On Thursday, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that calls for the end of the United States’ 64-year-old embargo against Cuba.
Since Maduro’s capture, the U.S. has cut off all shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. President Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on countries that send oil to the island.
The oil deprivation in Cuba has sparked concern from international bodies, including the United Nations, which warned that the holdout would strain an already-fragile fuel situation and create a humanitarian crisis in the country.
“For 60 years, we have been waiting for [the] embargo to do what politicians in Washington claim it will do — deliver freedom or democracy to the people of Cuba. It has failed,” McGovern wrote in his newly introduced bill.
“It’s time to throw away the old, obsolete, failed policies of the past and try something different. Let’s focus on the people of Cuba — and let’s treat them like human beings who want to live their lives in dignity and freedom. The Cuban people — not politicians in Washington — ought to decide their own leaders and their own future.”
The Massachusetts representative’s proposal mirrors a similar bill that was put forth to the U.S. Senate by Oregon Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in 2025.
Additionally, McGovern criticized the seemingly hypocritical nature that the blockade has on Trump’s desire to curb immigration in the U.S.
“The Trump administration says they want to curtail migration, but their own hard line approach only incentivizes migration to the United States by making living conditions worse in Cuba,” he wrote.
“Not only is the embargo absurdly ineffective — it is counterproductive, hurting the very people it purports to help. It’s not Cuban elites who are harmed by our policies — it’s regular people and families who are denied food, medicine, and basic goods. We ought to use diplomacy and engagement to achieve our goals.”
McGovern isn’t new to looking for an end of the embargo, his advocacy on the topic dates back to at least 2000.
At the turn of the century, he penned an Op-Ed in The Times calling for former President Bill Clinton to put an end to the Cold War politics looming over the two countries’ strain.
“The president should … declare to the Cuban people that the Cold War is finally over,” McGovern wrote in his 2000 article. “He should announce that he will use his executive power to normalize diplomatic relations, lift the travel restrictions imposed on U.S. citizens who want to travel to Cuba and waive as much of the outdated economic embargo as current law allows.”
To help curb the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Cuba, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent two of her country’s naval ships filled with humanitarian aid to the island last week, despite Trump’s tariff threats.
In another effort to send aid to Cuba, an international coalition is preparing to send a flotilla with resources in March to the Caribbean archipelago. Named after “Nuestra América,” the 1891 essay by Cuban independence leader José Marti, the “Nuestra América Flotilla” mission is inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla, which attempted to get aid to Gaza last year amid Israel’s blockade of the Palestine coastline.
The coalition includes the political and grassroots organizations Progressive International, the People’s Forum and Code Pink, among others.
“We are sailing to Cuba, bringing critical humanitarian aid for its people,” the organizers wrote on the official flotilla website. “The Trump administration is strangling the island, cutting off fuel, flights, and critical supplies for survival. The consequences are lethal, for newborns and parents, for the elderly and the sick.”
Northern California forecast: Dry days ahead with foggy mornings, sunny afternoons
Monday will once again start with patchy fog in the valley and lower foothills.
IS WAY MORE RELIABLE THAN THE 35%. BUT YOU KNOW, IT’S A FUN KIND OF LIKE TRADITION THAT THEY HAVE THERE ON THE EAST COAST. BUT YEAH, STILL STILL A LONG WAYS AWAY FROM SPRING. STILL. WELL, LET ME CHECK MY SHADOW. I DON’T HAVE ONE HERE, JUST A REFLECTION COUNT. THESE DARN STUDIO LIGHTS. WELL, I GUESS WE’RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO USE SCIENCE, RIGHT? THIS CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER DOES. AND THEY’VE CERTAINLY USED THAT CLIMATE DATA AND ALGORITHMS TO PREDICT THAT THIS NEXT MONTH IS GOING TO BE COOLER FOR THE EAST COAST, COOLER THAN NORMAL. AND ON THE WEST COAST. WELL, WE’VE GOT THE WARMTH IS GOING TO FEEL LIKE WINTER IS COMING TO AN END. AS FOR RAIN NOT DOING TOO GOOD EITHER. THIS UPCOMING MONTH IS FORECAST TO BE DRIER THAN A NORMAL FEBRUARY, ACCORDING TO THE CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER. AND THAT’S BECAUSE WE’VE HAD BACK TO BACK AREAS OF HIGH PRESSURE THAT’S JUST STALLED OVER THE WEST COAST, INCLUDING ONE NOW WE HAVE ONE THAT’S MOVING IN AND THAT’S GOING TO STRENGTHEN FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK. WE MIGHT GET SOME CLOUDS SNEAK IN AT THE END OF THE WEEK, BUT ANOTHER AREA OF HIGH PRESSURE WILL MOVE IN FOR THE WEEKEND. IT’S NOT UNTIL CLOSER TO THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY. SOMETIME NEXT WEEK, OUR NEXT CHANCE OF SHOWERS WILL ARRIVE. SO DRY WEEK AHEAD. FOGGY VALLEY MORNINGS, WIDESPREAD AND DENSE AT TIMES. EXPECT THAT FOG LAYER TO LIFT AROUND MIDDAY TO NOON. AFTERNOON SUN AND CLOUDS, AND IT WILL BE UNSEASONABLY WARM IN THE VALLEY AND EVEN WARMER WEATHER UPHILL IN THE FOOTHILLS AND THE SIERRA. RIGHT NOW, WE’RE SITTING IN BETWEEN THE TWO AREAS OF HIGH PRESSURE, SO WE HAVE THIS NORTH WIND THAT’S KEEPING FOG DEVELOPMENT AWAY FOR THIS EVENING. VISIBILITY IS GREAT IN THE VALLEY RIGHT NOW, AND THE WINDS ARE STILL NOTICEABLE IN STOCKTON MODESTO THAT BREEZE STILL ABOUT 5 TO 10MPH AND THEY’RE GOING TO STICK AROUND TOMORROW. THEY’LL BE MOST NOTICEABLE IN THE NORTHWEST EDGE OF THE VALLEY. WILLIAMS AND WINTERS. YOU’LL NOTICE A NICE LIGHT BREEZE TOMORROW, AND THAT’S GOING TO LIMIT FOG DEVELOPMENT IN THE MORNING. IT WILL STILL BE PATCHY WHEN WE WAKE UP FOR YOUR MONDAY MORNING, BUT THAT FOG SHOULDN’T LAST AS LONG AS IT HAS BEEN AND TEMPERATURES WILL BE ALLOWED TO WARM INTO THE MID 60S ACROSS THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY TOMORROW. SAME STORY IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY. A LITTLE MORNING FOG TURNING INTO FULL SUNSHINE IN THE AFTERNOON, TEMPERATURES WARMING INTO THE LOW TO MID 60S. A LOT OF SUN IN THE DELTA IN THE BAY AREA, 67 IN SAN FRANCISCO, SAN JOSE, JUST A DEGREE SHY OF 70 DEGREES. IT’S GOING TO BE A NICE DAY IN THE FOOTHILLS TO GO ON A HIKE, DO ANYTHING OUTDOORS AS TEMPERATURES CLIMB INTO THE LOW TO MID 60S IN THE SIERRA, 50S IN TRUCKEE AND SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, WARMING INTO THE LOW 60S IN POLLOCK PINES, ARNOLD AND YOSEMITE. LOOKING OUT TO YOUR NEXT SEVEN DAYS? STILL NO RAIN DROPS ON THERE, JUST PATCHY MORNING FOG AND THEN TEMPERATURES WARMING IN THE 60S IN THE FOOTHILLS AND THE SIERRA CRUISING IN THE MID 50S ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE WEEKEND. SATURDAY SUNDAY MIGHT BE A LITTLE COOLER THANKS TO A PASSING SYSTEM THAT AGAIN, WILL BRING SOME CLOUDS IN, BUT THAT’S IT. THAT’S ALL THE UNSETTLED WEATHER WE HAVE FOR THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS. MORNING FOG AND THEN AFTERNOON SUNSHINE. SAME IN THE VALLEY. TEMPERATURES CRUISING IN THE MID 60S ALL THROUGH NEXT WEEKEND.
