Tag: thousand

Hostages freed, prisoners released, as Trump hails ‘golden age’ in Mideast

REIM, Israel — Israelis and Palestinians cried, cheered and gave thanks Monday as Hamas militants released their last 20 living hostages in exchange for more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

It was the first phase of a ceasefire deal put in place last month even as President Trump — the driving force behind the agreement — gave what amounted to a victory speech in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, before departing for a peace summit in Egypt.

Greeted with a standing ovation before he said a word, Trump heralded the deal as ushering in “a golden age” for Israel and the Middle East.

“After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today, the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace,” he said.

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah celebrate the release of prisoners by Israel on Oct. 13, 2025.

(Issam H.S. Alasmar / Anadolu / Getty Images)

His words belied the many complications facing an agreement that remains far from a comprehensive road map that could definitively end a war that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and pulverized much of the Gaza Strip, even as it scarred Israeli society with the deaths of 1,200 people and brought unprecedented international condemnation of the country’s leadership.

The night before the scheduled morning handover, tens of thousands Israelis streamed into Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, as well as to the roadside near southern Israel’s Reim military base, where the hostages were to be brought after their release.

A party atmosphere prevailed on the road to Reim, as Sikorsky Super Stallion helicopters landed in a dusty field to the cheers of a nearby crowd, which raised Israeli and American flags and swayed to a song whose lyrics promised, “I’m coming home, tell the world I’m coming home.”

Passing cars honked in salute, with one passenger rolling down her window and shouting, “The kidnapped are returning!”

“Since Thursday my smile has been stuck, my jaw hurts from it, after two years of not doing it at all,” said Sarit Kenny, 65, a resident of a kibbutz nearby who said she had attended a rally every week since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, to call for the hostages’ return.

She pointed to the American flag in her hand, saying she wanted it to be an expression of her appreciation of Trump.

Matan Zangauker is reunited with his mother at the initial reception point after his release by the militant group Hamas.

(Israel Defense Forces / Associated Press)

“He’s the one who actually did this. He did what our prime minister didn’t do,” she said.

Jonathan Kaneh, 46, who owned a polymer factory in the kibbutz of Orim, saw in the release a more somber moment. On Oct. 7, Hamas militants on a truck shot at him as he was riding his bicycle; the bullet grazed his arm but he was otherwise unhurt. At the same time, the war precipitated by the attack had forced him to shutter his business.

He had arrived early at the site to mark the start of the attack two years ago, which began at 6:29 a.m.

“It was important to me to come here, to close this circle. A lot of people, their lives stopped in this place,” he said, his voice turning deep with emotion.

For many others, the day represented a moment combining religion and the sense of history, with the hostages’ release falling on the religious holiday of Simchat Torah, just as their kidnapping had been on Simchat Torah two years earlier.

“It’s my luck to be here now, and most of the people are feeling same, that we had to be here,” said 70-year-old Uzi Bar-On, as he sat on a lawn chair and made coffee on a portable stove, with Jimmy, his dog, by his side.

At a gathering at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, people react in anticipation of the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

(Oded Balilty / Associated Press)

Bar-On said that the last two years had seen him consumed with thoughts of revenge against Hamas and the people of Gaza, but that the hostage release could help Israelis to move on.

“First I want to see the hostages. When I see them with my own eyes, not through the press, then maybe I can start to think differently,” he said.

When the convoy of vans and military vehicles bearing the first group passed by, the crowd erupted in a flurry of cheers.

It seemed timed to coincide with the moment Air Force One was about to land at Ben Gurion International Airport, before Trump would be whisked away to Jerusalem to meet hostage families before his Knesset address.

Aside from touting the achievements of his administration (and impugning former Presidents Obama and Biden), Trump gave a full-throated endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a deeply unpopular figure with many Israelis, who blame their leader for embroiling the country in the war in the first place and accuse him of prolonging it for his own political purposes.

But Trump insisted that Netanyahu did “a great job,” and diving into Israel’s domestic affairs, urged the president to pardon Netanyahu of corruption charges he’s facing. Trump also heaped praise on envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner for their efforts in brokering the deal, while musing about the idea of Israel making peace with Iran.

Later he flew to Egypt for a summit in Sharm el Sheikh, where he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi and a raft of Arab and Islamic leaders to discuss the next steps for Gaza.

“We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us,” Trump said at the summit, which saw Sisi award Egypt’s highest civilian honor to Trump.

Netanyahu did not attend, with his office saying that the timing conflicted with the Jewish holiday.

President Trump addresses the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem on Oct. 13, 2025.

(Evelyn Hockstein / Associated Press)

The Trump-brokered deal stipulates Hamas will release the bodies of 28 hostages who died in captivity, with each one returned in exchange for 15 bodies of Palestinians killed during Oct. 7.

Four bodies were released Monday. In recent days, Hamas said it was facing difficulties retrieving corpses from the rubble of Gaza’s war-ravaged buildings.

A few hours after the release of the second batch of hostages, buses carrying about 1,700 Gaza residents detained in Israel without charge over the last two years left for the Palestinian enclave, along with 250 prisoners serving life sentences for convictions in attacks on Israelis.

Two busloads of 88 people were released in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where families assembled at the Ramallah Cultural Palace — a place normally reserved for performances — to greet relatives, some they hadn’t seen in decades.

When the buses arrived, Palestinian security forces tried to maintain order but were soon overwhelmed by the crowd. The prisoners and detainees emerged with their heads shaved, looking gaunt and pale in the afternoon sun — a measure, many said, of the harsh treatment they received.

Despite their joy at the release, few were willing to be interviewed, saying Israeli authorities had warned them to not celebrate or speak to the media under threat of rearrest.

“When I saw all the people here, we forgot all of our pain. But our brothers detained inside are still suffering,” said one released prisoner who had spent 20 years in an Israeli jail. One hand held a cigarette, while the other carried a phone he was using to talk to his niece for the first time.

“I’m tired, but thank God for everything,” said Yahya Nimr Ahmad Ibrahim, a Fatah member arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 23 years. Wrapped in a Palestinian black-and-white kaffiyeh, he looked frail as family members carried him on their shoulders in celebration.

The list of Palestinian detainees to be released was a point of contention up to the very last minute, according to Palestinian rights groups, which count at least 100 additional prisoners with lifetime sentences who would not be released.

The head of the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, Raed Abu Al-Hummus, said the commission had received hundreds of phone calls from people enraged that their loved ones weren’t being released.

Palestinians rejoice over their release from Israeli prisons.

(Ayman Nobani / DPA / Picture Alliance / AP Images)

For others, the prisoner release was bittersweet: 154 of the 250 prisoners were to be exiled to Gaza, Egypt, Malaysia or Turkey, and with their family members subject to travel restrictions, it was unlikely they would see them anytime soon.

Elsewhere in the crowd, bewilderment laced with anger when families who had been informed that their loved ones would be released discovered they weren’t on the buses after all.

“We don’t know what happened. The Israeli army called me last night, told me my brother was coming here. They even came and smashed up our house so we wouldn’t celebrate. Then we heard he’s to be exiled, but no one knows where he is,” said Raed Imran, the brother of Mohammad Imran, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member who was serving 13 life sentences.

Beside him was his sister, Ibtisam, crying.

“We prepared all his favorite foods, all of them,” she said, barely able to keep her voice steady from crying. “We’ve been working since two days for this moment. We even have the dishes in the car, ready for him when he came out.”

Imran began to tear up as well.

“We just don’t know. No one has told us anything,” he said.

As the afternoon sun waned, the crowd began to thin out, save for a few families asking anyone who seemed in authority to give them information about their missing loved ones. But soon enough, they too walked away.

Nabih Bulos

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October 12, 2025
The Trump loyalist who picked up where Musk left off with slashing federal workforce: ‘We’re having fun’

WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.

But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.

Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.

Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.

But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”

He’s still only partway done.

“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”

Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.

“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.

He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.

“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.

Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.

Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.

In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.

“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”

Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.

When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”

Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.

Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”

When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.

He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.

He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”

To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.

Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.

DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)

The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.

Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.

Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.

“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”

Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”

“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.

“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”

Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.

But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.

“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.

Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.

“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.

He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.

“We’re having fun,” he said.

Doyle McManus

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October 10, 2025
Government shutdown begins as nation faces new period of uncertainty
Plunged into a government shutdown, the U.S. is confronting a fresh cycle of uncertainty after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to keep government programs and services running by Wednesday’s deadline.What we know: The Senate voted down two short-term spending bills on Tuesday: one Democratic proposal and one Republican proposal that passed in the House.The Senate has adjourned until Wednesday morning. The House is not in session this week.Senate Democrats are demanding that health care subsidies and Medicaid cuts be addressed before passing a funding bill.Thousands of federal workers are facing furloughs or layoffs.This is the first government shutdown in nearly seven years. Roughly 750,000 federal workers are expected to be furloughed, some potentially fired by the Trump administration. Many offices will be shuttered, perhaps permanently, as Trump vows to “do things that are irreversible, that are bad” as retribution. His deportation agenda is expected to run full speed ahead, while education, environmental and other services sputter. The economic fallout is expected to ripple nationwide.”We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House before the midnight deadline.But the president, who met privately with congressional leadership this week, appeared unable to negotiate any deal between Democrats and Republicans to prevent that outcome.This is the third time Trump has presided over a federal funding lapse, the first since his return to the White House this year, in a remarkable record that underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities and a political climate that rewards hardline positions rather than more traditional compromises.Plenty of blame being thrown aroundThe Democrats picked this fight, which was unusual for the party that prefers to keep government running, but their voters are eager to challenge the president’s second-term agenda. Democrats are demanding funding for health care subsidies that are expiring for millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, spiking the costs of insurance premiums nationwide.Republicans have refused to negotiate for now and have encouraged Trump to steer clear of any talks. After the White House meeting, the president posted a cartoonish fake video mocking the Democratic leadership that was widely viewed as unserious and racist.What neither side has devised is an easy offramp to prevent what could become a protracted closure. The ramifications are certain to spread beyond the political arena, upending the lives of Americans who rely on the government for benefit payments, work contracts and the various services being thrown into turmoil.”What the government spends money on is a demonstration of our country’s priorities,” said Rachel Snyderman, a former White House budget official who is the managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington.Shutdowns, she said, “only inflict economic cost, fear and confusion across the country.” Economic fallout expected to ripple nationwideAn economic jolt could be felt in a matter of days. The government is expected Friday to produce its monthly jobs report, which may or may not be delivered.While the financial markets have generally “shrugged” during past shutdowns, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, this one could be different partly because there are no signs of broader negotiations.”There are also few good analogies to this week’s potential shutdown,” the analysis said.Across the government, preparations have been underway. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, directed agencies to execute plans for not just furloughs, as are typical during a federal funding lapse, but mass firings of federal workers. It’s part of the Trump administration’s mission, including its Department of Government Efficiency, to shrink the federal government.What’s staying open and shutting downThe Medicare and Medicaid health care programs are expected to continue, though staffing shortages could mean delays for some services. The Pentagon would still function. And most employees will stay on the job at the Department of Homeland Security.But Trump has warned that the administration could focus on programs that are important to Democrats, “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”As agencies sort out which workers are essential, or not, Smithsonian museums are expected to stay open at least until Monday. A group of former national park superintendents urged the Trump administration to close the parks to visitors, arguing that poorly staffed parks in a shutdown are a danger to the public and put park resources at risk.Video below: House Speaker rejects Democrats’ calls for health care negotiations as government shuts downNo easy exit as health care costs soarAhead of Wednesday’s start of the fiscal year, House Republicans had approved a temporary funding bill, over opposition from Democrats, to keep government running into mid-November while broader negotiations continue.But that bill has failed repeatedly in the Senate, including late Tuesday. It takes a 60-vote threshold for approval, which requires cooperation between the two parties. A Democratic bill also failed. With a 53-47 GOP majority, Democrats are leveraging their votes to demand negotiation.Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Republicans are happy to discuss the health care issue with Democrats — but not as part of talks to keep the government open. More votes are expected Wednesday.The standoff is a political test for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who has drawn scorn from a restive base of left-flank voters pushing the party to hold firm in its demands for health care funding.”Americans are hurting with higher costs,” Schumer said after the failed vote Tuesday.House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home nearly two weeks ago after having passed the GOP bill, blaming Democrats for the shutdown.”They want to fight Trump,” Johnson said Tuesday on CNBC. “A lot of good people are going to be hurt because of this.”Trump, during his meeting with the congressional leaders, expressed surprise at the scope of the rising costs of health care, but Democrats left with no path toward talks.During Trump’s first term, the nation endured its longest-ever shutdown, 35 days, over his demands for funds Congress refused to provide to build his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days during the Obama presidency over GOP demands to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Other closures date back decades. ___Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Joey Cappelletti, Will Weissert, Fatima Hussein and other AP reporters nationwide contributed to this report.
Plunged into a government shutdown, the U.S. is confronting a fresh cycle of uncertainty after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to keep government programs and services running by Wednesday’s deadline.

