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  • ‘We all panicked and ran’: Brown University freshman speaks after deadly shooting

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    ‘We all panicked and ran’: Brown University freshman speaks after deadly shooting

    PROVIDENCE TODAY. THAT’S RIGHT. BEN, THAT VIGIL ACTUALLY JUST WRAPPED UP A FEW MOMENTS AGO HERE AT LIPPITT MEMORIAL PARK. AND YOU CAN SEE PEOPLE ARE STILL LINGERING AROUND HERE WANTING TO BE IN COMMUNITY AFTER THIS UNTHINKABLE TRAGEDY HAPPENED AT BROWN UNIVERSITY. IT WAS REALLY A BEAUTIFUL CEREMONY. THERE WAS SINGING, THERE WAS PRAYER, AND OF COURSE, COMMUNITY COMING TOGETHER AFTER THIS UNIMAGINABLE EVENT. I SPOKE TO SEVERAL PEOPLE HERE, BOTH COMMUNITY MEMBERS, FACULTY AT THE UNIVERSITY AND PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THIS AREA, ALL SAYING THEY THEY COULD NOT BELIEVE SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENED HERE. THERE WAS ACTUALLY A HOLIDAY EVENT ALREADY SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE AT THIS PARK. OF COURSE, WITH EVERYTHING HAPPENING AT BROWN UNIVERSITY, THE EVENT RAPIDLY SWITCHED INTO A VIGIL AND A MOMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY TO COME TOGETHER. HERE’S WHAT SOME PEOPLE HAD TO SAY ABOUT HOW TIGHT KNIT THIS PLACE IS. THIS IS A SMALL SCHOOL. EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE. IT’S GREAT. STRENGTH IS ITS INTIMACY, AND WE’RE SEEING THAT TONIGHT. AND, YOU KNOW, IT’S TERRIBLE REASON FOR US TO GET TOGETHER. BUT IT IS VERY HEARTWARMING TO SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HERE AND HOW MUCH LOVE THERE IS. THE RED CROSS WAS ALSO HERE, AS WELL AS OTHER COMMUNITY PARTNERS, MAKING SURE EVERYONE HAD EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED TO BE ABLE TO COME TOGETHER SAFELY. THERE’S ALSO ENHANCED LAW ENFORCEMENT PRESENCE HERE. I CAN TELL YOU THERE HAVE BEEN MULTIPLE PATROLS HAPPENING AROUND THIS PARK, AS WELL AS LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS WALKING THROUGHOUT THE CROWD, MAKING SURE EVERYONE FELT COMFORTABLE. BUT OF COURSE, AFTER SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENS, THE COMMUNITY WANTS TO COME TOGETHER. AND FROM WHAT EVERYONE IS SAYING, PROVIDENCE IS SUCH A TIGHT KNIT COMMUNITY. THEY REALLY WANT IT TO BE TOGETHER IN THIS MOMENT. AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. FOR NOW, WE’RE LIVE IN PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND. DANAE BUCCI WCVB NEWSCENTER 5. AND OUR THANKS TO JENNY FOR THAT. AND IF YOU’RE NOT FAMILIAR WITH PROVIDENCE AND BROWN UNIVERSITY, SO HERE ON THAT SIDE OF THE STREET IS THE ENGINEERING BUILDING. BARRAS AND HOLLY ON THIS SIDE OF THE STREET ARE HOMES. THIS UNIVERSITY IS VERY MUCH INTERCONNECTED AND INTERTWINED WITH PROVIDENCE NEIGHBORHOODS HERE. AND SO THIS EVENT, THIS SHOOTING IS CERTAINLY IMPACTING MORE THAN JUST THE BROWN UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY. IT’S IMPACTING THE GREATER PROVIDENCE COMMUNITY AS WELL. OUR CAITLIN GALEHOUSE, WITH THIS PART OF THE STORY, AS A LOT OF BUSINESSES IN THIS CITY STILL REMAIN CLOSED, THE PROVIDENCE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN SHAKEN BY THIS TRAGEDY. WE’RE IN WAYLAND SQUARE. THIS IS ABOUT A MILE OFF CAMPUS, AND IT’S BEEN RELATIVELY QUIET THIS AFTERNOON. IN FACT, SOME STORES ARE ACTUALLY CLOSED BECAUSE OF THE SHOOTING. I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON AT ALL. FEAR, ANXIETY. TRAGEDY. STRIKING PROVIDENCE SATURDAY AFTER A MAN OPENED FIRE IN A CLASSROOM AT BROWN UNIVERSITY, KILLING TWO STUDENTS AND INJURING NINE OTHERS. THIS IS DEFINITELY BONDING EVERYONE CLOSER TOGETHER. KIND OF SOUNDS AS HORRIBLE AS IT IS. IT’S KIND OF LIKE TRAUMA BONDING IN A WAY. WE’RE ALL HERE AT THE SAME EXACT UNIVERSITY, YOU KNOW, GOING THROUGH THE SAME THINGS. IT’S BEEN ONE DAY SINCE THE TRAGIC INCIDENT BROKE OUT AT THE UNIVERSITY, AND MANY ARE STILL DIGESTING THE REALITY OF WHAT HAPPENED. I’M JUST SADDENED FOR THE BROWN COMMUNITY AND THE ENTIRE STATE. IT’S JUST TRAGIC, THE THE TRAGEDY BEING SO CLOSE TO CHRISTMAS AND, YOU KNOW, FINISHING OUT THE SCHOOL YEAR AND READY TO CELEBRATE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ALL, TO HAVE THAT TAKEN AWAY JUST BY SOME SENSELESS ACT. THE SHELTER IN PLACE ORDER WAS LIFTED EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, BUT THE STREETS ARE STILL QUIET, PROBABLY LESS PEOPLE OUT OF THE COFFEE SHOPS THERE WAS YESTERDAY. WE WERE GOING TO GO OUT TO DINNER. WE DID, AND OBVIOUSLY WE JUST STAYED INSIDE. IT’S A LOT. IT’S IT’S SAD. IT’S SCARY. WE HAD A LOT OF PEOPLE, COWORKERS, THINGS LIKE THAT, CHECKING IN ON US LAST NIGHT. AND I HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS THAT ALSO KIND OF LIVE LIKE SURROUNDING EAST SIDE AREA. SO YEAH, EVERYONE JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO HOW TO PROCESS AND HOW TO MOVE ON. BROWN UNIVERSITY HAS CANCELED CLASSES AND FINAL EXAMS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE SEMESTER DUE TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES. REPORTING IN P

    ‘We all panicked and ran’: Brown University freshman speaks after deadly shooting

    Updated: 9:11 PM EST Dec 14, 2025

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    A shooting Saturday at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, that killed two students and injured nine others has left many students, families and city officials struggling to process the tragedy. Members of the Brown community expressed shock and sadness as they mourned the loss of the two students. Video above: Brown University students, community shaken by campus mass shootingAuthorities said the person believed to be responsible fled the scene, prompting a shelter-in-place order that lasted into the early morning hours Sunday. Students were told to stay where they were, silence their cellphones and, at one point, hide. Drew Nelson, a freshman at Brown, described the terrifying moments after the shooting. “We were running out probably a minute or two after the shooting, and there were already, I would guess, between five and 10 cop cars outside. I didn’t see anything that would, I would call a suspect. I didn’t see the shooter. I just kept running until I was nowhere near the building,” he said. Students are now leaving campus and returning home, but for many, that process of healing is only beginning.

    A shooting Saturday at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, that killed two students and injured nine others has left many students, families and city officials struggling to process the tragedy.

    Members of the Brown community expressed shock and sadness as they mourned the loss of the two students.

    Video above: Brown University students, community shaken by campus mass shooting

    Authorities said the person believed to be responsible fled the scene, prompting a shelter-in-place order that lasted into the early morning hours Sunday.

    Students were told to stay where they were, silence their cellphones and, at one point, hide.

    Drew Nelson, a freshman at Brown, described the terrifying moments after the shooting.

    “We were running out probably a minute or two after the shooting, and there were already, I would guess, between five and 10 cop cars outside. I didn’t see anything that would, I would call a suspect. I didn’t see the shooter. I just kept running until I was nowhere near the building,” he said.

    Students are now leaving campus and returning home, but for many, that process of healing is only beginning.

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  • Leaders of secretive California religious group accused of murder after members vanish

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    Two leaders of a group described as “cult-like” by authorities in the Inland Empire have been arrested along with a prominent member on suspicion of murder amid multiple investigations into the disappearance of two former members and the death of a 4-year-old boy many years ago.