Northern California forecast: Dry days ahead with foggy mornings, sunny afternoons
Monday will once again start with patchy fog in the valley and lower foothills.
Monday will once again start with patchy fog in the valley and lower foothills.Fog will lift by mid-morning, allowing abundant sunshine to warm the valley and foothills into the mid-60s. The valley will see a light north breeze. Sierra temperatures will peak in the mid-50s.Northern California can expect similar dry days through the first half of the week, starting with morning fog and ending with sunshine. We’ll notice a bit more cloud cover in the latter half of the week due to passing disturbances.The stalled area of high pressure responsible for this unchanging weather will finally break down and shift east at the end of the week, allowing for more clouds and a subtle cooldown this weekend. While some breezes are expected, skies should remain dry.Forecast models suggest more unsettled weather may return during the second week of the month.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Monday will once again start with patchy fog in the valley and lower foothills.
Fog will lift by mid-morning, allowing abundant sunshine to warm the valley and foothills into the mid-60s. The valley will see a light north breeze. Sierra temperatures will peak in the mid-50s.
Northern California can expect similar dry days through the first half of the week, starting with morning fog and ending with sunshine. We’ll notice a bit more cloud cover in the latter half of the week due to passing disturbances.
The stalled area of high pressure responsible for this unchanging weather will finally break down and shift east at the end of the week, allowing for more clouds and a subtle cooldown this weekend. While some breezes are expected, skies should remain dry.
Forecast models suggest more unsettled weather may return during the second week of the month.
GOLDEN TROUT WILDERNESS, Calif. — The first two miles were pleasant enough. The grade was mild, the forest serene. It was what lay ahead that worried me:
A 2,500-foot descent to Jordan Hot Springs, a spot in California’s High Sierra backcountry that has long had a hold on my imagination — an idyllic meadow with rock-dammed bathtub-hot pools.
Given my age and lack of recent high-altitude exertion, I could easily need a helicopter to get out.
But that was a secondary concern. I was most anxious about what I might see along the way. Would it be an affirmation of nature’s power of renewal or an omen of irreversible decline?
I was retracing my steps of 20 years earlier to a scene of mass death I had never been able to erase from my mind. At a small plateau alongside Ninemile Creek in the Golden Trout Wilderness Area, I had stood in a forest of black sticks standing on both sides of a steep canyon like whiskers on a beast too large to comprehend.
I had hiked to Jordan Hot Springs and the burn scar of the 2002 McNally fire to probe big questions of fire ecology: Are Sierra forests overgrown? Is fire management the unintended cause of destructive crown fires? Do forests reduced to blackened earth and charcoal trees recover?
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The McNally fire wiped out whole forests in 2002. What does it tell us today about the future of vast areas devastated by recent fires?
At that time, the questions proved too big. I never wrote a story.
But the image stuck. Year after year I would wonder, “What does that canyon look like today?”
It took another fire to turn that question into action.
I did not grasp from the TV images of the 2020 Castle fire how deeply it would affect me personally when I saw its aftermath with my own eyes.
It was two years ago that I took a nostalgic drive up Highway 190 into the mountains east of Porterville in the San Joaquin Valley. At the elevation where the oak and scrub give way to cedar, fir and pine, I had a horrific shock rounding a familiar bend anticipating a thrill I had felt so many times before.
Instead of my favorite Sierra vista, I saw total disfigurement. The road ahead, once hidden in a sheath of forest, is now a scar carved into the side of a landscape of exposed soil and the standing carcasses of tens of thousands of blackened trees.
Those last 10 miles up the Tule River Canyon had always been a spiritual climb for me, releasing the weight of urban life along with the Central Valley heat and enlivening my spirit with cascading streams, pine-scented air and anticipation of the road’s end.
I had been enamored of this view since 1962, when I first drove to the end of Highway 190 in Quaking Aspen to begin my summer job packing mules into the Sierra backcountry.
Now it was gone. So much beauty lost. Never to return?
The 2020 Castle fire left huge sections of Sequoia National like these standing dead trees.
(Daniel Flesher / LA Times Studios)
In the recent years of unprecedented wildfires, the public discourse has been filled with speculation that such a total tree die-off, combined with a warming climate, could irreversibly change a forest, leaving it barren of the conifers that dominate an alpine ecosystem.
I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted hope that in my lifetime I might see the Tule River Canyon once again as it was.
Thus arose the fanciful idea that a return to Jordan Hot Springs would allow me to see into the future by looking at the past. My purpose was aesthetic and emotional, not scientific. But if I was going to personalize nature, I thought it would be prudent to backstop my feelings with expertise.
I asked around and found a fire ecologist who has been studying the McNally fire almost since the embers went out. Chad Hanson, co-founder and principal ecologist of the John Muir Project and resident of nearby Kennedy Meadows, is the kind of scientist who returns to the field year after year and wades through waist-high underbrush to track the trajectory of recovery.
Hanson jumped at the opportunity to take a reporter off-road to see nature as he sees. He offered some advice that I understood better once we were on the trail: “Don’t wear shorts.”
On the first leg, a 650-foot drop to Casa Vieja Meadows, his commentary turned the hike into a walking lesson to reshape my view of the nature of fire and nature itself.
“To really grasp what’s happening in nature, especially after wildfires, you really have to think like a forest,” he said. “And forests don’t operate on human timescales, and they don’t operate the way humans do, especially when it comes to life and death.”
Hanson has a relationship with the forest that is at once clinical and lyrical.
“A standing dead tree is vastly more important to wildlife and biodiversity in the forest than a standing live tree of the same size,” he said. “A tree in the forest ecosystem may have two or three hundred years of incredibly important vital life after it dies.”
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1.A screen grab of an area of the 2020 Castle Fire that has undergone post-fire logging. 2.A screen grab of along the trail to Jordan Hot Springs a charred tree sits surrounded by White Thorn Bush.
A screen grab of trees charred by the 2020 Castle fire in this once-dense portion of the forest.
(Daniel Flesher / LA Times Studios)
Woodpeckers carve nesting cavities in the softer dead trees and broken-off snags, then move on each year, leaving behind homes for other nesting creatures, such as nuthatches and chipmunks. As the trees break off or fall, the downed logs become food and cover for earthbound species and eventually decay into nutrients in the soil.
Our maps showed we were walking through forest burned in the McNally fire, but what I saw around us made that hard to imagine. A canopy of Jeffrey pine, red fir and incense cedar shaded the trail. Except for the blackened bark on their lower trunks, there was no sign of catastrophic fire.
“That’s because there wasn’t,” Hanson assured me. The fire had passed through where we were walking. But the common descriptors “scorched,” “blackened” and “destroyed” did not apply.
“Most of the fire area is like this, where it would have killed a few of the seedlings and saplings but basically almost nothing else,” Hanson said. “It’s largely unchanged by the fire.”
It took nearly five weeks for the McNally fire to cover 150,000 acres. Much of that time, at night or when the wind was down, it moved at a human walking pace.
“The temperature drops and the relative humidity goes up, the winds die down, flames drop to the ground and it starts creeping along,” Hanson said.
A screen grab of a hillside heavily altered by the 2020 Castle fire.
(Daniel Flesher / LA Times Studios)
Several times as we walked, the canopy opened up nearby and Hanson stopped to point out a high-intensity burn where a burst of wind in the heat of the afternoon had lofted the flames into the living branches more than 100 feet above us. Some were an acre or two, some up to 50 acres.
A quarter century after the fire, each was a mini-laboratory of regeneration. My first impression was sunlight, a brightness that contrasted with the shade we stood in. Then brush, predominantly whitethorn and manzanita, interspersed in waist-high thickets. Then snags, standing dead trees broken off halfway up. Finally, patches of young conifer, some mere saplings, some 15 to 20 feet tall
The few trees that had survived the fire now looked like Christmas trees planted on top of telephone poles. For a year after the fire, Hanson said, they would have appeared dead with all their foliage scorched. But at the very top, surviving terminals had sent out new twigs in the next growing season.
Those were the starter trees that spread the seed that had germinated and was now thriving in the open sunlight.
