The MLB All-Star Game has served disparate purposes over the years. It always has been a showcase for baseball’s top talent. Once upon a time, the outcome determined home field advantage in the World Series. In recent years, it has been a fashion runway for ridiculous uniforms.
This year, it will be an incubator.
The Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System will take its next measured step toward regular-season implementation when it is used in the All-Star Game on Tuesday in Atlanta.
Just as ABS was conducted during spring training, each team will get two challenges that can be made only by the pitcher, catcher or batter. Successful challenges are retained.
The player making a challenge taps his cap or helmet to let the plate umpire know that his ball or strike call will be reviewed. The ubiquitous Hawk-Eye system tracks the trajectory and location of the pitch and and a graphic of the pitch is displayed on the scoreboard while the call is being reviewed.
In the minor leagues, ABS has been tested since 2021 and the ABS challenge was implemented in 2022. Major leaguers got their first taste during spring training.
Result? Not much difference from the calls made by human umpires. Strikeouts were reduced slightly and walks increased a tick.
“We have made a lot of progress in the way the system works,” MLB vice president of on-field strategy Joe Martinez said at a media-demonstration session during spring training, “and also the way we weave the system into the game play. And we’re at a point in triple-A where we have a system that the players like, the coaches like, the umpires like and the fans like.”
The shape of a major league strike zone as called by umpires isn’t the precise cube seen on television but takes a rounded form that bulges wider in the middle of the zone and tightens at the top and bottom.
Human umpires continue to improve, in no small part because pitch tracking puts every call under a microscope. MLB umpires have improved their accuracy in calling balls and strikes every year since pitch tracking technology was introduced in 2008, according to FanGraphs. Accuracy has spiked from 81.3% to 92.4%. Expressed another way, incorrect calls have been reduced by nearly 60% in 15 years.
Major League Baseball negotiated a change with the umpires association last offseason in how home-plate umpires are evaluated, effectively tightening the strike zone. The change decreased the margin of error for umpires in their evaluations, resulting in fewer called strikes off the edges of the plate.
Still, a handful of calls are missed in nearly every game, and the all-stars will have an opportunity to tap their caps and challenge at least two calls per team. Should the experiment be a hit with participants and fans, the next step will be for the 11-person MLB competition committee to consider implementing the challenge system for the 2026 regular season.
All-Star notes
— All-Stars will wear what they wear during regular-season games, meaning those unsightly uniforms that were uniformly panned by players and fans the last several years will remain in a closet somewhere. This will be the first year since 2019 that players wear the regular-season uniforms of their teams.
— Department of serendipity: The All-Star Game will take place on Tuesday (7/15) in Atlanta, the number and location of Hank Aaron’s historic home run in 1974 that vaulted him past Babe Ruth to become MLB’s all-time leader at the time. Hammerin’ Hank blasted No. 715 off the Dodgers’ Al Downing at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The tribute will re-create the moment through the use of projection mapping and custom pyrotechnics at the end of the sixth inning.
— MLB All-Star week begins Saturday with the Futures Game. The MLB draft will be held Sunday, the Home Run Derby is scheduled for Monday with the All-Star Game taking place Tuesday.
Welcome back to another edition of the Times of Troy newsletter, fresh off a pretty consequential week at USC, one you might have missed while eating ungodly amounts of potato salad or sipping margaritas by the pool. But I’m here to catch you up.
July 1, in particular, marked a major turning point for the University of Southern California. Not only was it Carol Folt’s final day as university president, but it was also the first day of a new era for all of college sports, as USC and other schools are now officially permitted to make direct payments to their athletes.
Both changes will have a profound impact on USC’s athletic department and how it operates going forward.
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But let’s focus on Folt’s exit. I wrote in November about the imprint her six years as president would leave on USC athletics. She made investing in athletics one of her “moonshot” goals and, by most accounts, followed through on that promise. She signed off on the hire of Lincoln Riley, which cost the university over $20 million in the first year and more than $10 million per year since, and ushered forth the school’s move to the Big Ten, which will help its bottom line. Then last November, Folt was there with ceremonial shovel in hand to break ground on the Bloom Football Performance Center, the gleaming centerpiece of a $225-million fundraising initiative that will forever be part of her legacy. She announced her exit soon after.
Say what you will about Folt — and I have said plenty in this space — but she saw the value in investing in athletics. She understood that the football program was the front porch of the university.
There’s no guarantee that USC’s next president will have the same approach.
Whoever that is will have plenty more pressing problems to deal with first. He or she will inherit a university that reported a staggering $158-million budget deficit for 2023-24 and could now face even more dire financial straits courtesy of the Trump administration, with the potential for major cuts to federal research funding, among other things, in near the future.
No matter what happens, USC’s next president will have a serious financial crisis to solve, a furious faculty to calm and a tense political climate to navigate. Athletics, in the grand scheme, probably shouldn’t be front-of-mind. But the new president’s perspective on college athletics — and their plans for the university as a whole — will have wide-reaching implications for USC’s athletic department going forward.
Take the last two presidents at USC. Folt arrived in 2019 in the aftermath of the Varsity Blues scandal — as well as several other scandals — with an edict to clean up the university. Right away, she set out to reshape athletics, forcing out athletic director Lynn Swann two months after taking the job. She fired three other senior officials a few months after that.
Before her, Max Nikias took the helm in 2010 and immediately announced a $6-billion fundraising initiative, the largest in the history of higher education at the time. In six years, the university raised as much as it had in the previous six decades combined, $760 million of which came from athletics. That directive would shape how every department functioned. In athletics, I’d argue that it set the tone for Varsity Blues.
The new president now takes over at a time when college athletics have never been more expensive. Not only will USC use the full allotted revenue-sharing cap of $20.5 million — $2.5 of which will likely be counted for scholarships — but the expectation is it will spend much more in additional scholarships beyond that. That’s no small expenditure.
Already, no one else was reaching as deeply into their pockets for athletics as USC. According to the most recent Department of Education data, USC reported over $242 million in total athletics expenses between July 2023 and July 2024, more than every other Big Ten or Southeastern Conference school by a considerable margin. (USC also reported $242 million in revenue.)
That number is almost certainly higher this year, too. And from 2025 to 2026, we know at least $20.5 million — and likely much more — will be added to the total.
But the bigger question, in this time of great uncertainty and unexplored gray area, may be what the new president’s tolerance for pushing the envelope will be. At the advent of NIL, when third-party collectives were first coming to the forefront, multiple officials within the department told me that Folt had no interest in wading into the gray area of boosters directly paying football players. She was, after all, the president hired to clean up the school’s image. It wasn’t until a federal judge opened the floodgates on NIL that USC even stepped in with both feet.
It’s going to take more innovative thinking than that to “win the new era” of college athletics. Will the new president have the stomach for working outside the rev-share cap? What about collective bargaining with college football players? Or a Big Ten-SEC super league?
USC has the right leaders in place at the top of its athletic department, and I’ve only heard positive feedback around the department about interim university president Beong-Soo Kim.
But whomever is hired for the permanent job will take the reins at an especially critical time for college athletics. And wherever they stand could change everything about the direction in which USC is headed.
USC and Texas A&M track and field athletes and coaches pose with NCAA trophies after being crowned co-champions. USC has already sent at least one track athlete through the NIL clearinghouse to get their compensation approved.
(C. Morgan Engel / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
— USC has already had deals approved by the NIL clearinghouse. All third-party NIL deals over $600 must now be approved by NIL Go, the clearinghouse run by Deloitte that’s set up to determine whether deals have a legitimate business purpose and fall within a reasonable range of compensation. There will be ways to get around that, of course. For one, schools all over the country front-loaded as many NIL deals as they could before the July 1 deadline, so as to not have to use the clearinghouse. But USC has successfully used the clearinghouse already, and it wasn’t for football like you might assume. The first of those deals, an official said, came from USC’s track and water polo programs.
— USC continues to be an unstoppable force on the recruiting trail. The latest addition to the Trojans’ No. 1 class comes at receiver, as Ethan “Boobie” Feaster committed last week, giving USC three four-star wideouts and eight top-100 prospects in 2026. Feaster, who reclassified from the 2027 class, looks like he could be the best of the bunch. USC now has the No. 1 tight end, the No. 2 offensive tackle, the 7th- and 10th-ranked receivers and the 5th- and 9th-ranked running backs committed — and its class on defense might still be better!
—USC’s women’s basketball program has a new general manager. Selena Castillo spent the last two years as director of external affairs for Duke’s women’s basketball team. She replaces Amy Broadhead, whose hire last September was hailed at the time as a groundbreaking move for the program. Broadhead ultimately chose to leave college athletics of her own accord just nine months later, for a job at the streaming service Crunchyroll. Now Castillo steps into a key role, at a key time. It’ll be up to her to maximize the rare window that USC has now with young, marketable stars like JuJu Watkins and Jazzy Davidson in the fold.
