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  • Botulism outbreak sickens more than 50 babies and expands to all ByHeart products

    Federal health officials on Wednesday expanded an outbreak of infant botulism tied to recalled ByHeart baby formula to include all illnesses reported since the company began production in March 2022.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said investigators “cannot rule out the possibility that contamination might have affected all ByHeart formula products” ever made.The outbreak now includes at least 51 infants in 19 states. The new case definition includes “any infant with botulism who was exposed to ByHeart formula at any time since the product’s release,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most recent illness was reported on Dec. 1.No deaths have been reported in the outbreak, which was announced Nov. 8.Previously, health officials had said the outbreak included 39 suspected or confirmed cases of infant botulism reported in 18 states since August. That’s when officials at California’s Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program reported a rise in treatment of infants who had consumed ByHeart formula. Another 12 cases were identified with the expanded definition, including two that occurred in the original timeline and 10 that occurred from December 2023 through July 2025.ByHeart, a New York-based manufacturer of organic infant formula founded in 2016, recalled all its products sold in the U.S. on Nov. 11. The company, which accounts for about 1% of the U.S. infant formula market, had been selling about 200,000 cans of the product each month.News that ByHeart products could have been contaminated for years was distressing to Andi Galindo, whose 5-week-old daughter, Rowan, was hospitalized in December 2023 with infant botulism after drinking the formula. Galindo, 36, of Redondo Beach, California, said she insisted on using ByHeart formula to supplement a low supply of breast milk because it was recommended by a lactation consultant as “very natural, very gentle, very good for the babies.”“That’s a hard one,” Galindo said. “If there is proof that there were issues with their manufacturing and their plant all the way back from the beginning, that is a problem and they really need to be held accountable.”Amy Mazziotti, 43, of Burbank, California, said her then-5-month-old son, Hank, fell ill and was treated for botulism in March, weeks after he began drinking ByHeart. Being included in the investigation of the outbreak “feels like a win for all of us,” she said Wednesday.“I’ve known in my gut from the beginning that ByHeart was the reason Hank got sick, and to see that these cases are now part of the investigation brings me to tears — a mix of relief, gratitude and hope that the truth is finally being recognized,” she said.In a statement late Wednesday, ByHeart officials said the company is cooperating with federal officials “to understand the full scope of related cases.”“The new cases reported by CDC and FDA will help inform ByHeart’s investigation as we continue to seek the root cause of the contamination,” the statement said.Lab tests detected contaminationThe FDA sent inspectors last month to ByHeart plants in Allerton, Iowa, and Portland, Oregon, where the formula is produced and packaged. The agency has released no results from those inspections.The company previously reported that tests by an independent laboratory showed that 36 samples from three different lots contained the type of bacteria that can cause infant botulism.“We cannot rule out the risk that all ByHeart formula across all product lots may have been contaminated,” the company wrote on its website last month.Those results and discussions with the FDA led CDC officials to expand the outbreak, according to Dr. Jennifer Cope, a CDC scientist leading the investigation.“It looks like the contamination appeared to persist across all production runs, different lots, different raw material lots,” Cope said. “They couldn’t isolate it to specific lots from a certain time period.”Inspection documents showed that ByHeart had a history of problems with contamination.In 2022, the year ByHeart started making formula, the company recalled five batches of infant formula after a sample at a packaging plant tested positive for a different germ, cronobacter sakazakii. In 2023, the FDA sent a warning letter to the company detailing “areas that still require corrective actions.”A ByHeart plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, was shut down in 2023 just before FDA inspectors found problems with mold, water leaks and insects, documents show.Infant botulism is rareInfant botulism is a rare disease that affects fewer than 200 babies in the U.S. each year. It’s caused when infants ingest botulism bacteria that produce spores that germinate in the intestines, creating a toxin that affects the nervous system. Babies are vulnerable until about age 1 because their gut microbiomes are not mature enough to fight the toxin.Baby formula has previously been linked to sporadic cases of illness, but no known outbreaks of infant botulism tied to powdered formula have previously been confirmed, according to research studies.Symptoms can take up to 30 days to develop and can include constipation, poor feeding, loss of head control, drooping eyelids and a flat facial expression. Babies may feel “floppy” and can have problems swallowing or breathing.The sole treatment for infant botulism is known as BabyBIG, an IV medication made from the pooled blood plasma of adults immunized against botulism. California’s infant botulism program developed the product and is the sole source worldwide.The antibodies provided by BabyBIG are likely most effective for about a month, although they may continue circulating in the child’s system for several months, said Dr. Sharon Nachman, an expert in pediatric infectious disease at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital.“The risk to the infant is ongoing and the family should not be using this formula after it was recalled,” Nachman said in an email.Families of several babies treated for botulism after drinking ByHeart formula have sued the company. Lawsuits filed in federal courts allege that the formula they fed their children was defective and ByHeart was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.

    Federal health officials on Wednesday expanded an outbreak of infant botulism tied to recalled ByHeart baby formula to include all illnesses reported since the company began production in March 2022.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said investigators “cannot rule out the possibility that contamination might have affected all ByHeart formula products” ever made.

    The outbreak now includes at least 51 infants in 19 states. The new case definition includes “any infant with botulism who was exposed to ByHeart formula at any time since the product’s release,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most recent illness was reported on Dec. 1.

    No deaths have been reported in the outbreak, which was announced Nov. 8.

    Previously, health officials had said the outbreak included 39 suspected or confirmed cases of infant botulism reported in 18 states since August. That’s when officials at California’s Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program reported a rise in treatment of infants who had consumed ByHeart formula. Another 12 cases were identified with the expanded definition, including two that occurred in the original timeline and 10 that occurred from December 2023 through July 2025.

    ByHeart, a New York-based manufacturer of organic infant formula founded in 2016, recalled all its products sold in the U.S. on Nov. 11. The company, which accounts for about 1% of the U.S. infant formula market, had been selling about 200,000 cans of the product each month.

    News that ByHeart products could have been contaminated for years was distressing to Andi Galindo, whose 5-week-old daughter, Rowan, was hospitalized in December 2023 with infant botulism after drinking the formula. Galindo, 36, of Redondo Beach, California, said she insisted on using ByHeart formula to supplement a low supply of breast milk because it was recommended by a lactation consultant as “very natural, very gentle, very good for the babies.”

    “That’s a hard one,” Galindo said. “If there is proof that there were issues with their manufacturing and their plant all the way back from the beginning, that is a problem and they really need to be held accountable.”

    Amy Mazziotti, 43, of Burbank, California, said her then-5-month-old son, Hank, fell ill and was treated for botulism in March, weeks after he began drinking ByHeart. Being included in the investigation of the outbreak “feels like a win for all of us,” she said Wednesday.

    “I’ve known in my gut from the beginning that ByHeart was the reason Hank got sick, and to see that these cases are now part of the investigation brings me to tears — a mix of relief, gratitude and hope that the truth is finally being recognized,” she said.

    In a statement late Wednesday, ByHeart officials said the company is cooperating with federal officials “to understand the full scope of related cases.”

    “The new cases reported by CDC and FDA will help inform ByHeart’s investigation as we continue to seek the root cause of the contamination,” the statement said.

    Lab tests detected contamination

    The FDA sent inspectors last month to ByHeart plants in Allerton, Iowa, and Portland, Oregon, where the formula is produced and packaged. The agency has released no results from those inspections.

    The company previously reported that tests by an independent laboratory showed that 36 samples from three different lots contained the type of bacteria that can cause infant botulism.

    “We cannot rule out the risk that all ByHeart formula across all product lots may have been contaminated,” the company wrote on its website last month.

    Those results and discussions with the FDA led CDC officials to expand the outbreak, according to Dr. Jennifer Cope, a CDC scientist leading the investigation.

    “It looks like the contamination appeared to persist across all production runs, different lots, different raw material lots,” Cope said. “They couldn’t isolate it to specific lots from a certain time period.”

    Inspection documents showed that ByHeart had a history of problems with contamination.

    In 2022, the year ByHeart started making formula, the company recalled five batches of infant formula after a sample at a packaging plant tested positive for a different germ, cronobacter sakazakii. In 2023, the FDA sent a warning letter to the company detailing “areas that still require corrective actions.”

    A ByHeart plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, was shut down in 2023 just before FDA inspectors found problems with mold, water leaks and insects, documents show.

    Infant botulism is rare

    Infant botulism is a rare disease that affects fewer than 200 babies in the U.S. each year. It’s caused when infants ingest botulism bacteria that produce spores that germinate in the intestines, creating a toxin that affects the nervous system. Babies are vulnerable until about age 1 because their gut microbiomes are not mature enough to fight the toxin.

    Baby formula has previously been linked to sporadic cases of illness, but no known outbreaks of infant botulism tied to powdered formula have previously been confirmed, according to research studies.

    Symptoms can take up to 30 days to develop and can include constipation, poor feeding, loss of head control, drooping eyelids and a flat facial expression. Babies may feel “floppy” and can have problems swallowing or breathing.

    The sole treatment for infant botulism is known as BabyBIG, an IV medication made from the pooled blood plasma of adults immunized against botulism. California’s infant botulism program developed the product and is the sole source worldwide.

    The antibodies provided by BabyBIG are likely most effective for about a month, although they may continue circulating in the child’s system for several months, said Dr. Sharon Nachman, an expert in pediatric infectious disease at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital.

    “The risk to the infant is ongoing and the family should not be using this formula after it was recalled,” Nachman said in an email.

    Families of several babies treated for botulism after drinking ByHeart formula have sued the company. Lawsuits filed in federal courts allege that the formula they fed their children was defective and ByHeart was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.

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  • Supreme Court poised to strike down Watergate-era campaign finance limits

    WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservatives signaled Tuesday they are likely to rule for Republicans and President Trump by throwing out a Watergate-era limit on campaign funding by political parties.

    The court has repeatedly said campaign money is protected as free speech, and the new ruling could allow parties to support their candidate’s campaigns with help from wealthy donors.

    For the second day in a row, Trump administration lawyers urged the justices to strike down a law passed by Congress. And they appeared to have the support of most of the conservatives.

    The only doubt arose over the question of whether the case was flawed because no current candidate was challenging the limits.

    “The parties are very much weakened,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “This court’s decisions over the years have together reduced the power of political parties, as compared to outside groups, with negative effects on our constitutional democracy.”

    He was referring to rulings that upheld unlimited campaign spending by wealthy donors and so-called super PACs.

    In the Citizens United case of 2010, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and four other conservatives struck down the long-standing limits on campaign spending, including by corporations and unions. They did so on the theory that such spending was “independent” of candidates and was protected as free speech under the 1st Amendment.

    They said the limits on contributions to candidates were not affected. Those limits could be justified because the danger of corruption where money bought political favors. This triggered a new era of ever-larger political spending but most of it was separate from the candidates and the parties.

    Last year, billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $250 million to support Donald Trump’s campaign for reelection. He did so with money spent through political action committees, not directly to Trump or his campaign.

    Meanwhile the campaign funding laws limit contributions to candidates to $3,500.

    Lawyers for the National Republican Senatorial Committee pointed out this trend and told the Supreme Court its decisions had “eroded” the basis for some of the remaining the 1970s limits on campaign funding.

    At issue Tuesday were the limits on “coordinated party spending.” In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress added limits on campaign money that could be given to parties and used to fund their candidates. The current donation limit is $44,000, the lawyers said.

    Washington attorney Noel Francisco, Trump’s solicitor general during his first term, urged the court strike down these limits on grounds they are outdated and violate the freedom of speech.

