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Tag: los angeles times

  • Former schools chief Austin Beutner plans to challenge Bass, blasting her over Palisades fire

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    Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner is planning to announce a challenge to Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 election, arguing that the city has failed to properly respond to crime, rising housing costs and the devastating Palisades fire.

    Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker who lives in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, would become the first serious challenger to Bass, who is running for her second and final term.

    Beutner said in an interview Saturday that city officials at all levels showed a “failure of leadership” on the fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

    The inferno seriously damaged Beutner’s house, forcing him and his family to rent elsewhere in the neighborhood, and destroyed his mother-in-law’s home entirely.

    “When you have broken hydrants, a reservoir that’s broken and is out of action, broken [fire] trucks that you can’t dispatch ahead of time, when you don’t pre-deploy at the adequate level, when you don’t choose to hold over the Monday firefighters to be there on Tuesday to help fight the fire — to me, it’s a failure of leadership,” Beutner said.

    “At the end of the day,” he added, “the buck stops with the mayor.”

    A representative for Bass’ campaign declined to comment.

    Beutner’s attacks come days after federal prosecutors filed charges in the Palisades fire, accusing a 29-year-old of intentionally starting a New Year’s Day blaze that later rekindled into the deadly inferno.

    With the federal investigation tied up, the Fire Department released a long-awaited after-action report Wednesday. The 70-page report found that firefighters were hampered by poor communication, inexperienced leadership, a lack of resources and an ineffective process for recalling them back to work. Bass announced a number of changes in light of the report.

    Beutner, a onetime advisor to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, could pose a serious political threat to Bass. He would come to the race with a wide range of experiences — finance, philanthropy, local government and even the struggling journalism industry.

    Although seven other people have filed paperwork to run for her seat, none have the fundraising muscle or name recognition to mount a major campaign. Rick Caruso, the real estate developer whom Bass defeated in 2022, has publicly flirted with the idea of another run but has stopped short of announcing a decision.

    Bass beat Caruso by a wide margin in 2022 even though the shopping mall mogul outspent her by an enormous margin. Caruso has been an outspoken critic of her mayorship, particularly on her response to the Palisades fire.

    Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said he believes that Beutner would face an uphill climb in attempting to unseat Bass — even with the criticism surrounding the handling of the Palisades fire. However, his entry into the race could inspire other big names to launch their own mayoral campaigns, shattering the “wall of invincibility” that Bass has tried to create.

    “If Beutner jumps in and starts to get some traction, it makes it easier for Caruso to jump in,” Guerra said. “Because all you’ve got to do is come in second in the primary [election], and then see what happens in the general.”

    Earlier Saturday, The Times reported that Beutner’s longtime X account had featured — then quickly removed — the banner image “AUSTIN for LA MAYOR,” along with the words: “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Austin Beutner for LA Mayor 2026.” That logo was also added and then removed from other Beutner social media accounts.

    Beutner’s announcement, which is currently planned for Monday, comes in a year of crises for the mayor and her city. She was out of the country in January, taking part in a diplomatic mission to Ghana, when the ferocious Palisades fire broke out.

    Upon her return, she faced withering criticism over the city’s preparation for the high winds, as well as Fire Department operations and the overall emergency response.

    In the months that followed, the city was faced with a $1-billion budget shortfall, triggered in part by pay raises for city workers that were approved by Bass. To close the gap, the City Council eliminated about 1,600 vacant positions, slowed down hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department and rejected Bass’ proposal for dozens of additional firefighters.

    By June, Bass faced a different emergency: waves of masked and heavily armed federal agents apprehending immigrants at car washes, Home Depots and elsewhere, sparking furious street protests.

    Bass’ standing with voters was badly damaged in the wake of the Palisades fire, with polling in March showing that fewer than 20% of L.A. residents gave her fire response high marks.

    But after President Trump put the city in his cross hairs, the mayor regained her political footing, responding swiftly and sharply. She mobilized her allies against the immigration crackdown and railed against the president’s deployment of the National Guard, arguing that the soldiers were “used as props.”

    Beutner — who, like Bass, is a Democrat — said he voted for Bass four years ago and had come to regret his choice.

    He described Los Angeles as a city “adrift,” with unsolved property crimes, rising trash fees and housing that is unaffordable to many.

    Beutner said that he supports Senate Bill 79, the law that will force the city to allow taller, denser buildings near rail stations, “in concept.”

    “I just wish that we had leadership in Los Angeles that had been ahead of this, so we would have had a greater say in some of the rules,” he said. “But conceptually, yes, we’ve got to build more housing.”

    Bass had urged Gov. Gavin Newsom not to sign the bill into law, which he did on Friday.

    Beutner is a co-founder and former president of Evercore Partners, a financial services company that advises its clients on mergers, acquisitions and other transactions. In 2008, he retired from that firm — now simply called Evercore Inc. — after he was seriously injured in a bicycling accident.

    In 2010, he became Villaraigosa’s jobs czar, taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and receiving wide latitude to strike business deals on Villaraigosa’s behalf, just as the city was struggling to emerge from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

    Slightly more than a year into his job, Beutner filed paperwork to begin exploring a run for mayor. He secured the backing of former Mayor Richard Riordan and many in the business community but pulled the plug in 2012.

    In 2014, Beutner became publisher of the Los Angeles Times, where he focused on digital experimentation and forging deeper ties with readers. He lasted roughly a year in that job before Tribune Publishing Co., the parent company of The Times, ousted him.

    Three years later, Beutner was hired as the superintendent of L.A. Unified, which serves schoolchildren in Los Angeles and more than two dozen other cities and unincorporated areas. He quickly found himself at odds with the teachers union, which staged a six-day strike.

    The union settled for a two-year package of raises totaling 6%. Beutner, for his part, signed off on a parcel tax to generate additional education funding, but voters rejected the proposal.

    In 2022, after leaving the district, Beutner led the successful campaign for Proposition 28, which requires that a portion of California’s general fund go toward visual and performing arts instruction.

    Earlier this year, Beutner and several others sued L.A. Unified, accusing the district of violating Proposition 28 by misusing state arts funding and failing to provide legally required arts instruction to students.

    He also is immersed in philanthropy, having founded the nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides vision screenings, eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities.

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    David Zahniser, Julia Wick

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  • Tech billionaire Marc Benioff says Trump should deploy National Guard to San Francisco

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    Marc Benioff has become the latest Silicon Valley tech leader to signal his approval of President Trump, saying that the president is doing a great job and ought to deploy the National Guard to deal with crime in San Francisco.

    The Salesforce chief executive’s comments came as he headed to San Francisco to host his annual Dreamforce conference — an event for which he said he had to hire hundreds of off-duty police to provide security.

    “We don’t have enough cops, so if they [National Guard] can be cops, I’m all for it,” he told the New York Times from aboard his private plane.

    The National Guard is generally not allowed to perform domestic law enforcement duties when federalized by the president.

    Last month, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s use of National Guard soldiers in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act — which restricts use of the military for domestic law enforcement — and ordered that the troops not be used in law enforcement operations within California.

    Trump has also ordered the National Guard to deploy to cities such as Portland, Ore., and Chicago, citing the need to protect federal officers and assets in the face of ongoing immigration protests. Those efforts have been met with criticism from local leaders and are the subject of ongoing legal battles.

    President Trump has yet to direct troops to Northern California, but suggested in September that San Francisco could be a target for deployment. He has said that cities with Democratic political leadership such as San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles “are very unsafe places and we are going to straighten them out.”

    “I told [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training for our military, our national guard,” Trump said.

    Benioff’s call to send National Guard troops to San Francisco drew sharp rebukes from several of the region’s elected Democratic leaders.

    San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins said she “can’t be silent any longer” and threatened to prosecute any leaders or troops who harass residents in a fiery statement on X.

    “I am responsible for holding criminals accountable, and that includes holding government and law enforcement officials too, when they cross the bounds of the law,” she said. “If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents, use excessive force or cross any other boundaries that the law prescribes, I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”

    State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) also took to X to express indignation, saying, “we neither need nor want an illegal military occupation in San Francisco.”

    “Salesforce is a great San Francisco company that does so much good for our city,” he said. “Inviting Trump to send the National Guard here is not one of those good things. Quite the opposite.”

    San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office offered a more muted response, touting the mayor’s efforts to boost public safety in general, but declining to directly address Benioff’s remarks.

    Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor, noted that the city is seeing net gains in both police officers and sheriff’s deputies for the first time in a decade. He also highlighted Lurie’s efforts to bring police staffing up to 2,000 officers.

    “Crime is down nearly 30% citywide and at its lowest point in decades,” Lutvak said. “We are moving in the right direction and will continue to prioritize safety and hiring while San Francisco law enforcement works every single day to keep our city safe.”

    When contacted by The Times on Friday night, the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vociferously opposed the deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, did not issue a comment in response to Benioff.

    Benioff and Newsom have long been considered friends, with a relationship dating back to when Newsom served as San Francisco’s mayor. Newsom even named Benioff as godfather to one of his children, according to the San Francisco Standard.

    Benioff has often referred to himself as an independent. He has donated to several liberal causes, including a $30-million donation to UC San Francisco to study homelessness, and has contributed to prior political campaigns of former President Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Hillary Clinton.

    However, he has also donated to the campaigns of former House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain, both Republicans, and supported tougher-on-crime policies and reducing government spending.