At one burn, Hanson proposed that we make a side trip and wade through the brush up on a steep canyon wall where, he assured me, we would find even more saplings just breaking through. Knowing that we had completed less than half our descent, and that each step down would require a step back up, I decided to wait to see how I felt later in the day on the way back up.
Casa Vieja Meadows was a perfect Sierra scene: a half-mile plain of yellow-green grass, a ring of forest all around it, a cattleman’s shed across the way and tranquil Ninemile Creek running its length.
At the meadow’s end, the creek dived into a rocky canyon, the beginning of a 1,500-foot drop through patches of willow, cottonwood and fern.
When we reached that spot that has stuck in my memory for 20 years, my immediate reaction was disappointment. I saw no beauty, only a scar that was neither a forest of dead trees nor living ones. Only a few snags remained. The fallen trees must have been there — there had been no logging to remove them — but were submerged in the brush, out of sight. At most, a dozen or two pre-fire trees survived on both sides of the canyon.
From a belt of willow at the stream’s edge to the ridges above, both sides of the canyon were covered in gray-green hue of whitethorn extending as far as I could see toward Jordan Hot Springs, still a half mile beyond.
Here, Hanson preached a beauty based on the timescale of natural succession. Because of its size and severity, this high-intensity burn area will remain what is called montane chaparral for decades, he said. In doing so, it will give the greater forest ecosystem what it cannot survive without.
“That’s some of the best wildlife habitat,” he said, sweeping his hand over the horizon. “We’re not used to seeing it that way as humans where we see the flames go high and kill most of the trees. But it turns there are a lot of wildlife species in the forest that have evolved over millions of years to depend specifically on areas where most of the trees have been killed.
A screen grab of a hillside above Jordan Hot Springs where the 2002 McNally fire burned. There are early signs of conifer regeneration emerging among lower vegetation.
(Daniel Flesher / LA Times Studios)
“This is actually really important habitat for shrub nesting birds, for small mammals, woodpeckers, bluebirds, nuthatches, any cavity-nesting species. They depend on these patches where you have a lot of dead trees.”
Hanson assured me this vast landscape of brush was already making its return as a conifer forest. To see the evidence, we’d have to slog into the whitethorn to see the future. I shakily followed Hanson up a canyon as he worked his way through openings he said were likely blazed by foraging bears, then over a fallen tree trunk that crumbled under my steps.
I was gasping for air and having difficulty maintaining balance when he stopped.
Hanson began noting tufts of pine needles poking out of the waist-high brush around us. “One, two, three, four, five, six,” he said, counting as he went along. Farther up, he pointed out clumps of new conifers, some up to 18 feet tall.
The saplings just now poking their needles into the sunlight, and hundreds more that we would only be able to be seen on our hands and knees, will grow and propagate, he said.
“It’s going to keep regenerating every year, every decade after the fire,” he said. “There’s going to be more new ones coming in and the earlier ones are going to get taller and older. And that’s just classic natural progression.”
In a hundred years, they’ll be so thick they’ll block out the sun, and the brush, starved of energy to drive photosynthesis, will wither, and the shrub nesting species will move to a different mountain cleared by a later fire.
I had seen what I needed to see. All that was left was to fulfill a personal desire to return one more time to Jordan Hot Springs.
Through all my youthful explorations of the Kern River Canyon — my Yosemite without crowds — that golden-green meadow with its pools had been only an illusion for me. Named for the man who came across it blazing a trail from the San Joaquin Valley to the Mojave Desert in 1861, it was a storied place just beyond my horizon.
Several times I led mule strings to Soda Flat, a private outpost in Sequoia National Forest. The hot springs beckoned only 3½ miles away. But after 20 miles on the trail, duty to my livestock and to my client, Bakersfield realtor Ralph Smith, prevented me from indulging that fantasy.
So much has changed since then. The pack station at Quaking Aspen was demolished and relocated four miles deeper into the backcountry on logging roads. A paved road was cut into the roadless area east of the Kern River giving automobile access to the five-mile John Jordan Hot Springs trail.
My visual memory of Jordan Hot Springs from that 2005 hike has faded. The catharsis I felt then of finally seeing it after so many decades has not. At the stage in life when I know that my return to many places will be my last, I wanted to fix its image in my memory, to sit simply one more time and contemplate the beauty of this small spot in the universe.
It wasn’t to be.
A screen grab of an aerial view shows the scale of the 2020 Castle fire.
(Daniel Flesher / LA Times Studios)
Noting my fatigue, Hanson asked if I wanted to go on. With the sun on its downward arc and a 500-foot descent ahead to fulfill that wistful desire, he thought prudence dictated that it was time to turn home. I had to agree. It was a slow ascent. I couldn’t go more than a few hundred feet without stopping to sit and catch my breath. But I made it, just before dark — without a helicopter.
I never intended to settle the big academic and political questions over what’s the right way to care for a forest: Indigenous stewardship vs. forest thinning; post-fire logging and bio-mass extraction vs. natural decay and regeneration; fire control vs. natural selection.
Much has been written about that. Much more will likely be before I could report that a consensus is achieved.
I do have a preview of the Tule River Canyon a quarter century from now, and it won’t be the place I have known for so much of my life. There will likely be no vistas of forest canopy, no shaded glens with water cascading through a tapestry of conifers, pine sap spicing the morning air.
More likely, there will be mile after mile of whitethorn and manzanita, a few grandfather trees identifiable by their odd conical foliage high on spindly trunks, patches of vigorous young pine 15 to 20 feet tall, and saplings whose tops barely break through the brush.
From my new perspective, I’m still not able to call that beauty, but I can call it hope. I’m betting on one who crawls through the brush to find answers that it’s only the beginning of something that will take longer than my lifetime to reveal itself.
WASHINGTON — The Senate gave final approval Monday night to a deal that could end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, sending it to the House, where Democrats are launching a last-ditch effort to block the measure because it does not address healthcare costs.
Senators approved the shutdown deal on a 60-40 vote, a day after Senate Republicans reached a deal with eight senators who caucus with Democrats. The movement in the Senate prompted Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) earlier on Monday to urge House members to start making their way back to Washington, anticipating that the chamber will be ready to vote on the bill later in the week.
The spending plan, which does not include an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, has frustrated many Democrats who spent seven weeks pressuring Republicans to extend the tax credits. It would, however, fund the government through January, reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown and ensure that federal employees who were furloughed receive back pay.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) also promised senators a vote in December that would put lawmakers on record on the healthcare subsidies. Thune said in a speech Monday that he was “grateful that the end is in sight” with the compromise.
“Let’s get it done, get it over to the House so we can get this government open,” he said.
Senate Democrats who defected have argued that a December vote on subsidies is the best deal they could get as the minority party, and that forcing vulnerable Republicans in the chamber to vote on the issue will help them win ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
As the Senate prepared to vote on the deal Monday, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader of the chamber, continued to reiterate his opposition to what he called a “Republican bill.” Schumer, who has faced backlash from Democrats for losing members of his caucus, said the bill “fails to do anything of substance to fix America’s healthcare crisis.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) speaks to reporters about the government shutdown.
(Mariam Zuhaib / Associated Press)
Thune’s promise to allow a vote in the Senate does not guarantee a favorable outcome for Democrats, who would need to secure Republican votes for passage through the chamber. And the chance to address healthcare costs will be made even harder by Johnson, who has not committed to holding a vote on his chamber in the future.
“I’m not promising anybody anything,” he said. “I’m going to let the process play out.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, told reporters that House Democrats will continue to make the case that extending the subsidies is what Americans are demanding from elected officials, and that there is still a fight to be waged in the chamber — even if it is a long shot.
“What we are going to continue to do as House Democrats is to partner with our allies throughout America is to wage the fight, to stay in the Colosseum,” Jeffries said at a news conference.
Some Republicans have agreed with Democrats during the shutdown that healthcare costs need to be addressed, but it is unlikely that House Democrats will be able to build enough bipartisan support to block the deal in the chamber.
Still, Jeffries said the “loudmouths” in the Republican Party who want to do something about healthcare costs have an opportunity to act now that the House is expected to be back in session.
“They can no longer hide. They can no longer hide,” Jeffries said. “They are not going to be able to hide this week when they return from their vacation.”