    “The theory is that they’re needed to prevent an individual donor from laundering a $44,000 donation through the party to a particular candidate in exchange for official action,” he said.

    If a big-money donor hopes to win a favor from a congressional candidate, the “would-be briber would be better off just giving a massive donation to the candidate’s favorite super PAC,” Francisco said.

    The suit heard Tuesday was launched by then-Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and other Republican candidates, and it has continued in his role as vice president and possibly a presidential candidate in 2028.

    Usually, the Justice Department defends federal laws, but in this instance, the Trump administration switched sides and joined the Republicans calling for the party spending limits to be struck down.

    Precedents might have stood in the way.

    In 2001, the Supreme Court had narrowly upheld these limits on the grounds that the party’s direct support was like a contribution, not independent spending. But the deputy solicitor general, Sarah Harris, told the justices Tuesday that the court’s recent decisions have “demolished” that precedent.

    “Parties can’t corrupt candidates, and no evidence suggests donors launder bribes by co-opting parties’ coordinated spending with candidates,” she said.

    Marc Elias, a Democratic attorney, joined the case in the support of the court limits. He said the outcome would have little to do with speech or campaign messages.

    “I think we’re underselling the actual corruption” that could arise, he said. If an individual were to give $1 million to political party while that person has business matter before the House or Senate, he said, it’s plausible that could influence “a deciding or swing vote.”

    The only apparent difficulty for the conservative justices arose over questions of procedure.

    Washington attorney Roman Martinez was asked to defend the law, and he argued that neither Vance nor any other Republicans had legal standing to challenge the limits. Vance was not a current candidate, and he said the case should be dismissed for that reason.

    Some legal observers noted that the limits on parties arose in response to evidence that huge campaign contributions to President Nixon’s reelection came from industry donors seeking government favors.

    “Coordinated spending limits are one of the few remaining checks to curb the influence of wealthy special interests in our elections,” said Omar Noureldin, senior vice president for litigation at Common Cause. “If the Supreme Court dismantles them, party leaders and wealthy donors will be free to pour nearly unlimited money directly into federal campaigns, exactly the kind of corruption these rules were created to stop.”

    Daniel I. Weiner, an elections law expert at the Brennan Center, said the justices were well aware of how striking down these limits could set the stage for further challenges.

    “I was struck by how both sides had to acknowledge that this case has to be weighed not in isolation but as part of a decades-long push to strike down campaign finance rules,” he said. “Those other decisions have had many consequences the court itself failed to anticipate.”

    David G. Savage

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  • Will California’s new K-12 antisemitism law make up for Trump’s civil rights cuts?

    At a time when the federal government is dismantling civil rights protections in K-12 schools, California is expanding them — although some wonder how far the state will go to combat discrimination in schools.

    A new law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, creates an Office of Civil Rights within the California Department of Education. The office will have a staff of at least six, including an antisemitism coordinator, who will educate school districts about the harms of bias and investigate discrimination complaints.

    “I think it’s a good idea and the state of California will pull it off. The risks are small and the possibility for good is large,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “But for it to be successful, it has to have real responsibility and real power.”

    The new law stems from a surge in antisemitic incidents in California last year following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Authored by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), the law is intended to eliminate anti-Jewish and other bias in the classroom and ensure that students of all ethnicities and religions feel protected.

    But the road to Newsom’s desk was not smooth. The bill faced tough opposition from the California Teachers Assn. , the state’s largest teachers union, which argued that the law would limit teachers’ right to free speech by curbing their ability to discuss the conflict in Gaza or other topical issues. The union declined to comment for this article.

    Zbur, who was among the law’s authors, said the new Office of Civil Rights and the antisemitism coordinator are not intended to punish teachers. The idea, he said, is to help schools stamp out bullying, discrimination and other acts targeting specific groups of students.

    “The idea that this law is about policing is hogwash,” Zbur said. “It’s intended to be productive, to provide districts with resources so they can prevent students from being harmed in school.”

    Federal layoffs and closures

    Discrimination has long been illegal in California schools. Individuals who feel they’ve been discriminated against can file complaints with the state’s Civil Rights Department or with their local school district. But much K-12 anti-discrimination enforcement has fallen on the federal government’s Office of Civil Rights. Created in the mid-1960s, the office investigates complaints about a range of issues, such as school segregation, unfair discipline practices and whether students with disabilities or English learners are receiving the services they’re entitled to.

    In March, the Trump administration announced it was laying off nearly half of the U.S. Department of Education workforce and closing numerous branches of the Office of Civil Rights, including the one in California. That’s meant a steep decline in the number of cases and long delays for those the office investigates. In the three months after the Department of Education cuts, for example, the office received nearly 5,000 complaints but investigated only 309.

    On Tuesday, the Department of Education went even further, spinning off some of the agency’s largest responsibilities to other federal departments — including much of the administration of elementary and high school funding. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative vision for the country that so far Trump has followed, calls for the Office of Civil Rights to become part of the Department of Justice and for it to “reject gender ideology and critical race theory.”

    The U.S. Department of Education didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    ‘Cutting off funding, that’s what works’

    California’s new Office of Civil Rights will have a director and several coordinators who will oversee anti-discrimination cases based on race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion. The director and anti-discrimination coordinators will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature, likely after Jan. 1.

    The office will provide schools with materials about preventing discrimination, and work with districts that have been the subject of complaints from students, families or the public. In serious cases, the office will recommend more intensive assistance to the state Department of Education to correct problems. For districts that persistently flout anti-discrimination laws, “the department may use any means necessary to effect compliance,” according to laws already in place. That may include cutting funding for textbooks or other materials found to be discriminatory.

    The office will also submit an annual report to the Legislature on the overall picture of discrimination in schools, including the number of complaints, how they were resolved, and their outcomes.

    But to be successful, the office will have to be nonpartisan, transparent and fair, Orfield said. Cases against a school should include strong evidence, and schools should have the opportunity to defend themselves and appeal a verdict if they believe it was wrongly issued.

    And the office should not shy away from cutting funds to schools that don’t comply, he said. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the federal Office of Civil Rights cut funds to more than 100 schools in the South that refused to desegregate — a move that may have been the only way to force compliance, Orfield said.

    “Cutting off funding, that’s what works,” he said. “Although if you’re going to have sanctions, there must be due process.”

    Photo ops and reports?

    Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation for the public interest law firm Public Counsel, agreed that enforcement will be the key to whether the new office is effective.

    “If the office just issues reports and does photo ops, we don’t need another one of those,” Rosenbaum said. “The issue is whether or not they can enforce these rights across the board.”

    He’d also like to see the office take a more proactive approach instead of only responding to individuals’ complaints. Education itself, he said, is a civil right, and too many students are not receiving the high-quality lessons in safe, well-equipped schools that they’re entitled to.

    Still, he’s happy to see the office get off the ground, particularly in light of the federal cuts to civil rights enforcement.

    “There’s an urgency for California to fill a void,” Rosenbaum said. “It should have happened decades ago, but it’s a good start.”

    Jones is a reporter for CalMatters.

    Carolyn Jones

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  • E-biking teens accused of violently assaulting Hermosa Beach man are arrested

    A video of a gang of teenage e-bikers beating up a man near the Hermosa Beach Pier until one of them yells “he’s dead, he’s dead” sent waves of outrage through the tight-knit coastal community this week.

    On Wednesday, the Hermosa Beach Police Department said it had identified five juveniles involved in the attack. Their ages range from 13 to 15. Two who are accused of being the primary aggressors are under arrest.

    The two teens were booked on suspicion of felony assault at the city jail and will be transported to Juvenile Hall. Their case will be presented to the L.A. County district attorney’s office’s juvenile division for filing consideration, police said.

    The group assaulted a 56-year-old resident about 8 p.m. Friday near 11th Court and Beach Drive, police said. The resident had walked past his intended destination to initiate contact with the youths and did not appear to have been targeted, authorities said.

    Surveillance camera recordings show the teens surrounding the man, knocking him to the ground and then repeatedly punching and kicking him.

    Officers responded to a 911 call for the assault and took the victim to hospital. He was discharged and interviewed by officers Monday. No information has been shared on his condition or injuries.

    In the days after the assault, police spoke with the parents of the teens involved and fielded numerous phone calls, e-mails and videos from the scene submitted by the community as calls for accountability intensified.

    “We know the videos circulating are disturbing,” the department said in a Wednesday statement. “As with all cases, we take this seriously and appreciate the community’s patience while we continue to work on this case. We sincerely thank those who have trusted the process and allowed our team to remain focused on the facts and evidence.”

    The assault was the latest in a string of incidents involving teenagers on e-bikes in the South Bay communities of Manhattan Beach, El Segundo and Redondo Beach. E-biking teens have also been accused of igniting fireworks on the busy Hermosa Beach Pier as well as barreling down streets and assaulting residents.

    The city of Hermosa Beach enacted an emergency ordinance in June 2024 intended to curb dangerous behavior on the motorized bikes. The ordinance requires minors to wear helmets on e-bikes, forbids riding an e-bike under the influence of drugs or alcohol and bans e-bikes on the Greenbelt trail. Juveniles who violate the ordinance can have their e-bikes impounded.

    The Police Department issued 40 e-bike citations this year as of Nov. 13 and has impounded 19 e-bikes since the ordinance was adopted.

    Anyone with additional information regarding the recent assault is asked to contact the Hermosa Beach Police Department at (310) 318-0360.

    Clara Harter

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  • Rep. Swalwell’s suit alleges abuse of power, adds to scrutiny of Trump official’s mortgage probes

    In a fiery rebuttal to allegations he’d criminally misrepresented facts in his mortgage documents, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Tuesday — accusing him of criminally misusing government databases to baselessly target President Trump’s political opponents.

    “Pulte has abused his position by scouring databases at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — two government-sponsored enterprises — for the private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats,” attorneys for Swalwell wrote in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. “He then used those records to concoct fanciful allegations of mortgage fraud, which he referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”

    They said Pulte launched his attack on Swalwell at a particularly inopportune time, just as Swalwell was launching his campaign for California governor.

    Pulte’s attack, Swalwell’s attorneys wrote, “was not only a gross mischaracterization of reality” but “a gross abuse of power that violated the law,” infringing on Swalwell’s free speech rights to criticize the president without fear of reprisal, and violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which they said bars federal officials from “leveraging their access to citizens’ private information as a tool for harming their political opponents.”

    Pulte, the FHFA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

    Pulte has previously defended his work probing mortgage documents of prominent Democrats, saying no one is above the law. His referrals have exclusively targeted Democrats, despite reporting on Republicans taking similar actions on their mortgages.

    Swalwell’s lawsuit is the latest counterpunch to Pulte’s campaign, and part of mounting scrutiny over its unprecedented nature and unorthodox methods — not just from targets of his probes but from other investigators, too, according to one witness.

    In addition to Swalwell, Pulte has referred mortgage fraud allegations to the Justice Department against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who have all denied wrongdoing and suggested the allegations amount to little more than political retribution.

    James was criminally charged by an inexperienced, loyalist federal prosecutor specially appointed by Trump in Virginia, though a judge has since thrown out that case on the grounds that the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed. The judge also threw out a case against former FBI Director James Comey, another Trump opponent.

    Cook’s attorneys slammed Pulte in a letter to the Justice Department, writing that his “decision to use the FHFA to selectively — and publicly — investigate and target the President’s designated political enemies gives rise to the unmistakable impression that he has been improperly coordinating with the White House to manufacture flimsy predicates to launch these probes.”

