Oct. 28 (UPI) — With the impending loss of benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program potentially causing low-income Americans and their families to go hungry, 25 states have filed suit to force the federal government to release funds for the program during the federal government shutdown.
Starting Saturday, SNAP benefits will not be distributed. The program gives food aid to 40 million Americans.
In past government shutdowns, the USDA used a contingency fund to pay out SNAP benefits. Last week, the President Donald Trump administration said it won’t be using contingency funds to pay for SNAP.
“We just can’t do it without the government being open,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Oct. 21. “By Nov. 1, we are very hopeful this government reopens and we can begin moving that money out. But right now, half the states are shut down on SNAP.”
The lawsuit said this has never happened before.
“Because of USDA’s actions, SNAP benefits will be delayed for the first time since the program’s inception. … Suspending SNAP benefits in these circumstances is both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act,” the lawsuit said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement on the suit:
“Millions of Americans are about to go hungry because the federal government has chosen to withhold food assistance it is legally obligated to provide,” James said.
“SNAP is one of our nation’s most effective tools to fight hunger, and the USDA has the money to keep it running. There is no excuse for this administration to abandon families who rely on SNAP, or food stamps, as a lifeline. The federal government must do its job to protect families.”
On Fox News, Rollins was asked if the Agriculture well had truly run dry, CNBC reported.
“100% unequivocally, USDA does not have the $9.2 billion that it would require,” Rollins said.
“There’s not just pots of $9.2 billion sitting around. And what’s particularly rich about New York saying that, or California, or any of these other blue states that have filed the lawsuit to say, ‘Oh no, we’re going to go, you guys, USDA, go find the money,'” Rollins said.
The lawsuit alleges that the USDA has the money and won’t spend it. The plaintiffs are led by the attorneys general of Massachusetts, California, Arizona and Minnesota. The states and the District of Columbia asked a judge to reply quickly to force the USDA to use the contingency funds for November.
Oct. 17 (UPI) — More than 20 states are suing the Trump administration for rescinding $7 billion in Congress-approved funds to equip nearly 1 million homes in low-income and disadvantaged communities with solar power.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of breaching grant agreements by unilaterally terminated grants that had already been awarded.
“The administration is again targeting people struggling to get by in America, this time by gutting programs that help low-income households afford electricity, Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.
“Congress passed a solar energy program to help make electricity costs more affordable, but the administration is ignoring the law and focused on the conspiracy theory that climate change is a hoax.
The Solar for All program was established with the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which included a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for the EPA to administer.
Using that Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Congress appropriated $7 billion for the EPA to make grants, loans and financial assistance available for low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from zero-emission technologies, including solar power.
In April 2024, the EPA announced it had selected 60 applicants to receive the grants. By August of that year, the EPA had awarded program funds to states and other grant recipients.
But in August, the EPA, under the Trump administration, ended the program and reclaimed about 90% of the funds already awarded.
The 22 states, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, are accusing the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how administrative agencies operate, and the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine by canceling the program.
The plaintiffs allege that the EPA is using an “erroneous interpretation” of H.R. 1, which the Trump administration calls the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress in July, to justify the termination of the grants.
The states on Wednesday also filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to recover damages caused by the alleged breach of the grant agreements.
Earlier this month, a coalition of solar energy companies, labor unions and homeowners sued the EPA over the termination of the grants.
A WIDOW is set to sue a utilities station operator after her husband was electrocuted while pruning hedges.
Gardener Blair Campbell, 35, was carrying out work on an ivy-covered bush when he accidentally came into contact with a substation wire in October 2022.
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Blair Campbell was killed while pruning a hedgeCredit: SWNS
The dad-of-two was airlifted to hospital following the horror but tragically died shortly after.
An inquest at Cheshire Coroner’s Court found that Blair from electrocution.
The victim’s widow, Tina, says she is yet to receive any apology from SP Energy Networks – part of Scottish Power – who operated the station.
She now says she will sue the company to get damages for her husband’s death.
Tina, who lives in Mobberley with her two children, said she had received no apology or compensation from Scottish Power.
She said: “There was not a lot we could do prior to the inquest. Because of the complexity of the case and involvement by HSE and the police that delayed things and we had to wait two years for the inquest.
“My solicitors have been in touch since the inquest with Scottish Power sending paperwork, but basically there has been silence.
“As a result my solicitors have had to put the matter back into the courts.
“I believe that Scottish Power now has 28 days to respond after they were put on notice of our intentions.
“If that fails we will have to apply for a court date, which is unlikely to be before autumn next year. This would drag it out for another 12 months.
“The inquest was over three days with a jury and the conclusion was that they (the power company) ‘more than likely contributed to the death of Blair’ due to the lack of maintenance.”
The inquest was told Blair ran firm, Blue Kiwi Gardens and Maintenance, after moving to the UK from New Zealand to be with Tina.
On October 3, 2022, he had gone to work to prune the hedge when he suffered the fatal shock.
Thick ivy on the bush had covered warning signs about the substation – meaning Blair was unaware of the danger underneath.
The court was told that before Blair’s death, numerous reports had been made about a need to remove the ivy that were not acted on.
SP Energy Networks, which maintains the substation, has now made changes to its health and safety policy.
An ad warns: “Your Cabinet position may be at risk if you don’t heed proper instructions and keep up your correct stamp duty payments.”
It came after the ethics watchdog ruled the real Ms Rayner, who had three homes including a grace-and-favour London flat, breached the ministerial code over £40,000 of unpaid stamp duty.
Studio Canal and Spitting Image were contacted for comment.
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A balding Prince Harry puppet featured in the new Spitting Image spin-off, The Rest is Bullsh*t
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A latex lookalike of wife Meghan was also on the showCredit: PA
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US President Donald Trump could be seen offering King Charles a burgerCredit: PA
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Rayner is seen launching a website called WrongmoveCredit: TNI Press
CHICAGO — Illinois and Chicago filed a lawsuit Monday aiming to stop President Trump’s administration from sending hundreds of National Guard troops to the city, just as troops prepared to deploy and hours after a federal judge blocked troops from being sent to Portland, Oregon.
The quickly unfolding developments come as the administration portrays the Democrat-led cities as war-ravaged and lawless and amid Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Officials in both cities have disputed the president’s characterizations, saying military intervention isn’t needed and it’s federal involvement that’s inflaming the situation.
The legal challenge comes after Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said some 300 of the state’s guard troops were to be federalized and deployed to the nation’s third-largest city, along with 400 others from Texas.
The lawsuit alleges that “these advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.”
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit says.
Pritzker said the potential deployment amounted to “Trump’s invasion” and called on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to block it. Abbott pushed back and said the crackdown was needed to protect federal workers who are in the city as part of the president’s increased immigration enforcement.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed in a weekend statement that Trump authorized using Illinois National Guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.
In Chicago, the sight of armed Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous landmarks amplified concerns from residents already uneasy after an immigration crackdown that began last month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.
Protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside the city, and federal officials reported the arrests of 13 protesters on Friday near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview.
The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that federal agents shot a woman Saturday morning on the southwest side of Chicago. A department statement said it happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
No law enforcement officers were seriously injured, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
In Portland, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by Oregon and California to block the deployment of guard troops from those states to the city.
There has been a sustained and low-level protest outside the Portland ICE facility, but it’s been less disruptive than the downtown clashes of 2020 when demonstrations erupted after George Floyd’s killing.
Immergut, a first-term Trump appointee, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday.
“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said. “Why is this appropriate?”
Local officials have suggested that many of the president’s claims and social media posts about Portland appear to rely on images from 2020. Under a new mayor, the city has reduced crime, and downtown has seen fewer homeless encampments and increased foot traffic.
Most violent crime around the U.S. has actually declined in recent years, including in Portland, where a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
A federal judge in September said the administration “willfully” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.
Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner are taking legal action to snuff out accusations that they are the subjects of a federal criminal racketeering investigation — claims publicized by the former’s ex-boyfriend Ray J.
Attorneys for the “Kardashians” reality stars and businesswomen sued the “One Wish” singer Wednesday for defamation and false light publicity. The 13-page complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, stems from numerous comments Ray J made this year about his old flame and her family in a TMZ documentary and on a Twitch livestream.
“Ray J’s public statements are blatantly false,” the lawsuit says. “No such federal investigation exists; no law enforcement agency has initiated any criminal proceedings or investigations related to racketeering charges against Ms. Kardashian or Ms. Jenner; and no credible evidence whatsoever supports these inflammatory allegations.”
Neither representatives for the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” alumnae nor Ray J (born Ray Norwood Jr.) immediately responded to requests for comment.
The complaint alleges that Ray J — younger brother to singer-actor Brandy — first publicly suggested the mother-daughter duo’s involvement in a RICO investigation in May 2025, when he appeared in the TMZ documentary “United States vs. Sean Combs: Inside the Diddy Trial.” The TMZ special chronicled the developments in the rap and alcohol-branding mogul’s high-profile federal sex-trafficking case. The 44-year-old singer linked Combs’ case to his ex-girlfriend and her famous family, stating in the special, “If you told me that the Kardashians was being charged for racketeering, I might believe it,” the lawsuit says.
Attorneys for Jenner, 69, and Kardashian, 44, allege Ray J’s comment “was designed to plant the seed in the public mind” that the reality stars are comparable to Combs, who was accused of drugging women, violence against ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and orchestrating orgies known as “freakoffs.” “To date, Ray J has not retracted his knowingly false and disparaging statement,” the lawsuit says.