Democrats believed that fighting for an extension of healthcare tax credits, even at the expense of shutting down the government, would highlight their messaging on affordability, a political platform that helped lead their party to victory in elections across the country last week.
If the tax credits are allowed to lapse at the end of the year, millions of Americans are expected to see their monthly premiums double.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune answers questions Monday about a possible end to the government shutdown after eight members of the Democratic caucus broke ranks and voted with Republicans.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
California’s U.S. senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, were among the Democrats who voted against the deal to reopen the government because it did not address healthcare costs.
“We owe our constituents better than this. We owe a resolution that makes it possible for them to afford healthcare,” Schiff said in a video Sunday night.
Some Republicans too have warned that their party faces backlash in the midterm elections next year if it doesn’t come up with a more comprehensive health plan.
“We have always been open to finding solutions to reduce the oppressive cost of healthcare under the unaffordable care act,” Johnson said Monday.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, for one, supported an expeditious vote to reopen the government but insisted on a vote to eliminate language from the spending deal he said would “unfairly target Kentucky’s hemp industry.” His amendment did get a vote and was eventually rejected on a 76-24 vote Monday night.
With the bill headed to the House, Republicans expect to have the votes to pass it, Johnson said.
Any piece of legislation needs to be approved by both the Senate and House and be signed by the president.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump said he would support the legislative deal to reopen the government.
“We’re going to be opening up our country,” Trump said. “Too bad it was closed, but we’ll be opening up our country very quickly.”
Trump added that he would abide by a provision that would require his administration to reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown.
“The deal is very good,” he said.
Johnson said he spoke to the president on Sunday night and described Trump as “very anxious” to reopen the government.
“It’s after 40 days of wandering in the wilderness, and making the American people suffer needlessly, that some Senate Democrats finally have stepped forward to end the pain,” Johnson said. “Our long national nightmare is finally coming to an end, and we’re grateful for that.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday urged congressional Republicans to unilaterally end the government shutdown by eliminating the filibuster — an unprecedented step that GOP leaders have opposed taking until now.”It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option — Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.Senate Republicans have so far ruled out changing the Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold needed for passing legislation, arguing that it would ultimately benefit Democrats the next time they retake power.But Trump, in his post, brushed off that concern, contending that Republicans should take advantage of the opportunity first.”Now I want to do it in order to take advantage of the Democrats,” Trump wrote.
President Donald Trump on Thursday urged congressional Republicans to unilaterally end the government shutdown by eliminating the filibuster — an unprecedented step that GOP leaders have opposed taking until now.
“It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option — Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Senate Republicans have so far ruled out changing the Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold needed for passing legislation, arguing that it would ultimately benefit Democrats the next time they retake power.
But Trump, in his post, brushed off that concern, contending that Republicans should take advantage of the opportunity first.
“Now I want to do it in order to take advantage of the Democrats,” Trump wrote.
As the partial government shutdown grinds on, with no end in sight, Catherine Cortez Masto stands ready to end it right now.
The lawyerly senator from Nevada is one of just two Democrats to repeatedly vote with Republicans and Maine’s independent senator, Angus King, to have the federal government up and running.
She’s not only bucking her Senate colleagues with her contrarian stance, but also placing herself squarely at odds with the animating impulse of her party’s political base: Stop Trump! Give no quarter! Now is the time! This is the fight!
Cortez Masto evinces not a flicker of doubt.
“I have been very consistent about the cost of a shutdown and the impact to Americans and the fact that I believe we need to work in a bipartisan way to find solutions to what we’re seeing right now, which is this looming healthcare crisis,” Cortez Masto said from Washington.
“And I think we can do that by keeping the government open. I don’t think we should do it by swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”
Unlike the Democrats’ other defector, Pennsylvania’s quirky Sen. John Fetterman, Cortez Masto hasn’t developed a reputation for partisan heresy, or antagonized party peers by playing footsie with President Trump and the MAGA movement.
Despite her temporary alliance with the GOP, she’s unstinting in her criticism of the president and the Republican stance on healthcare, the issue at the heart of the shutdown fight.
“Of course we need to stand up to Trump’s attacks on our families and our country,” she said. “I’ve been one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s disastrous trade and tariff policies.”
Her split with fellow Democrats, she suggested, is not over ends but rather means.
It’s entirely possible, Cortez Masto insisted, to keep the government open for business and, at the same time, work through the parties’ differences over healthcare, including, most imminently, the end of subsidies that have kept insurance costs from skyrocketing.
It comes down to negotiation, trust and compromise, which in Cortez Masto’s view, is still possible — even in these rabidly partisan times.
“That’s what Congress is built on,” she said. “Congress is built on compromise, working together across the aisle to get stuff done. I still believe in it.”
Although she noted — with considerable understatement — “there are those in the administration and some of my colleagues” who disagree.
Not to mention a great many Democratic activists who believe anything short of jailing Trump and dispatching the entire GOP-run Congress to a far-off desert island amounts to cowardly capitulation.
Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing the onetime Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, after the Democrat retired.
Six years later, when she sought reelection, Cortez Masto was widely considered Democrats’ most endangered incumbent. She was not nearly as powerful or prominent as Reid had been. Inflation was raging, and Nevada was still suffering an economic hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her opponent was a middling Republican, Adam Laxalt, a failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the architects of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. He also seemed to harbor a soft spot for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.
Still, Cortez Masto barely beat him, winning by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. In retrospect, the result could be seen as a harbinger of Trump’s success in carrying the state after twice losing Nevada.
Cortez Masto next faces reelection in 2028, which is politically ages away. By then, the shutdown will be long forgotten. (And presumably long over.)
Her focus, she said, is the here and now and, especially, the shutdown’s economic effect at a time Nevada is already feeling the negative consequences of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. Las Vegas, which runs on tourism, has experienced a notable slump, and Cortez Masto suggested the shutdown only makes things worse.
That, however, hasn’t deterred Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Jacky Rosen, who has repeatedly voted alongside nearly every other Democrat to keep the government shuttered until Republicans give in.
“Nevadans sent me here to fight for them,” Rosen said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Not to cave.”
Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy. “She’s a good friend.… Our goal is to fight for Nevada and we are doing it,” she said. “We both are doing it in different ways.”
So, negotiation. Bipartisanship. Compromise.
What makes Cortez Masto think Trump, who’s run roughshod over Congress and the courts, can be trusted to honor any deal Democrats cut with Republicans to reopen the government and address the healthcare crisis she sees?
“Well, that’s the rub, right? We know what he’s doing,” she replied. He’s “flouting the law when it comes to … taking the role of legislators and appropriating funds at his own whim…. So, of course, no, you can’t trust him.
“But he is there. What you got to figure out is how you work together with Republican colleagues to get something done.”
Cortez Masto noted, dryly, that Congress is, in fact, a separate branch of government with its own power and authority. Republicans have ceded both to Trump and if they really want to solve problems, she said, and do more than the president’s bidding, they “need to come out and do bipartisan legislation to push back on this administration.”
“We’ve got to govern,” Cortez Masto said. “We’ve got to work together.”
President Donald Trump revealed that he wants to use American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday in declaring an end to “woke” culture before an unusual gathering of hundreds of top U.S. military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about U.S. nuclear capabilities and warned that “America is under invasion from within.”“After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help we’re defending the borders of our country,” Trump said.Hegseth had called military leaders to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. His address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.Video below: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives remarks in QuanticoAdmirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.‘We will not be politically correct’Trump is used to boisterous crowds of supporters who laugh at his jokes and applaud his boasts during his speeches. But he wasn’t getting that kind of soundtrack from the generals and admirals in attendance.In keeping with the nonpartisan tradition of the armed services, the military leaders sat mostly stone-faced through Trump’s politicized remarks, a contrast from when rank-and-file soldiers cheered during Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg this summer.During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.That was echoed by Trump, who said “the purposes of America military is not to protect anyone’s feelings. It’s to protect our republic.″″We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom,” Trump said. “And we will be a fighting and winning machine.”Loosening disciplinary rulesHegseth said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigationsHe said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”The defense secretary called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.A Navy investigation found that Caserta’s supervisor’s “noted belligerence, vulgarity and brash leadership was likely a significant contributing factor in (the sailor)’s decision to end his own life.”Gender-neutral physical standardsHegseth used the platform to slam environmental policies and transgender troops while talking up his and Trump’s focus on “the warrior ethos” and “peace through strength.”Hegseth said the department has been told from previous administrations that “our diversity is our strength,” which he called an “insane fallacy.”“They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQE+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal,” he said, adding the use of electric tanks and the COVID vaccine requirements to the list as mistaken policies.Hegseth said this is not about preventing women from serving.“But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” he said. “If women can make it excellent, if not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result.”Hegseth’s speech came as the country faces a potential government shutdown this week and as Hegseth, who has hammered home a focus on lethality, has taken several unusual and unexplained actions, including ordering cuts to the number of general officers and firings of other top military leaders.Hegseth has championed the military’s role in securing the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying to American cities as part of Trump’s law enforcement surges, and carrying out strikes on boats in the Caribbean that the administration says targeted drug traffickers.