    Darryl Muzic Martin, 58, who identifies himself as the pastor of His Way Spirit Led Assemblies, and Shelley Bailey “Kat” Martin, 62, who refers to herself as a prophetess and a gifted oracle, have been arrested on suspicion of murder along with member Rudy Moreno, 43, according to Redlands police.

    The leaders of the group have been under investigation in connection with the disappearance of former member Emilio Ghanem in May 2023 after visiting a Redlands Starbucks. Separately, Claremont police are investigating the disappearance of Moreno’s brother, Ruben, who was also a member, while Colton police have been probing the death of 4-year-old Timothy Thomas in 2010, who was in the Martins’ custody when he died after not receiving medical treatment.

    Authorities have yet to explain whom they allege each person killed. But Darryl Martin’s booking records in the Riverside County jail show he was held on allegations of murder, possession of a machine gun, and explosives. His wife was booked in the San Bernardino County jail on suspicion of murder and possession of a machine gun. Moreno was booked on suspicion of second-degree murder, possession of a firearm by a felon, and possession of a machine gun. The arrests occurred Thursday morning.

    On Aug. 6, Redlands police, with help from the FBI, swarmed the current base of His Way Spirit Led Assemblies in Hemet as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Ghanem.

    Emilio Ghanem was reported missing in May 2023.

    (Redlands Police Department)

    Four residents were briefly detained, with two booked on unrelated weapons charges, police said. Several illegal firearms — converted fully automatic rifles, short-barreled rifles and unserialized ghost guns, were recovered.

    Police conducted a similar raid on Aug. 12 at a remote compound connected to the group in the Riverside County town of Anza, where they briefly detained eight people and recovered electronic devices and other digital evidence, according to Redlands Police Department spokesperson Carl Baker.

    Officers at that time also detained the Martins at a motel in Laguna Hills but ultimately released them without seeking any criminal charges.

    But the investigation did not stop.

    Authorities began giving the group a closer look last year, after Ghanem had disappeared and investigators found the truck he’d been driving along with other evidence that led them to believe a homicide may have occurred.

    Ghanem joined His Way Spirit Led Assemblies around 2000 and helped launch a pest control business run by the group, called Fullshield Inc., his sister, Jennifer Ghanem, said.

    For many years, he lived in one of the group’s Colton homes.

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    A California religious group that police describe as ‘cult-like’ has landed in the spotlight after a 4-year-old boy died and two members disappeared.

    In April 2023, Ghanem left both the religious group and the company it operated, MaxGuard, behind and moved to Nashville to reunite with his family. Ghanem started his own pest control company, then returned to the Inland Empire to open a satellite office to win back some of his old clients before he disappeared.

    While Redlands police were looking into Ghanem’s disappearance, over the summer Claremont police announced that another missing man, Ruben Moreno, had been affiliated with the group. Moreno was reported missing in 2019.

    As word of the Redlands police investigation spread, Colton police renewed its investigation into the death of 4-year-old Timothy Thomas on Jan. 16, 2010 — after he died within an hour of the 911 call, according to the coroner’s report. He was in the custody of Darryl and Shelley Martin at the time.

    Timothy Thomas

    Authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding the January 2010 death of Timothy Thomas.

    (Colton Police Department)

    Timothy’s cause of death was ruled to be septic shock due to a ruptured appendix, according to the coroner’s report. Detectives suspect neglect also played a role, according to Colton detectives.

    Police recommended charges against the Martins in 2010, but the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office declined to prosecute.

    Neither the Martins nor their attorney has responded to The Times’ inquiries.

    A beige two-story home surrounded by a security fence

    Timothy Thomas was staying with members of His Way Spirit Led Assemblies in Colton when he suffered a medical emergency, authorities say.

    (Daniel Flesher / LA Times Studios)

    When Timothy died, group members were uncooperative with the investigation and gave conflicting testimony, making it challenging to prosecute the case, authorities said.

    At the time, then-Det. Jack Morenberg, who was investigating, expressed concern over allegations of child abuse and said the home had the appearance of a possible “‘cult-like’ ministry,” according to the coroner’s investigative report.

    As part of the probe, Darryl Martin told police that Timothy’s parents had given him and his wife temporary custody of their three children because their mother had problems and couldn’t provide a stable home, according to the report. One of Timothy’s aunts told police that the Martins would not allow the boy’s mother to see him, or her other children.

    A second aunt felt that Darryl Martin was responsible for Timothy’s death and reported this to Colton police and child protective services in an effort to get the boy’s two remaining siblings removed from the house, according to the report. That aunt said that Martin had instructed Timothy not to vomit and “showed him how to place his hand over his mouth to stop the vomit from coming out,” the report states.

    Since Timothy’s death, several members have parted ways with the group and recently revised their statements to Colton police, saying that their original testimony was made under duress from the group’s leaders, Colton police Sgt. Shawn McFarland told The Times recently.

    In September, Colton police officials said they planned to resubmit the death investigation to prosecutors based on new evidence.

    Because of the statute of limitations, McFarland said, the only charge available to pursue is child homicide or murder.

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    Richard Winton, Clara Harter

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  • Federal judge issues order to prohibit immigration officials from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia

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    A federal judge ordered Friday that U.S. immigration officials could not detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia, hours after his release from immigration detention.Abrego Garcia was appearing Friday morning for a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge’s orders. His lawyers asked the judge to block authorities from detaining him again.Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said. She wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.“For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration,” she wrote.Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August during a similar check-in.Abrego Garcia on Friday stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”He urged people to keep fighting.“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from Xinis, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.Mistakenly deported and then returnedAbrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.A lawsuit to block removal from the USThe 2019 settlement found he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.ICE freed Abrego Garcia from Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday just before the deadline Xinis gave the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s release.He returned home to Maryland a few hours later.Immigration check-inCheck-ins are how ICE keeps track of some people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through a backlogged court system. The appointments were once routine but many people have been detained at their check-ins since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he’s prepared to defend his client against further deportation efforts.“The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding he fully expects the government to again take steps to deport his client. “We’re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.”The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis’ order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary.Sandoval-Moshenberg said the judge made it clear that the government can’t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to.”Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court.Charges in TennesseeAbrego Garcia was hit with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the U.S. government brought him back from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.

    BALTIMORE —

    A federal judge ordered Friday that U.S. immigration officials could not detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia, hours after his release from immigration detention.

    Abrego Garcia was appearing Friday morning for a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge’s orders. His lawyers asked the judge to block authorities from detaining him again.

    Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said. She wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.

    “For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration,” she wrote.

    Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August during a similar check-in.

    Abrego Garcia on Friday stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”

    “I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”

    He urged people to keep fighting.

    “I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”

    After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.

    The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from Xinis, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.

    Mistakenly deported and then returned

    Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.

    While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.

    Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.

    A lawsuit to block removal from the US

    The 2019 settlement found he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.

    In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.

    ICE freed Abrego Garcia from Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday just before the deadline Xinis gave the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s release.

    He returned home to Maryland a few hours later.

    Immigration check-in

    Check-ins are how ICE keeps track of some people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through a backlogged court system. The appointments were once routine but many people have been detained at their check-ins since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

    Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he’s prepared to defend his client against further deportation efforts.

    “The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding he fully expects the government to again take steps to deport his client. “We’re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.”

    The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis’ order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.

    “This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary.

    Sandoval-Moshenberg said the judge made it clear that the government can’t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to.”

    Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court.

    Charges in Tennessee

    Abrego Garcia was hit with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the U.S. government brought him back from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.

    The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

    A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.

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  • Crews battle hazardous fire on cargo ship in San Pedro, major emergency declared

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    A major emergency was declared at the Port of Los Angeles on Friday night as 186 firefighters worked to combat a massive and stubborn blaze involving hazardous materials on a cargo ship, authorities said.

    An electrical fire was reported below deck of the 1,100-foot container ship 1 Henry Hudson at 6:38 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. An explosion rattled the boat just before 8 p.m., affecting power to lights and cranes, authorities said.

    Hazardous materials are in several of the cargo containers involved in the blaze and all firefighters are wearing protective suits and oxygen masks, according to LAFD. Specially trained hazardous materials crews are monitoring air quality as efforts continue to suppress the fire in the ship’s sub-levels.