Months after appearing on the TMZ special, Ray J doubled down on his claims during a Twitch livestream with rapper Chrisean Rock in late September. The “Sexy Can I” musician declared last week, “The federal RICO I’m about to drop on Kris and Kim is about to be crazy,” according to court documents. During the livestream Ray J also allegedly said “the feds is coming, there’s nothing I can do about it” and claimed the stars’ supposed RICO case is “worse than Diddy[‘s].”
“I’m talking about, I’m on the news every day. I’m gonna say a lot of s—,” he said about the scale of the RICO case, the complaint says.
Elsewhere in the livestream, he urged his followers: “Anybody that is cool with Kim, they need to tell her now, the rain is coming, the feds is coming.”
Infamously, Kardashian and Ray J were an item in the early 2000s. Though they broke up in 2006, their sex tape was leaked in 2007, the same year “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” premiered on E!
Attorneys for Jenner and Kardashian cast Ray J’s accusations as his latest attempts to stay relevant. The lawsuit alleges he has a history of “making false, sensationalized claims about high-profile individuals” to gain attention, citing an online incident with rapper Sexxy Red. Earlier this year, Ray J hinted he got intimate with the “Sticky” rapper. He apologized for the claim and clarified that they just sat near each other on the same flight. “I went out of control and I said that I slept with Sexxy Red,” he said.
The lawsuit says Jenner and Kardashian — who recently completed her legal training — “suffered reputational harm” that has taken and will continue to take a professional toll. They are seeking a jury trial and an unspecified amount in damages exceeding $35,000.
As news of the lawsuit spread Wednesday, Ray J seemingly stood firm in his accusations. In a video shared to his Instagram story Wednesday, he asserted, “I’m not about to be silenced.” He also said he spoke with Jenner-Kardashian attorney Alex Spiro, who allegedly asked him “crazy questions,” including whether he spoke to “feds.”
“Honestly, like, y’all should be super scared because I’m not backing down. I’m tired of it,” Ray J continued. “The rain is coming, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
In another Instagram story shared Wednesday evening, he announced to followers that he would be going live on Twitch at 2 a.m., “that’s 5 o’clock New York Time, perfect time for ‘The Breakfast Club’ to be stalking my page and see what I’m gonna say.”
Every day, some of L.A.’s poorest residents line up outside the county benefits office in South Central, weaving their way through a swarm of salesmen hawking deals that feel too good to be true.
Would you like $15 for a quick blood pressure exam? A free phone? Perhaps, $2 for a COVID swab?
How about cash to sign up to sue L.A. County for sexual abuse at juvenile halls?
Over the last year, a Times investigation found a practice of paying for plaintiffs among a nebulous network of vendors, who usher people desperate for cash toward a law firm that could profit significantly from their business.
The Times spent two weeks outside the county social services office in South Central Los Angeles, where a constant flow of people applied for food stamps and cash aid, and spoke with seven people who said they were paid there within the last year to sue the county for sex abuse.
Most said they were abused inside the county’s juvenile halls, but had not planned to sue until they were flagged down on the sidewalk and offered cash. Two people said they were told to fabricate stories of abuse.
All the claims involving alleged payments were filed by Downtown LA Law Group, a pivotal player in the county’s recent $4-billion settlement for sex abuse inside its juvenile halls and foster homes — the largest such payout in U.S. history. Of the roughly 11,000 plaintiffs in the settlement, The Times found that nearly one-fourth were represented by the firm.
Marlon Bland, 31, said he got $200 — half in cash outside the county’s social services office and the other half when he went to meet with lawyers from Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA. The receptionist there handed him a $100 check, he said. DTLA sued the county on his behalf Aug. 23, 2024.
Kevin Richardson, 59, whose suit was filed by DTLA on Oct. 15, said he got $50 outside the social services office.
Quantavia Smith, 38, whose suit was filed by DTLA on April 29, said a vendor drove her to the office of a downtown law firm and then gave her $200.
The Times could not reach the vendors for the story, and DTLA attorneys declined to be interviewed. The law firm strongly denied paying people to sue and said no representative of the firm had been authorized to make payments.
“We do not pay our clients to file lawsuits, and we strongly oppose such actions,” the law firm said. “If we ever became aware that anyone associated with us, in any capacity, did such a thing — we would end our relationship with them immediately. We want justice for real victims.”
California law bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits with a law firm.
DTLA did not answer questions about how the people who said they were paid to sue ended up with the law firm.
The firm’s statement said all their cases go through an intense review process “that tests for truthfulness and has many checks and balances.”
“As a result of this stringent quality control, we have rejected clients whose cases did not meet our criteria,” the firm said. “We are confident that the claims we have filed are valid and will withstand judicial scrutiny.”
For the last year, a mystery has vexed veteran sex abuse attorneys: How did a law firm best known for representing victims of auto accidents attract so many sex abuse plaintiffs in less than two years?
According to a Times analysis of court records, DTLA has amassed more than 2,700 people to sue L.A. County, more than nearly any other law firm involved in the settlement. The firm will get nearly half the payout for each client, per retainer agreements viewed by The Times.
Two legal experts warned, speaking generally, that offering people cash to sue, particularly those who are financially on the brink, could invite fraud into the historic sex abuse settlement.
“Of course, it makes the chance of fraudulent claims more likely,” said Richard Zitrin, a legal ethics professor at UC Law SF.
Some plaintiffs say they were explicitly told to make up claims.
“They tell you what to say,” said Carlshawn Stovall, 43, who said he was given about $20 by a vendor outside the benefits office to sue. “You’re supposed to make it up.”
Stovall said he gave the vendor his cellphone number and was told a lawyer would call him soon and ask him a few questions: What facility were you in? What year? How were you abused?
The vendor handed him a postcard-sized “script” of how to respond, he said. He didn’t need to worry about getting fact-checked, the vendor told him, as the county had no records of who was in its facilities decades ago. It seemed “a good way to get some quick money,” he said.
By the time the call came, he said, he’d lost the script, so he ad-libbed that probation officers watched him masturbate in the shower. The call, he said, lasted less than ten minutes and he never heard from them again.
On Nov. 7, DTLA filed a lawsuit on his behalf alleging he was “sexually harassed and abused” by staff in Central Juvenile Hall. Stovall said he was never in juvenile hall — much less abused there.
“I was a good kid,” he said, laughing.
Juan Fajardo said he used to sell phones next to the lawsuit vendors. He said he would watch a man pull up outside the social services office in a Tesla most Fridays and hand the recruiters cash, which they would dole out the following week to potential plaintiffs. The recruiters told him they were paid per person they signed up, he said.
“‘Just make up a story, say you got touched, here’s $50,’” Fajardo recalled the recruiters who set up shop next to him saying. “They’ll give it to you and then say, ‘Hey you never know, you might even get a lawsuit.’”
One recruiter also sold phones, he recounted. When someone wanted to get a phone, he said, he’d watch the recruiter first take a call on the new phone and make up a story of abuse under the customer’s name. The recruiter would then hand the customer their new phone and pocket the $50 for himself, Fajardo said.
After a few months of watching, Fajardo said, he decided to make up a story, too. He didn’t want to give his real name, so he gave the recruiter the name of a family member and a fake birthday. He said he took $50 and later got a call from a law firm. Ten minutes after the call, he said, he was told his case had been accepted.
DTLA filed the lawsuit under the family’s member name on Aug. 28, 2024. Fajardo said he doesn’t feel right trying to collect the money.
“I said something like, ‘They videotaped us while we’re in the showers, touching us while they pat us down,’” he recounted. “That’s what everyone was saying. I was like, ‘I’ll just use that instead of trying to make up a whole different lie.’”
Most plaintiffs The Times spoke with only knew the first names of the vendors, which some referred to as “recruiters” for the law firm, and said they hadn’t seen them for a few months.
They would usually hang around the people offering free phones right next to the entrance to the county building, according to some who said they were paid.
“It’s been three different people that I’ve seen. They come randomly, maybe once or twice a month,” said Oscar Garcia, who sells cigarettes on the sidewalk. “They promise them $50 to sign.”
Like most sexual abuse cases, all of DTLA’s lawsuits that are part of the massive settlement were filed using only the victim’s initials — JOHN DOE A.R., JANE DOE M.P. The Times confirmed the seven people who said they were paid had lawsuits filed by DTLA through sources with access to plaintiffs’ real names and case numbers.
After The Times reached out to DTLA for comment, the firm called two people The Times had spoken with on the record into its office on Sept. 11 and told them to stop speaking with the reporter.
One man, whom The Times is not naming as he later asked to not be included in the story, called The Times the morning of Sept. 11 and said the firm had ordered him a ride from the broken down car he was living out of in South Central to the firm’s office. He said an attorney had warned him that The Times was doing a “smear article” and didn’t want plaintiffs like him receiving any money from the settlement.
Mitchell Langberg, a defamation lawyer retained by the firm, sent The Times a sworn declaration from the man later that day, accusing the reporter of pretending to be a representative of DTLA to lure him into speaking freely.
The man had saved the reporter’s number in his phone as belonging to the “LA TIMES,” had his picture taken by a Times photographer, sent emails to the reporter’s L.A. Times email account and texted asking when the story would run in the paper.
Shortly afterward, some of the DTLA clients interviewed for this story received a text from the firm, they said, warning them against speaking with reporters:
“If you have been contacted, please notify our office immediately,” the text read.
The litigation floodgates opened in 2020 after California passed a law allowing survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue the perpetrator even though the statute of limitations had passed on their cases.
