ReportWire

Tag: Case

  • Alec Baldwin lawsuit claiming wrongful prosecution heads to federal court

    Four years after the “Rust” movie shooting, New Mexico officials have moved Alec Baldwin’s lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution to federal court.

    This week’s filing is the latest twist in the long legal saga after the October 2021 on-set death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

    Baldwin, the 67-year-old star and a producer of the western film, had been facing a felony involuntary manslaughter charge for his role in Hutchins’ accidental shooting. But the judge overseeing Baldwin’s case abruptly dismissed the charge against him during his July 2024 trial after concluding that prosecutors withheld evidence that may have been helpful to his legal team.

    Six months later, Baldwin sued New Mexico’s district attorney and special prosecutors, asserting malicious prosecution. The actor claimed he had been made a celebrity scapegoat because of the intense media pressure on local authorities to solve the high-profile case.

    His lawsuit targeted New Mexico special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey, 1st Judicial Dist. Atty. Mary Carmack-Altwies and Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies, who led the investigation into Hutchins’ death.

    The defendants have denied Baldwin’s allegations.

    Baldwin’s wrongful prosecution suit was first filed in New Mexico court in Santa Fe.

    On Tuesday, the defendants, including Morrissey, exercised their legal right to shift the case to federal court. The decision was made, in part, because “Mr. Baldwin brought federal civil rights claims in his lawsuit,” said Albuquerque attorney Luis Robles, who represents the defendants.

    In addition, Baldwin does not live in New Mexico, where the case was filed.

    Baldwin could object to the move and petition for it to be brought back to state court. On Wednesday, his team was not immediately available for comment.

    A New Mexico judge had dismissed Baldwin’s malicious prosecution claims in July, citing 90 days of inactivity in the case. Baldwin’s legal team petitioned to get the case reinstated and the judge agreed to the request.

    That prompted the defendants’ move to shift the case to the higher court.

    During his Santa Fe trial last year, Baldwin’s lawyers had sought to turn the focus away from whether Baldwin pulled his gun’s trigger in the accidental shooting to where the lethal bullet came from.

    Baldwin’s attorneys repeatedly accused law enforcement officers and prosecutors of bungling the case, including by allegedly hiding potential evidence — a batch of bullets that they said may have been related to the one that killed Hutchins.

    Meg James

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Sonja Sharp

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  • California judge halts Trump federal job cuts amid government shutdown

    SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration Wednesday from firing thousands of government workers based on the ongoing federal shutdown, granting a request from employee unions in California.

    U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued the temporary restraining order after concluding that the unions “will demonstrate ultimately that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious.”

    Illston slammed the Trump administration for failing to provide her with clear information about what cuts are actually occurring, for repeatedly changing its description and estimates of job cuts in filings before the court, and for failing — including during Wednesday’s hearing in San Francisco — to articulate an argument for why such cuts are not in violation of federal law.

    “The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” Illston said — which she said was not the case.

    She said the government justified providing inaccurate figures for the number of jobs being eliminated under its “reduction in force” orders by calling it a “fluid situation” — which she did not find convincing.

    “What it is is a situation where things are being done before they are being thought through. It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs,” she said. “And it has a human cost, which is really why we’re here today. It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

    Illston also ran through a string of recent comments made by President Trump and other members of his administration about the firings and their intentionally targeting programs and agencies supported by Democrats, saying, “By all appearances, they’re politically motivated.”

    The Trump administration has acknowledged dismissing about 4,000 workers under the orders, while Trump and other officials have signaled that more would come Friday.

    Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said Wednesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that the number of jobs cut could “probably end up being north of 10,000,” as the administration wants to be “very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding,” and the shutdown provided that opportunity.

    Attorneys for the unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, said that the figures were unreliable and that they feared additional reduction in force orders resulting in more layoffs, as promised by administration officials, if the court did not step in and block such actions.

    Illston, an appointee of President Clinton, did just that.

    She barred the Trump administration and its various agencies “from taking any action to issue any reduction in force notices to federal employees in any program, project or activity” involving union members “during or because of the federal shutdown.”

    She also barred the administration from “taking any further action to administer or implement” existing reduction notices involving union members.

    Illston demanded that the administration provide within two days a full accounting of all existing or “imminent” reduction in force orders that would be blocked by her order, as well as the specific number of federal jobs affected.

    Elizabeth Hedges, an attorney for the Trump administration, had argued during the hearing that the order should not be granted for several procedural reasons — including that the alleged harm to federal employees from loss of employment or benefits was not “irreparable” and could be addressed through other avenues, including civil litigation.

    Additionally, she argued that federal employment claims should be adjudicated administratively, not in district court; and that the reduction in force orders included 60-day notice periods, meaning the layoffs were not immediate and therefore the challenge to them was not yet “ripe” legally.

    However, Hedges would not discuss the case on its actual merits — which is to say, whether the cuts were actually legal or not, which did not seem to sit well with Illston.

    “You don’t have a position on whether it’s OK that they do what they’re doing?” Illston asked.

    “I am not prepared to discuss that today, your honor,” Hedges said.

    “Well — but it’s happening. This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal, even though that’s what this motion challenges?” Illston said.

    “That’s right,” Hedges said — stressing again that there were “threshold” arguments for why the case shouldn’t even be allowed to continue to the merits stage.

    Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the unions, suggested the government’s positions were indefensible and directly in conflict with public statements by the administration — including remarks by Trump on Tuesday that more cuts are coming Friday.

    “How do we know this? Because OMB and the president relentlessly are telling us, and other members of the administration,” Leonard said.

    Leonard said the harm from the administration’s actions is obvious and laid out in the union’s filings — showing how employees have at times been left in the dark as to their employment status because they don’t have access to work communication channels during the shutdown, or how others have been called in to “work without pay to fire their fellow employees” — only to then be fired themselves.

    “There are multiple types of harm that are caused exactly right now — emotional trauma. That’s not my word, your honor, that is the word of OMB Director Vought. Let’s cause ‘trauma’ to the federal workforce,” Leonard said. “And that’s exactly what they are doing. Trauma. The emotional distress of being told you are being fired after an already exceptionally difficult year for federal employees.”

    Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which is co-counsel for the unions, praised Illston’s decision in a statement after the hearing.

    “The statements today by the court make clear that the President’s targeting of federal workers — a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook — is unlawful,” Perryman said. “Our civil servants do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”

    Illston asked the two parties to confer on the best date, probably later this month, for a fuller hearing on whether she should issue a more lasting preliminary injunction in the case.

    “It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case — and my breath is bated until we find that,” Illston said.

    After the hearing, during a White House news conference, Trump said his administration was paying federal employees whom “we want paid” while Vought uses the shutdown to dismiss employees perceived as supporting Democratic initiatives.

    “Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects — not only jobs,” Trump said.

    Kevin Rector

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  • Federal shutdown stalls legal battles between California, Trump administration

    Days before the Trump administration was supposed to file its response to a California lawsuit challenging its targeting of gender-affirming care providers, attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge to temporarily halt the proceedings.

    Given the federal shutdown, they argued, they just didn’t have the lawyers to do the work.

    “Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ‘emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,’” they wrote in their filing Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown.

    The district judge presiding over the case, which California filed in federal court in Massachusetts along with a coalition of other Democrat-led states, agreed, and promptly granted the request.

    It was just one example of the now weeks-old federal shutdown grinding to a halt important litigation between California and the Trump administration, in policy battles with major implications for people’s lives.

    The same day, in the same Massachusetts court, Justice Department attorneys were granted a pause in a lawsuit in which California and other states are challenging mass firings at the U.S. Department of Education, after noting that department funding had been suspended and it didn’t know “when such funding will be restored by Congress.”

    The same day in U.S. District Court in Central California, the Trump administration asked for a similar pause in a lawsuit that it had brought against California, challenging the state’s refusal to provide its voter registration rolls to the administration.

    Justice Department attorneys wrote that they “greatly regret any disruption caused to the Court and the other litigants,” but needed to pause the proceedings until they were “permitted to resume their usual civil litigation functions.”

    Since then, the court in Central California has advised the parties of alternative dispute resolution options and outside groups — including the NAACP — have filed motions to intervene in the case, but no major developments have occurred.

    The pauses in litigation — only a portion of those that have occurred in courts across the country — were an example of sweeping, real-world, high-stakes effects of the federal government shutdown that average Americans may not consider when thinking about the shutdown’s impact on their lives.

    Federal employees working in safety and other crucial roles — such as air traffic controllers — have remained on the job, even without pay, but many others have been forced to stay home. The Justice Department did not spell out which of its attorneys had been benched by the shutdown, but made clear that some who had been working on the cases in question were no longer doing so.

    Federal litigation often takes years to resolve, and brief pauses in proceedings are not uncommon. However, extended disruptions — such as one that could occur if the shutdown drags on — would take a toll, forestalling legal answers in some of the most important policy battles in the country.

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has sued the Trump administration more than 40 times since January, has not challenged every request for a pause by the Trump administration — especially in cases where the status quo favors the state.

    However, it has challenged pauses in other cases, with some success.

    For example, in that same Massachusetts federal courthouse Oct. 1, Justice Department attorneys asked a judge to temporarily halt proceedings in a case in which California and other states are suing to block the administration’s targeted defunding of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

    Their arguments were the same as in the other cases: Given the shutdown, they didn’t have the attorneys to do the necessary legal work.

    In response, attorneys for California and the other states pushed back, noting that the shutdown had not stopped Department of Health and Human Services officials from moving forward with the measure to defund Planned Parenthood — so the states’ residents remained at imminent risk of losing necessary healthcare.

