thousand

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court will open its new term Monday by hearing arguments on whether the oil and gas industry may be forced to pay damages for the scorching heat waves, wildfires and droughts that are blamed on climate change.

It’s a momentous question the justices have put off deciding for nearly a decade — and may do so again.

California joined more than two dozen blue states and municipalities in 2023 when it sued the five largest oil companies, alleging “decades of deception” over the danger of a warming climate.

They have “privately known the truth for decades but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record-breaking profits at the expense of our environment,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.

Fire and smoke rise at the Chevron Refinery in El Segundo in October 2025.

(Robbin Goddard/Los Angeles Times)

Such climate-change lawsuits were patterned after the mass claims against the tobacco and opioid industries. Both were accused of concealing the dangers of their very profitable products.

But the climate suits have stalled. Judges have been divided over whether these potentially huge claims should be decided in federal or state court, and if so, under what law.

Last year, Boulder County, Colo., won a 5-2 ruling in the state Supreme Court that allowed its 2018 suit to proceed as a claim of a public nuisance, an unjust enrichment or a civil conspiracy. These are referred to as “common law” claims that are long-standing and traditional but do not rely on a measure approved by the Legislature.

The Colorado judges also said the climate-change suits are not “preempted” or blocked by federal anti-pollution laws because the suit for damages did not regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The dissenters said the state court was giving Boulder a “green light to act as its own republic” to punish the Exxon Mobil Corp. for the impact of “global climate change.”

Appealing to the Supreme Court, the oil companies sounded the same theme.

“Boulder, Colorado cannot make energy policy for the entire country,” they said. A ruling for the county would “authorize all 50 states and tens of thousands of municipalities” to ask their local juries to “impose ruinous liability” on the fossil fuel industry, they told the court.

The Trump administration joined in support of the industry’s appeal.

“Our federal system would disintegrate if each state could tackle inherently national or international problems by forcing its regulatory prescriptions on the other 49,” the administration’s lawyers wrote.

In February, the justices voted to hear the case and decide whether federal law blocks state law claims for the “effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions.”

The court scheduled the case of Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil vs. Boulder County as the first of the new term.

Legal experts say the industry’s claim to be shielded by federal law is weak.

UCLA law professor Alejandro Camacho described the “preemption arguments as the latest and perhaps most ambitious effort to weaponize federal law to prevent polluters and fraudsters from paying for the harms they cause.”

Neither the Constitution nor the Clean Air Act provides such a shield, he said.

Legal experts on the other side question the notion that a public nuisance can be defined so broadly to include both the sale of a legal product and the impact on carbon pollution, much of it coming from China and India.

The outcome in the Supreme Court remains in doubt.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, left, shown with Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh in 2025, withdrew from involvement in the climate case being argued Monday, when the court term begins.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Last week, Justice Samuel A. Alito, a reliable conservative, announced he was withdrawing from the case. He did not say why, but he owns stock in other oil companies that could be affected by the court’s decision.

A broad ruling for Boulder would send a shock through the fossil-fuel industry and clear the wave of climate-change suits to proceed in state courts.

The industry may turn to Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would shield energy companies from such liability claims.

Similarly, a broad ruling shielding the oil companies probably would block all of the climate change suits, including California’s.

The justices may opt out of ruling, however.

When they granted review of the case, they asked the lawyers on both sides to weigh in on whether the high court had “jurisdiction” to decide the Boulder case.

Usually the U.S. Supreme Court reviews only final judgments handed down by state courts, and the Boulder case did not result in a final ruling.

And without Alito, the court could split 4 to 4.

A decision based on a tie vote would affirm Boulder’s early stage victory but would not set a precedent that would govern other cases.

In its new term, the court also will hear major cases on immigration and guns.

Two of the cases test the Trump administration’s strict deportation policies. One denies bond hearings to people who entered the country illegally and may be deported.

In the past, the government usually offered bond hearings to those who could be held for months or even years while their claims were pending, so long as they could show they were not a flight risk or danger to the public.