What we know:
- The Senate voted down two short-term spending bills on Tuesday: one Democratic proposal and one Republican proposal that passed in the House.
- The Senate has adjourned until Wednesday morning. The House is not in session this week.
- Senate Democrats are demanding that health care subsidies and Medicaid cuts be addressed before passing a funding bill.
- Thousands of federal workers are facing furloughs or layoffs.
- This is the first government shutdown in nearly seven years.
Roughly 750,000 federal workers are expected to be furloughed, some potentially fired by the Trump administration. Many offices will be shuttered, perhaps permanently, as Trump vows to “do things that are irreversible, that are bad” as retribution. His deportation agenda is expected to run full speed ahead, while education, environmental and other services sputter. The economic fallout is expected to ripple nationwide.

“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House before the midnight deadline.

But the president, who met privately with congressional leadership this week, appeared unable to negotiate any deal between Democrats and Republicans to prevent that outcome.

This is the third time Trump has presided over a federal funding lapse, the first since his return to the White House this year, in a remarkable record that underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities and a political climate that rewards hardline positions rather than more traditional compromises.

Plenty of blame being thrown around

The Democrats picked this fight, which was unusual for the party that prefers to keep government running, but their voters are eager to challenge the president’s second-term agenda. Democrats are demanding funding for health care subsidies that are expiring for millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, spiking the costs of insurance premiums nationwide.

Republicans have refused to negotiate for now and have encouraged Trump to steer clear of any talks. After the White House meeting, the president posted a cartoonish fake video mocking the Democratic leadership that was widely viewed as unserious and racist.

What neither side has devised is an easy offramp to prevent what could become a protracted closure. The ramifications are certain to spread beyond the political arena, upending the lives of Americans who rely on the government for benefit payments, work contracts and the various services being thrown into turmoil.

“What the government spends money on is a demonstration of our country’s priorities,” said Rachel Snyderman, a former White House budget official who is the managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington.

Shutdowns, she said, “only inflict economic cost, fear and confusion across the country.”

Economic fallout expected to ripple nationwide

An economic jolt could be felt in a matter of days. The government is expected Friday to produce its monthly jobs report, which may or may not be delivered.

While the financial markets have generally “shrugged” during past shutdowns, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, this one could be different partly because there are no signs of broader negotiations.

“There are also few good analogies to this week’s potential shutdown,” the analysis said.

Across the government, preparations have been underway. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, directed agencies to execute plans for not just furloughs, as are typical during a federal funding lapse, but mass firings of federal workers. It’s part of the Trump administration’s mission, including its Department of Government Efficiency, to shrink the federal government.

What’s staying open and shutting down

The Medicare and Medicaid health care programs are expected to continue, though staffing shortages could mean delays for some services. The Pentagon would still function. And most employees will stay on the job at the Department of Homeland Security.

But Trump has warned that the administration could focus on programs that are important to Democrats, “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

As agencies sort out which workers are essential, or not, Smithsonian museums are expected to stay open at least until Monday. A group of former national park superintendents urged the Trump administration to close the parks to visitors, arguing that poorly staffed parks in a shutdown are a danger to the public and put park resources at risk.

Video below: House Speaker rejects Democrats’ calls for health care negotiations as government shuts down

No easy exit as health care costs soar

Ahead of Wednesday’s start of the fiscal year, House Republicans had approved a temporary funding bill, over opposition from Democrats, to keep government running into mid-November while broader negotiations continue.

But that bill has failed repeatedly in the Senate, including late Tuesday. It takes a 60-vote threshold for approval, which requires cooperation between the two parties. A Democratic bill also failed. With a 53-47 GOP majority, Democrats are leveraging their votes to demand negotiation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Republicans are happy to discuss the health care issue with Democrats — but not as part of talks to keep the government open. More votes are expected Wednesday.

The standoff is a political test for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who has drawn scorn from a restive base of left-flank voters pushing the party to hold firm in its demands for health care funding.

“Americans are hurting with higher costs,” Schumer said after the failed vote Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home nearly two weeks ago after having passed the GOP bill, blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

“They want to fight Trump,” Johnson said Tuesday on CNBC. “A lot of good people are going to be hurt because of this.”

Trump, during his meeting with the congressional leaders, expressed surprise at the scope of the rising costs of health care, but Democrats left with no path toward talks.

During Trump’s first term, the nation endured its longest-ever shutdown, 35 days, over his demands for funds Congress refused to provide to build his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days during the Obama presidency over GOP demands to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Other closures date back decades.

___

Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Joey Cappelletti, Will Weissert, Fatima Hussein and other AP reporters nationwide contributed to this report.
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September 30, 2025
Senate adjourns after failed funding votes as government heads for shutdown at midnight
Senate Democrats have voted down a Republican bill to keep funding the government, putting it on a near-certain path to a shutdown after midnight Wednesday for the first time in nearly seven years.What we know: The Senate voted down two short-term spending bills — one Democratic proposal and one Republican proposal.The Senate has adjourned until tomorrow morning, all but guaranteeing the government will shut down.Senate Democrats are demanding that health care subsidies and Medicaid cuts be addressed before passing a funding bill.Thousands of federal workers face furloughs or layoffs if the government shuts down at midnight Wednesday.There are fewer than 2 hours before the government shuts down for the first time in nearly seven years. The Senate rejected the legislation as Democrats are making good on their threat to close the government if President Donald Trump and Republicans won’t accede to their health care demands. The 55-45 vote on a bill to extend federal funding for seven weeks fell short of the 60 needed to end a filibuster and pass the legislation.Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans are trying to “bully” Democrats by refusing to negotiate on an extension of expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire at the end of the year.”We hope they sit down with us and talk,” Schumer said after the vote. “Otherwise, it’s the Republicans will be driving us straight towards a shutdown tonight at midnight. The American people will blame them for bringing the federal government to a halt.”The failure of Congress to keep the government open means that hundreds of thousands of federal workers could be furloughed or laid off. After the vote, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo saying “affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”Threatening retribution to Democrats, Trump said Tuesday that a shutdown could include “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”Trump and his fellow Republicans said they won’t entertain any changes to the legislation, arguing that it’s a stripped-down, “clean” bill that should be noncontroversial. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said “we can reopen it tomorrow” if enough Democrats break party lines.The last shutdown was in Trump’s first term, from December 2018 to January 2019, when he demanded that Congress give him money for his U.S.-Mexico border wall. Trump retreated after 35 days — the longest shutdown ever — amid intensifying airport delays and missed paydays for federal workers. Democrats take a stand against Trump, with exceptionsWhile partisan stalemates over government spending are a frequent occurrence in Washington, the current impasse comes as Democrats see a rare opportunity to use their leverage to achieve policy goals and as their base voters are spoiling for a fight with Trump. Republicans who hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate needed at least eight votes from Democrats after Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed the bill.Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voted with Republicans to keep the government open — giving Republicans hope that there might be five more who will eventually come around and help end a shutdown.After the vote, King warned against “permanent damage” as Trump and his administration have threatened mass layoffs.”Instead of fighting Trump we’re actually empowering him, which is what finally drove my decision,” King said.Thune predicted Democratic support for the GOP bill will increase “when they realize that this is playing a losing hand.”Shutdown preparations beginThe stakes are huge for federal workers across the country as the White House told agencies last week that they should consider “a reduction in force” for many federal programs if the government shuts down. That means that workers who are not deemed essential could be fired instead of just furloughed.Either way, most would not get paid. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in a letter to Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst on Tuesday that around 750,000 federal workers could be furloughed each day once a shutdown begins.Federal agencies were already preparing. On the home page of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a large pop up ad reads, “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people.”Democrats’ health care asksDemocrats want to negotiate an extension of the health subsidies immediately as people are beginning to receive notices of premium increases for the next year. Millions of people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act could face higher costs as expanded subsidies first put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic expire.Democrats have also demanded that Republicans reverse the Medicaid cuts that were enacted as a part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” this summer and for the White House to promise it will not move to rescind spending passed by Congress.”We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.Thune pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later. Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits, but many are strongly opposed to it.In rare, pointed back-and-forth with Schumer on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Thune said Republicans “are happy to fix the ACA issue” and have offered to negotiate with Democrats — if they will vote to keep the government open until Nov. 21.A critical, and unusual, vote for DemocratsDemocrats are in an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced shutdowns as pointless and destructive, and it’s unclear how or when a shutdown will end. But party activists and lawmakers have argued that Democrats need to do something to stand up to Trump.”The level of appeasement that Trump demands never ends,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “We’ve seen that with universities, with law firms, with prosecutors. So is there a point where you just have to stand up to him? I think there is.”Some groups called for Schumer’s resignation in March after he and nine other Democrats voted to break a filibuster and allow a Republican-led funding bill to advance to a final vote.Schumer said then that he voted to keep the government open because a shutdown would have made things worse as Trump’s administration was slashing government jobs. He says things have now changed, including the passage this summer of the massive GOP tax cut bill that reduced Medicaid.Trump’s role in negotiationsA bipartisan meeting at the White House on Monday was Trump’s first with all four leaders in Congress since retaking the White House for his second term. Schumer said the group “had candid, frank discussions” about health care.But Trump did not appear to be ready for serious talks. Hours later, he posted a fake video of Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries taken from footage of their real press conference outside of the White House after the meeting. In the altered video, a voiceover that sounds like Schumer’s voice makes fun of Democrats and Jeffries stands beside him with a cartoon sombrero and mustache. Mexican music plays in the background.At a news conference on the Capitol steps Tuesday morning, Jeffries said it was a “racist and fake AI video.”Schumer said that less than a day before a shutdown, Trump was trolling on the internet “like a 10-year-old.””It’s only the president who can do this,” Schumer said. “We know he runs the show here.”___Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Kevin Freking, Matthew Brown, Darlene Superville and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.
Senate Democrats have voted down a Republican bill to keep funding the government, putting it on a near-certain path to a shutdown after midnight Wednesday for the first time in nearly seven years.