    Marine crews are working to cool the outside of the ship to make conditions on the boat more tenable for firefighting crews. As of 8 p.m., incident command had instructed that no firefighting members go below deck.

    At that time progress on containment remained slow, according to LAFD. The ship did not appear to be sinking despite a large amount of water being used to fight the fire.

    Drones were being used to acquire thermal imaging of the blaze and assist the emergency response, authorities said.

    Earlier in the evening, authorities said six of the boat’s crew members were unaccounted for. At 8:30 p.m., LAFD confirmed that all 23 crew members had been found and safely assisted off the ship. No injuries have been reported.

    The California Highway Patrol announced at 10:30 p.m. that the Vincent Thomas Bridge, a main access point to the port’s terminals, would be closed until further notice due to the fire. Drivers are advised to avoid the area and follow detour routes.

    The U.S. Coast Guard also responded to the incident and established a safety perimeter of one nautical mile around the vessel.

    The cargo ship sails under the flag of Panama and arrived in the Port of L.A. on Wednesday after traveling from Tokyo, according to Vessel Finder.

    In a statement on X, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said the city is continuing to monitor the incident closely. Gov. Gavin Newsom was briefed on the incident and his office is coordinating with local authorities to support the emergency response, officials said.

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    Clara Harter

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  • Woman decapitated by a garbage truck near elementary school in Orange County

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    A woman was decapitated by a garbage truck when she was crossing the street Wednesday in Orange County, according to authorities.

    Maria Rubalcava de Ruesga, 69, of Santa Ana, was crossing the street around 7:56 a.m. near Shelton and Bishop streets when she was hit by a garbage truck making a right turn on Shelton, according to a Santa Ana Police Department news release.

    Officers from the police department got multiple calls about the traffic collision and along with the Orange County Fire Authority, responded to the scene, according to the release.

    The truck had been going east on Bishop Street and making a turn on the roundabout when it hit the woman as she was crossing the street, authorities said.

    ABC7 reported that the woman had been decapitated in the collision.

    Children and families from the nearby Pio Pico Dual Language Academy were also nearby during the incident, according to the outlet.

    The Santa Ana Unified School District will be providing support for witnesses of the crash.

    The Santa Ana Police Department’s Collision Investigation Unit will be investigating the crash, according to the release. Anyone with more information has been asked to contact the Santa Ana Police Department’s Traffic Division at (714) 245-8200.

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    Summer Lin

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  • After Gen Z march in Mexico, government and critics spar as Trump cites ‘big problems’ south of border

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    MEXICO CITY — A weekend protest march convened to highlight the concerns of Mexico’s Generation Z has instead dramatized deep political divisions extending well beyond the needs of young Mexicans.

    The mostly peaceful demonstration in downtown Mexico City on Saturday culminated in several hours of clashes when small groups of protesters battled with phalanxes of riot police deployed to protect the National Palace in Mexico City’s central square, or zócalo.

    In the aftermath of the protests, Mexico’s leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum accused right-wing opponents of hijacking the demonstration to provoke unrest and smear her government.

    “A march that was supposedly called against violence utilized violence,” Sheinbaum told reporters Monday.

    But opposition leaders and other critics said the march reflected deep concern about alleged cartel infiltration in the government and charged that police brutalized young protesters.

    Among those who noticed the chaotic scenes from Mexico was President Trump, who, in Oval Office comments to the press on Monday, again raised the provocative specter of U.S. strikes on cartel targets in Mexico. The country is a major production site for fentanyl, amphetamines and other synthetic drugs bound for the U.S. market, and a transport corridor for South American cocaine.

    “I looked at Mexico City over the weekend. There’s some big problems there,” Trump said. “Let me just put it this way: I am not happy with Mexico.”

    Asked if he would contemplate U.S. attacks on cartel targets in Mexico, Trump responded: “Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me. Whatever we have to do to stop drugs.”

    Trump has charged that Mexico is “run by the cartels,” though he has praised Sheinbaum as a “very brave woman.”

    Sheinbaum has denied that cartels control Mexico. She has maintained a cooperative attitude with Trump on two contentious binational issues — drug trafficking and tariffs — but has said Mexico would not yield its sovereignty and agree to U.S. strikes.

    Saturday’s march — one of many similar protests across Mexico on that day — was originally called in support of Generation Z, after related demonstrations in Nepal and Morocco. Young people worldwide have decried a lack of economic and educational opportunities.

    But the rally in Mexico City became mostly a march against what many participants labeled the leftist “narco-government” of Sheinbaum and her ruling Morena party

    Many protesters hoisted banners declaring: “I am Carlos Manzo,” after the mayor of the western city of Uruapan, who was assassinated this monthin a shooting that authorities have blamed on organized crime.

    Manzo had accused Sheinbaum’s government of coddling criminals. Supporters of his so-called “White Hat” movement — after the popular mayor’s signature sombrero — took to the streets of Uruapan and other cities in Michoacán state this month by the tens of thousands to demand a crackdown on organized crime. Backers of the growing movement were also major participants in Saturday’s march in Mexico City.

    In the aftermath of the march, Sheinbaum’s opponents accused her government of repressing dissent.

    “They brutalized young people who only want a better Mexico,” Alejandro Moreno, president of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, charged on X. “They beat them because they are scared. They know that the power of an organized people is stronger than a cowardly narco-regime.”

    Mexican authorities denied allegations of brutality and said that at least 60 police officers were injured.

    A small minority of protesters, many wearing ski masks, tossed stones, bottles, fireworks and other improvised weapons at police. Police used both physical force and volleys of tear gas to push them back. Each side blamed the other for igniting the melees.

    “They wanted to generate this idea: ‘Chaos in Mexico!’ “ charged Sheinbaum, noting how the images of the clashes received widespread domestic and international attention in the press and social media.

    The president called for an investigation of the violence, which, she said, was funded by her opponents. She vowed that authorities would also investigate any allegations of police brutality. The great majority of protesters, she said, were nonviolent.

    Authorities said 17,000 marchers took place in Saturday’s demonstration. The opposition said the number was much higher.

    Opponents of Sheinbaum’s government have vowed additional protests. But many experts doubt that a deeply fractured opposition could do much to loosen Morena’s stranglehold on power.

    Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, ex-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, faced much larger street demonstrations during his time in office, along with allegations of ties of drug traffickers. But neither seemed to dent his widespread popularity.

    Polls have shown Sheinbaum, who just completed the first year of a six-year term, with 70%-plus approval ratings. Her Morena party, with strong backing from poor and working-class Mexicans who have benefited from minimum-wage increases and social welfare programs, retains firm control of congress, the courts and most statehouses across Mexico.

    Security remains the major concern of most Mexicans, polls show, even as the president has touted decreases in homicides and other violent crimes. Sheinbaum has launched a crackdown on organized crime that has seen thousands of suspects arrested — including dozens expelled to face justice in U.S. courts.

    Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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    Patrick J. McDonnell, Kate Linthicum

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  • Trump says Americans will receive $2,000 tariff dividend

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    President Trump said Sunday that most Americans would receive a $2,000 dividend payment as a result of his administration’s tariffs levied against foreign countries.

    Trump announced the potential payments on his Truth Social platform, calling opponents of his tariffs “FOOLS” in a post.

    “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion,” the president wrote. “Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

    Congressional approval would likely be necessary to provide the payments. There is no specific plan at this point for the dividends, which could cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars.

    The post by Trump comes after a difficult week for the president.

    The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that questions whether Trump exceeded his authority in levying tariffs against foreign nations without congressional support. Most of the justices on the bench, including conservative justices such as Chief Justice John G. Roberts, appeared skeptical of the president’s authority under the Constitution.

    Most of the justices seemed to take the view that the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise taxes, duties and tariffs, not the president.

    That blow came on the heels of Democratic wins throughout the country on Tuesday.

    Since taking office, Trump has implemented steep tariffs on specific goods as well as particularly high tariffs on goods from specific countries such as India and Brazil.

    Trump said in remarks on Thursday at the White House that revocation of the tariffs would be “devastating” for the U.S.

    On Sunday in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he had not yet spoken with Trump about the proposed dividend.

    “The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms and lots of ways,” Bessent said.

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    Noah Goldberg

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  • Slaying of Mexican mayor sparks national outcry over cartel power

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    MEXICO CITY — Carlos Manzo blazed a maverick path as he battled both cartels and what he called skimpy federal support for his crusade against organized crime in his hometown of Uruapan, in western Mexico.