But the Trump administration said it plans to detain tens of thousands of such persons indefinitely, even if they have no criminal record and pose no risk.

Government lawyers pointed to a provision of the 1996 immigration law that said people who entered the country illegally “shall be detained.” Previous administrations applied the mandatory-detention rule only to migrants who entered the U.S. illegally and were arrested near the border.

A refinery in Carson in 2024.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

On Thursday, the court announced it will hear arguments on the mandatory detention policy, likely to be scheduled for January.

The other case involves so-called “third-country removals.”

The administration is determined to deport immigrants who have “final orders of removal,” many of whom have criminal records. But in some cases, they may not be sent back to their country of origin.

The policy of sending them to a third country has been condemned as harsh and cruel. Thousands of these people have been flown to impoverished countries that are dangerous and where they may be subjected to abuse.

The administration says it seeks assurances from those countries that the deported persons will not be not be abused or persecuted, but it refuses hearings for individuals.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston has ruled these deportees are entitled to a “meaningful notice” of where they are being sent and “meaningful opportunity” to contest this if they have a reasonable fear they will face persecution and torture.

Trump administration lawyers filed emergency appeals at the Supreme Court to set aside Murphy’s orders. They argued that the judge had gone beyond his authority, and the court’s conservatives agreed.

In December, however, the court will hear arguments from both sides on what the law calls for in such deportation cases.

Meanwhile, on Dec. 2, the court will hear a potential landmark on gun rights and and decide whether states may prohibit possession and sale of semiautomatic AR-15 rifles.

California and 11 other blue states have adopted such laws, often in response to mass shootings.

Gun rights advocates say these rapid-fire rifles are among the most popular weapons nationwide and should be protected as lawful under the 2nd Amendment’s right “to keep and bear arms.”

After turning away cases for a decade, the justices voted to hear 2nd Amendment challenges to the laws in Cook County, Ill., and the state of Connecticut.

Sept. 22, 2026 6:56 PM PT

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to limit the number of refugees admitted to the country to 17,500 mostly white South Africans, the administration told Congress on Tuesday, as it continues to transform a program that at one point served as a pathway to safety for people fleeing war and strife from countries around the world.

In a notice to Congress obtained by the Associated Press, the administration said the white South Africans faced seizures of their land and other forms of persecution and would be likely to assimilate when they come to America. The South African government has repeatedly rejected the idea that the white South Africans, who are Afrikaners, are a persecuted minority in the home country.

The Trump administration has dramatically altered a refugee program that historically enjoyed strong bipartisan support as it welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from countries around the world to new lives in America, and instead the administration has transformed it into a vehicle to resettle white South Africans in America.

The administration told Congress in the announcement that it intended to spend about $500 million to resettle the new arrivals to the U.S.

Presidents set the cap on how many refugees the U.S. will approve through the program each year, and historically, they’ve allocated those numbers across various geographic regions while factoring in wars or conflicts that spark humanitarian needs around the globe.

Santana and Kim write for the Associated Press.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice.

ICE removed those detainees from its online detainee locator system on Sept. 15, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the change. Several lawyers contacted by The Associated Press confirmed their clients vanished from the system this week, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the situation Friday.

The move represents a stark departure from previous practice and highlights the hardline nature of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, leaving thousands of detainees exceedingly hard to trace and potentially unable to exercise all of their legal options.

The practice, which applies to detainees who have received final orders of removal from an immigration court, could speed deportations by making last-minute legal challenges harder to pursue, immigration lawyers said. Nearly 16,000 people who were arrested and booked into ICE detention in July were subject to final removal orders, more than a third of the overall bookings, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA.

The practice does not apply to detainees held at a detention facility in Adelanto, California or at temporary holding facilities in Minneapolis, New York City or suburban Chicago, the sources said. Judges have ordered ICE to list detainees in those facilities in the online locator promptly upon their arrival, as part of litigation over their detention practices.