    Earlier this year, Benioff also praised the Elon Musk-led federal cost-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

    “I fully support the president,” Benioff told the New York Times this week. “I think he’s doing a great job.”

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    Clara Harter

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  • Search underway for gunman who shot three teenagers in Sun Valley

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    Authorities are searching for a gunman who opened fire at three teenagers in Sun Valley on Friday evening before fleeing in a silver car, authorities said.

    The Los Angeles Police Department responded to the reported shooting at 5:37 p.m. Officers found three male teens who had been shot near Vineland Avenue and Arminta Street. The victims, all between 16 and 18 years old, suffered non-life threatening wounds and were taken to hospitals.

    The shooter, described as a man in black clothing, was last seen fleeing eastbound on Arminta Street toward Vineland Avenue, according to an LAPD spokesperson. He is believed to be driving a silver Lexus RX SUV and may be armed with a handgun.

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    Clara Harter

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  • Trump-appointed judges signal willingness to let president deploy troops to states

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    The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appears poised to recognize President Trump’s authority to send soldiers to Portland, Ore., with members of the court signaling receptiveness to an expansive new read of the president’s power to put boots on the ground in American cities.

    A three-judge panel from the appellate court — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — heard oral arguments Thursday after Oregon challenged the legality of the president’s order to deploy hundreds of soldiers to Portland. The administration claims the city has become lawless; Oregon officials argue Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify calling in the National Guard.

    While the court has not issued a decision, a ruling in Trump’s favor would mark a sharp rightward turn for the once-liberal circuit — and probably set up a Supreme Court showdown over why and how the U.S. military can be used domestically.

    “I’m sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of ‘executing the laws’ is right or wrong,” said Judge Ryan D. Nelson of Idaho Falls, Idaho, one of the two Trump appointees hearing the arguments.

    “That’s an internal decision making, and whether there’s a ton of protests or low protests, they can still have an impact on his ability to execute the laws,” he said.

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

    The facts about the situation on the ground in Portland were not in dispute at the hearing on Thursday. The city has remained mostly calm in recent months, with protesters occasionally engaging in brief skirmishes with authorities stationed outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

    Instead, Nelson and Judge Bridget S. Bade of Phoenix, whom Trump once floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee, questioned how much the facts mattered.

    “The president gets to direct his resources as he deems fit, and it seems a little counterintuitive to me that the city of Portland can come and say, ‘No you need to do it differently,’” Nelson said.

    He also appeared to endorse the Department of Justice’s claim that “penalizing” the president for waiting until protests had calmed to deploy soldiers to quell them created a perverse incentive to act first and ask questions later.

    “It just seems like such a tortured reading of the statute,” the judge said. He then referenced the first battle of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, saying, “I’m not sure even President Lincoln would be able to bring in forces when he did, because if he didn’t do it immediately after Fort Sumter, [Oregon’s] argument would be, ‘Oh, things are OK now.’”

    Trump’s efforts to use troops to quell protests and support federal immigration operations have led to a growing tangle of legal challenges. The Portland deployment was halted by Immergut, who blocked Trump from federalizing Oregon troops. (A ruling from the same case issued the next day prevents already federalized troops from being deployed.)

    In June, a different 9th Circuit panel also made up of two Trump appointees ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — discretion to determine whether facts on the ground met the threshold for military response in Los Angeles. Thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines were deployed over the summer amid widespread protests over immigration enforcement.

    The June decision set precedent for how any future deployment in the circuit’s vast territory can be reviewed. It also sparked outrage, both among those who oppose armed soldiers patrolling American streets and those who support them.

    Opponents argue repeated domestic deployments shred America’s social fabric and trample protest rights protected by the 1st Amendment. With soldiers called into action so far in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, many charge the administration is using the military for political purposes.

    “The military should not be acting as a domestic police force in this country except in the most extreme circumstances,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “That set of circumstances is not present right now anywhere in the country, so this is an abuse of power — and a very dangerous one because of the precedent it sets.”

    Supporters say the president has sole authority to determine the facts on the ground and if they warrant military intervention. They argue any check by the judicial branch is an illegal power grab, aimed at thwarting response to a legitimate and growing “invasion from within.”

    “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 military top brass last week. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

    The 9th Circuit agreed to rehear the Los Angeles case with an 11-member “en banc” panel in Pasadena on Oct. 22, signaling a schism among Trump’s own judges over the boundaries of the president’s power.

    Still, Trump’s authority to call soldiers into American cities is only the first piece in a larger legal puzzle spread before the 9th Circuit, experts said.

    What federalized troops are allowed to do once deployed is the subject of another court decision now under review. That case could determine whether soldiers are barred from assisting immigration raids, controlling crowds of protesters or any other form of civilian law enforcement.

    Trump officials have maintained the president can wield the military as he sees fit — and that cities such as Portland and L.A. would be in danger if soldiers can’t come to the rescue.

    “These are violent people, and if at any point we let down our guard, there is a serious risk of ongoing violence,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard.”

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    Sonja Sharp

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  • Newsom to seek court order stopping Trump’s deployment of California National Guard to Oregon

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday that he intends to seek a court order in an attempt to stop President Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops to Oregon.

    Calling the president’s action a “breathtaking abuse of power,” Newsom said in a statement that 300 California National Guard personnel were being deployed to Portland, Ore., a city the president has called “war-ravaged.”

    “They are on their way there now,” Newsom said of the National Guard. “This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power.”

    Trump’s move came a day after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the federalization of Oregon’s National Guard.

    The president, who mobilized the California National Guard amid immigration protests earlier this year, has pursued the use of the military to fight crime in cities including Chicago and Washington, sparking outrage among Democratic officials in those jurisdictions. Local leaders, including those in Portland, have said the actions are unnecessary and without legal justification.

    “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words — ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents,” Newsom said.

    In June, Newsom and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a federal lawsuit over Trump’s mobilization of the state’s National Guard during immigration protests in Los Angeles. California officials are expected to file the court order over Sunday’s deployment using that existing lawsuit.

    Newsom has ratcheted up his rhetoric about Trump in recent days: On Friday, the governor lashed out at universities that may sign the president’s higher education compact, which demands rightward campus policy shifts in exchange for priority federal funding.

    “I need to put pressure on this moment and pressure test where we are in U.S. history, not just California history,” Newsom said. “This is it. We are losing this country.”

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    Daniel Miller, Melody Gutierrez

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  • This Beverly Hills haven for the rich has a floating garden for the public. Here’s a sneak peek

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    Everyone is now invited to come experience the high life in Beverly Hills.

    New details about a floating public garden, which will be part of a nearly $5-billion luxury housing and hotel complex, were unveiled on Thursday by its London-based developer.

    Cain, which started work on the high-rise One Beverly Hills project more than a year ago, released an updated look at the sprawling botanical gardens that will surround the complex at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, a project that has been in the making for more than two decades.

    City officials agreed to let Cain build by far the two tallest towers in Beverly Hills with the understanding that stacking the condominiums high would leave open space for 8.5 acres of gardens on the 17.5-acre site.

    A rendering of the planned “Ephemeral Pond” in the gardens at the One Beverly Hills.

    (One Beverly Hills)

    “We regard the gardens as the soul of the project,” said Jonathan Goldstein, chief executive of Cain.

    More than half of the gardens will be open to the public.

    One Beverly Hills is one of the biggest real estate developments by cost under construction in North America, Goldstein said.

    It was conceived by London-based architect Foster + Partners. The firm is led by Norman Foster, an English lord perhaps best known for designing a landmark lipstick-like skyscraper in London known as the Gherkin and the hoop-shaped Apple Inc. headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

    Slated to open before the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the complex will also house some of the priciest condos and hotel suites in the country, as developers seek to capitalize on the city’s reputation for luxury and celebrity.

    One Beverly Hills will be anchored by the Aman Beverly Hills, a 78-room, all-suite hotel that will be the brand’s first West Coast property.

    The tower residences will also be branded and serviced by Aman, a Swiss company owned by Russian-born real estate developer Vlad Doronin, which Forbes describes as “the world’s most preeminent resort brand,” and attracts affluent guests such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and George and Amal Clooney.

    The two towers — 26 and 32 stories — will have a total of fewer than 200 condos.

    Interspersed among the property will be as many as 45 stores and restaurants, including a Dolce & Gabbana boutique and restaurants Casa Tua Cucina and Los Mochis.

    The most public aspect of One Beverly Hills will be the gardens designed by Los Angeles architecture firm Rios, which also designed the 12-acre Gloria Molina Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles and created a new master plan for Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge.

    A rendering of retail and dining outlets

    One Beverly Hills will contain as many as 45 retail and dining outlets, each set within a distinct environment.

    (Foster + Partners)

    One Beverly Hills will feature botanical gardens that reflect the diverse landscape of Southern California, with drought-resistant native plants fed solely on recycled water, including rainfall and the runoff from residents’ sinks and showers. The gardens are designed to have more than 200 species of plants and trees, including palms, oaks, sycamores, succulents and olives.

    Set within the historic grounds of the former Beverly Hills Nurseries, which later became the Robinson-May department store, the gardens will feature two miles of walkways, trails, sitting areas and water features.

    Rios’ design takes inspiration from the state’s distinct ecological zones — from shaded oak ridges to bright meadows and coastal bluffs.