    Schiff also has lambasted Trump and Pulte for their targeting of him and other Democrats, and cheered the tossing of the cases against James and Comey, calling it “a triumph of the rule of law.”

    In recent days, federal prosecutors in Maryland — where Schiff’s case is being investigated — have also started asking questions about the actions of Pulte and other Trump officials, according to Christine Bish, a Sacramento-area real estate agent and Republican congressional candidate who was summoned to Maryland to answer questions in the matter last week.

    Pulte has alleged that Schiff broke the law by claiming primary residence for mortgages in both Maryland and California. Schiff has said he never broke any law and was always forthcoming with his mortgage lenders.

    Bish has been investigating Schiff’s mortgage records since 2020, and had repeatedly submitted documents about Schiff to the federal government — first to the Office of Congressional Ethics, then earlier this year to an FHFA tip line and to the FBI, she told The Times.

    When Trump subsequently posted one of Schiff’s mortgage documents to his Truth Social platform, Bish said she believed it was one she had submitted to the FHFA and FBI, because it was highlighted exactly as she had highlighted it. Then, she saw she had missed a call from Pulte, and was later asked by Pulte’s staff to email Pulte “the full file” she had worked up on Schiff.

    “They wanted to make sure that I had sent the whole file,” Bish said.

    Bish said she was subsequently interviewed via Google Meet on Oct. 22 by someone from the FHFA inspector general’s office and an FBI agent. She then got a subpoena in the mail that she interpreted as requiring her to be in Maryland last week. There, she was interviewed again, for about an hour, by the same official from the inspector general’s office and another FBI agent, she said — and was surprised their questions seemed more focused on her communications with people in the federal government than on Schiff.

    “They wanted to know if I had been talking to anybody else,” she said. “You know, what did I communicate? Who did I communicate with?”

    Schiff’s office declined to comment. However, Schiff’s attorney has previously told Justice Department officials that there was “ample basis” for them to launch an investigation into Pulte and his campaign targeting Trump’s opponents, calling it a “highly irregular” and “sordid” effort.

    The acting FHFA inspector general at the time Bish was first contacted, Joe Allen, has since been fired, which has also raised questions.

    On Nov. 19, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) — the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — wrote a letter to Pulte denouncing his probes as politically motivated, questioning Allen’s dismissal and demanding documentation from Pulte, including any communications he has had with the White House.

    Swalwell’s attorneys wrote in Tuesday’s lawsuit that he never claimed primary residence in both California and Washington, D.C., as alleged, and had not broken any laws.

    They accused Pulte of orchestrating a coordinated effort to spread the allegations against Swalwell via a vast network of conservative influencers, which they said had “harmed [Swalwell’s] reputation at a critical juncture in his career: the very moment when he had planned to announce his campaign for Governor of California.”

    They said the “widespread publication of information about the home where his wife and young children reside” had also “exposed him to heightened security risks and caused him significant anguish and distress.”

    Swalwell said in a statement that Pulte has “combed through private records of political opponents” to “silence them,” which shouldn’t be allowed.

    “There’s a reason the First Amendment — the freedom of speech — comes before all others,” he said.

    Kevin Rector

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  • Pope Leo XIV accepts resignation of Spanish bishop accused of abuse in first known case for pontiff

    Pope Leo XIV on Saturday accepted the resignation of an ailing Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s, the first known time the new pontiff removed a bishop accused of abuse.A one-line statement from the Vatican said Leo had accepted the resignation of Cádiz Bishop Rafael Zornoza, 76. It didn’t say why, but Zornoza submitted his resignation to the pope last year when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops.It hadn’t been accepted though until the El País newspaper reported earlier this month that Zornoza had been recently placed under investigation by a church tribunal. The daily, which since 2018 has exposed decades of abuse and cover-up in the Spanish Catholic Church, said Zornoza was accused of abusing a young former seminarian while he was a young priest and directed the diocesan seminary in Getafe.The report, quoting a letter the former seminarian wrote the Vatican over the summer, said Zornoza fondled him and regularly slept with him from when he was 14-21 years old. The former seminarian’s letter said Zornoza heard his confession and persuaded him to see a psychiatrist to “cure” his homosexuality.The diocese of Cádiz denied the accusations against Zornoza but confirmed the investigation was being carried out by the church court in Madrid, known as the Rota. In a Nov. 10 statement, the diocese said Zornoza was cooperating with the investigation and had suspended his agenda temporarily “to clarify the facts and to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of cancer.”“The accusations made, referring to events that took place almost 30 years ago, are very serious and also false,” the statement said.It is believed to be the first publicly known case of a bishop being retired, and being placed under investigation for alleged abuse, since the Spanish church began reckoning in recent years with a decades-long legacy of abuse and cover-up that has rocked the once-staunchly Catholic Spain.Leo didn’t immediately name a temporary leader of the diocese.In 2023, Spain’s first official probe of abuse indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands, based on a survey that was part of a report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman. The ombudsman conducted an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.Spain’s Catholic bishops apologized but dismissed the interpretations of the ombudsman report as a “lie,” arguing that many more people had been abused outside of the church.The Spanish Catholic hierarchy then did its own report, saying in 2024 that it had found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. It then launched a plan to compensate victims, after Spain’s government approved a plan to force the church to pay economic reparations.

    Pope Leo XIV on Saturday accepted the resignation of an ailing Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s, the first known time the new pontiff removed a bishop accused of abuse.

    A one-line statement from the Vatican said Leo had accepted the resignation of Cádiz Bishop Rafael Zornoza, 76. It didn’t say why, but Zornoza submitted his resignation to the pope last year when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops.

    It hadn’t been accepted though until the El País newspaper reported earlier this month that Zornoza had been recently placed under investigation by a church tribunal. The daily, which since 2018 has exposed decades of abuse and cover-up in the Spanish Catholic Church, said Zornoza was accused of abusing a young former seminarian while he was a young priest and directed the diocesan seminary in Getafe.

    The report, quoting a letter the former seminarian wrote the Vatican over the summer, said Zornoza fondled him and regularly slept with him from when he was 14-21 years old. The former seminarian’s letter said Zornoza heard his confession and persuaded him to see a psychiatrist to “cure” his homosexuality.

    The diocese of Cádiz denied the accusations against Zornoza but confirmed the investigation was being carried out by the church court in Madrid, known as the Rota. In a Nov. 10 statement, the diocese said Zornoza was cooperating with the investigation and had suspended his agenda temporarily “to clarify the facts and to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of cancer.”

    “The accusations made, referring to events that took place almost 30 years ago, are very serious and also false,” the statement said.

    It is believed to be the first publicly known case of a bishop being retired, and being placed under investigation for alleged abuse, since the Spanish church began reckoning in recent years with a decades-long legacy of abuse and cover-up that has rocked the once-staunchly Catholic Spain.

    Leo didn’t immediately name a temporary leader of the diocese.

    In 2023, Spain’s first official probe of abuse indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands, based on a survey that was part of a report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman. The ombudsman conducted an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.

    Spain’s Catholic bishops apologized but dismissed the interpretations of the ombudsman report as a “lie,” arguing that many more people had been abused outside of the church.

    The Spanish Catholic hierarchy then did its own report, saying in 2024 that it had found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. It then launched a plan to compensate victims, after Spain’s government approved a plan to force the church to pay economic reparations.

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  • A new virus variant and lagging vaccinations may mean the US is in for a severe flu season

    The United States may be heading into its second severe flu season in a row, driven by a mutated strain called subclade K that’s behind early surges in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan.Last winter’s season was extreme, too. The U.S. had its highest rates of flu hospitalizations in nearly 15 years. At least 280 children died of influenza, the highest number since pediatric death numbers were required to be shared in 2004.Now, with a new variant in the mix, experts say we’re on track for a repeat. And with flu vaccinations down and holiday travel on the way, they worry that things may look much worse in the weeks ahead.The good news: Early analysis shows that this season’s flu shots offer some protection against being hospitalized with this variant, especially for kids. The bad news is that many Americans appear to be skipping their flu vaccines this year. New data from prescription data company IQVIA shows that vaccinations are down compared to where they usually are at this point in the year.A new playerFlu activity is low but rising quickly in the United States, according to the latest FluView report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Most of the flu viruses identified this season have been an A strain called H3N2, and half of those have come from subclade K, a variant that was responsible for a rougher-than-normal flu season this summer in the Southern Hemisphere.That variant wasn’t a major player when scientists decided which strains should be in the annual flu shots, so the vaccines cover a related but slightly different group of viruses.”It’s not like we’re expecting to get complete loss of protection for the vaccine, but perhaps we might expect a little bit of a drop-off if this is the virus that sort of dominates the season, and early indications are that’s probably going to be the case,” said Dr. Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for studies on the ecology of influenza in animals and birds at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.Early analysis by the U.K. Health Security Agency shows that subclade K has seven gene changes on a key segment of the virus. Those mutations change the shape of this region, making it harder for the body’s defenses to recognize.”That’s the predominant thing that our immune system targets with antibodies, and that’s also pretty much what’s in the vaccine,” said Dr. Adam Lauring, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School.UKHSA scientists found that the current flu vaccines are still providing decent protection against subclade K viruses. Vaccination cut the odds of an emergency department visit or hospitalization for the flu by almost 75% in children. The effectiveness for adults, even those over 65, was lower, about 30% to 40% against needing to visit the hospital or ER.But the scientists offer a caveat: These results are from early in the season, before the protection from seasonal flu vaccines has had time to wane or wear off. The findings are posted in a recent preprint study, which means it was published ahead of scrutiny from outside experts.Still, some protection is better than no protection, and while subclade K is expected to dominate the season, it won’t be the only flu strain circulating. No one gets to pick what they’re exposed to. Lauring said his daughter has just recovered from the flu, but it was a B-type strain.At the same time this new variant has emerged, flu vaccinations appear to be down in the U.S. According to IQVIA, about 64% of all flu vaccinations were administered at retail pharmacies, which administered roughly 26.5 million flu shots between August and the end of October. That’s more than 2 million fewer shots than the 28.7 million given over the same time frame in 2024.”I’m not surprised,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, who directs the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health. Vaccine skepticism expressed by leaders of the US Department of Health and Human Services has “injected chaos into the whole vaccination system,” she said.”There’s been a lot of attention on really non-issues,” like vaccine ingredients and separating shots, that she thinks “at the best, left people confused but possibly at the worst have left people worried about getting vaccinated,” she added.Flu vaccinations have also fallen in Australia, where subclade K was the predominant virus this year. As a result, flu hit a record, with more than 443,000 cases. Flu season in the Southern Hemisphere typically runs from May to July, so infectious disease experts often look to those countries for a preview of what might be on the way to North America.”What they saw in Australia is that they had a bad season. And so it’s concerning for you and us, what’s coming,” said Dr. Earl Rubin, director of the infectious disease division at the Montreal Children’s Hospital in Canada.’This is the time we start to see the rise’It’s difficult to say whether subclade K actually makes a person sicker than other flu strains, but if it drives more cases, it will certainly drive hospitalizations too, Rubin said.”When you look at severity, the more cases you have, if the same percentage get hospitalized, obviously you’re going to have more hospitalization if you have more cases. So it sometimes will look like the severity is also worse,” he said.Lab testing data has begun to show an uptick in flu cases.”This is the time we start to see the rise,” said Dr. Allison McMullen, a clinical microbiologist at BioMerieux, which makes the BioFire test, a popular diagnostic tool for respiratory pathogens.The company anonymously compiles its test results into a syndromic surveillance tool, which can offer a glimpse of what bugs are making people sick at any given time. At the beginning of the month, less than 1% of tests were positive for type A flu. Now it’s 2.4% – still low numbers but going up briskly, which aligns with the CDC trend.”We’re going to start seeing heavy holiday travel before we know it,” McMullen added. “With the rising cases that we’re seeing the U.K. and Japan, it can definitely be a bellwether for what we’re going to see in North America.”Signals are also rising in wastewater, said Dr. Marlene Wolfe, an assistant professor of environmental health at Emory University. In October, 18% of samples in the WastewaterSCAN network — an academically led wastewater monitoring program based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory — were positive for type A flu, Wolfe said. In November, that number had risen to 40%.”Flu is something where, when it’s not in season, we don’t detect it very frequently in wastewater,” Wolfe said. COVID, on the other hand, can be detected pretty much all the time, which makes it challenging to know if it’s going up or down, she said.The scientists can set a threshold for when they can declare that a specific area is in flu season, Wolfe says. So far, just four of the 147 sites they monitor in 40 states have reached that threshold. Those sites are in the Northeast — in Maine and Vermont — in Iowa and in Hawaii.”I am concerned, I guess, that we could have a big flu season this year based on what we’re seeing in other parts of the world, and particularly Europe and elsewhere,” Michigan’s Lauring said.”It’s not too late. Go and get your flu shot,” Lauring advised. “And be alert that it’s out there.”