    The “man with a hat,” after his signature white sombrero, was an annoyance to the power structure in Mexico City, but beloved among many constituents for his uncompromising stance against the ruthless mobs that hold sway in much of the country.

    “They can kill me, they can abduct me, they can intimidate or threaten me,” the outspoken Manzo declared on social media in June. “But the people who are sick of extortion, of homicides, of car thefts — they will demand justice.”

    He added, “There is an enraged tiger out there — the people of Uruapan.”

    That rage was on dramatic display last week, as tens of thousands marched through the streets of Uruapan and elsewhere in violence-plagued Michoacán state to denounce the slaying of Manzo, 40. He was gunned down Nov. 1 amid a crowd of revelers, including his family, at a Day of the Dead celebration, in a killing that reverberated nationwide and beyond.

    The assassinations of other public figures in recent years have also triggered outrage and dismay in the country, but Manzo’s death has unleashed something else: A divisive aftermath that has seen many questioning Mexico’s very ability to confront the rampaging cartels in places like Michoacán, where organized crime has a forceful grip on government, the economy and people’s daily lives.

    “This structural control of organized crime is deeply worrying for the entire country,” said Erubiel Tirado, a security expert at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. “It speaks of a crisis of legitimacy in terms of the government’s ability to function.”

    Legislators from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) placed hats painted like blood on their seats in condemnation of the murder of Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo during a session in the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 4, 2025, in Mexico City.

    (Luis Barron / Sipa USA via Associated Press )

    Mexico, wrote columnist Mariana Campos in El Universal newspaper, “is fractured into zones where criminals set the rules, administer justice, charge taxes and decide who can be the mayor, who can be a businessman.”

    Less than two weeks before Manzo’s killing, police in Michoacán found the battered body of Bernardo Bravo, a renowned leader of regional lime growers who had pushed back against cartel extortion demands. Bravo was shot in the head and his corpse showed signs of torture, authorities said.

    For months, the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum has rolled out statistics showing nationwide reductions in homicides and other offenses, along with the arrests of hundreds of organized crime figures — among them dozens expelled to face justice in the United States.

    Yet polls consistently show many Mexicans remain unconvinced. The death of Manzo — who cut a national reputation by insisting that officials coddled criminals — only heightened a pervasive sense of vulnerability, especially in places like Michoacán.

    The picturesque region of verdant hillsides, pine-studded mountains and wild Pacific coastline has long been a hub of cartel violence. In 2006, then-President Felipe Calderón chose Michoacán as the place to declare Mexico’s ill-fated “War on Drugs.”

    That came a few months after an especially macabre incident in Uruapan: Cartel gunmen tossed five severed heads onto a nightclub dance floor.

    During the War on Drugs, the military was deployed to combat cartels, but the strategy backfired, significantly escalating violence nationwide and raising concerns about the militarization of the country and the trampling of human rights.

    Relatives pull the coffin of Mexican journalist Mauricio Cruz Solis during his wake

    Relatives pull the coffin of Mexican journalist Mauricio Cruz Solis during his wake in Uruapan, Michoacan state, on Oct. 30, 2024. Cruz was shot dead Oct. 29 in western Mexico, a local prosecutor’s office said, in a part of the country hit hard by organized crime.

    (Enrique Castro / AFP via Getty Images)

    According to many in Uruapan and across the country, things have only gotten worse since then.

    “Broadcast it to the entire world: In Mexico the narco-traffickers govern,” said Arturo Martínez, 61, who runs a handicraft shop in Uruapan, a city of more than 300,000 at the heart of Mexico’s multibillion-dollar avocado industry. “What can any average person expect if they kill the mayor in front of his family, in front of thousands of people? We are completely at the mercy of the criminals.”

    It is a frequently voiced viewpoint that meshes with President Trump’s comments that cartels exercise “total control” in Mexico — a charge denied by Sheinbaum, though others say the breakdown in Michoacán exemplifies a broader lack of control.

    Uruapan “has become a mirror of the country, a microcosm where the ability to govern goes off the tracks, [and] fear substitutes for the state,” Denise Dresser, a political analyst, told Aristegui Noticias news outlet.

    Manzo, an independent, broke with Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena party more than a year ago and charged that the central government had ignored his pleas for additional police firepower and security funding to confront organized crime.

    Following the mayor’s slaying, Sheinbaum ruled out a return to the militaristic War on Drugs, which cost tens of thousands of lives and, according to Sheinbaum and other critics, did little to halt drug trafficking.

    Police officers stand guard as protesters demonstrate against the assassination of Uruapan's mayor

    Police officers stand guard as protesters demonstrate against the assassination of Uruapan’s mayor at the Government Palace in Morelia, Mexico, on Nov. 3. The Mexican government reported Nov. 2 that the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, who was killed the previous night during a public event in the western state of Michoacan, had been under official protection since December.

    (Jordi Lebrija / AFP via Getty Images)

    Manzo was the latest of scores of Mexican mayors and local officials assassinated in recent years, as cartels seek to control turf, trafficking routes, police departments and municipal budgets, while also bolstering extortion schemes and other rackets. Manzo’s death stood out because of his provocative media presence, as he demanded that authorities beat criminals into submission — or kill them.

    “In many places criminal groups control the police chiefs, the local treasuries, the mayors,” noted Víctor Manuel Sánchez, a professor at the Autonomous University of Coahuila. “Then there are mayors like Carlos Manzo who seek to break this circle — and they end up dead.”

    Sheinbaum assailed opposition critics who have blamed what they call her lax policies for the killing. She condemned the “vile” and “cowardly” attack on Manzo, and vowed to bring the killers to justice.

    The 17-year-old gunman who fatally shot Manzo was killed at the scene, according to police, who say two other suspects were arrested. Authorities call the operation a well-planned cartel hit, though there has been no official confirmation of which of the many mobs operating in the area was responsible. Also still unclear is the motive.

    In the wake of the mayor’s killing, the president is unveiling a “Plan Michoacán” in a bid to improve security. Many are skeptical.

    “It’s the latest of many such plans,” noted Tirado of the Iberoamerican University. “None have worked.”

    Taking over as mayor of Uruapan was Grecia Quiroz, the widow of Manzo, who vowed to continue her husband’s fight against cartels. As Quiroz lifted her right hand last week to take the oath of office, she cradled her husband’s trademark white hat in her left arm.

    “This hat,” declared the new mayor, “has an unstoppable force.”

    White hats have been a common sight at demonstrations denouncing his death, and a white hat graced Manzo’s coffin at his funeral.

    His widow’s well-choreographed swearing-in amid extra-tight security did little to alter the predominant mood of anguish and gloom in Uruapan. Hope is a commodity in short supply for the town’s despondent and fearful residents.

    “It’s the narcos who run things here, not the mayor, not the president,” said Martínez, the shop owner. “Carlos Manzo only wanted to protect his people. And look what happened to him.”

    Times staff writer Kate Linthicum and special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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    Patrick J. McDonnell

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  • Video: Train plows into truck carrying thousands of pears

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    After a speeding train collided with a semi-truck carrying pears in the Netherlands, authorities have released video of the incident to “raise awareness and improve behavior.”Jeremy Roth for CNN’s “Take a Look at This (TALAT)” reports that authorities are using the truck driver’s ill-timed hesitation as a cautionary tale about safety at railroad crossings.The train’s collision with the truck’s cargo trailer sent thousands of pears flying across the scene.See the TALAT video in the player above, and learn what happened when a bear got trapped in an SUV in ColoradoVideo released by Pro Rail shows the truck approaching the crossing, pausing, and then reversing as safety arms closed around it.The driver appeared unsure of what to do and attempted to move just as the commuter train bore down. Pro Rail reported minor injuries and shared the video on social media. They advised drivers to move through lowered safety arms if they become stuck.

    (Video: CNN, PRO RAIL, TMX, LARIMER COUNTY SD, Pro Rail/TMX via CNN Newsource) —

    After a speeding train collided with a semi-truck carrying pears in the Netherlands, authorities have released video of the incident to “raise awareness and improve behavior.”

    Jeremy Roth for CNN’s “Take a Look at This (TALAT)” reports that authorities are using the truck driver’s ill-timed hesitation as a cautionary tale about safety at railroad crossings.

    The train’s collision with the truck’s cargo trailer sent thousands of pears flying across the scene.

    See the TALAT video in the player above, and learn what happened when a bear got trapped in an SUV in Colorado

    Video released by Pro Rail shows the truck approaching the crossing, pausing, and then reversing as safety arms closed around it.

