targeted

Jan. 14 (UPI) — Ukrainian air defenses were in action around Kyiv on Wednesday morning as Russian forces launched another mass drone attack targeting the city’s already ravaged power and heating infrastructure with multiple explosions heard downtown.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that following the raid — the third major attack in five days — 6,000 buildings, about half of all buildings, were without power amid freezing temperatures.

Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said Tuesday that Russia was “going all in” to take out Ukraine‘s energy infrastructure after mass attacks targeting power and gas facilities overnight Monday and Jan. 9.

The state-run electricity network operator Ukrenergo said earlier that 70% of Kyiv had no electricity following Monday’s attack.

Senior Ukrainian officials from President Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky on down, have said the attacks on Kyiv and other major cities have no military value but are part of a concerted effort by Moscow to “break” the will of Ukrainians by depriving them of the ability to keep warm during the harsh Ukrainian winter.

The overnight temperature in Kyiv dipped to -2 degrees Frahrenhreit.

The situation led Klitschko to appeal on Friday to residents with someplace else to go to get out of Kyiv temporarily to relieve pressure on emergency services and hospitals, as well as engineering crews scrambling to repair energy infrastructure and keep what remains working.

One couple with a 1-year-old child told the BBC they were preparing to leave for the home of the wife’s parents outside Kyiv on Friday because they were struggling to stay warm and the intermittent power supply meant they were unable to charge their batteries sufficiently.

State-run Ukrainian Railways has begun providing static trains for people with no power at home to get some respite. Dubbed “Invincibility Trains,” the trains spend their days sitting at suburban station platforms with their engines idling, providing heat and water for residents.

As she watched her son play with toys donated by international charities, a woman told the BBC that the train was a safe space to escape to from her 17th-floor apartment, which was without electricity or water and where the elevator was out.

Former vice presidential contender and current aw-shucks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced this week that he won’t run for a third term, dogged by a scandal over child care funds that may or may not be going to fraudsters.

It’s a politically driven mess that not coincidentally focuses on a Black immigrant community, tying the real problem of scammers stealing government funds to the growing MAGA frenzy around an imaginary version of America that thrives on whiteness and Christianity.

Despite the ugliness of current racial politics in America, the fraud remains real, and not just in Minnesota. California has lost billions to cheats in the last few years, leaving our own governor, who also harbors D.C. dreams, vulnerable to the same sort of attack that has taken down Walz.

As we edge closer to the 2028 presidential election, Republicans and Democrats alike will probably come at Gavin Newsom with critiques of the state’s handling of COVID-19 funds, unemployment insurance and community college financial aid to name a few of the honeypots that have been successfully swiped by thieves during his tenure.

In fact, President Trump said as much on his social media barf-fest this week.

“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun,” he wrote.

Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson also said he’s conducting his own “investigation.” And Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is claiming his fraud tip line has turned up “(c)orruption, fraud and abuse on an epic scale.”

Just to bring home that this vulnerability is serious and bipartisan, Rep. Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman rumored to have his own interest in the Oval Office, is also circling the fraud feast like a vulture eyeing his next meal.

“I want to hear from residents in my district and across the state about waste, mismanagement, inefficiencies, or fraud that we must tackle,” Khanna wrote on social media.

Newsom’s spokesman Izzy Gardon questioned the validity of many fraud claims.

“In the actual world where adults govern,” Gardon said, “Gavin Newsom has been cleaning house. Since taking office, he’s blocked over $125 BILLION in fraud, arrested criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers, and protected taxpayers from the exact kind of scam artists Trump celebrates, excuses, and pardons.”

What exactly are we talking about here? Well, it’s a pick-your-scandal type of thing. Even before the federal government dumped billions in aid into the states during the pandemic, California’s unemployment system was plagued by inefficiencies and yes, scammers. But when the world shut down and folks needed that government cash to survive, malfeasance skyrocketed.

Every thief with a half-baked plan — including CEOs, prisoners behind bars and overseas organized crime rackets — came for California’s cash, and seemingly got it. The sad part is these weren’t criminal geniuses. More often than not, they were low-level swindlers looking at a system full of holes because it was trying to do too much too fast.