Lawyers and relatives distressed by lack of information on detainees

The effort to hide their locations adds to the ways in which the Trump administration has made life harder for detainees and their families as it has increased pressure on them to waive appeals and agree to deportation.

ICE did not publicize the move and in a statement issued to the AP, the agency did not confirm or deny it. The statement said detainees with final removal orders were being prioritized for deportation, even as ICE faces a “historic number of injunctions” from courts stopping individual removals.

As a result of the change, lawyers and relatives lost track of their clients and loved ones without explanation, which is especially concerning because detainees are frequently moved to new facilities before deportation, said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” he said. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.”

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has argued that people who are subject to final removal orders have received due process. That usually means an immigration judge has ordered their removal after a hearing, including cases when immigrants fail to show up, and the decision was affirmed on appeal or not appealed.

Detainees with final removal orders still have options to appeal

Still, those detainees have options to challenge their detention and removal, including seeking to reopen the case or by bringing what’s known as a habeas petition asking a judge to release them on constitutional grounds. Federal judges have granted thousands of rulings ordering that detainees be released or granted bond hearings.

ICE detention facilities held more than 65,000 people as of early July, the most recent available data. Around 30% of them likely have final removal orders, said Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project.

More people have been issued final removal orders after failing to show up for hearings in recent months because the administration’s immigration courts have taken steps to make it harder to participate and to reopen such cases, she said.

“To me, it’s just another iteration of disappearing people,” she said. “Why would we do that in the United States of America? It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.”

Some with final removal orders also have legal protections against deportation to their countries of origin based on the likelihood they would be tortured or persecuted. Many of them are facing removal to third-party countries where they have no ties and their disappearance in ICE’s system will make legal challenges harder, lawyers said.

Lawyers say clients have vanished from ICE locator system

ICE initiated the online detainee locator system in 2010 to allow relatives, lawyers and the public to search for people in custody. Previously they had to call ICE regional offices or individual facilities to try to track them down.

Many advocates and lawmakers have complained that the system updates too slowly and contains too much inaccurate or missing information, allowing ICE to shield the locations of detainees for days or weeks. Minors, people who have been held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for less than 48 hours, and detainees who are being transported are not in the system, among others.

But the exclusion of detainees with final removal orders has no apparent parallel, several immigration lawyers said. Atenas Burrola Estrada, a deputy program director with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said that “every single one of our clients who has a final order has disappeared from the locator,” including 17 in all as of Monday.

Among those disappeared from the locator system are eight Somali men being detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to one of their attorneys, My Khanh Ngo, of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said the change could make it “nearly impossible” for people to challenge their removals in some cases.

“If you can’t find your client, don’t know what’s happening to your client, you can’t get that information to the court to stop their removal,” she said.

Foley writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of people joined outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday evening to protest President Trump’s plans for the facility, lending their voices to a chorus of organizations and individuals who have been horrified that he might make good on his threat to close and tear down the storied institution.

The crowd streamed in from the nearest subway stop, crowding streets in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington and locking down traffic as they walked, many carrying signs, as they joined in an event dubbed “Hands Around the Kennedy Center.” At one point some held hands, forming a human chain around the center.

Chris Raleigh, co-founder of Hands Off the Arts, which set up the gathering, said in an interview that he hoped it would show that people are willing to fight to keep Trump’s plans for the building at bay.

One of the most iconic buildings on the Potomac River waterfront, the Kennedy Center has been a focus of Trump’s remake of Washington since 2025, when he began installing his loyalists on its governing board. Late last year, he had his named placed on the center in front of that of President Kennedy. A judge ruled that Trump’s name was illegally added and ordered it removed.

The Kennedy Center board, which remains aligned with the president, voted Tuesday to close the center indefinitely for repairs hours after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked their plans to return Trump’s name to the building. On Thursday, the judge ordered the Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the building, including demolishing it.

Raleigh said he, like others, is concerned that Trump could take the step without notifying the court. “Look at the East Wing,” he said, referring to the demolished portion of the White House. “We got up one morning and there was a giant hole there.”