—What’s up with the transfer exodus out of USC baseball? When I spoke with Andy Stankiewicz ahead of our last edition of this newsletter, he singled out outfielder Brayden Dowd as a player he was excited about heading into next season. Well, Dowd has since entered the transfer portal, along with 16 of his teammates. That’s a significant portion of last year’s NCAA tournament roster. Dowd, who hit .324 with 52 runs, 10 home runs and 36 RBI last season, is the only major loss in the batting order. But the Trojans will have a ton of talent to replace on the mound, with its two top starters out (Caden Aoki, via transfer, Caden Hunter, via the draft) and its two top relievers, by ERA, transferring (Brodie Purcell and Jude Favela).
—There’s a new one-time transfer window from July 7-Aug. 5, but don’t expect the usual chaos. The only athletes permitted to transfer in that window will be those listed as “Designated Student-Athletes” by their respective schools, and the only athletes listed as DSAs are those who would have been removed from a roster in 2025-26 because of new roster limits from the House settlement. In other words, this would only really affect athletes on the back-end of rosters, many of which would have previously been viewed as walk-ons. So, for now, no need for any more transfer panic.
—Should college athletes and staff be allowed to bet on other sports? That’s a question that was recently asked by the NCAA Division 1 Council to its membership. Whether you agree morally or not, the reality is the NCAA simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to police all forms of sports betting on campus. Betting on college sports will obviously still be against the rules — and punishable by a lifetime ban — and the Council was clear that it doesn’t “endorse” gambling. But betting on other sports could be an option moving forward.
Food for thought
Joey Chestnut wins the Nathan’s Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4 in New York City.
(Adam Gray / Getty Images)
Growing up in the Kartje household, it was tradition that every July 4 we would watch the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. This year, after a few years off, I got to share those 10 gloriously gluttonous minutes with my son.
We’re still working on his hot-dog eating fundamentals. (According to my wife, toddlers are not supposed to competitively eat. Ugh. Lame.) But the whole experience got me ruminating on a question I’d seen asked before on social media: How many hot dogs have I actually eaten in my lifetime?
I’ll spare you the methodology here, but let’s just say I’m looking at between 600-700 hot dogs, conservatively, in my lifetime. Gulp.
Matthew Goode, right, stars in the Netflix series “Dept. Q.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
I’m a sucker for a British crime drama, so it’s no surprise that I’ve enjoyed Netflix’s “Dept. Q.” Set in Scotland, the show follows an ornery police detective begrudgingly leading a misfit cold-case unit. It reminds me of Sherlock, another fantastic entry in the genre featuring a prickly lead. Matthew Goode, the star of Dept. Q, is particularly good at playing prickly.
Until next time….
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Had the ball been called out, Pavlyuchenkova would have won the point and taken the game.
Instead, it was replayed, Kartal won the point and went on to break for a 5-4 lead.
Pavlyuchenkova had seen the ball was out – and a TV replay showed that was the case by some distance.
Addressing the crowd, Helwerth said: “We’re just going to check if the system was up and running, because there was no audio call.”
After a telephone call, he announced the electronic system “was unfortunately unable to track the last point” and ordered the point to be replayed.
The rulebook states that if the electronic line calling system fails to make a call, “the call shall be made by the chair umpire”.
It adds: “If the chair umpire is unable to determine if the ball was in or out, then the point shall be replayed. This protocol applies only to point-ending shots or in the case when a player stops play.”
The fact Pavlyuchenkova went on to win the match meant the malfunction was not as costly as it could have been, although she still questioned why the umpire did not call it out.
“That’s why he’s there,” she said. “He also saw it out, he told me after the match.
“I thought he would do that, but he didn’t. Instead they just said replay.
“I don’t know if it’s something to do [with Kartal being] local.
“I think it’s also difficult for him. He probably was scared to take such a big decision.”
BBC Sport pundits Anne Keothavong and Tracy Austin praise Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s ability to bounce back from being denied a game winning point due to “an operating error” deactivating the automatic line calling system in her fourth round win over Sonay Kartal at Wimbledon 2025.
Australia’s flagship carrier says it believes a ‘significant’ amount of personal data was stolen in a cyberattack.
Qantas is investigating a major cyberattack after hackers accessed a system holding personal data belonging to 6 million customers, Australia’s flagship airline has said.
Qantas took “immediate steps” to secure its systems after detecting “unusual activity” on a third-party platform on Monday, the airline said on Wednesday.
The airline is investigating the amount of data that was stolen, but it expects that it will be “significant”, Qantas said in a statement.
The affected data includes customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers, but not credit card details, personal financial information or passport details, according to the airline.
Qantas said it had put additional security measures in place, and notified the police, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Qantas Group Chief Executive Officer Vanessa Hudson offered an apology to customers over the breach.
“Our customers trust us with their personal information and we take that responsibility seriously,” Hudson said.
“We are contacting our customers today and our focus is on providing them with the necessary support.”
The data breach comes as Qantas is working to rebuild its reputation following a series of controversies during the COVID-19 pandemic, including revelations that it sold tickets for thousands of cancelled flights and lobbied against a bid by Qatar Airways to operate more flights to Europe.
Qantas earned its lowest-ever spot in last year’s World Airline Awards by Skytrax, falling from 17th to 24th place, before climbing 10 spots in the 2025 ranking.
Hudson’s predecessor, Alan Joyce, stepped down two months ahead of his scheduled retirement in 2023, while acknowledging the need for the airline “to move ahead with its renewal as a priority”.
Last week, the FBI in the United States said that a cybercriminal group known as Scattered Spider had expanded its targets to include airlines.
The FBI said the hacking group often impersonates employees or contractors to deploy ransomware and steal sensitive data for extortion purposes.
Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK’s benefits system is broken and fixing it is a “moral imperative”, a day after a backbench Labour revolt saw him forced into a U-turn on welfare cuts.
The prime minister told the Welsh Labour Party conference in Llandudno that the government would not take away the welfare “safety net that vulnerable people rely on”.
But he said he could not let benefits “become a snare for those who can and want to work”.
Despite the government’s concession on its plans to reform welfare, some Labour MPs want further changes, while the Unite union has called for the proposal to be dropped altogether ahead of a vote on Tuesday.
The BBC understands whips and cabinet ministers – including Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves – have been phoning or texting Labour MPs over the weekend, going through the names of the initial rebels in a bid to get an accurate assessment of potential voting.
Some MPs are saying they have yet to make their mind up on how to vote and are awaiting a statement on Monday from Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall that will spell out government concessions.
Speaking at the conference in north Wales on Saturday, Sir Keir said fixing the “broken” benefits system needed to be done because it was “failing people every day”, leaving “a generation of young people written off for good and the cost spiralling out of control”.
“Fixing it is a moral imperative, but we need to do it in a Labour way,” he added.
The government’s initial plans, aimed at bringing down the welfare bill, would have made it harder for people to claim personal independence payment (Pip), a benefit paid to 3.7 million people with long-term physical or mental health conditions.
But following a rebellion among Labour MPs and the likelihood the government would be defeated in the Commons, the government announced the stricter criteria would only apply to new claimants.
It reversed its plans to freeze the health-related component of universal credit, and the payment will now rise in line with inflation for existing recipients.
Ministers will also carry out a review of the Pip assessment process, with input from disability organisations.
A £1bn support package to help people into work, originally scheduled for 2029, will be fast-tracked.
A new “reasoned amendment” to the bill will be put down on Monday by rebel MPs, which will reflect government concessions but is expected to be similar to the now-withdrawn earlier amendment that sought to block changes to the benefits system.
The BBC understands that around 50 Labour MPs currently back that new amendment.
That number is likely to increase but the expectation is it will not reach the 80-plus needed to put the government in danger of defeat. However it would still represent a significant rebellion.
Rebel MPs are also expected to hold a briefing on Monday night at Westminster with various disability charities.
Labour MP Diane Abbott earlier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she thought the result of a vote on the new plans would be tight, partly because backbenchers are still “upset about the lack of consultation” and because of “the notion of a two-tier benefit system”.
But former Labour justice secretary Lord Falconer told the programme that “sensible” changes to the welfare reforms were “pretty significant”, and that he believed opposition among Labour MPs was “shrinking and shrinking”.
Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP who chairs the Work and Pensions Select Committee, told the BBC on Friday: “The concessions are a good start, they are very good concessions and they will protect existing claimants.
“However there are still concerns about new claimants. It would not be right for me not to do anything just to spare the prime minister an inconvenience.”
Ahead of Sir Keir’s conference speech, Unite called for the “entire welfare bill to be dropped and for the government to start again”, with general secretary Sharon Graham accusing Labour of “attacking the most vulnerable in our society”.
“The government’s latest plans for disabled benefits cuts are divisive and sinister,” she said.
“Creating a two-tier system where younger disabled people and those who become disabled in the future will be disadvantaged and denied access to work and education, is morally wrong.”
