Tampa International Airport said on social media Thursday that it wanted to ban people from wearing pajamas at the Florida facility. No, it wasn’t being serious.A post on the airport’s official X account said that after successfully going “Crocs-free,” Tampa International had “seen enough” of pajamas.“The madness stops today. The movement starts now,” reads the post, which had been viewed 5.7 million times by mid-afternoon Eastern time and generated a debate about airport attire in the comments.Beau Zimmer, an airport spokesperson, told The Associated Press the post was part of the airport’s longstanding social media persona — a tongue-in-cheek voice it has cultivated since its early days on Twitter, before the platform rebranded as X. The account has attracted a loyal global following, he said.“Our regular social media followers just eat this stuff up,” Zimmer said. “But obviously this is all in fun, and we encourage our travelers to be comfortable.”U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reacted to the post with a GIF of actor John Krasinski from the TV show “The Office” looking into the camera and saying, “Yes!”Duffy has been encouraging passengers to dress more formally while flying, part of a civility campaign he launched last November — called “the Golden Age of Travel Starts with You.” The Transportation Department said the campaign was “intended to jumpstart a nationwide conversation around how we can all restore courtesy and class to air travel.”The airport released a statement Thursday clarifying its post was intended as a joke.“Today’s post about ‘banning’ pajamas was another playful nod to day-of-travel fashion debates,” it said. “We encourage our passengers to travel comfortably and appreciate our loyal followers who enjoy the online humor.”Zimmer said the airport’s online personality has been around for at least a decade. In the earlier days of what was then Twitter, a young intern started posting light-hearted jokes, like poking fun at rival sports teams and fans, “and it really took off.”Earlier this month, the day after the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied from a four-goal deficit to beat the Boston Bruins 6-5 in an NHL Stadium Series game in Tampa, the airport shared on X: “Oh, and safe flight home to all the Bruins fans today :)”Last month, alluding to an ongoing joke about passengers mixing up the airport’s code of TPA with TIA, an airport in Albania, the Tampa airport shared a New Year’s resolution “to stress out less.”“Unfortunately,” the post continued, “some of y’all’s resolutions is to continue calling us TIA so we will not be meeting our goal.”One X user responded that Tampa airport should just change its code to “GOAT so people don’t get confused,” referring to the acronym for “greatest of all time.”
Tampa International Airport said on social media Thursday that it wanted to ban people from wearing pajamas at the Florida facility. No, it wasn’t being serious.
A post on the airport’s official X account said that after successfully going “Crocs-free,” Tampa International had “seen enough” of pajamas.
“The madness stops today. The movement starts now,” reads the post, which had been viewed 5.7 million times by mid-afternoon Eastern time and generated a debate about airport attire in the comments.
Beau Zimmer, an airport spokesperson, told The Associated Press the post was part of the airport’s longstanding social media persona — a tongue-in-cheek voice it has cultivated since its early days on Twitter, before the platform rebranded as X. The account has attracted a loyal global following, he said.
“Our regular social media followers just eat this stuff up,” Zimmer said. “But obviously this is all in fun, and we encourage our travelers to be comfortable.”
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reacted to the post with a GIF of actor John Krasinski from the TV show “The Office” looking into the camera and saying, “Yes!”
Duffy has been encouraging passengers to dress more formally while flying, part of a civility campaign he launched last November — called “the Golden Age of Travel Starts with You.” The Transportation Department said the campaign was “intended to jumpstart a nationwide conversation around how we can all restore courtesy and class to air travel.”
The airport released a statement Thursday clarifying its post was intended as a joke.
“Today’s post about ‘banning’ pajamas was another playful nod to day-of-travel fashion debates,” it said. “We encourage our passengers to travel comfortably and appreciate our loyal followers who enjoy the online humor.”
Zimmer said the airport’s online personality has been around for at least a decade. In the earlier days of what was then Twitter, a young intern started posting light-hearted jokes, like poking fun at rival sports teams and fans, “and it really took off.”
Earlier this month, the day after the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied from a four-goal deficit to beat the Boston Bruins 6-5 in an NHL Stadium Series game in Tampa, the airport shared on X: “Oh, and safe flight home to all the Bruins fans today :)”
Last month, alluding to an ongoing joke about passengers mixing up the airport’s code of TPA with TIA, an airport in Albania, the Tampa airport shared a New Year’s resolution “to stress out less.”
“Unfortunately,” the post continued, “some of y’all’s resolutions is to continue calling us TIA so we will not be meeting our goal.”
One X user responded that Tampa airport should just change its code to “GOAT so people don’t get confused,” referring to the acronym for “greatest of all time.”
Southern California home prices dipped slightly in January. It’s the third month in a row that prices have fallen, and the eighth time in the last nine months.
In January, the average home price fell to $855,335, according to data from Zillow. Prices were down .01% month over month and 0.9% year over year.
It’s the lowest that Southern California home values have been since March 2024.
The dip reflects a slow winter market with tepid sales and low inventory. But economists and real estate agents say a variety of factors have contributed to the broader decline over the last year, including high mortgage rates, rising inventory and economic uncertainty stemming from tariffs.
Until the recent declines, July 2023 was the last time that year-over-year prices had fallen. Back then, rising mortgage rates were knocking many buyers out of the market. Values started increasing again when the number of homes for sale plunged as sellers backed away, unwilling to give up mortgages they took out earlier in the pandemic with rates of 3% or lower.
Real estate agents say homeowners increasingly want to take the next step in their lives and are deciding to move rather than hold on to their ultra-low mortgage rates. But many first-time buyers, without access to equity, remain locked out.
Add on the economic uncertainty and you get a market that’s noticeably downshifted.
If the Trump administration’s policies end up pushing the economy into a recession, some economists say home prices could drop much further.
Even accounting for the winter slowdown, January was an extremely slow month for new inventory in L.A. County. Only 3,472 new homes were listed for sale in January; that’s 1.4% less than December, and the lowest total since January 2024.
For now, Zillow is forecasting that the economy will avoid a recession and home prices will increase over the next year. The real estate firm expects that over the course of the year, home prices will rise 1.2% both nationally and in L.A.
Housing prices by city and neighborhood
Note to readers
Welcome to the Los Angeles Times’ Real Estate Tracker. Every month we will publish a report with data on housing prices, mortgage rates and rental prices. Our reporters will explain what the new data mean for Los Angeles and surrounding areas and help you understand what you can expect to pay for an apartment or house. You can read last month’s real estate breakdown here.
Explore home prices and rents for January
Use the tables below to search for home sale prices and apartment rental prices by city, neighborhood and county.
Rental prices in Southern California
Rents continued to get cheaper across L.A., dropping to $2,163 in January. That’s the lowest median rent since January 2022.
A variety of factors have contributed to the slowdown, but the simplest explanation is a case of supply and demand. In 2025, 15,095 multifamily units were completed in L.A., an 18% increase year over year and the second-highest total in the last decade.
Meanwhile, L.A. County’s population shrank by 28,000 in 2025. As a result, vacancy rates climbed to 5.3% at the end of 2025, leading some tenants to declare L.A. a renter’s market.
WASHINGTON — New whistleblower documents detail substantial cuts by the Trump administration to the training requirements for new immigration officers.
Among the cuts are the elimination of practical exams, use of force and legal training courses, and an overall reduction in training time, contrary to an official’s testimony to Congress earlier this month.
The documents, provided to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) by whistleblowers from the Department of Homeland Security, were publicly revealed ahead of a forum Monday with congressional Democrats — the third in recent weeks probing what the members view as abusive and illegal tactics used by federal agents.
Lauren Bis, deputy assistant public affairs secretary at Homeland Security, said no training hours have been cut.
“Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive 4th and 5th Amendment comprehensive instruction,” she said. “The training does not stop after graduation from the academy. Recruits are put on a rigorous on-the-job training program that is tracked and monitored.”
Earlier this month, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons testified to Congress that while the agency had reduced the number of training days to 42 from 75, “We went from five days a week to six days a week. Five days a week was five eight-hour days and we’ve gone to six 12-hour days.”
But the documents appear to contradict Lyons’ testimony.
“The schedules reflected on these documents indicate that current ICE recruits receive nearly 250 fewer hours of training than previous cohorts of recruits,” according to a 90-page memorandum from minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Blumenthal is the top Democrat on that committee.
Blumenthal’s office also disclosed the identity of one whistleblower: Ryan Schwank, an attorney who most recently served as an instructor for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits at the ICE Academy within the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
Schwank, who resigned Feb. 13, is one of two whistleblowers who made a confidential disclosure to Blumenthal’s office last month regarding an ICE policy allowing agents to forcefully enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant.
In his testimony Monday, Schwank said that for the last five months, he watched ICE leadership dismantle its training program. What remains, he said, is a “dangerous husk.”
Schwank said the assertion by Homeland Security leaders that cadets receive the same training in a shorter time frame “is a lie.”
“This means that cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable, the very standard which the law requires them to meet when deciding whether or not to use deadly force,” he said. “Our jobs as instructors are to teach them so well they can make split-second decisions about what they can and cannot do in life-or-death situations. Yet in the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job.”
Schwank said he was shown the secret memo authorizing forceful home entry on his first day as a training instructor. He was told to teach its contents but not to take notes on it or discuss its existence.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” he said. “Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.”
“So in effect, you were told, as an instructor on the law, that you were to train ICE agents how to break the law,” Blumenthal told Schwank.
Schwank told Blumenthal that the reason he received the training position was because the lawyer in the position before him had been forced to resign on their refusal to teach the contents of the memo.
Another witness at the forum was Teyana Gibson Brown, whose husband, Garrison Gibson, was arrested in Minneapolis last month after agents burst through their door with guns drawn. She said she and her husband repeatedly asked to see a warrant but were ignored.
“I heard the door pop and I realized we were no longer protected,” she said. “Ten officers that were all armed were standing in front of me and my family. Words can never be sufficient for me to portray what sorts of horror we felt in this moment.”
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said the notion that “ICE wants to write its own permission slip, without a judge, to break down your door and to violate your rights” should terrify all Americans. Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, led the forum with Blumenthal.
Blumenthal’s office did not confirm whether Schwank or the other whistleblower, who is still anonymous, provided the documents that were released Monday and included in the 90-page memo.
The documents show ICE has eliminated more than a dozen practical exams that ICE officers previously needed to graduate. In July 2021, a cadet needed to pass 25 practical exams to graduate. Now, nine are required.
Eliminated exams include “Judgment pistol shooting,” “Criminal encounters,” and “Determine removability.”
“All of these are now instead evaluated, if at all, mainly by open-book, multiple-choice written exams and without any graded practical examinations,” the memo states.
During the hearing, Blumenthal raised a poster showing the two lists of exam topics. The longer list, Schwank told him, was a vital lesson on things like “how to use their firearms safely, how to encounter an individual they intended to detain, much like Mrs. Gibson Brown’s husband.”
Tests that used to be closed-book became open-book, he said. As a result, he watched cadets graduate despite using excessive force in practical exercises.
Comparisons between the program’s syllabus table of contents and general information sections from July 2025 — before the surge in hiring — and this month show that ICE appears to have cut whole courses, such as use of force simulation training, U.S. government structure, criminal versus removal proceedings, and use of force.
In a statement, Homeland Security said no training requirements have been removed and that new recruits get 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training. The agency said training was streamlined to cut redundancy and incorporate technological advancements without cutting subject matter content.