    The driver appeared unsure of what to do and attempted to move just as the commuter train bore down.

    Pro Rail reported minor injuries and shared the video on social media. They advised drivers to move through lowered safety arms if they become stuck.

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  • FBI searches Melodee Buzzard’s home in case of the missing Santa Barbara girl

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    The search for 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard took a new turn on Thursday when the FBI searched the girl’s Santa Barbara County home weeks after she was reported missing.

    Detectives escorted the girl’s mother, Ashlee Buzzard, off the property to another location “that would not interfere with their ability to conduct a thorough search,” the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said.

    Along with the search at the home in the 500 block of Mars Avenue, authorities also searched a storage locker and the rental car that the girl was last seen in. Authorities said Melodee was missing on Oct. 14 after a prolonged absence from her school. Officials believe she was last seen as recently as Oct. 7 and may have been driven to Nebraska by her mother, the Sheriff’s Office said.

    Sheriff’s detectives and FBI agents served a search warrant at the Buzzard home where a makeshift memorial on the sidewalk includes a picture of the curly haired girl.

    “We appreciate the FBI’s assistance in today’s searches,” Lt. Chris Gotschall from the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “In cases like this, every detail matters and it is invaluable to have additional resources and specialized expertise. Collaboration with our federal partners allows us to ensure we’re using every available tool to help bring resolution to this case.”

    The Lompoc School District contacted the Sheriff’s Office to report the girl’s prolonged absence from her independent study program Oct. 14. Authorities then visited her home that day, but Melodee was nowhere to be seen and Buzzard refused to cooperate with their investigation, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

    Relatives on the girl’s father’s side of the family said they have not seen the girl in years.

    “She hasn’t let us see her for a few years,” Melodee’s aunt Bridgett Truitt told local news station KEYT. “And all of us have tried. But we never stopped thinking about her or loving her or praying for her.”

    Local authorities were unable to confirm any sightings of the girl within the last year. The FBI joined the investigation four days after her school district reported her absence.

    Melodee is described as 4 feet 6 inches tall, weighing about 60 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.

    Staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.

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    Nathan Solis

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  • OHA Launches ‘Move Oregon Health Forward’ Pledge, Names Champions Advancing Health Equity Across The State – KXL

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    SALEM, Ore. — The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has announced a group of statewide “Champions” for its Oregon Health Forward initiative and launched a new Move Oregon Health Forward Pledge, inviting organizations across sectors to publicly commit to advancing health equity and wellbeing for all Oregonians.

    The initiative is part of OHA’s 2030 strategic goal to build a “whole of society” approach to health — encouraging collaboration between public agencies, businesses, education, and community organizations to address health disparities and strengthen community wellbeing.

    “Now more than ever, it is the responsibility of all of us who care about health and wellbeing in Oregon to demonstrate our commitment,” said OHA Director Sejal Hathi, M.D., MBA. “I hope others see these actions and ask what their organizations can do to help all Oregonians achieve their full potential for health.”

    Champions Leading the Way

    OHA recognized eight inaugural Champions for their leadership and tangible commitments to the effort:

    • Marin Arreola, President, Advanced Economic Solutions Inc. — expanding access to equitable behavioral health services through workforce development and culturally responsive care.

    • Julia Banks, Senior Vice President, Wells Fargo — pledging $250,000 to support housing stability and help renters avoid eviction.

    • Dr. Adrien Bennings, President, Portland Community College — advancing a Behavioral Health Career Pathway to diversify Oregon’s behavioral health workforce.

    • David Drinkward, President & CEO, Hoffman Construction Company — implementing a Recovery Ready Workplace substance use prevention program for construction workers.

    • Clarissa Etter-Smith, Executive Director, Genentech — expanding STEM opportunities for underrepresented youth and improving patient access to care through inclusive clinical trials and advocacy partnerships.

    • Peggy Maguire, President, Cambia Health Foundation — committing $200,000 in 2025 to support whole-person primary care models and early interventions for families.

    • Gustavo Morales, Executive Director, Euvalcree — strengthening economic development and health equity in Eastern Oregon through technical assistance for local organizations.

    • Dr. Jayathi Murty, President, Oregon State University — investing in rural health programs, chronic disease prevention, and student placements in underserved communities.

    The Move Oregon Health Forward Pledge

    The new pledge calls on organizations statewide to sign on and commit to five core principles:

    1. Hold firm: Stay the course in advancing community health, even amid uncertainty.

    2. Act where we can: Take steps—large or small—to improve wellbeing among employees and communities.

    3. Consider health in decision-making: Evaluate how policies and budgets affect Oregonians’ ability to live well.

    4. Support solutions: Use influence and resources to help more people thrive.

    5. Stand together: Join a growing network of partners committed to a healthier Oregon.

    Organizations that sign the pledge or make new commitments will be recognized by OHA and honored at an end-of-year celebration.

    The early phase of Oregon Health Forward was supported by the CDC Foundation, which mobilizes private-sector resources to strengthen the nation’s public health system.

    For more information or to sign the pledge, click here.

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    Jordan Vawter

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  • ICE officials replaced with Border Patrol, cementing hard tactics that originated in California

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is initiating a leadership shakeup at a dozen or so offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to bring more aggressive enforcement operations across the U.S.

    Some of the outgoing field office directors at ICE are anticipated to be replaced with leaders from Customs and Border Protection, according to news reports. Among the leaders targeted for replacement are Los Angeles Field Office Director Ernesto Santacruz and San Diego Field Office Director Patrick Divver, the Washington Examiner reported Monday.

    The stepped up role of Border Patrol leaders in interior enforcement — which has historically been ICE territory — marks an evolution of tactics that originated in California.

    In late December, Gregory Bovino, who heads the Border Patrol’s El Centro region, led a three-day raid in rural Kern County, nabbing day laborers more than 300 miles from his typical territory. Former Biden administration officials said Bovino had gone “rogue” and that no agency leaders knew about the operation beforehand.

    Bovino leveraged the spectacle to become the on-the-ground point person for the Trump Administration’s signature issue.

    The three-decade veteran of Border Patrol, who has used slick social media videos to promote the agency’s heavy-handed tactics, brought militarized operations once primarily used at the border into America’s largest cities.

    In Los Angeles this summer, contingents of heavily armed, masked agents began chasing down and arresting day laborers, street vendors and car wash workers. Tensions grew as the administration ordered in the National Guard.

    The efforts seem to have become more aggressive after a Supreme Court order allowed authorities to stop people based on factors such as race or ethnicity, employment and speaking Spanish.

    Bovino moved operations to Chicago and escalated his approach. Immigration agents launched an overnight raid in a crowded apartment, shot gas into crowds of protesters and fatally shot one man.

    Now Bovino is expected to hand-pick some of the replacements at ICE field offices, according to Fox News.

    Tom Wong, who directs the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego, said the leadership changes are unsurprising, given Bovino’s strategies in Los Angeles and Chicago.

    “The Trump administration is blurring the distinction between Border Patrol and ICE,” he said. “The border is no longer just the external boundaries of the United States, but the border is everywhere.”

    Former Homeland Security officials said the large-scale replacement of executives from one agency with those from another agency is unprecedented.

    The two agencies have similar authorities but very different approaches, said Daniel Altman, former head of internal oversight investigations at U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    ICE officers operate largely inside the country, lean heavily on investigations and typically know when they set out for the day who they are targeting.

    Border Patrol, on the other hand, patrols the borderlands for anyone they encounter and suspect of entering illegally. Amid the rugged terrain and isolation, Border Patrol built a do-it-yourself ethos within the century-old organization, Altman said.

    “Culturally, the Border Patrol prides itself on solving problems, and that means that whatever the current administration needs or wants with respect to immigration enforcement, they’re usually very willing and able to do that,” said Altman.

    White House leadership has not been happy with arrest numbers. Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff who is heading his immigration initiatives, set a goal of 3,000 immigration arrests per day, which the agency has not been able to meet.

    DHS says it expects to deport 600,000 people by January, a figure that includes people who were turned back at the border or at airports.

    Tricia McLaughlin, assistant public affairs secretary for the Homeland Security department, didn’t confirm or deny the changes but described immigration officials as united.

    “Talk about sensationalism,” she said. “Only the media would describe standard agency personnel changes as a ‘massive shakeup.’ If and when we have specific personnel moves to announce, we’ll do that.”