    Species once cultivated by the historic nursery will be reintroduced alongside new plantings. Visitors will encounter pollinator gardens alive with butterflies and hummingbirds, color-themed landscapes, and cascading water features, all designed to reflect the beauty of Southern California’s environment with scents of rosemary, jasmine and chaparral.

    Rendering of One Beverly Hills, a planned $2 billion garden-like residential and hotel complex in Beverly Hills.

    Rendering of One Beverly Hills, a nearly $5-billion complex under construction at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards.

    (Foster + Partners)

    Making the gardens feel natural instead of manicured was a design challenge because they will cover an underground garage for 1,800 vehicles and Merv Griffin Way, which connects Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards. The gardens will link One Beverly Hills with the existing Beverly Hilton hotel and Waldorf Astoria hotel.

    The soil in the gardens can be no more than four feet deep, yet it must nourish trees that are trucked in from other locations and are between 50 and 100 years old so that the garden appears to have been around a long time.

    “This shouldn’t feel like a rooftop garden,” said landscape architect John Pearson of Rios. “We want it to feel like it’s a botanical garden that just happens to be 40 feet in the air.”

    It will also gently connect with sidewalks, which is part of the plan to encourage locals and tourists walking around Beverly Hills to wander in, said Rios founder, Mark Rios.

    “It’d be really nice if the park became something you cut through,” Rios said, “We really want to create a sort of seamless experience where there’s this huge landscaped park in the middle of this urban area.”

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    Roger Vincent

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

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    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.”

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    Sonja Sharp

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  • California police saw an illegal U-turn. But they couldn’t issue a ticket to the self-driving Waymo

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    Police in Northern California were understandably perplexed when they pulled over a Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn, only to find no driver behind the wheel and therefore, no one to ticket.The San Bruno Police Department wrote in now viral weekend social media posts that officers were conducting a DUI operation early Saturday morning when a self-driving Waymo made the illegal turn in front of them.Officers stopped the vehicle, but declined to write a ticket as their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’.”“That’s right … no driver, no hands, no clue,” read the post, which was accompanied by photos of an officer peering into the car.Officers contacted Waymo to report what they called a “glitch,” and in the post, they said they hope reprogramming will deter more illegal moves.The department’s Facebook post has generated more than 500 comments, with many people outraged that police didn’t ticket the company. People also wanted to know how police got the car to pull over.But San Bruno Sgt. Scott Smithmatungol said they can only ticket a human driver or operator for a moving violation, unlike parking tickets that can be left with the vehicle.A new state law that kicks in next year will allow police to report moving violations to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is figuring out the specifics, including potential penalties, the Los Angeles Times reports.Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina told the LA Times that the company’s autonomous driving system is closely monitored by regulators. “We are looking into this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Ilina said.Waymos currently operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco and in areas south of the city, including the suburb of San Bruno.“It blew up a lot bigger than we thought,” Smithmatungol said of the viral post to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re not a large agency like San Francisco.”San Bruno has about 40,000 residents and a sworn police force of 50 officers, he said.Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.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

    SAN FRANCISCO —

    Police in Northern California were understandably perplexed when they pulled over a Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn, only to find no driver behind the wheel and therefore, no one to ticket.

    The San Bruno Police Department wrote in now viral weekend social media posts that officers were conducting a DUI operation early Saturday morning when a self-driving Waymo made the illegal turn in front of them.

    Officers stopped the vehicle, but declined to write a ticket as their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’.”

    “That’s right … no driver, no hands, no clue,” read the post, which was accompanied by photos of an officer peering into the car.

    Officers contacted Waymo to report what they called a “glitch,” and in the post, they said they hope reprogramming will deter more illegal moves.

    The department’s Facebook post has generated more than 500 comments, with many people outraged that police didn’t ticket the company. People also wanted to know how police got the car to pull over.

    But San Bruno Sgt. Scott Smithmatungol said they can only ticket a human driver or operator for a moving violation, unlike parking tickets that can be left with the vehicle.

    A new state law that kicks in next year will allow police to report moving violations to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is figuring out the specifics, including potential penalties, the Los Angeles Times reports.

    Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina told the LA Times that the company’s autonomous driving system is closely monitored by regulators. “We are looking into this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Ilina said.

    Waymos currently operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco and in areas south of the city, including the suburb of San Bruno.

    “It blew up a lot bigger than we thought,” Smithmatungol said of the viral post to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re not a large agency like San Francisco.”

    San Bruno has about 40,000 residents and a sworn police force of 50 officers, he said.

    Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

    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

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  • Feds sue L.A. County sheriff for ‘unreasonable’ delays in issuing concealed gun permits

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    The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Robert Luna, claiming the department violated county gunowners’ 2nd Amendment rights by delaying thousands of concealed carry permit application decisions for “unreasonable” periods of time.

    In a statement, the Justice Department claimed that the Sheriff’s Department “systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home — not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.”

    The complaint, filed in the Central District of California, the federal court in Los Angeles, cites data provided by the Sheriff’s Department about the more than 8,000 concealed carry permit applications and renewal applications it received between Jan. 2, 2024, and March 31 this year.

    During that period, the Justice Department wrote, it took an average of nearly 300 days for the Sheriff’s Department to schedule interviews to approve the applications or “otherwise” advance them.

    As a result, of the nearly 4,000 applications for new concealed carry licenses it received during those 15 months, “LASD issued only two licenses.” Two others were denied, the Justice Department said, while the rest remained pending or were withdrawn.

    The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide comment Monday. In March, when the Trump administration announced its 2nd Amendment investigation, the department said it was “committed to processing all Concealed Carry Weapons [CCW] applications in compliance with state and local laws.”

    The department’s statement said it had approved 15,000 applications for concealed carry licenses but that because of “a significant staffing crisis in our CCW Unit” it was “diligenty working through approximately 4,000 active cases.”

    Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Monday that the Justice Department was working to safeguard the 2nd Amendment, which “protects the fundamental constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms.”

    “Los Angeles County may not like that right, but the Constitution does not allow them to infringe upon it,” Bondi said. “This Department of Justice will continue to fight for the Second Amendment.”

    The federal agency’s complaint alleged that the practice of delaying the applications in effect forced gun permit applicants “to abandon their constitutional rights through administrative exhaustion.”

    In December 2023, the California Rifle and Pistol Assn. sued the Sheriff’s Department over what it alleged were improper delays and rejections of applications for concealed carry licenses. In January, U.S. District Court Judge Sherilyn P. Garnett ordered the department to reduce delays.

    In the new complaint, the Justice Department called on the court to issue a permanent injunction.

    Gun rights groups heralded the move by the Trump administration.

    “This is a landmark lawsuit in that it’s the first time the Department of Justice has ever filed a case in support of gun owners,” Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to see the federal government step up and defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens and hope this pattern continues around the country.”

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    Connor Sheets

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  • Former VP Kamala Harris offers few regrets about failed presidential campaign at first L.A. book event

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    Former Vice President Kamala Harris offered a spirited defense of her short, unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid, lamented the loss of voters’ faith in institutions and urged Democrats to not become dispirited on Monday as she spoke at the first hometown celebration of her new book about her roller-coaster campaign.

    She appeared to take little responsibility for her loss to President Trump in 2024 while addressing a fawning crowd of 2,000 people at The Wiltern in Los Angeles.

    “I wrote the book for many reasons, but primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” Harris said about “107 Days,” her political memoir that was released last week. “Think about it. A sitting president of the United States is running for reelection and three and a half months before the election decides not to run, and then a sitting vice president takes up the mantle to run against a former president of the United States who has been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”

    She dismissed Trump’s claims that his 2024 victory was so overwhelming that it was a clear mandate by the voters

    “And by the way, can history reflect on the fact that it was the closest presidential election?” Harris said, standing from her seat on the stage, as the audience cheered. “It is important for us to remember so that we that know where we’ve been to decide and chart where we are.”

    Trump beat Harris by more than 2.3 million votes — about 1.5% of the popular vote — but the Republican swept the electoral college vote, winning 312-226. Other presidential contests have been tighter, notably the 2000 contest between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote by nearly 544,000 votes but Bush won the electoral college vote 271-266 in a deeply contentious election that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Harris, faulted for failing to connect with voters about their economic pain in battleground states in the Midwest and Southwest, criticized former President Biden about his administration’s priorities. She said she would have addressed kitchen table issues before legislation about infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing.

    “I would have done the family piece first, which is affordable childcare, paid leave, extension of the child tax credit,” she said, basic issues facing Americans who “need to just get by today.”

    Harris spoke about her book in conversation with Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, the hosts of the “I’ve Had It” podcast and former cast members of the Bravo series “Sweet Home Oklahoma.”

    Attendees paid up to hundreds or thousands of dollars on the resale market for tickets to attend the event, part of a multi-city book tour that began last week in New York City. The East Coast event was disrupted by protesters about Israeli actions in Gaza. Harris is traveling across the country and overseas promoting her book.

    The former vice president’s book tour is expect to be a big money maker.

    Harris’ publisher recently added another “107 Days” event at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Oct. 28.

    The Bay Area native touched upon current news events during her appearance, which lasted shortly over an hour.

    About the impending federal government shutdown, Harris said Democrats must be clear that the fault lies squarely with Republicans because they control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

    “They are in power,” she said, arguing that her party must stand firm against efforts to cut access to healthcare, notably the Affordable Care Act.