    “The risks of irreparable harms are especially high because it is unclear how long the lapse in appropriations will continue, meaning relief may not be available for months at which point numerous health centers will likely be forced to close due to a lack of funds,” the states argued.

    On Oct. 8, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denied the government’s request for a pause, finding that the states’ interest in proceeding with the case “outweighs” the administration’s interest in pausing it.

    Talwani’s argument, in part, was that her order denying a pause would provide Justice Department officials the legal authority to continue litigating the case despite the shutdown.

    Bonta said in a statement that “Trump owns this shutdown” and “the devastation it’s causing to hardworking everyday Americans,” adding that his office will not let Trump use it to cause even more harm by delaying relief in court cases.

    “We’re not letting his Administration use this shutdown as an excuse to continue implementing his unlawful agenda unchecked. Until we get relief for Californians, we’re not backing down — and neither are the courts,” Bonta said. “We can’t wait for Trump to finally let our government reopen before these cases are heard.”

    Trump and Republicans in Congress have blamed the shutdown on Democrats.

    Kevin Rector

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  • Trump’s top federal prosecutor in L.A. faces challenge over ‘acting’ status

    A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday to decide whether maneuvers used by the Trump administration to install Bill Essayli as acting United States attorney in Los Angeles are improper — and, if so, what should be done about it.

    During a Tuesday hearing in downtown L.A., Senior Judge J. Michael Seabright — who flew in from Hawaii for the proceeding — wondered how to proceed after defense attorneys sought to dismiss indictments against three clients and to disqualify Essayli “from participating in criminal prosecutions in this district.”

    Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.

    His term was set to expire in late July unless he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges. But the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months without any confirmation process.

    Seabright was selected from the District of Hawaii after L.A.’s federal judges recused themselves from the proceedings. He questioned the consequences of dismissing any charges over Essayli’s title.

    “If I did this for your client, I’ll have to do it for every single defendant who was indicted when Mr. Essayli was acting under the rubric of acting U.S. attorney, correct?” Seabright said to a deputy federal public defender.

    “I don’t think you will,” replied James A. Flynn. “This is a time-specific, case-specific analysis and the court doesn’t need to go so far as to decide that a dismissal would be appropriate in all cases.”

    “Why not? You’re asking for a really draconian remedy here,” Seabright said, before questioning how many indictments had been made since Essayli was designated acting U.S. attorney at the end of July.

    “203, your honor,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins responded.

    In a court filing ahead of the hearing Tuesday, lawyers bringing the challenge against Essayli called the government’s defense of his status a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials.”

    During the nearly two-hour hearing, Flynn cited similar legal challenges that have played out elsewhere. A federal judge ruled in August that Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.”

    The judges who ruled on the Nevada and New Jersey cases did not dismiss the charges against defendants, instead ordering that those cases not be supervised by Habba or Chattah.

    Flynn argued that the remedies in other states “have not been effective to deter the conduct.”

    “This court has the benefit of additional weeks and has seen the government’s response to that determination that their appointments were illegal and I submit the government hasn’t gotten the message,” Flynn said.

    Flynn said another option could be a dismissal without prejudice, which means the government could bring the case against their clients again. He called it a “weaker medicine” than dismissal with prejudice, “but would be a stronger one than offered in New Jersey and Nevada.”

    The hearing grew testy at times, with Seabright demanding that Assistant U.S. Atty. Robbins tell him when Essayli’s term will end. Robbins told the judge the government believes it will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.

    Robbins noted that Essayli has also been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, essentially allowing him to remain in charge of the office if he loses the “acting” title.

    Bondi in July also appointed him as a “special attorney.” Robbins told the judge that “there’s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli’s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.”

    “The defense challenge here, the stated interest that they have, is Bill Essayli cannot be acting,” Robbins said. “But they don’t have a compelling or strong response to Bill Essayli is legitimately in the office and he can be the first assistant … he can supervise other people in the office.”

    Seabright asked both sides to brief him by Thursday on “whatever hats you believe [Essayli’s] wearing now” and “whether I were to say he wasn’t legitimately made acting U.S. attorney … what hats does he continue to wear.”

    “If I understand the government’s proposed remedy correctly … it would essentially be no remedy at all, because they would be re-creating Mr. Essayli as the acting United States attorney, he’d just be wearing a first assistant hat,” Flynn said.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”

    “The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.

    Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language verbatim at news conferences. His tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of prosecutors quitting.

    Brittny Mejia

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  • Palmdale mother charged with murder in toddler’s fentanyl overdose death

    A 23-year-old Palmdale woman will face a murder charge in the 2023 overdose death of her 2-year-old son, Los Angeles County authorities said Monday.

    Anaie Flores was charged with one count of murder and one county of child abuse causing the death of her son, Angel, in November 2023, according to a criminal complaint.

    Angel died after overdosing on fentanyl left out by her mother, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami, who is prosecuting the case.

    Flores was arrested Thursday by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies and held in lieu of $2-million bail, jail records show.

    It was not immediately clear who was serving as Flores’ attorney. Her arraignment was continued on Monday afternoon, according to Hatami.

    Flores pleaded no contest to grand theft this year and was sentenced to two years of probation in connection with a March burglary, court records show.

    Although it is rare for prosecutors to charge adults with murder in the cases of accidental overdoses involving children in their care, it is not unprecedented. Hatami is pursuing a similar case involving the death of a 17-month-old boy in Lancaster.

    “Fentanyl is sort of like a loaded gun. If you leave a loaded gun in your house and it’s not locked up properly and you have children, and a child gets ahold of that loaded gun and shoots themselves, the parent should be responsible,” Hatami said in an interview with The Times this year. “That’s conscious disregard for the safety of others.”

    At least 11 children younger than 5 have suffered fentanyl-related deaths in California in 2023, according to the state health department.

    James Queally

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  • 1 dead, 2 injured in shooting at Alcorn State

    1 dead, 2 injured in shooting at Alcorn State University

    1 dead, 2 injured in Alcorn State University shooting; MBI investigating.

    Updated: 10:11 PM EDT Oct 11, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has been called in to investigate a shooting on the campus of Alcorn State University that left at least one person dead and two injured.According to MBI, the shooting happened around 6:30 p.m. Saturday near the Industrial Technology Building on campus. No arrests have been made at this time. Investigators are continuing to gather evidence, and MBI says details remain preliminary and could change as the investigation develops.

    The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has been called in to investigate a shooting on the campus of Alcorn State University that left at least one person dead and two injured.

    According to MBI, the shooting happened around 6:30 p.m. Saturday near the Industrial Technology Building on campus.

    No arrests have been made at this time.

    Investigators are continuing to gather evidence, and MBI says details remain preliminary and could change as the investigation develops.

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  • Here are 5 major Supreme Court cases to be argued this fall

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court opens its new term on Monday and is scheduled to hear arguments in 33 cases this fall.

    The justices will hear challenges to transgender rights, voting rights and Trump tariffs and will reconsider a 90-year-old precedent that protects officials of independent agencies from being fired by the president.

    Here are the major cases set for argument:

    Conversion therapy and free speech: Does a licensed mental health counselor have a 1st Amendment right to talk to patients under age 18 about changing their sexual orientation or gender identity, even if doing so is prohibited by state law?

    California in 2012 was first state to ban “conversion therapy,” believing it was harmful to minors and leads to depression and suicide. Other states followed, relying on their authority to regulate the practice of medicine and to prohibit substandard care.

    The Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group, sued on behalf of a Colorado counselor and argued that the state is “censoring” her speech. (Chiles vs. Salazar, to be argued on Tuesday.)

    Supreme Court Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., left, Clarence Thomas and Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. attend inauguration ceremonies for Donald Trump in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20 in Washington.

    (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

    Voting rights and Black majority districts: Does a state violate the Constitution if it redraws its congressional districts to create one with a Black majority?

    In the past, the court has said racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional. But citing the Voting Rights Act, it also has ruled states must sometimes create an electoral district where a Black or Latino candidate has a good chance to win.

    Otherwise, these minorities may be shut out from political representation in Congress, state legislatures or county boards.

    But Justice Clarence Thomas has argued for outlawing all use of race in drawing district lines, and the court may adopt his view in a pending dispute over a second Black majority district in Louisiana. (Louisiana vs. Callais, to be argued Oct. 15.)

    Trump and tariffs: Does President Trump have legal authority acting on his own to impose large import taxes on products coming from otherwise friendly countries?

    Trump is relying on a 1977 law that empowers the president to act when faced with an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad. The measure does not mention tariffs or taxes.

    In a pair of cases, lower courts ruled the tariffs were illegal but kept them in place for now. Trump administration lawyers argue the justices should defer to the president because tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security. (Learning Resources vs. Trump, to be argued Nov. 5.)

    Three athletes compete in the 100-meter hurdles.

    The high court will look at whether transgender athletes can compete in certain sports. Above, a 100-meter hurdles event during a track meet in Riverside in April.

    (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

    Transgender athletes and school sports: Can a state prevent a transgender student whose “biological sex at birth” was male from competing on a girls sports team?

    West Virginia and Idaho adopted such laws but they were struck down by judges who said they violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of laws and the federal Title IX law that bars sex discrimination in schools and colleges.

    Trump voiced support for “keeping men out of women’s sports” — a characterization deemed false by transgender women and their advocates, among others. If the Supreme Court agrees, this rule is likely to be enforced nationwide under Title IX. (West Virginia vs. B.P.J. is due to be heard in December.)

    Trump and independent agencies: May the president fire officials of independent agencies who were appointed with fixed terms set by Congress?

    Since 1887, Congress has created semi-independent boards, commissions and agencies with regulatory duties. While their officials are appointed by the president, their fixed terms keep them in office when a new president takes over.