    White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, “The President’s entire team is working in lockstep to implement the President’s policy agenda, and the tremendous results from securing the border to deporting criminal illegal aliens speak for themselves.”

    On Fox News on Tuesday, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the administration is dedicated to achieving record deportations of primarily immigrants with criminal records.

    “As far as personnel changes, that’s under the purview of the Secretary of Homeland Security,” he said. “I’m at the White House working with people like Stephen Miller, one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met, to come up with strategic policies and plans — how to get success, how to maintain success, and how to get the numbers ever higher.”

    Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE and DHS official under the Biden administration, said the personnel moves appear to be an “attempt to migrate a Border Patrol ethos over to ICE.”

    “ICE’s job has historically focused on targeting and enforcing against public safety threats,” she said. “Border Patrol has a much more highly militarized job of securing the border, protecting against transnational crime and drug trafficking and smuggling. That sort of approach doesn’t belong in our cities and is quite dangerous.”

    Fleischaker said it would be difficult to increase deportations, even with Border Patrol leaders at the helm, because of the complexities around securing travel documents and negotiating with countries that are reticent to accept deportees.

    In the meantime, she said, shunting well-liked leaders will sink morale.

    “For the folks who are still there, everybody knows you comply or you risk losing your job,” she said. “Dissent, failure to meet targets or even ask questions aren’t really tolerated.”

    On Tuesday, DHS posted a video montage of Bovino on its Instagram page set to Coldplay’s song “Viva la vida.” The caption read, “WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED.”

    Staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

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    Andrea Castillo, Rachel Uranga

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  • Driver dies, dog survives after vehicle goes over side of Santa Cruz Wharf in high surf

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    A dramatic scene unfolded at the Santa Cruz Wharf over the weekend when a vehicle went off the edge of the pier and into the water, sparking a frantic rescue effort that ended with authorities recovering a body and a dog.

    Witnesses reported seeing the vehicle break through the wooden railing at 9:44 a.m. Sunday. When firefighters arrived, they found the damaged section about two-thirds away from the start of the wharf.

    Visibility was limited and the surf was high — waves were about 12 feet — making it difficult to immediately find the vehicle, officials said.

    After about 10 minutes, the vehicle was spotted resting on its roof in about 30 feet of water, said Santa Cruz Fire Department Battalion Chief Josh Coleman at a news conference Sunday.

    “The victim was brought out of a vehicle, upside down, at the bottom of the ocean floor, with significant swelling, in 33 minutes,” Coleman said.

    The victim was pronounced dead at a local hospital. A dog was also pulled from the water and survived, officials said.

    The emergency response included 13 lifeguards, two jet skis and two boats.

    Emergency divers remained in the water for an hour to search the water in case there were any additional passengers in the vehicle, but none were found, authorities said.

    Authorities did not provide any detail about a potential cause for the incident or estimate on how fast the vehicle was traveling before it went off the edge of the wharf. The incident remains under investigation by the Santa Cruz Police Department.

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    Nathan Solis

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  • ‘Make or break moment’: Supreme Court is set to rule on Trump using troops in U.S. cities

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    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.

    A decision could come at any time.

    And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

    Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.

    The Chicago-based judges said Trump exaggerated the threat faced by federal immigration agents and had equated “protests with riots.”

    Trump administration lawyers, however, said these judges had no authority to second-guess the president. The power to deploy the National Guard “is committed to his exclusive discretion by law,” they asserted in their appeal in Trump vs. Illinois.

    That broad claim of executive power might win favor with the court’s conservatives.

    Administration lawyers told the court that the National Guard would “defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence” in response to aggressive immigration enforcement, but it would not carry out ordinary policing.

    Yet Trump has repeatedly threatened to send U.S. troops to San Francisco and other Democratic-led cities to carry out ordinary law enforcement.

    When he sent 4,000 Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, their mission was to protect federal buildings from protesters. But state officials said troops went beyond that and were used to carry out a show in force in MacArthur Park in July.

    Newsom, Bonta warn of dangers

    That’s why legal experts and Democratic officials are sounding an alarm.

    “Trump v. Illinois is a make-or-break moment for this court,” said Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, a frequent critic of the court’s pro-Trump emergency orders. “For the Supreme Court to issue a ruling that allows the president to send troops into our cities based upon contrived (or even government-provoked) facts … would be a terrible precedent for the court to set not just for what it would allow President Trump to do now but for even more grossly tyrannical conduct.”

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a brief in the Chicago case warning of the danger ahead.

    “On June 7, for the first time in our nation’s history, the President invoked [the Militia Act of 1903] to federalize a State’s National Guard over the objections of the State’s Governor. Since that time, it has become clear that the federal government’s actions in Southern California earlier this summer were just the opening salvo in an effort to transform the role of the military in American society,” their brief said.

    “At no prior point in our history has the President used the military this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate. … What the federal government seeks is a standing army, drawn from state militias, deployed at the direction of the President on a nationwide basis, for civilian law enforcement purposes, for an indefinite period of time.”

    Conservatives cite civil rights examples

    Conservatives counter that Trump is seeking to enforce federal law in the face of strong resistance and non-cooperation at times from local officials.

    “Portland and Chicago have seen violent protests outside of federal buildings, attacks on ICE and DHS agents, and organized efforts to block the enforcement of immigration law,” said UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. “Although local officials have raised cries of a federal ‘occupation’ and ‘dictatorship,’ the Constitution places on the president the duty to ‘take care that the laws are faithfully executed.’”

    He noted that presidents in the past “used these same authorities to desegregate southern schools in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education and to protect civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Those who cheer those interventions cannot now deny the same constitutional authority when it is exercised by a president they oppose,” he said.

    The legal battle so far has sidestepped Trump’s broadest claims of unchecked power, but focused instead on whether he is acting in line with the laws adopted by Congress.

    The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel Invasions.”

    Beginning in 1903, Congress said that “the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary” if he faces “danger of invasion by a foreign nation … danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States or the president is unable to execute the laws of the United States.”

    While Trump administration lawyers claim he faces a “rebellion,” the legal dispute has focused on whether he is “unable to execute the laws.”

    Lower courts have blocked deployments

    Federal district judges in Portland and Chicago blocked Trump’s deployments after ruling that protesters had not prevented U.S. immigration agents from doing their jobs.

    Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, described the administration’s description of “war-ravaged” Portland as “untethered to the facts.”

    In Chicago, Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee, said that “political opposition is not rebellion.”

    But the two appeals courts — the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and the 7th Circuit in Chicago — handed down opposite decisions.

    A panel of the 9th Circuit said judges must defer to the president’s assessment of the danger faced by immigration agents. Applying that standard, the appeals court by a 2-1 vote said the National Guard deployment in Portland may proceed.

    But a panel of the 7th Circuit in Chicago agreed with Perry.

    “The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even giving substantial deference to his assertions,” they said in a 3-0 ruling last week. “Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.”

    Attorneys for Illinois and Chicago agreed and urged the court to turn down Trump’s appeal.

    “There is no basis for claiming the President is ‘unable’ to ‘execute’ federal law in Illinois,” they said. “Federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks.”

    U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, shown at his confirmation hearing in February, said the federal judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the Trump administration’s deployment of troops.

    (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

    Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer presented a dramatically different account in his appeal.

    “On October 4, the President determined that the situation in Chicago had become unsustainably dangerous for federal agents, who now risk their lives to carry out basic law enforcement functions,” he wrote. “The President deployed the federalized Guardsmen to Illinois to protect federal officers and federal property.”

    He disputed the idea that agents faced just peaceful protests.

    “On multiple occasions, federal officers have also been hit and punched by protestors at the Broadview facility. The physical altercations became more significant and the clashes more violent as the size of the crowds swelled throughout September,” Sauer wrote. “Rioters have targeted federal officers with fireworks and have thrown bottles, rocks, and tear gas at them. More than 30 [DHS] officers have been injured during the assaults on federal law enforcement at the Broadview facility alone, resulting in multiple hospitalizations.”

    He said the judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the deployment, and he urged the court to cast aside their rulings.

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    David G. Savage

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  • 9th Circuit rethinks ruling that bolstered Trump’s authority to deploy troops

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    Three of the country’s most powerful judges met in Pasadena on Wednesday for a rare conclave that could rewrite the legal framework for President Trump’s expansive deployment of troops to cities across the United States.

    The move to flood Los Angeles with thousands of federalized soldiers over the objection of state and local leaders shocked the country back in June. Five months later, such military interventions have become almost routine.