Raleigh said the Kennedy Center is more in the public eye than the East Wing was. He added that he doesn’t believe the president fully understands why people are so upset, “but that’s our job, right? This may be the line that no one expected, but this is where the line is going to be.”

Protesters talked about the importance of the center as the pinnacle of the nation’s performing arts world.

Bud Wilkinson, a local member of the arts community, set up a chalkboard with Trump’s name written on it hundreds of times. Protesters flocked to him to erase the names and replace them with hearts.

“The Kennedy Center is vital to the arts in Washington. We need it. We need this,” Wilkinson said. “This is not just about putting the president’s name on the Kennedy Center. It’s about censoring the performances and the programming. That’s what started all this. So that’s what the nitty-gritty really is about this. So I want to replace all of this with love. That’s why there’s a heart.”

Alina Baciu talked about the opportunities and relationships that students at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts have with the center and how those relationships might be affected by what’s going on.

Her daughter had opportunities to take advantage of all the center had to offer as a student at the Ellington school, she said. “I mean, they borrowed the beautiful costumes and the beautiful dresses from the Washington National Opera for their performances at Duke Ellington,” she said. They also performed on the center’s Millennium Stage.

“All of those things have gone away because of this craziness. And it just hurts my heart,” Baciu said.

Laura Steinberg, a volunteer for the last 10 years, said the loss of performances has already been heart-wrenching. “This reminds me of that picture from Tiananmen Square, where that young man stood in front of the tank,” she said of the throngs present. “This was my visceral response to this. I’ll stand in front of the wrecking ball if it’s going to come to that. My guess is many of these people would come down because we saw what he did to the East Wing. Nobody thought he would actually do it. So I think the shock has mobilized people.”

Friday’s event followed a tumultuous week in federal courts in Washington, where filings and counter-filings flooded the courts as the administration continues pushing for the president’s vanity projects. The administration has made substantive steps to begin work on a number of projects, despite the fact they are still being litigated. Such projects include Trump’s triumphal arch and the administration’s takeover of East Potomac Golf Links and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said he was willing to save the center, which he said was losing money. He did not address a question about demolishing it.

“We have a lot of people working very hard on it to save it,” he said. “I can save it easily, but why should we be doing that and then raise money for the rest of our lives to keep it afloat? Because that’s what you have to do, if we get no recognition. I think the Trump administration should be recognized as having saved the Kennedy Center.”

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

Spain’s Lamine Yamal says most racism he has suffered has come from people unaware of their own comments or behaviour.

Barcelona forward ‌Lamine Yamal said he has experienced racism “a thousand ⁠times”, with ⁠many people unaware that their comments or behaviour are racist.

The 19-year-old has been the target of ⁠racial abuse during his rapid rise to prominence.

In October 2024, footage appeared to show Lamine, Raphinha and Ansu ⁠Fati being racially abused during Barcelona’s match against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu.

The Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia said in a bulletin published in March that Lamine and ‌Vinicius Jr were the most frequent targets of online racist abuse in Spain in the final quarter of 2025.

Asked by former Argentina international Jorge Valdano in an interview with Spanish broadcaster Movistar whether he had directly experienced racism, Lamine said: “A thousand times.

“People are indirectly ⁠racist toward you, but maybe don’t ⁠realise it. There are a lot of comments or looks that are racist, and they don’t even notice.

“If someone calls me Black, it’s ⁠not going to bother me at all, ultimately I’m Black, I’m not any other ⁠colour. Another thing is whether it’s ⁠good or bad, whether they’re saying it to offend me.

“But if I’m playing a match and they paid for a ticket to see ‌me, I’m not going to get angry just because they disrespected me.”

La Liga has stepped up efforts to combat racist ‌abuse ‌in stadiums following several high-profile incidents in Spanish football in recent years.