In a matter of months, billions had been siphoned away. A state audit in 2021 found that at least $10 billion had been paid out on suspicious unemployment claims — never mind small business loans or other types of aid. An investigation by CalMatters in 2023 suggested the final figure may be up to triple that amount for unemployment. In truth, no one knows exactly how much was stolen — in California, or across the country.

It hasn’t entirely stopped. California is still paying out fraudulent unemployment claims at too high a rate, totaling up to $1.5 billion over the last few years — more than $500 million in 2024 alone, according to the state auditor.

But that’s not all. Enterprising thieves looked elsewhere when COVID-19 money largely dried up. Recently, that has been our community colleges, where millions in federal student aid has been lost to grifters who use bots to sign up for classes, receive government money to help with school, then disappear. Another CalMatters investigation using data obtained from a public records request found that up to 34% of community college applications in 2024 may have been false — though that number represents fraudulent admissions that were flagged and blocked, Gardon points out.

Still, community college fraud will probably be a bigger issue for Newsom because it’s fresher, and can be tied (albeit disingenuously) to immigrants and progressive policies.

California allows undocumented residents to enroll in community colleges, and it made those classes free — two terrific policies that have been exploited by the unscrupulous. For a while, community colleges didn’t do enough to ensure that students were real people, because they didn’t require enough proof of identity. This was in part to accommodate vulnerable students such as foster kids, homeless people and undocumented folks who lacked papers.

With no up-front costs for attempting to enroll, phonies threw thousands of identities at the system’s 116 schools, which were technologically unprepared for the assaults. These “ghost” students were often accepted and given grants and loans.

My former colleague Kaitlyn Huamani reported that in 2024, scammers stole roughly $8.4 million in federal financial aid and more than $2.7 million in state aid from our community colleges. That‘s a pittance compared with the tens of billions that was handed out in state and federal financial aid, but more than enough for a political fiasco.

As Walz would probably explain if nuanced policy conversations were still a thing, it’s both a fair and unfair criticism to blame these robberies on a governor alone — state government should be careful of its cash and aggressive in protecting it, and the buck stops with the governor, but crises and technology have collided to create opportunities for swindlers that frankly few governmental leaders, from the feds on down, have handled with any skill or luck.

The crooks have simply been smarter and faster than the rest of us to capitalize first on the pandemic, then on evolving technology including AI that makes scamming easier and scalable to levels our institutions were unprepared to handle.

Since being so roundly fleeced during the pandemic, multiple state and federal agencies have taken steps in combating fraud — including community colleges using their own AI tools to stop fake students before they get in.

And the state is holding thieves accountable. Newsom hired a former Trump-appointed federal prosecutor, McGregor Scott, to go after scam artists on unemployment. And other county, state and federal prosecutors have also dedicated resources to clawing back some of the lost money.

With the slow pace of our courts (burdened by their own aging technology), many of those cases are still ongoing or just winding up. For example, 24 L.A. County employees were charged in recent months with allegedly stealing more than $740,000 in unemployment benefits, which really is chump change in this whole mess.

Another California man recently pleaded guilty to allegedly cheating his way into $15.9 million in federal loans through the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs.

And in one of the most colorful schemes, four Californians with nicknames including “Red boy” and “Scooby” allegedly ran a scam that boosted nearly $250 million in federal tax refunds before three of them attempted to murder the fourth to keep him from ratting them out to the feds.

There are literally hundreds of cases across the country of pandemic fraud. And these schemes are just the tip of the cash-berg. Fraudsters are also targeting fire relief funds, food benefits — really, any pot of public money is fair game to them. And the truth is, the majority of that stolen money is gone for good.

So it’s hard to hear the numbers and not be shocked and angry, especially as the Golden State is faced with a budget shortfall that may be as much as $18 billion.

Whether you blame Newsom personally or not for all this fraud, it’s hard to be forgiving of so much public money being handed to scoundrels when our schools are in need, our healthcare in jeopardy and our bills on an upward trajectory.

The failure is going to stick to somebody, and it doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to figure out who it’s going to be.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Israel’s military launched attacks on what it described as Hezbollah and Hamas “targets” in Lebanon after issuing ⁠evacuation orders for four villages in the ​country’s east and south.