Since then, law firms have hunted aggressively for lucrative cases, flooding social media with ads and quietly tapping third parties to find former occupants of county-run juvenile halls and foster homes. The effort has met little resistance from L.A. County officials, who say they threw out relevant records long ago.
This spring, the county agreed to pay $4 billion to settle thousands of sex abuse claims dating back to the 1950s without taking depositions or knowing the names of thousands of plaintiffs. Rather, the vetting had been done almost entirely by attorneys who stand to walk away with more than a billion dollars in fees.
It is a lopsided system that, some attorneys concede, risks squandering taxpayer money meant for victims who suffered egregious abuse as children in the county’s custody.
“The whole thing just stinks,” said John Manly, a longtime sex abuse lawyer who served as a lead attorney in the settlements against USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and USC gynecologist George Tyndall. “It looks to me like a third of these cases are total bull—, and [the county] is paying for no reason.”
As a state lawmaker, Lorena Gonzalez pushed for AB 218, which gave victims a new window to sue over childhood sexual abuse. Gonzalez, now the president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said she believes plaintiff lawyers have taken advantage of the law change.
(K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune)
Manly’s law firm, Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, is one of three prominent law firms that sued the county under the law change, but did not join the settlement.
DTLA was started by two cousins, Daniel Azizi and Farid Yaghoubtil, and their childhood friend Salar Hendizadeh, the partners told commercial real estate company CoStar after expanding in 2023 to a new Banksy-adorned office building downtown. Attorneys focus on the typical cases for most personal injury firms — dog bites, falls and auto accidents.
The firm became the scourge of ride app companies such as Uber, which sued DTLA and another law firm in federal court in July. The ride app giant alleged that the firms had filed a flurry of “fraudulent claims” and colluded with an Encino-based doctor to inflate the cost of plaintiffs’ medical expenses. The lawsuit is ongoing. In an Instagram post, DTLA called it a “calculated attempt by a billion-dollar corporation” to suppress legitimate claims.
In an interview in June before The Times learned of the alleged vendor payments, attorney Andrew Morrow, the lead attorney in nearly all the firm’s sex abuse cases against the county, said DTLA’s success was due to the reputation he had cultivated as “the therapy guy … out in the streets of downtown LA.” Clients called him, he said, because they knew the firm would connect them with a therapist.
“And I said, Well, let me ask you this, do you have a lawsuit? Were you a victim?” Morrow said of the calls. “We were filling a void in the marketplace.”
Some of the DTLA clients The Times interviewed said they spoke with a therapist provided by the firm. Four said they never heard from the firm after the day they signed up for a lawsuit.
Morrow said sexual abuse cases were “a little bit of a new frontier” for him. He had previously specialized in real estate, entertainment and insurance litigation at a firm he founded before switching to DTLA in 2023, according to his old bio.
He is now one of the region’s most prolific filers of sexual abuse cases. His cases, he said, are vetted for fraud through mental health professionals.
“I’m sure there are firms that still have cases like that,” he said. “We don’t because, like I said, ours go to therapy, and our doctors identify that stuff.”
For thousands of sex abuse victims, the law worked as intended.
With the passage of AB 218 in 2020, survivors had until they were 40 rather than 26 to sue their abuser, giving them a chance to get financial compensation for horrors they were far too young to grapple with — much less sue over — as children. Stories of abuse that had been hidden for decades surfaced, as did the names of prolific abusers, some of whom were still working with minors.
But it also put a massive target on the budgets of government entities, which had long ago thrown out records that could be used for a defense. Former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, who spearheaded the law, says she’s been disturbed by how it’s panned out.
“It’s clear that the State Bar and attorneys themselves cannot hold themselves accountable,” said Gonzalez, now the president of the California Federation of Labor Unions. “What they’re doing, I think, to the cities and counties is deplorable.”
Following the law change, firms began amassing thousands of clients to sue the county through social media campaigns promising payouts and privacy.
“You’re going to be a Jane Doe or a John Doe,” Morrow told potential clients in a video posted to the firm’s TikTok page last year. “No one’s ever going to know your name.”
The cases are lucrative for attorneys, many of whom will receive 40% of their clients’ payouts, according to retainer agreements viewed by The Times. That includes New York City-based Slater Slater Schulman, which has roughly 3,700 clients; Boca-Raton-based Herman Law, with about 800 clients; and Los Angeles-based Becker Law Group and McNicholas & McNicholas, for which The Times found a combined 1,100 plaintiffs. Todd Becker, with Becker Law Group, said their fee differs from plaintiff to plaintiff.
DTLA has the highest contingency fee The Times found, requiring 45% of any payout. DTLA said its fee structure is “entirely standard within the industry.” These fees typically range from 33% to 40%, according to the American Bar Assn.
With most retainers on the higher end of the range, some attorneys involved in the settlement estimate $1.5 billion in taxpayer money could easily flow to lawyers — close to what the county Fire Department spends in a year.
As the county prepares to start dispensing money in January, some firms say they’ve started to find a few flaws in their caseload.
Becker Law Group said in a July court filing that four of the firm’s clients recently told the firm they weren’t abused. Patrick McNicholas, who co-counsels cases with the firm, said the lawsuits were weeded out as part of the firm’s vetting process.
Slater Slater Schulman, which has filed more cases than any other law firm, stated in a September filing that client John Doe J.S. “should not have been included.” The firm previously said in a lawsuit that he had been sexually assaulted at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey beginning in 2006 when he was 13.
Slater Slater Schulman has found similar problems in its avalanche of sex abuse cases against the Boy Scouts of America. On Sept. 9, retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barbara Houser, who is overseeing the $2.4-billion victim settlement trust, singled out Slater Slater Schulman for a pattern of “irregularities” and “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs. The firm previously said it represented roughly 14,000 victims.
The firm was asked to pay for an “independent third party” to investigate its cases for fraud before going through the trust’s standard vetting process. Clifford Robert, an outside attorney representing the firm in its issues with the Boy Scout cases, said Slater Slater Schulman is “working tirelessly” to address the issues and that justice for survivors is its top priority.
Tammy Rogers, 56, hired the Slater firm in 2022 to sue after a staff member at MacLaren Children’s Center, a county-run children’s facility now infamous for abuse, allegedly molested her when she was about 9. She said she’s grown unnerved by the financial incentive lawyers like hers have in amassing unwieldy numbers of clients.
“You can’t get ahold of them,” she said of her firm, which has filed cases on behalf of hundreds of new plaintiffs since the settlement was finalized. “I called them repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly.”
Tammy Rogers, 56, said a staff member at MacLaren Children’s Center sexually abused her when she was 9, an incident that sent her spiraling toward drugs and tortured relationships with men. She sued the county in 2022.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
County and plaintiff lawyers nailed down the $4-billion figure on Oct. 30. Since then, thousands more plaintiffs have been added.
“[Firms think] ‘there’s a fund out there, and I’m going to do everything in my power to get as much as I can,’” said one attorney suing the county over sex abuse, who declined to be named, fearing professional repercussions.
It’s a fund, critics say, with few safeguards for fake claims.
The cases will be reviewed by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger, who mediated similar settlements for the victims of the 2023 Maui wildfires and the 2017 Las Vegas concert mass shooting. Any plaintiff who wants to skip that vetting process can take $150,000 in a lump sum at the start of next year.
Meisinger will distribute the remaining money after reviewing fact sheets from the victims. If Meisinger believes a case is fraudulent, the county can either give the plaintiff $50,000 to resolve it or get it booted from the settlement, meaning it would work its own way through the court system, according to an allocation protocol reviewed by The Times.
Otherwise, the minimum amount a client can get is $100,000, according to the protocol. The most is $3 million, far less than some victims who suffered egregious abuse feel they deserve.
“I spent two years being tortured by some grown ass men. I mean, I even gave them names,” said a man who was granted anonymity to discuss his case. “It seems like, once again, I’m being taken advantage of.”
He said he had hoped to use the money to buy 60 acres of land for a group home that would give orphaned children the joy he says was snuffed out of him before he hit puberty. At age 10, he said, he was raped and forced to perform oral sex on a man at MacLaren Children’s Center. At age 43, he said, he can’t smell Pine-Sol without flashbacks to the supply closet favored by his abusers as a site for their assaults.
Trinidad Pena, 52, said she desperately needs the settlement money to pay for medical care, overdue bills and therapy. At age 12, she said, she was impregnated by a staff member at MacLaren Children’s Center — an assault that has haunted her since the 1980s.
“What kind of rights did I have as a 12-year-old to sign away another human being?” asked Pena, who recalls seeing the baby for seven minutes before the girl was given to a family in Laguna Hills through a closed adoption. “The lawyers are being made millionaires, but we are just going to be able to pay our back taxes.”
The county was never interested in a fight.
Once the deluge of lawsuits started, county lawyers had just one goal: to make the cases go away without the county going bankrupt.
They did not want to risk a trial. Early in negotiations, county lawyers understood they were looking at a number of cases of brutal rape and molestation that could easily make a disgusted jury award the type of budget-busting $135-million verdict that got handed to the Moreno Valley Unified School District in 2023 for the sexual abuse of two students by a middle school teacher. The district hired him despite a past arrest for molesting his foster son, according to the lawsuit.
Attorney John Manly said he believes the county did not do enough vetting of the cases. Manly’s law firm, Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, is one of three prominent law firms that sued the county under the law change, but did not join the $4-billion settlement.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
If there were even 30 cases that appalled the jury as much as that one, the county would risk paying far more than $4 billion. Better, the county lawyers reasoned, to come up with a total sum that wouldn’t drain coffers of the government, which is responsible for the social safety net for the poorest residents, and let someone else divvy it up among the thousands of victims. With a $45-billion budget, they could make $4 billion work if most county agencies trimmed their spending.