QUANTICO, Va. —
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of U.S. military officials to an in-person meeting Tuesday to declare an end to “woke” culture in the military and announce new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.
Hegseth and President Donald Trump had abruptly called military leaders from around the world to convene at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. Hegseth’s address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.
Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.
Admirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.
Video below: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives remarks in Quantico
During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”
“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.
He said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigations
Hegseth said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”
He called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”
“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”
Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.
A Navy investigation found that Caserta’s supervisor’s “noted belligerence, vulgarity and brash leadership was likely a significant contributing factor in (the sailor)’s decision to end his own life.”
Hegseth used the platform to slam physical fitness and grooming standards, environmental policies and transgender troops while talking up his and Trump’s focus on “the warrior ethos” and “peace through strength.”
Hegseth said the department has been told from previous administrations that “our diversity is our strength,” which he called an “insane fallacy.”
“They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQE+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal,” he said, adding the use of electric tanks and the COVID vaccine requirements to the list as mistaken policies.
Hegseth said this is is not about preventing women from serving.
“But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” he said. “If women can make it excellent, if not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result.”
Hegseth’s speech came as the country faces a potential government shutdown this week and as Hegseth, who has hammered home a focus on lethality, has taken several unusual and unexplained actions, including ordering cuts to the number of general officers and firings of other top military leaders.
The Sacramento City Unified School District is facing a $43 million budget deficit, leading to a spending freeze starting Oct. 1.Administrators said the freeze is necessary to cover payroll and maintain operations. The district received the grim news about the massive budget shortfall at its Thursday meeting from the chief business and operations officer, Janea Marking. She showed a photo of a city about to be consumed by a large tsunami wave. “SCUSD, no one in particular, it’s in our DNA, has a bad, bad habit of uncontrolled, unbudgeted, unexpected expenses,” she said.The district is scrambling to find ways to come up with $43 million after unexpected budget items, including late payroll payments, unexpected invoices, and unauthorized contract payments. Managers say there were $62 million in unauthorized contracts last year, most for special education programs. “A contract that has not been authorized by the school district, but they provided a service ahead of time because they needed to provide services to students immediately,” Assistant Superintendent Cindy Tao explained.The spending freeze will affect non-classroom hiring, new contracts, travel, and non-emergency overtime, but not teachers’ contracts. “Stretched thin already, and we’ve just accomplished a lot of additional supports for our students that have been long needed and long deserved by our students,” said the president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association, Nikki Davis Melevsky.The SCTA wants the district to be accountable for why and how this happened.”They need to look into who signed these contracts, who authorized them, and why did they not go through the appropriate procedures so that the Budget Office would have been aware that they were out there and that they were needing to be paid?” asked Davis Melevsky.District spokesperson Alexander Goldberg discussed the spending freeze in a statement: “Those measures alone will not fix our problems. There will be many other budgetary sacrifices to make in the coming months to get the district back on a path to solvency before the end of the fiscal year. In reaching that goal, it is our every intention to avoid major disruption to student opportunities, programs, and the day-to-day educational experience.”School Board President Jasjit Singh said in an email, “The board is committed to ensuring our district is financially sound while maintaining the services crucial to student success. School district budgets are in a constant state of fluctuation. We are confident in our staff’s efforts to help cut costs and implement saving ideas.”The board is expected to get an update in December on where they stand financially after a couple of months of a spending freeze.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
The Sacramento City Unified School District is facing a $43 million budget deficit, leading to a spending freeze starting Oct. 1.
Administrators said the freeze is necessary to cover payroll and maintain operations.
The district received the grim news about the massive budget shortfall at its Thursday meeting from the chief business and operations officer, Janea Marking. She showed a photo of a city about to be consumed by a large tsunami wave.
“SCUSD, no one in particular, it’s in our DNA, has a bad, bad habit of uncontrolled, unbudgeted, unexpected expenses,” she said.
The district is scrambling to find ways to come up with $43 million after unexpected budget items, including late payroll payments, unexpected invoices, and unauthorized contract payments. Managers say there were $62 million in unauthorized contracts last year, most for special education programs.
“A contract that has not been authorized by the school district, but they provided a service ahead of time because they needed to provide services to students immediately,” Assistant Superintendent Cindy Tao explained.
The spending freeze will affect non-classroom hiring, new contracts, travel, and non-emergency overtime, but not teachers’ contracts.
“Stretched thin already, and we’ve just accomplished a lot of additional supports for our students that have been long needed and long deserved by our students,” said the president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association, Nikki Davis Melevsky.
The SCTA wants the district to be accountable for why and how this happened.
“They need to look into who signed these contracts, who authorized them, and why did they not go through the appropriate procedures so that the Budget Office would have been aware that they were out there and that they were needing to be paid?” asked Davis Melevsky.
District spokesperson Alexander Goldberg discussed the spending freeze in a statement: “Those measures alone will not fix our problems. There will be many other budgetary sacrifices to make in the coming months to get the district back on a path to solvency before the end of the fiscal year. In reaching that goal, it is our every intention to avoid major disruption to student opportunities, programs, and the day-to-day educational experience.”
School Board President Jasjit Singh said in an email, “The board is committed to ensuring our district is financially sound while maintaining the services crucial to student success. School district budgets are in a constant state of fluctuation. We are confident in our staff’s efforts to help cut costs and implement saving ideas.”
The board is expected to get an update in December on where they stand financially after a couple of months of a spending freeze.
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Trump administration can end legal protections for around 430,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest twist in a legal fight over Biden-era policies that created new and expanded pathways for people to live in the United States, generally for two years with work authorization. The Trump administration announced in March it was ending the humanitarian parole protections.“We recognize the risks of irreparable harm persuasively laid out in the district court’s order: that parolees who lawfully arrived in this country were suddenly forced to choose between leaving in less than a month — a choice that potentially includes being separated from their families, communities, and lawful employment and returning to dangers in their home countries,” the judges wrote. “But absent a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits, the risk of such irreparable harms cannot, by itself, support a stay.”In a two-page ruling, the court lifted a stay issued by a district court and is allowing the administration to end humanitarian parole for those groups while the lawsuit plays out. The ruling Friday is a victory for the Trump administration, but doesn’t change anything on the ground.Esther Sung, the legal director of Justice Action Center, a co-counsel in the case, said the ruling “hurts everyone.”“People who came here from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela did everything the government asked of them, and the Trump administration cruelly and nonsensically failed to hold up the government’s end of the bargain,” Sung said. “While we are deeply disappointed by this decision, we will continue to advocate zealously for our clients and class members as the litigation continues.”A district court issued a stay in April halting the administration’s decision, but the Supreme Court lifted the lower court order at the end of May with little explanation.The Trump administration had argued the appeals court should follow the Supreme Court and reverse the district court ruling.The protections for people fleeing turmoil in their home countries were always meant to be temporary, and the Department of Homeland Security has the power to revoke them without court interference, the Justice Department said in a court filing.Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that ending parole on a case-by-case basis would be a “gargantuan task” that would slow the government’s efforts to press for the removal of the migrants.“The Secretary’s discretionary rescission of a discretionary benefit should have been the end of the matter,” lawyers for the government wrote in their brief.Plaintiffs, including people who benefited from the legal protections, urged the appeals court to endorse the district court ruling, which found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could not categorically end protections for these groups, but instead had to evaluate each case individually. They also cited the district court’s finding that Noem ignored the humanitarian concerns that led to the legal protections in the first place.“The district court applied the law correctly and did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that Secretary Noem’s action inflicted irreparable injury on the class members (among others) and that the public interest and balance of the equities tip sharply in favor of preliminary relief,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote in a brief.Republican President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to deport millions of people. Since taking office, he has sought to dismantle Biden administration policies that expanded paths for migrants to live legally in the U.S.The Trump administration’s decision was the first-ever mass revocation of humanitarian parole, attorneys for the migrants said in court papers, calling it “the largest mass illegalization event in modern American history.”