June 27 (UPI) — Honduras is preparing for general elections on Nov. 30, 2025, amid a fragile democracy and ongoing internal conflict. Corruption, violence and impunity have eroded the country’s institutions and deepened public distrust in the electoral process.
The National Electoral Council, or CNE, is facing a crisis after chaotic primary elections in March involving the nation’s three major political parties. The vote was marred by severe logistical failures. In many polling stations, ballot boxes and voting materials arrived up to 12 hours late, and officials reported major problems with transporting supplies.
CNE President Cossete López testified before Congress that she could not “guarantee” a clean general election, prompting concerns about a possible postponement.
Although other CNE members later confirmed the vote would proceed as scheduled, internal divisions remain. The council’s three commissioners — each affiliated with a different political party — have publicly blamed one another for the breakdown in March.
The Center for the Study of Democracy, or CESPAD, has been strongly critical of the electoral process, citing weak institutions, low public confidence, and a lack of clear action to address failures from the March primaries. The group also pointed to legal loopholes that allow arbitrary decisions, ongoing political violence and clientelism, and a history of result manipulation.
“The country is at a critical juncture. Current conditions raise fears that the general elections will unfold amid distrust, institutional improvisation and potential political destabilization,” CESPAD said.
CESPAD said the electoral budget was approved late, jeopardizing key systems such as the Election Results Transmission System, or TREP, and external audits. It also warned that the CNE continues to struggle with internal partisan divisions, technical staff resignations and low public credibility.
A survey by the Reflection, Research and Communication Team, or ERIC-SJ, found that 62.5% of respondents said the March primaries weakened democracy, while 76.8% said they do not trust the CNE.
Civil society groups and election experts are urging immediate reforms to restore the credibility of the CNE and ensure a reliable election process in November. They cite poor coordination, undertrained personnel and political interference in technical decisions within the electoral authority. They are also calling for extensive national and international monitoring to promote transparency and reduce the risk of fraud.
The ERIC-SJ survey also revealed a shift in the political landscape. The opposition Liberal Party now leads, with 39% of respondents saying they expect it to win, compared to 25.6% for Libre, the ruling party, and 23.2% for the National Party.
The change is attributed to growing dissatisfaction with President Xiomara Castro’s administration, which has weakened the candidacy of her ally, Rixi Moncada. At the same time, Liberal candidate Salvador Nasralla — a well-known television host running on an anti-corruption platform — has gained momentum.
Nasralla is attracting protest votes from Hondurans frustrated with the ruling party, while the National Party is working to rebuild support with candidate Nasry Asfura — despite lasting fallout from corruption scandals involving former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
Beyond individual candidates, political skepticism remains deep. Only 1 in 10 Hondurans believes elections are fair, and just 10% trust the National Congress or political parties.
Still, voter turnout is expected to remain high. Eight in 10 respondents said they plan to vote in November.
President Castro enters the election season with falling approval ratings. Her administration earned an average score of 4.13 out of 10 — the lowest since she took office in 2022. Nearly 40% of Hondurans say the country is worse off than before her presidency.
Hondurans identify the government’s main failures as the ongoing economic crisis (28.8%), unemployment (17.9%), broken promises (16.1%) and insecurity (13.2%). Although President Castro points to achievements like a historic drop in homicides, her security strategy — based on emergency measures modeled after El Salvador’s approach — has drawn criticism from international human rights groups.
The international community, including the Organization of American States, the European Union and the United Nations, along with local organizations such as CESPAD and ERIC-SJ, have issued urgent calls for electoral reforms and technical protocols as a prerequisite for credible elections. The key question now is not only whether the vote will happen, but under what conditions.
Despite the tensions, there is broad consensus that the elections must be held on schedule. Canceling or postponing the vote is widely viewed as a step that could spark a deeper institutional crisis.
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced an investigation into hiring practices at the University of California (UC) system, the latest instance of his feud with higher education.
The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it would investigate efforts by the UC system to increase the diversity of staff, accusing the school of employing practices that “openly measure new hires by their race and sex”.
The Trump administration has previously depicted diversity initiatives as a form of discrimination.
“Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,” Harmeet Dhillion, the head of the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
“Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law.”
In a letter of notice to the University of California, the Justice Department noted that it had “reason to believe” unlawful actions occurred on some of the school’s campuses. But it added that it had not “reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation”.
The University of California system is one of the most prominent public university systems in the US, with 10 campuses and more than 299,000 enrolled students.
The school defended its hiring practices on Thursday in response to the investigation announcement.
“The University of California is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws,” a spokesperson for the UC system said in a statement. “The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported.”
President Trump has yet to weigh in on the investigation, but his administration has repeatedly clashed with US universities during his second term in the White House.
Prestigious universities, such as Harvard and Columbia, have had federal grants and contracts cancelled over allegations that they have not done enough to crack down on campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Trump administration said those protests were anti-Semitic and created an unsafe environment for Jews on college campuses.
Trump and his allies have also portrayed universities as hotbeds of left-wing ideas and political dissent. In the case of Harvard University, the Trump administration sent a letter on April 11 with a list of demands for changes.
One required Harvard to submit to an external audit of its enrollment and staff, to evaluate “viewpoint diversity” with the aim of implementing “reforms” to its admissions and hiring practices. The external party, the letter noted, would have to “satisfy the federal government”.
Harvard has resisted those demands, citing the need to protect academic freedom. The Trump administration has since threatened its tax-exempt status and sought to restrict its ability to enrol foreign students.
In response, Harvard has filed lawsuits to restore its federal funding and block the Trump administration’s attempts to bar foreign students.
On Thursday, the school also unveiled an agreement with the University of Toronto that would allow foreign students to continue their Harvard studies in Canada if Trump’s visa restrictions affected their ability to attend classes.
Critics have described Trump’s actions as an effort to pressure schools into greater conformity with the political views and priorities of the White House.
One particular flashpoint for the Trump administration has been efforts to promote diversity in university hiring and enrolment.
Proponents say those initiatives help counter the legacy of discrimination in higher education, but the Trump administration has said they are a form of discrimination themselves.
In a news conference on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not weigh in on the specifics of the UC investigation, but reaffirmed Trump’s commitment to dismantling diversity initiatives.
“It’s the position of this president that we want to restore a merit-based society and culture in the United States of America where people are not hired, nor are they promoted, based on the colour of their skin or their gender,” she said.
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order ending “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programming in the federal government. He called those programmes a source of “immense public waste and shameful discrimination”.
But critics have argued that Trump’s efforts have served as their own form of discrimination, violating the constitutional rights of those he disagrees with.
The government, for instance, has sought to deport several foreign students who took part in pro-Palestine activities on college campuses, raising free speech questions.
They include a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested by immigration agents for co-authoring an article in the school newspaper calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has filed an extraordinary lawsuit against the Maryland district court system and its federal judges, accusing them of having “used and abused” their powers to stymie deportations.
The complaint was lodged late on Tuesday. In its 22 pages, the administration accuses Maryland’s federal courts of “unlawful, anti-democratic” behaviour for placing limits on Trump’s deportation policies.
Fifteen district judges are named among the defendants, as is a clerk of court, one of the administrative officials in the court system.
The complaint advances an argument that Trump and his allies have long made publicly: that the president has a mandate from voters to carry out his campaign of mass deportation — and that the courts are standing in the way.
“Injunctions against the Executive Branch are particularly extraordinary because they interfere with that democratically accountable branch’s exercise of its constitutional powers,” the lawsuit reads.
It seeks an immediate injunction against a recent ruling from Chief Judge George Russell III, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
Russell had issued a standing order that would automatically take effect each time an immigrant files a petition for habeas corpus — in other words, a petition contesting their detention.
The chief judge’s order prevents the Trump administration from deporting the immigrant in question for a period of two business days after the petition is filed. That time frame, Russell added, can be extended at the discretion of the court.
The idea is to protect an immigrant’s right to due process — their right to a fair hearing in the legal system — so that they have the time to appeal their deportation if necessary.
But the Trump administration said that Russell’s order, and other orders from federal judges in Maryland, do little more than subvert the president’s power to exercise his authority over immigration policy.
“Every unlawful order entered by the district courts robs the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect,” the lawsuit argued.
Trump’s immigration policies have faced hundreds of legal challenges since the president took office for his second term in January.
Tuesday’s lawsuit admits as much, citing that fact as evidence of judicial bias against Trump’s immigration agenda.
“In the first 100 days of President Trump’s current term, district courts have entered more nationwide injunctions than in the 100 years from 1900 to 2000, requiring the Supreme Court to intervene again and again in recent weeks,” the lawsuit said.
The Supreme Court has upheld the right to due process, writing in recent cases like JGG v Trump that immigrants must be able to seek judicial review for their cases.
But critics have argued that other recent decisions have undermined that commitment. Earlier this week, for instance, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s ruling that barred the US government from deporting immigrants to third-party countries without prior notice.