What we know:
- The Senate voted down two short-term spending bills — one Democratic proposal and one Republican proposal.
- The Senate has adjourned until tomorrow morning, all but guaranteeing the government will shut down.
- Senate Democrats are demanding that health care subsidies and Medicaid cuts be addressed before passing a funding bill.
- Thousands of federal workers face furloughs or layoffs if the government shuts down at midnight Wednesday.
- There are fewer than 2 hours before the government shuts down for the first time in nearly seven years.
The Senate rejected the legislation as Democrats are making good on their threat to close the government if President Donald Trump and Republicans won’t accede to their health care demands. The 55-45 vote on a bill to extend federal funding for seven weeks fell short of the 60 needed to end a filibuster and pass the legislation.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans are trying to “bully” Democrats by refusing to negotiate on an extension of expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire at the end of the year.

“We hope they sit down with us and talk,” Schumer said after the vote. “Otherwise, it’s the Republicans will be driving us straight towards a shutdown tonight at midnight. The American people will blame them for bringing the federal government to a halt.”

The failure of Congress to keep the government open means that hundreds of thousands of federal workers could be furloughed or laid off. After the vote, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo saying “affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”

Threatening retribution to Democrats, Trump said Tuesday that a shutdown could include “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

Trump and his fellow Republicans said they won’t entertain any changes to the legislation, arguing that it’s a stripped-down, “clean” bill that should be noncontroversial. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said “we can reopen it tomorrow” if enough Democrats break party lines.

The last shutdown was in Trump’s first term, from December 2018 to January 2019, when he demanded that Congress give him money for his U.S.-Mexico border wall. Trump retreated after 35 days — the longest shutdown ever — amid intensifying airport delays and missed paydays for federal workers.

Democrats take a stand against Trump, with exceptions

While partisan stalemates over government spending are a frequent occurrence in Washington, the current impasse comes as Democrats see a rare opportunity to use their leverage to achieve policy goals and as their base voters are spoiling for a fight with Trump. Republicans who hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate needed at least eight votes from Democrats after Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed the bill.

Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voted with Republicans to keep the government open — giving Republicans hope that there might be five more who will eventually come around and help end a shutdown.

After the vote, King warned against “permanent damage” as Trump and his administration have threatened mass layoffs.

“Instead of fighting Trump we’re actually empowering him, which is what finally drove my decision,” King said.

Thune predicted Democratic support for the GOP bill will increase “when they realize that this is playing a losing hand.”

Shutdown preparations begin

The stakes are huge for federal workers across the country as the White House told agencies last week that they should consider “a reduction in force” for many federal programs if the government shuts down. That means that workers who are not deemed essential could be fired instead of just furloughed.

Either way, most would not get paid. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in a letter to Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst on Tuesday that around 750,000 federal workers could be furloughed each day once a shutdown begins.

Federal agencies were already preparing. On the home page of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a large pop up ad reads, “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people.”

Democrats’ health care asks

Democrats want to negotiate an extension of the health subsidies immediately as people are beginning to receive notices of premium increases for the next year. Millions of people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act could face higher costs as expanded subsidies first put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic expire.

Democrats have also demanded that Republicans reverse the Medicaid cuts that were enacted as a part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” this summer and for the White House to promise it will not move to rescind spending passed by Congress.

“We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.

Thune pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later. Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits, but many are strongly opposed to it.

In rare, pointed back-and-forth with Schumer on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Thune said Republicans “are happy to fix the ACA issue” and have offered to negotiate with Democrats — if they will vote to keep the government open until Nov. 21.

A critical, and unusual, vote for Democrats

Democrats are in an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced shutdowns as pointless and destructive, and it’s unclear how or when a shutdown will end. But party activists and lawmakers have argued that Democrats need to do something to stand up to Trump.

“The level of appeasement that Trump demands never ends,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “We’ve seen that with universities, with law firms, with prosecutors. So is there a point where you just have to stand up to him? I think there is.”

Some groups called for Schumer’s resignation in March after he and nine other Democrats voted to break a filibuster and allow a Republican-led funding bill to advance to a final vote.

Schumer said then that he voted to keep the government open because a shutdown would have made things worse as Trump’s administration was slashing government jobs. He says things have now changed, including the passage this summer of the massive GOP tax cut bill that reduced Medicaid.

Trump’s role in negotiations

A bipartisan meeting at the White House on Monday was Trump’s first with all four leaders in Congress since retaking the White House for his second term. Schumer said the group “had candid, frank discussions” about health care.

But Trump did not appear to be ready for serious talks. Hours later, he posted a fake video of Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries taken from footage of their real press conference outside of the White House after the meeting. In the altered video, a voiceover that sounds like Schumer’s voice makes fun of Democrats and Jeffries stands beside him with a cartoon sombrero and mustache. Mexican music plays in the background.

At a news conference on the Capitol steps Tuesday morning, Jeffries said it was a “racist and fake AI video.”

Schumer said that less than a day before a shutdown, Trump was trolling on the internet “like a 10-year-old.”

“It’s only the president who can do this,” Schumer said. “We know he runs the show here.”

___

Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Kevin Freking, Matthew Brown, Darlene Superville and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.
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September 30, 2025
Feds sue L.A. County sheriff for ‘unreasonable’ delays in issuing concealed gun permits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gun rights groups heralded the move by the Trump administration.

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

Connor Sheets

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September 30, 2025
Turning Point, moving forward without Charlie Kirk, makes first return to Utah since his killing

Turning Point USA’s college tour will return to Utah on Tuesday for its first event in the state since its founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated on a college campus earlier this month.The stop, at Utah State University in Logan, is about two hours north of Utah Valley University, where Kirk was killed Sept. 10 by a gunman who fired a single shot through the crowd while Kirk was speaking.The assassination of a top ally of President Donald Trump and one of the most significant figures in his Make America Great Again movement has galvanized conservatives, who have vowed to carry on Kirk’s mission of encouraging young voters to embrace conservatism and moving American politics further right. Kirk himself has been celebrated as a “martyr” by many on the right, and Turning Point USA, the youth organization he founded, has seen a surge of interest across the nation, with tens of thousands of requests to launch new chapters in high schools and on college campuses.Tuesday’s event, which was scheduled before Kirk’s death, will showcase how Turning Point is finding its path forward without its charismatic leader, who headlined many of its events and was instrumental in drawing crowds and attention.The college tour is now being headlined by some of the biggest conservative names, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck. Tuesday’s event will feature conservative podcast host Alex Clark and a panel with Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Andy Biggs, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Gov. Spencer Cox.And it will further a pledge his widow, Erika Kirk, made to continue the campus tour and the work of the organization he founded. She now oversees Turning Point along with a stable of her late husband’s former aides and friends.‘Nothing is changing’Erika Kirk has sought to assure her husband’s followers that she intends to continue to run the operation as her late husband intended, closely following plans he laid out to her and to staff.“We’re not going anywhere. We have the blueprints. We have our marching orders,” she said during an appearance on his podcast last week.That will include, she said, continuing to tape the daily podcast.“My husband’s voice will live on. The show will go on,” she said, announcing plans for a rotating cast of hosts. She said they intended to lean heavily on old clips of her husband, including answering callers’ questions.“We have decades’ worth of my husband’s voice. We have unused material from speeches that he’s had that no one has heard yet,” she said.Erika Kirk, however, made clear that she does not intend to appear on the podcast often, and so far seems to be assuming a more behind-the-scenes role than her husband.Mikey McCoy, Kirk’s former chief of staff, said Erika Kirk is in daily contact with members of the Trump administration, and has described her as “very strategic” and different from her husband.The events have served as tributes to KirkThe events so far have served as tributes to the late Kirk, with a focus on prayer, as well as the question-and-answer sessions that he was known for.At Virginia Tech last week, the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, urged the crowd to carry Kirk’s legacy forward.“The question that has been asked over and over again is: Who will be the next Charlie? And as I look out in this room and I see thousands of you, I want to repeat the best answer that I have heard: You will be the next Charlie,” he said. “All of you.”He also praised Erika Kirk as an “extraordinary” leader.“Over the course of the last two weeks, Erika Kirk has demonstrated that she not only has the courage of a lion, but she has the heart of a saint. We have grieved with her and her family. We have prayed for her and her family,” he said. “Is there anyone better to lead Turning Point going forward than Erika Kirk?”He then turned the stage over to Kelly, who said Charlie Kirk had asked her to join the tour several months ago. She said she knew appearing onstage carried risk, but felt it was important to be there “to send a message that we will not be silenced by an assassin’s bullet, by a heckler’s veto, by a left-wing, woke professor or anyone who tries to silence us from saying what we really believe,” she said to loud cheers.At another event at the University of Minnesota last week, conservative commentator Michael Knowles gave a solo speech in lieu of the two-man conversation with Kirk that was originally planned. Then he continued Kirk’s tradition of responding to questions from the audience, which ranged from one man quibbling about Catholic doctrine to another arguing that the root of societal problems stems from letting women vote. (To the latter, he responded that women aren’t to blame because “men need to lead women.”)As Knowles spoke, a spotlight shined on a chair left empty for Kirk.Knowles said Kirk was instrumental in keeping together disparate conservative factions, and he worries about the MAGA movement fracturing without Kirk doing the day-to-day work to build bridges between warring groups.“Charlie was the unifying figure for the movement. It’s simply a fact,” he said. “There is no replacing him in that regard.”“The biggest threat right now is that without that single figure that we were all friends with, who could really hold it together, things could spin off in different directions,” Knowles said. “We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

LOGAN, Utah —

Turning Point USA’s college tour will return to Utah on Tuesday for its first event in the state since its founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated on a college campus earlier this month.

The stop, at Utah State University in Logan, is about two hours north of Utah Valley University, where Kirk was killed Sept. 10 by a gunman who fired a single shot through the crowd while Kirk was speaking.

The assassination of a top ally of President Donald Trump and one of the most significant figures in his Make America Great Again movement has galvanized conservatives, who have vowed to carry on Kirk’s mission of encouraging young voters to embrace conservatism and moving American politics further right. Kirk himself has been celebrated as a “martyr” by many on the right, and Turning Point USA, the youth organization he founded, has seen a surge of interest across the nation, with tens of thousands of requests to launch new chapters in high schools and on college campuses.

Tuesday’s event, which was scheduled before Kirk’s death, will showcase how Turning Point is finding its path forward without its charismatic leader, who headlined many of its events and was instrumental in drawing crowds and attention.

The college tour is now being headlined by some of the biggest conservative names, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck. Tuesday’s event will feature conservative podcast host Alex Clark and a panel with Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Andy Biggs, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Gov. Spencer Cox.

And it will further a pledge his widow, Erika Kirk, made to continue the campus tour and the work of the organization he founded. She now oversees Turning Point along with a stable of her late husband’s former aides and friends.

‘Nothing is changing’

Erika Kirk has sought to assure her husband’s followers that she intends to continue to run the operation as her late husband intended, closely following plans he laid out to her and to staff.

“We’re not going anywhere. We have the blueprints. We have our marching orders,” she said during an appearance on his podcast last week.

That will include, she said, continuing to tape the daily podcast.

“My husband’s voice will live on. The show will go on,” she said, announcing plans for a rotating cast of hosts. She said they intended to lean heavily on old clips of her husband, including answering callers’ questions.

“We have decades’ worth of my husband’s voice. We have unused material from speeches that he’s had that no one has heard yet,” she said.

Erika Kirk, however, made clear that she does not intend to appear on the podcast often, and so far seems to be assuming a more behind-the-scenes role than her husband.

Mikey McCoy, Kirk’s former chief of staff, said Erika Kirk is in daily contact with members of the Trump administration, and has described her as “very strategic” and different from her husband.