BOSTON —
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Trump administration can end legal protections for around 430,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest twist in a legal fight over Biden-era policies that created new and expanded pathways for people to live in the United States, generally for two years with work authorization. The Trump administration announced in March it was ending the humanitarian parole protections.
“We recognize the risks of irreparable harm persuasively laid out in the district court’s order: that parolees who lawfully arrived in this country were suddenly forced to choose between leaving in less than a month — a choice that potentially includes being separated from their families, communities, and lawful employment and returning to dangers in their home countries,” the judges wrote. “But absent a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits, the risk of such irreparable harms cannot, by itself, support a stay.”
In a two-page ruling, the court lifted a stay issued by a district court and is allowing the administration to end humanitarian parole for those groups while the lawsuit plays out. The ruling Friday is a victory for the Trump administration, but doesn’t change anything on the ground.
Esther Sung, the legal director of Justice Action Center, a co-counsel in the case, said the ruling “hurts everyone.”
“People who came here from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela did everything the government asked of them, and the Trump administration cruelly and nonsensically failed to hold up the government’s end of the bargain,” Sung said. “While we are deeply disappointed by this decision, we will continue to advocate zealously for our clients and class members as the litigation continues.”
A district court issued a stay in April halting the administration’s decision, but the Supreme Court lifted the lower court order at the end of May with little explanation.
The Trump administration had argued the appeals court should follow the Supreme Court and reverse the district court ruling.
The protections for people fleeing turmoil in their home countries were always meant to be temporary, and the Department of Homeland Security has the power to revoke them without court interference, the Justice Department said in a court filing.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that ending parole on a case-by-case basis would be a “gargantuan task” that would slow the government’s efforts to press for the removal of the migrants.
“The Secretary’s discretionary rescission of a discretionary benefit should have been the end of the matter,” lawyers for the government wrote in their brief.
Plaintiffs, including people who benefited from the legal protections, urged the appeals court to endorse the district court ruling, which found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could not categorically end protections for these groups, but instead had to evaluate each case individually. They also cited the district court’s finding that Noem ignored the humanitarian concerns that led to the legal protections in the first place.
“The district court applied the law correctly and did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that Secretary Noem’s action inflicted irreparable injury on the class members (among others) and that the public interest and balance of the equities tip sharply in favor of preliminary relief,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote in a brief.
Republican President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to deport millions of people. Since taking office, he has sought to dismantle Biden administration policies that expanded paths for migrants to live legally in the U.S.
The Trump administration’s decision was the first-ever mass revocation of humanitarian parole, attorneys for the migrants said in court papers, calling it “the largest mass illegalization event in modern American history.”
L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced that he would make a decision on the possible resentencing of the Menendez brothers by the end of the week.
Erik and Lyle Menendez have spent 34 years behind bars after being convicted of the 1989 slaying of their parents, but evidence recently surfaced supporting the brothers’ claims that they were sexually abused by their father, prompting a reexamination of the case.
Gascón had promised to offer a position on the case by a November hearing but told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday that he was accelerating this timeline in response to increased public attention.
The famous case has soared back into the public eye thanks in part to a new Netflix miniseries and documentary that shone a light on the violent past of Jose Menendez, the brothers’ father. It has also sparked a heated public discourse over whether the brothers deserve a new shot at justice and if societal views of rape have evolved since the pair were sentenced to life in prison in 1996.
Gascón, for his part, told Tapper it was concerning that one of the prosecutors made comments about “how men cannot be raped.”
“There was certainly implicit bias that took place at that time that perhaps may have had an impact in the way the case was perceived and presented to the jury,” he said.
He said prosecutors in his office today were split into two camps regarding a possible resentencing.
“I have a group of people, including some that were involved in the original trial, that are adamant that they should spend the rest of their life in prison and that they were not molested,” he said. “I have other people in the office that believe they probably were molested and that they deserve to have some relief.”
Gascón said the Menendez brothers were facing two possible forms of relief.
The first is a petition filed by the brothers’ defense team arguing that new evidence challenges the argument prosecutors made during trial — that the murders were motivated by the boys’ desire to secure their $14-million inheritance and that Jose Menendez did not abuse his sons.
This evidence includes a letter that attorneys say Erik Menendez wrote about the sexual abuse he endured as a teenager prior to committing the killings as well as new claims brought forward by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, who said he too was raped by Jose Menendez.
The second possible form of relief is a California law that allows for the early release of prisoners who have already served long sentences and are not deemed a threat to the community, Gascón said.
Gascón said he was considering both options and noted that either one would require a court approval.
Russillo opens the show with his thoughts on the play-in games and the end of the Warriors dynasty (0:34). Then, Frank Isola joins to explain what went wrong for Golden State, share which eliminated team needs to hit the reset button, and discuss the Knicks’ ceiling (18:44). Next, comedian Dan Soder comes on to share why he chose comedy and details how jokes are created (55:13). Plus, Ceruti and Kyle join for Life Advice (89:51). How do we kick the bad player out of our pick-up games?
The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out rg-help.com to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details.
Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Frank Isola and Dan Soder Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Mike Wargon
April is nearly here and spring has sprung, which means it’s time to comb through the best movies leaving streaming services at the end of this month and plan accordingly.
This month’s lineup is an eclectic assortment of classics, crowd-pleasers, and cerebral gems. Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 debut, Sexy Beast starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley, is a top priority; you must watch that if you haven’t already. Other picks include the sci-fi horror film Underwater, starring Love Lies Bleeding’s Kristen Stewart, Kathryn Bigelow’s elusive cyberpunk thriller Strange Days, a classic martial arts action film starring the inimitable Sonny Chiba, and more.
Whatever you’re looking for, there are options for you, with the added urgency of “you won’t be able to watch this here next month.”
Here are the best movies you should watch before they leave streaming this March.
Editor’s pick
Sexy Beast
Image: FilmFour/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Director: Jonathan Glazer Cast: Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane Leaving Criterion Channel: March 31
Earlier this month, Jonathan Glazer took home the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest, his first Oscar win in his 30-plus-year career. Glazer has only directed four features in that time, each one more cerebral and astounding than the last. His first film, Sexy Beast, is arguably his most “commercial” effort to date — and even that qualifier feels like a stretch: It’s a black comedy crime drama that plays out with the nail-biting tension of a horror thriller.
The film centers on Gary “Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone), a career criminal happily whiling away his retirement in Costa del Sol with his wife and friends. Gal is suddenly plagued by a visit from Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a former associate who has come to recruit him for a upcoming heist. Don is a foul-mouthed, emotionally manipulative sociopath who delights in incessantly berating those around him and bending people to his whim, so when Gal refuses his offer, Don makes it his mission to make Gal’s life a living hell until the job is done.
Glazer’s stellar direction and Ivan Bird’s dreamlike cinematography are what set Sexy Beast apart from other crime movies of its era. So does Kingsley’s scene-stealing performance as a malevolent agent of chaos, who blows in like a bad omen to wreak emotional and physical havoc on anyone and anything unfortunate enough to be close to him. That’s not even mentioning the score, which includes contributions from U.K. trip-hop outfit Unkle, who Glazer previously collaborated with on the music video for their 1998 single “Rabbit in Your Headlights.” Sexy Beast is an exhilarating, thorny, and terrifying case study in emotional manipulation that also happens to be a superb heist movie, and you should absolutely make it your priority to see it if you haven’t already. —Toussaint Egan
One of the most influential action movies ever made, The Street Fighter is a gloriously violent display of Sonny Chiba’s unique star power, as he rips and tears his way through a bunch of gangsters and lowlifes. Decades later, Chiba’s son Mackenyu (One Piece) is carrying that legacy forward… albeit in a slightly less violent fashion.