    She also ripped into Trump for his social media post of a fake AI-generated video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The video purports to show Schumer saying that Latino and Black voters hate Democrats, so the party must provide undocumented residents free healthcare so they support the party until they learn English and “realize they hate us too.” Jeffries appears to wear a sombrero as mariachi music plays in the background.

    “It’s juvenile,” Harris said. Trump is “just a man who is unbalanced, he is incompetent and he is unhinged.”

    Harris did not touch on the issues she wrote in her book that caused consternation among Democrats, such as not selecting former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to be her running mate because she did not believe Americans were ready to support a presidential ticket with a biracial woman and a gay man. She also did not mention her recounting of reaching out to Gov. Gavin Newsom after Biden decided not to seek reelection, and him not responding to her beyond saying he was out hikinG.

    Harris lamented civic and corporate leaders caving to demands from the Trump administration.

    Among those Trump targeted were law firms that did work for his perceived enemies.

    “I predicted almost everything,” she said. “What I did not predict was the capitulation of universities, law firms, media corporations be they television or newspapers. I did not predict that.”

    She said that while she worked in public service throughout her career, her interactions with leaders in the private sector led her to believe that they would be “among the guardians of our democracy.”

    “I have been disappointed, deeply deeply disappointed by people who are powerful who are bending the knee at the foot of this tyrant,” Harris said.

    Harris did not mention that her husband, Doug Emhoff, is a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher that earlier this year that reached an agreement with the White House to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal work during the Republican’s time in the White House and beyond.

    In April, the firm reached an agreement with the Trump administration, with the president saying their services would be dedicated to helping veterans, Gold Star families, law enforcement members and first responders, and that the law firm agreed to combat antisemitism and not engage in “DEI” efforts.

    Emhoff, who joined the law firm in January and also is now on the has faculty at USC , has condemned his law firm’s agreement with the administration.

    Emhoff, who was in attendance at the event and posing for pictures with Harris supporters, declined comment about the event.

    “I’m just here to support my wife,” he said.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • ‘They just don’t come’: What’s making L.A.’s tourism tumble

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    Months of negative news have triggered a tough summer for tourism in Los Angeles, deepening the economic woes for a city buffeted by natural disasters and immigration raids.

    Tourist arrivals fell by close to 10% this season, according to the latest numbers from Visit California.

    The region’s economy and image suffered significant setbacks this year. Shocking images of the destructive Eaton and Palisades fires in January, followed by the immigration crackdown in June, made global news and repelled visitors. Meanwhile, President Trump’s fickle tariff policies and other geopolitical posturing have convinced many international tourists to avoid America.

    On Hollywood Boulevard, there are fewer tourists, and the ones who show up spend less, says Salim Osman. He works for Ride Like A Star, an exotic car company that rents to visitors looking to take a luxury vehicle for a spin and snap the quintessential L.A. selfie.

    Last year, crowds lined up to rent its Ferraris and Porches for around $200 an hour, Salim says. However, this summer, foot traffic dropped by nearly 50%.

    “It used to be shoulder to shoulder out here,” he said, looking along the boulevard. “It’s a lot harder for people to come here, or they’re afraid of what’s going on here, so they just don’t come.”

    Business has been slow around the TCL Chinese Theater, where visitors place their hands into the concrete handprints of celebrities like Kristen Stewart and Denzel Washington.

    There were fewer people to hop onto sightseeing buses, stop inside Madame Tussauds wax museum and snap impromptu photos with patrolling characters such as Spiderman and Mickey Mouse. Souvenir shops nearby say they have also had to increase the prices of many of their knick-knacks because of tariffs and a decline in sales.

    Of all the state’s international travelers, the most significant absence was from Canadian tourists. Arrivals from visitors from up north fell around 30% in June and July.

    Summer in Palm Springs was okay this year, said its mayor, Ron deHarte, but only because domestic tourists offset the sharp decline in Canadians.

    “We’ve hurt our Canadian Friends with actions that the administration has taken. It’s understandable,” he said. “We don’t know how long they won’t want to travel to the States, but we’re hopeful that it is short-term.”

    A view of travelers at Long Beach Airport in Long Beach. Long Beach Airport saw a 10.5% decrease in passenger traffic when compared to 2024.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    Visitors from China, India and Germany also avoided the state. Surprisingly, Mexican tourists didn’t stay away. There were 5.4% more arrivals from our southern neighbor despite the ICE raids, which often targeted Latino people.

    There was a dip in traffic to most Los Angeles airports. With the World Cup on the books for next year and the Summer Olympics gearing up in 2028, the growing decline in tourism is worrisome for many across all industries.

    Cynthia Guidry, the director of the Long Beach Airport, says reduced airline schedules, economic pressures and rising costs also impacted airport traffic. She’s currently seeking out ways to best prepare for the Olympics, which don’t involve flight revenue, such as dining at the airport and souvenir shopping.

    “We’re focused on attracting new service, growing non-aeronautical revenue and managing expenses to stay resilient,” she said.

    Many of the state’s most prominent attractions are also experiencing dry spells. Yosemite reported a decrease of as much as 50% in bookings ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

    Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services, a consulting firm in the industry, says that this past year has been a “soft year” for most theme parks nationwide.

    The "Forever Marilyn" statue towers over visitors who attend the weekly Palm Springs Villagefest along Museum Way.

    The “Forever Marilyn” statue towers over visitors who attend the weekly Palm Springs Villagefest along Museum Way.

    (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    There have been fewer international visitors and more domestic traffic, as more people are embracing the idea of staycations, or spending their holidays closer to home.

    “People in the locales where the parks are stayed in their areas,” he said, adding that this summer people stayed home because of “the general economy, the media, the tariffs, the confusion and the uncertainty that came with that.”

    Los Angeles and California depend on tourism.

    Last year, the state’s tourism hit a new high, with visitors spending $157.3 billion, up 3% from 2023, and creating 24,000 jobs, according to a 2024 economic impact report from Visit California.

    “Los Angeles is California’s primary international gateway; the impacts are felt statewide,” Adam Burke, president of Los Angeles Tourism, said in a statement to The Times. “Looking ahead, long-term recovery will depend on global economic conditions and how the U.S. is perceived abroad.”

    Tourists walk across celebrity stars on Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Dolby Theater.

    Tourists walk across celebrity stars on Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Dolby Theater.

    (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

    Australian tourists Geoffrey and Tennille Mutton ignored the warnings of their friends and family to bring their two daughters to L.A.

    “A lot of people have had a changed view of America,” said Geoffrey as his family enjoyed Ben & Jerry’s ice cream outside of Hollywood’s Dolby Theater. “They don’t want to come here and support this place.”

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    Cerys Davies

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  • After Michigan church shooting, Mayor Bass calls for more police near houses of worship

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    Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced Sunday that Los Angeles police will increase patrols around houses of worship after a deadly shooting earlier in the day during services at a Michigan church.

    Five people were killed, including the shooter, and authorities say it is possible there are more.

    L.A. has thousands of houses of worship, including hundreds of storefront churches, according to the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

    “This type of violence is reprehensible and should have no place in our country,” Bass said in a statement posted on social media.

    Sometime around 10:25 a.m. Sunday, 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford drove a vehicle through the front doors of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, exited the vehicle and started shooting, according to preliminary information released by local authorities.

    Hundreds of congregants were inside, including many who shielded children, authorities said.

    Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye said at a news conference that Sanford was shot and killed by law enforcement officers at 10:33 a.m. in the church parking lot.

    Renye said 10 gunshot victims were transported to hospitals, including two who died. Seven are in stable condition while one victim remains in critical condition.

    Sanford is believed to have also intentionally set the church on fire, Renye said.

    After authorities entered the burned church, they found two more bodies. Renye said there may be others; authorities are aware of others not yet accounted for.

    After authorities killed Sanford, law enforcement officers searched multiple nearby churches regarding bomb threats, said Lt. Kim Vetter of the Michigan State Police. Vetter declined to say whether the churches searched were all LDS or other denominations and faiths.

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    Jaclyn Cosgrove

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  • Photos: Black surfers ride the waves at Huntington Beach

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    1

    2

    Nicole Mitchell, of Charlotte, NC, celebrates with fellow beginners after ride a wave during beginning surf lessons.

    3

    Surf instructors Mike Bennett, left, and Shanden Brutsch, right, cheer on Cassandra Winston as she rides her first wave.

    1. Surf instructors help Candace Chestnut, of Los Angeles, ride a wave for her first time as she takes lessons. 2. Nicole Mitchell, of Charlotte, N.C., celebrates with fellow beginners after riding a wave. 3. Surf instructors Mike Bennett, left, and Shanden Brutsch, right, cheer on Cassandra Winston as she rides her first wave.

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    Allen J. Schaben

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  • U.S. attorney said she was fired after telling Border Patrol to follow a court order

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    The acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento has said she was fired after telling the Border Patrol chief in charge of immigration raids in California that his agents were not allowed to arrest people without probable cause in the Central Valley.

    Michele Beckwith, a career prosecutor who was made the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California earlier this year, told the New York Times that she was let go after she warned Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that a court injunction blocked him from carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in Sacramento.

    Beckwith did not respond to a request for comment from the L.A. Times, but told the New York Times that “we have to stand up and insist the laws be followed.”

    The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento declined to comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.

    Bovino presided over a series of raids in Los Angeles starting in June in which agents spent weeks pursuing Latino-looking workers outside of Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and other areas. The agents often wore masks and used unmarked vehicles.