An ‍Israeli army spokesperson said earlier it was planning air strikes on Hezbollah and ‍Hamas “military infrastructure” ⁠in the villages of Hammara and Ain el-Tineh in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and Kfar Hatta and Aanan in the south.

An AFP news agency photographer in Kfar Hatta saw dozens of families flee the village after an Israeli warning was issued with drone activity in the area. Ambulances and fire trucks are on standby.

Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 ending ​more than a year ‌of heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. Israel has repeatedly violated the truce with bombardment and continues to occupy five areas in the country.

‌Lebanon ‌has faced growing pressure ⁠from the United States and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear Israel could escalate strikes.

Lebanon’s army was expected to complete the disarmament south of the Litani River – 30km (12 miles) from the border with Israel – by the end of 2025. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Sunday called the disarmament efforts “far from sufficient”.

For faith leaders supporting and ministering to anxious immigrants across the United States, 2025 was fraught with challenges and setbacks. For many in these religious circles, the coming year could be worse.

The essence of their fears: President Trump has become harsher with his contemptuous rhetoric and policy proposals, blaming immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages and, in a social media post, demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION.”

Haitians who fled gang violence in their homeland, as well as Afghans allowed entry after assisting the U.S. in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, now fear that their refuge in America may end due to get-tough policy changes. Somali Americans, notably in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, worry about their future after Trump referred to them as “garbage.”

After Trump’s slurs, the chair of the Catholic bishops conference’s subcommittee on racial justice urged public officials to refrain from dehumanizing language.

“Each child of God has value and dignity,” said the bishop of Austin, Texas, Daniel Garcia. “Language that denigrates a person or community based on his or her ethnicity or country of origin is incompatible with this truth.”

Here’s a look at what lies ahead for these targeted immigrant communities, and the faith leaders supporting them.

Haitians in limbo

In 2024, Trump falsely accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. It worsened fears about anti-immigrant sentiment in the mostly white, blue-collar city of about 59,000, where more than 15,000 Haitians live and work.

Thousands of them settled in Springfield in recent years under the Temporary Protected Status program.

Their prospects now seem dire. The TPS program, allowing many Haitians to remain legally in Springfield and elsewhere, expires in early February.

“It’s going to be an economic and humanitarian disaster,” said the Rev. Carl Ruby, pastor of Central Christian Church — one of several Springfield churches supporting the Haitians.

Ruby and Viles Dorsainvil, a leader of Springfield’s Haitian community, traveled recently to Washington to seek help from members of Congress.

“Every single legislator we’ve talked to has said nothing is going to happen legislatively. Trump’s rhetoric keeps getting harsher,” Ruby said. “It just doesn’t feel like anything is going our way.”

Many Haitians fear for their lives if they return to their gang-plagued homeland.

Faith communities have come together to support immigrants in the face of Trump’s crackdown, Ruby said.

“It’s increasing our resolve to oppose this,” he said. “There are more and more churches in Springfield saying we will provide sanctuary. … We will do whatever it takes to protect our members.”

Afghan refugees

Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on the first day of his second term. Halting the program and its federal funding affected hundreds of faith-based organizations assisting refugees.

Among them was Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, which serves the region around Washington, D.C., and lost 68% of its budget this year. The organization laid off two-thirds of its staff, shrinking from nearly 300 employees to 100.

Many of its employees and nearly two-thirds of its clients are Afghans. Many worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan and fled after the Taliban’s takeover from a U.S.-backed government in 2021.

The Trump administration announced new immigration restrictions after an Afghan national became the suspect in the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington.

“It shook up our team. It was awful,” said Kristyn Peck, CEO of LSSNCA.

Peck said there is increased fear among Afghans on her staff and a false public narrative that Afghan immigrants are a threat.

“A whole group of people have now been targeted and blamed for this senseless act of violence,” she said.

She still finds reasons for hope.

“We continue to do the good work,” Peck said. “Even in challenging moments, we just continue to see people putting their faith into action.”

Volunteers have stepped up to provide services that employees no longer have funding to provide, including a program that helps Afghan women with English-language and job-skills training.

U.S.-based World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization overseen by the National Association of Evangelicals, has joined left-of-center religious groups decrying the new crackdown on Afghan refugees.