The first movie to receive an X rating in the U.S. because of violence, The Street Fighter not only inspired the title of the fighting game series, it also introduced the idea of X-ray fatalities, directly influencing Mortal Kombat. If you’re a fighting game fan and you’ve never seen The Street Fighter, this is your chance to fix that. —Pete Volk
Movies to watch on Hulu
Underwater
Photo: Alan Markfield/20th Century Fox
Director: William Eubank Cast: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Mamoudou Athie Leaving Hulu: March 31
Underwater is a lean genre project with B-movie flair and solid execution. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Kristen Stewart stars as the mechanical engineer of a research and drilling facility at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. When disaster strikes and part of the facility is destroyed, she joins the remaining survivors in their attempt to make it out alive. With a strong cast (with the exception of T.J. Miller, who is graciously killed very early in the movie), solid direction by William Eubank (who just directed the solid action thriller Land of Bad), and a tight script from Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You), Underwater is a fun popcorn sci-fi thriller. And with Love Lies Bleeding now out in theaters, why not check out an underrated Kristen Stewart project? —PV
Movies to watch on Max
Strange Days
Image: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Director: Kathryn Bigelow Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis Leaving Max: March 31
Strange Days is a cult classic whose reputation is defined in no small part by how difficult it has been to watch on streaming. Max added the movie to its platform in January 2023, but not all good things last.
Set in a futuristic Los Angeles just two days before the end of the 20th century, Strange Days follows Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a black-market broker dealing in an illicit technology that allows the user to record their own memories and physical sensations and experience them after the fact. When Lenny comes across a recording that threatens to implicate the LAPD in a high-profile murder, he’s forced to turn to his old friend Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett) in order to uncover the origins behind the recording while staying one step ahead of a mysterious killer that wants him dead.
Conceived by producer James Cameron and inspired by the 1992 LA riots that erupted in the wake of the infamous Rodney King trial, Strange Days is a pitch-black sci-fi thriller that touches on institutional racism, voyeurism, societal collapse, and sexual violence, the latter of which is focused primarily on women and Black people. It’s a hard watch — but nevertheless a worthwhile one that rewards its audience with a trio of terrific performances and a strikingly original vision of a bygone alternate future. —TE
Movies to watch on Prime Video
The Swordsman
Image: Well Go USA Entertainment
Director: Jae-Hoon Choi Cast: Jang Hyuk, Kim Hyeon-so Leaving Prime: March 31
There’s no shortage of terrific Korean action movies. If you’re specifically looking for one that’s a stylish, emotional historical drama with fast and frenzied swordplay, I would highly recommend The Swordsman. Set in the aftermath of the Joseon dynasty, the movie follows the story of Tae-yul, the former bodyguard of King Gwanghaegun, who lives in seclusion with his daughter, Tae-ok.
Taey-yul has been afflicted with a condition that threatens to rob him of his sight, and in order to cure it, he’ll need special herbs afforded only to the most well-connected of families. Desperate to help her father, Tae-ok accepts an offer to serve a wealthy family in exchange for the medicine, but when she is inadvertently kidnapped as part of a larger conflict, Tae-yul is forced to come out of hiding to come to her rescue.
Joe Taslim of The Raid and Warrior fame shines as Gurutai, a sneering slave trader and Qing emissary who serves as the film’s primary antagonist. The action itself is terrific, but what really elevates The Swordsman as a whole is Tae-yul grappling with his rapidly diminishing eyesight and the unfolding tragedy of his backstory conveyed through flashbacks. At an hour and a half, it’s a perfect action film to pop on and watch over the weekend. —TE
Flo Lloyd-Hughes is joined by Jessy Parker Humphreys and Becky Taylor-Gill to discuss a big weekend in the WSL. They start by discussing the Traitors finale (spoiler alert) before moving on to Liverpool-Arsenal, Manchester City’s blistering run of form and a relentless Bunny Shaw. Plus, more Marc Skinner quotes and a NewCo CEO interview that ended in Glastonbury discourse.
Host: Flo Lloyd-Hughes Guests: Jessy Parker Humphreys and Becky Taylor-Gill Producer: Jonathan Fisher
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore announced Friday that he will step down as head of the LAPD at the end of February, after which time the city and department officials will begin the process of finding a new leader to take over one of the most unique and challenging jobs in law enforcement.
At a news conference with Mayor Karen Bass, Moore said he was proud of his career at the department and choked back tears.
“During my tenure, I know I’ve made mistakes and missteps,” Moore said. “But I’m also confident that my work has seen success across a broad spectrum of topics unmatched by any other law enforcement agency in this country.”
Bass praised Moore and thanked him for his work, saying he made the decision to leave recently.
“Chief Moore let me know that his timeline was moving up to spend more time with his family,” Bass said. “This means, of course, that the police commission will have to appoint an interim chief and a nationwide search will be conducted now because his timeline was moved up and that was unexpected.”
Bass said she had asked Moore to “serve in a consulting capacity to assist an interim chief,” and that he had agreed to the offer.
Moore has endured a series of department controversies in recent months, including a string of officer misconduct incidents and a whistleblower complaint that alleged that two detectives were ordered to investigate Bass shortly after her election. Moore vehemently denied the allegations.
Before his reappointment in January 2023 to a second five-year term as the city’s top cop, Moore said he would serve for two or three years before turning the department over to a new chief ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.
Moore said at the time he wanted more time to finish the job he started when he took over the department in 2018. Moore said he wanted to continue reforms on use of force and diversity and avoid a “haphazard” transition before the Olympics, which are set to start soon after his full second term would have expired. He said he would spend the next few years laying the groundwork for a succession plan.
Bass reappointed Moore to a second five-year term over the concern of critics who argued that the scope of scandals that have plagued the department during his tenure reflected a poor track record for any leader.
Moore’s backers say the department has embraced reforms in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other flash points from 2020, including expanding community outreach efforts and placing new limits on pretextual traffic stops that Moore said “undermined public trust and confidence but also added little merit from a law enforcement standpoint.”
The LAPD has gotten more diverse under his watch, Moore said. He has also defended his record of promoting female officers, pointing out a series of recent appointments of female officials, including one to deputy chief.
The latest LAPD data indicate that crime is trending downward, and Moore had enjoyed the public support of Bass and the Police Commission. In recent months, though, the department has been roiled by allegations that one of Moore’s assistant chiefs surreptitiously tracked an officer with whom he’d been romantically involved, and a scandal involving gang unit officers suspected of thefts and illegal stops.
The episodes renewed questions about management and oversight of the nation’s third-largest police department.
Then last month, two detectives in the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division filed complaints alleging they were ordered to investigate Bass, possibly at Moore’s behest. The claims are being investigated by the inspector general’s office.
Moore denied the allegations, telling The Times: “I have no such knowledge of any alleged investigation nor would I initiate any such investigation.”
The 63-year-old Moore secured the police chief’s job in 2018 after nearly four decades with the LAPD, rising through the ranks and becoming known for his statistics-driven policing approach. He was at the helm at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a marked rise in violent crimes and homicides in L.A., as elsewhere. Last year, however, there was a drop in violent crimes and homicides, a decline that has continued through most of 2023.
Moore pledged a more compassionate approach to policing following his appointment by Mayor Eric Garcetti. Early in his tenure, he weathered severe criticism for his handling of mass demonstrations in Los Angeles over the deaths of Floyd and other Black Americans killed in police custody. Officers were repeatedly accused of using heavy-handed tactics against protesters who took to the streets.
Moore has also faced the challenge of running a department that is several hundred officers short of its allotted strength of 9,500 officers, a gap that made it harder to keep police on the streets.
Bass, who took office in December 2022 after campaigning on the promise of bringing more police accountability and transparency, said previously she believed Moore shared her desire to see the department improve its recruitment of “reform-minded” officers and change how it responds to calls involving the mentally ill.