    But such indiscriminate tactics were not allowed in California’s Eastern District after the American Civil Liberties Union and United Farm Workers filed suit against the Border Patrol earlier in the year and won an injunction.

    The suit followed a January operation in Kern County called “Operation Return to Sender,” in which agents swarmed a Home Depot and Latino market, among other areas frequented by laborers. In April, a federal district court judge ruled that the Border Patrol likely violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

    As Beckwith described it to New York Times reporters, she received a phone call from Bovino on July 14 in which he said he was bringing agents to Sacramento.

    She said she told him that the injunction filed after the Kern County raid meant he could not stop people indiscriminately in the Eastern District. The next day, she wrote him an email in which, as quoted in the New York Times, she stressed the need for “compliance with court orders and the Constitution.”

    Shortly thereafter her work cell phone and her work computer stopped working. A bit before 5 p.m. she received an email informing her that her employment was being terminated effective immediately.

    It was the end of a 15-year career in in the Department of Justice in which she had served as the office’s Criminal Division Chief and First Assistant and prosecuted members of the Aryan Brotherhood, suspected terrorists, and fentanyl traffickers.

    Two days later on July 17, Bovino and his agents moved into Sacramento, conducting a raid at a Home Depot south of downtown.

    In an interview with Fox News that day, Bovino said the raids were targeted and based on intelligence. “Everything we do is targeted,” he said. “We did have prior intelligence that there were targets that we were interested in and around that Home Depot, as well as other targeted enforcement packages in and around the Sacramento area.”

    He also said that his operations would not slow down. “There is no sanctuary anywhere,” he said. “We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to affect this mission and secure the homeland.”

    Beckwith is one of a number of top prosecutors who have quit or been fired as the Trump administration pushes the Department of Justice to aggressively carry out his policies, including investigating people who have been the president’s political targets.

    In March, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was fired after lawyers for a fast-food executive he was prosecuting pushed officials in Washington to drop all charges against him, according to multiple sources.

    In July, Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, was fired by the Trump administration, according to the New York Times.

    And just last week, a U. S. attorney in Virginia was pushed out after he had determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute James B. Comey. A new prosecutor this week won a grand jury indictment against Comey on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding.

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    Jessica Garrison

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  • Contributor: California Democrats aren’t just resisting; they’re governing

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom answering the Republican redistricting power-grab in Texas with a plan of his own is a powerful example of how Golden State Democrats are standing up to President Trump and firing up their base. But while the partisan fireworks draw attention, California Democrats are also quietly offering a different kind of model for the national party that may prove more meaningful in the long run. They’re not just resisting Trump; they’re actually governing.

    Forget what you think you know about California and its lefty Democrats. They’re inching to the center, meeting voters where they are, and it’s improving people’s lives.

    Just look at San Francisco, long seen as a dysfunctional emblem of failed progressive governance.

    The city’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit leader and philanthropist, has shaken off left-wing taboos and focused on delivering results. Instead of defunding the police, he’s hiring more officers and cracking down on shoplifting and drug crimes. Instead of demonizing the business community, he’s partnering with them. He’s also reforming zoning laws to make it easier to build more housing, which should ease the city’s affordability crunch and the homelessness crisis. Lurie has been in office less than a year, but already crime is plummeting and his approval rate has reached 73%.

    National Democrats can find a lesson here: Voters care about results, not just empathy and ideology.

    In Sacramento, Newsom and legislative Democrats are taking a similar tack, with a stubborn focus on affordability and the courage to stare down opposition, even in their own coalition. For example, the Legislature recently reformed the California Environmental Quality Act, a well-intentioned 50-year-old law that had been twisted to obstruct construction projects, clean energy development and public transportation. This angered some powerful environmental activists, but it will ultimately help bring down costs for housing and energy.

    CEQA reform is emblematic of California’s new, more balanced approach on some thorny issues, like energy and climate. The state recently announced that two-thirds of its power now comes from clean energy sources — a major achievement. At the same time, Newsom and the Legislature agreed to a package of bills that will increase oil drilling while extending the state’s cap-and-trade program. Together, the package can reduce energy costs for Californians and strengthen our state’s chances of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. Some environmental justice advocates and climate purists oppose the deal, but it’s an example of how to make progress in the long term while addressing affordability in the short term.

    Immigration is another example: Newsom and other leading California Democrats continue to stand up to the Trump administration’s inhumane immigration policies, including suing to stop the deployment of troops to Los Angeles. But they also recently passed a budget that pulls back on costly plans to provide health insurance to all low-income undocumented immigrants.

    This reflects the new California model: principled resistance and pragmatic governance. The results speak for themselves. The Golden State recently surpassed Japan to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.

    Democratic leaders are making these moves because they are listening to voters who consistently say that the high cost of living is their top concern.

    In 2024, these concerns contributed to a surprising number of Californians abandoning Democrats, even with Kamala Harris, the state’s former U.S. senator and attorney general, on the ticket. Trump flipped 10 counties and boosted his support in 45. Since 2016, 72% of California counties have gotten redder, including many with heavy Latino populations.

    Democrats are paying attention and are wisely changing course. Being responsive to voter concerns doesn’t have to mean sacrificing core values, but it does require new approaches when the old ways aren’t working.

    Karen Skelton (whose father is a political columnist for the Los Angeles Times) is a political strategist, having worked in the White House under Presidents Clinton and Biden and at the United States Departments of Energy, Transportation and Justice.

    Insights

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    Perspectives

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    Ideas expressed in the piece

    • California Democrats are demonstrating effective governance by moving toward the political center while maintaining their core values, offering a model for the national Democratic Party that goes beyond mere resistance to Trump’s policies.

    • San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie exemplifies this pragmatic approach by hiring more police officers, cracking down on shoplifting and drug crimes, and partnering with the business community rather than demonizing it, resulting in plummeting crime rates and a 73% approval rating.

    • Sacramento Democrats are prioritizing affordability and practical results over ideological purity, as demonstrated by their reform of the California Environmental Quality Act despite opposition from environmental activists, ultimately helping to reduce housing and energy costs.

    • The state’s balanced approach to energy and climate policy shows how Democrats can make long-term progress while addressing immediate affordability concerns, achieving two-thirds clean energy power while also increasing oil drilling through a cap-and-trade package.

    • On immigration, California Democrats maintain principled resistance to Trump’s policies while making pragmatic budget decisions, such as pulling back on costly plans to provide health insurance to all low-income undocumented immigrants.

    • This strategic shift reflects Democrats’ responsiveness to voter concerns about the high cost of living, which contributed to Trump gaining support in 10 counties and 45 others in 2024, with 72% of California counties becoming redder since 2016.

    Different views on the topic

    • Republican leaders view California’s redistricting response as a partisan power grab rather than principled governance, with some vowing to challenge the maps in court and arguing that the redistricting process violates the California Constitution by relying on outdated population data[1].

    • Environmental activists and climate advocates oppose California’s pragmatic approach to energy policy, particularly the package that increases oil drilling while extending cap-and-trade programs, viewing it as a betrayal of environmental justice principles.

    • Progressive organizations initially opposed California’s redistricting efforts, with Common Cause, a good governance group supporting independent redistricting, originally opposing the state’s partisan response before later reversing its stance[1].

    • Some Democratic constituencies argue that pulling back on progressive policies like universal healthcare for undocumented immigrants represents an abandonment of core Democratic values rather than pragmatic governance.

    • Critics contend that the centrist shift represents capitulation to conservative pressure rather than principled leadership, arguing that Democrats should maintain their progressive positions rather than moderating in response to political setbacks.

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    Karen Skelton

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  • The ‘Brady Bunch’ house will finally open its doors to the public — for three days only

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    “The Brady Bunch” superfans better hold onto their bell bottoms: The TV family’s retro home in Studio City will finally be accessible to the public for the first time.

    The double doors to the midcentury Studio City home — made famous with its appearance in the beloved 1970s sitcom — will open to fans for three days in November thanks to a limited event by pop culture historian Alison Martino and her Vintage Los Angeles. Martino, an on-air host and producer for Spectrum news and the daughter of singer-actor Al Martino, unveiled the “Brady Experience” on Monday on Facebook.

    “It’s like stepping back into our childhood! IT IS ASTONISHING and you will see every single room,” she announced. “I will personally be taking each and every one of you throughout the house.”

    From Nov. 7 to 9, Martino will guide fans who have shelled out $275 each through the iconic Dilling Street property. The event is now sold out. Though the home’s facade appeared throughout the run of the family sitcom, its interior at the time bore no resemblance to the colorful rooms shown on screen. The interiors of the Brady residence were constructed on sets at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

    The famous abode, originally built in 1959 with late modernist architecture, was renovated decades after “The Brady Bunch” ended in 1974.

    HGTV purchased the home in 2018 for $3.5 million (more than twice the asking price) and renovated the interior to match what “Brady Bunch” audiences saw onscreen. The home renovation network documented that process in “A Very Brady Renovation,” which featured the stars who portrayed the Brady children.

    As part of the renovations, HGTV reproduced the groovy spaces from the set in the home, adding a second floor to accommodate the additional rooms. The network sold the home in 2023 for $3.2 million to Tina Trahan, a historic-home enthusiast and wife to former HBO executive Chris Albrecht.

    The home, in all its “Brady Bunch” glory, has become “even more groovy with more remarkable vintage decor added,” Martino added in her announcement. She said nothing in the home would be off limits, allowing fans to “see every detail up close.”