    But whether the deployments can expand — and how long they can continue — relies on a novel reading of an obscure subsection of the U.S. code that determines the president’s ability to dispatch the National Guard and federal service members. That code has been under heated debate in courts across the country.

    Virtually all of those cases have turned on the 9th Circuit’s decision in June. The judges found that the law in question requires “a great level of deference” to the president to decide when protest flashes into rebellion, and whether boots on the ground are warranted in response.

    On Wednesday, the same three judge panel — Jennifer Sung of Portland, Eric D. Miller of Seattle and Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu — took the rare move of reviewing it, signaling a willingness to dramatically rewrite the terms of engagement that have underpinned Trump’s deployments.

    “I guess the question is, why is a couple of hundred people engaging in disorderly conduct and throwing things at a building over the course of two days of comparable severity of a rebellion?” said Miller, who was appointed to the bench in Trump’s first term. “Violence is used to thwart the enforcement of federal law all the time. This happens every day.”

    The question he posed has riven the judicial system, splitting district judges from appellate panels and the Pacific Coast from the Midwest. Some of Trump’s judicial appointees have broken sharply with their colleagues on the matter, including on the 9th Circuit. Miller and Bennett appear at odds with Ryan D. Nelson and Bridget S. Bade, who expanded on the court’s June ruling in a decision Monday that allowed federalized troops to deploy in Oregon.

    Most agreethat the statute itself is esoteric, vague and untested. Unlike the Insurrection Act, which generations of presidents have used to quell spasms of violent domestic unrest, the law Trump invoked has almost no historical footprint, and little precedent to define it.

    “It’s only been used once in the history of our country since it was enacted 122 years ago,” California Solicitor General Samuel Harbourt told the court Wednesday.

    Attorneys from both sides have turned to legal dictionaries to define the word “rebellion” in their favor, because the statute itself offers no clues.

    “Defendants have not put forward a credible understanding of the term ‘rebellion’ in this litigation,” Harbourt told the panel Wednesday. “We’re continuing to see defendants rely on this interpretation across the country and we’re concerned that the breadth of the definition the government has relied on … includes any form of resistance.”

    The wiggle room has left courts to lock horns over the most basic facts before them — including whether what the president claims must be provably true.

    In the Oregon case, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland, another Trump appointee, called the president’s assertions about a rebellion there “untethered to the facts.”

    But a separate 9th Circuit panel overruled her, finding the law “does not limit the facts and circumstances that the President may consider” when deciding whether to use soldiers domestically.

    “The President has the authority to identify and weigh the relevant facts,” the court wrote in its Monday decision.

    Nelson went further, calling the president’s decision “absolute.”

    Upon further review, Sung signaled a shift to the opposite interpretation.

    “The court says when the statute gives a discretionary power, that is based on certain facts,” she said. “I don’t see the court saying that the underlying decision of whether the factual basis exists is inherently discretionary.”

    That sounded much more like the Midwest’s 7th Circuit decision in the Chicago case, which found that nothing in the statute “makes the President the sole judge of whether these preconditions exist.”

    “Political opposition is not rebellion,” the 7th Circuit judges wrote. “A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protestors advocate for myriad legal or policy changes, are well organized, call for significant changes to the structure of the U.S. government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms as the law currently allows.”

    The Trump administration’s appeal of that decision is currently before the Supreme Court on the emergency docket.

    But experts said even a high court ruling in that case may not dictate what can happen in California — or in New York, for that matter. Even if the justices ruled against the administration, Trump could choose to invoke the Insurrection Act or another law to justify his next moves, an option that he and other officials have repeatedly floated in recent weeks.

    The administration has signaled its desire to expand on the power it already enjoys, telling the court Wednesday there was no limit to where troops could be deployed or how long they could remain in the president’s service once he had taken control of them.

    “Would it be your view that no matter how much conditions on the ground changed, there would be no ability of the district court or review — in a month, six months, a year, five years — to review whether the conditions still support [deployment]?”

    “Yes,” McArthur said.

    Bennett pressed the point, asking whether under the current law the militia George Washington federalized to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 could “stay called up forever” — a position the government again affirmed.

    “There’s not a word in the statute that talks about how long they can remain in federal service,” McArthur said. “The president’s determination of whether the exigency has arisen, that decision is vested in his sole and exclusive discretion.”

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    Sonja Sharp

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  • 4 found dead inside Fullerton home after friend reported mass drug overdose, police say

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    Fullerton police said they discovered the bodies of four people inside a residence after a friend reported they had overdosed and were not breathing.

    Authorities said they were called to an apartment in the 100 block of Wilshire Avenue at 11:01 a.m. on Tuesday and the bodies were discovered.

    “There is no immediate threat to the public,” the police said in a statement.

    Two women console each other after learning of the deaths of four softball teammates.

    (KTLA-TV Channel 5)

    Detectives have launched a death investigation. Authorities have not confirmed the identities of the deceased, but a friend of the group told KTLA-TV Channel 5 that they were all part of the same softball team.

    Police did not confirm the deaths were a result of a drug overdose and could not immediately be reached for additional comment on Wednesday.

    But drug use has become a growing concern in the county in recent years.

    In Orange County, the rate of death due to opioid overdose nearly tripled from 2017 to 2021, from 7.9 deaths per 100,000 to 23.2. The largest increase occurred during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the overdose rate rising 88% between 2019 and 2020, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.

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    Hannah Fry

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  • Man taken into custody after driving his car into security gate outside White House, authorities say

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    Man taken into custody after driving his car into security gate outside White House, authorities say

    Updated: 12:48 AM EDT Oct 22, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity, or any potential motivation.

    WASHINGTON —

    A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.

    The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.

    Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.

    Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity, or any potential motivation.

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  • Trump has power to command National Guard troops in Oregon, 9th Circuit rules

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    The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed command of Oregon National Guard troops to the president Monday, further raising the stakes in the ongoing multifront judicial battle over military deployments to cities across the U.S.

    A three-judge appellate panel — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — found that the law “does not limit the facts and circumstances that the President may consider” when deciding whether to dispatch soldiers domestically.

    The judges found that when ordering a deployment, “The President has the authority to identify and weigh the relevant facts.”

    The ruling was a stark contrast to a lower-court judge’s finding earlier this month.

    U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland previously called the president’s justification for federalizing Oregon troops “simply untethered to the facts” in her Oct. 4 temporary restraining order.

    The appellate judges said they were guided by a precedent set in the 9th Circuit this summer, when California tried and failed to wrest back control of federalized soldiers in and around Los Angeles.

    Another proceeding in California’s case is scheduled before the appellate court this week and the court’s earlier decision could be reversed. At the same time, an almost identical deployment in Illinois is under review by the Supreme Court.

    For now, exactly which troops can deploy in Portland remains bitterly contested in U.S. District court, where Immergut blocked the administration from flooding Portland with Guardsmen from California.

    The issue is likely to be decided by Supreme Court later this fall.

    The judges who heard the Oregon case outlined the dueling legal theories in their opinions. The two members of the bench who backed Trump’s authority over the troops argued the law is straightforward.

    “The President’s decision in this area is absolute,” wrote Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee, in a concurrence arguing that the court had overstepped its bounds in taking the case at all.

    “Reasonable minds will disagree about the propriety of the President’s National Guard deployment in Portland,” Nelson wrote. “But federal courts are not the panacea to cure that disagreement—the political process is (at least under current Supreme Court precedent).”

    Susan P. Graber, a Clinton appointee, said the appellate court had veered into parody.

    “Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” she wrote in her stinging dissent.

    But the stakes of sending armed soldiers to American cities based on little more than “propaganda” are far higher, she wrote.

    “I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur,” Graber wrote. “Above all, I ask those who are watching this case unfold to retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.”

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    Sonja Sharp

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  • Ceasefire unravels: Gaza sees deadly strikes; aid flows suspended

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    JERUSALEM  — Israel launched airstrikes Sunday in Gaza after what it said was a Hamas attack on its forces, adding to the two-year-old war’s death toll and rattling a delicate U.S.-brokered ceasefire that had brought a measure of relief to the beleaguered enclave.

    The day descended into finger-pointing as each side accused the other of violating the pact that President Trump, just six days earlier, had said would usher in “a golden age” of peace for the Middle East.

    The ceasefire compelled Israel to end its months-long blockade of the enclave, but Israel said Sunday that it once again halted aid flows, potentially plunging Gaza once more into famine even as aid groups were clamoring for additional supplies to be trucked in.