    The Supreme Court upheld their independence from direct presidential control in the 1935 case of Humphreys Executor vs. U.S., but Trump has fired several such officials.

    The current court has sided with Trump in two such cases and will hear arguments on whether to overturn the 90-year-old precedent. (Trump vs. Slaughter is due to be argued in December.)

    David G. Savage

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  • She went to get her green card and now faces deportation. Did the feds trick her?

    On Sept. 16, Barbara Gomes Marques May and her husband arrived at the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building for what they believed would be the final step in Marques May’s process to obtain her green card.

    The interview process had gone smoothly, Tucker May recalled. But toward the end, a federal immigration official she had met with said he needed Marques May to follow him so he could photocopy her passport, he recalled. She and her husband believed the trip would be brief and they would be able to leave.

    Instead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques May, a 38-year-old Brazilian national who has no criminal record and works as a film director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County before being sent to Louisiana. Meanwhile, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to try to stop her deportation.

    On Wednesday, Marques May was scheduled to board a 6 a.m. flight to her home country, but her attorney was able to file a motion to reopen her deportation proceedings and keep her on U.S. soil, at least temporarily. As of Thursday, she had been moved to Arizona and will return to California while her deportation proceedings remain open, her attorney said.

    “It’s very much an ongoing nightmare,” Tucker May said in an interview this week.

    Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond to a request for comment about Marques May’s case.

    According to her attorney, Marcelo Gondim, Marques May arrived in the U.S. in 2018 on a tourist visa. Gondim said she applied for an extension but was denied. She ended up overstaying her visa, he said, and in 2019, the government sent her a notice to appear for a court hearing to begin deportation proceedings.

    But Marques May had moved and had not kept her address up to date with immigration court, and so the letter never reached her, Gondim said. Because she failed to appear, the government issued a removal order against her.

    In April 2025, the couple got married and she began the process to apply for a green card, Gondim said. Under the Biden administration, he said, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would have notified Marques May that there was a removal order issued for her and directed her on how to get it resolved.

    Overstaying a visa is not considered a criminal offense, and penalties are issued if the person leaves the country. In cases involving married couples, Gondim said, there’s an automatic forgiveness for overstaying a visa, relief that Marques May would’ve been eligible for.

    But the Trump administration has instead used courthouses and Citizenship and Immigration Services offices to engage in mass arrests of migrants attending mandated hearings and appointments. Soon, the USCIS will have expanded powers.

    In September, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new directive that will allow the agency — which administers and oversees immigration applications — to enforce immigration law with “special agents.” The order goes into effect Monday.

    “USCIS will have greater capacity to support DHS efforts by handling investigations from start to finish, instead of referring certain cases to Homeland Security Investigation within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the agency said in a statement.

    After Marques May was arrested, May struggled to figure out where federal authorities had sent his wife. Finally, he was able to get in touch with her, and she detailed how, when she was arrested in L.A., she burst into tears, and an ICE agent took a selfie with her, he said.

    During her transfer between detention facilities, she told him, she was subjected to harsh conditions, including how she went without food or water for more than 12 hours and had access to bathrooms with no toilet paper. She was given only bread and water and a couple of times an apple.

    Marques May, who had surgery this year for chronic back problems, was also denied medical treatment for a device she uses to manage her pain, he said. May went public with her arrest more than a week after she was detained, he said, because he had run out of all legal avenues.

    “There is an open disdain being shown by ICE for the basic rule of law for this country,” he said.

    May began posting about her arrest online, garnering hundreds of responses and support. A GoFundMe page had raised more than $50,000 as of Thursday. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who counts Marques May as one of her constituents, said she was “doing everything possible to prevent her deportation and I’m demanding that ICE follow the law.”

    “Unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique, it reflects a broader pattern under Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel,” she posted on X.

    Gondim said he repeatedly tried to stop her from being transferred to facilities outside California, only to find barriers and delays by ICE officials to getting legal documents for her to sign. From Adelanto, she was transferred to Arizona, then Louisiana.

    The government is not doing anything wrong by complying with the removal order, he said, “but they cannot prevent the person from having access to counsel and be able to present their case to file some form of relief [so they] don’t get unjustly deported.”

    To stop Marques May’s imminent deportation, Gondim filed separate motions to reopen her deportation proceedings and terminate her deportation proceedings. Until a judge rules on the case, Gondim said, ICE cannot deport her. He said he’s hopeful that she will end up being released.

    “Since she has already an approved petition from her U.S. citizen husband, and she has a clear path to filing a new [application] and getting her green card,” he said, an immigration court judge will not be interested in pursuing a case against a person who should be approved for permanent residency by law.

    Until then, May said his wife’s first feature film has been put on hold until she can be released. In 2021, Marques May premiered her short film, “Pretas,” at the Culver Theater for the L.A. Brazilian Film Festival. The film centers on Black women and their experiences dealing with racism and carries a message of creating a more anti-racist society.

    “I love Los Angeles so much,” she said in an interview at the time. “I couldn’t be happier. It was a premiere I wasn’t expecting.”

    It was their shared love of films that bonded the couple, who met on a dating app, May said. They spent a lot of their time together watching movies, sharing popcorn and then discussing what worked and didn’t in the films.

    May says he now thinks about all the immigrants who have not committed any crimes but lack the legal resources to avoid deportation.

    “These are human beings that these terrible things are happening to,” he said. “If anybody reads stories like this, if they think this doesn’t apply to them because they’re not married to an immigrant, I beg those people to consider what they think comes next.”

    Melissa Gomez

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  • Trump wants to use U.S. cities as military ‘training grounds.’ Can judges stop him?

    President Trump warned the country’s top ranking military officials Tuesday that they could be headed to “war” with U.S. citizens, signaling a major escalation in the ongoing legal battle over his authority to deploy soldiers to police American streets.

    “What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one-by-one,” Trump said in an address to top brass in Quantico, Va. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

    Commanders should use American cities as “training grounds,” the president said.

    Trump’s words provoked instant pushback. Oregon has already filed a legal challenge, and experts expressed concern that what the president described is against the law.

    “He is suggesting that they learn how to become warriors in American cities,” said Daniel C. Schwartz, former general counsel at the National Security Agency, who heads the legal team at National Security Leaders for America. “That should scare everybody. It’s also boldly illegal.”

    The use of soldiers to assist with federal immigration raids and crowd control at protests and otherwise enforce civilian laws has been a point of contention with big city mayors and blue state governors for months, beginning with the deployment of thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles in early June.

    That deployment was illegal, a federal judge ruled last month. In a scorching 52-page decision, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer barred soldiers under Trump’s command from carrying out law enforcement duties across California, warning of a “national police force with the President as its chief.”

    Yet hundreds of troops remained on the streets of Los Angeles while the matter was under litigation. With the case still moving through the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, hundreds more are now set to arrive in Portland, Ore., with another hundred reportedly enroute to Chicago — all over the objections of state and local leaders.

    “Isolated threats to federal property should not be enough to warrant this kind of response,” said Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law. “The threat has to be really serious, and I don’t think the Trump administration has made that case.”

    Others agreed.

    “I’m tremendously worried,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “Using the military for domestic law enforcement is something that’s characteristic of authoritarian regimes.”

    Oregon’s attorney general filed a lawsuit Monday alleging the president had applied a “baseless, wildly hyperbolic pretext” to send in the troops. Officials in Illinois, where the Trump administration has made Chicago a focal point of immigration enforcement, are also poised to file a challenge.

    Although the facts on the ground are different legally, the Oregon suit is a near copy-paste of the California battle making its way through the courts, experts said.

    “That’s exactly the model that they’re following,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

    Unlike the controversial decision to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in August, the Los Angeles and Portland deployments have relied on an esoteric subsection of the law, which allows the president to federalize troops over the objection of state governments in certain limited cases.

    California’s challenge to those justifications has so far floundered in court, with the 9th Circuit finding in June that judges must be “highly deferential” to the president’s interpretation of facts on the ground. That case is under review by a larger panel of judges.

    In a memo filed Monday, California Deputy Solicitor General Christopher D. Hu warned that the decision had emboldened the administration to deploy troops elsewhere, citing Portland as an example.

    “Defendants apparently believe that the June 7 memorandum — issued in response to events in Los Angeles — indefinitely authorizes the deployment of National Guard troops anywhere in the country, for virtually any reason,” Hu wrote. “It is time to end this unprecedented experiment in militarized law enforcement and conscription of state National Guard troops outside the narrow conditions allowed by Congress.”

    Experts warn the obscure 19th century law at the heart of the debate is vague and “full of loopholes,” worrying some who see repeated deployment as a slippery slope to widespread, long-term military occupations.

    “That has not been our experience at least since the Civil War,” Schwartz said. “If we become accustomed to seeing armed uniformed service personnel in our cities, we risk not objecting to it, and when we stop objecting to it, it becomes a norm.”

    The joint address to military leaders in Virginia on Tuesday further stoked those fears.

    “We’re under invasion from within,” the president admonished generals and admirals gathered in the auditorium. “No different from a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”

    He touted the move in August to create a “quick reaction force” to “quell civil disturbances” — a decree folded into his executive order expanding the D.C. troop deployment.

    “George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, George Bush and others all used the armed forces to keep domestic order and peace,” Trump said. “Now they like to say, oh, you’re not allowed to use the military.”

    Those historic cases have some important differences with 2025, experts say.

    When President Cleveland sent troops to break up a railroad strike and tamp down mob violence against Chinese immigrants, he invoked the Insurrection Act. So did 15 other presidents, including Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush.

    Experts stress that Trump has pointedly not used the act, despite name-checking it often in his first term.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday largely avoided the theme of “enemies within,” instead extolling the “warrior ethos” at the heart of his military reform project. He railed against what he saw as the corrupted culture of the modern military — as well as its aesthetic shortcomings.