    Proceeds for the three-day event will benefit animal rescue Wags and Walks, a cause that Martino said Brady family dog “Tiger would definitely approve!”

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    Alexandra Del Rosario

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  • ICE offers big bucks — but California police officers prove tough to poach

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    In the push to expand as quickly as possible, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aggressively wooing recruits with experience slapping handcuffs on suspects: sheriff’s deputies, state troopers and local cops.

    The agency even shelled out for airtime during an NFL game with an ad explicitly targeting officers.

    “In sanctuary cities, dangerous illegals walk free as police are forced to stand down,” the August recruitment ad warned over a sunset panorama of the Los Angeles skyline. “Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst.”

    To meet its hiring goal, the Trump administration is offering hefty signing bonuses, student loan forgiveness and six-figure salaries to would-be deportation officers.

    ICE has also broadened its pool of potential applicants by dropping age requirements, eliminating Spanish-language proficiency requirements and cutting back on training for new hires with law enforcement experience.

    Along the way, the agency has walked a delicate line, seeking to maintain cordial relations with local department leaders while also trying to poach their officers.

    “We’re not trying to pillage a bunch of officers from other agencies,” said Tim Oberle, an ICE spokesman. “If you see opportunities to move up, make more money to take care of your family, of course you’re going to want it.”

    But despite the generous new compensation packages, experts said ICE is still coming up short in some of the places it needs agents the most.

    “The pay in California is incredible,” said Jason Litchney of All-Star Talent, a recruiting firm. “Some of these Bay Area agencies are $200,000 a year without overtime.”

    Even entry level base pay for a Los Angeles Police Department officer is more than $90,000 year. In San Francisco, it’s close to $120,000. While ICE pays far more in California than in most other states, cash alone is less likely to induce many local cops to swap their dress blues for fatigues and a neck gaiter.

    “If you were a state police officer who’s harbored a desire to become a federal agent, I don’t know if you want to join ICE at this time,” said John Sandweg, who headed ICE under President Obama.

    Police agencies nationwide have struggled for years to recruit and retain qualified officers. The LAPD has only graduated an average of 31 recruits in its past 10 academy classes, about half the number needed to keep pace with the city’s plan to grow the force to 9,500 officers.

    “That is a tremendous issue for us,” said Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, a professional advocacy organization.

    A person walks near the stage during a hiring fair by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 26 in Arlington, Texas.

    (Julio Cortez / Associated Press)

    ICE, too, has long failed to meet its staffing targets. As of a year ago, the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations — it’s dedicated deportation force — had 6,050 officers, barely more than in 2021.

    As of Sep. 16, the Department of Homeland Security said it has sent out more than 18,000 tentative job offers after a summer recruitment campaign that drew more than 150,000 applications.

    It did not specify how many applicants were working cops.

    At an ICE career expo in Texas last month, the agency at times turned away anyone who didn’t already have authorization to carry a badge or an honorable discharge from the military.

    “We have so many people who are current police officers who are trying to get on the job right now and that’s who we’ve been prioritizing,” one ICE official at the event said.

    But the spirited pursuit of rank-and-file officers has sparked anger and resentment among top cops around the country.

    “Agencies are short-staffed,” said David J. Bier, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute. “They are complaining constantly about recruitment and retention and looking every which way to maintain their workforce — and here comes along ICE — trying to pull those officers away.”

    Law enforcement experts say that outside of California, especially in lower income states, many young officers take home about as much as public school teachers, making the opportunity for newer hires to jump ship for a federal gig even more enticing.

    Some fear the ICE hiring spree will attract problematic candidates.

    “The scariest part keeping me up at night is you hear agencies say we’re lowering standards because we can’t hire,” said Justin Biedinger, head of Guardian Alliance Technologies, which streamlines background checks, applicant testing and other qualifications for law enforcement agencies.

    At the same time, the Trump administration is finding ways to deputize local cops without actually hiring them.

    The Department of Homeland Security has dramatically overhauled a controversial cooperation program called 287(g) that enlists local police officers and sheriff’s deputies to do the work of ICE agents.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem

    U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at the Wilshire Federal Building in June in Los Angeles.

    (Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

    As of early September, according to the program website, 474 agencies in 32 states were participating, up from 141 agencies in March.

    Some states such as Georgia and Florida require their agencies to apply for the program. Others, including California, forbid it.

    But that, too, could soon change.

    The administration is exploring ways to force holdouts to comply, including by conditioning millions of dollars of funding for domestic violence shelters, rape crisis hotlines and child abuse centers on compliance with its immigration directives. In response, California and several other states have sued.

    Even in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions such as Los Angeles, where local laws prohibit cops from participating in civil immigration enforcement, police officers have found themselves tangled up in federal operations. The LAPD has drawn criticism for officers responding to the scenes of ICE arrests where confrontations have erupted.

    “We get called a lot to come out and assist in providing security or making sure that it doesn’t turn violent,” said Marvel, the police advocacy organization president.

    “The vast majority of peace officers do not want to do immigration enforcement because that’s not the job they signed up for,” Marvel said. “We want to protect the community.”

    Among the agency’s most vocal critics, the push to beef up ICE is viewed as both dangerous and counterproductive.

    “Punishing violent criminals is the work of local and state law enforcement,” said Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute. “If we were to abolish ICE and devote the money to those things, we’d have lower violence and crime.”

    The cash and perks ICE is dangling will inevitably draw more people, experts said, but some warned that newly minted deportation officers should be careful about mortgaging their future.

    The potential $50,000 hiring bonus is paid out in installments over several years — and the role may lack job security.

    At the same time Trump is doubling ICE’s headcount, he’s also rewriting the rules to make it far easier to ax federal workers, said Sandweg, the former Obama official.

    That could come back to haunt many agency recruits four years from now, he said: “I think there’s a very good chance a future Democratic administration is going to eliminate a lot of these positions.”

    Zurie Pope, a Times fellow with the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, contributed to this report.

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    Sonja Sharp, Sandra McDonald, Brittny Mejia

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  • Predator drones shift from border patrol to protest surveillance

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    FT. HUACHUCA, Ariz. — When MQ-9 Predator drones flew over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this summer, it was the first time they had been dispatched to monitor demonstrations on U.S. soil since 2020, and their use reflects a change in how the government is choosing to deploy the aircraft once reserved for surveilling the border and war zones.

    Previous news reports said the drones sent by the Department of Homeland Security conducted surveillance on the weekend of June 7 over thousands of protesters demonstrating against raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Predators flew over Los Angeles for at least four more days, according to tracking experts who identified the flights through air traffic control tower communications and images of a Predator in flight.

    Those amateur sleuths, who monitor flight traffic and identified the first flight, which was confirmed by Customs and Border Protection, shared their findings on social media.

    Defenders of using drones to monitor protests say the aircraft, with their high-tech capabilities, can provide authorities useful and detailed information in real time. Human rights advocates fear the new policy will impinge on civil rights.

    The drones, which fly at around 20,000 feet to conduct surveillance, can beam a live video feed to various government agencies — ICE, the military and more . The MQ designation refers to the drone’s abilities and function. In military parlance, M means multi-use and Q indicates it’s an unmanned aerial vehicle.

    When asked about the additional days of flights over Los Angeles, Homeland Security did not directly address the questions but said the flights were meant to protect police and military.

    “CBP’s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) has provided both Manned and Unmanned aerial support to federal law enforcement partners conducting operations in the Greater Los Angeles area,” the department said in a statement.

    “Both platforms provide an unparalleled ability with Electro-optical/infrared sensors and video downlink capabilities that provide situational awareness and communications support that enhance officer safety,” the statement added.

    Protesters march against immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles on June 10, the same day the Department of Homeland Security on X posted video of protests taken by a drone.

    (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

    Homeland Security touted information obtained through drones in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on June 10. The post included footage of vehicles on fire and protesters squaring off with law enforcement personnel, apparently to show why it was necessary for the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles.

    “WATCH: DHS drone footage of LA rioters,” the post read. “This is not calm. This is not peaceful. California politicians must call off their rioting mob.”

    The post was dated June 10, but it was not clear if the video was from a Predator drone.

    Supporters of civil liberties are asking why this equipment, which has been used to drop laser-guided bombs on targets in countries like Afghanistan, is being used for domestic issues.

    The deployment of Predators over protesters is a significant departure from the U.S. government’s policy not to fly the drones over demonstrations, to avoid the perception they are spying on 1st Amendment rights activity, U.S. officials said.

    The last time Homeland Security sent a Predator to fly over protesters, according to U.S. government officials, was in Minneapolis during the 2020 protests against the killing of George Floyd by a police officer later convicted of his murder.

    Five Democrats on the House Oversight Committee called the deployment a “gross abuse of authority” and asked Homeland Security to explain what had occurred.

    At times the drones are requested by law enforcement or other authorities to fly over a region, say, to help monitor forest fires, or to provide surveillance for the Super Bowl, officials said.

    The Predators come equipped with cutting-edge infrared heat sensors and high-definition video cameras, and can track scores of individuals within a 15-nautical-mile radius.

    Two people in chairs look at screens and panels of buttons.

    In a file photo, an unmanned Predator drone is being guided from a flight operations center at Ft. Huachuca in Arizona in 2013.