    The United States may be heading into its second severe flu season in a row, driven by a mutated strain called subclade K that’s behind early surges in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan.

    Last winter’s season was extreme, too. The U.S. had its highest rates of flu hospitalizations in nearly 15 years. At least 280 children died of influenza, the highest number since pediatric death numbers were required to be shared in 2004.

    Now, with a new variant in the mix, experts say we’re on track for a repeat. And with flu vaccinations down and holiday travel on the way, they worry that things may look much worse in the weeks ahead.

    The good news: Early analysis shows that this season’s flu shots offer some protection against being hospitalized with this variant, especially for kids. The bad news is that many Americans appear to be skipping their flu vaccines this year. New data from prescription data company IQVIA shows that vaccinations are down compared to where they usually are at this point in the year.

    A new player

    Flu activity is low but rising quickly in the United States, according to the latest FluView report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Most of the flu viruses identified this season have been an A strain called H3N2, and half of those have come from subclade K, a variant that was responsible for a rougher-than-normal flu season this summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

    That variant wasn’t a major player when scientists decided which strains should be in the annual flu shots, so the vaccines cover a related but slightly different group of viruses.

    “It’s not like we’re expecting to get complete loss of protection for the vaccine, but perhaps we might expect a little bit of a drop-off if this is the virus that sort of dominates the season, and early indications are that’s probably going to be the case,” said Dr. Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for studies on the ecology of influenza in animals and birds at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

    Early analysis by the U.K. Health Security Agency shows that subclade K has seven gene changes on a key segment of the virus. Those mutations change the shape of this region, making it harder for the body’s defenses to recognize.

    “That’s the predominant thing that our immune system targets with antibodies, and that’s also pretty much what’s in the vaccine,” said Dr. Adam Lauring, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School.

    UKHSA scientists found that the current flu vaccines are still providing decent protection against subclade K viruses. Vaccination cut the odds of an emergency department visit or hospitalization for the flu by almost 75% in children. The effectiveness for adults, even those over 65, was lower, about 30% to 40% against needing to visit the hospital or ER.

    But the scientists offer a caveat: These results are from early in the season, before the protection from seasonal flu vaccines has had time to wane or wear off. The findings are posted in a recent preprint study, which means it was published ahead of scrutiny from outside experts.

    Still, some protection is better than no protection, and while subclade K is expected to dominate the season, it won’t be the only flu strain circulating. No one gets to pick what they’re exposed to. Lauring said his daughter has just recovered from the flu, but it was a B-type strain.

    At the same time this new variant has emerged, flu vaccinations appear to be down in the U.S. According to IQVIA, about 64% of all flu vaccinations were administered at retail pharmacies, which administered roughly 26.5 million flu shots between August and the end of October. That’s more than 2 million fewer shots than the 28.7 million given over the same time frame in 2024.

    “I’m not surprised,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, who directs the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health. Vaccine skepticism expressed by leaders of the US Department of Health and Human Services has “injected chaos into the whole vaccination system,” she said.

    “There’s been a lot of attention on really non-issues,” like vaccine ingredients and separating shots, that she thinks “at the best, left people confused but possibly at the worst have left people worried about getting vaccinated,” she added.

    Flu vaccinations have also fallen in Australia, where subclade K was the predominant virus this year. As a result, flu hit a record, with more than 443,000 cases. Flu season in the Southern Hemisphere typically runs from May to July, so infectious disease experts often look to those countries for a preview of what might be on the way to North America.

    “What they saw in Australia is that they had a bad season. And so it’s concerning for you and us, what’s coming,” said Dr. Earl Rubin, director of the infectious disease division at the Montreal Children’s Hospital in Canada.

    ‘This is the time we start to see the rise’

    It’s difficult to say whether subclade K actually makes a person sicker than other flu strains, but if it drives more cases, it will certainly drive hospitalizations too, Rubin said.

    “When you look at severity, the more cases you have, if the same percentage get hospitalized, obviously you’re going to have more hospitalization if you have more cases. So it sometimes will look like the severity is also worse,” he said.

    Lab testing data has begun to show an uptick in flu cases.

    “This is the time we start to see the rise,” said Dr. Allison McMullen, a clinical microbiologist at BioMerieux, which makes the BioFire test, a popular diagnostic tool for respiratory pathogens.

    The company anonymously compiles its test results into a syndromic surveillance tool, which can offer a glimpse of what bugs are making people sick at any given time. At the beginning of the month, less than 1% of tests were positive for type A flu. Now it’s 2.4% – still low numbers but going up briskly, which aligns with the CDC trend.

    “We’re going to start seeing heavy holiday travel before we know it,” McMullen added. “With the rising cases that we’re seeing the U.K. and Japan, it can definitely be a bellwether for what we’re going to see in North America.”

    Signals are also rising in wastewater, said Dr. Marlene Wolfe, an assistant professor of environmental health at Emory University. In October, 18% of samples in the WastewaterSCAN network — an academically led wastewater monitoring program based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory — were positive for type A flu, Wolfe said. In November, that number had risen to 40%.

    “Flu is something where, when it’s not in season, we don’t detect it very frequently in wastewater,” Wolfe said. COVID, on the other hand, can be detected pretty much all the time, which makes it challenging to know if it’s going up or down, she said.

    The scientists can set a threshold for when they can declare that a specific area is in flu season, Wolfe says. So far, just four of the 147 sites they monitor in 40 states have reached that threshold. Those sites are in the Northeast — in Maine and Vermont — in Iowa and in Hawaii.

    “I am concerned, I guess, that we could have a big flu season this year based on what we’re seeing in other parts of the world, and particularly Europe and elsewhere,” Michigan’s Lauring said.

    “It’s not too late. Go and get your flu shot,” Lauring advised. “And be alert that it’s out there.”

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  • California rejoins fight over Nazi-looted painting held by Spanish museum

    California is once again fighting in federal court for a Jewish family’s right to have a precious Impressionist painting returned to them by a Spanish museum nearly 90 years after it was looted by the Nazis.

    The state is also defending its own authority to legally require art and other stolen treasures to be returned to other victims with ties to the state, even in disputes that stretch far beyond its borders.

    The state has repeatedly weighed in on the case since the Cassirer family first filed it while living in San Diego in 2005. Last year, California passed a new law designed to bolster the legal rights of the Cassirers and other families in the state to recover valuable property stolen from them in acts of genocide or political persecution.

    On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office filed a motion to intervene in the Cassirer case directly in order to defend that law. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation — which is owned by Spain and holds the Camille Pissarro masterpiece — has claimed that the law is unconstitutional and should therefore be ignored.

    Bonta, in a statement to The Times, said the law is “about fairness, moral — and legal — responsibility, and doing what’s right,” and the state will defend it in court.

    “There is nothing that can undo the horrors and loss experienced by individuals during the Holocaust. But there is something we can do — that California has done — to return what was stolen back to survivors and their families and bring them some measure of justice and healing,” Bonta said. “As attorney general, my job is to defend the laws of California, and I intend to do so here.”

    Bonta said his office “has supported the Cassirers’ quest for justice for two decades,” and “will continue to fight with them for the rightful return of this invaluable family heirloom.”

    Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, did not answer questions from The Times. Bonta’s office said Stauber did not oppose its intervening in the case.

    Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers’ longtime attorney, thanked Bonta’s office for “intervening in this case again to defend California’s interests in protecting the integrity of the art market and the rights of stolen-property victims.”

    “California law has always provided strong protections for the victims of stolen property and stolen art in particular, which the Legislature has consistently reinforced,” Dubbin said.

    The state bucked the powerful U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by passing the law last year. The appellate court found in a ruling in January 2024 that the painting was lawfully owned by the Spanish museum.

    Bonta’s latest move ratchets up the intrigue surrounding the 20-year-old case, which is being watched around the globe for its potential implications in the high-stakes world of looted art litigation.

    The painting in question — Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” — is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Both sides acknowledge it was stolen from Lilly Cassirer Neubauer by the Nazis in 1939, after she agreed in desperation to surrender it to a Nazi appraiser in exchange for a visa to flee Germany at the dawn of World War II.

    The attention surrounding the case, and its potential to set new precedent in international law, likely makes the painting even more valuable.

    After World War II, Lilly received compensation for the painting from the German government, but the family never relinquished its right to the masterpiece — which at the time was considered lost. What she was paid was a fraction of the current estimated worth.

    In the decades that followed, Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer — who had also survived the Holocaust — moved with his family to San Diego.

    In 2000, Claude made the shocking discovery that the painting was not lost to time after all, but part of a vast art collection that Spain had acquired from the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, the scion of a German industrialist family with ties to Adolf Hitler’s regime. Spain restored an early 19th century palace near the Prado Museum in Madrid in order to house the collection as the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

    Claude asked the museum to return the painting to his family. It refused. He sued in U.S. federal court in 2005. The case has been moving through the courts ever since.

    California passed its new law in response to the 9th Circuit ruling last year that held state law at the time required it to apply an archaic Spanish law. That measure dictates that the title to stolen goods passes legitimately to a new owner over time, if that owner wasn’t aware the goods were stolen when they acquired them — which the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has argued makes its ownership of the painting legally sound.

    In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new law during a small gathering with the families of Holocaust survivors at the Holocaust Museum LA. Lilly’s great-grandson and Claude’s son David Cassirer, who now lives in Colorado, was there, praising the state’s lawmakers for “taking a definitive stand in favor of the true owners of stolen art.”

    In March, the Supreme Court in a brief order ruled that the 9th Circuit must reconsider its ruling in light of California’s new law.

    In September, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Collection filed a motion asking the appellate court to rule in its favor once more. It put forward multiple arguments, but among them was that California’s new law was “constitutionally indefensible” and deprived the museum of its due process rights.

    “Under binding Supreme Court precedent, a State may not, by legislative fiat, reopen time-barred claims and transfer property whose ownership is already vested,” the museum argued.

    It said the U.S., under federal law, “does not seek to impose its property laws or the property laws of its own states on other foreign sovereigns, but rather expressly acknowledges that different legal traditions and systems must be taken into account to facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Nazi-looted art cases.”

    It said California’s law takes an “aggressive approach” that “disrupts the federal government’s efforts to maintain uniformity and amicable relations with foreign nations,” and “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of federal policy.”