The events have served as tributes to Kirk

The events so far have served as tributes to the late Kirk, with a focus on prayer, as well as the question-and-answer sessions that he was known for.

At Virginia Tech last week, the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, urged the crowd to carry Kirk’s legacy forward.

“The question that has been asked over and over again is: Who will be the next Charlie? And as I look out in this room and I see thousands of you, I want to repeat the best answer that I have heard: You will be the next Charlie,” he said. “All of you.”

He also praised Erika Kirk as an “extraordinary” leader.

“Over the course of the last two weeks, Erika Kirk has demonstrated that she not only has the courage of a lion, but she has the heart of a saint. We have grieved with her and her family. We have prayed for her and her family,” he said. “Is there anyone better to lead Turning Point going forward than Erika Kirk?”

He then turned the stage over to Kelly, who said Charlie Kirk had asked her to join the tour several months ago. She said she knew appearing onstage carried risk, but felt it was important to be there “to send a message that we will not be silenced by an assassin’s bullet, by a heckler’s veto, by a left-wing, woke professor or anyone who tries to silence us from saying what we really believe,” she said to loud cheers.

At another event at the University of Minnesota last week, conservative commentator Michael Knowles gave a solo speech in lieu of the two-man conversation with Kirk that was originally planned. Then he continued Kirk’s tradition of responding to questions from the audience, which ranged from one man quibbling about Catholic doctrine to another arguing that the root of societal problems stems from letting women vote. (To the latter, he responded that women aren’t to blame because “men need to lead women.”)

As Knowles spoke, a spotlight shined on a chair left empty for Kirk.

Knowles said Kirk was instrumental in keeping together disparate conservative factions, and he worries about the MAGA movement fracturing without Kirk doing the day-to-day work to build bridges between warring groups.

“Charlie was the unifying figure for the movement. It’s simply a fact,” he said. “There is no replacing him in that regard.”

“The biggest threat right now is that without that single figure that we were all friends with, who could really hold it together, things could spin off in different directions,” Knowles said. “We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

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September 30, 2025
Farm-to-Fork event draws thousands to downtown Sacramento

IT WAS A BUSY AND VERY PACKED WEEKEND IN DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO WITH THE FARM TO FORK. AT TERRA MADRE AMERICAS. THIS WAS THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF WEEKEND EVENTS TO TAKE OVER THE CAPITAL CITY. KCRA 3’S MARICELA DE LA CRUZ IS IN SACRAMENTO TONIGHT, SO MARICELA, HOW MANY PEOPLE ATTENDED THE FIRST YEAR OF THIS COMBINED EVENT? YES, IT WAS A VERY SUCCESSFUL EVENT. WE’RE TOLD THAT OVER 100,000 PEOPLE MADE IT OUT HERE TO DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO TO ENJOY THIS THREE DAY EVENT. YES, HE’S TIRED FIGHTING IN THIS TOWN. A WEEKEND FILLED WITH SPIRITS, WINE, FOOD, LIVE MUSIC AND THE MAIN EVENT. THOUSANDS OF VISITORS. I WENT THROUGH ALL OF THE EXPERIENCES EARLY ON, SO THE FOOD TASTING, THE LITTLE TINY BIT OF COFFEE TASTING, THE WINE TASTING HAS BEEN ABSOLUTELY GREAT. AN ESTIMATED 165,000 PEOPLE TURNED OUT FOR FARM TO FORK AT TERRA MADRE AMERICAS THIS WEEKEND. IT’S SO ACCESSIBLE THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY TO ENTER. IT’S JUST WHAT YOU WANT TO SAMPLE. AND EVEN THEN, IF LIKE THERE’S NOT A COST TO ENTRY, YOU CAN SAMPLE WHAT THEY HAVE TO OFFER WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY A LOT. THE EVENT IS PART OF VISIT SACRAMENTO’S TEN YEAR PARTNERSHIP WITH SLOW FOOD INTERNATIONAL, AND ORGANIZERS WERE PLEASANTLY SURPRISED BY THE TURNOUT. FARM TO FORK HAS ALWAYS BEEN POPULAR. WE KNEW THAT ABOUT 100,000 PEOPLE ATTEND THAT EVENT. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME EVENT, SO TOUGH TO GAUGE WHO’S GOING TO SHOW UP, BUT WE’VE BEEN BLOWN AWAY AT THE RESPONSE. I MEAN, EVERYBODY THAT’S HERE SEEMS TO BE HAVING A GREAT TIME. THE VENDORS HAVE BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL. TERRA MADRE AMERICAS KICKS OFF A SERIES OF EVENTS RUNNING THROUGH OCTOBER WITH AFTERSHOCK FESTIVAL STARTING THURSDAY AND IRONMAN CALIFORNIA THE WEEKEND AFTER THAT, ALL PROMISING A BOOST TO SACRAMENTO’S ECONOMY. CERTAINLY, A LOT OF PUBLICITY FOR THE REGION. YOU KNOW, WHEN YOU LOOK AT AFTERSHOCK, 65% OF THE ATTENDEES DON’T LIVE IN THIS REGION. SO YOU HAVE A LOT OF VISITORS COMING INTO TOWN. BUT FROM AN ECONOMIC IMPACT STANDPOINT, IT’S WELL OVER $50 MILLION. WHEN YOU FACTOR IN ALL THESE EVENTS THEY’RE SPENDING AT OUR HOTELS, THEY’RE SPENDING WITH LOCAL BUSINESSES. THEY’RE UTILIZING RIDESHARES FOR VENDORS LIKE HARRIGAN, THE EVENT EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS. IT MAKES A REALLY BIG DEAL. LIKE I SAID, I’VE BEEN DOING FARM TO FORK THE PAST FEW YEARS, AND I REALLY DO RELY ON IT AS ONE OF MY BIGGEST EVENTS OF THE YEAR, NOT JUST FOR SALES, BUT FOR MARKETING AND FOR VISITORS. AND ALL THE EXPERIENCE WITH SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE. YEAH, I’M HAVING A REALLY GREAT TIME SO FAR. REALLY AWESOME OPTIONS FOR EATING THE BAR HAS BEEN REALLY FUN. THEY’VE GOT A CONCERT GOING THAT’S FUN, AND THEY’VE GOT THE EXHIBIT INSIDE OF THE SAFE CREDIT UNION. AND OUT HERE ALONG 14TH STREET, CREWS ARE ALREADY CLEARING OUT THE AREA OF THIS VERY SUCCESSFUL EVENT. AND WE KNOW THAT OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS AND WEEKS, WE’RE ALSO GOING TO START SEEING MORE OF THE CREWS BEING OUT IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF SACRAMENTO CITY AS WE GET READY FOR AFTERSHOCK. IN CALIFORNIA. IRONMAN. FOR NOW, WE’RE LIVE IN DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO. MARICELA DE

Farm-to-Fork event draws thousands to downtown Sacramento

Updated: 11:40 PM PDT Sep 28, 2025

Editorial Standards ⓘ

The Farm-to-Fork at Terra Madre Americas event in downtown Sacramento attracted an estimated 165,000 people, featuring spirits, wine, food, live music, and thousands of visitors enjoying the festivities.Sheryl Renay Sharama, who attended the food festival, said, “I went through all of the experiences earlier on, so the food tasting, the little tiny bit of coffee tasting, the wine tasting has been absolutely great.”Constanza Neyra, another attendee, highlighted the accessibility of the event, noting, “It’s so accessible that you don’t have to pay to enter. It’s just what you want to sample, and even then, if, like, there’s not a cost to enter, you can sample what they have to offer without having to pay a lot.”The event is part of Visit Sacramento’s 10-year partnership with Slow Food International, and organizers were pleasantly surprised by the turnout. Mike Testa from Visit Sacramento said, “Farm-to-Fork has always been popular. We knew that about 100,000 people attended that event. This is a first-time event, so it’s tough to gauge who’s going to show up, but we’ve been blown away by the response. I mean, everybody that’s here seems to be having a great time. The vendors have been very successful.”Terra Madre Americas kicks off a series of events running through October, including the Aftershock Festival, which begins Thursday and Ironman California the following weekend, all promising a boost to Sacramento’s economy. Testa added, “Certainly, a lot of publicity for the region. When you look at Aftershock, 65% of the attendees don’t live in this region, so you have a lot of visitors coming into town. But, from an economic impact standpoint, it’s well over $50 million. When you factor in all these events, they’re spending at our hotels, they’re spending with local businesses, and are utilizing rideshares.”For vendors like Nurelle Harrigan, the event exceeded expectations. Harrigan said, “It makes a really big deal. I’ve been doing Farm-to-Fork the past few years, and I really do rely on it as one of my biggest events of the year, not just for sales but for marketing.”Visitors enjoyed an all-day experience with something for everyone. Khendel Turner shared, “I’m having a really great time so far. Really awesome options for eating. The bars have been really fun. They’ve got a concert going on that’s fun, and they’ve got exhibits going on inside the Safe Credit Union.”

The Farm-to-Fork at Terra Madre Americas event in downtown Sacramento attracted an estimated 165,000 people, featuring spirits, wine, food, live music, and thousands of visitors enjoying the festivities.

Sheryl Renay Sharama, who attended the food festival, said, “I went through all of the experiences earlier on, so the food tasting, the little tiny bit of coffee tasting, the wine tasting has been absolutely great.”

Constanza Neyra, another attendee, highlighted the accessibility of the event, noting, “It’s so accessible that you don’t have to pay to enter. It’s just what you want to sample, and even then, if, like, there’s not a cost to enter, you can sample what they have to offer without having to pay a lot.”

The event is part of Visit Sacramento’s 10-year partnership with Slow Food International, and organizers were pleasantly surprised by the turnout. Mike Testa from Visit Sacramento said, “Farm-to-Fork has always been popular. We knew that about 100,000 people attended that event. This is a first-time event, so it’s tough to gauge who’s going to show up, but we’ve been blown away by the response. I mean, everybody that’s here seems to be having a great time. The vendors have been very successful.”

Terra Madre Americas kicks off a series of events running through October, including the Aftershock Festival, which begins Thursday and Ironman California the following weekend, all promising a boost to Sacramento’s economy. Testa added, “Certainly, a lot of publicity for the region. When you look at Aftershock, 65% of the attendees don’t live in this region, so you have a lot of visitors coming into town. But, from an economic impact standpoint, it’s well over $50 million. When you factor in all these events, they’re spending at our hotels, they’re spending with local businesses, and are utilizing rideshares.”

For vendors like Nurelle Harrigan, the event exceeded expectations. Harrigan said, “It makes a really big deal. I’ve been doing Farm-to-Fork the past few years, and I really do rely on it as one of my biggest events of the year, not just for sales but for marketing.”

Visitors enjoyed an all-day experience with something for everyone. Khendel Turner shared, “I’m having a really great time so far. Really awesome options for eating. The bars have been really fun. They’ve got a concert going on that’s fun, and they’ve got exhibits going on inside the Safe Credit Union.”