Candidates still learn the same elements always required, the agency said, including multiple classes on use-of-force policy, as well as safe arrest techniques and de-escalation.
The training reductions come as ICE plans to bring up more than 4,000 new Enforcement and Removal Operations officers this fiscal year, which ends in September. One of the documents notes that ICE had graduated 803 new officers in 2026 as of Jan. 29 and projected 3,204 more graduates by the end of the fiscal year.
In its statement, Homeland Security said the agency is prepared to train 12,000 new hires this year, and that the majority of new hires are experienced law enforcement officers who have already gone through a police academy.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) asked Schwank about the new officers ICE has hired.
“Are they police officers that already have this training, so they don’t have to worry about it?” she asked. “Is it individuals that don’t have any law enforcement background?”
Schwank said the cadets he met genuinely wanted to learn and to do their jobs correctly but didn’t arrive with a law enforcement background.
“I’ve had cadets who are 18 years old,” he said. “I had a cadet who celebrated her 19th birthday in her classes. We have cadets who don’t have college degrees. We have cadets for whom English is not their primary language.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a child of Southern segregation who rose to national prominence as a powerful voice for Black economic and racial equality, has died.
Jackson, who had battled the neurodegenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy for more than a decade, died at home surrounded by family. His daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed his death with the Associated Press. He was 84. Jackson was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017 before the PSP diagnosis was confirmed in April.
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement posted online. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”
Handsome and dynamic, an orator with a flair for memorable rhyme, Jackson was the first Black candidate for president to attract a major following, declaring in 1984 that “our time has come” and drawing about 3.5 million votes in Democratic primaries — roughly 1 in 5 of those cast.
Four years later, using the slogan “Keep hope alive,” he ran again, winning 7 million votes, second only to the eventual nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. His hourlong speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention brought many delegates to tears and provided the gathering’s emotional high point.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, acknowledge the cheers of delegates and supporters before his emotional speech to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta on July 20, 1988.
(John Duricka / Associated Press)
“Every one of these funny labels they put on you, those of you who are watching this broadcast tonight in the projects, on the corners — I understand,” he said. “Call you outcast, low down, you can’t make it, you’re nothing, you’re from nobody, subclass, underclass; when you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination.”
For nearly a generation, from the 1970s into the 1990s, that ability to absorb the insults and rejection suffered by Black Americans and transmute them into a defiant rhetoric of success made Jackson the most prominent Black figure in the country. Both beneficiary and victim of white America’s longstanding insistence on having one media-anointed leader serve as the spokesman for tens of millions of Black citizens, he drew adulation and jeers but consistently held the spotlight.
Supporters greeted his speeches with chants of “Run, Jesse, run.” Opponents tracked every misstep, from audits of his grants in the 1970s to his use of the anti-Jewish slur “Hymietown” to refer to New York City during the 1984 campaign, to the disclosure, in 2001, that he had fathered a daughter in an extramarital affair.
As he dominated center stage, the thundering chorus of his speeches — “I am … somebody” — inspired his followers even as it sometimes sounded like a painful plea.
Jackson’s thirst for attention began in childhood. Born out of wedlock on Oct. 8, 1941, he often stood at the gate of his father’s home in Greenville, S.C., watching with envy as his half-brothers played, before returning to the home he shared with his mother, Helen Burns, and grandmother, Mathilda.
During high school, his father, Noah Robinson, a former professional boxer, would sometimes go to the football field to watch Jesse play. If he played well, Noah would sometimes tell others, “That’s one of mine.” For the most part, however, until Jesse was famous, he shunned his son, who was later adopted by the man his mother married, Charles Jackson.
It was his grandmother, known as Tibby, who encouraged Jackson’s ambition. A domestic in stringently segregated Greenville, Tibby brought home books and magazines, such as National Geographic, that her white employers’ children had discarded.
“Couldn’t read a word herself but she’d bring them back for me, you know, these cultural things used by the wealthy and refined,” Jackson once said. “All she knew was, their sons read those books. So I ought to read them too. She never stopped dreaming for me.”
Her dreams propelled Jackson toward college — as did a need to avenge the childhood taunts that echoed in his head. An honors student, he turned down a contract to pitch for the Chicago White Sox to accept a football scholarship to the University of Illinois.
At Christmas break, he came home with a list of books. A librarian at the McBee Avenue Colored Branch referred him to the white library downtown and called ahead to clear the way. When he entered the main library, two police officers stood at the loan desk. A librarian told him it would take at least six days to get the books from the shelves. When he offered to get them himself, the officers told him to leave.
“I just stared up at that ‘Greenville Public Library’ and tears came to my eyes,” Jackson told a biographer, Marshall Frady.
That summer, 1960, Jackson came home and led a sit-in at the library, his arrest a first taste of civil disobedience. In the fall, he transferred to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. There he became the star quarterback and participated in the beginnings of the sit-ins that became a signature part of the civil rights movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“It wasn’t a matter of Gandhi or Dr. King then,” he said of the library sit-in, “it was just my own private pride and self-respect.”
With his height and his oratorical flourishes, Jackson was a charismatic figure who led protests in Greensboro. Once, during a demonstration outside a cafeteria, as police were about to arrest the demonstrators, Jackson suggested they kneel and recite the Lord’s Prayer.
“Police all took off their caps and bowed their heads,” he said. “Can’t arrest folks prayin’.”
Then he led the demonstrators in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“They stopped, put their hands over their heart,” Jackson said. “Can’t arrest folks singing the national anthem.”
After half an hour, he recalled, “we got tired and let ’em arrest us.”
Elected student body president, Jackson graduated in 1963. A grant from the Rockefeller Fund for Theological Education brought him to the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he hoped to find a venue for social activism.
That summer, Jackson traveled to Washington, where he heard King deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two years later, he and a group of college buddies piled into vans to drive south for King’s Selma-to-Montgomery march. He met King there, and early the next year, King asked Jackson to head his Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. The goal was to win economic gains for Black people with a combination of consumer boycotts and negotiated settlements.
At 24, Jackson was the youngest of King’s aides. Operating out of a hole-in-the-wall office at SCLC’s South Side headquarters, he began by organizing preachers, arranging for them to urge their congregations on Easter to boycott products made by a local dairy that employed no Black workers.
During the following week, Country Delight lost more than half a million dollars in revenue. Within days, the company offered a deal: 44 jobs for Black workers. Without waiting for a boycott, other dairy companies called with offers, too.
King soon asked Jackson to be the national director of Operation Breadbasket. Jackson hesitated — the job required him to leave the seminary six months short of graduation. Jackson recounted in his autobiography that King told him, “Come with me full time and you’ll learn more theology in six months than you would in six years at the seminary.” He earned his ordination several years later.
In 1968, Jesse Jackson stands to the left of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where King was assassinated the next day.
(Charles Kelly / Associated Press )
In April 1968, Jackson joined King in Memphis, where the civil rights leader had decided to stand with striking Black sanitation workers. Few of King’s staff supported the effort, worrying that the strike — and the planned Poor People’s Campaign in Washington — distracted from the main goal of attaining voting and political rights for Black Americans.
During a planning meeting, King blew up at his aides, including Jackson. “If you’re so interested in doing your own thing, that you can’t do what this organization is structured to do, if you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead,” King yelled at Jackson, according to the latter’s account. “But for God’s sake, don’t bother me!”
The next day, standing below the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where the team was staying in Memphis, King yelled down at Jackson in joviality, as if to mitigate the outburst, inviting him to dinner.
Within moments, shots rang out. Jackson later said he ran upstairs and caught King’s head as he lay dying. Andrew Young, a King aide who later became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Frady that he doubted Jackson had cradled King’s head, but that they all had rushed to the scene and all had gotten blood on their clothes.
But if all of them were touched by King’s blood, only Jackson wore his gore-stained olive turtleneck for days, sleeping and grieving in it, wearing it on NBC’s “Today Show” and before the Chicago City Council. In dramatizing the moment to his own benefit, Jackson provoked hostility from King’s widow and others in the movement’s leadership that lasted decades.
Richard Hatcher, the first Black mayor of Gary, Ind., and a Jackson supporter, recalled that once Jackson decided to run for president, the campaign thought it had the backing of the Black leadership.
“Big mistake. Big mistake,” Hatcher said. “Over the following months, every time things seemed to get going, here would come a statement from Atlanta, from Andy [Young] or Joe Lowery or Mrs. King, ‘We don’t think this is a good idea at all.’“
As Jackson’s media prominence grew — including a cover photo on Time magazine in 1970 — tensions erupted between Jackson and SCLC, in part because of the sloppy bookkeeping that became a Jackson characteristic. In late 1971, SCLC’s board suspended Jackson for “administrative impropriety” and “repeated violation of organization discipline.” Jackson resigned, saying, “I need air. I must have room to grow.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson raises a clenched fist from a police van after he and 11 others from Operation Breadbasket were arrested during a sit-in at the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., offices in New York City on Feb. 2, 1971. The organization, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has been protesting A&P’s alleged discrimination against blacks.
(MARTY LEDERHANDLER / Associated Press)
Calling a dozen Black celebrities to New York’s Commodore Hotel, Jackson formed his own organization. Originally called People United to Save Humanity — the presumptuous title was soon changed to People United to Serve Humanity — PUSH became his pulpit. Like Operation Breadbasket, its goal was to boost minority employment and ownership.
Jackson traveled the country preaching self-esteem and self-discipline. Thousands of youngsters took pledges to say no to drugs, turn off their television sets, study. They became the core of his voter registration drives, the inspiration for the “I am somebody” chant that would define his public ministry.
As with Operation Breadbasket, Jackson used PUSH to hold corporate America to account. In 1982, for example, he launched a boycott of Anheuser-Busch with the slogan “this Bud’s a dud.”
“We spend approximately $800 million with them [annually]. Yet, out of 950 wholesale distributorships, only one is Black-owned,” Jackson said.
Shortly thereafter, Anheuser-Busch contributed $10,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund, contributed more than $500,000 to the Rainbow PUSH coalition, and established a $10-million fund to help minorities buy distributorships.
In 1998, 16 years later, the River North beer distributorship in Chicago was purchased by two of Jackson’s sons, Yusef and Jonathan. (Jackson’s eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., won election to Congress from Chicago in 1995, but resigned and was convicted of fraud in 2013 for misuse of campaign funds. Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, also had two daughters, Jacqueline and Santita. A third daughter, Ashley Laverne Jackson, was the child of his relationship with a PUSH staff member, Karin Stanford.)
Critics called the PUSH campaigns elaborate shakedowns. Others, like Jeffrey Campbell, president of Burger King when Jackson opened negotiations in 1983, found the encounter with Jackson and his rhetoric of economic empowerment inspiring.
“Before they came in, my view was that we ought to fight them, that this guy Jackson was a monster, and I had the backing of my bosses to walk out if necessary,” Campbell told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. But Campbell said he quickly changed his mind.
“He got to me very quickly, without me realizing it, when he started talking about fairness. He would say: What is fair? Blacks give you 15% of your business — isn’t it fair that you give 15% of your business, your jobs, your purchases back to the Black community, the Black businesses?
“That little seed began to grow in the back of my mind,” Campbell said. “It was the right question to ask me.”