But Moore’s leadership has come into question as several of his top commanders and closest confidantes have become caught up in scandals. One assistant chief retired under a cloud of suspicion, after being caught having sex with a subordinate in a government car.
Another LAPD captain was found to have leaked confidential details of a sex crime victim and her police report to the alleged perpetrator, then CBS head Les Moonves.
In 2022, a jury awarded a female Los Angeles police commander $4 million in damages for a sexual harassment lawsuit against the city over a nude photograph that was doctored to look like her and shared around the department.
In 2021, a botched fireworks explosion by the department’s bomb squad leveled a South L.A. neighborhood. Moore faced withering criticism over the incident. Last July, he issued a statement promising to improve the department.
“This neighborhood is resilient, and we will continue the work of repairing our relationship with this community we have sworn to protect and serve,” Moore said.
Times legal affairs reporter Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
In the opening sequence of It, the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King’s terrifying novel of the same name, Bill Denbrough is helping his little brother, Georgie, create a paper sailboat on a stormy day. To finish the project, though, Bill needs Georgie to grab some wax from the basement. It’s a simple task, but for an imaginative 6-year-old, the prospect of descending down into a dark, damp cellar is the stuff of nightmares. Director Andy Muschietti does a great job of capturing an irrational childhood fear and turning it into something we can all relate to. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go down there, either:
Of course, Georgie returns from the basement unscathed, only to suffer a gruesome fate at the hands of the monstrous Pennywise later on. (Not to roast a small child’s survival instincts, but how are you not running for the hills when a creepy clown is hanging out in a sewer drain?!) Fear is an essential component of It: It’s something Pennywise feeds on while shape-shifting into whatever will scare its victim the most, rational or otherwise. Clearly, Pennywise was taking some cues from Hollywood.
For decades, the horror genre has terrorized audiences by homing in on phobias. Some of these fears are universal: After watching The Descent or Gerald’s Game, who wouldn’t be afraid of confined spaces with no means of escape? But there’s something to be said about horror movies that manage to mine scares from obscure fears: I didn’t even realize somniphobia was a thing until I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street. (Apologies to Freddy Krueger; I wasn’t really familiar with your game.) In that spirit, the first major horror release of 2024 imagines terror lurking within the most unexpected place of all: a sinister [checks notes] swimming pool?
In Night Swim, produced by horror icons James Wan and Jason Blum, professional baseball player Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is forced into early retirement after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As Ray and his wife, Eve (Kerry Condon), go about finding a new place to raise their two kids, they end up touring a home with a massive, run-down pool. Tired of constantly moving during Ray’s playing days, the couple is ready to put down some roots—even better, easy access to a pool is exactly what Ray needs to manage his condition with water therapy. But once the Wallers start using the pool, it’s clear that something is amiss. The pool lights ominously flicker at night, the family cat goes missing (RIP, Cider), and the characters experience creepy visions and hear voices. Haunted houses are a dime a dozen in the genre, but it’s not every day you watch a film about a killer swimming pool.
To be sure, water can be scary under the right circumstances: Jaws has long been cited as a major cause of people’s irrational fear of sharks; movies like Open Water and The Reef will make you think twice about an oceanic getaway. But those fears don’t necessarily translate from the sea to someone’s backyard—at least not without some ingenuity. Night Swim is based on writer-director Bryce McGuire’s 2014 short film of the same name, which he codirected with Rod Blackhurst. In the short, which runs only under four minutes with credits, a woman (Megalyn Echikunwoke) is swimming alone at night when she notices a shadowy figure watching her by the pool. When she comes up for air, nobody is there—not long after, she’s dragged down to the pool’s depths, never to be seen again. It’s effectively creepy in its simplicity, a premise grounded in the feeling you might’ve gotten as a kid that there’s something in the swimming pool waiting to attack you. At the same time, nothing about the short screams, “This needs the feature-length treatment.”
To McGuire’s credit, I can’t envision anyone working harder to convince moviegoers that a goddamn pool could be a proper horror villain. Like a student doing whatever it takes to meet the word count on an essay, Night Swim throws out every possible water-based scenario to torment the Wallers in its 90-odd-minute running time: swimming alone at night, swimming alone during the day, diving for quarters, a game of Marco Polo with some supernatural intervention, a possessed pool cover (?) that’s trying to drown a child, a pool party gone awry. The movie’s insistence on making the pool the centerpiece of absolutely everything occasionally hits the so-bad-it’s-good sweet spot, especially when the characters are saying things like:
“I used to be scared of pools.”
“We have a pool.” [Smiles]
“There’s something wrong with this pool!”
“This pool is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me!”
[Menacingly] “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SAY POLO!”
(In an alternate universe, cinema’s real-life Ocean Master, James Cameron, never recovers from directing Piranha II: The Spawning and Night Swim becomes his magnum opus.)
Against all odds, there are some interesting ideas at play in Night Swim. When characters are attacked, they get dragged down to a watery abyss that’s like a more literal spin on the Sunken Place: one of the rare times when the film is genuinely unsettling and creative in its aquatic imagery. For Ray, the pool also appears to be curing his MS, so much so that he attends his son’s baseball practice and hits a ball hard enough that it smashes one of the stadium lights. The fact that Ray thinks about the pool before blasting a home run implies some kind of psychic connection between man and water, which is just wonderfully batshit. (As I explained to my colleague Ben Lindbergh, the power of the pool flowed through him, which I don’t believe counts as one of MLB’s banned substances. For some reason, this movie loves baseball almost as much as it loves pools.)
But for all the absurd moments that rise to the surface of Night Swim, the film is never comfortable embracing all of its schlocky potential. Where Night Swim really flounders is in its attempts to explain the supernatural occurrences surrounding the pool and how it affects the people who use it. The notion of water as a powerful, malevolent force with a will of its own is certainly intriguing, but the film makes the fatal mistake of taking its pool-centric mythology far too seriously. Even as Ray develops an unhealthy obsession with his new hobby, like he’s Jack Torrance in board shorts, this isn’t the Overlook Hotel; it’s an evil swimming pool. Would it be so hard to fully dive into the deep end of silliness?
Alas, Night Swim doesn’t have enough waterlogged nonsense to qualify it for the so-bad-it’s-good canon. Horror obsessives will still find some joy in a movie in which Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon engage in passionate arguments about family, baseball, and whether their new pool is trying to murder them. But Night Swim won’t do for pools what Jaws did for the ocean: This is one irrational fear you won’t have to worry about resurfacing. That doesn’t mean, however, that McGuire is done trying to ruin our childhoods: On the heels of Night Swim, he’s a cowriter on Imaginary, Blumhouse’s upcoming horror flick about an imaginary friend in the form of a teddy bear with some nefarious intentions. Hopefully, Imaginary will do more with its wacky premise than McGuire’s lackluster directorial debut does. After all, when it comes to high-concept horror movies, it’s a sink or swim affair.
This pod was born to be wild. The Midnight Boys are here to dive into the murky waters of ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ (04:50). They also discuss this being the final DCEU film and how this will affect the state of fandom in film (51:18). Later they also touch on the news that Marvel has parted ways with Jonathan Majors (81:36).
Hosts: Charles Holmes, Van Lathan, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
Chris and Andy look back at the year in television by opening up the mailbag. They talk about which shows they would have recast (1:00), which TV show would have been better as a movie and vice versa (36:47), and what they would consider to be a perfect season of television (53:59).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen
“This agreement allows for work to proceed as quickly as possible on the replacement of old and failing pipes under Bath St,” the spokesman said.
The project had been particularly challenging from an engineering perspective, and time had been an important factor, he said.
It had investigated alternative pipe routes as part of its planning, but “almost all routes” had to pass under private property in Bath St at some stage.
The only other option was to run the new pipe along…
Mal and Jo are joined by a bunch of Ringer regulars to bring you this year’s House of Recommends and give you some great content to consume during the holiday season that you may have missed this year and beyond.
Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Guests: Amanda Dobbins, Rob Mahoney, Ben Lindbergh, Dave Gonzales, Zach Kram Senior Producer: Steve Ahlma Social: Jomi Adeniran Addition Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal
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