    (John Moore / Getty Images)

    The drone uses an artificial intelligence program, called Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, or VaDER, to detect small objects — a human being, a rabbit, even a bird in flight. The infrared sensors can identify heat signatures even inside some buildings.

    In response to the drone flights over Los Angeles, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill in July that would restrict Predator drones and other unmanned aircraft from being deployed by the U.S. government over demonstrators.

    “My bill to ban military surveillance drones over our cities puts Trump and his administration in check,” said Gomez. “This is not just about Los Angeles, this affects the entire country. I refuse to allow Trump to use these weapons of war, capable of carrying bombs, as tools for law enforcement against civilians.”

    On Sept. 16, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution endorsing Gomez’s Ban Military Drones Spying on Civilians Act.

    “Los Angeles will not stand by while the federal government turns weapons of war against our residents,” said Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who introduced the resolution. “Spying on people engaged in peaceful protest is unconstitutional, dangerous and a direct attack on democracy.”

    The drones were first brought to the U.S. southern border in 2005 and retrofitted for surveillance operations. Homeland Security deployed the drones to fly the length of the 2,000-mile, U.S.-Mexico border, searching for drug traffickers and groups of undocumented migrants.

    Just an hour south of Tucson lies Ft. Huachuca, one of four MQ-9 drone bases from which the drones deploy along the southern border and into the interior of the U.S.

    As with the MQ-9, military-grade technology often finds its way into the interior of the country, experts say.

    “It is tested in war zones, the border, tested in cities along the border and tested in the interior of the country,” said Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights organization. “That tends to be the trajectory we see.”

    With a drop in migrant crossings into the United States, experts anticipate drones will be deployed more often over demonstrations in the coming years.

    “If somebody in the Trump administration decides there’s a need to use drones in the interior over U.S. citizens, resources won’t be an issue,” said Adam Isaacson, who covers national security for the Washington Office of Latin America, a human rights research group. “Because there’s just not that much to monitor at the border.”

    Fisher is a special correspondent. This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom dedicated to high-quality news and information from the U.S.-Mexico border.

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    Steve Fisher

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  • Essay: An Angeleno dines in Mexican Chicago. They’re just like us

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    The Trump administration has spent weeks threatening Chicago, trolling the Midwest colossus of 9 million with incendiary online posts. In the gut, even from far away, it has felt like early June in L.A. all over again.

    That’s because Chicago is just like us: big, urban, vibrant, and brown. This summer I visited the city where I always feel the flutter of familiarity.

    Let it be said: Chicago, like L.A., is Mexican as hell.

    Sikil pak at Bar Sótano. A mezcal by Gusto Histórico.

    Sikil pak at Bar Sótano. A mezcal by Gusto Histórico. (Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times)

    Los Angeles may have more Mexican residents in total numbers, but in terms of who makes up each city’s Latino population, Chicago is “as Mexican” as Los Angeles. Consider that about a third of Chicago is Hispanic or Latino, and roughly 73% of those people identify as Mexican. In Los Angeles, more than 45% are Latino, and about 71% of that population is Mexican, according to recent census data.

    There is a Mexican essence in this tough, labor-leading Midwest town, and it’s transmitted in the foods that local people of all backgrounds revere. Tacos, birria and carnitas are as familiar as deep-dish pizza and pickle-topped Chicago dogs. This was solidified for me after crossing a threshold that some West Coast purists would blanch at breaching — going to a Rick Bayless restaurant.

    Contemporary comforts

    First, however, I fell for Mi Tocaya Antojería, a funky place with tall windows facing a patio in the dynamic neighborhood of Logan Square. a Chef Diana Dávila, a leader in values-led dining, established this pillar of modern Mexican American comfort cuisine in 2017.

    Her well-loved peanut butter lengua, little squares of braised tongue topped with grilled radish and pickled onion, arrived on a plate streaked with spicy peanut sauce. This and more of Dávila’s dishes reminded me of the many confident, innovative female Mexican chefs I’ve admired over the years. Like others in her cohort, she did several stints in high-stakes kitchens and also grew up working at her family’s taquería.

    Chicago’s Mexican-ness is not a recent demographic phenomenon.

    “I think a lot of people don’t know,” said Ximena N. Beltrán Quan Kiu, a Chicago writer and consultant who specializes in Latino and Mexican American topics.

    1. Interior view of dining room and kitchen at Mi Tocaya.
    2. The peanut butter lengua and a skin-contact wine from Azizam at Mi Tocaya in Baja California.

    1. Interior view of dining room and kitchen at Mi Tocaya. 2. The peanut butter lengua and a skin-contact wine from Azizam at Mi Tocaya in Baja California. (Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times)

    “California, Texas and Florida have the highest Latino populations, but Chicago has the highest Mexican population away from any border state,” Beltrán said. “The migration patterns are really huge — from Mexico to Chicago.”

    The influence of Mexican Chicago on all of us may run deeper than we realize. At the 1893 World’s Fair, tamale cart vendors sparked a national obsession with tamales, writes Times columnist Gustavo Arellano in his book “Taco USA.” He also credits the early canning of Mexican comfort dishes — including chile con carne and even tortillas — to Chicago‘s canning industry.

    Where it feels like home

    Crowds at the Mexican Independence Day Parade on Sunday, Sept. 14, in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.

    Crowds at the Mexican Independence Day Parade on Sunday, Sept. 14, in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.

    (Erin Hooley / Associated Press)

    In Los Angeles it is Boyle Heights or East L.A. In San Diego it is Barrio Logan or City Heights. In San Francisco it is the Mission District. And in Chicago it is Pilsen and Little Village. These are among the most well-known multiethnic Mexican American neighborhoods in the United States.

    Pilsen, first populated by German, Polish and Czech immigrants, has been the central node of the city’s Mexican life going back to the 1910s, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.

    Local legend Carnitas Uruapan, opened on 18th Street in 1975 by Inocencio Carbajal, has brought perfect Michoacán-style slow-braised pork to five decades of families who line up for carnitas to-go with all the necessary sides.

    Recently, the family family added a new dine-in location in Little Village, characterized as the urban port-of-entry for more recent arrivals from Mexico and Latin America.

    Owners Marcos Carbajal and his father Inocencio Carbajal inside the new dine-in location of Carnitas Uruapan.

    Owners Marcos Carbajal and his father Inocencio Carbajal inside the new dine-in location of Carnitas Uruapan in Little Village.

    (Carnitas Uruapan)

    “We haven’t really changed our core menu in 50 years,” Marcos Carbajal, the founder’s son and co-operator, told me, “and if we did, people would revolt.”

    Not this, not that

    Mexican Chicago is shaped by dining traditions that reflect a range of inter-generational customs, like the lore of the Tamale Lady, a Pilsen street vendor whose tamales are considered a cut above any other in Cook County. Or for Birrieria Zaragoza, open since 2007 in nearby Archer Heights.

    Pilsen is also home to Cantón Regio, a Monterrey-style antojería with particularly good refried beans and flour tortillas, and Pochos, an all-day restaurant that sits right next-door to the Carnitas Uruapan original storefront.

    Participants at the 2025 Pilsen Mexican Independence Day parade on Saturday, Sept. 6.

    In L.A. it is Boyle Heights or East L.A. And in Chicago it is Pilsen and Little Village. Above, participants at the 2025 Pilsen Mexican Independence Day parade on Saturday, Sept. 6.

    (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

    Pochos co-owner Irene Acosta grew up with her parents and siblings on the “Mexican side” of Chicago, part of a first- and second-generation thriving in the local restaurant industry.

    “I identify as pocho and there wasn’t a home for us. It was all either the mom-and-pop shops, or places that were way too modern,” Acosta said during a quiet lull one weekday.

    The restaurateur began watching Julia Child videos on PBS when she was 5. She and co-founder Miguel Hernandez opened their first Pochos location in 2019. “We’re not really Mexican, we’re not really American,” Acosta said, “we’re somewhere in between.”

    We brunched on the restaurant’s chorizo omelet, braised beef empanadas and a towering lemon berry French toast. Paired with mimosas, it was a fun pocho brunch, Pilsen-made.

    1. Owner Irene Acosta and servers Olinca Martínez and Alondra Peña inside the Pochos dining room.
    2. The chorizo omelet at Pochos.

    1. Owner Irene Acosta and servers Olinca Martínez and Alondra Peña inside the Pochos dining room. 2. The chorizo omelet at Pochos. (Daniel Hernandez/Los Angeles Times)

    The Bayless effect

    I had a Rick Bayless torta once. At O’Hare. It’s almost a requirement during stop at that airport. The torta was good.

    Bayless, who first opened Frontera Grill with wife Deann Bayless in Chicago’s River North in 1987, helped train American diners to equate Mexican cuisines with high-quality ingredients and complex preparations — just as Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken did when they opened Los Angeles’ Border Grill on Melrose Avenue in 1985. It wasn’t until 2013 that the first Michelin star for a Mexican-born chef went to Carlos Gaytán for his restaurant Mexique, also in Chicago.

    The Bayless trajectory meanwhile morphed into a successful empire involving books, a TV show, and four restaurants, all in the same River North building where Frontera Grill first started nearly 40 years ago. In 1989 he added upscale Topolobampo and eventually fast-casual Xoco and his “speakeasy” concept Bar Sótano, whose name means “basement.”

    Chef Rick Bayless at his restaurant, Frontera Grill, in Chicago.

    Chef Rick Bayless in 2007 at Frontera Grill, his first of four restaurants in the same building in River North.