How Jackson handled money gave critics additional openings. Between 1972 and 1988, PUSH and its affiliates attracted more than $17 million in federal grants and private contributions. After many audits, the Justice Department sought $1.2 million in repayments, citing poor recordkeeping and a lack of documentation.
Jackson gave little thought to such issues. “I am a tree-shaker, not a jelly-maker,” he would often say.
Management held little interest for him. But politics was a different matter.
From the moment he began urging and registering Black Americans to vote, Jackson found his milieu. He used PUSH resources to staff get-out-the-vote drives that helped elect Hatcher in Gary, Kenneth Gibson in Newark, N.J., and Carl Stokes in Cleveland.
In those days, he also advocated participating in both parties, what he called “a balance of power.” In 1972, he claimed he had registered 40,000 Black voters to support Illinois’ white Republican senator, Charles Percy.
That same year, at the Democratic convention in Miami, Jackson unseated Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s 58-member Illinois delegation and replaced it with a “rainbow” of his own, even though he had never voted in a Democratic primary. Liberal Democrats who despised Daley as a corrupt big-city boss hailed Jackson as a hero.
In the decade to come, Jackson basked in celebrity and international travel, including a controversial meeting with Yasser Arafat. Jackson met the then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1979 when he traveled to Syria to free U.S. pilot Robert Goodman, who’d been shot down while on a bombing mission. By the time Jackson declared his 1984 presidential campaign, he had burnished his foreign policy credentials.
At the convention that year in San Francisco, he predicted that in an era of Reaganomics, a Rainbow Coalition of ethnic and religious identities could retake the White House.
“We must leave the racial battleground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground,” he said in a memorable speech.
“America, our time has come. We come from disgrace to amazing grace. Our time has come,” he said. “Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free and come November, there will be a change, because our time has come.” Delegates roared to their feet.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a candidate for the democratic nomination for President, works the crowd from onstage following a speech at the Cincinnati Convention center, Friday, April 13, 1984.
(Al Behrman / Associated Press)
But they did not nominate him. Nor did the convention of 1988. Addressing Black ministers in Los Angeles in 1995, the hurt still showed as Jackson railed at the injustice of beating Al Gore in the presidential primaries, only to watch as he was tapped by Bill Clinton to be his running mate in 1992.
“In 1988, I beat him in Iowa, a state 98% white; he said it was ’cause of liberals and farmers. So I beat him in New Hampshire; he said it was ’cause he was off campaigning in the South. So I beat him in the South on Super Tuesday; he said Dukakis had split his support. I beat him then in Illinois, in Michigan; he said he wasn’t really trying. I beat him then in New York; said he ran out of money. But now, here I am this afternoon, talking to y’all in this church in South Central L.A. — and he’s vice president of the United States.”
To many of his Democratic opponents, however, Jackson’s “rainbow coalition” symbolized not common ground, but the party’s devolution into a collection of identity caucuses whose narrow causes doomed them to defeat. In 1992, many of those critics gathered around Clinton as he formulated his “New Democrat” campaign. Clinton soon used Jackson as a foil.
The occasion came when Jackson invited rap singer and activist Sister Souljah to a political event featuring the Arkansas governor. In an interview, Souljah had wondered why after all the animus of white people toward Black people, it was unacceptable for Black people to kill whites. Clinton, instead of delivering the usual liberal-candidate-seeks-Black-votes hominy, lashed out at her words.
The moment bought Clinton a priceless image of willingness to speak truth to the party’s interest groups but came at the price of Jackson’s rage.
“I can maybe work with him, but I know now who he is, what he is. There’s nothin’ he won’t do,” Jackson said to Frady. “He’s immune to shame.”
By then, however, Jackson’s prominence had already begun to wane. Indeed, the role of race leader, itself, had started to disappear. The civil rights revolution in which Jackson had figured so prominently had allowed a new and more diverse generation of Black elected officials, corporate executives and public figures to flourish. Their success eroded his singular platform.
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, laughs after saying goodbye to Rev. Jesse Jackson, reflected left, after Obama addressed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s annual conference breakfast in Rosemont, Ill. on June 4, 2007
(Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)
Jackson continued to travel, agitate, protest, but the spotlight had moved on. He dreamed that Jesse Jr. might one day win the office he had pursued. When, instead, another Black Democrat from Chicago, Barack Obama, headed toward the Democratic nomination in 2008, Jackson’s frustration spilled into public with a vulgar criticism of Obama caught on microphone.
In Obama’s White House, he suffered what for him might have been the severest penalty — being ignored.
Yet to those who had seen him in his prime, his image remained indelible.
“When they write the history of this campaign,” then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said after the 1984 contest, “the longest chapter will be on Jackson. The man didn’t have two cents. He didn’t have one television or radio ad. And look what he did.”
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children, Jesse Jr., Yusef, Jonathan, Jacqueline, Santita and Ashley.
the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention Friday, June 30, 2006, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Southern Californians out on Saturday night for Valentine’s Day took a break from staring longingly into each other’s eyes to gaze at something else: a SpaceX rocket blazing across the early evening Southland sky.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket carried 24 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit, according to the company.
Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet provider, has launched about 11,000 Starlink broadband satellites into space since 2019, using its workhorse Falcon 9.
At 7:03 p.m., SpaceX posted to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the 24 Starlink satellites had successfully been deployed.
SpaceX said on its launch page that residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties might experience one or more sonic booms during the launch, a phenomenon that has long upset residents and raised concerns about the booms’ effect on nearby endangered species.
SpaceX has three more launches scheduled from Vandenberg this month, the next expected to take place Wednesday, according to the company’s site.
This was the fourth SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg this month.
The Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket. After its stage separation process Saturday night, the rocket’s first stage will land on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean, according to the company.
“Love is in the air,” one X user quipped, “and so is Falcon 9.”
Times staff writer Laurence Darmiento contributed to this report.
Faced with numerous complaints about broken streetlights that have plunged neighborhoods into darkness, two Los Angeles City Council members unveiled a plan Friday to spend $65 million on installing solar-powered lights.
With 1 in 10 streetlights out of service because of disrepair or copper wire theft, Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky and Eunisses Hernandez launched an effort to convert at least 12% of the city’s lights to solar power — or about 500 in each council district.
Broken streetlights emerged as an hot-button issue in this year’s election, with council members scrambling to find ways to restore them. Councilmember Nithya Raman, now running against Mayor Karen Bass, cited the broken lights as an example of how city agencies “can’t seem to manage the basics.”
By switching to solar, the streetlights will be less vulnerable to theft, said Yaroslavsky, who represents part of the Westside.
“We can’t keep rebuilding the same vulnerable systems while copper theft continues to knock out lights across Los Angeles,” she said.
Three other council members — Traci Park, Monica Rodriguez and Hugo Soto-Martínez — signed on to the proposal. All five are running for reelection.
Miguel Sangalang, director of the Bureau of Street Lighting, said there are 33,000 open service requests to fix streetlights across L.A., although some may be duplicates. The average time to fix a streetlight is 12 months, he said.
Repair times have increased because of a rise in vandalism, the department’s stagnant budget and a staff of only 185 people to service the city’s 225,000 streetlights, he said.
About 60,000 street lights are eligible to be converted to solar, according to Yaroslavsky.
Council members also are looking to increase the amount the city charges property owners for streetlight maintenance. Yaroslavsky said the assessment has been unchanged since 1996, forcing city leaders to rely on other sources of money to cover the cost.
Last month, Soto-Martínez announced he put $1 million into a streetlight repair team in his district, which stretches from Echo Park to Hollywood and north to Atwater Village. Those workers will focus on repairing broken lights, hardening lights to prevent copper wire theft and clearing the backlog of deferred cases.
On Monday, city crews also began converting 91 streetlights to solar power in Lincoln Heights and Cypress Park. Hernandez tapped $500,000 from her office budget to pay for the work. The shift to solar power should save money, she said, by breaking the cycle of constantly fixing and replacing lights.
“This is going to bring more public safety and more lights to neighborhoods that so desperately need it and that are waiting a long time,” she said.
In recent years, neighborhoods ranging from Hancock Park and Lincoln Heights to Mar Vista and Pico Union have been plagued by copper wire theft that darkens the streets. On the 6th Street Bridge, thieves stole seven miles’ worth of wire.
Yaroslavsky and Park spoke about the problem Friday at a press conference in the driveway of a Mar Vista home. Andrew Marton, the homeowner, pointed to streetlights around the block that have been targeted by thieves.
Many surrounding streets have been dark since shortly after Christmas, Marton said. He has changed his daily routines, trying not to walk his dog late at night and worrying for the safety of his family.
He said he reported the problem to the city and was told it would take 270 days to fix. He then reached out to Park, who contacted the police department, he said.
A couple of neighboring streets had their lights restored, he said, but his street remains dark at night.
Park said she and Yaroslavsky identified $500,000 in discretionary funds to pay for a dedicated repair team to fix streetlights, either by adding solar or by reinforcing the existing copper wire, in their respective Westside districts.
AL KAWD, Yemen — In the cramped examination room of this tiny village clinic, Rania Moussa lay on her side and covered her eyes with a pillow, her slight, childlike-frame belying the fact she is 13 years old. It had been days since she had taken an injection of the powerful antibiotics she needs to manage her condition, a type of anemia.
But the clinic, which used to give them for free, now had none to offer; and aid cuts since the U.S. froze assistance last year meant it was unlikely to get them anytime soon. Without the medication, Rania’s mother said, her daughter couldn’t do anything.
“She can’t walk; she can barely move. I had to carry her here. We could get the shots before, but now none of the clinics have them, so I have to buy them from pharmacies,” said Jamilah Omar, Rania’s mother. “We can barely afford food, let alone medications.”
Somehow, Omar scraped together money for the antibiotics, which the clinic staff administered.
In the year since the evisceration of U.S. Agency for International Development at the hands of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, discussions on its shuttering can devolve into political point-scoring, with advocates and opponents of the Trump administration shouting over each other about the savings made or lack thereof.
Remnants of signage for the U.S. Agency for International Development on the facade of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 29, 2025.
(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)
But it’s here, in places like the dust-swept grouping of cinder-block houses and dilapidated buildings that make up Al Kawd, where the real-world impact of those cuts can be most clearly felt.
“You feel helpless,” said Areeda Fadhli, the 53-year-old medical assistant managing the clinic, as she shifted the pillow away to look at Rania’s face.
“Imagine your son, your daughter, fading in front of you,” she said. “How do you think that feels?”
Fadhli pointed to some boxes of basic medical supplies squirreled away in a corner.
“It’s the last shipment and it came more than nine months ago,” she said. “We’re trying to stretch them as much as possible.”
The contractions in Yemen reflect a wider ravaging of foreign assistance worldwide. In 2025, the U.S. pledged $3.4 billion in global aid, a fraction of the $14.1 billion funded under President Biden. That includes funds from USAID and other U.S. entities.
And that amount is getting only smaller: Late last year, the Trump administration announced in 2026 it would provide $2 billion to U.N. programs in 17 countries, while pointedly excluding Afghanistan and Yemen.
Rabii Nasr, a nurse, cleans a child’s wound at a hospital in Yemen’s Abyan province. Her injury did not require stitches, which was fortunate because the hospital had run out of stitches and surgical thread.
(Nabih Bulos/Los Angeles Times)
Other wealthy nations are following suit, with Germany more than halving its humanitarian budget for 2026 compared with last year. France is planning to reduce development assistance by nearly 40%, and the U.K. is shrinking aid expenditures from 0.5% to 0.3% of its gross national income by 2027.