    David Cassirer, the lead plaintiff in the case since Claude’s death in 2010, argued the opposite in his own filing to the court.

    Cassirer argued that California’s new law requires an outcome in his favor — which he said would also happen to be in line with “moral commitments made by the United States and governments worldwide, including Spain, to Nazi victims and their families.”

    “It is undisputed that California substantive law mandates the award of title here to the Cassirer family, as Lilly’s heirs, of which Plaintiff David Cassirer is the last surviving member,” Cassirer’s attorneys wrote.

    They wrote that California law holds that “a thief cannot convey good title to stolen works of art,” and therefore requires the return of the painting to Cassirer.

    Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who sponsored the bill in the Legislature, praised Bonta for stepping in to defend the law — which he called “part of a decades-long quest for justice and is rooted in the belief that California must stand on the right side of history.”

    Kevin Rector

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  • Wrongfully convicted man to get $19-million settlement from Baldwin Park

    A wrongfully convicted man who spent more than 30 years behind bars will receive $19.1 million as part of a settlement with the city of Baldwin Park, officials said.

    Daniel Saldana, 56, was convicted in connection to a 1989 drive-by shooting outside a Baldwin Park high school football game that left two students injured. But for years Saldana maintained he was innocent, insisting he wasn’t at the shooting.

    Saldana was was freed from prison in 2023 after a judge declared him factually innocent and, on Friday, the Baldwin Park City Council agreed to pay $19.1 million to settle a wrongful conviction federal lawsuit.

    Attorneys for Saldana argued in the lawsuit it was the “egregious misconduct” of a Baldwin Park detective that led to the wrongful conviction in 1990.

    Saldana could not be reached for comment, but his attorneys released a statement blaming the wrongful conviction on a Baldwin Park detective.

    “Mr. Saldana’s wrongful conviction resulted from the egregious misconduct of a Baldwin Park detective who systematically fabricated evidence and pressured witnesses throughout a fundamentally flawed investigation,” said Amelia Green, one of Saldana’s attorneys.

    The case against Saldana began to unravel when one of the codefendants, Raul Vidal, told the state parole board in 2017 that Saldana was not present at the shooting.

    A deputy district attorney had been present at Vidal’s parole hearing, but the testimony didn’t spark a review of the case at the time. It was not until 2023 that the state’s parole board turned over transcripts of the hearing to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.

    The district attorney’s office then moved to have Saldana’s conviction overturned, and a judge found him factually innocent in May 2023.

    In February 2024, Saldana and his attorneys filed a suit against the city and former Baldwin Park Police Detective Michael Donovan, alleging the former detective coerced witnesses and falsified reports to get Saldana convicted.

    Donovan allegedly pressured a teen witness to testify that Saldana was the second shooter in the incident, although the teen originally testified there had been only one shooter, according to the lawsuit.

    In a statement, the city of Baldwin Park confirmed the settlement and said the incident did not involve any current city employees.

    “The city sincerely hopes Mr. Saldana can now move forward in his new life,” the statement read.

    Salvador Hernandez

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  • Judge blocks Trump administration push to fine UCLA $1.2 billion for alleged antisemitism

    A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants.

    The decision is a major win for universities that have struggled to resist President Trump’s attempt to discipline “very bad” universities that he claims have mistreated Jewish students, forcing them to pay exorbitant fines and agree to adhere to conservative standards.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, rendered moot — for now — nearly every aspect of a more than 7,000-word settlement offer the federal government sent to the University of California in August after suspending $584 million in medical, science and energy research grants to the Los Angeles campus.

    The government said it froze the funds after finding UCLA broke the law by using race as a factor in admissions, recognizing transgender people’s gender identities, and not taking antisemitism complaints seriously during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 — claims that UC has denied.

    The settlement proposal outlined extensive changes to push UCLA — and by extension all of UC — ideologically rightward by calling for an end to diversity-related scholarships, restrictions on foreign student enrollment, a declaration that transgender people do not exist, an end to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, the imposition of free speech limits and more.

    “The administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities,” Lin wrote in her opinion. “Agency officials, as well as the president and vice president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune. Universities are then presented with agreements to restore federal funding under which they must change what they teach, restrict student anonymity in protests, and endorse the administration’s view of gender, among other things. Defendants submit nothing to refute this.”

    “It is undisputed,” Lin added, “that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”

    Universities including Columbia, Brown and Cornell agreed to pay the government hundreds of millions to atone for alleged violations similar to the ones facing UCLA. The University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia also reached agreements with the Trump administration that were focused, respectively, on ending recognition of transgender people and halting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

    Friday’s decision, for the time being, spares the UC system from proceeding with negotiations that it reluctantly entered with the federal government to avoid further grant cuts and restrictions across the system, which receives $17.5 billion in federal funding each year. UC President James B. Milliken has said that the $1.2-billion fine would “completely devastate” UC and that the system, under fire from the Trump administration, faces “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”

    This is not the first time a judge rebuked the Trump administration for its higher education campaign. Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in September ordered the government to reverse billions in cuts to Harvard. But that case did not wade directly into settlement negotiations.

    Those talks with UC have proceeded slowly. In a court hearing last week, a Department of Justice lawyer said “there’s no evidence that any type of deal with the United States is going to be happening in the immediate future.” The lawyer argued that the settlement offer was only an idea that had not received UC approval.

    Because of that, he said, a lawsuit was inappropriate. Lin disagreed.

    “Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real. With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratcheting up defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system.”

    The case was brought by more a dozen faculty and staff unions and associations from across UC’s 10 campuses, who said the federal government was violating their 1st Amendment rights and constitutional right to due process. UC, which has avoided directly challenging the government in court, was not party to the suit.

    “This is not only a historic lawsuit — brought by every labor union and faculty union in the UC — but also an incredible win,” said Veena Dubal, a UC Irvine law professor and general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the American Assn. of University Professors, which has members across UC campuses.

    Dubal called the decision “a turning point in the fight to save free speech and research in the finest public school system in the world.”

    Asked about Friday’s outcome, a spokesperson said UC “remains focused on our vital work to drive innovation, advance medical breakthroughs and strengthen the nation’s long-term competitiveness. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the university.”

    Zoé Hamstead, chair of external relations and legal affairs for the Council of UC Faculty Assns., said she was “thrilled that the court has affirmed our First Amendment rights.”

    The organization is an umbrella group of faculty associations across UC campuses that sued.

    Hamstead, an associate professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, said she was “deeply proud to be part of a coalition that represents the teachers, researchers, and workers of the University of California who are challenging rising authoritarianism in federal court.”

    Anna Markowitz, an associate professor in UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and president of the Los Angeles campus faculty association, said her chapter was “extremely pleased with this decision, which will put a pause on the current federal overreach at UC.”

    “UCLA faculty are honored to stand with this coalition, which continues to show that when faced with an administration targeting the very heart of higher education, fighting back is the only option,” Markowitz said.

    Lin’s injunction is not the final say on the case, which will proceed through the legal process as she determines whether a permanent injunction is warranted. The government also could appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as it has done for other cases, including one filed by UC researchers that restored funding from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation among other agencies.

    An appeals court hearing in that case was held Friday; a decision is pending.

    Jaweed Kaleem

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  • Supreme Court dismisses long-shot challenge to right to marry for same-sex couples

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed without comment a long-shot challenge to the constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples.

    The justices turned away an appeal petition from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who defied the court’s landmark decision in 2015 and repeatedly refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

    She appealed after one couple sued and won $100,000 in damages plus attorneys fees for her deliberate violation of their constitutional rights.

    She argued the court should hear her case to decide whether the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment should have protected her from being sued.

    Her appeal also posed a separate question she had not raised before in her long legal fight. She said the court should decide “whether Obergefell v. Hodges,” which established the right to same-sex marriage, “should be overturned.”

    That belated question drew wide attention to her appeal, even though there was little or no chance it would be seriously considered by the high court.

    Some LGBTQ+ advocates were concerned, however, because the conservative court had overturned Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs case of 2022.

    Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for himself alone, said then “we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” referring to cases on the rights to contraception, private sexual conduct and same-sex marriages.

    But other conservative justices had disagreed and said abortion was unique. “Rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe … termed ‘potential life,’ ” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in his opinion for the court.

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her new book “Listening to the Law” described the right to marry as a “fundamental right” that is protected by the Constitution.

    “The complicated moral debate about abortion stands in dramatic contrast to widespread American support for liberties like the rights to marry, have sex, procreate, use contraception, and direct the upbringing of children,” she wrote.

    In July, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimated there are 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States and nearly 300,000 children being raised by them.

    Davis had suffered a series of defeats in the federal courts.

    A federal judge in Kentucky and the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati rejected her claims based on the free exercise of religion.

    Former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis speaks to reporters in Kentucky in 2015. The Supreme Court on Monday rejected her appeal to overturn the right to same-sex marriage.

    (Timothy D. Easley / Associated Press)

    Those judges said government officials do not have free speech or religious right to refuse to carry out their public duties.

    “That is not how the Constitution works. In their private lives, government officials are of course free to express their views and live according to their faith. But when an official wields state power against private citizens, her conscience must yield to the Constitution,” Judge Helene White wrote for the 6th Circuit Court in March.

    Ten years ago, shortly after the court’s ruling in Obergefell vs. Hodges, Kentucky’s governor, the county’s attorney and a federal judge all told Davis that she was legally required to give a marriage license to same-sex couples who applied for one.

    She refused and said the county would issue no marriage licenses until she had been given a special exemption.

    David Moore and David Ermold had been a couple for 19 years, and they filed suit after they were turned away from obtaining a marriage license on three occasions. Davis said she was acting “under God’s authority.”

    A federal judge held her in contempt for refusing to comply with the law. While she was in jail, the couple finally obtained a marriage license from one of her deputies, but their lawsuit continued.

    The Kentucky Legislature revised the law to say that county clerks need not put their name on the licenses issued by her office. Davis said that accommodation was sufficient, and she tried to have the lawsuit dismissed as moot.

    The 6th Circuit refused because the claim for damages was still valid and pending. The Supreme Court turned away one of her appeals in 2019.

    A federal judge later ruled she had violated the rights of Moore and Ermold, and a jury awarded each of them $50,000 in damages.

    Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel in Orlando, which advocates for religious freedom, appealed on her behalf.

    His petition to the Supreme Court said the court should hear her case to decide whether the 1st Amendment’s protection for the free exercise of religion should shield a public official from being sued “in her individual capacity.”

    The 6th Circuit Court rejected that claim in a 3-0 ruling.

    “The Bill of Rights would serve little purpose if it could be freely ignored whenever an official’s conscience so dictates,” Judge White said.

    “Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine the dire possibilities that might follow if Davis’s argument were accepted. A county clerk who finds interracial marriage sinful could refuse to issue licenses to interracial couples. An election official who believes women should not vote could refuse to count ballots cast by females. A zoning official personally opposed to Christianity could refuse to permit the construction of a church,” she said.

    Judge Chad Readler, a Trump appointee, said even if public employees have some rights based on their religious views, “her conduct here exceeded the scope of any personal right. … Rather than attempting to invoke a religious exemption for herself, Davis instead exercised the full authority of the Rowan County Clerk’s office to enact an official policy of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples, one every office employee had to follow.”

    David G. Savage

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  • Supreme Court rejects call to overturn its decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a call to overturn its landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

    The justices turned away an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

    Davis had been trying to get the court to overturn a lower-court order for her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple denied a marriage license.

    Her lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices has called for erasing the same-sex marriage ruling.