Tuesday’s lawsuit against the Maryland federal court system appears poised to test whether the judicial branch can continue to serve as a check against the executive branch’s powers, at least as far as immigration is concerned.
The lawsuit attacks Maryland’s immigration-related court orders on several fronts. For example, it questions whether “immediate and irreparable injury” is likely in the deportation cases. It also asserts that the federal courts are impeding immigration courts — which fall under the authority of the executive branch — from greenlighting deportations.
But the complaint also emphasises the need for speed in executing the removals of immigrants from the US.
“Removals can take months of sensitive diplomacy to arrange and often do not completely come together until the last minute,” the Trump administration’s lawsuit said.
“A delay can undo all of those arrangements and require months of additional work before removal can be attempted again.”
Maryland is a reliably Democratic-leaning state, and the Trump administration has been dealt some significant setbacks in its federal courts.
That, in turn, has led the president and his allies to denounce the courts for “judicial overreach”, a theme reprised in Tuesday’s court filing.
One of the most prominent immigration cases unfolding in the US is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant and resident of Maryland who was deported despite a protection order allowing him to remain in the country. His lawyers have maintained he fled El Salvador to escape gang violence.
His deportation was challenged before District Judge Paula Xinis, one of the judges named in Tuesday’s complaint.
Xinis ruled in early April that the US must “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return from the El Salvador prison where he was being held, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision — though it struck the word “effectuate” for being unclear.
The Maryland judge then ordered the Trump administration to provide updates about the steps it was taking to return Abrego Garcia to the US. She has since indicated the administration could be held in contempt of court for failing to do so.
Abrego Garcia was abruptly returned to the US on June 6, after more than two and a half months imprisoned in El Salvador. The Trump administration said it brought him back to face criminal charges for human trafficking in Tennessee. That case is currently ongoing, and Abrego Garcia has denied the charges against him.
That legal proceeding, and Xinis’s orders, were not explicitly named in Tuesday’s lawsuit. But the complaint offered a broad critique of orders like hers.
“Defendants’ lawless standing orders are nothing more than a particularly egregious example of judicial overreach interfering with Executive Branch prerogatives,” the lawsuit argued, “and thus undermining the democratic process.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” now before the Senate takes the current preoccupation with making every governmental relationship transactional to an immoral extreme. It puts a $1,000 price tag on the right to seek asylum — the first time the United States would require someone to pay for this human right.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” U.S. law incorporates that right, stating that “any alien … irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.” Neither makes this right contingent on being able to pay.
Bear in mind that asylum seekers in the United States do not have the right to court-appointed attorneys. That means the system already profoundly disadvantages indigent asylum seekers — they can’t afford a lawyer, often don’t speak English and have no road map for navigating arcane immigration law.
The new law would make asylum even more inaccessible for a poor person, in effect, creating two classes of those seeking refuge here. Those wealthy enough to pay $1,000 up front would have their protection claims heard; those unable to pay would be shunted back to face persecution and the problems that drove them from their home countries to begin with.
If this part of the bill isn’t modified before its final passage, Congress will have piled on to the obstacles the Trump administration has already put in place to block the right to seek asylum. On Inauguration Day, President Trump proclaimed an invasion of the United States by “millions of aliens” and “suspend[ed] the physical entry of any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border.” Until the president decides the “invasion” is over, the order explicitly denies the right of any person to seek asylum if it would permit their continued presence in the United States.
Since Jan. 20, asylum seekers trying to enter the United States at the southwestern border have been turned away and, in some cases, loaded onto military planes and flown to third countries — Panama, for example — without any opportunity to make asylum claims.
“I asked for asylum repeatedly. I really tried,” Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27-year-old Christian convert from Iran, told Human Rights Watch after being sent to Panama. “Nobody listened to me …. Then an immigration officer told me President Trump had ended asylum, so they were going to deport us.”
On top of the basic fee for asylum seekers, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would also require an asylum seeker to pay a fee of “not less than $550” every six months to be permitted to work in the U.S. while their claim is pending. The bill would also impose an additional $100 fee for every year an asylum application remains pending in the heavily backlogged system, punishing the person fleeing persecution for the government’s failure to provide sufficient immigration judges.
Children are not spared. For the privilege of sponsoring an unaccompanied migrant child, the bill would require the sponsor, often a relative who steps forward to care for the child, to pay a $3,500 fee. Congressional priorities for spending on unaccompanied children who arrive at our borders show a distinct lack of compassion: The bill directs that a $20-million appropriation for U.S. Customs and Border Protection “shall only be used to conduct an examination of such unaccompanied alien child for gang-related tattoos and other gang-related markings.”
Add to these barriers the complete shutdown of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, except for white South Africans; the termination of “humanitarian parole” for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; the end of temporary protected status programs that have provided protection to people coming from countries of widespread conflict, and the travel ban that bars entry from some of the world’s top refugee-producing countries, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iran and Sudan.
In the meantime, Trump hypes the idea of selling $5-million “gold cards” for super rich foreigners who want to buy U.S. permanent residence. When asked who might be interested, Trump replied, “I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention capacity (by my calculations, that would more than triple capacity). It also specifies $14.4 billion for ICE transportation and removal operations, $46.5 billion for the border wall and $858 million to pay bonuses to ICE officials.
With all the money Congress is prepared to spend, it’s a wonder the bill didn’t add a few dollars for sanding down the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty and re-chiseling it to say, “Give me your rich and well-rested … yearning to breathe free.”
Bill Frelick is refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report “‘Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened’: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama.”
Welcome once again to an offseason edition of the Times of Troy newsletter. We return to you at the dawn of a new era in college athletics, one that USC and its leaders have promised they will win … if the lawyers don’t first.
The House settlement was at long last approved earlier this month by a federal judge, ushering in a world where college athletes will be paid directly by their schools and all of college sports problems are solved overnight!
… just kidding! There are more of those than ever!
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USC, like most of its power conference peers, plans to pay out the maximum of $20.5 million that’s permitted by the settlement, the vast majority of which — around $15 million or so — will go to the football program. But the approach to allocating the rest, and securing third-party NIL outside of the cap, is likely to differ wildly from school to school.
USC has not yet shared specifics of how it plans to allocate that money, but in her recent State of Troy address, athletic director Jennifer Cohen noted that USC would be “increasing investment” in all 23 of its programs. That investment, The Times has since clarified, will include either direct payments to players from the $20.5-million revenue-sharing pool, an increase in the program’s number of funded scholarships or a combination of the two.
Each of USC’s 23 athletic programs, in other words, will benefit from the advent of revenue sharing in one of those three ways. UCLA, on the other hand, has taken a different approach by announcing that it will not add any additional scholarships and instead divide all of that $20.5 million among its individual athletes.
We can safely assume USC won’t stray all that far from the formula put forth last year when the settlement received preliminary approval. That model called for 75% of the cap set aside for football, 15% for men’s basketball and 5% for women’s basketball, while the other 5% would be split up among the rest of the school’s programs.
That remaining 5% to 10%, set aside for non-revenue sports, is where strategy will come into play. Newly funded scholarships still count against the cap, up to $2.5 million, and still cost the university real money. USC won’t just add them indiscriminately.
Adding a scholarship could make a more significant difference than cutting a check. But it also means less to directly pay athletes who are looking for checks.
Take the beach volleyball team, for example. When I spoke with coach Dain Blanton a year ago, on the way to their fourth consecutive national title, he told me funding for additional, beach-only scholarships would be a game-changer. And for a sport such as beach volleyball that’s unlikely to deal with regular NIL bidding wars, adding scholarships makes more strategic sense than it does in other sports.
USC baseball also makes for an interesting test case. Some top-flight baseball programs — mostly from the Southeastern Conference — will choose to invest millions in paying their baseball players directly. Some, meanwhile, might decide to fund 20-plus additional scholarships from the previously allotted total of 11.7. The new scholarship limit for baseball programs is now 34, leaving a ton of wiggle room.
USC isn’t going to fund that many scholarships. Nor is the school likely to funnel all of its remaining cap — after football and basketball — into the baseball program, no matter how many national titles it has won. So how does its baseball program keep up with the Joneses?
Those vast differences in strategy are going to have ripple effects, especially in a sport such as baseball, where some programs will be much more well funded than others.
“Parity is probably going to be lost somewhat [in college baseball],” USC baseball coach Andy Stankiewicz told me. “Some programs are probably going to fund up to 30 or more. And then some other programs probably aren’t even going to fund 11.7. That’s what’s kind of lost in all of this.”
There’s still so much we don’t know about how USC will approach this new era of revenue sharing. Could it follow a similar approach to Ohio State, which plans to directly pay athletes in just four sports, while adding 91 scholarships among the rest? Or might it hew closer to its crosstown rival, focusing more on direct cash payments?