Andy Baum, the county’s outside attorney leading the defense effort, told a judge in a June hearing that he viewed it as an “inventory settlement.” There were simply too many cases, the county felt, to fight individually. And so lawyers conducted only basic vetting of the claims — most of which were filed in court with a pseudonym, an unnamed abuser, and a sentence or two about the abuse. They took no depositions, according to multiple lawyers involved in the settlement.
“We have thousands of cases, and we don’t even have the most fundamental information,” Baum said at the hearing.
The county also allowed many cases to become part of the settlement without the paperwork the law requires. Under state law, cases in which the victim is older than 40 must be filed with a certificate from a therapist, who can attest that there is a “reasonable basis” to believe the plaintiff was sexually abused.
DTLA, which specialized in these cases, filed many of its older lawsuits without the certificate, considered by the Legislature as a critical way to prevent fraudulent claims. The county lawyers never protested, explaining in the June court hearing that they wanted to make sure DTLA’s cases were quickly ushered into the nearly finalized settlement.
“We had a gun to our head,” Baum told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff, who’s overseeing the juvenile hall abuse cases, when pressed by the judge on why he waived the rule.
DTLA said nearly all of its certificates have since been filed, but did not provide numbers on how many remain outstanding.
The paltry defense launched by the county has some rethinking the law that started the deluge.
Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) tried to push through a bill this session intended as a lifeline to entities drowning in sex abuse lawsuits by limiting the window victims would have to sue. He pulled it last month after outcry from victim advocacy groups that said it trampled on the rights of survivors.
Maryland went further after being flooded with sex abuse claims for juvenile facilities following a similar state law change in 2023. This spring, the state capped sex abuse cases against government entities at $400,000 and limited attorneys’ fees to 25% for cases resolved in court.
That’s not happening in California.
“It’s just, in my view, not politically viable,” Laird said.
Some lawmakers who try to change the law have faced brutal pushback by law firms, including Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, which has run ads branding such bills as “predator” protection.
“I don’t see the appetite,” he said.
For L.A. County, the pace of cases remains relentless.
Since the announcement of the $4-billion settlement, James Harris Law, a Seattle-based firm that specializes in mass torts, has been aggressively recruiting clients through social media ads that tell “abused juvies” they can qualify in 30 seconds for up to $1 million.
After The Times entered a reporter’s cellphone number in one of the firm’s ads on Instagram, a representative from the firm’s intake department called more than 38 times.
Harris said his firm runs a “straightforward public awareness campaign” and didn’t believe his ads contained dollar amounts. The sums were removed from the ads after The Times contacted Harris.
The marketing proved fruitful. This summer, months after the county announced the settlement, Baum said, James Harris called him to discuss his brimming inventory: 2,500 new cases.
Baum said the newcomer acknowledged he was “late to the party.”
Sean Greene and Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee contributed to this report.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Robert Luna, claiming the department violated county gunowners’ 2nd Amendment rights by delaying thousands of concealed carry permit application decisions for “unreasonable” periods of time.
In a statement, the DOJ claimed that the Sheriff’s Department “systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home — not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.”
The complaint, filed in the Central District of California, the federal court in Los Angeles, cites data provided by the Sheriff’s Department about the more than 8,000 concealed carry permit applications and renewal applications it received between Jan. 2, 2024, and March 31.
During that period, the DOJ wrote, it took an average of nearly 300 days for the Sheriff’s Department to schedule interviews to approve the applications or “otherwise” advance them.
As a result, of the nearly 4,000 applications for new concealed carry licenses it received during those 15 months, “LASD issued only two licenses.” Two others were denied, the DOJ said, while the rest remained pending or were withdrawn.
The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide comment Monday. In March, when the Trump administration announced its 2nd Amendment investigation, the department said it was “committed to processing all Concealed Carry Weapons [CCW] applications in compliance with state and local laws.”
The department’s statement said it had approved 15,000 applications for concealed carry licenses but that because of “a significant staffing crisis in our CCW Unit” it was “diligenty working through approximately 4,000 active cases.”
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Monday that the DOJ was working to safeguard the 2nd Amendment, which “protects the fundamental constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms.”
“Los Angeles County may not like that right, but the Constitution does not allow them to infringe upon it,” Bondi said. “This Department of Justice will continue to fight for the Second Amendment.”
The federal agency’s complaint alleged that the practice of delaying the applications effectively forced gun permit applicants “to abandon their constitutional rights through administrative exhaustion.”
In December 2023, the California Rifle and Pistol Assn. sued the Sheriff’s Department over what it alleged were improper delays and rejections of applications for concealed carry licenses. In January, U.S. District Court Judge Sherilyn P. Garnett ordered the department to reduce delays.
In the new complaint, the DOJ called on the court to issue a permanent injunction.
Gun rights groups heralded the move by the Trump administration.
“This is a landmark lawsuit in that it’s the first time the Department of Justice has ever filed a case in support of gun owners,” Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to see the federal government step up and defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens and hope this pattern continues around the country.”
California and other Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration on Monday for allegedly stripping them of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal security and disaster relief funding based on their unwillingness to aid in federal immigration enforcement.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the latest funding reduction — which the states were notified of over the weekend — flew in the face of last week’s ruling. He criticized it as an illegal effort to force Democratic states into complying with a federal immigration campaign they have no legal obligation to support.
“Tell me, how does defunding California’s efforts to protect against terrorism make our communities safer?” Bonta said in a statement. “President Trump doesn’t like that we won’t be bullied into doing his bidding, ignoring our sovereign right to make decisions about how our law enforcement resources are best used to protect our communities.”
The White House referred questions on the lawsuit to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The agency has previously argued that its core mission is to defend the nation’s security against threats, including from illegal immigration, and therefore that it should be able to withhold funding from states that it believes are not upholding or are actively undermining that mission.
The funding in question — billions of dollars annually — is distributed to the states to “prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from catastrophic disasters,” and have been distributed “evenhandedly” for decades by administrations of both political parties, the states’ lawsuit argues.
The funding, authorized by Congress in part after disasters such as September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, pays for things such as the salaries and training of first responders, testing of state computer systems for vulnerabilities to cyber attacks, mutual aid compacts among regional partners and emergency responses to disasters, the states said in their lawsuit.
Bonta’s office said California expected about $165 million, but was notified it would receive $110 million, a cut of $55 million, or a third of its funding. Other blue states saw even greater reductions, with Illinois seeing a 69% reduction and New York receiving a 79% reduction, it said.
Other states that are supporting the Trump administration’s immigration policies received large increases, and some more than 100% increases, the suing states said.
They said the notifications provided no justification for the reductions, noting only that they were made at the direction of Homeland Security. And yet, the reason was clear, they said, including because of recent comments by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials who have stated outright that states who do not cooperate with federal immigration policies and that maintain sanctuary policies would see reduced funding.
“The explanation for DHS and FEMA’s last-minute decision to reallocate $233 million in homeland security funds — the Reallocation Decision — is apparent. Although DHS has for decades administered federal grant programs in a fair and evenhanded manner, the current Administration is taking money from its enemies,” the states wrote in their lawsuit. “Or, as defendant Secretary Noem put it succinctly in a February 19 internal memorandum, States whose policies she dislikes ‘should not receive a single dollar of the Department’s money.’”
The states also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to immediately block the funding cuts — and prevent the Federal Emergency Management Agency from disbursing any related funds that could not be recouped later — as the case proceeds.
Just last week, a federal judge ruled that the administration setting immigration-related conditions on similar emergency funding was “arbitrary and capricious,” and unconstitutional.
“DHS justifies the conditions by pointing to its broad homeland security mission, but the grants at issue fund programs such as disaster relief, fire safety, dam safety, and emergency preparedness,” the judge in that case wrote. “Sweeping immigration-related conditions imposed on every DHS-administered grant, regardless of statutory purpose, lack the necessary tailoring.”
Last month, another judge ruled in a third case that the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Los Angeles or other local jurisdictions based on their sanctuary policies.
In their lawsuit Monday, California and the other states argued that the Trump administration appeared “undeterred” by last week’s ruling against pre-conditioning funding on immigration enforcement cooperation.
After being “frustrated in its first attempt to coerce [the states] into enforcing federal civil immigration law,” the states wrote, “DHS took yet another lawless action” by simply reallocating funding to “more favored jurisdictions” willing to support the administration’s immigration crackdown.
Bonta said the law requires such funding to be distributed based on objective assessments of “threat and risk,” but the weekend notifications showed the Trump administration doing little more than “rushing to work around last week’s order” and “force and coerce” blue states into compliance in a new way.
“This is a lawless, repeat offender administration that keeps breaking the law,” he said.
Bonta said the lawsuit is the 40th his office has filed against the current Trump administration to date. He said his office was in conversation with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, and that they both believe that “we deserve all the funding that has been appropriated to us.”
Joining California in Monday’s lawsuit were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia. All were also party to the litigation challenging preconditions on such funding that was decided last week.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers to be deployed to the state of Oregon under federal authority, in a move swiftly challenged by the Democratic-run state in a federal lawsuit.
A memorandum signed by Hegseth and addressed to the state’s top military officer said that the troops would be “called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days”, a day after US President Donald Trump said he wanted to send soldiers to ‘war-ravaged Portland,’ the state’s capital.