    Thomas was among four dissenting justices in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are the other dissenters who are on the court today.

    Roberts has been silent on the subject since he wrote a dissenting opinion in the case. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but he said recently he was not advocating that it be overturned.

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court in 2015, has said that there are times when the court should correct mistakes and overturn decisions, as it did in the 2022 case that ended a constitutional right to abortion.

    But Barrett has suggested recently that same-sex marriage might be in a different category than abortion because people have relied on the decision when they married and had children.

    Davis drew national attention to eastern Kentucky’s Rowan County when she turned away same-sex couples, saying her faith prevented her from complying with the high court ruling. She defied court orders to issue the licenses until a federal judge jailed her for contempt of court in September 2015.

    She was released after her staff issued the licenses on her behalf but removed her name from the form. The Kentucky legislature later enacted a law removing the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.

    Davis lost a reelection bid in 2018.

    Mark Sherman

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  • In the West Bank’s last Christian village, faith, fear and an uncertain future

    TAYBEH, West Bank — “Come visit Taybeh,” begins the brochure touting the touristic attractions here, the last entirely Palestinian Christian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

    Though it counts Jesus among its many visitors over the years, said Khaldoon Hanna, Taybeh’s avuncular deputy mayor, these days “no one is coming.”

    He sighed as he looked around the restaurant he owns on the village’s Main Street. It felt abandoned, with little trace of activity in the kitchen and a layer of dust coating most tables. Only one faucet worked in the bathroom, but it didn’t feel worth it to repair the rest.

    “In the last two years, I haven’t had more than 20 tourists come in here,” Hanna said.

    How could they, Hanna said, when you have to negotiate a growing gantlet of Israeli roadblocks just to get here? Or face off emboldened settlers who make increasing forays into the village to burn cars or destroy property? In July, they even tried to set fire to the ruins of the Church of St. George, a 4th century Byzantine structure on Taybeh’s hilltop, Hanna and religious leaders said; the Israeli government says it’s unclear what started the blaze.

    “There’s a vicious attack on us at this point, and we as Christians, we can do nothing,” Hanna said. “If we don’t get support, be it social, political, economic, we’ll be extinct soon.”

    A man walks up the main road in Taybeh, a West Bank village of 1,200 residents that is proud of its heritage.

    (Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

    Life as a Palestinian near the settlements has long been difficult in this bucolic portion of the West Bank, where the olive groves covering the hills are the sites of regular confrontations between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers. The confrontations have become increasingly lethal, with more than 1,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and armed settlers since the Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations.

    But although the war in Gaza is abating, extremist settler groups such as the so-called Hilltop Youth have doubled down on their unprecedented — and increasingly effective — campaign of harassment and land-grabbing that has hit all Palestinians, regardless of religion or political affiliation.

    This year, the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, tallied more than 1,000 attacks in the West Bank through August, putting it on track to be the most violent on record.

    And the scope of the intimidation campaign is increasing: The olive harvest in October saw 126 attacks on Palestinians and their property in 70 West Bank towns and villages; it was almost three times the number of attacks and double the communities targeted during 2023’s harvest. More than 4,000 olive trees and saplings were vandalized, the highest number in six years, OCHA says.

    Almost half of those attacks have been in Ramallah governorate, which encompasses Taybeh and a slew of communities contending with intensifying violence from settlement outposts — that is, encampments set up by settlers in rural parts of the West Bank that are illegal under Israeli law but often protected by the authorities.

    People walking on the grounds of a white church with a lighted entryway

    Worshipers walk on the grounds of Christ the Redeemer Latin Church in Taybeh.

    (Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

    Taybeh, which means “delicious” in Arabic and which relies on tourism along with olive and other harvests, has been particularly affected, if only because of sheer demographics: Christians account for roughly 1% to 2% of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, down from about 10% when Israel was founded in 1948.

    Even within that tiny minority, Taybeh’s 1,200 residents are fiercely proud of their community and see it as unique. Tourists have long come here, whether to day-trip through hiking trails where prophets once trod or visit the village’s different churches. In years past, it was the site of an Oktoberfest celebration that would draw 16,000 people.

    Just as Christians in other parts of the Middle East have left because of war and instability, the constant lack of security, not to mention the economic strangulation that has accompanied it, have pushed 10 families to emigrate from the village in the last two years. It may sound like a small number, but it is a loss the village can ill afford, said Father Jack-Nobel Abed of Taybeh’s Greek Melkite Catholic Church.

    Abed, who sports an impressive beard and a baritone voice, passionately advocates for Christians to stay in the Holy Land. When U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — an ardent supporter of the settler movement — visited Taybeh after the torching near the church, Abed asked him to not issue U.S. immigrant visas to Christians from the area.

    “I told him, ‘We have something to do in this land. This is our land, and our roots are deep enough to reach hell,’” Abed said. But he said he also understood if people leave for a time and return later.

    “If the circumstances and the situation is forcing someone [to leave] because they’re afraid their kids will be killed, imprisoned, or to have no proper future, then you can’t hold a stick and stop them from what they need to do,” Abed said.

    He has little patience for Christian Zionists such as Huckabee, who he said claim to care for Christians in the region while turning a blind eye to the persecution driving them away.

    “Who are you to speak in my name as a Christian? How would you have learned of Christianity if it weren’t for someone like me in this land?” Abed asked.

    A man with dark hair and mustache stands with hands clasped near empty tables in his restaurant

    Khaldoon Hanna, in the restaurant he owns in Taybeh, says few tourists visit the village anymore because of violence committed by Israeli settlers and increased security measures imposed by Israel in the West Bank.

    (Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

    The Israeli military says it works to prevent settler attacks, and Palestinians must coordinate with Israeli authorities in advance to visit their lands if they’re near settlements or outposts. But even when Palestinians do that, settlers often come out to block them anyway, and they’ve commandeered areas that never required coordination in the past.

    When Palestinians fight back, the army prosecutes them under military law, while settlers, if they’re prosecuted at all, are subject to civil law. A report last year from the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said more than 93% of investigations of settlers between 2005 and 2023 closed without an indictment. Only 3% led to a conviction.

    A store in a building sits empty next to another building, with a statue in front

    A butcher shop sits empty in Taybeh, a village in the central West Bank about 20 miles east of Jerusalem.

    (Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

    In any case, Hanna and others say, the line between settlers and army has been blurred since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

    “It’s all the same,” Hanna said. “The entire aim is to make me forget anything called Palestine — to reach a point of desperation where I have nothing here. I have no future here.”

    On that point, Hanna and hard-line settlers agree.

    “Look at how much territory we’ve conquered in the last two years, in how many places the wheel has turned and despair has seeped into the enemy,” wrote settler leader Elisha Yered on X in a post exhorting Jews to deny Palestinians employment opportunities.

    A woman in a dark T-shirt and jeans is seated, with equipment behind her

    Madees Khoury, general manager of the Taybeh Brewing Co., at the family-run brewery in Taybeh.

    (Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

    But some Palestinians refuse to give up. Madees Khoury, the general manager of Taybeh Brewing Co., is one of those who choose to stay in town, though she knows at least one family gearing up to emigrate in the coming weeks.

    “Khalas, you can’t blame them,” she said, using the Arabic word for “enough.” “It’s sad. These are the good people, the ones you want to stay, to build, to educate their kids, to resist.”

    That was the ethos driving her family, which opened the microbrewery in the optimistic days after the 1993 Oslo Accords, when peace and a Palestinian state seemed within reach. Instead of starting a brewery in Boston, Khoury’s father, Nadeem Khoury, and his brother gave up their business in Brookline, Mass., and moved back with their kids to Taybeh.

    Khoury started hanging out in the brewery when she was 7, folding cartons “and generally staying in other people’s way.” She remembers her childhood during the second intifada, or uprising, when she couldn’t attend birthday parties because of Israeli checkpoint closures, and driving through mountain passes permeated by the smell of tear gas.

    “It’s not normal. But I’m a stronger Palestinian for having gone through it. I’m not afraid of a settler in the checkpoint with an M-16; he’s more terrified of me,” she said. She added that pressure from the U.S. is the only way to reduce the wave of violence engulfing her village.

    “If Americans want peace, if they really care about the Christians in Palestine, they wouldn’t allow settlers to stay on Taybeh land and causing problems.”

    An image of a man with a crown of thorns and other religious pictures hang on a wall

    Iconography is displayed inside the ruins of the 4th century Church of St. George in Taybeh.

    (Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

    Although Israel portrays itself as a model of religious freedom, there has been a rise in anti-Christian behavior in recent years. A 2024 report by the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue counted 111 reported cases of attacks against Christians in Israel and the West Bank, including 46 physical assaults, 35 attacks against church properties and 13 cases of harassment.

    “We think that as Christians, nothing will happen to us. But this is empty talk. As long as you’re Palestinian, they’ll attack you,” Khoury said.

    After earning a college degree in Boston, she came back in 2007 and has been working at the brewery since. She acknowledges that the last two years have been the most difficult yet, with business down 70% and Israeli security procedures turning a 90-minute drive to the port of Haifa into a three-day odyssey. Still, the company used the lull to build a new brewery — an expression of faith despite the almost daily settler attacks.

    “My brother jokes around and says we’re building this for the settlers to take,” she said, walking through the new brewery wing.

    She paused for a moment, her face turning serious.

    “We’re not going anywhere. We’re building. We’re growing. We’re investing. And we’re staying,” she said.

    “Because this is home.”

    Nabih Bulos

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  • Supreme Court justices sound skeptical of Trump’s tariffs

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Wednesday of President Trump’s claim that he has the power to set large tariffs on products coming from countries around the world.

    Most of the justices, both conservative and liberal, said Congress, not the president, had the power to impose taxes and tariffs. And they agreed Congress did not authorize tariffs in an emergency powers law adopted in 1977.

    It has “never before been used to justify tariffs, and no one had argued it before this case,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Trump’s top courtroom attorney. “The imposition of taxes on Americans … has always been a core power of Congress.”

    Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that tariffs involve the president’s power over foreign affairs. They are “regulatory tariffs, not taxes,” he said.

    Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed.

    Imposing a tariff “is a taxing power which is delegated by the Constitution to Congress,” Kagan said.

    Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said he too was skeptical of the claim the president had the power to impose taxes based on his belief that the nation faces a global emergency.

    If so, could a future president acting on his own impose a 50% tax on cars because of climate change? he asked.

    Gorsuch said the court has recently blocked far-reaching presidential regulations by Democratic presidents that went beyond an old and vague law, and the same may be called for here.

    Otherwise, presidents may feel free to take away the taxing power “from the people’s representatives,” he said.

    But Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Samuel A. Alito Jr. questioned the challenge to the president’s tariffs.

    Kavanaugh pointed to a round of tariffs imposed by President Nixon in 1971, and he said Congress later adopted its emergency powers act without clearly rejecting that authority.

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she was struggling to understand what Congress meant in the emergency powers law when it said the president may “regulate” importation.

    She agreed the law did not mention taxes and tariffs that would raise revenue, but some judges then saw it as allowing the authority to impose duties or tariffs.

    The tariffs case heard Wednesday is the first major challenge to Trump’s presidential power to be heard by the court. It is also a test of whether the court’s conservative majority is willing to set legal limits on Trump’s executive authority.

    Trump has touted these import taxes as crucial to reviving American manufacturing.

    But owners of small businesses, farmers and economists are among the critics who say the on-again, off-again import taxes are disrupting business and damaging the economy.

    Since Trump returned to the White House in January, the court’s six Republican appointees have voted repeatedly to set aside orders from judges who had temporarily blocked the president’s policies and initiatives.