“When President Trump announces his intention to ‘permanently halt’ all migration from ‘Third World countries,’ he’s insulting the majority of the global Church,” declared World Relief CEO Myal Greene. “When his administration halts processing for all Afghans on account of the evil actions of one person, he risks abandoning tens of thousands of others who risked their lives alongside the U.S. military.”

Somalis targeted by Trump

In mid-December, imams and other leaders of Minnesota’s Somali community established a task force to tackle the fallout from major fraud scandals, a surge in immigration enforcement, and Trump’s contemptuous words toward the largest group of Somali refugees in the U.S.

“We’re not minimizing the crime, but we’re amplifying the successes,” said imam Yusuf Abdulle.

He directs the Islamic Association of North America, a network of more than three dozen mostly East African mosques. About half are in Minnesota, which, since the late 1990s, has been home to growing numbers of Somali refugees who are increasingly visible in local and U.S. politics.

“For unfortunate things like fraud or youth violence, every immigrant community has been through tough times,” Abdulle said. “For the number of years here, Somali is a very resilient, very successful community.”

Even though most Somalis in Minnesota are U.S. citizens or lawfully present, Abdulle said, many deserted local businesses and mosques when immigration enforcement surged.

The new task force includes more than two dozen faith and business leaders, as well as community organizers. Addressing their community’s fears is the first challenge, followed by increased advocacy ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“Every election year the rhetoric goes up. And so we want to push back against these hateful rhetorics, but also bring our community together,” said community leader Abdullahi Farah.

Faith leaders respond

In mid-November, U.S. Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly to issue a “special message” decrying developments causing fear and anxiety among immigrants. It marked the first time in 12 years that the bishops invoked this urgent way of speaking collectively.

“We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care,” said the message. “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”

The bishops thanked priests, nuns and lay Catholics accompanying and assisting immigrants.

“We urge all people of goodwill to continue and expand such efforts,” the message said.

The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Yehiel Curry, issued a similar pastoral message last month thanking ELCA congregations for supporting immigrants amid “aggressive and indiscriminate immigration enforcement.”

“The racial profiling and harm to our immigrant neighbors show no signs of diminishing, so we will heed God’s call to show up alongside these neighbors,” Curry wrote.

HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit serving refugees and asylum-seekers, has condemned recent Trump administration moves.

“As a Jewish organization, we also know all too well what it means for an entire community to be targeted because of the actions of one person,” HIAS said.

“We will always stand in solidarity with people seeking the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety, including those being targeted now by harmful policies and hateful rhetoric in the Afghan American and Somali American communities.”

Crary, Dell’Orto, Henao and Stanley write for the Associated Press.

As Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley seeks to become the state’s next attorney general, a dominant issue in the campaign has been his approach to the state’s three-strikes law, with his two Republican opponents seeking to cast him as being soft on crime.

Cooley defends his policy of generally not pursuing life sentences for relatively minor offenses, saying that justice requires that the punishment should fit the crime. His approach has won widespread support during three successful election campaigns for district attorney but has also drawn fire from critics who say his policy fails to adequately protect society from repeat offenders.

One of the clearest examples of the risks involved is the case of Gilton Beltrand Pitre, a convicted rapist who in 2007 went on to kill a homeless teenage girl whose body was dumped in a Silver Lake alley.

Pitre was found guilty of her murder last month and details of his criminal history were laid out in a court record filed by prosecutors last week.

Two years before the murder, Pitre had been eligible for prosecution under the state’s “three-strikes” law when he was charged with a felony for selling $5 worth of marijuana to an undercover police officer. His two strikes included a 1994 residential burglary and a 1996 rape.

Under the law, prosecutors could have sought a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Instead, Pitre was allowed to plead guilty to a drug crime in exchange for a 32-month prison sentence, court records show.

Alyssa Gomez, 15, was killed four days after Pitre was released from prison. Prosecutors say Pitre visited the Olive Motel on Sunset Boulevard with the teenage runaway, who had been living on the streets since she was 12.

Her lifeless body, wrapped in a bedspread from the motel, was discovered the next morning in an alley behind a restaurant. Prosecutors said Pitre had sex with the girl and then strangled her.