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Oregon’s governor, Democrat Tina Kotek, said on Sunday that she had objected to the deployment in a conversation with the president.
“Oregon is our home — not a military target,” she said in a statement.
Democratic Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a lawsuit in federal court in Portland on Sunday against Hegseth, Trump and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, shortly after state officials received the memo.
“What we’re seeing is not about public safety,” Rayfield said. “It’s about the president flexing political muscle under the guise of law and order, chasing a media hit at the expense of our community.”
The National Guard is a state-based reserve military force in the US that can be mobilised for active duty when needed. It typically responds to domestic emergencies, such as natural disasters and civil unrest, and also supports military operations abroad.
Protesters stand outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Saturday in Portland, Oregon [Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images/AFP]
While the memorandum does not specifically cite Portland as the target of the proposed deployment, Trump, in a social media post on Saturday, said he had directed the Pentagon, at Noem’s request, “to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”.
ICE, the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sits under the Homeland Security Department.
“I am also authorising Full Force, if necessary,” Trump added.
While the Trump administration has promised to crack down on Antifa, a loosely affiliated left-wing anti-fascist movement, according to the CATO Institute, people with right-wing ideologies have been responsible for 54 percent of politically motivated murders in the country since 2020, more than double the number attributed to the left.
Just days before Trump’s announcement on Saturday, a deadly shooting took place at an ICE facility in Texas. One detainee was killed and two others were severely injured in the attack, which Trump blamed, without providing evidence, on the “radical left”.
Since taking office, Trump has ordered troops deployed to several states and cities where his political rivals, the Democratic Party, are in power.
Most recently, he has also ordered troops deployed to Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, Illinois, after earlier deployments to the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, California.
Despite the crackdown, protests against the US government’s anti-immigration policies have continued outside ICE facilities, where advocates say people are being held in degrading and crowded conditions, as the Trump administration continues to push for mass deportations.
Protesters gathered outside an ICE building in Portland over the weekend, some wearing brightly coloured costumes.
According to The Oregonian newspaper, fewer than 100 people remained at the protest outside the federal building, in the city which is home to some 635,000 people, on Sunday evening after an earlier crowd had begun to disperse.
The Oregonian also reported on Saturday that federal officers had arrested more than two dozen people outside the federal building since June, but that most of the arrests had occurred in the first month of protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Walt Disney Co., Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday sued a Chinese artificial intelligence firm called MiniMax for copyright infringement, alleging its AI service generates iconic characters including Darth Vader, the Minions and Wonder Woman without the studios’ permission.
“MiniMax’s bootlegging business model and defiance of U.S. copyright law are not only an attack on Plaintiffs and the hard-working creative community that brings the magic of movies to life, but are also a broader threat to the American motion picture industry,” the companies said in their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The entertainment companies requested that MiniMax be restrained from further infringement. They are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, as well as attorney fees and costs.
This is the latest round of copyright lawsuits that major studios have brought against AI companies over intellectual property concerns. In June, Disney and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney for copyright infringement. Earlier this month, Warner Bros. Discovery also sued Midjourney.
Shanghai-based MiniMax has a service called Hailuo AI, which is marketed as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket” and used characters including the Joker and Groot in its ads without the studios’ permission, the studios’ lawsuit said. Users can type in a text prompt requesting “Star Wars’” iconic character Yoda or DC Comics’ Superman, and Hailuo AI can pull up high quality and downloadable images or video of the character, according to the document.
“MiniMax completely disregards U.S. copyright law and treats Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters like its own,” the lawsuit said. “MiniMax’s copyright infringement is willful and brazen.”
“Given the rapid advancement in technology in the AI video generation field … it is only a matter of time until Hailuo AI can generate unauthorized, infringing videos featuring Plaintiffs’ copyrighted characters that are substantially longer, and even eventually the same duration as a movie or television program,” the lawsuit said.
MiniMax did not immediately return a request for comment.
Hollywood is grappling with significant challenges, including the threat of AI, as companies consolidate and reduce their expenses as production costs rise. Many actors and writers, still recovering from strikes that took place in 2023, are scrambling to find jobs. Some believe the growth of AI has threatened their livelihoods as tech tools can replicate iconic characters with text prompts.
While some studios have sued AI companies, others are looking for ways to partner with them. For example, Lionsgate has partnered with AI startup Runway to help with behind the scenes processes such as storyboarding.
Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Baroness Sue Gray has challenged the government’s plan to limit a civil service internship scheme to working-class students.
The government argued the change will bring in “more working-class young people” widening the talent pool for a civil service that will “truly reflect the country”.
But Baroness Gray told peers she was “from the most working class of backgrounds” but had “learned a lot from being around people from different walks of life”.
From October 2026, Whitehall’s main internship scheme designed to attract university students to the civil service will now only be available for students from “lower socio-economic backgrounds” – judged by what jobs their parents did when they were 14.
Those who are successful on the internship will then be prioritised for entry to the Fast Stream, the main graduate programme for entry to the civil service.
But Baroness Gray said: “As a former civil servant from the most working class of backgrounds, and I’m sure there are very good intentions here, I would have found it really difficult when I joined the civil service to not have a wider group that I actually was exposed to, and I learned so much from that.
“I would like to know what the evidence base is for actually reaching this conclusion, because I do think it’s good intentioned, but I think there are other ways that the civil service can be opened up as well.”
Labour minister Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent said this was one of the “rare” occasions she “disagreed” with Baroness Gray.
“This is not about stopping the civil service being a meritocracy. It is ensuring that the meritocracy is available to everyone, regardless of where you were born,” she said
Earlier, Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Baroness Finn pointed out that the current rules made clear a person’s selection for work in the civil service “must be on merit on the basis of fair and open competition”.
She said: “The changes proposed by the government to the summer internship programme would allow the child of a mechanic, an electrician or even possibly a toolmaker to apply, but discriminate against the child of a roofer, a taxi driver or a nurse, who would be deemed ineligible.
“Quite apart from dramatically reducing the range of talent, does she really believe that this is still a fair and open and indeed a sensible process?”
Baroness Gray, the daughter of Irish immigrants in 1950s Tottenham, grew up with a salesman father and a barmaid mother.
She joined the civil service straight from school after her father died when she was a teenager.
She became a household name as the Partygate investigator, and her critical report into Downing Street lockdown gatherings contributed to Boris Johnson’s downfall in 2022.
She was poached from the civil service by Labour to lead Sir Keir Starmer’s office as the party prepared for government ahead of the 2024 election, but infighting forced her out within 100 days of victory.
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Dakota Smith and Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government.
L.A.’s political leaders are facing a daunting and possibly insurmountable deadline. If they blow it, they could face all kinds of headaches — legal, financial and otherwise.
By June 2026, they must show a federal judge that they have removed 9,800 homeless encampments from streets, sidewalks and public rights of way. That means 9,800 tents, cars, RVs and makeshift structures — those created out of materials like cardboard or shopping carts — over a four-year period.
The city’s strategy for reaching that goal has become a huge source of friction in its long-running legal battle with the LA Alliance for Human Rights, which sued the city in 2020 over its handling of homelessness.
In recent months, the encampment removal plan has also become the subject of a second lawsuit — one alleging that the City Council approved it behind closed doors, then failed to disclose that fact, in violation of a state law requiring that government business be conducted in public view.
The encampment removal plan was “drafted and adopted without any notice to the public (which includes the owners of these tents, makeshift encampments, and RVs that the City has agreed to clear), let alone any public debate or discussion,” said the lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Community Action Network, the homeless advocacy group also known as LA CAN, which is an intervenor in the LA Alliance case.
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Lawyers for the city say they followed the Ralph M. Brown Act, which spells out disclosure requirements for decisions made behind closed doors by government bodies. In one filing, they said their actions were not only legal, but “reasonable and justified under the circumstances.”
As with everything surrounding the LA Alliance case, there is a tortured backstory.
The LA Alliance sued the city in 2020, alleging that too little was being done to address the homelessness crisis, particularly in Skid Row. The case was settled two years later, with the city agreeing to create 12,915 new shelter beds or other housing opportunities by June 2027.
After that deal was struck, the city began negotiating with the LA Alliance over an accompanying requirement to reduce the number of street encampments, with quarterly milestones in each council district.
The LA Alliance eventually ran out of patience, telling U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in February 2024 that the city was 447 days late in finalizing its plan. The group submitted to the court a copy of the encampment removal plan, saying it had been approved by the City Council on Jan. 31, 2024.
Two months later, City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office also told Carter that the plan to remove 9,800 encampments, and the accompanying milestones, had gone before the council on Jan. 31.
The council “approved them without delay,” Feldstein Soto’s team said in a filing submitted jointly by the city and the LA Alliance.
Video from the Jan. 31 meeting shows that council members did in fact go behind closed doors for more than two hours to discuss the LA Alliance case. But when they returned, Deputy City Atty. Jonathan Groat said there was nothing to report from the closed session.
The encampment removal plan is a huge issue for LA CAN, which has warned that the 9,800 goal effectively creates a quota system for sanitation workers — one that could make them more likely to violate the property rights of unhoused residents.
At no point during the council’s deliberations did the public have the opportunity to weigh in on the harm that would be caused by seizing the belongings of thousands of unhoused people, said attorney Shayla Myers, who represents LA CAN. Beyond that, she said, the public was never told who supported the plan and who opposed it.
“The narrow exception in the Brown Act that allows a legislative body to confer with their attorneys in closed session was never intended to allow the City Council to shelter these kinds of controversial decisions from public view,” the lawsuit states.