    “It’s tiring to look out at combat formations and see fat troops,” Hegseth said. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon. It’s a bad look.”

    As deployments multiply across the country, experts said they were watching what the appellate division and ultimately the Supreme Court will decide.

    “It will be a test for the Supreme Court,” Schwartz said. “Whether they are willing to continue to allow this president to do whatever he wants to do in clear violation of constitutional principles, or whether they will restrain him.”

    Sonja Sharp

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  • L.A. County will pay $20 million to family of 4-year-old boy who was tortured, killed

    Los Angeles County agreed to pay $20 million Tuesday to the family of Noah Cuatro, a 4-year-old Palmdale boy who was tortured to death by his parents in 2019.

    The case brought intense scrutiny of the county’s child welfare system after it was revealed that the Department of Children and Family Services had failed to remove Noah from his parents despite a court order.

    DCFS had been given 10 days to get Noah away from his parents and seen by a doctor after multiple reports of neglect and abuse, The Times previously reported. The department ignored the order.

    He died less than two months later, right before his fifth birthday. His parents later pleaded no contest to murder and torture charges.

    “He always begged me not to send him to his parents,” said Eva Hernandez, Noah’s great-grandmother. “I tried to explain to him so many times, but he didn’t understand. He’d take his little hands and look into my eyes and say, ‘Don’t make me go there.’”

    Eva Hernandez cries while remembering her great-grandson Noah Cuatro as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors prepares to approve a $20-million settlement to his family.

    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

    Hernandez sued DCFS in 2020, alleging the department had failed her grandson and should have intervened to keep him safe. Cuatro had been under the supervision of the agency from the time he was born because his mother had been accused of fracturing his half sister’s skull.

    The child welfare department said since Noah’s death they’ve hired thousands of social workers to decrease caseloads and retrained social workers on interviewing techniques and use of forensic exams.

    “It is DCFS’ hope that this resolution gives Noah’s family a sense of peace,” the department said in a statement. “DCFS remains committed to learning from the past, improving its work, and operating with transparency.”

    At the time of his death, Noah remained under supervision by DCFS despite more than a dozen reports to the child abuse hotline and police from callers who believed that he and his siblings were being abused.

    Attorney Brian Claypool, who represented Cuatro’s family in the lawsuit, said Noah’s death was a direct result of the county failing to follow the court order to remove him from his parents. A Superior Court judge had agreed to remove him after a social worker filed a 26-page request with the court, citing evidence of abuse.

    “The county really blew it with the removal order. There’s no excuse for them not to have picked up Noah,” Claypool said. “The most shocking, upsetting part of this case is when I took the deposition of the social worker in the case and the two supervisors, none of the individuals read the petition of all the abuse that was submitted to the court. That was inexcusable.”

    Hands hold up a framed photo.

    Eva Hernandez holds a photo of her great-grandson Noah Cuatro.

    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

    Noah’s parents initially called 911 on July 5, 2019, saying their son had drowned in a swimming pool of their apartment complex, but authorities grew suspicious after finding the boy unconscious and dry in the apartment. Doctors later found bruises across his body and signs of “mottling” around his neck.

    County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose district includes Palmdale, called his death a “heartbreaking tragedy.”

    “While nothing can undo the harm he suffered, today’s $20 million settlement awarded to his surviving siblings and grandmother provides some measure of support as they continue to heal,” she said in a statement. “Noah’s life was not in vain. His case has reinforced the need for ongoing review of child welfare cases, stronger partnerships with our schools, and a stabilized DCFS workforce to better protect children in the Antelope Valley. Noah leaves behind a legacy — he will not be forgotten.”

    His great-grandmother, Hernandez, said she still thinks of him every day.

    “I know that he’s not suffering anymore,” she said.

    Rebecca Ellis

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  • Legal experts say Trump’s indictment of Comey is a test of justice

    WASHINGTON — On a Phoenix tarmac in 2016, former President Clinton and U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch had a serendipitous meeting on a private jet. The exchange caused a political firestorm. At a time when the Justice Department was investigating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, the appearance of impropriety prompted a national scandal.

    “Lynch made law enforcement decisions for political purposes,” Donald Trump, her Republican rival that year, would later write of the meeting on Twitter. “Totally illegal!”

    It was the beginning of a pattern from Trump claiming political interference by Democrats and career public servants in Justice Department matters, regardless of the evidence.

    Now, Trump’s years-long claim that it was his opponents who politicized the justice system has become the basis for the most aggressive spree of political prosecutions in modern American history.

    “What Trump is doing now with the U.S. attorneys is really in complete opposition to how the people who created those offices imagined what those officials would do — the Founders simply did not envision the office in this way,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis.

    “From the inception of the Justice Department,” he added, “one of the most remarkable things is how it was never used in this way.”

    On Thursday, at Trump’s express direction, federal charges were filed against James Comey, the former FBI director, alleging he gave false testimony before Congress and attempted to obstruct a congressional proceeding five years ago.

    The indictment was secured from a federal grand jury after Trump fired a U.S. attorney with doubts about the strength of the case — replacing him with a loyalist, and telling Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi openly on social media to pursue charges against him and others.

    “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP,” Trump wrote on social media after the charges were filed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, denies the charges.

    “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way,” Comey said in a statement posted online. “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.

    “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice. But I have great confidence in the federal judicial system,” Comey continued. “And I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

    Behind the charges against Comey, legal experts see a weak case wielded as a cudgel in a political persecution of Trump’s perceived enemy. Comey is accused of lying about authorizing a leak to the media about an FBI investigation through an anonymous source.

    It is only the latest example. Over the summer, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, used his position to accuse three of the president’s political foes of mortgage fraud, referring the cases to the Justice Department for potential charges — actions actively encouraged by Trump online.

    “It’s not a list,” Trump said Thursday, asked whether more prosecutions are coming. “I think there will be others. They’re corrupt. These were corrupt radical left Democrats. Comey essentially was Dem — he’s worse than a Democrat.”

    The president’s overt use of the Justice Department as a partisan tool threatens a new era of political persecutions that could well backfire on his own allies. The Supreme Court has made clear that presidents enjoy broad immunity for their actions while in office. But their aides do not. Bondi, Pulte and others, just like Comey, are obligated to provide occasional testimony to House and Senate committees under oath.

    “The Comey indictment is notable for its personalized politicization being so open,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College. “The same actions carried out clandestinely would seem scandalous, because they are — and the fact they were so blatantly advertised does not make them less corrupt.”

    But the Comey case can also be seen as a test of the viability of a prosecution based purely on politics. Already, lawyers for Trump’s other legal targets have said they plan on using his overt threats against them to get cases against their clients thrown out in court.

    This week, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended Trump’s vocal advocacy for criminal charges against political foes as a matter of “accountability.”

    “We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media, from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ,” Leavitt said.

    “You look at people like [California Sen.] Adam Schiff, and like James Comey, and like [New York Atty. Gen.] Letitia James, who the president is rightfully frustrated with,” she continued. “He wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president.”

    But Trump’s accusations against Democrats have routinely failed the tests of inspectors general, journalistic inquiry and public scrutiny.

    When Trump was investigated over potential coordination between his campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 race, he claimed a liberal, “deep state” cabal was behind an inquiry based on, as the special prosecutor’s report concluded, “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”

    And when charged with federal crimes over his handling of highly classified material, and his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, he dismissed the charges as a witch hunt choreographed by President Biden and his attorney general, a claim that had no basis in fact.

    The special counsel investigations against Trump, Kastor said, were “prosecutions, not persecutions.”

    “His claims that the investigations surrounding him are specious — the investigations were appropriate,” Kastor added. “These investigations are not.”

    Michael Wilner

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  • ‘I’m not afraid’: Former FBI director responds after being indicted

    This indictment filed overnight does not specifically mention the Russia investigation, but it does accuse Comey of making *** false statement and obstructing *** congressional proceeding. Comey’s accused of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation into Russia meddling with the 2016 election and whether he authorized *** leak to the press. Now timing is everything. Last week, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey resigned after President Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney General. Social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey. The president then nominated US Attorney Lindsay Halligan, former personal attorney to the president. Halligan quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to *** grand jury shortly after charges were filed. Comey responded, My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have *** trial. And keep the faith. Overnight, President Trump posted on social media saying that Comey has been bad for the country and is being held responsible for his crimes against the nation. If Comey is convicted, he faces up to 5 years in prison at the White House. I’m Rachel Horzheimer.

    ‘I’m not afraid’: Former FBI Director responds to indictment

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly lying to Congress about the Russia investigation, prompting a response from Comey expressing confidence in the judicial system.

    Updated: 7:52 AM EDT Sep 26, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his testimony in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.The indictment, filed Thursday night, does not specifically mention the Russia investigation but outlines charges against Comey for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation and whether he authorized a leak to the press. Last week, Erik Siebert, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey, resigned after President Donald Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.In a social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey, James, and Trump’s other political enemies, writing to Bondi, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” President Trump then nominated U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the president, who quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to a grand jury.Halligan rushed to present the case to a grand jury because prosecutors had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired.Shortly after the charges were filed, Comey responded in a video posted on his social media, saying, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.” Overnight, President Trump posted on social media, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and saying Comey is “being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”Trump continued by posting early Friday morning, “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP.”If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his testimony in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

    The indictment, filed Thursday night, does not specifically mention the Russia investigation but outlines charges against Comey for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation and whether he authorized a leak to the press.

