must assert their authority not through spectacle but through competence. Reversing the current trajectory will require political courage, institutional reconstruction and a renewed commitment to pluralism and freedom. The alternative is stark: a political landscape where democracy is reduced to procedures while real power is negotiated through violence, and where the politics of fear become the politics of the state.
California is once again fighting in federal court for a Jewish family’s right to have a precious Impressionist painting returned to them by a Spanish museum nearly 90 years after it was looted by the Nazis.
The state is also defending its own authority to legally require art and other stolen treasures to be returned to other victims with ties to the state, even in disputes that stretch far beyond its borders.
The state has repeatedly weighed in on the case since the Cassirer family first filed it while living in San Diego in 2005. Last year, it passed a new law designed to bolster the legal rights of the Cassirers and other families in California to recover valuable property stolen from them in acts of genocide or political persecution.
On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office filed a motion to intervene in the Cassirer case directly in order to defend that law. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation — which is owned by Spain and holds the Camille Pissarro masterpiece — has claimed that the law is unconstitutional and should therefore be ignored.
Bonta, in a statement to The Times, said the law is “about fairness, moral — and legal — responsibility, and doing what’s right,” and the state will defend it in court.
“There is nothing that can undo the horrors and loss experienced by individuals during the Holocaust. But there is something we can do — that California has done — to return what was stolen back to survivors and their families and bring them some measure of justice and healing,” Bonta said. “As Attorney General, my job is to defend the laws of California, and I intend to do so here.”
Bonta said his office “has supported the Cassirers’ quest for justice for two decades,” and “will continue to fight with them for the rightful return of this invaluable family heirloom.”
Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, did not did not answer questions from The Times. Bonta’s office said Stauber did not oppose its intervening in the case.
Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers’ longtime attorney, thanked Bonta’s office for “intervening in this case again to defend California’s interests in protecting the integrity of the art market and the rights of stolen property victims.”
“California law has always provided strong protections for the victims of stolen property and stolen art in particular, which the Legislature has consistently reinforced,” Dubbin said.
Bonta’s latest move ratchets up the intrigue surrounding the 20-year-old case, which is being watched around the globe for its potential implications in the high-stakes world of looted art litigation.
The painting in question — Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” — is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Both sides acknowledge it was stolen from Lilly Cassirer Neubauer by the Nazis in 1939, after she agreed in desperation to surrender it to a Nazi appraiser in exchange for a visa to flee Germany at the dawn of World War II.
The attention surrounding the case, and its potential to set new precedent in international law, likely makes the painting even more valuable.
After World War II, Lilly received compensation for the painting from the German government, but the family never relinquished its right to the masterpiece — which at the time was considered lost. What she was paid was a fraction of the current estimated worth.
In the decades that followed, Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer — who had also survived the Holocaust — moved with his family to San Diego.
In 2000, Claude made the shocking discovery that the painting was not lost to time after all, but part of a vast art collection that Spain had acquired from the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, the scion of a German industrialist family with ties to Hitler’s regime. Spain restored an early 19th-century palace near the Prado Museum in Madrid in order to house the collection as the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Claude asked the museum to return the painting to his family. It refused. He sued in U.S. federal court in 2005. The case has been moving through the courts ever since.
California passed its new law in response to the 9th Circuit ruling last year, which held that state law at the time required it to apply an archaic Spanish law. That measure dictates that the title to stolen goods passes legitimately to a new owner over time, if that owner wasn’t aware the goods were stolen when they acquired them — which the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has argued makes its ownership of the painting legally sound.
In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new law during a small gathering with the families of Holocaust survivors at the Holocaust Museum LA. Lilly’s great-grandson and Claude’s son David Cassirer, who now lives in Colorado, was there, praising the state’s lawmakers for “taking a definitive stand in favor of the true owners of stolen art.”
In March, the Supreme Court in a brief order ruled that the 9th Circuit must reconsider its ruling in light of California’s new law.