LA CAN now wants a Superior Court judge to force the city to disclose any votes cast by council members on the encampment removal plan. The group also wants recordings and transcripts of those proceedings, as well as a declaration that the city violated the Brown Act in its handling of the matter.
Beyond that, the group alleges that the council violated the Brown Act a second time, in May 2024, by failing to disclose its approval of an agreement with L.A. County — again reached behind closed doors — over the delivery of services to homeless residents.
Assistant City Atty. Strefan Fauble pushed back on LA CAN’s assertions, saying “no settlement or agreement was voted on or approved” by the council on Jan. 31, 2024. In a letter to LA CAN last year, Fauble also said the agreement with the county was not disclosed at the time because it had not been finalized in federal court.
“The City has always complied with its post-closed session disclosure requirements under the Brown Act when a settlement or agreement is final,” he wrote. “It will continue to do so.”
Meanwhile, the fight over the encampment removal plan is getting messier.
Two months ago, Judge Carter spelled out restrictions on the types of tents that can be counted toward the 9,800. In a 62-page order, he said a tent discarded by sanitation workers could be counted toward the city’s goal only if its owner had been offered housing or a shelter bed beforehand.
The city is weighing an appeal of that assertion. In a memo to the council, Feldstein Soto said the judge had “reinterpreted” some of the city’s settlement obligations.
An appeal would be expensive, and Feldstein Soto is already in hot water over legal bills racked up in the LA Alliance case.
On Wednesday, the council balked at Feldstein Soto’s request for a $5-million increase to the city’s contract with the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, which would include work on an appeal and other tasks. The council sent the request to the budget committee for more review.
Some councilmembers voiced dismay that Gibson Dunn billed $3.2 million in less than three months, after the council had allocated an initial $900,000 for a two-year period.
State of play
— VA VOUCHERS: Los Angeles County housing authorities have more than enough federal rental subsidies to house all of the county’s homeless veterans. Yet chronic failures in a complicated bureaucracy of referral, leasing and support services have left those agencies treading water. About 4,000 vouchers are gathering dust while an estimated 3,400 veterans remain on the streets or inside shelters, The Times reported.
— TAKE THE STAIRS: Could new apartment buildings with only one staircase help solve L.A.’s housing crisis? Councilmember Nithya Raman favors such a change, saying it can be done without sacrificing safety.
— FILM FACTOTUM: More than two and a half years after taking office, Mayor Karen Bass fulfilled a longstanding campaign promise, announcing the selection of a new film liaison between City Hall and the entertainment industry. Steve Kang, president of the Board of Public Works, will serve as the primary point person for film and TV productions looking to shoot in L.A. He’ll be assisted by Dan Halden, who works out of the city’s Bureau of Street Services, and producer Amy Goldberg.
— VALLEY SHUFFLE? City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who faces term limits next year, told The Times he’s considering a run for state Senate in 2028. If he gets in the race, the former state lawmaker would compete for the North Hollywood-to-Moorpark district currently represented by state Sen. Henry Stern, who faces term limits in 2028.
— PROTESTER PAYOUT: A Los Angeles filmmaker and his daughter were awarded more than $3 million after a jury found Los Angeles County negligent for injuries the man sustained when a sheriff’s deputy shot him in the face with a projectile during a protest against police brutality in 2020.
— CRIME SPREE: Police announced the arrest this week of several alleged gang members accused of burglarizing nearly 100 homes and businesses, largely on the Westside. The suspects are believed to be part of a South L.A. group that called itself the “Rich Rollin’ Burglary Crew” and focused on the theft of high-end jewelry, purses, watches, wallets, suitcases and guns, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said.
— OFF THE BUS: Ridership on Metro’s network of buses continued to drop in July, weeks after federal immigration agents began a series of raids across L.A. County. Amid the decrease, Metro’s rail ridership grew by 6.5% over the same period.
— HOUSING WARS: After the L.A. City Council voted to oppose state Sen. Scott Wiener‘s new transit density bill, Councilmember Imelda Padilla joined Wiener and podcast host Jon Lovett (also a vocal supporter of the bill) to debate its merits on Pod Save America’s YouTube channel. The spirited conversation garnered more than 50,000 views, spawnednumerous memes and sparked hundreds of replies on the r/losangeles subreddit.
At one point, Lovett appeared shocked when Padilla, who joined seven of her colleagues in opposing Senate Bill 79, boasted of getting a proposed six-story affordable housing project reduced to three stories. Padilla addressed her viral interview during Friday’s council meeting, saying she views the council’s role as one that seeks compromise “between the NIMBYs and the YIMBYs.”
— SHE’S (OFFICIALLY) RUNNING: L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solisofficially launched her campaign for a proposed new congressional district in southeast L.A. County, offering up a list of heavyweight backers, including Mayor Karen Bass, Sheriff Robert Luna, Supervisor Janice Hahn and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness went to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, moving 10 people indoors, according to a Bass aide.
On the docket for next week: The L.A. County Board of Supervisors will take up a proposed ordinance to streamline the process of rebuilding in Altadena in the wake of the Eaton fire.
Stay in touch
That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Dr. Lisa DeNell Cook, seen here at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in February of 2022. President Donald Trump announced Monday she was fired, but Cook proclaimed Tuesday she would not resign. File Pool Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 26 (UPI) —Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has declared that not only won’t she resign after President Donald Trump fired her, but will sue him for trying.
“President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” Cook said in a statement Tuesday. “I will not resign.”
“I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022,” she concluded.
Trump sent her a letter Monday that stated “Pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, as amended, you are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately.”
Section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act does state a Fed governor can be “removed for cause by the President.”
Trump listed a criminal referral the Justice Department received from U.S. Director of Federal Housing Bill Pulte as his cause, which he alleged to have evidence Cook committed mortgage fraud.
Pulte, who has made several accusations against Cook over more than a week, posted a statement Monday from the U.S. Federal Housing Department.
“Thank you President Trump for your commitment to stopping mortgage fraud and following the law,” Pulte wrote to X. “If you commit mortgage fraud in America, we will come after you, no matter who you are.”
However, no charges have been levied against Cook of any sort.
Cook has since retained the services of attorney Abbe Lowell.
“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
“His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis,” Lowell added. “We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this illegal action.”
Two of the seven current Fed governors are prior Trump appointees, and as now-former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler resigned earlier this month, Trump can appoint someone of his choice to fill her seat. Should Trump succeed in terminating the Biden-appointed Cook or should she resign, he could also replace her with an appointee of his choice, which would shift the board to a majority of governors who share his economic positions.
Despite claims that they wouldn’t be having a 23rd child, the Radfords have shocked viewers after a clip from the show appears to show Sue experiencing a pregnancy scare
Sue and Noel Radford had previously insisted that they wouldn’t be having more kids
Sue Radford has shocked viewers and sparked rumours of a pregnancy scare after a clip from an upcoming episode of 22 Kids and Countingshowed her panic over a late period and “crazy” hormones.
Sue, who shares 22 children with husband Noel, turned 50 in March, and in the next episode of the reality show documenting the family’s life, we get to follow the lead-up to the milestone. In the promotional clip ahead of the air date, Sue can be seen saying: “My 50th is coming up, I feel like my hormones are crazy.”
In the 30-second video, we then hear a woman telling her: “I think it’s really risky for you to stop the pill.” The clip dramatically cuts to Sue approaching Noel and telling him she needs to talk because her period is “late”. The video ends on a cliff hanger, with both Noel and Sue stating: “Oh my God.”
The couple already have 22 children, who are: Chris, Sophie, Chloe, Jack, Daniel, Luke, Millie, Katie, James, Ellie, Aimee, Josh, Max, Tillie, Oscar, Casper, Hallie, Phoebe, Archie, Bonnie, and Heidie. Their 17th child, Alfie, was sadly still born in 2014.
Sue looked concerned about her hormone changes in the new episode(Image: Channel5_tv/X)
Despite the show hinting at a possible pregnancy scare, Sue and Noel, 54, have previously insisted that Heidie was their last child. The five-year-old went to school for the first time last September, and Sue told the Mirror that she was finally enjoying having some free time with all the kids now out the house.
She said: “But I have to confess I did cry when she went to school. It’s such a big moment – your last baby going to school and you don’t have any more at home. I do also love having the house full and bustling.”
Ahead of her 50th this year, Sue explained that this birthday was a “big deal”, saying: “I said: ‘You know what, because I am turning 50, I am definitely having a whole year of celebrations!’”
The couple were shocked in the clip, prompting suspicions of a pregnancy scare(Image: Channel5_tv/X)
The whole family, including the grandkids, headed to Disney World in Florida, US, to celebrate Sue in the Easter holidays. On her birthday, Noel wrote a heart-warming Instagram caption for his wife, in which he said: “Myself and all of our children want to wish this beautiful, loving, caring lady who we all call Sue and Mum a Happy big 50th Birthday today or as Sue says I’m 49 plus 1.”
Another milestone was celebrated in the Radford house this week, as Max received his GSCE results. The family announced the news of his success online, writing: “We are so incredibly proud of Max he passed his GCSE with mainly 7 and 8’s.”
They added: “He is so incredibly happy, well done Max we knew you would do it, very proud mum and dad moment.”
WASHINGTON — As Gov. Gavin Newsom and the University of California consider whether to sue the Trump administration to restore more than half a billion dollars in federal grants to ULCA, the White House on Tuesday had a terse response.
“Bring it on, Gavin,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt when asked about Newsom’s opposition to a Trump plan demanding more than $1 billion and sweeping campus changes at UCLA to resolve federal antisemitism findings against the university.