Pitre, 38, was scheduled to be sentenced for the girl’s murder on Thursday but the hearing was postponed until July 14.

Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael A. Yglecias defended the office’s handling of the 2005 drug case. He said the 32-month prison sentence was appropriate given the relatively minor nature of that crime.

Yglecias noted that Pitre’s rape conviction was at the time the only violent crime in his background. Prosecutors, he said, consider not just the office’s policy when they decide how to pursue a case but also whether a judge would probably impose a potential life sentence for such a crime.

“The overriding feature in this case was that it was a sale of $5 of marijuana,” he said. “That’s pretty much what dictated the outcome.”

A district attorney’s spokeswoman said Cooley declined to comment on Pitre’s case. But his campaign strategist, Kevin Spillane, said that Los Angeles County is among the state’s top three counties when it comes to convictions for three-strikes cases.

“The reality is that the D.A.’s office is aggressive about pursuing three-strikes cases,” Spillane said. “Tens of thousands of criminals go through the D.A.’s office. It’s always easy to find someone who recommits.”

Mike Reynolds, who helped draft the 1994 three-strikes law after the murder of his 18-year-old daughter, blamed Cooley’s policy for the decision not to seek a longer sentence for Pitre.

Although district attorneys around the state are typically cautious about seeking possible life sentences for eligible third-strikers accused of relatively minor crimes, Reynolds said Cooley’s policy goes too far. He said Pitre’s rape conviction provided compelling evidence that he was a danger to society.

“You’re literally playing Russian roulette politically with every one of these guys that you let out,” said Reynolds, who has endorsed state Sen. Tom Harman of Huntington Beach in the June 8 primary race with Cooley and former law school dean John Eastman.

Under the three-strikes law, a judge can sentence an offender to 25 years to life in prison even for a nonviolent felony, such as petty theft or drug possession, as long as the offender’s criminal history includes at least two violent or serious crimes.

It is unclear from the court file whether the prosecutor who oversaw Pitre’s 2005 plea bargain realized he was eligible for a three-strikes sentence. Deputy Dist. Atty. Marlene Sanchez did not return calls seeking comment.

Under Cooley’s policy, prosecutors can seek permission from supervisors to pursue a third-strike sentence even for a minor felony. Yglecias said that was not done in Pitre’s case and that such requests are usually granted when offenders have lengthier criminal records.

“While the three-strikes law gives us a great tool … the present crime has to have the most weight,” Yglecias said. “If not, then we would be talking about the other extreme. Why is the D.A.’s office seeking 25 years to life against a guy who stole a slice of pizza? … There has to be a balance.”

Pitre’s strikes began with the burglary of his mother’s home, when he stole a television set that he sold for $40 to support a cocaine habit, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors last week in the murder case. He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Two years later, in 1996, Pitre attacked his roommate and began strangling her with the cord from some Venetian blinds, according to a memo.

Pitre told the victim he was going to rape and kill her and that he had killed before, the memo said. He took her to a bathtub that he had filled with water and said she could choose whether she wanted to be choked or drowned. Then he raped and sodomized her.

After the attack, Pitre told the victim he planned to kill her so he would not have to go to jail. The victim dissuaded him by feigning a romantic interest and reminding him she had a young daughter, the memo said.

Pitre pleaded no contest to rape and was sentenced to three years in prison.

In the murder case, the district attorney’s office highlighted details about the rape to argue in court papers that Pitre is a “violent, predatory recidivist who falls squarely within the spirit of the three-strikes law.”

jack.leonard@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — The idea of requiring new state and local workers to participate in the federal Social Security program, a provision of the new House budget offer, is likely to ignite strong opposition in California, Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge) said Tuesday.

Only a third of the state’s 1.5 million public employees are covered by Social Security and those who are see their pensions reduced by up to $133 a month, according to state figures provided to Fiedler.

Public employees in California already are pressing a legal challenge to a federal law saying they cannot pull out of the system.

The idea of including newly hired state and local workers in Social Security is drawing increasing support on Capitol Hill as Congress looks for new ways to cut the deficit. Already endorsed in the Senate by Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), it would reduce the deficit by $200 million next year.