In September, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Collection filed a motion asking the appellate court to rule in its favor once more. It put forward multiple arguments, but among them was that California’s new law was “constitutionally indefensible” and deprived the museum of its due process rights.
“Under binding Supreme Court precedent, a State may not, by legislative fiat, reopen time-barred claims and transfer property whose ownership is already vested,” the museum argued.
It said the U.S., under federal law, “does not seek to impose its property laws or the property laws of its own states on other foreign sovereigns, but rather expressly acknowledges that different legal traditions and systems must be taken into account to facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Nazi-looted art cases.”
It said California’s law takes an “aggressive approach” that “disrupts the federal government’s efforts to maintain uniformity and amicable relations with foreign nations,” and “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of federal policy.”
David Cassirer, the lead plaintiff in the case since Claude’s death in 2010, argued the opposite in his own filing to the court.
Cassirer argued that California’s new law requires an outcome in his favor — which he said would also happen to be in line with “moral commitments made by the United States and governments worldwide, including Spain, to Nazi victims and their families.”
“It is undisputed that California substantive law mandates the award of title here to the Cassirer family, as Lilly’s heirs, of which Plaintiff David Cassirer is the last surviving member,” Cassirer’s attorneys wrote.
They wrote that California law holds that “a thief cannot convey good title to stolen works of art,” and therefore requires the return of the painting to Cassirer.
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who sponsored the bill in the legislature, praised Bonta for stepping in to defend the law — which he called “part of a decades long quest for justice and is rooted in the belief that California must stand on the right side of history.”
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Going into the first start of his career, Luke Duncan would be facing the nation’s top-ranked team in one of the most intimidating environments in college football with an offensive line missing its most veteran starter.
It went about as well as one might expect.
Don’t blame Duncan, the UCLA backup quarterback who did his best with a conservative game plan in the absence of Nico Iamaleava. It was just that the Bruins were so thoroughly outclassed that they basically had no chance with their star quarterback sidelined by concussion symptoms he experienced earlier in the week.
Ohio State scored on its first five drives on the way to a 48-10 victory on Saturday at Ohio Stadium, the highlights for the Bruins sporadic enough to be counted on one hand.
There was a sack by linebacker Jalen Woods to end a Buckeyes drive early in the third quarter, forcing them to punt. There was a fourth-down stop on Ohio State’s next drive that gave the ball back to the Bruins. Duncan finally put his team on the board late in the third quarter when he found Kwazi Gilmer cutting across the field for an 18-yard touchdown.
“He got more and more comfortable, that’s what I was proud to see of him,” UCLA interim coach Tim Skipper said of Duncan. “That’s a tough deal and just proud of that kid for fighting. He never blinked an eye and just kept moving forward, so he’ll build off of that.”
There was little to celebrate for the Bruins (3-7 overall, 3-4 Big Ten) on a night they were outgained, 440-222, in total yardage even after tightening up considerably on defense in the second half.
Duncan increasingly found a rhythm after halftime and completed 16 of 23 passes for 154 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. The redshirt sophomore was never sacked, an offensive line that was missing guard Garrett DiGiorgio holding up against the Buckeyes’ pressure.
“It was nice to get in that rhythm,” Duncan said, “and just wish we could have started earlier.”
Ohio State defensive lineman Kenyatta Jackson, top, tackles UCLA running back Jaivian Thomas during the first half Saturday.
(Jay LaPrete / Associated Press)
Playcaller Jerry Neuheisel tried to help Duncan with a game plan that called for lots of short passes and a few direct snaps to running backs. It led to a relatively efficient performance from a quarterback who had not previously thrown a pass at the college level but did not help the Bruins build any momentum as they managed only two first downs in the first half.
“He had his little package of plays that we had for him,” Skipper said. “We were trying to get him going, you know, get him to ease into the game.”
UCLA didn’t cross midfield until wide receiver Rico Flores Jr. hauled in a 51-yard pass late in the third quarter. The Bruins eventually scored on Gilmer’s touchdown, but the momentum was only momentary given that the Buckeyes (10-0, 7-0) returned the resulting kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown as Lorenzo Styles Jr. successfully navigated the coverage.