    While they have not explained most of their temporary emergency rulings, the conservatives have said the president has broad executive authority over federal agencies and on matters of foreign affairs.

    David G. Savage

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  • She helped get her violent husband deported. Then ICE deported her — straight into his arms.

    Carmen’s abusive husband came home drunk one night last summer. He pounded and kicked the door. He threatened to kill her as her young son watched in horror. She called police, eventually obtaining a restraining order. Months later he returned and beat her again. Police came again and he was eventually deported.

    Thinking she finally escaped his cruelty, Carmen applied for what is known as a U-Visa. The visa provides crime victims a way to stay in the United States legally, but the Trump administration has routinely ignored pending applications.

    During a regular immigration check-in in June, Carmen was detained. Two months later, she was put on a plane with her 8-year-old son, who just completed second grade. She was headed to her home country, terrified her husband would find her.

    Lawyers for Carmen along with several immigrant victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and other crimes last month sued the Trump administration in the Central District of California for detaining and deporting survivors with pending visa applications, some of whom have been granted status to stay and sometimes work.

    They argue that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement implemented a policy in the early days of the administration that upended decades-long standards aimed at protecting victims with pending applications for a class of visas known as survivor-based protections.

    Congress created those visas to ensure immigrant victims would report crimes to law enforcement and be safe, but lawyers for the victims argue the administration has reneged on those promises.

    “These laws have existed because they keep us all safe, and there is a process and legal rights that attach when you seek out those protections,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, who is one of the lead attorneys on the case.

    Carmen’s real name and certain details about her case weren’t included in the lawsuit because her lawyers say her life is still at risk.

    But others were.

    Immigration agents arrested Kenia Jackeline Merlos, a native of Honduras, during a family outing near the Canadian border. The Portland, Ore., mother of four U.S. citizen children had been given deferred status allowing her to reside in the U.S. after a man pulled a gun and threatened to kill her. Merlos has been in detention for about four months in Washington state. She was released late last month, weeks after a judge threw out her case.

    Yessenia Ruano self-deported after immigration agents told her she would be removed, despite her pending T-Visa application for trafficking survivors. Ruano, a teacher’s aide in Wisconsin, fled El Salvador and had been trafficked in the United States. A mother of twins girls, she had been living in the U.S. for 14 years, fighting a removal order. Rather than have her children see her arrested and removed, she decided to leave.

    Yessenia Ruano on her last day at the Milwaukee public school where she was a teacher’s aide. Ruano, who was a victim of human trafficking, self-deported along with her twin daughters in June.

    (Yessenia Ruano)

    Under the Trump administration, immigration agents no longer routinely check or consider a detained immigrant’s status as a crime victim before deporting or detaining them. The policy only makes an exception if it will interfere with law enforcement investigations.

    The administration’s actions affect nearly half a million immigrants who are awaiting a decision on a pending application for survivor-based protections, the most common of which is the U-Visa. Because Congress capped the number of visas that can be issued annually at 10,000, it can take a person 20 years to have their application processed.

    Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, defended the practice of deporting those stuck in limbo, saying every unauthorized immigrant ICE removes “has had due process and has a final order of removal — meaning they have no legal right to be in the country.”

    The lawsuit argues the administration violated procedural rules in referencing the executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” as the main justification for the policy.

    The invasion, it states, is “fictional” but the rhetoric has allowed Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem and the immigration agencies to wage an “arbitrary, xenophobic and militarized mass deportation campaign that has terrorized immigrant communities and further victimized survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and other serious crimes who Congress sought to protect.”

    The lawsuit is one of several challenging the agencies’ practice as the administration focuses its enforcement campaign in Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and Washington, D.C.

    “They just detain and deport them,” said Rebecca Brown, with Public Counsel, one of the groups litigating the case. “It’s is a policy of arrest first, ask questions later.”

    Kenia Jackeline Merlos is seen during a family trip in 2023.

    Kenia Jackeline Merlos is seen during a family trip in 2023.

    (Kenia Jackeline Merlos)

    In Carmen’s case, according to a sworn declaration filed in the lawsuit, she arrived in 2022 to the United States and sought asylum. A judge denied her case. She scraped together money and found an attorney to file an appeal. She later learned he didn’t correctly fill out the forms and the case was denied. In the meantime, she did regular check-ins with immigration officials as the abuse worsened.

    “I was terrified of these appointments, but I never missed a single appointment,” she said in the declaration.

    The night her husband tried to knock down the door, her son was hysterical. The restraining order helped for a while, but a few months later, he showed up again.

    Law enforcement eventually placed an ankle monitor on her husband, but he came to her son’s soccer games, stalking them and watching from afar.

    Carmen submitted the U-Visa in March and learned he had been deported that same month. Finally, she thought she would be free.

    Months later, she was summoned to an immigration check-in. She arrived alone. Officials told her to return the next day for an appointment with ICE. When she did, an officer told her she was being detained and would be deported.

    Was there someone who could care for her son, the officer asked.

    “I didn’t have anyone,” she said in the statement.

    A family member brought her boy to the facility and the two were transferred to a recently reopened family detention center in Texas. There, her son, distraught, slept all hours of the day.

    “My son suffered so much,” she stated. “He would try to sleep in the morning so the day would go faster and he wouldn’t have to endure the many hours imprisoned.”

    After a month at the facility, Carmen’s new attorney informed authorities of the pending application and asked for her release because her son suffered from medical issues, as did she. The request was denied, as were others to pause the removal.

    At the end of July, she and her son were deported.

    “I had nowhere to go,” she stated.

    She emerged from the plane to her nightmare.

    “I saw a man standing across from us and my heart sank,” she said. “It was my husband.”

    “My husband told me it was such a coincidence that he was there when we arrived,” she said. “I knew he was lying. He had found that we were being deported and he was there to take us.

    “I had no choice, I had nowhere else to go and there was no one speaking up for me.”

    Now she says she is even more trapped than before.

    He took her passports, so she can’t travel. She must ask permission just to leave the house, and if she is allowed to, give him constant updates while she is away. At night, he takes her phone and checks it, interrogating her about every call she made.

    “I never know what will make him angry,” she said. “We live in constant fear.”

    Rachel Uranga

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

    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.

    Nathan Solis

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  • As concerns loom over sex abuse payouts, L.A. County finalizes $828-million settlement

    L.A. County supervisors have unanimously approved an $828-million settlement for alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse, finalizing the deal while questions mount over the legitimacy of some claims in a separate multibillion-dollar payout that they agreed to this spring.

    The settlement approved Tuesday brings the county’s spending on sex abuse litigation this year to nearly $5 billion, with the bulk of that total coming from a $4-billion deal made in April to resolve thousands of claims filed by people who said they were abused decades ago in county-run juvenile detention centers and foster homes.

    The latest settlement involves similar claims brought by 414 clients of three law firms who opted to negotiate separately from the rest. The $4-billion settlement initially covered roughly 6,800 claims, but has ballooned to more than 11,000.

    The larger settlement has come under scrutiny after The Times found nine people who said they were paid to sue. Four said they were told to fabricate the claims. All had lawsuits filed by Downtown LA Law Group, which represents more than 2,700 clients in the first settlement.

    The firm has denied paying clients to sue and said it has “systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.” The firm has asked the court to dismiss three claims on behalf of allegedly fraudulent plaintiffs this month.

    Downtown LA Law Group will be required to detail any claims that came to it through recruiters, the county’s top attorney said Tuesday. The firm has denied any wrongdoing.

    (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

    The settlement approved Tuesday involves cases only from Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Team, Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, and Panish Shea Ravipudi and has no cases from DTLA. But the firm nevertheless took center stage Tuesday as the supervisors pressed their top attorney on how the lawsuits were vetted.

    “What were we doing prior to this article?” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, referencing The Times’ reporting from earlier this month.

    The county was in a tough spot, county counsel Dawyn Harrison explained. Many plaintiff attorneys didn’t want the county interviewing their clients, she said. And a judge had temporarily paused the discovery process, providing the county little insight into the identities of the thousands of people suing.

    Harrison said Tuesday that DTLA cases now will be required to go through a “completely new level of review” beyond the standard vetting that was already underway by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger. In addition to having a new retired Superior Court judge vet all their cases, DTLA must provide the county with information on plaintiffs acquired through “a recruiter or vendor,” she said.

    “DTLA is required to identify every recruiter it used, a list of each plaintiff brought in per recruiter, information about any funds that changed hands, and a declaration under oath by each recruiter identifying what was done, what was said, and any monies paid,” Harrison said.

    It’s an unusual request.

    California law bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits with a law firm.

    DTLA has denied knowledge of any of its clients receiving payments to sue and said the firm wants “justice for real victims” of sexual abuse.

    “If we ever became aware that anyone associated with us, in any capacity, did such a thing, we would end our relationship with them immediately,” the firm said.

    The rush of lawsuits was kicked off by a now-controversial bill known as AB 218, which changed the statute of limitations for victims of sexual abuse and created a new window to sue. The county, which is responsible for the safety of children inside juvenile carceral facilities and foster care, has seen more than 12,000 claims and counting since the law took effect in 2020.

    The allegations of fraud that now hover over these cases was the fault of “an unmanageable law,” not the county’s vetting process, Harrison said.

    “AB 218 erased those guardrails and allowed decades-old claims that no one can meaningfully vet,” she said.

    The county’s lawyers and politicians have become increasingly loud critics of the law, which they say has left them facing a deluge of decades-old claims with no records. Supervisor Hilda Solis said she felt the county had become the “guinea pig” for the bill.

    Joe Nicchitta, the county’s acting chief executive officer, estimated that anywhere between $1 billion to $2 billion in county taxpayer money from the settlements will go to attorneys.

    “The law had some very noble intentions but it has been … and I’m just going to say what I think, hijacked by the plaintiff’s bar,” he said. “They do all of the vetting, they do all of the intake, they advertise extensively. They’re incentivized to bring as many cases as possible.”

    Nicchitta said he’d heard rumors that venture capitalists were poking around Sacramento to find out “whether or not we have enough cash to pay for another settlement, so that they can finance a law firm to bring another round of settlements against us.”

    “It’s clear to me the system is ruptured,” he said.

    Courtney Thom, who was the lead attorney on cases from Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, said she believed the county was blaming the new state law for the failures of its own lawyers.

    “To blame AB 218 and say that’s what enabled the fraud is just a pathetic attempt to deflect responsibility,” Thom said. “Our firm has been saying for two years we’re concerned about fraud.”

    Mike Arias, who represents clients in the latest settlement as a partner with Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Team, said the three firms involved stopped adding clients more than a year ago.

    “That’s a big distinction,” Arias said. “We said, at the time, the number of plaintiffs would not change. Ethically, my view was that’s who we represent and who we’re going to negotiate for.”

    Arias said the allocation for the second settlement will be done by retired Orange County Superior Court Judge Gail Andler, who specializes in overseeing sexual abuse litigation. Potential payouts will range between $750,000 and $3.25 million, he said.

    Victims say the money represents a sliver of justice for the abuse they say they suffered while confined in county custody — little of which has been criminally prosecuted.

    One man, who is part of the settlement and asked not to be identified, said he has no idea what happened to the probation official who he alleges raped him at around 16 while he was asleep in his cell at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, knocked out on sleep medication.

    “I had no control in that place,” said the man, now 34. “My body hasn’t ever felt the same since.”

    The county has launched an "AB 218 Fraud hotline"

    The county has launched an “AB 218 fraud hotline” where tipsters can report misconduct related to the flood of sex abuse claims.