    Sunday’s strikes constituted the strongest challenge yet to an uneasy truce that came into place Oct. 10 after intense diplomacy — and no little pressure on the belligerents — from Trump and a raft of Arabic and Islamic nations to stop fighting and bring an end to a war that has killed tens of thousands and all but flattened much of Gaza.

    War!

    — Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister

    Live broadcasts Sunday showed blooms of smoke rising across the Gaza Strip, as Israeli warplanes hit multiple areas in Rafah, Khan Yunis and Deir al Balah, killing at least 15 people, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said one one soldier and one officer were killed.

    In a statement, the Israeli military accused the militant group Hamas of firing an anti-tank missile at troops in southern Gaza, calling the attack “a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.” The military added that it responded “to eliminate the threat and dismantle tunnel shafts and military structures used for terrorist activity.”

    Later, reports of dozens of attacks by Hamas came in from local media.

    A wounded Palestinian child is brought to Nasser Hospital after an Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Oct. 19, 2025.

    (Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press)

    “Hamas will pay a heavy price for every shot and every breach of the ceasefire,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “If the message is not understood, our response will become increasingly severe.”

    The Israel Defense Forces said targets included “weapons storage facilities, infrastructure used for terrorist activity, firing posts, terrorist cells, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites. The IDF also struck and dismantled [nearly 4 miles] of underground terrorist infrastructure, using over 120 munitions.”

    Flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes

    — Izzat al-Risheq, senior Hamas official, on Israeli strikes

    Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, denied any connection to the violence in Rafah, saying that it was “unaware of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area” and that it hadn’t had contact with any of its fighters since March, when Israel broke an earlier ceasefire.

    Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq insisted that it was Israel — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — that was continuing to violate the agreement and fabricating “flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes.”

    “Netanyahu’s attempts to evade and disavow his commitments come under pressure from his extremist terrorist coalition, in an attempt to evade his responsibilities to the mediators and guarantors,” Al-Risheq wrote on his Telegram messaging app channel.

    Hamas says Israel has violated the ceasefire 47 times, killing 38 Palestinians and injuring 143 since the truce began Oct. 10.

    Two men with dark beards, with hands raised as they lean out of a rear vehicle window, are greeted by a crowd of people

    Israeli twins Gali and Ziv Berman, who were recently released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, are welcomed home as they return from the hospital to Beit Guvrin, Israel, on Oct. 19, 2025.

    (Ariel Schalit / Associated Press)

    In the days since, Hamas has handed over 20 living hostages kidnapped in its operation on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war; in exchange, Israel released more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas also returned the bodies of 12 other hostages who died in captivity, and said it was still searching for the remains of 16 others.

    The Qassam Brigades said in a later statement Sunday that it had recovered another body and that it would deliver it to Israel that day “if field conditions permit.” It added that any escalation “will hinder the search, excavation, and recovery of the bodies.”

    Israel still controls just over half of Gaza’s territory.

    The violence Sunday sparked calls from Israeli leaders across the political spectrum for a return to the fight against Hamas. A Netanyahu rival — Israeli politician Benny Gantz — said that “all options must be on the table.”

    Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist minister in Netanyahu’s government who was against any truce with Hamas, said fighting should resume “with maximum force.” His right-wing ally, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted a single word: “War!”

    Details on what had prompted the Israeli onslaught remained scant. The Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported the incident began at 10 a.m., when Hamas fighters emerged from a tunnel and fired an anti-tank missile at an engineering vehicle. That was followed by sniper fire at another vehicle.

    But one Palestinian channel on Telegram seen as close to Hamas said the target was a Palestinian militia that had worked throughout the war with Israel.

    The head of that militia, Yasser Abu Shabab, did not respond to questions sent to the militia’s email address.

    People, some kneeling, grieve before black body bags

    Relatives grieve as the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire are brought to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza, Oct. 19, 2025.

    (Abdel Kareem Hana / Associated Press)

    The violence comes a day after the State Department said in a rare weekend statement that there were “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.”

    The State Department warned that “should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire.”

    In response, Hamas dismissed what it called “U.S. allegations” as “false” and said that they “fully align with the misleading Israeli propaganda.” It accused Israel of supporting “criminal gangs” that it said were assaulting Palestinian civilians.

    “Criminal gangs” was an apparent reference to militias competing with Hamas for control of Gaza. Last week, video emerged of what was said to be Hamas operatives executing accused collaborators in Gaza.

    Last week, Trump noted the internal conflicts in Gaza when he repeated his demand that Hamas abide by a key part of the 20-point peace pact: that it disarm. If not, Trump warned Hamas, “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”

    The war began after Hamas-led militants blitzed into southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people, two-thirds of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and kidnapped about 250 others.

    Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which says the majority are women and children and which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

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    Nabih Bulos

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  • Commentary: Dinosaurs, unicorns and ‘raging grannies’ — but no kings — in Sacramento

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    SACRAMENTO — Thousands of rebels gathered outside the state Capitol on Saturday, mindlessly trampling the lawn in their Hokas, even as the autumnal sun in Sacramento forced them to strip off their protective puffer vests.

    With chants of “No Kings,” many of these chaotic protesters spilled off sidewalks into the street, as if curbs held no power of containment, no meaning in their anarchist hearts.

    Clearly, the social order has broken. Where would it end, this reporter wondered. Would they next be demanding passersby honk? Could they dare offer fiery speeches?

    The answer came all too soon, when within minutes, I spotted clear evidence of the organized anti-fascist underground that U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has been warning us about.

    The “Raging Grannies of Sacramento” had set up a stage, and were testing microphones in advance of bombarding the crowd with song. These women wore coordinating aprons! They had printed signs — signs with QR codes. If grandmothers who know how to use a QR code aren’t dangerous, I don’t know who it is.

    Ellen Schwartz, 82, told me this Canadian-founded group operates without recognized leaders — an “international free-form group of gaggles of grannies,” is how she put it, and I wrote it all down for Kash Patel.

    Within moments, they had robbed Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews of their most famous duet: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” mutilating it into “super callous fragile racist narcissistic POTUS.”

    Ellen Schwartz, 82, is a member of the “Raging Grannies,” a group that protested at the “No Kings” rally in Sacramento on Saturday.

    (Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

    Not to be outdone by the Silent Generation, 2-year-old Rhea also showed up, first clinging to her mom, then toddling around on her own as if she owned the place. This is a kid to keep an eye on.

    Since Rhea cannot yet speak about her political beliefs, her parents gave me some insight into why she was there.

    “I’m not sure if we’ll still have a civilization that allows protest very long, so I want her to at least have a memory of it,” said her dad, Neonn, who asked that their last names not be used. Like many Americans, he’s a bit hesitant to draw the eye of authority.

    Kara, Rhea’s mom, had a more hopeful outlook.

    “America is the people, so for me I want to keep bringing her here so that she knows she is part of something bigger: peace and justice,” she said, before walking off to see the dinosaurs.

    Kara holds her 2-year-old daughter, Rhea, at the rally in Sacramento.

    Kara holds her 2-year-old daughter, Rhea, at the rally in Sacramento.

    (Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

    Dinosaurs, that’s right. And tigers. And roosters. And unicorns. Even a cow hugging a chipmunk, which I believe is now illegal in most of the South.

    Yes, folks, the Portland frog has started something. The place was full of un-human participants acting like animals — dancing with abandon, stomping around, saying really mean things about President Trump.

    Meanwhile, the smell of roasting meat was undeniable. People, they were eating the hot dogs! They were eating the grilled onions! There were immigrants everywhere selling the stuff (and it was delicious).

    I spoke to a Tyrannosaurus Rex and asked him why he went Late Cretaceous.

    “If you don’t do something soon, you will have democracy be extinct,” Jim Short told me from inside the suit.

    Two people in dinosaur costumes

    Jim Short, left, and his wife, Patty Short, donned dinosaur costumes at the “No Kings” rally in Sacramento.

    (Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

    His wife, Patty, was ensconced in a coordinating suit, hers brown, his green. Didn’t they worry about being labeled anti-American for being here, as House Speaker Mike Johnson and others have claimed?

    “I’m not afraid,” Patty said. “I’m antifa or a hardened criminal or what’s the other one?”

    “Hamas?” Jim queried. “Or an illegal immigrant?”

    “I think people need more history,” Patty said.

    I agree.

    And the day millions of very average Americans turned out to peacefully protect democracy — again — may be part of it.

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    Anita Chabria

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