    Last week, Erik Siebert, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey, resigned after President Donald Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

    In a social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey, James, and Trump’s other political enemies, writing to Bondi, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” President Trump then nominated U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the president, who quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to a grand jury.

    Halligan rushed to present the case to a grand jury because prosecutors had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired.

    Shortly after the charges were filed, Comey responded in a video posted on his social media, saying, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

    Overnight, President Trump posted on social media, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and saying Comey is “being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”

    Trump continued by posting early Friday morning, “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP.”

    If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


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  • Trump taps ‘Tough Patriot’ — L.A. lawyer known for crypto, guns — as 9th Circuit judge

    He’s never held public office or donned a judge’s robes, but an arch-conservative Los Angeles County attorney is racing toward confirmation on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, accelerating the once-liberal court’s sharp rightward turn under President Trump.

    A competitive target shooter with a background in a cryptocurrency, Eric Tung was approached by the White House Counsel’s Office on March 28 to replace Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta, a Bush appointee and one of the court’s most prominent conservatives, who is taking senior status.

    A new father and still a relative unknown in national legal circles, Tung found an ally in pal Mike Davis, a reputed “judge whisperer” in Trump’s orbit. Speaking to the New York Post in mid-March, Davis touted Tung as Ikuta’s likely successor.

    The Pasadena lawyer appeared on a Federalist Society panel at the Reagan Library this year, debating legal efforts to restrain “ ‘agents’ of the left.”

    “Eric is a Tough Patriot, who will uphold the Rule of Law in the most RADICAL, Leftist States like California, Oregon, and Washington,” Trump wrote on Truth Social when the nomination was announced in July.

    The response from California senators was apoplectic.

    “Mr. Tung believes in a conception of the Constitution that rejects equality and liberty, and that would turn back the clock and continue to exclude vast sections of the American public from enjoying equal justice under the law,” said Sen. Alex Padilla.

    In the past, senators from a potential judge’s home state could block a nomination — a custom Trump exploded when he steamrolled Washington senators to install Eric D. Miller to the 9th Circuit in 2019.

    Tung has been tight-lipped about his ascent to the country’s busiest circuit. He did not respond to inquiries from The Times.

    A Woodland Hills native and conservative Catholic convert, Tung made a name for himself as a champion of the crypto industry and elegant legal writer, frequently lecturing at California law schools and headlining Federalist Society events.

    After graduating from Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Neil Gorsuch before joining the white-shoe law firm Jones Day, a feeder to the Trump Justice Department.

    Many lauded the nomination when it was first announced, including the National Asian Pacific American Bar Assn.

    “Eric is a highly regarded originalist who would follow in the footsteps of Justice Scalia, for whom he clerked,” said Carrie Campbell Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal advocacy group.

    Groups on the left, including Alliance for Justice, Demand Justice and the National Council of Jewish Women, have lobbied against putting Tung on the appellate court.

    If confirmed, Tung will be Trump’s 11th appointment to the 9th Circuit, a court the president vowed to remake when he first took office in 2017.

    During Trump’s first term, Judge Ikuta was part of a tiny conservative minority on the famously lopsided bench, a legacy of President Jimmy Carter’s decision to double the size of the circuit and pack it with liberal appointees.

    Many Trump judges ruffled feathers at first, and most have shown themselves to be “pretty conservative and pretty hard nosed,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

    Their ranks include the former Hawaii Atty. Gen. Judge Mark J. Bennett, as well as the circuit’s first openly gay member, Judge Patrick J. Bumatay.

    Trump’s appellate appointees helped deliver him several controversial recent decisions, including the finding in June that Trump had broad discretion to deploy the military on American streets. Another 9th Circuit ruling this month found that the administration could all-but eliminate the country’s refugee program via an indefinite “pause.”

    But they’ve also clashed sharply with the Justice Department’s attorneys, even in cases where the appellate panel ultimately sided with the administration.

    That’s what the president is trying to avoid this time around — particularly with his picks headed in the west, experts said.

    “People on the far right are pushing [Trump] to have people who will be ‘courageous’ judges — in other words, do things that are really unpopular that Trump likes,” Tobias said.

    Tung may fit the bill. In addition to his crypto chops and avowed support for constitutional originalism, he has been an ardent defender of religious liberty and an opponent of affirmative action. He shoots competitively as part of the International Defensive Pistol Assn.

    Both Tung and his wife Emily Lataif have close ties to the anti-abortion movement. Tung worked extensively with the architect of Texas’ heartbeat bill; Lataif interned for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion policy group that seeks to make IUDs and emergency contraception illegal and opposes many forms of in-vitro fertilization.

    “Emily is the epitome of grace under pressure, as was evidenced … when she and Eric had to evacuate their home during the California wildfires, only days after welcoming their first child,” Severino said. “She’s worked at the highest levels, from the White House to the executive team at Walmart, and her talent is matched only by her kindness and love for her family.”

    When asked by Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware whether he believed IVF was protected by the Constitution, Tung declined to answer.

    It wasn’t the only question the nominee ducked. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Tung of giving only “sham answers” to their inquiries, both in chambers and through written follow-ups.

    After pressing him repeatedly for his position on landmark cases including Obergefell vs. Hodges and Lawrence vs. Texas — privacy right precedents Justice Clarence Thomas wrote should be reconsidered after the fall of Roe vs. Wade — Sen. Adam Schiff pushed the nominee for his opinion on Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 case affirming interracial marriage.

    “Was that wrongly decided?” the California lawmaker asked the aspiring judge.

    “Senator, my wife and I are an interracial couple, so if that case were wrongly decided I would be in big trouble,” Tung said.

    “You’re willing to tell us you believe Loving was correctly decided, but you’re not willing to say the other decisions were correctly decided,” Schiff said. “That seems less originalist and more situational.”

    Sonja Sharp

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  • Federal judge orders Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA medical research grants

    A federal judge Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore $500 million in UCLA medical research grants, halting for now a nearly two-month funding crisis that UC leaders said threatened the future of the nation’s premier public university system.

    The opinion by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California added hundreds of UCLA’s National Institutes of Health grants to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to the University of California.

    Lin’s order provides the biggest relief to UCLA but affects federal funding awarded to all 10 UC campuses. Lin ruled that the NIH grants were suspended by form letters that were unspecific to the research, a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rulemaking.

    In addition to the medical grant freezes — which had prompted talks of possible UCLA layoffs or closures of labs conducting cancer and stroke research, among other studies — Lin said the government would have to restore millions of Department of Defense and Department of Transportation grants to UC schools.

    Lin explained her thinking during a hearing last week. She said the Trump administration committed a “fundamental sin” in its “un-reasoned mass terminations” of grants using “letters that don’t go through the required factors that the agency is supposed to consider.”

    The preliminary injunction will be in place as the lawsuit proceeds. But in broadening the case, Lin agreed with plaintiffs that there would be irreparable harm if the suspensions were not immediately reversed.

    The suit was originally filed in June by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley professors fighting a separate, earlier round of Trump administration grant clawbacks. UCLA faculty with NIH grants later joined the case.

    The University of California is not a party in the suit.

    The judge, a Biden appointee, told Department of Justice lawyers to make a court filing by Sept. 29 explaining “all steps” the government has take to comply with her order or, if necessary, explain why restoring grants “was not feasible.”

    UC did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment about the ruling.

    Spokespeople for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, and the Department of Justice did not respond to questions from The Times about the government’s next steps. The Trump administration had appealed an earlier ruling in the case to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Last month, the appeals court declined to reverse that ruling by Lin.

    Prior court orders in the case have resulted in government notices to campuses within days saying that funding will flow again.

    “This is wonderful news for UC researchers and should be tremendously consequential in ongoing UC negotiations with the Trump administration,” said Claudia Polsky, a UC Berkeley law professor who is part of the legal team behind the suit. “The restoration of more than half a billion dollars to UCLA in NIH funding alone gives UC the strongest hand it has had yet in resisting unlawful federal demands.”

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, worked with Polsky and argued the case in front of Lin.

    “The judge made clear what she said previously and the 9th Circuit held: The termination of grants was illegal and they must be restored,” he said.

    Trump administration lawyers argued against lifting more grant freezes, saying the case was in the wrong jurisdiction.

    A Justice Department lawyer, Jason Altabet, said during the hearing last week that instead of a District Court lawsuit filed by faculty, the proper venue would be for UC to file a case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Altabet based his arguments on a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s suspension of $783 million in NIH grants — to universities and research centers throughout the country — in part because the issue, the high court said, was not correctly within the jurisdiction of a lower federal court.

    In her Monday opinion, Lin disagreed with the government’s position that professors could not sue in District Court or the federal claims court.

    Lin addressed a hypothetical scenario posed to the government in court filings and during last week’s hearing, in which she asked what recourse a faculty member had if “a future administration terminated all grants to researchers with Asian last names.” The government’s position was that there would be none unless the person’s employer, the university, sued, because the grants are given to the institutions, not the researchers.

    Writing Monday, Lin called that an “extreme” view. “This court will not shut its doors” on researchers suing over “constitutional and statutory rights,” she wrote.

    The Trump administration rescinded $584 million in UCLA grants in late July, citing allegations of campus antisemitism, use of race in admissions and the school’s recognition of transgender identities as its reasons. The awards included $81 million from the National Science Foundation — also restored last month by Lin — and $3 million from the Department of Energy, which is still suspended.

    Last month, the government proposed a roughly $1.2-billion fine and demanded wide campus changes over admissions, protest rules, gender-affirming healthcare for minors and the disclosure of internal campus records, among other demands, in exchange for restoring the money.

    UCLA has said it made changes in the last year to improve the climate for Jewish communities and does not use race in admissions. Chancellor Julio Frenk has said that defunding medical research “does nothing” to address discrimination allegations. The university displays websites and policies that recognize different gender identities and maintains services for LGBTQ+ communities.