“It was a no-DNA touchdown,” Skipper said, “I don’t think anybody touched him.”
Ohio State’s offense produced most of the memorable moments in building a 27-0 halftime lead. Wide receiver Jeremiah Smith snagged a pass with one hand near the sideline, drawing audible amazement from the crowd of 104,168. Running back James Peoples hurdled UCLA defensive back Cole Martin on a 19-yard touchdown run, thrilling those fans anew.
Ohio State running back James Peoples, top, hurdles over UCLA defensive back Cole Martin to score a touchdown during the first half Saturday.
(Jay LaPrete / Associated Press)
Just when it seemed as if things couldn’t get worse for a team facing a 24-0 deficit in the final minute before halftime, Will Karoll’s punt went off the side of his foot and into the body of an Ohio State player. The Buckeyes kicked a field goal two plays later.
There was little slowing Ohio State’s offense. Running back Bo Jackson rushed for 112 yards and one touchdown and quarterback Julian Sayin completed his first 11 passes on the way to throwing for 184 yards and one touchdown before giving way to a backup midway through the fourth quarter.
The Bruins waved the white flag in the final two minutes, allowing Madden Iamaleava to make his collegiate debut in relief of Duncan.
Duncan said he found out he was starting Friday during a team meeting on the field, going on to lead the offense through a mock game.
“I gave him the [best] advice ever — just throw the ball to our color jersey,” Skipper cracked, “that’s all I told him.”
As Duncan warmed up more than two hours before kickoff, Nico Iamaleava stood behind his understudy, wearing sunglasses and the hood of his windbreaker pulled over his head. Duncan appeared confident and poised as he took underhanded tosses from a team manager and fired passes, even bopping his head ever so slightly as Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” blared over the stadium loudspeakers.
Duncan said Iamaleava rewatched plays on an iPad with him during the game, helping Duncan diagnose the Buckeyes’ defense. Other teammates encouraged Duncan, even after the score became lopsided.
“The whole O-line was cheering me on the whole time, and nobody got negative,” Duncan said. “It’s just a great group. No one gave up.”
Iamaleava was ruled out after he absorbed a series of punishing hits the previous weekend against Nebraska.
There was no relief in what he would see Saturday night.
Terrorists have launched an early-morning attack on the Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, in the Danko Wasagu Local Government Area (LGA) of Kebbi State, North West Nigeria, abducting scores of students.
The assault took place around 4:00 a.m., shortly before dawn prayers. Local sources say the attackers stormed the school premises, killing a staff member and injuring a security guard before escaping with several girls.
Residents of Maga, a community under the Danko Wasagu LGA, with its headquarters in Ribah, told HumAngle that the assailants “have not gone far” and are believed to still be within reach. They are calling for urgent intervention from both the Federal and Kebbi State Governments to prevent the terrorists from disappearing with the abducted students.
Security forces have yet to issue any official statement on the latest mass abduction of school children.
In recent years, Kebbi State has witnessed a disturbing surge in school abductions, which is part of a broader pattern of insecurity plaguing the northwestern region. The most notorious incident occurred on June 17, 2021, when armed attackers stormed the Federal Government College in Birnin Yauri. The assailants killed a police officer and abducted at least 80 students and five teachers.
This is a developing story.
Terrorists attacked the Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, Nigeria, early morning, abducting numerous students. The assault took place around 6:00 a.m., where the attackers killed a staff member and injured a security guard before fleeing with the abducted girls. Local residents report that the perpetrators are still nearby, urging immediate intervention from federal and state authorities. The incident reflects an ongoing trend in Kebbi State, which has experienced a rise in school abductions, including a significant attack on June 17, 2021, at the Federal Government College in Birnin Yauri, where over 80 students and five teachers were kidnapped. Security forces have not yet released any statements on the current incident.