The Trump administration offered different justifications for cutting foreign assistance. President Trump alleged there were “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse” while DOGE officials boasted about the cost savings. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said USAID did not serve, and in some cases harmed, the “core national interests of the United States.”
Administration officials brought no evidence of corruption and cited examples of waste that proved to be inaccurate, such as Trump’s assertion that $100 million was spent on condoms to the militant group Hamas in Gaza.
In any case, observers say the funds earmarked for foreign development assistance in the Biden era amounted to less than 1% of the federal budget.
Last year, the U.S. slashed funding for Yemen from USAID and other sources from $768 million — amounting to half of the country’s humanitarian response budget in 2024 — to $42.5 million. The result, the U.N. says, is that 453 health facilities have faced partial or imminent closure across the country, including hospitals, primary health centers and mobile clinics.
The Lancet, the esteemed British medical journal, published a study in July that estimated the cuts to USAID could result in 14 million otherwise preventable deaths worldwide by 2030. The estimates were based in part on the lifesaving effects of USAID’s past work on food security, HIV treatment, medical care and other services.
The cuts already deeply hit Yemen, a country that is no stranger to tragedy. A calamitous civil war — which began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital and spurred a furious assault from a Saudi-led coalition — made Yemen in years past the site of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.
Though Yemen has since been surpassed in devastation by other conflict spots, 19.5 million people — slightly less than half of the population — needed humanitarian assistance in 2025, with the majority of them food insecure, the U.N. says.
This year, with political upheaval persisting throughout the country, the expectation is that number will increase to 21 million; it’s a situation made more difficult by the Trump administration’s 2025 designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.
A soldier walks by the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, on Wednesday.
(Osamah Abdulrahman / Associated Press)
The designation, humanitarians say, in effect outlaws aid deliveries to areas under Houthi control, where 70% of the population resides. At the same time, the Houthis have detained 73 U.N. staff members and confiscated vehicles and telecommunications equipment, leaving the U.N. unable to operate.
“You have the perturbations of the conflict and increased humanitarian needs at the same time as a challenging funding environment constrained the delivery environment,” said Julien Harneis, the U.N.’s resident coordinator in Yemen. “So all the conditions are coming together for a very difficult year.”
For aid organizations in Yemen that relied on U.S. largesse, the aim has shifted to preserving whatever remains of their operations.
An aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing remaining assistance flows said the organization he worked for had shut down one of its two offices, fired 250 out of 300 employees and suspended support to dozens of health centers. The organization’s portfolio had shrunk from roughly $32 million to $2 million.
“Yes, we have other donors from Europe and Canada, but it doesn’t equal even 5% of what the Americans would give,” he said.
Some organizations have tried tailoring proposals to fit Washington’s regional priorities, including countering Iran and Al Qaeda, or by excluding terms that under the Trump administration have in effect become verboten.
“Anything focusing on gender, feminism, or LGBT protection: A statement with any of those concepts wouldn’t get sign-off,” he said.
To get a sense of what a difference a year makes, last January, before the aid cuts, Fadhli was about to extend the operations of the Al Kawd clinic from 12-hour shifts to 24.
Three doctors — an OB-GYN specialist and two general practitioners — already made the daily 52-mile journey from Aden, the main city in Yemen’s south, to Al Kawd to treat about 300 patients every day. Medical assistants, chosen from local village women, received $100 a month and training sessions to work in the clinic and help serve the community’s needs.
The clinic had enough basic medications for three months, and there was funding to procure specialized medicine for patients with complicated illnesses.
“People come here because they have no money, but before we could offer them solutions to their problems,” said Dr. Umayma Jamil, the 37-year-old OB-GYN specialist who is the last remaining physician in the clinic. She comes only once a week, paid for by whatever funds the clinic can cobble together.
Now, Jamil said, she will give a diagnosis, prescribe medicine and then see the patient return with the same complaint.
“I ask them, ’Did you get medicine?’ And they say they can’t because there’s no money,” Jamil said.
“It’s natural to be frustrated, but I don’t know what to do. It’s not in my hands.”
The effects of such a drastic scaling down of aid aren’t restricted to smaller facilities; they extend even to major medical institutions such as Al-Razi, the main hospital in Abyan province, serving more than 30,000 people every year.
Children are dying, and more children will die later this year
— Julien Harneis, U.N. resident coordinator in Yemen
Dr. Muhsen Abdullah, the surgeon who heads the emergency room, spoke with a weary tone of a ward without surgical thread or stitches, and anesthesiologists forced to ask patients to purchase their own anesthetic.
“Surgical perishables, antibiotics, even iodine and rubbing alcohol — all this the patient has to buy from the outside before they come in for surgery. It’s ridiculous,” he said, adding that some patients postponed procedures because they couldn’t afford postoperative treatment.
Around him were additional signs of disrepair: an X-ray examination board without a functioning backlight, and a dust-covered ultraviolet sterilization machine that hadn’t worked in months.
With humanitarian groups operating under extremely tight budgets, there’s little they can do when epidemics hit — assuming they can detect them in the first place, because much of that information relied on health centers reporting outbreaks.
“Now we have no reports. Zero,” the aid worker said. For example, he said, cholera cases in Yemen would appear to be fewer than last year, although suspected numbers are far larger.
“How can they tell you anyway? There are no kits to test.”
In Al Kawd, Fadhli and Jamil have already detected a few cases of cholera in the village. It’s a terrifying prospect, they said, because the disease transmitted by infected water killed a few dozen people — most of them children — last year. But with no money for quarantine or medications, there isn’t much they can do, so they expect the outbreak to get worse.
That’s in line with predictions from Harneis, the U.N. resident coordinator, who said aid groups in Yemen were anticipating an increase in epidemics “which we won’t be able to control, and an increase in mortality and morbidity, particularly affecting young children.”
“Children are dying, and more children will die later this year,” he said. And once such outbreaks hit, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay within the confines of Yemen, he added. “Epidemics don’t stop at the border.”
This month, the U.S. completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, a decision, the group said, that made “both the United States and the world less safe.”
Many in the aid community acknowledge USAID wasn’t perfect and understand complaints that it could be used to promote ideas the Trump administration denounces as “woke.”
But they nevertheless lament the rollback of their work. One person likened it to America’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving the field open for the Taliban to destroy all of USAID’s projects.
“OK, you could say USAID was unsustainable, but there’s an argument to be made you shouldn’t close the tap completely,” said the aid worker, adding his employer has been operating in Yemen since 1994.
“With this move, you’ve destroyed the work of decades.”
While waiting in a Des Moines, Iowa, exam room, Mya Buie nervously applies her lip gloss. Three months ago, the 17-year-old had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. In this moment, she is waiting to be seen for a postoperative checkup. She hasn’t liked medical settings since a shooting landed her in a Des Moines hospital’s intensive care unit for several days.”It was kind of scary. It was traumatic,” she said of the night her mother’s ex-boyfriend shot her in the face during a fight just days before her birthday.On the other hand, her surgeon, Dr. Simon Wright, has been looking forward to this appointment all week. He calls Buie one of his most memorable and brave patients.”I’m gonna take a look under your chin,” he says to Buie while carefully touching her face. The teenager was shot in the face with a .40-caliber bullet at close range. The impact of the bullet fractured and shattered her jaw into tiny fragments and permanently damaged four teeth.For years, Wright, a facial reconstruction trauma surgeon, has reconstructed facial bones by bending and molding titanium plates by hand to the injured area. It’s a time-consuming and often erroneous process.”There is always a level of dissatisfaction, and it doesn’t feel good to do something just good enough,” Wright said.The manual work has now been replaced with modern technology. Doctors used artificial intelligence to read a CT scan of Buie’s jaw, then a 3D printer turned that image into a custom jawbone plate.”It’s so much easier than trying to bend a plate to get it perfect,” Wright said. “It’s no question a game-changer.”Doctors say a customized jawbone plate allows for a more accurate fit, better aligns the jaw with a patient’s teeth, and cuts surgery time in half. What makes this process so unique: Buie’s customized plate was made in record time, a first for Des Moines trauma surgeons. “The ability to make a custom plate has been around for 10 years or more, but the ability to do it very quickly has not been,” Wright said.What would normally take several weeks took only a few days. The plate was created in a lab in Jacksonville, Florida, put on a plane to the Des Moines International Airport, then hand-delivered to the hospital on a Friday night before the teenager’s surgery first thing Saturday morning. “There is a lot of things that have to go right to do any kind of surgery at all, and to do something complicated like this, it’s really an inspiring thing to be part of,” Wright said, smiling. He also said this advancement serves as a reminder of the importance of supporting medical research because of its impact on people. “This came from the efforts of all kinds of people in different fields that have cross-pollinated. For example, 3D printing as a medical application, and at one point, it may not have begun with a medical endpoint in mind,” he said.For trauma patients, time is of the essence. For Buie, time does heal. The high school junior is back to school with plans to graduate early. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery. Her new jawbone plate will eventually fuse to bone and be as strong as ever. “I just thank God every day for giving me a second chance at life. I’m very grateful. I can tell my story and spread the word of God with this story, like a testament.” Buie will likely undergo additional surgeries. Next month, she will receive dental implants for her missing teeth.
While waiting in a Des Moines, Iowa, exam room, Mya Buie nervously applies her lip gloss. Three months ago, the 17-year-old had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. In this moment, she is waiting to be seen for a postoperative checkup. She hasn’t liked medical settings since a shooting landed her in a Des Moines hospital’s intensive care unit for several days.
On the other hand, her surgeon, Dr. Simon Wright, has been looking forward to this appointment all week. He calls Buie one of his most memorable and brave patients.
“I’m gonna take a look under your chin,” he says to Buie while carefully touching her face. The teenager was shot in the face with a .40-caliber bullet at close range. The impact of the bullet fractured and shattered her jaw into tiny fragments and permanently damaged four teeth.
For years, Wright, a facial reconstruction trauma surgeon, has reconstructed facial bones by bending and molding titanium plates by hand to the injured area. It’s a time-consuming and often erroneous process.
“There is always a level of dissatisfaction, and it doesn’t feel good to do something just good enough,” Wright said.
The manual work has now been replaced with modern technology. Doctors used artificial intelligence to read a CT scan of Buie’s jaw, then a 3D printer turned that image into a custom jawbone plate.
“It’s so much easier than trying to bend a plate to get it perfect,” Wright said. “It’s no question a game-changer.”
Doctors say a customized jawbone plate allows for a more accurate fit, better aligns the jaw with a patient’s teeth, and cuts surgery time in half. What makes this process so unique: Buie’s customized plate was made in record time, a first for Des Moines trauma surgeons.
“The ability to make a custom plate has been around for 10 years or more, but the ability to do it very quickly has not been,” Wright said.
What would normally take several weeks took only a few days. The plate was created in a lab in Jacksonville, Florida, put on a plane to the Des Moines International Airport, then hand-delivered to the hospital on a Friday night before the teenager’s surgery first thing Saturday morning.
“There is a lot of things that have to go right to do any kind of surgery at all, and to do something complicated like this, it’s really an inspiring thing to be part of,” Wright said, smiling. He also said this advancement serves as a reminder of the importance of supporting medical research because of its impact on people.