    UC leaders said they will not pay the $1.2-billion fine and are negotiating with the Trump administration over its other demands. They have told The Times that many settlement proposals cross the university’s red lines.

    The case wasclosely watched by researchers at the Westwood campus, who have cut back on lab hours, reduced operations and considered layoffs as the crisis at UCLA moves toward the two-month mark.

    Neil Garg, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA whose roughly four-year, $2.9 million grant was suspended over the summer, said that “people on the campus will be overjoyed” by the injunction.

    “From the scientific side of it, it is incredibly warming to hear that, to see that sort of decision,” said Garg said. “But we will wait and see how things play out.”

    Garg’s 19-person lab works on developing new organic chemistry reactions that could have pharmaceutical applications. “We try to invent chemistry that is unknown,” he explained.

    No one in Garg’s lab lost jobs after his grant was frozen. After the suspension, Garg sought new funding sources. “I have been very aggressive, as have many of my colleagues, in applying,” he said. “Even if the funds are restored, we don’t know how quickly that will happen or how permanent that is.”

    Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year neuroscience doctroal candidate at UCLA, had also lost a roughly $160,000 NIH grant that funded her study of stroke recovery treatment.

    “I am really glad that [the suspension] didn’t last more than these two months,” said Rathbun, who hoped grants return “quickly and efficiently” so researchers can “use the money in ways that we desperately need.”

    Rathbun said the experience showed her “how incredibly precarious of a situation we are in as researchers. And how quickly our lives and our life’s work can seemingly be upended.”

    Jaweed Kaleem, Daniel Miller

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  • Federal judge is ‘inclined’ to order Trump to restore $500 million in UCLA research grants

    A federal judge Thursday said she was “inclined to extend” an earlier ruling and order the Trump administration to restore an additional $500 million in UCLA medical research grants that were frozen in response to the university’s alleged campus antisemitism violations.

    Although she did not issue a formal ruling late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin indicated she is leaning toward reversing — for now — the vast majority of funding freezes that University of California leaders say have endangered the future of the 10-campus, multi-hospital system.

    Lin, a judge in the Northern District of California, said she was prepared to add UCLA’s National Institutes of Health grant recipients to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that has already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to UC campuses.

    The judge’s reasoning: The UCLA grants were suspended by form letters that were unspecific to the research, a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rulemaking.

    Though Lin said she had a “lot of homework to do” on the matter, she indicated that reversing the grant cuts was “likely where I will land” and she would issue an order “shortly.”

    Lin said the Trump administration had undertaken a “fundamental sin” in its “un-reasoned mass terminations” of the grants using “letters that don’t go through the required factors that the agency is supposed to consider.”

    The possible preliminary injunction would be in place as the case proceeds through the courts. But in saying she leaned toward broadening the case, Lin suggested she believed there would be irreparable harm if the suspensions were not immediately reversed.

    The suit was filed in June by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley professors fighting a separate, earlier round of Trump administration grant clawbacks. The University of California is not a party in the case.

    A U.S. Department of Justice lawyer, Jason Altabet, said Thursday that instead of a federal district court lawsuit filed by professors, the proper venue would be the U.S. Court of Federal Claims filed by UC. Altabet based his arguments on a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s suspension of $783 million in NIH grants — to universities and research centers throughout the country — in part because the issue, the high court said, was not properly within the jurisdiction of a lower federal court.

    Altabet said the administration was “fully embracing the principles in the Supreme Court’s recent opinions.”

    The hundreds of NIH grants on hold at UCLA look into Parkinson’s disease treatment, cancer recovery, cell regeneration in nerves and other areas that campus leaders argue are pivotal for improving the health of Americans.

    The Trump administration has proposed a roughly $1.2-billion fine and demanded campus changes over admission of international students and protest rules. Federal officials have also called for UCLA to release detailed admission data, ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors and give the government deep access to UCLA internal campus data, among other demands, in exchange for restoring $584 million in funding to the university.

    In addition to allegations that the university has not seriously dealt with complaints of antisemitism on campus, the government also said it slashed UCLA funding in response to its findings that the campus illegally considers race in admissions and “discriminates against and endangers women” by recognizing the identities of transgender people.

    UCLA has said it has made changes to improve campus climate for Jewish communities and does not use race in admissions. Its chancellor, Julio Frenk, has said that defunding medical research “does nothing” to address discrimination allegations. The university displays websites and policies that recognize different gender identities and maintains services for LGBTQ+ communities.

    UC leaders said they will not pay the $1.2-billion fine and are negotiating with the Trump administration over its other demands. They have told The Times that many settlement proposals cross the university’s red lines.

    “Recent federal cuts to research funding threaten lifesaving biomedical research, hobble U.S. economic competitiveness and jeopardize the health of Americans who depend on cutting-edge medical science and innovation,” a UC spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “While the University of California is not a party to this suit, the UC system is engaged in numerous legal and advocacy efforts to restore funding to vital research programs across the humanities, social sciences and STEM fields.”

    A ruling Lin issued in the case last month resulted in $81 million in NSF grants restored to UCLA. If the UCLA NIH grants are reinstated, it would leave about $3 million from the July suspensions — all Department of Energy grants — still frozen at UCLA.

    Lin also said she leaned toward adding Transportation and Defense department grants to the case, which run in the millions of dollars but are small compared with UC’s NIH grants.

    The hearing was closely watched by researchers at the Westwood campus, who have cut back on lab hours, reduced operations and considered layoffs as the crisis at UCLA moves toward the two-month mark.

    In interviews, they said they were hopeful grants would be reinstated but remain concerned over the instability of their work under the recent federal actions.

    Lydia Daboussi, a UCLA assistant professor of neurobiology whose $1-million grant researching nerve injury is suspended, observed the hearing online.

    Aftewards, Daboussi said she was “cautiously optimistic” about her grant being reinstated.

    “I would really like this to be the relief that my lab needs to get our research back online,” said Daboussi, who is employed at the David Geffen School of Medicine. “If the preliminary injunction is granted, that is a wonderful step in the right direction.”

    Grant funding, she said, “was how we bought the antibodies we needed for experiments, how we purchased our reagents and our consumable supplies.” The lab consists of nine other people, including two PhD students and one senior scientist.

    So far, none of Daboussi’s lab members have departed. But, she said, if “this goes on for too much longer, at some point, people’s hours will have to be reduced.”

    “I do find myself having to pay more attention to volatilities outside of our lab space,” she said. “I’ve now become acquainted with our legal system in ways that I didn’t know would be necessary for my job.”

    Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year neuroscience PhD candidate at UCLA, lost a roughly $160,000 NIH grant that funded her study of stroke recovery treatment.

    “If there is a chance that these suspensions are lifted, that is phenomenal news,” said Rathbun, who presented at UCLA’s “Science Fair for Suspended Research” this month.

    “Lifting these suspensions would then allow us to continue these really critical projects that have already been determined to be important for American health and the future of American health,” she said.

    Rathbun’s research is focused on a potential treatment that would be injected into the brain to help rebuild it after a stroke. Since the suspension of her grant, Rathbun, who works out of a lab at UCLA’s neurology department, has been seeking other funding sources.

    “Applying to grants takes a lot of time,” she said. “So that really slowed down my progress in my project.”

    Jaweed Kaleem, Daniel Miller

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  • Protester found not guilty of assault despite top Border Patrol official’s testimony

    U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino — the brash agent who led a phalanx of military personnel into MacArthur Park this summer — was called as a witness Wednesday in a federal misdemeanor assault case against a protester, who allegedly struck a federal agent.

    Bovino, one of the faces of President Trump’s immigration crackdown that began in Los Angeles and is now underway in Chicago, took the stand to testify that he witnessed an assault committed by Brayan Ramos-Brito in Paramount on June 7.

    But a jury acquitted the defendant early Wednesday afternoon after a little over an hour of deliberations. The not guilty verdict came shortly after Bovino was questioned by the defense about previous comments he made referring to undocumented immigrants as “scum.”

    During the two-day trial a number of videos were displayed showing a Border Patrol agent shove Ramos-Brito, but none clearly illustrated his alleged attack on the agent.

    Outfitted in his green Border Patrol uniform, Bovino was the lone Border Patrol agent to testify that he witnessed Ramos-Brito drag his arm back and strike an agent with an open palm in the chest.

    Ramos-Brito and his attorneys declined to comment after the verdict, but were seen celebrating the acquittal in the downtown federal courthouse. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

    The case could prove to be an ominous bellwether for embattled U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who has struggled to win indictments against those charged with committing crimes while protesting the president’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Southern California.

    Prosecutors originally brought felony charges against Ramos-Brito, which were reduced to misdemeanors. Charges against a man arrested alongside him were dismissed earlier this year.

    The incident that ended in Ramos-Brito’s arrest occurred during a skirmish between federal law enforcement agents and locals frustrated by Trump’s immigration policies.

    On a cross-examination, federal public defender Cuauhtemoc Ortega questioned Bovino about being the subject of a misconduct investigation a few years ago and receiving a reprimand for referring to undocumented immigrants as “scum, filth and trash.”

    Bovino denied referring to undocumented immigrants that way and said he was referring to “a specific criminal illegal alien” — a Honduran national who he said had raped a child and reentered the United States and had been caught at or near the Baton Rouge Border Patrol station.

    “I said that about a specific individual, not about undocumented peoples, that’s not correct,” he said.

    Ortega pushed back, reading from the reprimand, which Bovino signed, stating that he was describing “illegal aliens.”

    “They did not say one illegal alien,” Ortega said. “They said you describing illegal aliens, and or criminals, as scum, trash and filth is misconduct. Isn’t that correct?”