“This administration is well within its legal right to do this, and we want to ensure that our colleges and our universities are respecting the First Amendment rights and the religious liberties of students on their campuses and UCLA has failed to do that, and I have a whole list of examples that I will forward to Gavin Newsom’s press office, if he hasn’t seen them himself,” Leavitt said.
The statement was the first public comment from the White House about the high-stakes conflict between the nation’s premier public university system and the Trump administration, which has accused UCLA of violating the civil rights of Jewish students, illegally considering race in admissions and treating transgender people in sports, healthcare and campus life in ways that the government claims hinder women’s rights.
Leavitt spoke after a question from The Times about how Trump would response Newsom’s comments late last week that the settlement offer for UCLA was “extortion” and “ransom.”
“We’ll sue,” Newsom said Friday.
Responding to Leavitt’s comments, a Newsom spokesperson pointed The Times to a meme posted on X after the press conference.
“Glorious leader is entitled to all treasures of the realm, especially from universities,” said the post from Newsom’s press office account. The graphic features an image of what appears to a be a North Korean news anchor with a North Korea flag in the background.
In an earlier joint statement with California legislative leaders, Newsom said that the action against UCLA “isn’t about protecting Jewish students — it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president. Trump has weaponized the Department of Justice to punish California, crush free thinking, and kneecap the greatest public university system in the world.”
No lawsuit has been filed and the UC board of regents, who held an emergency meeting Monday afternoon over the grant cuts, has not announced how it will proceed aside from calling Trump’s current terms “unacceptable.”
Newsom sits as a voting member on the 24-person board, has appointed several of its members and can wield influence on the body, although the final decision on a lawsuit or settlement rests with the regents. Newsom did not attend Monday’s meeting.
In a statement after the meeting, a UC spokesperson said the $1 billion price tag would be “devastating.”
“UC’s leadership spent recent days evaluating the demand, updating the UC community, and engaging with stakeholders,” said Meredith Turner, UC senior vice president of external relations. “Our focus remains on protecting students’ access to a UC education and promoting the academic freedom, excellence, and innovation that have always been at the heart of UC’s work.”
Hundreds of grants — from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy — are on hold at UCLA. The money funds research into cancer, math, brain science and other areas, and helps pay for graduate student stipends and tuition as well as lab upkeep. If the freezes stay for the long-term, administrators are considering layoffs and other budget reductions.
Citing the reasons for the freezes, a July 30 NSF leter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk alleged UCLA “engages in racism, in the form of illegal affirmative action, UCLA fails to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias; UCLA discriminates against and endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces.”
Frenk, in a campuswide message the next day, disputed the funding halt.
“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” he wrote.
Hours after the Trump administration demanded that the University of California pay a $1-billion fine to settle federal accusations of antisemitism in exchange for restoring frozen grant funding to UCLA, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the proposal “extortion” and said the state will go to court to protect the nation’s premier university system.
“We’ll sue,” Newsom during a news conference with Texas legislators over California’s effort to counter a contentious Republican redistricting plan in that state.
President Trump is “trying to silence academic freedom” by “attacking one of the most important public institutions in the United States of America,” Newsom said, adding that he would “stand tall and push back against that, and I believe every member of California Legislature feels the same way.”
The federal government on Friday said UC should pay the billion-dollar fine in installments and contribute $172 million to a fund for Jewish students and other individuals affected by alleged violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The statute covers illegal discrimination related to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, including Jewish and Israeli identity.
In addition, the Trump administration demanded sweeping campus changes encompassing protests, admissions, gender identity in sports and housing, the abolition of scholarships for racial or ethnic groups, and submission to an outside monitor over the agreement.
“He has threatened us through extortion with a billion-dollar fine, unless we do his bidding,” Newsom said.
“We will not be complicit in this kind of attack on academic freedom on this extraordinary public institution. We are not like some of those other institutions,” he said.
The governor appeared to be referring to controversial and costly deals the Trump administration secured from Columbia and Brown universities over charges similar to those facing UCLA, deals Newsom criticized a day earlier in public remarks.
In a statement Friday, UC President James B. Milliken, who oversees the 10-campus system that includes UCLA, also seemed to rebuff the demand.
“As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians,” Milliken said. “Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the U.S. economy, and protect our national security.”
Milliken, who said UC was “reviewing” the terms, did not share details of the federal proposal, which sources said was first sent to media outlets before landing in UC inboxes Friday morning.
Four UC senior officials, speaking on background because they were not authorized to publicly comment on negotiations, confirmed the proposal’s details to The Times. A White House official who spoke on background also confirmed the financial figures.
A spokesperson for UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk referred The Times to Milliken’s statement. Federal negotiations are being handled on a UC-wide level.
UC is grappling with how to restore $584 million in frozen medical and science grant funds to UCLA. If the deal was accepted, it would be the largest settlement between a university and the Trump administration, far surpassing a $221-million agreement that Columbia University announced last month. Harvard is also reportedly considering a settlement involving a hefty fine.
“We would never agree to this,” said one of the UC officials who is involved in the deliberations with the Trump administration. “It is more money than was frozen at UCLA. So how does that make sense?”
But another senior UC official said the figure was understandable if it resolved all federal investigations across the system, even if UC may not ultimately agree to it. The federal proposal focuses on UCLA only, not all campuses.
Any payment would be a political liability for the university and state leaders in deep-blue California, where Trump’s policies are highly unpopular. A billion dollars would be a financial burden for a university system that is already facing a hiring freeze, budget squeezes, deferred state funding and scattered layoffs.
UCLA has faced the most charges from the government of any UC or public university, many of them tied to a 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment.
The encampment, which unsuccessfully demanded the university divest from weapons companies tied to Israel’s war in Gaza, was targeted in a violent overnight attack last spring and was later the subject of federal lawsuit by pro-Israel Jewish students. The students, along with a professor, accused UCLA of enabling antisemitism by not shutting down the encampment, which plaintiffs said blocked pro-Israel Jews from campus pathways. UCLA settled the suit for $6.45 million, including more than $2 million in donations to Jewish nonprofits.
The Trump administration’s Friday offer follows a similar playbook to agreements it reached with Columbia and Brown universities to restore federal funding and resolve allegations of civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students.
Trump wants to remake universities, which he has called “Marxist” hotbeds of liberalism and anti-Israel sentiment. During his second term, federal agencies have suspended or canceled billions in federal medical and science grants related to gender, LGBTQ+ issues or in response to campuses it accuses of being antisemitic. The White House has also attacked campus diversity programs and admissions practices as being illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.
University leaders have challenged the notion that cutting medical research helps protect Jewish people. “This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk, the UCLA chancellor, said in a campus letter this week.
At UCLA, Trump’s demands include an end to scholarships that focus on race or ethnicity, the sharing of admissions data with the government and changes to campus protest rules. The Trump administration is also proposing that UCLA Health and the medical school cease gender-affirming care for transgender people.
The Trump administration is also saying it wants an outside monitor to oversee the agreement.
The proposal came one day after Newsom said UC should not bend “on their knees” to Trump. Newsom, a Democrat, has fashioned himself as a national anti-Trump figure and is considering a presidential run in 2028.
The university system, run by Milliken — who assumed his role only last week — and the Board of Regents, is independent under the state Constitution. But the governor can exercise political sway over the regents, whose members he appoints. Newsom also holds an ex-officio seat on the board.
“It’s about so much more than the temperament of an aggrieved individual who happens to currently be president of the United States,” Newsom said Thursday.
Kaleem reported from Los Angeles and Wilner from Washington. Times staff Writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento and Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Booking.com is facing a class-action lawsuit from more than 10,000 European hotels arguing that the accommodation mega-site used its muscle to distort the market to their detriment over a 20-year period.
The lawsuit, expected to be one of the largest ever filed in the European hospitality sector, is also backed by 30 national hotel associations, including Britain’s.
“Over 10,000 hotels have already joined the pan-European initiative to claim compensation for financial losses caused by Booking.com’s use of illegal ‘best price’ (parity) clauses,” Hotrec said in a statement.
It alleges that the “best price” pledge on Booking.com was extracted from hotels under huge pressure not to offer rooms at lower prices on other platforms, including their own websites.
The hotel industry says that the Netherlands-based platform also used the clauses to prevent customers making what it called “free-rider” bookings, which it defined as using its services to find a hotel but then booking directly with the management, cutting out Booking.com.
“Registration [to the legal action] continues to grow steadily, and the response so far demonstrates the hospitality industry’s strong desire to stand up against unfair practices in the digital marketplace,” Hotrec said.
The litigation, which experts say will be an uphill battle, seeks damages for the period from 2004 to 2024, when Booking.com did away with the best price clause to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act.
Hotrec said the class action, to be heard in Amsterdam, follows a European court of justice (ECJ) ruling from 2024, “which found that Booking.com’s parity clauses violated EU competition law”.
“European hoteliers have long suffered from unfair conditions and excessive costs. Now is the time to stand together and demand redress,” said Hotrec’s president, Alexandros Vassilikos, calling out “abusive practices in the digital market” in Europe.
Booking.com called Hotrec and other hotel associations’ statements “incorrect and misleading” in an emailed statement, adding that it had not received “formal notification of a class action”.
It said that the ECJ ruling did not find that Booking.com’s “best price” clauses were anti-competitive but “simply stated that such clauses fall within the scope of EU competition law and that their effects must be assessed on a case-by-case basis”.
The company referred to a statement about its “commitment to fair competition”, in which it argued that “past parity clauses served to foster competitive pricing rather than restrict it”.