“This came from the efforts of all kinds of people in different fields that have cross-pollinated. For example, 3D printing as a medical application, and at one point, it may not have begun with a medical endpoint in mind,” he said.
For trauma patients, time is of the essence. For Buie, time does heal. The high school junior is back to school with plans to graduate early. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery. Her new jawbone plate will eventually fuse to bone and be as strong as ever.
“I just thank God every day for giving me a second chance at life. I’m very grateful. I can tell my story and spread the word of God with this story, like a testament.”
Buie will likely undergo additional surgeries. Next month, she will receive dental implants for her missing teeth.
A Los Angeles County district attorney’s office employee was “wrongfully detained” by federal immigration agents on Friday, according to an internal e-mail obtained by The Times.
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman called the incident “unacceptable” in an office-wide memo sent out on Friday evening.
“A member of our Office was wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I can thankfully report that, shortly after, our employee was released and is safe,” Hochman wrote. “This incident is unacceptable. Our employee is a dedicated public servant who serves the people of Los Angeles County with professionalism and integrity. This troubling situation caused great distress to our colleague, our co-worker’s family, and our entire Office family.”
The reason for the person’s detention was not immediately clear. A spokesman for Hochman declined to comment further and referred questions to ICE. Representatives for ICE did not respond to inquiries from The Times. .
Two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the incident, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly, said the employee was not a prosecutor. The employee was also not engaged in protest activity, the officials said.
In the e-mail, Hochman said he personally reached out to federal authorities on Friday to make them aware of the situation and “urge them to be more respectful of the rights of those who reside in our community and ensure this wrongful conduct does not occur again.”
In the months since ICE and Border Patrol agents began carrying out President Trump’s sweeping immigration raids in U.S. cities, civil liberties groups have repeatedly sued the Department of Justice alleging agents are making stops based on race rather than reasonable suspicion.
After ICE and Border Patrol agents spent months raiding car washes and Home Depot parking lots around L.A. County, a federal judge in October found sufficient evidence that agents were violating the 4th Amendment by relying on the race, language and vocation of targeted individuals to form “reasonable suspicion” for arrest.
The American Civil Liberties Union recently lodged a lawsuit against federal authorities on similar grounds over their behavior during chaotic and tense raids in Minneapolis. The Trump administration has maintained it is conducting tightly targeted operations and only going after the “worst of the worst,” but data show many of those arrested in Los Angeles during the raids had no criminal record.
The charred remains of the historic Pacific Palisades Business Block cast a shadow over a once-bustling shopping district along West Sunset Boulevard.
Empty lots littered with debris and ash line the street where houses and small businesses once stood. A year since the Palisades fire roared through the neighborhood, only a handful of businesses have reopened.
The Starbucks, Bank of America, and other businesses that used to operate in the century-old Business Block are gone. All that remains of the Spanish Colonial Revival building are some arches surrounding what used to be a busy retail space. The burned-out, rusty remnants of a walk-in vault squat in the center of the structure.
Nearby, the Shade Store, the Free-est clothing store, Skin Local spa, a Hastens mattress store, Sweet Laurel Bakery and the Hydration Room are among the many stores still shuttered. Local barbershop Gornik & Drucker doesn’t know if it can reopen.
“We have been going back and forth on what it would take to survive,” co-owner Leslie Gornik said. “If we open, we have to start over from scratch.”
Hundreds gathered around Business Block on the anniversary of the fire on Wednesday to witness a military-style white-glove ceremony to pay respects to the families who lost loved ones. Photos of those killed from the neighborhood were placed at the Palisades Village Green next door.
The Palisades fire burned for 24 days, destroying more than 6,800 structures, damaging countless others and forcing most of the neighborhood’s residents to move elsewhere. About 30 miles northeast, the Eaton fire burned more than 9,400 structures. Combined, the fires killed 31 people.
Remnants of the the Pacific Palisades Business Block, which was completed in 1924 and burned in the Palisades fire.
The few businesses that are back in Palisades serve as a beacon of hope for the community, but owners and managers say business is down and customers haven’t returned.
Ruby Nails & Spa, located near the Business Block, was closed for eight months before reopening in September. Now business is only half of what it was before the fires, owner Ruby Hong-Tran said.
“People come back to support but they live far away now,” she said. “All my clients, their houses burned.”
Ruby Hong-Tran, owner of Ruby Nails & Spa in Pacific Palisades, says her business is half of what it was since reopening.
It took months to clean all the smoke damage from her shop. The front is still being fixed to cover up burn damage.
The firestorms destroyed swaths of other neighborhoods, including Malibu, Topanga, Sierra Madre and Altadena, where businesses and homeowners also are struggling to build back.
Some are figuring out whether it is worth rebuilding. Some have given up.
The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation estimated last year that more than 1,800 small businesses were in the burn zones in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena, impacting more than 11,000 jobs.
Businesses say they often have been on their own. The Federal Emergency Management Agency tasked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to clean up debris at private residences, some public buildings and places of worship — but not commercial properties.
Business owners had to clean up the charred debris and toxic waste on their properties. Many had to navigate complicated insurance claims and apply for emergency loans to stay afloat.
Rosie Maravilla, general manager of Anawalt’s Palisades Hardware, said damage to her store was limited, and insurance covered the cleaning, so she was able to open quickly. The store reopened just one month after the fire.
Rosie Maravilla, general manager of Anawalt Palisades Hardware, in front of of the store in Pacific Palisades.
Still, sales are 35% lower than what they used to be.
“In the early days, it was bad. We weren’t making anything,” Maravilla said. “We’re lucky the company kept us employed.”
The customer base has changed. Instead of homeowners working on personal projects, the store is serving contractors working on rebuilding in the area.
An archival image of the area in Pacific Palisades hangs over the aisles in Anawalt Palisades Hardware, where business is down despite a customer base of contractors who are rebuilding.
Across the street from the Business Block, the Palisades Village mall was spared the flames and looks pristine, but is still closed. Shop windows are covered with tarps. Low metal gates block entry to the high-end outlets. The mall is still replacing its drywall to eliminate airborne contaminants that the fire could have spread.
All of its posh shops still are shut: Erewhon, Lululemon, Bay Theater, Blue Ribbon Sushi, athletic apparel store Alo, Buck Mason men’s and Veronica Beard women’s boutiques.
Mall owner and developer Rick Caruso said he is spending $60 million to reopen in August.
The need to bring back businesses impacted by the fires is urgent, Caruso said, and not just to support returning residents.
“It’s critical to bring jobs back and also for the city to start creating some tax revenue to support city services,” he said. ”Leaders need to do more to speed up the rebuilding process, such as speeding up the approval of building permits and stationing building inspectors closer to burn areas.”
Pedestrians walk past the Erewhon market in Palisades Village that plans to reopen this year.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Wednesday, on the anniversary of the fire, Caruso sent three light beams into the sky over the mall, which met in one stream to honor the impacted communities of Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Malibu.
The nighttime display will continue through Jan. 31.
Business Block’s history dates to 1924, when it served as a home for the community’s first ventures. In the 1980s, plans to tear it down and build a mall sparked a local uprising to save the historic symbol of the neighborhood’s vibrancy. It was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1984.
Tiana Noble, a Starbucks spokesperson, said the landlord terminated the company’s lease when the building burned down. Bank of America said it secured a new lease to rebuild nearby.
Business Block’s fate is still unclear. Some people want to preserve its shell and turn it into a memorial.
This week, it was ringed by a fence emblazoned with the words “Empowering fresh starts together.”
Caruso said the ruins should be torn down.
“It needs to be demolished and cleaned up,” he said. “It’s an eyesore right now and a hazard. I would put grass on it and make it attractive to the community.”
Twisted and scorched remnants of the the Pacific Palisades Business Block still are there a year after the fire.
A short walk from the Business Block and near a burned-down Ralphs grocery store is the Palisades Garden Cafe, one of the few places in the neighborhood to get food and drink. The small, vibrant cafe was closed for two months after the fire, during which the employees went without pay.
Manager Lita Rodriguez said business is improving, but misses the regulars.
“We used to get tons of students and teachers who live and work here,” she said. “Our customers are mostly contractors now.”
Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro arrived in the United States to face criminal charges after being captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.Video above: U.S. strikes Venezuela, captures President Maduro in overnight operationMaduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries. Video below: ‘We are going to run the country,’ Trump says of VenezuelaTrump says US will ‘run the country’The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.Video below: Fact checking President Trump’s Venezuela claimsEarly morning attackTaking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.Restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on airspace around Venezuela and the Caribbean expired early Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X, an announcement that suggested any further immediate major U.S. military action was unlikely. “Airlines are informed, and will update their schedules quickly,” he posted.Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”Video below: President Donald Trump’s full comments on Venezuela strike and Nicolas Maduro captureSome streets in Caracas fill upVenezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.In a demonstration of how polarizing Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture, while others celebrated it. At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”In other parts of the city, the streets were empty hours after the attack.“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared. Many families couldn’t sleep.”In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”Questions of legalityWhether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning. That was according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”___Toropin and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela; Lisa Mascaro, Michelle L. Price, Seung Min Kim and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington; Farnoush Amiri in New York; and Larry Neumeister in South Amboy, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro arrived in the United States to face criminal charges after being captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
Video above: U.S. strikes Venezuela, captures President Maduro in overnight operation
Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval.
Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.
Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.
Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.
Video below: ‘We are going to run the country,’ Trump says of Venezuela
Trump says US will ‘run the country’
The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.
Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.
The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.
Video below: Fact checking President Trump’s Venezuela claims
Early morning attack
Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.
“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”
Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.
Restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on airspace around Venezuela and the Caribbean expired early Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X, an announcement that suggested any further immediate major U.S. military action was unlikely. “Airlines are informed, and will update their schedules quickly,” he posted.
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.
“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”
Video below: President Donald Trump’s full comments on Venezuela strike and Nicolas Maduro capture
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.
Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
In a demonstration of how polarizing Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture, while others celebrated it. At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.
“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”
In other parts of the city, the streets were empty hours after the attack.
“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared. Many families couldn’t sleep.”
In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
Questions of legality
Whether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning. That was according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.
Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
___
Toropin and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela; Lisa Mascaro, Michelle L. Price, Seung Min Kim and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington; Farnoush Amiri in New York; and Larry Neumeister in South Amboy, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro arrived in the United States to face criminal charges after being captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries. Trump says US will ‘run the country’The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.Early morning attackTaking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.Restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on airspace around Venezuela and the Caribbean expired early Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X, an announcement that suggested any further immediate major U.S. military action was unlikely. “Airlines are informed, and will update their schedules quickly,” he posted.Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”Some streets in Caracas fill upVenezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.In a demonstration of how polarizing Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture, while others celebrated it. At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”In other parts of the city, the streets were empty hours after the attack.“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared. Many families couldn’t sleep.”In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”Questions of legalityWhether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning. That was according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”___Toropin and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela; Lisa Mascaro, Michelle L. Price, Seung Min Kim and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington; Farnoush Amiri in New York; and Larry Neumeister in South Amboy, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro arrived in the United States to face criminal charges after being captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval.
Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.
Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.
Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.
Trump says US will ‘run the country’
The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.
Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.
The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.
Early morning attack
Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.
“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”
Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.
Restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on airspace around Venezuela and the Caribbean expired early Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X, an announcement that suggested any further immediate major U.S. military action was unlikely. “Airlines are informed, and will update their schedules quickly,” he posted.