    “The report states that,” Bovino said.

    Ortega said that Bovino was warned if he committed any instance of misconduct again, “you could be fired.”

    Since June, more than 40 people have been charged with a range of federal offenses, including assaulting officers and interfering with immigration enforcement, at either downtown protests or the scene of immigration raids throughout the region this summer, the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. said this week.

    Ramos-Brito’s case was the first to go to trial.

    In closing arguments, Ortega accused the Border Patrol agent at the center of the case of lying and Bovino of “trying to cover up for him.” He cited Bovino’s past reprimand as evidence that he harbors bias.

    But prosecutors pushed back on that, with Asst. U.S. Atty. Patrick Kibbe arguing that the defense “wants you to believe that there’s some grand conspiracy against the defendant Mr. Ramos Britos. These officers don’t know him.”

    Kibbe acknowledged that Bovino’s prior statements were unprofessional.

    “Does it have anything to do with what he saw on June 7? No,” Kibbe said. “This is not about immigration enforcement… it’s about whether the defendant struck Agent Morales.”

    The case centers around a protest outside the Paramount Business Center, across the street from Home Depot.

    Already tensions were high, with federal officials raiding a retail and distribution warehouse in downtown L.A. in early June, arresting dozens of workers and a top union official.

    At the Paramount complex, which houses Homeland Security Investigation offices, protesters began arriving around 10 a.m on June 7. Among them was Ramos-Brito.

    Several videos played in court Tuesday showed Ramos-Brito and another man cursing at Border Patrol agents and stepping inches from their faces with balled fists. At one point, Ramos-Brito approached multiple Border Patrol agents who appeared to be Latino and said “you’re a f—ing disgrace if you’re Mexican.”

    Kibbe said that while many protesters were “passionately” demonstrating, Ramos-Brito crossed a line by striking U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jonathan Morales.

    “There’s a constitutional right to protest peacefully. It is a crime to hit a federal officer,” Kibbe said.

    Federal public defender M. Bo Griffith, however, said Ramos-Brito was the victim of an assault, not the other way around.

    Both social media and body-worn camera footage played in court clearly show Morales shove Ramos-Brito first, sending him flying backward into the busy intersection of Alondra Blvd. While footage shows Ramos-Brito marching back toward the agent with his fists balled, no angle clearly captures the alleged assault.

    Aside from Morales, three other agents took the stand Tuesday, but none said they saw Ramos-Brito hit Morales. None of the agents who testified were outfitted with body-worn cameras that day, according to Border Patrol Asst. Chief Jorge Rivera-Navarro, who serves as chief of staff for “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles.

    Some of the Border Patrol agents swarming L.A. in recent months come from stations that don’t normally wear body-worn cameras, according to Navarro. He testified that he has since issued an order that led to cameras being distributed to agents working in L.A.

    The clash that led to the assault charge started when Ramos-Brito stepped to U.S. Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Mejorado, who said he repeatedly asked Ramos-Brito to move to the sidewalk as the protest was blocking traffic. Video shows Mejorado place his hand on Ramos-Brito’s shoulder twice, and the defendant swatting it away.

    At that point, Morales, a 24-year veteran of the Border Patrol, said he thought he needed to step in and de-escalate the situation between his fellow agent and Ramos-Brito. He did so by shoving Ramos-Brito backward into the intersection, according to video played in court. Morales said Ramos-Brito then charged at him while cursing and threw a punch at the upper part of his chest and throat.

    On cross-examination, Griffith confronted Morales and Mejorado with inconsistencies between descriptions of the event they previously gave to a Homeland Security Investigations officer and their testimony in court. It was not the first time such a discrepancy affected the case.

    Federal prosecutors previously dropped charges against Jose Mojica, the other protester who was arrested alongside Ramos-Brito, after video footage called into question the testimony of an immigration enforcement agent.

    According to an investigation summary of Mojica’s arrest previously reviewed by The Times, Mejorado claimed a man was screaming in his face that he was going to “shoot him,” then punched him at the Paramount protest. The officer said he and other agents started chasing the man, but were “stopped by two other males,” later identified as Mojica and Ramos-Brito.

    Video played in court Tuesday and previously reported by The Times shows that sequence of events did not happen. Ramos-Brito and Mojica were arrested in a dogpile of agents after Ramos-Brito allegedly struck Mojica. There was no chase.

    Questioned about Mojica’s case in July, a Homeland Security spokesperson said they were unable to comment on cases “under active litigation.”

    Defense attorneys said Ramos-Brito sustained multiple contusions on his face, neck and back and had cuts and scrapes on his body from being dragged across the pavement later.

    According to his attorneys, Ramos-Brito’s only prior interaction with law enforcement was for driving without a license.

    On Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson had to remove 21 potential jurors from the pool, several of whom said they could not be impartial due to their views on immigration policy.

    Many of the potential jurors said they were first or second generation immigrants from the Philippines, Colombia, Bulgaria, Jamaica and Canada.

    “I believe that immigrants are part of this country and I’m kind of partial with the defendant,” said one man, a landscaper from Lancaster.

    Brittny Mejia, James Queally

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  • L.A. child dies from complication of measles infection contracted in infancy

    A school-aged child in Los Angeles County has died from a rare complication of measles after contracting the disease in infancy, the county public health department announced Thursday.

    The child — who was not old enough to be vaccinated at the time of infection — died from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a fatal progressive brain disorder that strikes roughly one in 10,000 people infected with measles in the U.S. Doctors believe the risk is as high as one in every 600 children who contract measles as a baby.

    The disorder typically develops two to 10 years after initial infection, even when — as in this child’s case — the patient recovers fully from measles. The disease begins with seizures, cognitive decline and involuntary muscle spasms, and progresses to dementia, coma and eventually death.

    “Most pediatricians in the U.S. have never seen a child with SSPE because we’ve been vaccinating kids against measles for decades,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, a New York-based pediatric infectious-disease specialist and author of the book, “Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children’s Health.”

    The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health could not release further details on the child’s age, gender or location due to patient privacy laws, a spokesperson said.

    The department could only confirm that the child acquired measles before becoming eligible for an MMR vaccination.

    “This case is a painful reminder of how dangerous measles can be, especially for our most vulnerable community members,” county health officer Dr. Muntu Davis said in a statement. “Infants too young to be vaccinated rely on all of us to help protect them through community immunity.”

    Children typically receive their first MMR dose when they are 12 to 15 months old and a second dose between the ages of 4 and 6 years.

    An early first dose from the age of 6 to 11 months is recommended for babies traveling internationally or through an international hub. Infants under the age of 6 months are too young to receive the MMR shot, according to guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Very young babies rely on antibodies acquired during gestation and herd immunity to protect them from measles, which killed roughly 400 children every year in the U.S. before the combined MMR vaccine’s introduction in 1971.

    Measles was “eliminated” in the U.S. in 2000, meaning the disease was rare enough and immunity widespread enough to prevent local transmission if an errant case popped up.

    For 25 years, parents in the U.S. have been able to trust that herd immunity will keep infants safe from measles until they are old enough to be vaccinated.

    This recent death may be a signal that social contract is beginning to break.

    Childhood immunization rates have been slowly but steadily falling nationwide, from 95% in the years before the COVID pandemic to below 93% in the 2023-24 school year.

    In California, one of five U.S. states that banned all non-medical vaccine exemptions, the vaccination rate that year was 96.2%. California is also one of only 10 states with a kindergarten measles vaccination rate exceeding the 95% threshold experts say is necessary to achieve herd immunity.

    But if current vaccination rates hold steady over the coming decades, measles will once again be endemic in the U.S. within 25 years, two Stanford University researchers found in a study published earlier this year.

    “Right now we should really be trying to up vaccination rates,” Mathew Kiang, an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health, told the Times in April. “If we just kept them the way they are, bad things are going to happen within about two decades.”

    Times staff writer Jenny Gold contributed to this report.

    Corinne Purtill

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  • Georgia judge to toss landmark racketeering charges against ‘Cop City’ protesters