It cited a poll in which 74% of hoteliers said Booking.com made their business more profitable, with many reporting higher occupancy rates and lower customer acquisition costs. However, other industry representatives criticised the company’s practices as extractive.
“As they gained control of the market, Booking was able to increase its commission rates and exert much greater pressure on hoteliers’ margins,” Véronique Siegel, president of the hotels division of French hospitality sector association Umih, told public broadcaster France Inter.
“For a room that the customer pays €100 (£87) for, if you take away Booking’s commission, the hotelier receives €75 at best, with which they have to pay their employees and invest.”
Despite the friction, Booking.com appears unavoidable for many hotels, offering an online reach and visibility hard to achieve for smaller, independent establishments.
Rupprecht Podszun, director of the institute for competition law at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University, said Booking.com was a classic example of how a digital platform could conquer an entire sector, creating a “winner takes all” dynamic.
He said the legal action would probably be protracted and turn on the thorny question of how damages could be measured.
“Judges will have to form an opinion and then it will go through all the appeals – everything at great expense and with all the tricks available under the law,” he told Germany’s daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“The case is a revolt of the hotels, saying: ‘You can’t just do what you want with us.’”
California and a coalition of other liberal-led states sued the Trump administration Friday over efforts to end gender-affirming care for transgender, intersex and nonbinary children and young adults nationwide — calling them an unconstitutional attack on LGBTQ+ patients, healthcare providers and states’ rights.
The lawsuit was brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and officials from 15 other states and the District of Columbia. It challenges a Jan. 28 executive order by President Trump that denounced gender-affirming care as “mutilation” and called on U.S. Justice Department officials to effectively enforce a ban, including by launching investigations into healthcare providers.
The lawsuit notes the Justice Department last month sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that have provided such care nationwide, with justice officials suggesting they may face criminal prosecution.
Bonta’s office, in a statement, said such efforts “have no legal basis and are intended to discourage providers from offering lifesaving healthcare that is lawful under state law.” The lawsuit asks a federal court in Massachusetts to vacate Trump’s order in its entirety for exceeding federal authority and undermining state laws that guarantee equal access to healthcare.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Trump made reining in transgender rights a key promise of his presidential campaign. Upon taking office, he moved swiftly to do so through executive orders, funding cuts and litigation. And in many ways, it has worked — particularly when it comes gender-affirming care for minors.
Clinics across the country that had provided such care have closed their doors in response to the threats and funding cuts. That includes the renowned Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, one of the largest and oldest pediatric gender clinics in the U.S.
The clinic told thousands of its patients and their families that it was shuttering last month. Other clinics have similarly closed nationwide, radically reducing the availability of such care in the U.S.
Republicans and other Trump supporters have cheered the closures as a major win, and they praised the president for protecting impressionable and confused children from so-called woke medical professionals pushing what they allege to be dangerous and irreversible treatments.
Bonta said in the Friday statement that Trump and his administration’s “relentless attacks” on such care were “cruel and irresponsible” and endangered “already vulnerable adolescents whose health and well-being are at risk.”
“These actions have created a chilling effect in which providers are pressured to scale back on their care for fear of prosecution, leaving countless individuals without the critical care they need and are entitled to under law,” Bonta said.
Mainstream U.S. medical associations have supported gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria for years. They and LGBTQ+ rights organizations have accused Trump and his supporters of mischaracterizing that care, which includes therapy, counseling and support for social transitioning, and can include puberty blockers, hormone treatment and, in rarer circumstances, mastectomies.
Queer advocates, many patients and their families say such care is life-saving, alleviating intense distress — and suicidal thoughts — in transgender and other gender-nonconforming youth. They and many mainstream medical experts acknowledge that gender-affirming care for young people is still a developing field, but say it is also based on decades of solid research by medical professionals who are far better equipped than politicians to help families make difficult medical decisions.
However, as the number of children who identify as transgender or nonbinary has rapidly increased in recent years, that argument has failed to take hold in many parts of the country. Conservatives and Republican leaders have grown increasingly alarmed by such care, pointing to young people who changed their minds about transitioning and now regret the care they received.
“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” Trump’s executive order stated.
Trump and others have escalated tensions further by spreading misinformation about kids being whisked away from school to have their gentials mutilated without their parents’ knowledge — which is not happening.
The battle has played out in the courts, in part as a state’s rights issue. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that conservative states may ban puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender teens, with the court’s conservative majority finding that states are generally free to set their own standards of medical care.
The Trump administration, however, has not taken the same view. Instead, it has aggressively tried to eradicate gender-affirming care nationwide, regardless of state laws — like those in California — that protect it.
Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” claimed that “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
It defined children as anyone under the age of 19, and said that moving forward, the U.S. wouldn’t “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another,” but would “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
The states’ lawsuit focuses on one particular section of that order, which directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to convene state attorneys general and other law enforcement officials nationwide to begin investigating gender-affirming care providers and other groups that “may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.”
The section suggested those investigations could be based on laws against “female genital mutilation,” or even around a 1938 law known as the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which authorizes the Food and Drug Administration to regulate food, drugs, medical devices and cosmetics.
On July 9, Bondi announced the Justice Department’s subpoenas to healthcare providers, saying doctors and hospitals “that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable.”
On July 25, The Times reported that Bill Essayli, the Trump administration’s controversial pick for U.S. attorney in L.A., had floated the idea of criminally charging doctors and hospitals for providing gender-affirming care, according to two federal law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
The targeting of gender-affirming care is part of a wider effort by the administration to eliminate transgender rights more broadly, in part on the premise that transgender people do not exist. On his first day in office, Trump issued another executive order declaring there are only two sexes and denouncing what he called the “gender ideology” of the left.
His administration has sought to limit the options transgender people have to get passports that reflect their identities, and the Justice Department has sued California over its policies allowing transgender girls to compete against other girls in youth sports. Many transgender Americans are looking for ways to flee the country.
Still, many in the LGBTQ+ community fear the attacks are only going to get worse. Among those who are most scared are the parents and families of transgender kids — including those who believe their health records may have been collected under the Justice Department’s subpoenas.
One mother of a Children’s Hospital patient told The Times last month that she is terrified the Justice Department is “going to come after parents and use the female genital mutilation law … to prosecute parents and separate me from my child.”
Bonta is leading the lawsuit along with the attorneys general of Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. Joining them are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the attorneys general of Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
WASHINGTON — A dozen Democratic House members — including four from California — sued the Trump administration Wednesday after lawmakers were repeatedly denied access to immigrant detention facilities where they sought to conduct oversight visits.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, says each plaintiff has attempted to visit a detention facility, either by showing up in person or by giving Homeland Security Department officials advanced notice, and been unlawfully blocked from entering.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said in a statement that visit requests should be made with enough time to prevent interference with the president’s authority to oversee executive department functions, and must be approved by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. McLaughlin said a week’s notice suffices.
“These Members of Congress could have just scheduled a tour; instead, they’re running to court to drive clicks and fundraising emails,” she wrote.
Among the plaintiffs are California Reps. Norma Torres of Pomona, Robert Garcia of Long Beach, who is the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles, and Lou Correa of Santa Ana, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement.
Also included are Reps. Adriano Espaillat of New York, who is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who is the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee; and Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, who is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
In an interview with The Times, Gomez said there was always an understanding between the executive and legislative branches about the importance of oversight. Under the Trump administration, that has changed, he said.
“We believe this administration, unless they’re faced with a lawsuit, they don’t comply with the law,” he said. “This administration believes it has no obligation to Congress, even if it’s printed in black and white. That’s what makes this administration dangerous.”
In a statement, Correa said that, as a longtime member of the House Homeland Security Committee, his job has always been to oversee Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Until this summer, he said, he fulfilled that role with no issues.
Reports from immigrant detention facilities in recent months have included issues such as overcrowding, food shortages and a lack of medical care. U.S. citizens have in some cases been unlawfully detained by immigration agents.
The lawsuit demands that the Trump administration comply with federal law, which guarantees members of Congress the right to conduct oversight visits anywhere that immigrants are detained pending deportation proceedings. The lawmakers are represented by the Democracy Forward Foundation and American Oversight.
ICE published new guidelines last month for members of Congress and their staff, requesting at least 72 hours notice from lawmakers and requiring at least 24 hours notice from staff before an oversight visit. The guidelines, which have since been taken down from ICE’s website, also claimed that field offices, such as the facility at the Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, “are not detention facilities” and fall outside the scope of the oversight law.
The agency says it has discretion to deny or reschedule a visit if an emergency arises or the safety of the facility is jeopardized, though such contingencies are not mentioned in federal law.
The lawsuit calls ICE’s new policy unlawful.
A federal statute, detailed in yearly appropriations packages since 2020, states that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”
Under the statute, federal officials may require at least 24 hours’ notice for a visit by congressional staff — but not members themselves.
The lawmakers say congressional oversight is needed now more than ever, with ICE holding more than 56,800 people in detention as of July 13, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization.
Ten people have died in ICE custody since Trump took office. Earlier this year, the administration moved to close three internal oversight bodies at Homeland Security, but revived them with minimal staff after civil rights groups sued.
Gomez said members of Congress have a duty to determine whether the administration is fulfilling its obligations to taxpayers under the law. The administration’s position that holding facilities inside ICE offices are not subject to oversight is a slippery slope, he said.
“What happens if they set up a camp and they say ‘This is not a detention facility but a holding center?’ For us it’s that, if they are willing to violate the law for these facilities, the potential for the future becomes more problematic,” he said.