How USC plans to divide its $20.5-million cap is just part of the equation. It’s how the school maneuvers outside of the cap and navigates NIL GO, the new NIL clearinghouse, that will be the true test of its might in this new era. All NIL deals over $600 must now be submitted to Deloitte, which will determine if those deals have “a valid business purpose” and fall within “a reasonable range of compensation.”
That system is not just begging for legal challenges, it’s ripe with loopholes. There’s no way for Deloitte to monitor if athletes actually follow through on the deliverables of an NIL deal. What’s to stop a third party from paying athletes for a deal that looks legit on paper but has terms that they never expect the athlete to deliver on?
That’s a question for another newsletter. But what we can say now is that USC, with its massive media market, is better positioned than most to win this new era as promised. Whether USC will actually deliver on that promise — before the lawyers step in and upend the rules again — will be up to those in charge … and the mountains of fundraising dollars they’ll need to keep it all afloat.
National title No. 138
Garrett Kaalund, center, of USC competes in the 200 meters.
(Al Sermeno / ISI Photos via Getty Images)
The USC men’s track and field team brought home its first outdoor national title since 1976 last week, which will couple nicely with the indoor national title that the team won in March.
It’s just the second time in school history that USC’s men’s track and field program has won both titles in the same season. The Trojans have 27 outdoor titles, more than double any other NCAA track program.
It’s quite a culmination for Quincy Watts, the Trojans’ director of track and field, who was promoted into the job four years ago — and who now needs to be kept at whatever cost.
Summer hoops impressions
Chad Baker-Mazara, with Auburn last season, should bring some intensity to USC this season.
(Stephanie Scarbrough / Associated Press)
At the start of his second summer at USC, Eric Musselman opened up men’s basketball practice last week to reporters, and with basically a brand new team of Trojans on the floor, there was a lot to take in.
A few initial observations from Galen Center …
—This team is more talented and athletic than last year. That feels pretty clear already, and this group has barely played together. The difference is especially stark in the frontcourt, where Jacob Cofie and Ezra Ausar give USC a physical presence in the paint that it sorely lacked last season. This team also has length in abundance on the perimeter, where Chad Baker-Mazara and Amarion Dickerson look like they could be menaces on defense. The backcourt is where USC suffered its biggest losses in the offseason, but with Baker-Mazara, Rodney Rice and five-star Alijah Arenas likely to be in the starting lineup, all three are capable of initiating offense or scoring themselves. The feeling inside the program is that this team has upgraded, especially on defense. At first glance, I have to agree.
—Alijah Arenas isn’t practicing yet, but he will be soon. Arenas was in attendance Thursday, but the incoming freshman still has high school coursework to catch up in order to graduate a year early. His absence has nothing to do with his serious Cybertruck accident and hospitalization in April. He’ll join the Trojans sometime this summer, and when he does, he’ll likely step right into the starting lineup.
—Baker-Mazara is a tone-setter. No one was more vocal or fiery during USC’s open practice, and as Musselman pointed out afterward, you won’t find many in college basketball with more experience than the 25-year old, sixth-year senior. You also won’t find many players with as much personality as Baker-Mazara, which seems to so far be working quite well with Musselman’s brand of intensity. “You put crazy and crazy together, it might work!” Baker-Mazara said Thursday. I’d be willing to bet already that this pairing works out for both sides.
—New point guard Jordan Marsh may play a bigger role than expected. The North Carolina Asheville transfer is only 5-11, 164 pounds, but I was surprised by how active he was on defense. I’m not the only one. Marsh has turned heads through the first week of summer practice, to the point that he may be more than just a backup point guard next season. As a legitimate microwave scorer off the bench, don’t be surprised if he gets 20-plus minutes at times next season.
A sturdy foundation
I caught up last week with Stankiewicz, who, in his third season, led the Trojans back to the NCAA tournament for just the second time in 20 years. USC fell in the NCAA regionals to Oregon State, a team with legitimate hopes of winning the College World Series, but overall, this season was a major step in the right direction for Trojan baseball.
This is no longer a program that needs to build back “brick by brick”, as Stankiewicz has said.
“The foundation is built,” Stankiewicz told me. “It’s solid. We’ve got pieces in place where we can now start to build it even taller.”
That metaphor will come to life next spring, when USC has a sparkling new stadium to play in. The Trojans have some key pieces to replace, with ace Caden Aoki bound for Georgia as a transfer and at least two key contributors, two-way star Ethan Hedges and starting pitcher Caden Hunter, sure to be drafted. But expectations will be higher next year nonetheless.
And Stankiewicz is ready for that next step.
“This is a program that’s been to Omaha a lot,” he said. “The expectation is that we’ll get back to that, and our guys have to understand that. This wasn’t enough. It was good. Well done. Nice job. But this can’t be what this program is about. It has to be about going to the next step, and the next step is winning a regional, winning a Super, getting to Omaha.”
Poll results
We asked you in our last newsletter whether a smoother path to the College Football Playoff for USC was worth losing its annual rivalry with Notre Dame.
Over 1,000 of you voted. And you answered, unsurprisingly, with a resounding “No”.
82.4% of our Times of Troy readers said that they wouldn’t risk the USC-Notre Dame rivalry for a better shot at the Playoff, while less than 17.6% say it would be worth it.
As an evangelist of our Times 101 best restaurant rankings — and of the late, great Jonathan Gold — I’ve had my share of delicious dinners across this fine city during my 13 years here. But my meal last Tuesday night at Dunsmoor in Glassell Park may very well have been the best I have ever had in L.A.
Trust me, I don’t say that lightly. But almost a week later, I still catch myself daydreaming about the sour milk cornbread, drowning in butter, honey and flaky salt. To call it “bread” at all doesn’t even capture its essence.
My wife and I sat at the chef’s counter last Tuesday to celebrate her birthday, and we watched in awe as they cooked most of the menu over an open hearth. Every single one of the five dishes we ordered was extraordinary. The Carolina gold rice and baby albacore were also serious standouts. But I’m pretty sure you can’t go wrong with anything on the menu.
Until next time….
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Israeli attacks at aid distribution sites sending increased number of casualties to hospitals says ICRC.
Gaza’s healthcare system is “extremely fragile” amid the ongoing Israeli war, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned.
The organisation said in a statement on Sunday that the enclave’s hospitals are in urgent need of protection and reinforcement amid Israel’s continued bombardment and blockade. It added that the system is facing growing pressure due to increasing casualty rates from Israeli attacks at aid points.
“In the last two weeks, the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah has had to activate its mass casualty incident procedure 12 times, receiving high numbers of patients with gunshot and shrapnel wounds,” ICRC said in a statement on X on Sunday.
“An overwhelming majority of patients from the recent incidents said they had been trying to reach assistance distribution sites,” it continued.
The healthcare system in Gaza is extremely fragile. To avert preventable deaths, the services of the remaining health-care facilities must be preserved and reinforced. pic.twitter.com/LhPBz6mSpy
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire around aid distribution sites operated by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) since it launched on May 27.
The organisation ousted the United Nations and other independent agencies from the aid distribution effort following an 11-week blockade of the enclave that prompted numerous warnings that many of Gaza’s people now face famine.
Gaza’s Government Media Office reported on Sunday that the death toll from events centred on the GHF aid sites had risen to 125. A further 736 are reported to have been wounded, with nine missing.
‘Increase in hostilities’
The Hamas-run office said 13 people were killed and 153 injured in the latest attacks. Israeli forces were reported to have opened fire on civilians gathered near aid distribution centres east of Rafah and Wadi Gaza Bridge, in central Gaza.
Witness Abdallah Nour al-Din told the AFP news agency that “people started gathering in the al-Alam area of Rafah” in the early morning.
“After about an hour and a half, hundreds moved towards the site and the army opened fire,” he said.
The Israeli military said it fired on people who “continued advancing in a way that endangered the soldiers” despite warnings.
A GHF statement said there had been no incidents “at any of our three sites” on Sunday.
‘Urgent action’
The Red Cross also expressed concern that the intensifying conflict is putting the enclave’s few functional medical facilities at risk.
“Recent days have seen an increase in hostilities around the few remaining and functional hospitals,” it said in the statement.
“This has made patient transfers between facilities increasingly challenging, and in many cases, patients cannot receive the intensive or specialized care they require.”
The ICRC warned that further loss of life is inevitable without urgent action and called for the protection of healthcare infrastructure and personnel.
“It requires taking all feasible steps to support their work, ensure their safety, and guarantee that they are not deprived of vital resources needed to carry out their work.”
June 3 (UPI) — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Tuesday the Federal Aviation Administration is searching for “top innovators” to lead the rebuilding of the nation’s “antiquated” air traffic control system.
Duffy said the FAA will host two industry days next week in Washington, D.C., and another in New Jersey to meet with companies that could spearhead the building of the next air traffic control system.
“We have an antiquated air traffic control system that is showing its age,” Duffy said. “In order to implement President Trump’s and my plan for a brand new system, we need the technical expertise and management experience from the best innovators in the world.”