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September 28, 2025
$1,500 for a name? A look inside the world of baby name consulting

Between setting up a nursery and packing a go bag, some parents may find themselves stressing over what to name a new baby. Yes, there is Google and a plethora of baby name books at public libraries. But now, parents have the option of hiring a baby name consultant. Taylor Humphrey of Woodside, California, has been in the industry for a decade and has had a hand in naming thousands of babies. It all started on Instagram. Humphrey said she has had a “lifelong love of baby names,” which turned into posts on her grid exploring the etymology, numerology and spiritual meaning of names. She said expecting parents started sending her messages through the social media app.“It was happening so frequently that eventually I decided that I was going to turn this into a business,” Humphrey said. Her pricing starts at $1,500 and can run up to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what parents are looking for. The base package includes a name report and several consultations over the phone or video call. “I work with parents who are currently trying to conceive, and they may be facing an IVF journey. I work with a lot of pregnant parents,” Humphrey said. “I’ve had a few frantic parents who are like, ‘We’re at the hospital and they’re not letting us leave. We’ve got to sign the birth certificate. What do we name our baby?’”Her clients are primarily wealthy families. Her reach extends from the Bay Area to Nebraska and even some international clients. Lauren Williams of Omaha, Nebraska, reached out to Humphrey a month before her son was due in 2023. She and her husband both had meaningful family names they were considering, but could not seem to come to an agreement on what to name their son. They thought Humphrey might be able to help them merge ideas. Humphrey did help them come up with some new name combinations as well as some names that were not already on their list, but were similar. Humphrey also told the Williams family to be patient in picking a name.“I think the most helpful or important thing that she told me in the long run was, ‘Do not name your baby until they are born and you see them.’ So, we went with that advice,” Williams said. The Nebraska parents ended up welcoming Carter Allen Williams into the world in September 2023. “Having her support has been important because otherwise it’s a really stressful decision,” Williams said. She and her husband are now expecting a baby girl in the next few weeks and have once again hired Humphrey to help them pick a name. “Generally speaking, I’m there to kind of mirror back to them and reflect what I hear them saying,” Humphrey said. “Names are so deeply personal, and they really are going to be your child’s legacy.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

SAN FRANCISCO —

Between setting up a nursery and packing a go bag, some parents may find themselves stressing over what to name a new baby.

Yes, there is Google and a plethora of baby name books at public libraries. But now, parents have the option of hiring a baby name consultant. Taylor Humphrey of Woodside, California, has been in the industry for a decade and has had a hand in naming thousands of babies.

It all started on Instagram. Humphrey said she has had a “lifelong love of baby names,” which turned into posts on her grid exploring the etymology, numerology and spiritual meaning of names. She said expecting parents started sending her messages through the social media app.

“It was happening so frequently that eventually I decided that I was going to turn this into a business,” Humphrey said.

Her pricing starts at $1,500 and can run up to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what parents are looking for. The base package includes a name report and several consultations over the phone or video call.

“I work with parents who are currently trying to conceive, and they may be facing an IVF journey. I work with a lot of pregnant parents,” Humphrey said. “I’ve had a few frantic parents who are like, ‘We’re at the hospital and they’re not letting us leave. We’ve got to sign the birth certificate. What do we name our baby?’”

Her clients are primarily wealthy families. Her reach extends from the Bay Area to Nebraska and even some international clients.

Lauren Williams of Omaha, Nebraska, reached out to Humphrey a month before her son was due in 2023. She and her husband both had meaningful family names they were considering, but could not seem to come to an agreement on what to name their son. They thought Humphrey might be able to help them merge ideas.

Humphrey did help them come up with some new name combinations as well as some names that were not already on their list, but were similar. Humphrey also told the Williams family to be patient in picking a name.

“I think the most helpful or important thing that she told me in the long run was, ‘Do not name your baby until they are born and you see them.’ So, we went with that advice,” Williams said.

The Nebraska parents ended up welcoming Carter Allen Williams into the world in September 2023.

“Having her support has been important because otherwise it’s a really stressful decision,” Williams said.

She and her husband are now expecting a baby girl in the next few weeks and have once again hired Humphrey to help them pick a name.

“Generally speaking, I’m there to kind of mirror back to them and reflect what I hear them saying,” Humphrey said. “Names are so deeply personal, and they really are going to be your child’s legacy.”

See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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September 27, 2025
Stampede at a political rally for popular actor Vijay in southern India kills 36, injures 40

A stampede at a rally for a popular Indian actor and politician in the southern state of Tamil Nadu killed at least 36 people and injured 40 others, the state’s health minister said late Saturday.Related video above: US tariffs on Indian imports doubled in August, impacting businesses and consumersMa Subramanian told The Associated Press that the victims were dead by the time they were taken to a hospital and that the injured were stable. The dead included eight children, Subramanian said.The rally, which officials say was attended by tens of thousands of people, was being addressed by Vijay, one of Tamil Nadu’s most successful actors-turned-politicians in the district of Karur.Indian media reports, quoting local officials, said that as Vijay spoke to the surging crowd, a group of his supporters and fans fell while trying to get close to his bus, causing the stampede. Supporters had gathered at the political rally amid intensely hot temperatures and Vijay arrived hours late, officials said.”There was indiscipline” at the rally, Subramanian said, adding that an investigation had been ordered.Quoting officials, the Press Trust of India news agency reported that at least 30 people fainted while Vijay was addressing the rally from atop his campaign vehicle and were rushed in ambulances to area hospitals. He halted his speech mid-way when workers raised alarm after noticing that people were fainting and falling, it said, adding that as they were removed to hospitals, Vijay continued his speech.However, he ended his speech shortly after sensing an abnormal situation in a section of the huge gathering, the news agency said.Hours after the accident, Vijay offered his condolences.”My heart is shattered,” he posted on X. “I am writhing in unbearable, indescribable pain and sorrow that words cannot express.”Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the “unfortunate incident” was “deeply saddening.””My thoughts are with the families who have lost their loved ones. Wishing strength to them in this difficult time. Praying for a swift recovery to all those injured,” he said on social media.In southern Indian states, particularly Tamil Nadu, some film stars have larger-than-life status, rooted in the ancient Tamil culture of hero worship and image worship. Many have become politicians, and some have even been given divine status.In 2024, Vijay retired from acting and launched his own political party. It was unclear whether he plans to run for office in Tamil Nadu state.Stampedes are relatively common in India when large crowds gather. In January, at least 30 people were killed as tens of thousands of Hindus rushed to bathe in a sacred river during the Maha Kumbh festival, the world’s largest religious gathering.

NEW DELHI (AP) —

A stampede at a rally for a popular Indian actor and politician in the southern state of Tamil Nadu killed at least 36 people and injured 40 others, the state’s health minister said late Saturday.

Related video above: US tariffs on Indian imports doubled in August, impacting businesses and consumers

Ma Subramanian told The Associated Press that the victims were dead by the time they were taken to a hospital and that the injured were stable. The dead included eight children, Subramanian said.

The rally, which officials say was attended by tens of thousands of people, was being addressed by Vijay, one of Tamil Nadu’s most successful actors-turned-politicians in the district of Karur.

Indian media reports, quoting local officials, said that as Vijay spoke to the surging crowd, a group of his supporters and fans fell while trying to get close to his bus, causing the stampede. Supporters had gathered at the political rally amid intensely hot temperatures and Vijay arrived hours late, officials said.

“There was indiscipline” at the rally, Subramanian said, adding that an investigation had been ordered.

Quoting officials, the Press Trust of India news agency reported that at least 30 people fainted while Vijay was addressing the rally from atop his campaign vehicle and were rushed in ambulances to area hospitals. He halted his speech mid-way when workers raised alarm after noticing that people were fainting and falling, it said, adding that as they were removed to hospitals, Vijay continued his speech.

However, he ended his speech shortly after sensing an abnormal situation in a section of the huge gathering, the news agency said.

Hours after the accident, Vijay offered his condolences.

“My heart is shattered,” he posted on X. “I am writhing in unbearable, indescribable pain and sorrow that words cannot express.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the “unfortunate incident” was “deeply saddening.”

“My thoughts are with the families who have lost their loved ones. Wishing strength to them in this difficult time. Praying for a swift recovery to all those injured,” he said on social media.

In southern Indian states, particularly Tamil Nadu, some film stars have larger-than-life status, rooted in the ancient Tamil culture of hero worship and image worship. Many have become politicians, and some have even been given divine status.

In 2024, Vijay retired from acting and launched his own political party. It was unclear whether he plans to run for office in Tamil Nadu state.

Stampedes are relatively common in India when large crowds gather. In January, at least 30 people were killed as tens of thousands of Hindus rushed to bathe in a sacred river during the Maha Kumbh festival, the world’s largest religious gathering.

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September 27, 2025
After insurance pullback, advocates demand a ‘bill of rights’ for California policyholders

A leading consumer group is proposing a policyholder rights initiative that would require insurers to offer coverage to California homeowners who fireproof their homes — or lose the right to sell home or auto insurance in the state for five years.

The Insurance Policyholder Bill of Rights was filed with state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office last week by Consumer Watchdog, the Los Angeles advocacy group whose founder Harvey Rosenfield authored Proposition 103, the 1988 initiative that governs California home and auto insurance law.

The initiative for the November 2026 ballot also would give policyholders not renewed by their insurer 180 days to make home repairs and improvements necessary for renewal if they face unavoidable permit, construction and other delays.

“The Insurance Policyholder Bill of Rights guarantees that people who invest in wildfire mitigation get coverage and prevents companies from canceling people simply because they file a claim,” Rosenfield said in a statement.

Insurers can seek six-month waivers of the rule in certain geographic areas but would need to show they have an overconcentration of risk there.

The proposed initiative comes after insurers began pulling back from the California market a few years ago after a spate of wildfires and began seeking double-digit rate increases. However, it is unclear whether the group will even start gathering the 500,000-plus signatures it would need to make the ballot.

Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, said the measure was prompted by a separate initiative filed by a Roseville, Calif., insurance broker that would repeal core reforms of Proposition 103, which established an elected insurance commissioner with the right to review requests for rate hikes before they take effect.

The proposed initiative — called the California Insurance Market Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2026 — was filed by Elizabeth Hammack, owner of Panorama Insurance Associates. It would allow insurer rate increases to take effect prior to any rate review, though they could be suspended later if the insurance commissioner determines the market is not “reasonably competitive.”

Additionally, insurers would have to provide premium credits to policyholders who take steps to reduce fire dangers on their property, under the measure.

The measure also would abolish another core element of Proposition 103, by banning payments to “intervenors” such as Consumer Watchdog, which insert themselves in the rate-review process and seek to block or reduce increases — a provision that has irked the industry since its inception.

Hammack did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment.

In an earlier email exchange with The Times, she said: “I drafted up the initiative and filed it out of pure frustration about the horrible California insurance market dysfunction and the feeling of just needing to do something, anything, to make a difference.”

Balber said it requires $5.5 million to gather the required signatures for an initiative. While the group is confident it could raise the funds, she said it would not proceed with its own measure unless Hammack raises money and moves forward beyond the filing stage — or if Consumer Watchdog is swamped by donations.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands of Californians who are fed up with the insurance industry and after the Los Angeles fires, I can guarantee you that there are people out there who would be begging to fund a ballot measure that would finally hold the insurance industry accountable,” she said.

Proposed ballot initiatives in California must be reviewed by the attorney general, who prepares a title and brief summary. After that, proponents have 180 days to gather signatures.

The proposed dueling ballot measures come at a time when there is widespread anger not only over rate increases, but how some insurers have handled claims stemming from the Jan. 7 Los Angeles-area fires, which destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 19 people.

The Eaton Fire Survivors Network in Altadena and local politicians have demanded that Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara halt anymore rate increases for State Farm General, California’s largest home insurer, unless complaints over its claims handling are resolved.

In addition to State Farm, the state’s insurer of last resort, the California FAIR Plan, has come under attack for denying smoke-damage claims. That prompted Gov. Newsom to send a letter this month calling on the plan to handle the claims “expeditiously and fairly.”

The plan has taken on hundreds of thousands of policyholders in recent years as insurers began pulling out of the state’s fire-plagued homeowners market. Hammack’s initiative seeks to have the plan establish a schedule to shrink its roles when more coverage from carriers becomes available.