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.
“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.
Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
In a demonstration of how polarizing Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture, while others celebrated it. At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.
“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”
In other parts of the city, the streets were empty hours after the attack.
“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared. Many families couldn’t sleep.”
In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
Questions of legality
Whether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning. That was according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.
Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
___
Toropin and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela; Lisa Mascaro, Michelle L. Price, Seung Min Kim and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington; Farnoush Amiri in New York; and Larry Neumeister in South Amboy, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
Above: Venezuelans in Florida react to U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.In the overnight hours on January 2 into January 3, 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a strike by U.S. forces in the South American country.The capture of the foreign leader comes after months of escalation from President Donald Trump against the nation, including more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of the country.U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Maduro was also indicted on “narco-terrorism” charges in 2020.In October, Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after several strikes on boats in the Caribbean.Floridian lawmakers reacted to the overnight strikes in Venezuela and the capture of Maduro.U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus, released a statement on President Maduro’s capture: “The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González. I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”Bondi shared the below indictment of Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on social media.
Above: Venezuelans in Florida react to U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In the overnight hours on January 2 into January 3, 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a strike by U.S. forces in the South American country.
The capture of the foreign leader comes after months of escalation from President Donald Trump against the nation, including more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of the country.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Maduro was also indicted on “narco-terrorism” charges in 2020.
In October, Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after several strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
Floridian lawmakers reacted to the overnight strikes in Venezuela and the capture of Maduro.
This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Thank you, @POTUS, @SecRubio, @SecWar, and the brave members of our military who led the operation that successfully CAPTURED narco-terrorist Nicolás Maduro.
A new day is here for Venezuela and Latin America. The United States and our hemisphere are safer because of President… https://t.co/VL4bnsbGVZ
This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Capturing the murderous Dictator Maduro is a major step towards a #VenezuelaLibre. Now there must be concerted efforts to ensure the democratically elected Edmundo Gonzalez is seated as the rightful new president.
This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
The United States of America is safer today because of the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and the bravery and heroism of the American Military which again proved itself the best in the world.
Best news of the night: no American casualties, a narco-terrorist Dictator in… https://t.co/RijjbTHl8b
This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Maduro used foreign terrorist organizations to traffic deadly drugs and violence into our country, killing countless Americans.
He was one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus, released a statement on President Maduro’s capture: “The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González. I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”
Bondi shared the below indictment of Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on social media.
There’s no mincing words: The list of climate records broken and the number of “unprecedented” extreme weather events this year goes on and on. Just in the past few months, at least 1,750 people died in monsoon flooding in Asia that a consortium of climate scientists attributed to human-caused global heating. Related video above: Solar and wind power increased faster than electricity demand in first half of 2025, report saysIn the U.S., investments in renewable, non-polluting energy were rolled back, and policy moves like the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and the Environmental Protection Agency’s reconsidering a key part of the federal government’s legal authority to regulate emissions.However, other nations have continued to make policy progress on prioritizing renewable energy and protecting the environment, and so have some scientists and groups on this side of the Atlantic.Here are a few of the highs and lows of humanity’s effect on our planet this year.The bad news firstGoal of keeping warming to 2.7 degrees no longer realisticHumans have failed to keep global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, long considered the goal following the original Paris climate agreement, according to UN Secretary General António Guterres. “Overshooting is now inevitable,” he said.Scientists widely consider the 2.7 degree goal the point at which climate change will begin hitting its most severe, irreversible damage.“We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible,” Guterres said ahead of the 2025 UN climate summit COP30, urging humanity to change course immediately. COP30 fails to make substantive progressUnfortunately, the outcomes from that UN summit did not live up to the secretary general’s hopes. This summit is an annual meeting where member countries measure their progress on addressing climate change and agree to legally binding goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.However, this final decision coming out of this year’s summit only included new voluntary initiatives to accelerate national climate action. According to commentary from the World Resources Institute, more than 80 countries advocated for a “global roadmap” to guide the transition away from fossil fuels, but negotiators didn’t include it in the final decision after they faced opposition from countries whose economies are built largely on oil and gas extraction and exports.World passes first climate ‘tipping point’This year, the world passed its first climate “tipping point,” meaning a threshold of irreversible change. Warming oceans have caused mass death in coral reefs, which are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. These reefs support a quarter of marine life and a billion people. Other tipping points, such as the devastation of the Amazon rainforest and melting ice sheets, are also approaching, scientists warn. Record-setting days of heat in major citiesThe world’s major cities now experience a quarter more very hot days every year on average than they did three decades ago, according to a September analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development.“This isn’t a problem we can simply air-condition our way out of,” said Anna Walnycki, a principal researcher, in a press release. “Fixing it requires comprehensive changes to how neighbourhoods and individual buildings are designed, as well as bringing nature back into our cities in the form of trees and other plants.“Climate change is the new reality. Governments can’t keep their heads buried in the sand anymore.”Where positive action made a differenceGlobal renewable energy generation surpasses coal for first time This year, expanding solar and wind power infrastructure led to record shifts away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Wind and solar farms produced more electricity than coal plants for the first time, a massive shift for power generation worldwide.According to a report from climate think tank Ember, in the first six months of the year, renewable energy overtook the global demand for electricity. The world generated almost a third more solar power in the first half of the year than it did in the same period last year, meeting a whopping 83% of the global increase in demand for electricity.Solar installations were up 64% around the globe after the first half of the year, driven largely by China, whose solar installations more than doubled compared to last year. Solar installations rose in the U.S. by only 4%, however.Pennsylvania children see drop in asthma after a coal plant closedAfter a coking plant closed near Pittsburgh, the population living in the area saw an immediate 20.5% drop in weekly respiratory trips to the emergency room, according to a study published almost 10 years later. Even more encouraging was that over the immediate term, pediatric emergency department visits decreased by 41.2%, a trend that increased as the months went on. The region also saw lower hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide.Congestion toll drops emissions in NYC by 22%In January, New York City became the first in the country to put in place a toll on drivers in certain parts of the city during rush hours. The measure was intended to reduce traffic and improve health. During the first six months of the policy, NYC emissions dropped 22%. The city is using the revenue to fund mass transit, including the subway system.
There’s no mincing words: The list of climate records broken and the number of “unprecedented” extreme weather events this year goes on and on. Just in the past few months, at least 1,750 people died in monsoon flooding in Asia that a consortium of climate scientists attributed to human-caused global heating.
Related video above: Solar and wind power increased faster than electricity demand in first half of 2025, report says
In the U.S., investments in renewable, non-polluting energy were rolled back, and policy moves like the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and the Environmental Protection Agency’s reconsidering a key part of the federal government’s legal authority to regulate emissions.
However, other nations have continued to make policy progress on prioritizing renewable energy and protecting the environment, and so have some scientists and groups on this side of the Atlantic.
Here are a few of the highs and lows of humanity’s effect on our planet this year.
The bad news first
Goal of keeping warming to 2.7 degrees no longer realistic
Humans have failed to keep global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, long considered the goal following the original Paris climate agreement, according to UN Secretary General António Guterres. “Overshooting is now inevitable,” he said.
Scientists widely consider the 2.7 degree goal the point at which climate change will begin hitting its most severe, irreversible damage.
“We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible,” Guterres said ahead of the 2025 UN climate summit COP30, urging humanity to change course immediately.
COP30 fails to make substantive progress
Unfortunately, the outcomes from that UN summit did not live up to the secretary general’s hopes. This summit is an annual meeting where member countries measure their progress on addressing climate change and agree to legally binding goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, this final decision coming out of this year’s summit only included new voluntary initiatives to accelerate national climate action. According to commentary from the World Resources Institute, more than 80 countries advocated for a “global roadmap” to guide the transition away from fossil fuels, but negotiators didn’t include it in the final decision after they faced opposition from countries whose economies are built largely on oil and gas extraction and exports.
World passes first climate ‘tipping point’
This year, the world passed its first climate “tipping point,” meaning a threshold of irreversible change. Warming oceans have caused mass death in coral reefs, which are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. These reefs support a quarter of marine life and a billion people.
Other tipping points, such as the devastation of the Amazon rainforest and melting ice sheets, are also approaching, scientists warn.
Record-setting days of heat in major cities
The world’s major cities now experience a quarter more very hot days every year on average than they did three decades ago, according to a September analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development.
“This isn’t a problem we can simply air-condition our way out of,” said Anna Walnycki, a principal researcher, in a press release. “Fixing it requires comprehensive changes to how neighbourhoods and individual buildings are designed, as well as bringing nature back into our cities in the form of trees and other plants.
“Climate change is the new reality. Governments can’t keep their heads buried in the sand anymore.”
Where positive action made a difference
Global renewable energy generation surpasses coal for first time
This year, expanding solar and wind power infrastructure led to record shifts away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Wind and solar farms produced more electricity than coal plants for the first time, a massive shift for power generation worldwide.
According to a report from climate think tank Ember, in the first six months of the year, renewable energy overtook the global demand for electricity. The world generated almost a third more solar power in the first half of the year than it did in the same period last year, meeting a whopping 83% of the global increase in demand for electricity.
Solar installations were up 64% around the globe after the first half of the year, driven largely by China, whose solar installations more than doubled compared to last year. Solar installations rose in the U.S. by only 4%, however.
Pennsylvania children see drop in asthma after a coal plant closed
After a coking plant closed near Pittsburgh, the population living in the area saw an immediate 20.5% drop in weekly respiratory trips to the emergency room, according to a study published almost 10 years later. Even more encouraging was that over the immediate term, pediatric emergency department visits decreased by 41.2%, a trend that increased as the months went on. The region also saw lower hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide.
Congestion toll drops emissions in NYC by 22%
In January, New York City became the first in the country to put in place a toll on drivers in certain parts of the city during rush hours. The measure was intended to reduce traffic and improve health. During the first six months of the policy, NYC emissions dropped 22%. The city is using the revenue to fund mass transit, including the subway system.
Each month, Edward Flores crunches the numbers. And each month he grows more and more certain of the stark impact of federal immigration raids on California’s economy.
Flores found that the number of people reporting private sector employment in California in late May and early June fell by 3.1% — a drop so significant it was exceeded in recent memory only by the employment downturn during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the UC Merced labor center based his analysis on U.S. census data from those months and published his findings over the summer.
Flores has repeated the analysis for each month since June, with the exception of October, when the federal government shut down and for the first time in some 50 years did not collect these data.
The employment decline grew further, with a 4.9% decrease in the first week of July — 742,492 fewer workers.
Numbers somewhat bounced back in August, after a U.S. district judge temporarily banned roving patrols of immigration agents from stopping people based on the color of their skin, language spoken or vocation. But from May to September, private sector employment fell by 2.9%, Flores said in his latest report.
“We are seeing a pretty persistent trend,” Flores said. “It really underscores the urgency with which our elected officials and policymakers should be devising ways of mitigating the economic harm that is occurring as a result of immigration enforcement actions.”
The analysis shows an outsize effect on noncitizen women, whose reported employment plummeted about 8.6%, or 1 in 12 out of work after raids began to roil Los Angeles in early June.
But citizens also showed a marked decline. From May to July, California citizens accounted for the largest share of the decline in private sector workers, about 415,000 people. But the analysis showed that the decline affected noncitizens more, with their numbers dropping by 12.3%, as compared with the 3.3% decline among citizens from May to July.