“In the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ there is $12.5 billion to start this project. A big deal,” Duffy told reporters Tuesday. “I believe the Senate’s going to provide more dollars for us also? We’ll see what they do … This has to happen fast.”
“The failures of the past is that the FAA has gotten small tranches of money, not full funding,” Duffy added. “We need full funding. We need the money up front so we can contract out and build this brand new system across the country.”
The FAA is planning to replace the core infrastructure of the system to include radar, software, hardware and telecommunications networks to make sure towers have the technology needed to “reduce outages, improve efficiency and reinforce safety.”
The proposed plan would replace fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at more than 4,600 sites and install 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches. And it would replace 618 radar systems that have exceeded their lifespan.
The FAA’s new system also calls for six new air traffic control centers, none of which have been built in the last 60 years.
“It is critical the United States acts now to invest and modernize a National Airspace System that supports the future and moves beyond the 1960s,” the FAA’s air traffic control system report said.
Plans to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system were announced by the Trump administration in February. At this point, there is no timeline or price for the project.
The FAA said that information will come when the best company provides “innovative ideas and new technologies” to help execute and manage the massive reinvention.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a new, world-class air traffic system,” said FAA acting administrator Chris Rocheleau. “We need world-class innovators to step up and tell us the best way to build it.”
A cadre of civil rights groups brought a lawsuit late Wednesday challenging Riverside County’s use of cash bail to detain people as they await trial, citing squalid conditions inside the county’s jails where dozens of inmates have died in recent years.
The class-action suit is the latest to challenge the legality of cash bail systems in California after a 2021 state Supreme Court ruling found it is unconstitutional to jail defendants solely because of their inability to pay their way out from behind bars.
“Every day, Riverside County imprisons people based on nothing more than their inability to pay an arbitrary, pre-set amount of cash that Defendants demand for their release,” attorneys for the civil rights groups argue in the 80-page complaint. “These individuals are not detained because they are too dangerous to release: The government would release them right away if they could pay. They are detained simply because they are too poor to purchase their freedom.”
The suit was brought by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Civil Rights Corps, Public Justice in Oakland and several other law firms on behalf of two people incarcerated in Riverside County jails and two local faith leaders. It names as defendants the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Superior Court system and the county.
Lt. Deirdre Vickers, a sheriff’s department spokesperson, said she could not comment on pending litigation, as did a representative for the county court system. The county executive’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While the suit argues money bail is unconstitutional across California and seeks an injunction ending its use, attorneys said they are focusing on Riverside County following a spate of deaths in the jails in 2022. That year, Riverside County recorded 18 inmate fatalities, the highest number in a decade.
The following year, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, a Democrat, opened what remains an ongoing investigation into complaints about living conditions in the county jails and allegations that deputies use excessive force against detainees.
Inmate deaths have fallen since 2022. The county reported 13 jail fatalities in 2023 and six last year, according to Vickers.
Bianco — a law-and-order conservative who has joined a crowded field of Democrats to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2026 election — has previously dismissed the state’s investigation into his jails as politically motivated. Bianco maintains the jail deaths, many of which authorities attribute to drug overdoses and suicides, are a reflection of the inmates’ life choices rather than a sign of any problem with the jail system.
“Every single one of these inmate deaths was out of anyone’s control,” Bianco said after news of the state investigation broke. “The fact of the matter is that they just happened to be in our custody.”
The cash bail system has deep roots in the U.S. as a means of pressuring defendants to show up for scheduled court appearances. Attend trial, and the sizable cash payments are returned to you or your family; skip court, and you forfeit your deposit.
Critics argue it effectively creates a two-tiered justice system, allowing wealthy defendants to pay their way out while awaiting trial, and leaving low-income defendants stuck behind bars. Proponents of eliminating the bail system contend that decisions about whether to jail defendants ahead of trial should be based on the severity of their crimes and the risk they pose to public safety, and not hinge on their income status.
Brian Hardingham, a senior attorney with Public Justice, said people sometimes spend days in jail awaiting their first court appearance, only for a prosecutor to decline to file a case presented by local police. That stint behind bars can have an outsize effect on people’s lives, especially if they are low-income, Hardingham said.
“You meet people with 6-month-old kids in jail who, if they’re lucky, there is a partner or a parent or someone who can watch their kids,” he said, adding that even a brief stretch in a county jail can result in people losing their job, vehicle or even their residence.
Supporters of the cash bail system, including many law enforcement groups, say that doing away with it would leave too many defendants free to potentially flee and re-offend, leading to crime spikes.
The issue grew increasingly controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus spread with deadly consequences through the state’s jails and prisons. Los Angeles County instituted a zero-bail policy for most offenses in 2020, trying to reduce jail crowding at a time when the virus was spreading rapidly. That policy was rescinded in June 2022.
Despite concerns from police groups, a 2023 report to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors showed re-arrest and failure-to-appear rates remained relatively static among those freed pre-trial while the zero-bail policy was in place.
A similar lawsuit to the one filed against Riverside County prompted Los Angeles County court officials to revise their bail policies in 2023. Under the new system, the vast majority of defendants accused of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies are now cited and released, or freed under specified conditions after a judge reviews their case. Defendants accused of serious offenses, including murder, manslaughter, rape and most types of assault, still face a stiff cash bail schedule.
Fears that the new system would result in a crime spike have not been borne out. Total crime in areas patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department fell by about 2% in 2024, the first calendar year the reduced bail policy was in place, according to department data. The city of Los Angeles has seen significant decreases in the number of robberies, property crimes and aggravated assaults committed this year, as of mid-May, records show.
Given the 2021 state Supreme Court ruling and the changes in Los Angeles, Hardingham said he is hopeful other counties will shift their bail policies without having to engage in a court fight.
“We would hope that they would be willing to see the writing on the wall and make the changes that are necessary,” he said.
Surprise! The Times of Troy is back by popular demand in your inbox, here to help ease you back into your week after what we hope was a relaxing holiday weekend.
I was honored and humbled to hear your thoughts — most of them very kind — about the newsletter’s debut season. So much so that we’ve decided to bring it back before our scheduled return in July.
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We’ve got some new ideas in the works for Season 2. But between now and July, when we turn our full attention to previewing the upcoming Trojans football season, we’ll land in your inbox periodically as the moment calls for it.
Now feels like one of those moments.
One of college football’s most storied rivalries is at a crossroads. A century after it was played for the first time, the historic series between USC and Notre Dame is at serious risk of ending. A lot of fans, former players and college football purists are upset about it. Most of them are pointing fingers at USC — and at Lincoln Riley especially.
I think there’s a little more to the situation than that. But the reason USC’s coach finds himself at the center of that frustration stems from comments he first made last summer during Big Ten media day, comments that explain quite transparently where USC stands right now, almost a year later.
USC and Mississippi had just canceled a home-and-home series, and rumors were swirling that Riley had pushed administrators to pull out of last September’s matchup with Louisiana State too. When he was asked what led to those changes, Riley didn’t hide his feelings about how scheduling should be handled. Why would any power conference school schedule marquee nonconference games in the future, he wondered aloud, unless there were “more guaranteed [College Football Playoff] spots in some of these conferences.” Otherwise, he predicted, those games would happen “less and less.”
“Our schedules are already going to be so good,” Riley said. “At some point, you’re like, alright, is the juice worth the squeeze in terms of playing these games?”
Before we address how that logic applies to Notre Dame — and before you start screaming “COWARD!” at your phone/computer screen — let’s acknowledge the fact that Riley has a point. (Ducks.) He is paid — more than all but a few coaches in the sport — to get USC to the College Football Playoff. Period. And as the playoff is currently constructed, there is no real incentive, on paper, for a coach such as Riley to want an extra marquee nonconference game on the schedule. Remove 95 years of context with the Irish and, to his point, the juice probably isn’t worth the squeeze.
This issue runs far deeper than just Notre Dame and USC, but let’s address the golden-domed elephant in the room, since Notre Dame’s athletic director has the college football world worked into a lather.
This is what Riley said about the rivalry last summer:
“If you get in a position where you’ve got to make a decision on what’s best for SC to help us win a national championship versus keeping that, shoot, then you gotta look at it. I mean, listen, we’re not the first example of that. Look all across the country — there’s been a lot of other teams [that] sacrifice rivalry games. I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen, but you know, as we get into this playoff structure, and if it changes or not, we’re in this new conference, we’re going to learn something about this as we go.”
And boy did USC learn something on the road in its Big Ten debut. The Trojans unraveled on all four of their conference road trips. They realized how hard it would be to mix in an October trip to South Bend during that annual gantlet. No other Big Ten teams have that challenge on the Trojans’ particular timeline. Not to mention there’s a possible Southeastern Conference-Big Ten crossover matchup to consider in the future.
Automatic qualifiers to the College Football Playoff are the quickest way to solve this problem, as far as USC is concerned. It would give teams such as USC comfort that a loss to a nonconference opponent in September wouldn’t keep them out of the playoff. However, it would also mean rendering games such as USC-Notre Dame mostly meaningless as far as playoff resumes go.