Her measure also would require the California insurance commissioners to have at least five years of insurance experience, either with a regulator, insurer or in other roles, such as actuarial science.

Times staff writer Paige St. John contributed to this report.

Laurence Darmiento

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September 22, 2025
Israel begins ground offensive in Gaza City with thousands of troops

BEIRUT — Israel began a ground offensive into Gaza City, military officials said Tuesday, slow-rolling into the beleaguered city from multiple directions despite international opprobrium and even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents remain within Gaza’s devastated confines.

Weeks of intense bombardment that all but leveled the Gaza Strip’s largest urban center made way for what Israeli military officials said was the ground maneuver phase of the operation to occupy the city.

“We are operating in the depths of the territory… Our aim is to deepen the blows to Hamas until its defeat,” said the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, in a video statement said to be from the border with Gaza on Tuesday.

“All our operations are carried out according to an orderly plan, with the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas before our eyes.”

Two divisions — comprising tens of thousands of soldiers — began entering the city late Monday from its western flank. Another is supposed to join in the coming days, while two other divisions encircle the city. Some 130,000 reservists are expected to be mobilized, the Israeli military said.

The Israeli military insists Hamas is using Gaza City as “the central hub” of its military and governing power, according to a briefing from its spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin. He added the Palestinian group has turned the city “into the largest human shield in history.”

“We estimate it will take several months to secure the city and its centers of gravity, and additional months to clear the city fully due to deep and entrenched infrastructure,” Defrin said.

In a statement later on Tuesday, Hamas characterized Israel’s accusation that it uses human shields as “a blatant attempt at deception.” It added that Israel is “continuing to perpetrate brutal massacres against innocent civilians.”

Residents reached by messaging apps reported “insane” amounts of bombardment while others said the Israeli military dispatched what they called “booby-trapped robots” — armored personnel carriers filled with explosives repurposed as unmanned drones — into city neighborhoods.

Military officials quoted in Israeli media say troops are proceeding with caution, with the expectation of some 2,000 Hamas fighters bunkered in the city.

Running concurrently with its ground offensive, the Israeli warplanes struck Hodeidah, a vital port city in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels. The Houthis began firing missiles on Israel in 2023 in a bid to pressure the government into a ceasefire with Hamas.

The Gaza operation went ahead despite widespread condemnation from Israel’s European allies and accusations internationally that it was committing genocide, according to a U.N. commission report released on Tuesday. Israel rejected the commission’s findings.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, wrote on X that Israel’s ground offensive “will mean more death, more destruction & more displacement.” She added the European Commission will present measures on Wednesday aimed at pressuring the Israeli government to change course.

Germany, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, excoriated the decision to occupy Gaza City. It is “the completely wrong path,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in a news conference.

Wadephul appealed to the Israeli government to instead return “to the path of negotiations for a ceasefire and an agreement” on the release of captives held in Gaza.

In Israel, the decision to launch the offensive — taken by the Cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August — continues to be a contentious matter that has divided the military leadership and spurred demonstrations against Netanyahu. On Tuesday morning, families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas protested in front of Netanyahu’s house in Jerusalem.

Despite the pummeling and repeated warnings that the roughly 1 million Gaza City residents should flee south to so-called humanitarian areas, more than two-thirds remain, according to Israeli military estimates. Health authorities in Gaza said more than 100 people have been killed since the offensive began; they added that the few remaining operational hospitals are overcrowded and suffering catastrophic shortages in medications and blood units.

“We are seeing massive killing of civilians in a way that I do not remember in any conflict since I am Secretary-General,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a news conference. Israel, he said, did not appear “interested in a serious negotiation for a ceasefire and release of hostages” and that it was determined to “go up to the end.”

Christoph Lockyear, secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, said that even those Gazans who survived the bombardment on their journey to southern Gaza would “find neither safety nor the basics they need to exist.”

Israeli soldiers work on their tanks and armored personnel carriers at a staging area on the border with the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Tuesday.

(Leo Correa / Associated Press)

“What is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, it is the systematic destruction of a people. MSF is clear: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and doing so with absolute impunity,” he said.

Many residents also say they cannot afford to go to al-Mawasi encampment, the area south of the enclave designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone, with drivers charging more than $1,000. Even for those who could pay such sums, overcrowding means there’s no shelter to be found or even a space for tents; and Israeli strikes have hit safe zones in the past.

Nevertheless, news broadcasts on location on the coastal highway south of Gaza City showed a deluge of thousands of vehicles, many straining under haphazardly piled towers of mattresses, plastic chairs, bags of clothing — anything people could save from their homes ahead of what is expected to be the city’s complete destruction.

Speaking to reporters ahead of his trip to London on Tuesday, President Trump said he “didn’t know too much about” the ground operation, but that Hamas “would have hell to pay” if it used hostages as human shields.

In a later news conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu said Trump invited him to visit the White House in two weeks’ time.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.

(Nathan Howard / Associated Press)

As Israeli armor advanced into Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was traveling from Tel Aviv to Doha on Tuesday morning, where he hopes to assuage Qatar’s ire over an Israeli strike on the Qatari capital targeting Hamas leaders last week.

A statement from the office of Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the meeting with Rubio centered on ways to enhance defense cooperation, along with joint diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire.

But in a news conference in Doha on Tuesday, Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, said ceasefire talks would have “no validity… when one party wants to assassinate anybody who is willing to talk on other side.”

“What kind of talks can be held, about what?” he said.

“Our focus right now is protecting our sovereignty, and we will not look into other issues until this one is resolved.”

In response to the strike, Qatar had threatened to suspend its longtime mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel. During a summit of Arabic and Islamic States on Monday held in Doha, its leaders berated Israel and demanded concrete punitive actions. (A collective communique from the summit announced little more than condemnation.)

Earlier, Rubio said he hoped the government would continue shepherding negotiations.

“If any country in the world can help mediate it, Qatar is the one,” he said.

He added Hamas had a “very short window of time in which a deal can happen,” and that the Trump administration’s preference was for a negotiated settlement.

Demonstrators in Jerusalem hold photos Tuesday depicting Israeli hostages being held in the Gaza Strip.

(Mahmoud Illean / Associated Press)

Hamas dismissed his words in a statement on Tuesday, saying Netanyahu bears “full responsibility” for the hostages’ lives, and that the U.S. used a “policy of deception” to cover up Israeli “war crimes.”

Israel demands the group hand back all hostages, surrender and disarm. Hamas insists on a ceasefire with negotiations that would lead to an exchange of hostages and Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and Israeli troops’ withdrawing from the Gaza Strip; disarmament would happen when Israel agrees to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The war sparked on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — two-thirds of them civilians, Israeli tallies say — and kidnapping 251 others.

Israel retaliated with a full-on offensive that pulverized wide swaths of the enclave and has so far killed more than 64,000 people, the grand majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities and aid groups; the Israeli military’s former chief of staff said in a recent interview more than 200,000 people have been killed or injured — more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population, a figure that aligns with the Palestinian Health Ministry’s estimates.

Nabih Bulos

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September 16, 2025
Barrage of Israeli airstrikes kills 32 in Gaza City, including 12 children, hospital says

A barrage of airstrikes killed at least 32 people across Gaza City as Israel ramps up its offensive there and urges Palestinians to evacuate, medical staff reported Saturday.The dead included 12 children, according to the morgue in Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.In recent days, Israel has intensified strikes across Gaza City, destroying multiple high-rise buildings and accusing Hamas of putting surveillance equipment in them.On Saturday, the army said it struck another high-rise used by Hamas in the area of Gaza City. It has ordered residents to leave as part of an offensive aimed at taking over the largest Palestinian city, which it says is Hamas’ last stronghold. Hundreds of thousands of people remain there, struggling under conditions of famine.One of the strikes overnight and into early morning Saturday hit a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing a family of 10, including a mother and her three children, said health officials. The Palestinian Football Association said a player for the Al-Helal Sporting Club, Mohammed Ramez Sultan, was killed in the strikes, along with 14 members of his family. Images showed the strikes hitting followed by plumes of smoke.Israel’s army did not immediately respond to questions about the strikes.Hostages’ relatives rally in IsraelMeanwhile, relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a deal to release their loved ones and criticized what they said was a counterproductive approach by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in securing a resolution.Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, described Israel’s attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar this week as a “spectacular failure.”“President Trump said yesterday that every time there is progress in the negotiations, Netanyahu bombs someone. But it wasn’t Hamas leaders he tried to bomb — it was our chance, as families, to bring our loved ones home,” Zangauker said.Some Palestinians are leaving Gaza City, but many are stuckIn the wake of escalating hostilities and calls to evacuate the city, the number of people leaving has spiked in recent weeks, according to aid workers. However, many families remain stuck due to the cost of finding transportation and housing, while others have been displaced too many times and do not want to move again, not trusting that anywhere in the enclave is safe.In a message on social media Saturday, Israel’s army told the remaining Palestinians in Gaza City to leave “immediately” and move south to what it’s calling a humanitarian zone. Army spokesman Avichay Adraee said that more than a quarter of a million people had left Gaza City — from an estimated 1 million who live in the area of north Gaza around the city.The United Nations, however, put the number of people who have left at around 100,000 between mid-August and mid-September. The U.N. and aid groups have warned that displacing hundreds of thousands of people will exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis. Sites in southern Gaza where Israel is telling people to go are overcrowded, according to the U.N., and it can cost money to move, which many people do not have.An initiative headed by the U.N. to bring temporary shelters into Gaza said more than 86,000 tents and other supplies were still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza as of last week.Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday that seven people, including children, died from malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours, raising the toll to 420, including 145 children, since the war began.The bombardment Friday night across Gaza City came days after Israel launched a strike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar, intensifying its campaign against the militant group and endangering negotiations over ending the war in Gaza.Families of the hostages still held in Gaza are pleading with Israel to halt the offensive, worried it will kill their relatives. There are 48 hostages still inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive.The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, abducting 251 people and killing some 1,200, mostly civilians. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children. Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed, and around 90% of some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip —

A barrage of airstrikes killed at least 32 people across Gaza City as Israel ramps up its offensive there and urges Palestinians to evacuate, medical staff reported Saturday.

The dead included 12 children, according to the morgue in Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

In recent days, Israel has intensified strikes across Gaza City, destroying multiple high-rise buildings and accusing Hamas of putting surveillance equipment in them.

On Saturday, the army said it struck another high-rise used by Hamas in the area of Gaza City. It has ordered residents to leave as part of an offensive aimed at taking over the largest Palestinian city, which it says is Hamas’ last stronghold. Hundreds of thousands of people remain there, struggling under conditions of famine.

One of the strikes overnight and into early morning Saturday hit a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing a family of 10, including a mother and her three children, said health officials. The Palestinian Football Association said a player for the Al-Helal Sporting Club, Mohammed Ramez Sultan, was killed in the strikes, along with 14 members of his family. Images showed the strikes hitting followed by plumes of smoke.

Israel’s army did not immediately respond to questions about the strikes.

Hostages’ relatives rally in Israel

Meanwhile, relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a deal to release their loved ones and criticized what they said was a counterproductive approach by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in securing a resolution.

Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, described Israel’s attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar this week as a “spectacular failure.”

“President Trump said yesterday that every time there is progress in the negotiations, Netanyahu bombs someone. But it wasn’t Hamas leaders he tried to bomb — it was our chance, as families, to bring our loved ones home,” Zangauker said.