Thousands of longtime immigrants from El Salvador and their loved ones are anxiously awaiting word from the Trump administration about whether they will face the possibility of deportation if their temporary legal protections expire as scheduled Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security has not yet announced whether it will end or extend Temporary Protected Status for some 170,000 Salvadorans, including 36,000 in California. But federal officials have targeted for arrest other immigrant groups whose TPS expired.

Since their status ended in July, many Haitians have been outfitted with ankle monitors and some have already been sent back to the politically unstable country plagued by gang violence.

As federal officials have whittled down the countries that still qualify for Temporary Protected Status, Salvadorans make up the largest population of remaining beneficiaries.

Just over 100,000 people from Sudan, Ukraine and Lebanon still have TPS protections until later this year, the vast majority of them Ukrainians.

Under TPS, recipients are able to obtain permits allowing them to work legally in the country. More than 150,000 U.S. citizen children nationwide have Salvadoran parents with TPS.

Asked by The Times on Tuesday about the administration’s plans regarding TPS for Salvadorans, border advisor Tom Homan said he does not know and that the decision is up to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Later Tuesday, Homeland Security released a statement that left the long-term outlook for Salvadorans with TPS uncertain: “An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”

Homan, for his part, noted that El Salvador is a “much safer country” now, perhaps suggesting the conditions that prompted people to leave El Salvador had improved.

Addressing the administration’s handling of TPS in general, he said, “I’m glad they’re finally sticking to what the statute says — temporary means temporary.”

The looming deadline set off a wave of alarm among communities in Los Angeles and beyond.

Lorena Zepeda of Los Angeles spent most of Friday with tears in her eyes as she waited for news about the fate of the program that has spared her, for nearly half her lifetime, from being deported back to El Salvador.

“Even though my work permit has been temporary, my life here is not temporary,” said Zepeda, 57. “From the second I stepped foot in the U.S., I have lived. And, I want to continue to live here. I’ve set down my roots here.”

California has the highest concentration of Salvadoran TPS holders in the nation, with smaller concentrations in Texas, Maryland and New York, according to the immigrant advocacy organization FWD.us. Most work in construction, groundskeeping and in transportation, the organization said, and they pay an estimated $1.5 billion in combined taxes.

About 1.3 million people from 17 countries were enrolled in the program when President Trump returned to office last year. The Supreme Court ruled in June that Trump can, without judicial review, end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Haiti and Syria, a decision that also cleared the way for further TPS terminations.

The administration has now ended TPS for more than 1 million immigrants from 13 countries.

Some terminations were announced at or after the expiration date. For instance, the administration announced the terminations for Nicaragua and Honduras three days after they were set to expire on July 8, 2025, but provided a 60-day extension.

A termination for citizens of El Salvador in particular stands to upend the lives of people with deep roots in the U.S. because they have had TPS for 25 years — the longest of any country. Trump administration officials and other conservatives have argued that the program has gone far beyond its original intent as a temporary means of reprieve.

Originally established in 1990 under the George H.W. Bush administration, TPS has been used in the years since under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Congress authorized the emergency relief for immigrants whose countries had been racked by armed conflict or natural disasters and who could not safely return home.

Trump tried to terminate TPS for Salvadorans during his first term, but an appeal kept the protections in place until President Biden took office and reversed the decision. Biden then substantially expanded the number of immigrants who qualified for protections under the program.

For Zepeda, who came to the U.S. in the early 1990s, saving TPS has been a years-long pursuit.

Zepeda works as a community coordinator for the Los Angeles-based Central American Resource Center, or CARECEN, the largest Central American organization in the country that provides low-cost immigration legal services and policy advocacy. She has gone to Sacramento and Washington to persuade lawmakers to keep the program alive.

She began receiving calls Tuesday morning from frantic TPS holders asking whether they should still attend medical appointments or how they will pay their rent without work permits. Aging Salvadorans fear losing their retirement benefits, she said.

“We’ve marched. We’ve led hunger strikes. We’ve done it all…No matter what happens, the fight does not end,” Zepeda said. “We will continue pushing to find legal stability in this country.”

Castillo reported from Washington and Luna from Los Angeles. Staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.