USC is choosing to take the cold, calculated route when it comes to this quandary. And I understand why. Why should the Trojans be expected to carry the water for the soul of college football at the cost of their own playoff odds, while the rest of the sport’s leaders, USC’s own included, have made clear just how much tradition actually means to them?
Don’t get me wrong. USC isn’t being brave with its stance. It’s openly acknowledging that it is choosing the route of least resistance, no matter how its fans may feel about it. That’s not exactly valiant. And by calling them out for holding up negotiations, Notre Dame’s athletic director has already won the PR battle. If the rivalry ends after this season, the narrative will forever be that USC killed it with cowardice.
I do think that narrative would ignore some key points. Notably that USC hasn’t said it wants to end the game. Only that it doesn’t want a long-term contract before it understands the parameters of the playoff. Nor was Notre Dame interested at all in having a conversation about any concessions to USC’s situation, such as an early season date for the game, to help get a deal over the finish line. If these negotiations were simply about maintaining the rivalry, Notre Dame would have agreed to play next season already. This isn’t a one-sided stalemate.
I know that USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen would prefer to continue the rivalry with Notre Dame. I know she understands how much equity she could lose if it doesn’t continue.
I also have no doubt that she will take the heat, if necessary, for its demise, if it means putting USC on a better path to the College Football Playoff.
Is that hope of a playoff worth losing a storied rivalry? I’d understand if you said no. But USC leaders have made abundantly clear how they feel about that question. Let’s hope they never have to answer it.
USC-Notre Dame poll
Let’s hear from you. Could a smoother path to the College Football Playoff be worth losing the Notre Dame-USC rivalry? Vote here and let us know. Results announced in the next Times of Troy.
Will Saint Thomas walk onto the court with the Trojans next season?
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
—USC basketball still has two roster spots available for the 2025-26 season. One is currently being held for Saint Thomas. But it’s not clear how much longer Eric Musselman and his staff are willing to wait on Thomas’ appeal to the NCAA. The sentiment within the program was that Thomas had a compelling case for a mental health waiver, but the gears of justice grind slowly with the NCAA, and Thomas is running out of time. Summer practice kicks off on June 9. If he isn’t granted an extra year, expect USC to fill that spot with a low-major, all-conference-type point guard who could initiate the offense when called upon.
—Six-foot-10 sophomore forward Jacob Cofie is one to watch this summer. USC’s staff is very bullish on the young big man. One person with close knowledge of the program told The Times that they expect Cofie to be on draft boards by the start of Big Ten season. Along with Utah transfer Ezra Ausar — who stands 6-8, 242 pounds — Cofie should give USC much more of a physical presence in the paint, something it sorely lacked last season.
—Leaders from the Power Four conferences are floating a binding document that would force schools to fall in line with the new NIL enforcement entity … or else. It won’t work. I, for one, would love to see the Big Ten try to kick USC or Michigan or Ohio State out of the conference for not bending the knee to the new College Sports Commission. But more critically here, there’s no way that such an agreement would pass legal muster. College sports can’t supersede state law, no matter what some galaxy-brained commissioners might think.
—The College Football Playoff field will no longer give the four highest-rated conference champions an automatic first-round bye. That change to “straight seeding” was unanimously approved last week by CFP leaders, after the initial format last season was received poorly pretty much everywhere outside of Tempe, Ariz. In the new format, the committee’s top-four rated teams will be ranked one through four and get that coveted bye, no matter if they won their conference or not. That might sound like a tedious change. But this is better for everybody.
—Former USC point guard Kayleigh Heckel finally has a transfer destination. Heckel is joining Connecticut months after losing to the Huskies in the Elite Eight in her last game at USC. No one would’ve anticipated that turn in the immediate aftermath of that loss in Spokane. But hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I guess.
When I was a kid, still just dreaming up the possibility of writing about sports, I would flip on ESPN every afternoon after school to try and catch Bill Plaschke or Woody Paige or Jackie MacMullan on “Around the Horn.” It was the show that taught me, in my ways, how to talk about sports.
That feels more and more like a lost art these days. And maybe that’s why ESPN unfortunately saw it fit to end “Around the Horn’s” run after nearly 5,000 shows. But I will always hold the show near and dear and forever respect its host, Tony Reali, for reminding the world all these years that sports talk can still have a soul.
Until next time….
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Kabila, accused of ‘treason’ and ‘war crimes’, denies government accusations of links to M23 rebel group.
Joseph Kabila, former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has attacked the country’s justice system after the Senate voted to lift his immunity, paving the way for him to be prosecuted for alleged treason and war crimes.
Kabila gave a livestreamed speech from an undisclosed location on Friday, a day after losing his immunity over alleged links to the M23 rebel group, saying that the justice system was “an instrument of oppression for a dictatorship desperately trying to survive”.
The 53-year-old, who denies supporting the Rwanda-backed rebels who have seized two major cities in the country’s conflict-battered east, has been in self-imposed exile since 2023.
The former president, who has repeatedly said he was returning from exile to help find a solution to the crisis, accused Kinshasa of taking “arbitrary decisions with disconcerting levity”.
Congo’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to grant the government’s request to lift the lifetime immunity Kabila – leader of the country from 2001 to 2019 – had enjoyed because of his honorific title as “senator for life”.
Justice Minister Constant Mutamba said Kabila’s alleged crimes included “treason, war crimes, crimes against humanity and participation in an insurrectional movement” in the country’s east.
On Friday, Kabila said the DRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were non-negotiable. “As a soldier, I swore to defend my country to the supreme sacrifice … I remain more faithful than ever to this oath,” he said.
Kabila’s return to the DRC could complicate the bid to end the rebellion in the east, which contains vast supplies of critical minerals that United States President Donald Trump’s administration is eager to access.
Washington is pushing for a peace agreement to be signed between the DRC and Rwanda this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region, according to Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, cited by news agency Reuters.
United States President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has selected a $175bn design for the multilayered Golden Dome missile defence programme aimed at countering aerial threats “even if they are launched from space”.
As part of the project, the US would deploy missile interceptors in space to shield against ballistic and hypersonic threats.
Here is more about the Golden Dome project.
What did Trump announce?
Trump on Tuesday announced $25bn initial funding for the project that will cost $175bn and be completed by the end of his current term in 2029.
“Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump said.
“This is very important for the success and even survival of our country.”
Trump also announced that US Space Force General Michael Guetlein would be the lead programme manager, responsible for overseeing the project’s progress.
“I promised the American people that I would build a cutting-edge missile defence shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack,” said Trump.
Trump additionally announced: “Canada has called us, and they want to be a part of it. So we’ll be talking to them.”
What is the Golden Dome project?
Trump said the Golden Dome was made to take down “hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles”, adding that the programme would have space-based interceptors and sensors.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, speaking alongside Trump, said the system is aimed at protecting “the homeland from cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, drones, whether they’re conventional or nuclear”.
The announcement comes just months after January 27, when Trump signed an executive order to “immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defence shield, which will be able to protect Americans”.
The Iron Dome is Israel’s missile defence system which detects an incoming rocket, determines its path, and intercepts it. The development of the system was funded by a grant from the US.
Trump said existing defence capabilities will be used in the construction of the project, and predicted the total cost would be about $175bn.
The White House has not yet released further details about the project. While Trump said the system would be developed in the US, he has not named which companies will be involved.
A space-based defence system was first envisaged by Ronald Reagan, the Republican US president from 1981 to 1989. Amidst the Cold War, Reagan proposed a barrier to nuclear weapons that included space-based technology, as part of his Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars project.
“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” Trump said on Tuesday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt looks on from behind posters depicting a ‘Golden Dome for America’ [Andrew Harnik /Getty Images via AFP]
Is the Golden Dome plan feasible?
Industry experts have questioned the timeline and budget of the plan.
Funding for the Golden Dome has not yet been secured. At Tuesday’s news conference, Trump confirmed that he was seeking $25bn for the system in a tax cut bill currently moving through Congress, although that sum could be cut amid ongoing negotiations.
Additionally, some variation is expected in the total cost of the project. The Associated Press quoted an unnamed government official as saying Trump had been given three versions of the plan, described as “medium,” “high”, and “extra high”. These versions correspond to the number of satellites, sensors and interceptors that will be placed in space. AP reported that Trump picked the “high” version, which has an initial cost ranging between $30bn and $100bn.
“The new data point is the $175 billion, but the question remains, over what period of time. It’s probably 10 years,” Tom Karako, a senior fellow with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told the Reuters news agency.
On May 1, 42 Democratic members of the US Congress signed a letter questioning the possible involvement of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is among the top technology companies seeking to build key components of the Golden Dome.
“If Mr Musk were to exercise improper influence over the Golden Dome contract, it would be another example of a disturbing pattern of Mr Musk flouting conflict of interest rules,” the letter says.