Some Palestinians are leaving Gaza City, but many are stuck

In the wake of escalating hostilities and calls to evacuate the city, the number of people leaving has spiked in recent weeks, according to aid workers. However, many families remain stuck due to the cost of finding transportation and housing, while others have been displaced too many times and do not want to move again, not trusting that anywhere in the enclave is safe.

In a message on social media Saturday, Israel’s army told the remaining Palestinians in Gaza City to leave “immediately” and move south to what it’s calling a humanitarian zone. Army spokesman Avichay Adraee said that more than a quarter of a million people had left Gaza City — from an estimated 1 million who live in the area of north Gaza around the city.

The United Nations, however, put the number of people who have left at around 100,000 between mid-August and mid-September. The U.N. and aid groups have warned that displacing hundreds of thousands of people will exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis. Sites in southern Gaza where Israel is telling people to go are overcrowded, according to the U.N., and it can cost money to move, which many people do not have.

An initiative headed by the U.N. to bring temporary shelters into Gaza said more than 86,000 tents and other supplies were still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza as of last week.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday that seven people, including children, died from malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours, raising the toll to 420, including 145 children, since the war began.

The bombardment Friday night across Gaza City came days after Israel launched a strike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar, intensifying its campaign against the militant group and endangering negotiations over ending the war in Gaza.

Families of the hostages still held in Gaza are pleading with Israel to halt the offensive, worried it will kill their relatives. There are 48 hostages still inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, abducting 251 people and killing some 1,200, mostly civilians. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children. Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed, and around 90% of some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced.

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September 13, 2025
‘It’s like a homecoming for everybody’: Lodi Grape Festival celebrates decades of tradition

THE EXCITEMENT. GUYS HAVING FUN SAY YEEHAW! THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF THINGS TO DO OR SEE INSIDE THE GATES OF THE LODI GRAPE FESTIVAL. IT’S ACTUALLY A FAMILY TRADITION. WE’VE BEEN GOING. I’VE BEEN GOING HERE SINCE I WAS LITTLE. THAT’S HOW IT’S BEEN FOR YEARS. IT’S JUST SOMETHING THAT, LIKE, TRULY MEANS A LOT TO US. IT’S SHOWTIME. THE FESTIVAL DATES BACK TO THE 1930S. ARE WE READY? FOR MANY, THE OUTING IS A TRADITION. WE HAVE LOTS OF MEMORIES HERE. THIS IS THE LAVA. THIS GROUP SAYS THEY’VE BEEN COMING HERE FOR DECADES. AND I HAVE EVERY ONE OF THEM. AND THEY HAVE THE PINS TO PROVE IT. THEY STOPPED MAKING THEM, LIKE TEN YEARS AGO. BUT I HAVE EVERY SINGLE ONE. IT USED TO BE WHEN WE WERE GROWING UP, YOU GOT AS FAR AS THE BEER BOOTH, AND THAT’S THAT’S WHERE ALL THE PARENTS STOP THOSE LONG LINES STILL MARK THE BOOTHS WHERE YOU CAN BUY DRINKS, AND WHILE MANY WILL DRINK THE WINE, CATCHING ME DOUBLE — THE GRAPES. WANT TO BECOME WINE VERY BADLY? THEY DO. SOME WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO MAKE IT. SINCE WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF 100,000 ACRES OF CALIFORNIA’S NICEST GRAPES, IT’S A GOOD IDEA THAT YOU SHOULD MAKE SOME WINE. THE GRAPES AND THE WINE INDUSTRY IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE COMMUNITY, AND WE WANT TO PROMOTE THAT THE BEST WE CAN. MARK ARMSTRONG IS THE CEO OF THE LODI GRAPE FESTIVAL. I’VE BEEN THE MANAGER 34 YEARS. I’M STILL THE NEW GUY. HE SAYS HE’S PROUD TO PUT THE FOUR DAY EVENT ON FOR THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO COME EVERY YEAR. IT’S LIKE HOMECOMING FOR EVERYBODY. IT’S A CELEBRATION OF THE GRAPE HARVEST AND SOMETHING FOR LODI FAMILIES TO LOOK FORWARD TO. EVERY YEAR. AND IT IS A FOUR DAY FESTIVAL, SO YOU CAN STILL COME IF YOU PLAN TO. THEY RECOMMEND BUYING YOUR TICKETS ONLINE. THAT WAY YOU CAN GET THE BEST DEAL IN LODI, PEYTON HEADLEE KCRA THREE NEWS. IT RUNS FROM NOON TO MIDNIGHT TOMORROW AND SATURDAY NOON TO 11 ON SUNDAY. THERE’S LIVE MUS

‘It’s like a homecoming for everybody’: Lodi Grape Festival celebrates decades of tradition

The Lodi Grape Festival in Northern California kicks off its four-day celebration, drawing thousands to enjoy food, wine, and entertainment.

Updated: 11:22 PM PDT Sep 11, 2025

Editorial Standards ⓘ

The Lodi Grape Festival in Northern California has begun its four-day celebration, marking the harvest season for wine grapes and drawing thousands of attendees to enjoy the festivities.The festival is filled with entertainment, food, vendors, grape murals, wine tasting, and so much more.”It’s actually a family tradition. I’ve been going here since I was little,” Monica Izaguirre said. “It’s just something that, like, truly means a lot to us.”For many families, the outing is a tradition that dates back decades. “It used to be when we were growing up, you got as far as the beer booths, and that’s where all the parents stopped,” Karen Brown Anderson said. “We’d get ride tickets and they go, okay, you’ve got a half hour and then come back here.”While many drink the wine that the festival offers, one booth will teach you how to make it.”Since we’re in the middle of 100,000 acres of California’s nicest grapes, it’s a good idea that you should make some wine,” Randy Savig with the Lodi Amateur Vintners Association said. “We make wine amateurish to start out with, and then some get very good at it. We have over, I think it’s 18 wineries in our Lodi area that they have started with our club and now they are a commercial winery.”Mark Armstrong, CEO of the Lodi Grape Festival, said the festival dates back to the 1930s. He emphasized the importance of the grape and wine industry to the community. “The grapes and the wine industry is the lifeblood of the community. And we want to promote that the best we can,” he said. Armstrong, who has managed the festival for 34 years, expressed pride in hosting the event for tens of thousands of attendees. “It’s like a homecoming for everybody,” he said.Tickets are still available. Armstrong said he recommends you buy tickets online for the best deals. The festival runs from noon to midnight on Friday and Saturday, and noon to 11 p.m. on Sunday, featuring live music acts including Tyler Rich and “We the Kings.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

LODI, Calif. —

The Lodi Grape Festival in Northern California has begun its four-day celebration, marking the harvest season for wine grapes and drawing thousands of attendees to enjoy the festivities.

The festival is filled with entertainment, food, vendors, grape murals, wine tasting, and so much more.

“It’s actually a family tradition. I’ve been going here since I was little,” Monica Izaguirre said. “It’s just something that, like, truly means a lot to us.”

For many families, the outing is a tradition that dates back decades.

“It used to be when we were growing up, you got as far as the beer booths, and that’s where all the parents stopped,” Karen Brown Anderson said. “We’d get ride tickets and they go, okay, you’ve got a half hour and then come back here.”

While many drink the wine that the festival offers, one booth will teach you how to make it.

“Since we’re in the middle of 100,000 acres of California’s nicest grapes, it’s a good idea that you should make some wine,” Randy Savig with the Lodi Amateur Vintners Association said. “We make wine amateurish to start out with, and then some get very good at it. We have over, I think it’s 18 wineries in our Lodi area that they have started with our club and now they are a commercial winery.”

Mark Armstrong, CEO of the Lodi Grape Festival, said the festival dates back to the 1930s. He emphasized the importance of the grape and wine industry to the community.

“The grapes and the wine industry is the lifeblood of the community. And we want to promote that the best we can,” he said.

Armstrong, who has managed the festival for 34 years, expressed pride in hosting the event for tens of thousands of attendees.

“It’s like a homecoming for everybody,” he said.

Tickets are still available. Armstrong said he recommends you buy tickets online for the best deals.

The festival runs from noon to midnight on Friday and Saturday, and noon to 11 p.m. on Sunday, featuring live music acts including Tyler Rich and “We the Kings.”

See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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September 11, 2025
Dad of Burning Man homicide victim appeals to Trump and FBI to solve the case

Ten days after a Russian man was mysteriously killed among a crowd of tens of thousands at Burning Man, Russian media is reporting that the man’s father has asked President Trump to have the FBI investigate.

Vadim Kruglov, 37, had been living in Washington state and, according to friends’ Instagram accounts, was making his first pilgrimage to the desert festival. He was killed on Aug. 30 sometime between 8 and 9:30 p.m., his body found “in a pool of blood” around the time the giant wooden effigy of a man was lighted on fire.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, which has jurisdiction over Black Rock Desert where the annual event takes place, is leading the homicide investigation but has made no public comments about what may have happened. The agency has issued public appeals for information about “any person who would commit such a heinous crime against another human being.”

The agency has also announced that Kruglov’s family has been formally notified of his death, and that “our sincerest condolences from the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office go out to Vadim Kruglov’s family for their tragic loss.”

Sheriff’s officials declined to comment on reports of the father’s appeal, or his criticisms of the pace of the investigation.

The Moscow Times reported Thursday that the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published a video from Kruglov’s father Thursday.

In it, Igor Kruglov bemoaned that “ten days have passed” and yet the investigation is “being conducted by one local sheriff.”

“Evil must be punished,” the father continues, “therefore, I appeal to you, dear Mr. President, and ask you to order the FBI to immediately begin investigating the murder of my son.”

Kruglov’s friends have been pushing a similar message to their tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

One post claimed that Kruglov died “from a professional knife strike to the neck — a single fatal blow. This happened in a place where more than 80,000 people from all over the world were gathered.” The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the manner in which Kruglov was killed or say whether the friend’s post was accurate.

The Instagram post contained several photographs of Kruglov enjoying himself at the festival.

“A young and talented man, who made a big contribution to this world, has been killed,” the friend wrote. “And the person who did this is still walking free.” The post added: “We strongly believe a federal investigation is needed.”