California wasn’t the only part of the U.S. to experience an employment downturn linked to immigration enforcement, Flores said.
In August, hundreds of National Guard troops flooded the streets of Washington, some in armored vehicles, as the federal government also deputized local police in its patrols, citing a need to crack down on out-of-control crime, even though data showed crime in the city was down.
In that month, the number of those reporting work in the private sector in Washington, D.C., decreased 3.3%, according to the UC Merced analysis. When federal control of local police in Washington ended in September, the district saw a 0.5% increase in private sector work.
These large declines were not seen in the rest of the country, where the number of private sector workers remained stagnant most months or saw slight increases.
Economists say what’s clear is that the U.S. population of immigrant workers is shrinking, after more than 50 years of growth, which will have consequences for the economy.
In January 2025, there were 53.3 million immigrants living in the U.S., making up close to 16% of the country’s population, according to the Pew Research Center. By June, the nation’s immigrant population had decreased by more than a million, to 51.9 million — and that decline has probably continued.
Giovanni Peri, a professor of international economics at UC Davis, said he expected to see major effects on sectors with an immigrant-heavy workforce, including construction, restaurants and personal services.
Large numbers of deportations are one factor, he said, but besides that, some will decide against immigrating to the U.S., while others already in the country will choose to leave.
Still others will stay home, scared to go to work — particularly in cities hit hard by raids.
“Immigrants are a very important part” of the workforce, he said. “We expect to see less growth of employment. That will be a sign both that immigrants are not coming and maybe some are leaving.”
Flores, the UC Merced researcher, advocates for policies such as cash relief or expanding access to unemployment insurance, which undocumented immigrants are denied despite contributing payroll taxes. Such policies, giving low-income families spending power, not only would provide much-needed relief but also would help inject money into the local economy.
“It’s the holiday season right now. There are so many families that don’t know how to put food on the table or pay their next bill,” Flores said. “As a public, we should be concerned with what is happening to people’s stability during these times.”
Mortgage rates are the interest you pay to borrow money for *** home. Higher rates mean higher monthly payments because of accrued interest, which costs you more over the life of *** loan. The Federal Reserve set short-term interest rates, which influence how much you owe for things like credit cards and car loans. But according to experts, mortgage rates do not follow the Fed. Instead they follow the 10-year Treasury, which has to do with US government bonds. Right now, the bond market is nervous about inflation. So even with the Fed’s recent Rate cut in December, mortgage rates didn’t budge. Our get the Facts data team dug into the numbers to show us how mortgages have changed over the last decade. Rates remain high, hovering an average of 6% this year, the lowest rates have been in the last decade and came during the COVID pandemic when they bottomed out at 2.65% in January of 2021. But mortgage rates have hovered around 3 to 4% until the start of 2022 when they surpassed 5% and haven’t dropped. Below 6% since September 2022, and these high rates can be painful when buying *** home. Our get the facts data team found the most expensive mortgages were in places like Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Marin Counties, all in California. But Nantucket County in Massachusetts tops the list, with mortgages averaging nearly $10,000 in 2025. The least expensive are mostly in the South or Midwest, like Todd County, South Dakota or Stewart County, Georgia. Where an average mortgage is over $300. If you’re trying to buy *** home, experts tell our data team there are 3 barriers right now, those high mortgage rates, high home prices, and buyers just not wanting to buy *** house right now due to other levels of uncertainty. If you’re curious with how your monthly mortgage rate has changed, our get the Facts data team created *** tool on our website. You just plug in your county, and it calculates how much more or less you’re paying compared to 10 years ago. Reporting in Washington, I’m Amy Lou.
Despite Fed rate cuts, mortgage rates could still rise. Here’s why
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its final meeting of 2025, but the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage remained high at 6.22%.
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its final meeting of 2025, but an expert says it may not translate into lower mortgage rates. Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said mortgage rates take their metric cue from the 10-year Treasury.”The two rates are disconnected. The only time the two rates move together is if we’re moving towards a recession,” Wachter said. Mortgage rates are the interest you pay to borrow money to buy a home. Higher mortgage rates raise monthly payments because more interest accrues on the principal mortgage each month.The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.22% as of Dec. 11, 2025. That is below the year-to-date average of 6.62%, but Wachter said rates remain high.”Just a matter of four years ago, mortgage rates were 3 or 4%, so this has a big impact on the overall economy, and we cannot, unfortunately, rely on the Federal Reserve’s action to solve this affordability problem,” Wachter said. National Association of Realtors data, analyzed by the Get the Facts Data Team, shows that monthly principal and interest mortgage payments in the United States have nearly doubled in the last 10 years.See how much your monthly mortgage has changed with our calculator.On average, the monthly cost of owning a home in counties across the United States was $1,424 in 2025, compared with $712 in 2015. That number doesn’t include costs like property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, homeowners association fees and other fees. Nantucket County in Massachusetts saw the monthly cost of owning a home more than double, reaching $9,797 in 2025 compared to $4,691 in 2015. The island, located about 30 miles south of Cape Cod, has a median home listing price of $5.2 million, according to Realtor.com.In California, mortgage rates rose by an average of 89% over the last 10 years. The highest mortgage rates in the state are found in Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.What is driving up mortgage costs?According to Wachter, homebuyers face three barriers: high mortgage rates, high housing prices and a buyer strike.High mortgage rates stem in part from large U.S. budget deficits caused by government borrowing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, housing prices have risen and many buyers have pulled back. “Buyers are uncertain about their future job prospects, overall economy prospects — even stock market prospects. That uncertainty is keeping buyers on the sidelines, which is why housing prices, even though they’re near all-time highs, are not increasing anymore,” said Wachter.Aside from increasing mortgage costs, the housing market is also seeing a surge in delistings.”The homeowners who are selling are disappointed because their prices are falling, so they’re taking their homes off the inventory. We see that happening more than ever recently,” Wachter said.A recent report from Realtor.com shows that about 6% of listings have been removed from the market by sellers each month since June. That is the highest national delisting rate reported by Realtor.com since it began tracking this metric in 2022. PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4K
NEW YORK —
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its final meeting of 2025, but an expert says it may not translate into lower mortgage rates.
Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said mortgage rates take their metric cue from the 10-year Treasury.
“The two rates are disconnected. The only time the two rates move together is if we’re moving towards a recession,” Wachter said.
Mortgage rates are the interest you pay to borrow money to buy a home. Higher mortgage rates raise monthly payments because more interest accrues on the principal mortgage each month.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.22% as of Dec. 11, 2025. That is below the year-to-date average of 6.62%, but Wachter said rates remain high.
“Just a matter of four years ago, mortgage rates were 3 or 4%, so this has a big impact on the overall economy, and we cannot, unfortunately, rely on the Federal Reserve’s action to solve this affordability problem,” Wachter said.
National Association of Realtors data, analyzed by the Get the Facts Data Team, shows that monthly principal and interest mortgage payments in the United States have nearly doubled in the last 10 years.
See how much your monthly mortgage has changed with our calculator.
On average, the monthly cost of owning a home in counties across the United States was $1,424 in 2025, compared with $712 in 2015. That number doesn’t include costs like property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, homeowners association fees and other fees.
Nantucket County in Massachusetts saw the monthly cost of owning a home more than double, reaching $9,797 in 2025 compared to $4,691 in 2015. The island, located about 30 miles south of Cape Cod, has a median home listing price of $5.2 million, according to Realtor.com.
In California, mortgage rates rose by an average of 89% over the last 10 years. The highest mortgage rates in the state are found in Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
What is driving up mortgage costs?
According to Wachter, homebuyers face three barriers: high mortgage rates, high housing prices and a buyer strike.
High mortgage rates stem in part from large U.S. budget deficits caused by government borrowing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, housing prices have risen and many buyers have pulled back.
“Buyers are uncertain about their future job prospects, overall economy prospects — even stock market prospects. That uncertainty is keeping buyers on the sidelines, which is why housing prices, even though they’re near all-time highs, are not increasing anymore,” said Wachter.
Aside from increasing mortgage costs, the housing market is also seeing a surge in delistings.
“The homeowners who are selling are disappointed because their prices are falling, so they’re taking their homes off the inventory. We see that happening more than ever recently,” Wachter said.
A recent report from Realtor.com shows that about 6% of listings have been removed from the market by sellers each month since June. That is the highest national delisting rate reported by Realtor.com since it began tracking this metric in 2022.
Trader Joe’s has purchased a former drugstore in Santa Monica, paving the way for a fourth location in the seaside city for the popular grocer.
The retailer paid $22 million this month for a shuttered Rite Aid at 1331 Wilshire Blvd., according to real estate data provider CoStar.
The Monrovia-based grocery chain, known for its inventive original products and frozen meals, has been on an expansion spree across the country and opened a branch in Costa Mesa earlier this month.
In October, a store opened in La Verne.
“We see ourselves as your neighborhood grocery store,” the company said on its website, announcing its latest store openings. “Step inside and you’ll find unconventional and interesting products in the Trader Joe’s label like Mandarin Orange Chicken and Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate.”
There are more than 600 Trader Joe’s nationwide and about 200 in California.
Santa Monica locations include 2300 Wilshire Blvd., where Trader Joe’s occupies 2,130 square feet on the ground floor of an apartment building, according to CoStar.
The former Rite Aid location a few blocks away is much larger at 17,800 square feet and comes with 125 surface parking stalls.
It’s unclear whether Trader Joe’s will continue to operate both locations, but there is precedent in Los Angeles, where there are two TJ’s across the street from one another in Sherman Oaks.
The initial plan was to close the Sherman Oaks location when the new branch was ready — both are off the 101 Freeway on Riverside Drive.
But in the end, the company decided it might be “fun” to keep both open, the new store’s manager said last June. Both stores are expected to remain open, the company confirmed.
Trader Joe’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when the new Santa Monica store will open.
The company’s expansion comes as grocery stores across Southern California and the country compete to win over budget-conscious consumers.
Inflation has driven up supermarket prices in recent years, causing average Americans to cut back on discretionary spending and seek out bargains.
Trader Joe’s is privately held and owned by families who also own part of the Aldi supermarket chain, according to its website.
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of federal immigration judges in California have been fired, retired or quit since the start of the Trump administration.
The reduction follows a trend in immigration courts nationwide and constitutes, critics say, an attack on the rule of law that will lead to yet more delays in an overburdened court system.
The reduction in immigration judges has come as the administration scaled up efforts to deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Trump administration officials have described the immigration court process, in which proceedings can take years amid a backlog of millions of cases, as an impediment to their goals.
Nationwide, there were 735 immigration judges last fiscal year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the arm of the Justice Department that houses immigration courts. At least 97 have been fired since President Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges.
California has lost at least 35 immigration judges since January, according to Mobile Pathways, a Berkeley-based organization that analyzes immigration court data. That’s down from 132. The steepest drop occurred at the San Francisco Immigration Court, which has lost more than half its bench.
“A noncitizen might win their case, might lose their case, but the key question is, did they receive a hearing?” said Emmett Soper, who worked at the Justice Department before becoming an immigration judge in Virginia in 2017. “Up until this administration, I had always been confident that I was working in a system that, despite its flaws, was fundamentally fair.”
Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy
— Amber George, former San Francisco Immigration Court judge
The administration intends to fill some judge positions, and in new immigration judge job listings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere seeks candidates who want to be a “deportation judge” and “restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system.”