How did China and Russia – the US’s biggest rivals – react?
The US sees a growing threat from China and Russia, its main adversaries.
Over the past decades, China has greatly advanced its ballistic and hypersonic missile technology, while Moscow boasts one of the most advanced intercontinental-range missile systems in the world. Russia and the US have amassed the largest arsenals of nuclear warheads worldwide.
The threat of drones has also grown amid advancements in technology.
China denounced the Golden Dome as a threat to international security and accused the US of prompting an arms race.
“The United States puts its own interests first and is obsessed with seeking its own absolute security, which violates the principle that no country’s security should come at the expense of others,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a regular briefing.
“(The plan) heightens the risk of space becoming a battlefield, fuels an arms race, and undermines international security,” he said.
The Kremlin said the Golden Dome missile shield plan was a “sovereign matter” for the US.
“This is a sovereign matter for the United States. If the United States believes that there is a missile threat, then of course it will develop a missile defence system,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, including AFP, on Wednesday.
“That is what all countries do,” he added.
“Of course, in the foreseeable future, the course of events will require the resumption of contacts to restore strategic stability,” he said.
Belgium has threatened to pull out of next year’s contest unless the current system – which is open to ‘manipulation’ – is changed
Some nations felt that Yuval Raphael, representing Israel, was helped to come 2nd by vote rigging(Image: Getty Images)
Big changes are expected to the Eurovision voting system next year after a string of complaints to organiser the European Broadcasting Union over potential vote-rigging. It comes after Israel finished in second place having won the public vote by a massive margin.
Several countries have now claimed that the current system, in which individuals can vote up to 20 times from one device, is open to “manipulation” and have demanded an investigation.
RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, and VRT, the Flemish public broadcasting company, are leading the drive for new rules, backed by Slovenia, Iceland, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands and Finland. It comes after Israel and Ukraine each won their semi-final, which are 100% decided by the public televote, with Israel then finishing second overall.
The EBU says it has taken the complaints about vote-rigging concerning Israel “seriously” and will investigate(Image: Getty Images)
Israeli contestant Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the 7 October attacks by Hamas, scored a total of 357 points to come runner-up with her song New Day Will Rise.
Belgium was so incensed by the way the votes stacked up, they announced an intention to pull out next year “unless the voting system at the contest changes”.
The nation called for an investigation after Israel received 12 points from the Belgian public despite getting zero from the jury, made up of music industry professionals. It was the same story for Spain and the UK, where the result was met with widespread surprise given the ongoing war in Gaza.
Flemish MP Katia Segers said: “A system in which everyone can cast up to 20 votes is a system that encourages manipulation. Whether this manipulation occurred in our country and all other participating and non-participating countries must be investigated.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called for Israel to be excluded from the contest, as Russia has been, saying: “There can be no double standards.”
The EBU’s Martin Green gave assurance that the voting system used was “the most advanced in the world” but added: “We remain in constant contact with all participating broadcasters of the Eurovision Song Contest and take their concerns seriously.”
One UK source said a return to the juries having a 50/50 vote at the semi-final stage, alongside the public, was now a likely outcome, along with a reduction in the number of votes allowed from each device.
“They can’t continue with the fiasco of televoting in its current form,” they said. “The public are voting for political reasons and it makes a mockery of the ESC being a supposed music competition.
“Juries are clearly voting Israel down to try to avoid a politically-motivated win, which undermines the whole contest. It’s a shambles.”
Israel’s participation in this year’s Eurovision provoked an angry backlash, coming after weeks of humanitarian aid being denied in Gaza, leading to thousands of Palestinian deaths. Protestors threw paint and tried to storm the stage during Yuval’s performance in Basel, Switzerland.
An open letter denouncing Israel’s entry and calling for the country to be banned was signed by 4,000 musicians, artist and music industry professionals from five Nordic countries.
UK fans were dismayed after Remember Monday scored the dreaded ‘nul points’ in the public televote and finished in 19th place. Referring to the UK being one of the “big 5” nations which pay for the competition and in return are guaranteed a place in the final, one said: “It’s time to stop funding this total farce.”
They arrive at the U.S. border from around the world: Eritrea, Guatemala, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ghana, Uzbekistan and so many other countries.
They come for asylum, insisting they face persecution for their religion, or sexuality or for supporting the wrong politicians.
For generations, they had been given the chance to make their case to U.S. authorities.
Not anymore.
“They didn’t give us an ICE officer to talk to. They didn’t give us an interview. No one asked me what happened,” said a Russian election worker who sought asylum in the U.S. after he said he was caught with video recordings he made of vote rigging. On Feb. 26, he was deported to Costa Rica with his wife and young son.
On Jan. 20, just after being sworn in for a second term, President Trump suspended the asylum system as part of his wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, issuing a series of executive orders designed to stop what he called the “invasion” of the United States.
What asylum seekers now find, according to lawyers, activists and immigrants, is a murky, ever-changing situation with few obvious rules, where people can be deported to countries they know nothing about after fleeting conversations with immigration officials while others languish in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
Attorneys who work frequently with asylum seekers at the border say their phones have gone quiet since Trump took office. They suspect many who cross are immediately expelled without a chance at asylum or are detained to wait for screening under the U.N.’s convention against torture, which is harder to qualify for than asylum.
“I don’t think it’s completely clear to anyone what happens when people show up and ask for asylum,” said Bella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council.
Restrictions face challenges in court
A thicket of lawsuits, appeals and countersuits have filled the courts as the Trump administration faces off against activists who argue the sweeping restrictions illegally put people fleeing persecution in harm’s way.
In a key legal battle, a federal judge is expected to rule on whether courts can review the administration’s use of invasion claims to justify suspending asylum. There is no date set for that ruling.
The government says its declaration of an invasion is not subject to judicial oversight, at one point calling it “an unreviewable political question.”
But rights groups fighting the asylum proclamation, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, called it “as unlawful as it is unprecedented” in the complaint filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court.
Illegal border crossings, which soared in the first years of President Biden’s administration, reaching nearly 10,000 arrests per day in late 2024, dropped significantly during his last year in office and plunged further after Trump returned to the White House.
Yet more than 200 people are still arrested daily for illegally crossing the southern U.S. border.
Some of those people are seeking asylum, though it’s unclear if anyone knows how many.
Paulina Reyes-Perrariz, managing attorney for the San Diego office of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said her office sometimes received 10 to 15 calls a day about asylum after Biden implemented asylum restrictions in 2024.
That number has dropped to almost nothing, with only a handful of total calls since Jan. 20.
Plus, she added, lawyers are unsure how to handle asylum cases.
“It’s really difficult to consult and advise with individuals when we don’t know what the process is,” she said.
Doing ‘everything right’
None of this was expected by the Russian man, who asked not to be identified for fear of persecution if he returns to Russia.
“We felt betrayed,” the 36-year-old told the Associated Press. “We did everything right.”
The family had scrupulously followed the rules. They traveled to Mexico in May 2024, found a cheap place to rent near the border with California and waited nearly nine months for the chance to schedule an asylum interview.
On Jan. 14, they got word that their interview would be on Feb 2. On Jan. 20, the interview was canceled.
Moments after Trump took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it had scrubbed the system used to schedule asylum interviews and canceled tens of thousands of existing appointments.
There was no way to appeal.
The Russian family went to a San Diego border crossing to ask for asylum, where they were taken into custody, he said.
A few weeks later, they were among the immigrants who were handcuffed, shackled and flown to Costa Rica. Only the children were left unchained.
Turning to other countries to hold deportees
The Trump administration has tried to accelerate deportations by turning countries like Costa Rica and Panama into “bridges,” temporarily detaining deportees while they await return to their countries of origin or third countries.
Earlier this year, some 200 migrants were deported from the U.S. to Costa Rica and roughly 300 were sent to Panama.
To supporters of tighter immigration controls, the asylum system has always been rife with exaggerated claims by people not facing real dangers. In recent years, roughly one-third to half of asylum applications were approved by judges.
Even some politicians who see themselves as pro-immigration say the system faces too much abuse.
“People around the world have learned they can claim asylum and remain in the U.S. indefinitely to pursue their claims,” retired U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a longtime Democratic stalwart in Congress, wrote last year in the Wall Street Journal, defending Biden’s tightening of asylum policies amid a flood of illegal immigration.
An uncertain future
Many of the immigrants they arrived with have left the Costa Rican facility where they were first detained, but the Russian family has stayed. The man cannot imagine going back to Russia and has nowhere else to go.
He and his wife spend their days teaching Russian and a little English to their son. He organizes volleyball games to keep people busy.
He is not angry at the U.S. He understands the administration wanting to crack down on illegal immigration. But, he adds, he is in real danger. He followed the rules and can’t understand why he didn’t get a chance to plead his case.
He fights despair almost constantly, knowing that what he did in Russia brought his family to this place.
“I failed them,” he said. “I think that every day: I failed them.”