    A Georgia judge on Tuesday said he will toss the racketeering charges against all 61 defendants accused of a years-long conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility that critics pejoratively call “Cop City.”Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer said he does not believe Republican Attorney General Chris Carr had the authority to secure the 2023 indictments under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO. Experts believe it was the largest criminal racketeering case ever filed against protesters in U.S. history.The defendants faced a wide variety of allegations — everything from throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, to supplying food to protesters who were camped in the woods and passing out fliers against a state trooper who had fatally shot a protester. Each defendant faced up to 20 years in prison on the RICO charges.Farmer said during a hearing that Carr needed Gov. Brian Kemp’s permission to pursue the case instead of the local district attorney. Prosecutors earlier conceded that they did not obtain any such order.“It would have been real easy to just ask the governor, ‘Let me do this, give me a letter,’” Farmer said. “The steps just weren’t followed.”The case is not over yetFive of the 61 defendants were also indicted on charges of domestic terrorism and first-degree arson connected to a 2023 “night of rage” in which masked activists burned a police car in downtown Atlanta and threw rocks at a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation. Farmer said Carr also didn’t have the authority to pursue the arson charge, though he believes the domestic terrorism charge can stand.Farmer said he plans to file a formal order soon and is not sure whether he would quash the entire indictment or let the domestic terrorism charge proceed.Deputy Attorney General John Fowler told Farmer that he believes the judge’s decision is “wholly incorrect.”Carr plans to “appeal immediately,” spokesperson Kara Murray said.“The Attorney General will continue the fight against domestic terrorists and violent criminals who want to destroy life and property,” she said.Defense attorney Don Samuel said the case was rife with errors. Defense attorneys had expected to spend the whole week going through dozens of dismissal motions that had been filed. During an impassioned speech on Monday, the first day of the hearing, Samuel called the case “an assault on the right of people to protest” and urged Farmer to “put a stop to this.”“We could have spun the wheel and seen which argument was going to win first,” Samuel told The Associated Press after Farmer announced his decision from the bench.The long-brewing controversy over the training center erupted in January 2023 after state troopers who were part of a sweep of the South River Forest killed an activist, known as “Tortuguita,” who authorities said had fired at them while inside a tent near the construction site. A prosecutor found the troopers’ actions “objectively reasonable,” though Tortuguita’s family has filed a lawsuit, saying the 26-year-old’s hands were in the air and that troopers used excessive force when they initially fired pepper balls into the tent.Numerous protests ensued, with masked vandals sometimes attacking police vehicles and construction equipment to stall the project and intimidate contractors into backing out. Opponents also pursued civic paths to halt the facility, including packing City Council meetings and leading a massive referendum effort that got tied up in the courts.Carr, who is running for governor, had pursued the case, with Kemp hailing it as an important step to combat “out-of-state radicals that threaten the safety of our citizens and law enforcement.”But critics had decried the indictment as a politically motivated, heavy-handed attempt to quash the movement against the 85-acre project that ultimately cost more than $115 million.Environmentalists and anti-police activists were unitedEmerging in the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests, the “Stop Cop City” movement gained nationwide recognition as it united anarchists, environmental activists and anti-police protesters against the sprawling training center, which was being built in a wooded area that was ultimately razed in DeKalb County.Activists argued that uprooting acres of trees for the facility would exacerbate environmental damage in a flood-prone, majority-Black area while serving as an expensive staging ground for militarized officers to be trained in quelling social movements.The training center, a priority of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, opened earlier this year, despite years of protests and millions in cost overruns, some of it due to the damage protesters caused, and police officials’ needs to bolster 24/7 security around the facility.But over the past two years, the case had been bogged down in procedural issues, with none of the defendants going to trial. Farmer and the case’s previous judge, Fulton County Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams, had earlier been critical of prosecutors’ approach to the case, with Adams saying the prosecution had committed “gross negligence” by allowing privileged attorney-client emails to be included among a giant cache of evidence that was shared between investigators and dozens of defense attorneys.As the delays continued, defendants said their lives had been wrecked by the charges, with many unable to secure steady jobs or housing.Three of the defendants, organizers of a bail fund that supported the protesters, had also been charged with 15 counts of money laundering, but prosecutors dropped those charges last year.Prosecutors had previously apologized to the court for various delays and missteps, but lamented the difficulty of handling such a sprawling case, though Farmer pointed out that it was prosecutors who decided to bring this “61-person elephant” to court in the first place.Defense attorney Xavier de Janon said Farmer’s decision is a “victory,” but noted that there are other defendants still facing unindicted domestic terrorism charges in DeKalb County, as well as numerous pending misdemeanors connected to the movement.“The prosecutions haven’t ended against this movement, and I hope that people continue to pay attention to how the state is dealing with protests and activism, because it hasn’t ended,” de Janon said. “This is a win, and hopefully many more will come.”

    ATLANTA —

    A Georgia judge on Tuesday said he will toss the racketeering charges against all 61 defendants accused of a years-long conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility that critics pejoratively call “Cop City.”

    Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer said he does not believe Republican Attorney General Chris Carr had the authority to secure the 2023 indictments under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO. Experts believe it was the largest criminal racketeering case ever filed against protesters in U.S. history.

    The defendants faced a wide variety of allegations — everything from throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, to supplying food to protesters who were camped in the woods and passing out fliers against a state trooper who had fatally shot a protester. Each defendant faced up to 20 years in prison on the RICO charges.

    Farmer said during a hearing that Carr needed Gov. Brian Kemp’s permission to pursue the case instead of the local district attorney. Prosecutors earlier conceded that they did not obtain any such order.

    “It would have been real easy to just ask the governor, ‘Let me do this, give me a letter,’” Farmer said. “The steps just weren’t followed.”

    The case is not over yet

    Five of the 61 defendants were also indicted on charges of domestic terrorism and first-degree arson connected to a 2023 “night of rage” in which masked activists burned a police car in downtown Atlanta and threw rocks at a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation. Farmer said Carr also didn’t have the authority to pursue the arson charge, though he believes the domestic terrorism charge can stand.

    Farmer said he plans to file a formal order soon and is not sure whether he would quash the entire indictment or let the domestic terrorism charge proceed.

    Deputy Attorney General John Fowler told Farmer that he believes the judge’s decision is “wholly incorrect.”

    Carr plans to “appeal immediately,” spokesperson Kara Murray said.

    “The Attorney General will continue the fight against domestic terrorists and violent criminals who want to destroy life and property,” she said.

    Defense attorney Don Samuel said the case was rife with errors. Defense attorneys had expected to spend the whole week going through dozens of dismissal motions that had been filed. During an impassioned speech on Monday, the first day of the hearing, Samuel called the case “an assault on the right of people to protest” and urged Farmer to “put a stop to this.”

    “We could have spun the wheel and seen which argument was going to win first,” Samuel told The Associated Press after Farmer announced his decision from the bench.

    The long-brewing controversy over the training center erupted in January 2023 after state troopers who were part of a sweep of the South River Forest killed an activist, known as “Tortuguita,” who authorities said had fired at them while inside a tent near the construction site. A prosecutor found the troopers’ actions “objectively reasonable,” though Tortuguita’s family has filed a lawsuit, saying the 26-year-old’s hands were in the air and that troopers used excessive force when they initially fired pepper balls into the tent.

    Numerous protests ensued, with masked vandals sometimes attacking police vehicles and construction equipment to stall the project and intimidate contractors into backing out. Opponents also pursued civic paths to halt the facility, including packing City Council meetings and leading a massive referendum effort that got tied up in the courts.

    Carr, who is running for governor, had pursued the case, with Kemp hailing it as an important step to combat “out-of-state radicals that threaten the safety of our citizens and law enforcement.”

    But critics had decried the indictment as a politically motivated, heavy-handed attempt to quash the movement against the 85-acre project that ultimately cost more than $115 million.

    Environmentalists and anti-police activists were united

    Emerging in the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests, the “Stop Cop City” movement gained nationwide recognition as it united anarchists, environmental activists and anti-police protesters against the sprawling training center, which was being built in a wooded area that was ultimately razed in DeKalb County.

    Activists argued that uprooting acres of trees for the facility would exacerbate environmental damage in a flood-prone, majority-Black area while serving as an expensive staging ground for militarized officers to be trained in quelling social movements.

    The training center, a priority of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, opened earlier this year, despite years of protests and millions in cost overruns, some of it due to the damage protesters caused, and police officials’ needs to bolster 24/7 security around the facility.

    But over the past two years, the case had been bogged down in procedural issues, with none of the defendants going to trial. Farmer and the case’s previous judge, Fulton County Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams, had earlier been critical of prosecutors’ approach to the case, with Adams saying the prosecution had committed “gross negligence” by allowing privileged attorney-client emails to be included among a giant cache of evidence that was shared between investigators and dozens of defense attorneys.

    As the delays continued, defendants said their lives had been wrecked by the charges, with many unable to secure steady jobs or housing.

    Three of the defendants, organizers of a bail fund that supported the protesters, had also been charged with 15 counts of money laundering, but prosecutors dropped those charges last year.

    Prosecutors had previously apologized to the court for various delays and missteps, but lamented the difficulty of handling such a sprawling case, though Farmer pointed out that it was prosecutors who decided to bring this “61-person elephant” to court in the first place.

    Defense attorney Xavier de Janon said Farmer’s decision is a “victory,” but noted that there are other defendants still facing unindicted domestic terrorism charges in DeKalb County, as well as numerous pending misdemeanors connected to the movement.

    “The prosecutions haven’t ended against this movement, and I hope that people continue to pay attention to how the state is dealing with protests and activism, because it hasn’t ended,” de Janon said. “This is a win, and hopefully many more will come.”

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  • Beats’ new iPhone 17 case has a lanyard that turns into a kickstand

    Beats has launched a new collection of cases to go with Apple’s latest iPhones, including one with a removable lanyard that doubles as a kickstand. Lanyards and cross-body straps for phones are becoming pretty common these days. If you’re someone who travels every now and then, they can help protect you from pickpockets or from accidentally leaving your phone behind while you struggle with your luggage. The lanyard on Beats’ case comes with something extra: It has an adaptor at the end that slides open and attaches to a magnetic part on the side of the case so that it can act as a kickstand for hands-free phone use. The Beats iPhone 17 Kickstand Case with MagSafe & Camera Control is available in Granite Gray, Bedrock Blue, Lime Stone and Pebble Pink. You can get it from Apple’s website for $59.

    The new collection also includes a basic case that Beats describes as “thin, light, and precisely crafted.” It’s available in the same colors, with the same matte hard outer shell that prevents fingerprints and an interior microfiber lining. This model will set you back $45 and is the only one in the collection that you can get for the iPhone Air.

    Finally, the Beats iPhone 17 Rugged Case with MagSafe & Camera Control will give you some extra protection if you tend to drop your devices. Beats designed it with a rugged polymer backing that’s complemented by impact-absorbing sidewalls. It has an enclosed bottom for enhanced protection and a textured matte exterior to give you a good grip on your phone. The manufacturer said it put the case through repeated drop and scratch tests, as well as multiple thermal, mechanical and chemical tests to simulate real world use. Beats’ rugged case is available in Everest Black, Rocky Blue, Alpine Gray and Sierra Orange for $79.

    Mariella Moon

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