The immigration judges union called the job listings “insulting.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that he was elected to “remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that.”
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he added.
The National Assn. of Immigration Judges said it expects a wave of additional retirements at the end of this month.
“My biggest concern is for the people whose lives are left in limbo. What can they count on when the ground is literally shifting every moment that they’re here?” said Amber George, who was fired last month from the San Francisco Immigration Court. “Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy.”
Because immigration courts operate under the Justice Department, their priorities typically shift from one presidential administration to the next, but the extreme changes taking place have renewed longtime calls for immigration courts to become independent of the executive branch.
The Trump administration recently added 36 judges; 25 of them are military lawyers serving in temporary positions.
This summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice. That took place after the department changed the requirements for temporary immigration judges, removing the need for immigration law experience.
The Department of Justice did not respond to specific questions, but said judges must be impartial and that the agency is obligated to take action against those who demonstrate systemic bias.
Former judges say that, because terminations have happened with no advance notice, remaining court staff have often scrambled to get up to speed on reassigned cases.
Ousted judges described a pattern: In the afternoon, sometimes while presiding over a hearing, they receive a short email stating that they are being terminated pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. Their names are swiftly removed from the Justice Department website.
Jeremiah Johnson is one of five judges terminated recently from the San Francisco Immigration Court.
Johnson said he worries the Trump administration is circumventing immigration courts by making conditions so unbearable that immigrants decide to drop their cases.
The number of detained immigrants has climbed to record levels since January, with more than 65,000 in custody. Immigrants and lawyers say the conditions are inhumane, alleging medical neglect, punitive solitary confinement and obstructed access to legal counsel. Requests by immigrants for voluntary departure, which avoids formal deportation, have surged in recent months.
Many of those arrests have happened at courthouses, causing immigrants to avoid their legal claims out of fear of being detained and forcing judges to order them removed in absentia.
“Those are ways to get people to leave the United States without seeing a judge, without due process that Congress has provided,” Johnson said. “It’s a dismantling of the court system.”
A sign posted outside the San Francisco Immigration Court in October protests enforcement actions by immigration agents. The court has lost more than half of its immigration judges.
(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
The judges in San Francisco’s Immigration Court have historically had higher asylum approval rates than the national average. Johnson said grant rates depend on a variety of circumstances, including whether a person is detained or has legal representation, their country of origin and whether they are adults or children.
In November, the military judges serving in immigration courts heard 286 cases and issued rulings in 110, according to Mobile Pathways. The military judges issued deportation orders in 78% of the cases — more often than other immigration judges that month, who ordered deportations in 63% of cases.
“They’re probably following directions — and the military is very good at following directions — and it’s clear what their directions are that are given by this administration,” said Mobile Pathways co-founder Bartlomiej Skorupa. He cautioned that 110 cases are a small sample size and that trends will become clearer in the coming months.
Former immigration judges and their advocates say that appointing people with no immigration experience and little training makes for a steep learning curve and the possibility of due process violations.
“There are multiple concerns here: that they’re temporary, which could expose them to greater pressure to decide cases in a certain way; and also they lack experience in immigration law, which is an extremely complex area of practice,” said Ingrid Eagly, an immigration law professor at UCLA.
Immigration courts have a backlog of more than 3 million cases. Anam Petit, who served as an immigration judge in Virginia until September, said the administration’s emphasis on speedy case completions has to be balanced against the constitutional right to a fair hearing.
“There are not enough judges to hear those cases, and this administration [is] taking it upon themselves to fire a lot of experienced and trained judges who can hear those cases and can mitigate that backlog,” she said.
Complementary bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House this month by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) would prevent the appointment of military lawyers as temporary immigration judges and impose a two-year limit of service.
“The Trump administration’s willingness to fire experienced immigration judges and hire inexperienced or temporary ‘deportation judges,’ especially in places like California, has fundamentally impacted the landscape of our justice system,” Schiff said in a statement announcing the bill.
The bills have little chance in the Republican-controlled Congress but illustrate how significantly Democrats — especially in California — oppose the administration’s changes to immigration courts.
Former Immigration Judge Tania Nemer, a dual citizen of Lebanon and the U.S., sued the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi this month, alleging that she was illegally terminated in February because of her gender, ethnic background and political affiliation. In 2023, Nemer ran for judicial office in Ohio as a Democrat.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, seen here at the White House in October, has dismissed complaints by a former immigration judge who alleged she was fired without cause.
“Most recently, yesterday, I was sued by an immigration judge who we fired,” she said Dec. 2. “One of the reasons she said she was a woman. Last I checked, I was a woman as well.”
Other former judges have challenged their terminations through the federal Merit Systems Protection Board.
Johnson, of San Francisco, is one of those. He filed his appeal this month, claiming that he was not given cause for termination.
“My goal is to be reinstated,” he said. “My colleagues on the bench, our court was vibrant. It was a good place to work, despite all the pressures.”
WASHINGTON — When Charlie Kirk was killed by an assassin this fall, Republican leaders credited the organization he founded for enabling President Trump’s return to power.
Now that organization is mobilizing behind Vice President JD Vance.
Uninterested in a competitive Republican primary in 2028, Turning Point USA plans to deploy representatives across Iowa’s 99 counties in the coming months to build the campaign infrastructure it believes could deliver Vance, a Midwesterner from nearby Ohio, a decisive victory, potentially short-circuiting a fractious GOP race, insiders said.
It is the latest move in a quiet effort by some in Trump’s orbit to clear the field of viable competitors. Earlier this month, Marco Rubio, the secretary of State previously floated by Trump as a possible contender, appeared to take himself out of the running.
“If Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him,” Rubio told Vanity Fair.
After Kirk’s widow, Erika, endorsed Vance on stage at Turning Point USA’s annual conference in Arizona last week, a straw poll of attendees found that 84% would support Vance in the coming primaries. Yet, wider public polling offers a different picture.
A CNN poll conducted in early December found that Vance held a plurality of Republican support for 2028, at 22%, with all other potential candidates, such as Rubio and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, registering in single digits.
The remaining 64% told pollsters they had “no one specific in mind,” reflecting an open field with plenty of room for other figures to gain ground.
While a recent Gallup poll found that 91% of Republicans approve of Vance’s job performance as vice president — an encouraging number entering a partisan primary — only 39% of Americans across party lines view him positively in the role, setting Vance up for potential challenges should he win the nomination.
Potential presidential candidates on both sides of the political aisle are expected to assess their chances over the next year, before primary season officially kicks off, after the midterm elections in November.
Closing out the Turning Point USA conference, Vance called for party unity amid escalating conflicts among right-wing influencers over the acceptability of racism and antisemitism within Republican politics.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” Vance said. “Every American is invited. We don’t care if you’re white or Black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between.”
Charlie Kirk, he added, “trusted all of you to make your own judgment. And we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
Vance’s remarks drew criticism from some on the right for appearing to tolerate bigotry within the party. The vice president himself has been subjected to racist rhetoric, with Nick Fuentes — a far-right podcaster who has praised Adolf Hitler — repeatedly directing attacks at Vance’s wife and children over their Indian ancestry.
“Let me be clear — anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s—,” Vance said in an interview last week, referring to President Biden’s former press secretary. “That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.”
In the same interview, Vance praised Tucker Carlson, another far-right podcaster who has defended Fuentes on free speech grounds, as a “friend of mine,” noting that he supported Vance as Trump’s vice presidential pick in 2024.
Trump has floated Vance as his potential successor multiple times without ever explicitly endorsing his nomination, calling him “very capable” and the “most likely” choice for the party.
“He’s the vice president,” Trump said in August. “Certainly he’s doing a great job, and he would be probably favored at this point.”
Several of Trump’s most ardent supporters have pushed the president to seek a third term in 2028, despite a provision of the Constitution, in the 22nd Amendment, barring him from doing so.
Trump himself has said the Constitution appears clear on the matter. But Steve Bannon, an architect of Trump’s historic 2016 campaign and one of his first White House strategists, continues to advocate a path forward for another run, reportedly disparaging Vance as “not tough enough” to lead the party to victory.
“He knows he can’t run again,” Susie Wiles, the president’s White House chief of staff, told Vanity Fair in a recent profile of her. “It’s pretty unequivocal.”
Trump, who will be 82 when he is slated to leave office, has told Wiles he understands a third term isn’t possible “a couple times,” she added.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent constitutional law professor and a lawyer to Trump during his Senate impeachment trial, recently presented Trump with a road map to a third term in an Oval Office meeting, which he will publish in a new book slated for release next year.
Even he came away from their meeting believing Trump would pass on another bid.
“That is my conclusion based on what he has said in public,” Dershowitz told The Times.
“He has said in the past,” he added, “that it’s too cute.”
A La Jolla woman who previously pleaded guilty to trying to pay an undercover detective $2 million to kill her husband was found dead last week, authorities said.
Tatyana Natasha Remley, 44, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on Dec. 18, according to the San Diego medical examiner’s office. She died at Piazza della Famigia, a public square in the heart of Little Italy, on 523 W. Date St. in San Diego.
Remley’s body was found outside a bar, according to witnesses. Soon after the incident last week, police responded to the scene and covered her body with a yellow tarp.
David Ohara, an eyewitness to the incident, later described what he saw on X.
“I just witnessed a suicide,” Ohara wrote. “The young lady shot one time in the air and then turned the gun on herself.”
Court records show that Remley had two run-ins with the law, one dating back to 2023 and another in September of this year.
On July 11, 2023, Remley filed for divorce from her estranged husband, Mark Remley, who was 57 years old at the time. The couple, who married in 2011, produced an equine-human acrobatics show called Valitar.
The show, set to premiere at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, was canceled “due to poor ticket sales and artistic differences with some of the performers,” according to an article from the Coast News Group in 2012.
Some employees told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2012 that the Remleys rushed the production and failed to pay performers for about a month.
But court records revealed that the couple was well off, owning six homes at one point. According to the Union-Tribune, Mark Remley bought his then-wife a $218,000 engagement ring.
However, signs of trouble emerged even before the divorce was filed. On July 2, 2023, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call of a fire at the couple’s $5-million home in the 4600 block of Rancho Reposo.
Remley, who was home at the time authorities arrived, had three guns and ammunition in her possession, according to deputies. She was arrested that day on suspicion of firearm-related offenses.
The cause of the fire was unknown at the time, but in September of this year, Remley was charged with felony arson. She was accused of setting fire to a structure and forest land. She pleaded not guilty to the charge, and was set to appear in court on March 3, 2026.
The following day, deputies received a tip that she was looking to hire a hitman to kill her husband, according to a previous Times report.
Remley met up with an undercover sheriff’s detective to hash out the plan on Aug. 2.
“She provided detailed information on how she wanted her husband killed and his body disposed,” the department said in a news release in 2023. “Remley brought three additional firearms and U.S. currency as a down payment for the murder.”
Remley allegedly offered $2 million in exchange for the slaying, authorities said.
In December 2023, she pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder and was sentenced to three years and eight months in state prison. She only served one year of her sentence, according to ABC 10 News San Diego.
In a final post to her Instagram account in October, Remley spoke about overcoming obstacles.
“I want to talk about how beautiful life is,” Remley said in the video. “Love yourself no matter what someone does to you. No matter how hurt you get.”
Remley celebrated her 44th birthday 10 days before her death.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional or call 988. The nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Or text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