    (Rebecca Ellis / Los Angeles Times)

    The county recently launched an “AB 218 fraud hotline” where tipsters can report misconduct related to the flood of claims. The county says it also plans to start a hotline for victims to safely report allegations of sex abuse in its facilities.

    “It is illegal for anyone to file, pay for, or receive payments for making fake claims of childhood sexual abuse,” states a banner now running atop the county website with a hand doling out hundred-dollar bills.

    The county also has launched a website that asks people to report if they were offered cash to sue, which law firms were involved, and whether they were coached, among other questions.

    Supervisor Holly Mitchell, whose district includes the South Central social services office where seven people told The Times they were paid to sue, said she wanted to see the hotlines advertised as aggressively as the plaintiff attorneys advertised for their cases.

    “You couldn’t turn on an urban radio station without hearing a commercial advertising these cases,” Mitchell said. “I certainly hope whatever we use, as we talk about our outreach, that we lean in as hard.”

    Rebecca Ellis

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  • Wife of suspended Osceola County sheriff transferred to Lake County Jail after 2nd arrest

    A judge denied bond for Robin Severance Lopez after her second arrest on charges related to bond issue.After spending Thursday night in the Osceola County Jail, Severance Lopez was transferred to the Lake County Jail on Friday morning. The estranged wife of the suspended Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez will no longer appear before an Osceola County judge on Friday afternoon.Her attorney, Michelle Yard, told WESH 2 that statewide prosecutors have filed a motion to revoke Severance-Lopez’s $400,000 bond from her original arrest in June on a conspiracy to commit racketeering charge.Statewide prosecutors say Robin Lopez testified falsely about her financial status at the hearing in August to remove her GPS ankle monitor, according to her attorney Michelle Yard, who got the probable cause affidavit Friday afternoon.The judged ruled to revoke bond after prosecutors says she violated pretrial release conditions by failing to refrain from criminal activity. Yard said she fully intends to defend Robin Lopez at her trial, which is set to begin on Nov. 10 in Lake County before Judge Brian Welke.What is she accused of?Robin Lopez was arrested in connection with the illegal Central Florida gambling enterprise that her estranged husband is accused of protecting, expanding and profiting between $600,000 and $700,000.Statewide prosecutors say Robin Lopez helped facilitate the movement of illicit money from the $21-million illegal gambling operation.Yard said she still has not received the new probable cause affidavit to rearrest Robin Lopez on a third-degree felony charge of providing false or misleading information, or omitting material information, in connection with an application for bail or a bail modification.”They sent me the charge and said that everything else is sealed, but there’s a Florida rule of criminal procedure that says they have to produce it,” Yard said in an exclusive interview with WESH 2 Thursday night.Osceola County sheriff’s deputies took Robin Lopez into custody just after 3 p.m. Thursday.”She was home with her child, and you know, just a normal afternoon, and we had no idea that deputies would be arriving to her house or that statewide was pursuing any additional charge,” Yard said.While Marcos Lopez’s attorneys have filed a motion to continue his case and he has waived his right to a speedy trial, a Lake County judge has set a trial date for Robin Lopez in November.The suspended sheriff’s attorneys are also asking the court to move his case from Lake County to Osceola County.A hearing on this motion this week was canceled, and the state has fired back with a motion on why it wants the criminal proceedings to continue in Lake County.

    LAKE COUNTY, Fla. —

    A judge denied bond for Robin Severance Lopez after her second arrest on charges related to bond issue.

    After spending Thursday night in the Osceola County Jail, Severance Lopez was transferred to the Lake County Jail on Friday morning.

    The estranged wife of the suspended Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez will no longer appear before an Osceola County judge on Friday afternoon.

    Her attorney, Michelle Yard, told WESH 2 that statewide prosecutors have filed a motion to revoke Severance-Lopez’s $400,000 bond from her original arrest in June on a conspiracy to commit racketeering charge.

    Statewide prosecutors say Robin Lopez testified falsely about her financial status at the hearing in August to remove her GPS ankle monitor, according to her attorney Michelle Yard, who got the probable cause affidavit Friday afternoon.

    The judged ruled to revoke bond after prosecutors says she violated pretrial release conditions by failing to refrain from criminal activity.

    Yard said she fully intends to defend Robin Lopez at her trial, which is set to begin on Nov. 10 in Lake County before Judge Brian Welke.

    What is she accused of?

    Robin Lopez was arrested in connection with the illegal Central Florida gambling enterprise that her estranged husband is accused of protecting, expanding and profiting between $600,000 and $700,000.

    Statewide prosecutors say Robin Lopez helped facilitate the movement of illicit money from the $21-million illegal gambling operation.

    Yard said she still has not received the new probable cause affidavit to rearrest Robin Lopez on a third-degree felony charge of providing false or misleading information, or omitting material information, in connection with an application for bail or a bail modification.

    “They sent me the charge and said that everything else is sealed, but there’s a Florida rule of criminal procedure that says they have to produce it,” Yard said in an exclusive interview with WESH 2 Thursday night.

    Osceola County sheriff’s deputies took Robin Lopez into custody just after 3 p.m. Thursday.

    “She was home with her child, and you know, just a normal afternoon, and we had no idea that deputies would be arriving to her house or that statewide was pursuing any additional charge,” Yard said.

    While Marcos Lopez’s attorneys have filed a motion to continue his case and he has waived his right to a speedy trial, a Lake County judge has set a trial date for Robin Lopez in November.

    The suspended sheriff’s attorneys are also asking the court to move his case from Lake County to Osceola County.

    A hearing on this motion this week was canceled, and the state has fired back with a motion on why it wants the criminal proceedings to continue in Lake County.


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  • Asylum seekers face deportation over failure to pay new fees — before being notified

    WASHINGTON — Late last month, an immigrant seeking asylum in the U.S. came across social media posts urging her to pay a new fee imposed by the Trump administration before Oct. 1, or else risk her case being dismissed.

    Paula, a 40-year-old Los Angeles-area immigrant from Mexico, whose full name The Times is withholding because she fears retribution, applied for asylum in 2021 and her case is now on appeal.

    But when Paula tried to pay the $100 annual fee, she couldn’t find an option on the immigration court’s website that accepted fees for pending asylum cases. Afraid of deportation — and with just five hours before the payment deadline — she selected the closest approximation she could find, $110 for an appeal filed before July 7.

    She knew it was likely incorrect. Still, she felt it was better to pay for something, rather than nothing at all, as a show of good faith. Unable to come up with the money on such short notice, Paula, who works in a warehouse repairing purses, paid the fee with a credit card.

    “I hope that money isn’t wasted,” she said.

    That remains unclear because of confusion and misinformation surrounding the rollout of a host of new fees or fee increases for a variety of immigration services. The fees are part of the sweeping budget bill President Trump signed into law in July.

    Paula was one of thousands of asylum seekers across the country who panicked after seeing messages on social media urging them to pay the new fee before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

    But government messaging about the fees has sometimes been chaotic and contradictory, immigration attorneys say. Some asylum seekers have received notice about the fees, while others have not. Misinformation surged as immigrants scrambled to figure out whether, and how, to pay.

    Advocates worry the confusion serves as a way for immigration officials to dismiss more asylum cases, which would render the applicants deportable.

    The fees vary. For those seeking asylum, there is a $100 fee for new applications, as well as a yearly fee of $100 for pending applications. The fee for an initial work permit is $550 and work permit renewals can be as much as $795.

    Amy Grenier, associate director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said that not having a clear way to pay a fee might seem like a small government misstep, but the legal consequences are substantial.

    For new asylum applications, she said, some immigration judges set a payment deadline of Sept. 30, even though the Executive Office for Immigration Review only updated the payment portal in the last week of September.

    “The lack of coherent guidance and structure to pay the fee only compounded the inefficiency of our immigration courts,” Grenier said. “There are very real consequences for asylum-seekers navigating this completely unnecessary bureaucratic mess.”

    Two agencies collect the asylum fees: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), under the Department of Homeland Security, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), under the Department of Justice, which operates immigration courts.

    Both agencies initially released different instructions regarding the fees, and only USCIS has provided an avenue for payment.

    The departments of Homeland Security and Justice didn’t respond to a request for comment. The White House deferred to USCIS.

    USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser said the asylum fee is being implemented consistent with the law.

    “The real losers in this are the unscrupulous and incompetent immigration attorneys who exploit their clients and bog down the system with baseless asylum claims,” he said.

    The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), a national membership organization, sued the Trump administration earlier this month after thousands of members shared their confusion over the new fees, arguing that the federal agencies involved “threaten to deprive asylum seekers of full and fair consideration of their claims.”

    The organization also argued the fees shouldn’t apply to people whose cases were pending before Trump signed the budget package into law.

    In a U.S. district court filing Monday, Justice Department lawyers defended the fees, saying, “Congress made clear that these new asylum fees were long overdue and necessary to recover the growing costs of adjudicating the millions of pending asylum applications.”

    Some of the confusion resulted from contradictory information.

    A notice by USCIS in the July 22 Federal Register confused immigrants and legal practitioners alike because of a reference to Sept. 30. Anyone who had applied for asylum as of Oct. 1, 2024, and whose application was still pending by Sept. 30, was instructed to pay a fee. Some thought the notice meant that Sept. 30 was the deadline to pay the yearly asylum fee.

    By this month, USCIS clarified on its website that it will “issue personal notices” alerting asylum applicants when their annual fee is due, how to pay it and the consequences for failing to do so.

    The agency created a payment portal and began sending out notices Oct. 1, instructing recipients to pay within 30 days.

    But many asylum seekers are still waiting to be notified by USCIS, according to ASAP, the advocacy organization. Some have received texts or physical mail telling them to check their USCIS account, while others have resorted to checking their accounts daily.

    Meanwhile the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) didn’t add a mechanism for paying the $100 fee for pending asylum cases — the one Paula hoped to pay — until Thursday.

    In its Oct. 3 complaint, lawyers for ASAP wrote: “Troublingly, ASAP has received reports that some immigration judges at EOIR are already requiring applicants to have paid the annual asylum fee, and in at least one case even rejected an asylum application and ordered an asylum seeker removed for non-payment of the annual asylum fee, despite the agency providing no way to pay this fee.”

    An immigration lawyer in San Diego, who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution, said an immigration judge denied his client’s asylum petition because the client had not paid the new fee, even though there was no way to pay it.

    The judge issued an order, which was shared with The Times, that read, “Despite this mandatory requirement, to date the respondents have not filed proof of payment for the annual asylum fee.”

    The lawyer called the decision a due process violation. He said he now plans to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, though another fee increase under Trump’s spending package raised that cost from $110 to $1,010. He is litigating the case pro bono.

    Justice Department lawyers said Monday that EOIR had eliminated the initial inconsistency by revising its position to reflect that of USCIS and will soon send out official notices to applicants, giving them 30 days to make the payment.

    “There was no unreasonable delay here in EOIR’s implementation,” the filing said. “…The record shows several steps were required to finalize EOIR’s process, including coordination with USCIS. Regardless, Plaintiff’s request is now moot.”

    Immigrants like Paula, who is a member of ASAP, recently got some reassurance. In a court declaration, EOIR Director Daren Margolin wrote that for anyone who made anticipatory or advance payments for the annual asylum fee, “those payments will be applied to the alien’s owed fees, as appropriate.”

    Andrea Castillo

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  • Opinion | Britain’s Do-It-Yourself Version of Chinese Sabotage

    A ‘spying’ case that may have been a mistake all along sows more distrust than Beijing ever could.

    Joseph C. Sternberg

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