    (Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)

    I was particularly curious about Bar Sótano because I had seen posts about how it offered a Mango Chamoy drink served in a small plastic bag with a straw tied into it, mimicking a practice deep in tianguis in Mexico, where you can drink a tepache like this for 10 or 15 pesos.

    I wanted to see if the Bayless presentation would trigger delight or offense in me. Plus, I needed to see what makes a Bayless restaurant a Bayless restaurant.

    I was truly in a neutral mindset. Sadly, the cocktail in the bag was no longer available, our server said. Something about the tariffs.

    Otherwise, service was crisp and clean while we sampled sikil pak, a Yucatecan cream or dip that’s trending in Mexican restaurants this year, and a ceviche with too much tomato. Also had two tacos that I could only describe as incoherent.

    When I looked up, the room was jammed.

    I could see why this kind of dining is considered top-quality and worth its value in this city. Every kind of possible Chicagoan was there on the night I visited, all having a good time. Many of the employees were Latino or Mexican, or maneuvered like veteran hospitality people, flipping tortillas and preparing salsas, or furiously mixing drinks.

    Mexican Chicagoans in the food industry usually acknowledge that Bayless restaurants have served as springboards for a veritable tree of future chef ventures, making him critical for the ecosystem of Midwestern Mexican fine dining.

    “At a time when we need allies, Rick Bayless is not an enemy,” said Beltrán, the writer.

    Bayless “opened a lane for Mexican food to be perceived as gourmet, something that has deep cultural connections,” Carbajal said. “And as a result of that, he’s opened doors for other people.”

    I sent multiple emails and messages to Bayless requesting an interview. I especially wanted to know if the chef would like to say anything about the climate in Chicago’s Mexican dining scene under this ominous threat from Washington.

    Sure, I would also want to ask about the withering criticism he’s received for his characterization of how we do things in California from writers like Gustavo Arellano and Bill Esparza, or the litany of public spats he’s had with prominent West Coast food voices including the late Jonathan Gold.

    Bayless did not respond to any of my requests for comment.

    Even so, I can recognize and admire the breadth of his influence on perceptions of Mexican food within the United States. It is similar to the like-it-or-not influence of Diana Kennedy on Mexican home-cooking in this country.

    “He employs hundreds of people from the neighborhoods, and he’s had our food for a really long time,” Carbajal said. “There are Rick Bayless alumni all over town.”

    Diana Becerra wears an indigenous Mexican costume during the Mexican Independence Day Parade.
    2. Onlookers watch the parade.
    3. People stop to take pictures of anti-ICE signs posted on windows at a clothing store during the 2025 Pilsen Mexican Independence Day parade.

    1. Diana Becerra wears an indigenous Mexican costume during the Mexican Independence Day Parade, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025, in Little Village. (Erin Hooley / Associated Press) 2. Onlookers watch the parade. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images) 3. People stop to take pictures of anti-ICE signs posted on windows at a clothing store during the 2025 Pilsen Mexican Independence Day parade. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

    Nightmare raids

    Considering the context of the ICE raids in the summer of 2025, Bayless is a reminder that in the greater scheme of things, the focus right now should be on how alike we are — all of us Americans, regardless of ethnicity or political lean.

    Those of us of who love Mexican American cuisine, in all its manifestations, can take heart in knowing it is still one of the most “American” aspects to whatever is left of the U.S. monoculture. Our nation is obsessed with tacos.

    The ICE surge in the Chicago metropolitan has begun, and has already resulted in the first fatal shooting during an ICE-identified detention since the start of the second Trump administration.

    Some Mexican Independence Day parties and festivities took place in recent days in Chicago, Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities, while many organizers also canceled events across the country, according to local media reports. Restaurants everywhere are already feeling the pinch of fear take hold in their communities, including Carbajal of Carnitas Uruapan, who said business has dipped.

    “The crowds are much smaller this year. Those are just indicators that people are not wanting to go out,” said Serena Maria Daniels, a longtime Midwest food journalist and author of the newsletter Midwest Mexican. Daniels said she’s watched locals activating in anticipation of Trump’s threats. But the chilling effect is already here, she and other sources said.

    “This situation really makes you pause and think about how our community has touched so many aspects of society, and how this is really threatening all of these threads that hold up the economy, that make cities function, that make governments function,” Daniels said. “It truly is a nightmare.”

    So here we are. In the throes of what now feels like a systematic assault on our way of life in multiethnic American urban centers, not merely targeting the “the worst of the worst” but anyone with brown skin.

    The operations also seem to disregard the sense of belonging and pride we all feel living in a wealthy multicultural megacity, fueled by immigrants, regardless of our background — the kind of place embodied by L.A. or Chicago. Our cities remain rich places, warts and all. We hold steadfast to community, to joy, to service, to open-mindedness, and we demonstrate it in our dining habits.

    In truth, our cities show the beauty and promise of this idea, where people from all over the world can gather to seek prosperity, share their cultures, and make it work. And we can all also have delicious carnitas tacos while doing it.

    Eating in Mexican Chicago

    Mi Tocaya
    2800 W. Logan Blvd, Chicago, IL 60647
    (872) 315-3947
    @mitocaya

    Carnitas Uruapan (Take-out only)
    1725 W. 18th St, Chicago, IL 60608
    (312) 226-2654

    Carnitas Uruapan (Dine-in)
    3801 W. 26th St, Chicago, IL 60623
    (773) 940-2770
    @carnitasuruapanchi

    Birreria Zaragoza
    Archer Heights location temporarily closed
    Uptown location: 4800 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640
    (773) 334-5650

    Cantón Regio
    1510 W. 18th St, Chicago, IL 60608
    (312) 733-3045
    @regiocanton

    Pochos
    1727 W. 18th St, Chicago, IL 60608
    (312) 989-3937
    @pochos_chicago

    Bar Sótano
    In the alley behind Frontera Grill
    443 N. Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654
    (312) 391-5857
    @barsotanochi

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    Daniel Hernandez

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  • L.A. soccer coach killed teen after slipping past city’s background check, family claims

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    The family of a 13-year-old boy found dead in a roadside ditch earlier this year is suing the city of Los Angeles, claiming parks department officials failed to do a proper background check on the youth soccer coach accused of sexually abusing and murdering the teen.

    Oscar Daniel Hernandez and Gladys Bautista Vasquez, the parents of Oscar Omar Rodriguez, filed a notice of claim against the city on Sept. 11, contending the Los Angeles Dept. of Parks & Recreation exposed children to harm by granting Mario Garcia-Aquino a permit to coach youth soccer teams.

    “The City of Los Angeles, through its permit application and approval process, knew or should have known that Mario Garcia-Aquino would be using city parks solely to groom and sexually abuse children on a daily or weekly basis under the guise of a boys’ soccer club,” read the notice, typically a precursor to a civil lawsuit.

    Gladys Hernandez, mother of Oscar Omar Hernandez, weeps while talking about her son during a news conference outside the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, CA on April 30, 2025.

    (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

    Oscar played for the Hurricane Valley Boys Soccer Club in the Sylmar area, which Garcia-Aquino coached. The family’s attorney, Michael Carrillo, said the city was negligent by failing to notify parents that he’d twice faced sexual abuse allegations from players in the past.

    The boy was found dead in Ventura County in April, days after traveling to Palmdale to Garcia-Aquino’s home where he was supposed to help his coach make soccer jerseys. Prosecutors have since accused Garcia-Aquino of killing the teen after sexually assaulting him. Oscar died of alcohol poisoning, records show.

    Garcia-Aquino is now awaiting trial for Oscar’s murder and the prior sex abuse allegations. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

    Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino accused of murder of 13 year old Oscar Omar Hernandez.

    A police booking photo of Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, 43, accused of killing 13-year-old Oscar Omar Hernandez on March, 28 2025.

    (Jessica Foster/Courtesy of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Depertment)

    The Los Angeles Police Department investigated an allegation of sex abuse against Garcia-Aquino in late 2022, officials previously told The Times, but a criminal case was never filed because the victim would not cooperate with law enforcement. A second player accused Garcia-Aquino of abuse in 2024, prompting a sheriff’s department investigation.

    But the L.A. County district attorney’s office took more than 10 months to file charges, a previous Times investigation showed, raising questions about whether prosecutors missed a chance to arrest the coach before the alleged killing.

    Undated handout photo of Oscar Omar Hernandez.

    Undated handout photo of Oscar Omar Hernandez. The 7th grader was killed March 28 and his body was found five days after he left his Sun Valley home to meet with his coach in Lancaster.

    (Courtesy of Hernandez family)

    “We would expect for the LAPD to inform the city that they work for that ‘Hey maybe this guy should be on the do not permit list,’” said Michael Carrillo, one of the family’s attorneys. “That would be a very rational reasonable approach. Anything to prevent this man from being around kids.”

    Garcia-Aquino is undocumented, and news of his arrest also previously drew a furious response from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which called him a “depraved illegal alien who should have never been in this country,” in a post on X earlier this year. Carrillo, however, said it would be “wrong” to blame the murder on immigration policies and that the family’s frustration lies with city and county officials.

    A spokesman for the city attorney’s office said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. Calls and e-mails to the Department of Parks and Recreation were not returned. Carrillo said he did not know when Garcia-Aquino’s coaching permit was last renewed.

    Garcia-Aquino is due back in court next month.

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    James Queally

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