Jessica Garrison

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September 11, 2025
LIVE: Americans mark 24th anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks

Americans are marking 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with solemn ceremonies, volunteer work and other tributes honoring the victims.Watch a livestream of the 9/11 ceremony at the Pentagon in the video player above.Many loved ones of the nearly 3,000 people killed were joining dignitaries and politicians at commemorations Thursday in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.On Thursday morning, Denise Matuza, Jennifer Nilsen and Michelle Pizzo boarded a bus from Staten Island for Lower Manhattan — each wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the names and faces of their husbands, who died in the attack.“Even 24 years later, it’s heart wrenching,” said Nilsen, whose husband, Troy Nilsen, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center. “It feels the same way every year.”For Ronald Bucca, who lost his father, the FDNY fire marshal Ronald Paul Bucca, the annual memorial served as an opportunity to “educate people on that day, especially the younger generations, and learn from each other how to be resilient and deal with loss and rebuild.”Pizzo, whose husband, Jason DeFazio, also worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, hoped more people could just take one minute to reflect on the day.“Younger kids don’t realize that you have to remember,” she said.The remembrances are being held during a time of increased political tensions. The 9/11 anniversary, often promoted as a day of national unity, comes a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah.LIVE: Watch a livestream below of the 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade CenterThe reading of names and moments of silenceKirk’s killing prompted additional security measures around the 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center site in New York.Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, had planned to attend the event in Manhattan but instead are set to visit with Kirk’s family on Thursday in Salt Lake City, according to a person familiar with Vance’s plans, but not authorized to speak about them publicly.Many in the crowd at Thursday’s ceremony at ground zero held up photos of lost loved ones as a moment of silence marked the exact time when the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center’s iconic twin towers. Family members then began reading aloud the names of the victims.At the Pentagon in Virginia, the 184 service members and civilians killed when hijackers steered a jetliner into the headquarters of the U.S. military were being honored in a ceremony attended by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. The president was then expected to head to the Bronx for a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers Thursday evening.And in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a similar ceremony marked by moments of silence, the reading of names and the laying of wreaths, will honor the victims of Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit. That service will be attended by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.People across the country are also marking the 9/11 anniversary with service projects and charity works as part of a national day of service. Volunteers will be taking part in food and clothing drives, park and neighborhood cleanups, blood banks and other community events.Reverberations from attacks persistIn all, the attacks by al-Qaida militants killed 2,977 people, including many financial workers at the World Trade Center and firefighters and police officers who had rushed to the burning buildings trying to save lives.The attacks reverberated globally and altered the course of U.S. policy, both domestically and overseas. It led to the “Global War on Terrorism” and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and related conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.While the hijackers died in the attacks, the U.S. government has struggled to conclude its long-running legal case against the man accused of masterminding the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The former al-Qaida leader was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later taken to a U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but has never received a trial.The anniversary ceremony in New York was taking place at the National Sept. 11 memorial and Museum, where two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets inscribed with the names of the dead mark the spots where the twin towers once stood.The Trump administration has been contemplating ways that the federal government might take control of the memorial plaza and its underground museum, which are now run by a public charity currently chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic. Trump has spoken of possibly making the site a national monument.In the years since the attacks, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars providing health care and compensation to tens of thousands of people who were exposed to the toxic dust that billowed over parts of Manhattan when the twin towers collapsed. More than 140,000 people are still enrolled in monitoring programs intended to identify those with health conditions that could potentially be linked to hazardous materials in the soot.__Associated Press reporters Michael Hill in Albany, New York, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this story.

NEW YORK —

Americans are marking 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with solemn ceremonies, volunteer work and other tributes honoring the victims.

Watch a livestream of the 9/11 ceremony at the Pentagon in the video player above.

Many loved ones of the nearly 3,000 people killed were joining dignitaries and politicians at commemorations Thursday in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

On Thursday morning, Denise Matuza, Jennifer Nilsen and Michelle Pizzo boarded a bus from Staten Island for Lower Manhattan — each wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the names and faces of their husbands, who died in the attack.

“Even 24 years later, it’s heart wrenching,” said Nilsen, whose husband, Troy Nilsen, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center. “It feels the same way every year.”

For Ronald Bucca, who lost his father, the FDNY fire marshal Ronald Paul Bucca, the annual memorial served as an opportunity to “educate people on that day, especially the younger generations, and learn from each other how to be resilient and deal with loss and rebuild.”

Pizzo, whose husband, Jason DeFazio, also worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, hoped more people could just take one minute to reflect on the day.

“Younger kids don’t realize that you have to remember,” she said.

The remembrances are being held during a time of increased political tensions. The 9/11 anniversary, often promoted as a day of national unity, comes a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah.

LIVE: Watch a livestream below of the 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center

The reading of names and moments of silence

Kirk’s killing prompted additional security measures around the 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center site in New York.

Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, had planned to attend the event in Manhattan but instead are set to visit with Kirk’s family on Thursday in Salt Lake City, according to a person familiar with Vance’s plans, but not authorized to speak about them publicly.

Many in the crowd at Thursday’s ceremony at ground zero held up photos of lost loved ones as a moment of silence marked the exact time when the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center’s iconic twin towers. Family members then began reading aloud the names of the victims.

At the Pentagon in Virginia, the 184 service members and civilians killed when hijackers steered a jetliner into the headquarters of the U.S. military were being honored in a ceremony attended by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. The president was then expected to head to the Bronx for a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers Thursday evening.

And in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a similar ceremony marked by moments of silence, the reading of names and the laying of wreaths, will honor the victims of Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit. That service will be attended by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.

People across the country are also marking the 9/11 anniversary with service projects and charity works as part of a national day of service. Volunteers will be taking part in food and clothing drives, park and neighborhood cleanups, blood banks and other community events.

Reverberations from attacks persist

In all, the attacks by al-Qaida militants killed 2,977 people, including many financial workers at the World Trade Center and firefighters and police officers who had rushed to the burning buildings trying to save lives.

The attacks reverberated globally and altered the course of U.S. policy, both domestically and overseas. It led to the “Global War on Terrorism” and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and related conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.

While the hijackers died in the attacks, the U.S. government has struggled to conclude its long-running legal case against the man accused of masterminding the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The former al-Qaida leader was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later taken to a U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but has never received a trial.

The anniversary ceremony in New York was taking place at the National Sept. 11 memorial and Museum, where two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets inscribed with the names of the dead mark the spots where the twin towers once stood.

The Trump administration has been contemplating ways that the federal government might take control of the memorial plaza and its underground museum, which are now run by a public charity currently chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic. Trump has spoken of possibly making the site a national monument.

In the years since the attacks, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars providing health care and compensation to tens of thousands of people who were exposed to the toxic dust that billowed over parts of Manhattan when the twin towers collapsed. More than 140,000 people are still enrolled in monitoring programs intended to identify those with health conditions that could potentially be linked to hazardous materials in the soot.

__

Associated Press reporters Michael Hill in Albany, New York, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this story.

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September 11, 2025
Commentary: It’s not just Latinos. Supreme Court says all brown people are suspicious

What makes someone suspicious enough to be grabbed by masked federal authorities?

Is it a Mexican family eating dinner at a table near a taco truck?

Afghan women in hijabs working at a Middle Eastern market?

South Asian girls in colorful lehengas, speaking Hindi at an Indian wedding?

According to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing a concurrence in the Supreme Court’s emergency ruling allowing roving immigration raids in Los Angeles, any of these could be fair game, using law and “common sense.”

Brown people, speaking brown languages, hanging out with other brown people, and doing brown people things like working low-wage jobs now meets the legal standard of “reasonable suspicion” required for immigration stops.

Living while brown has become the new driving while Black.

Of course, this particular high court ruling — and our general angst — has centered on Latino immigrants. That’s fair, and understandable. In California, about half of our immigrants are from Mexico, and thousands more from other Latin and South American countries.

But increasingly, especially for newer immigrants, more folks are coming from Africa and Asian countries such as China and India — some of which, you may recall, Donald Trump called “shithole countries” way back in 2018, while questioning why America doesn’t take more immigrants from white places such as Norway.

It’s a dangerous mistake to think Trump’s immigration purge is just about Latinos. He’s made that clear himself. We have reached the point in our burgeoning white nationalism when our high court has deemed brown synonymous with illegal, regardless of what country that pigment originated in. False distinctions about who is being targeted create divisions at a time when solidarity is our greatest power.

“It’s really about racial subordination, and this is really about promoting white supremacy in this nation,” George Galvis, executive director of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, told me. He’s part Native American and part Latino, and 100% against policies like this one that target people by skin color.

Mexico, India, China, Iran. People from these places may not always see what they have in common, but let me help you out.

Racists see two colors: white and not white. Although this particular case was filed on behalf of Latino defendants, there is nothing in it that limits its scope to Latinos.

“It’s not targeting, you know, Eastern Europeans. It’s not targeting people who are Caucasian,” said Amr Shabaik, legal director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in L.A., a nonprofit civil rights organization advocating for American Muslims. “This is going to be on Black and brown communities, and that’s who’s going to feel the brunt.”

For Black Americans, this argument is as old as dirt. Our criminal justice system, our society, has a long and documented history of viewing Black Americans with suspicion — considering it “common sense” to think they’re up to something nefarious for actions like getting behind the wheel of a car. But, for the most part, our courts have frowned upon such obvious racism — though not always.

That anti-Black discrimination can be seen today in Trump’s deployment of the National Guard into urban centers in what Trump has described as a “war” on crime, a callback to the war on drugs of the 1990s that targeted Black Americans with devastating consequences.

This ruling on immigration enforcement goes hand-in-hand with that military deployment, two prongs in a strategy to wear away our outrage and shock at the dismantling of civil rights.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, the 4th Amendment is supposed to protect us all from “arbitrary interference” by law enforcement.

“After today,” she wrote, “that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”

That makes this ruling “unconscionably irreconcilable” with the Constitution, she wrote.

ICE has detained about 67,000 people across the country since last October, according to government data. Of those, almost 18,000 are from Mexico. Detentions of people from Guatemala and Honduras add almost 14,000 Latinos to that number. Places including Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela add thousands more. Certainly, by any measure, Latinos are bearing the brunt of immigration enforcement.

Other parts of the brown world are not immune, however. More than 2,800 people from India have been detained, as have more than 1,400 Chinese people. Thousands of people from across Africa, including more than 800 Egyptians, have been locked up, too.

So we are not just talking about Latino people at car washes or Home Depots. We are talking about Artesia’s Little India; Mid-City’s Little Ethiopia; the Sri Lankan community in West Covina.

We are talking about Sacramento’s Stockton Boulevard, where Vietnamese men congregate in the cafes every afternoon.

We are talking about the farms, schools and towns of the Central Valley and the Central Coast, where Latino and Asian immigrants grow our food.

We are talking about cities such as Fremont in the Bay Area, where 50% of the population is Asian, from places including India, China and the Philippines.

We are talking about California, where immigrants make up 27% of the state’s population, more than double the national average. And yes, many of them lack documents, or live in families of mixed status.

A recent UC Merced study found that there are about 2.2 million undocumented immigrants in California. Of those, about two-thirds have been here more than a decade, and half have been here for more than 20 years.

“This isn’t about enforcing immigration laws — it’s about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Stephen Miller’s idea of an American, including U.S. citizens and children, to deliberately harm California’s families and small businesses,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media. “Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family — and every person is now a target.”

Remember a few short months ago when our dear leader swore they were only going after criminals? How quickly did that morph into criminals being anyone who had crossed the border illegally?

And now, it has openly become anyone who is brown — and we are not even shocked. We are happily debating what the rules of these broad sweeps will be, having given up entirely on the fact that broad sweeps are horrific.

Do you think it will stop with immigration, or even crime? What about LGBTQ+ people? Or protesters? Who becomes the next threat?

Immigration sweeps are not a Latino problem, a Latino fear. We have opened the door to target people who “common sense” tells us are un-American.

The only way to close that door is with our collective strength, undivided by the kind of “common sense” discrimination that men like Kavanaugh embrace.

Anita Chabria

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September 10, 2025
‘Get out of there!’ Israel warns Gaza City to evacuate

BEIRUT — Israel on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of the entire city of Gaza, the first time it has done so in the run-up to its planned full invasion of the largest urban center in the Gaza Strip’s north.

Home to roughly 1 million residents before the war, Gaza City still has hundreds of thousands of residents who are enduring famine conditions and fearful of displacement to other parts of an enclave where nowhere has proven safe in Israel’s almost-two-year campaign to destroy Hamas.

Six Palestinians died of hunger on Tuesday, according to Palestinian health authorities, increasing the death toll of starvation victims to 399.

“There’s no place left to go, not in the south, not in the north, nothing,” said Bajess AlKhaledi, a Gaza resident interviewed on Tuesday by Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera English. “We’re completely trapped.”

The evacuation order came the same day Israel launched an attack on Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Some 50,000 have left northern Gaza to areas south, according to the United Nations and partner humanitarian agencies on Sunday. They warn that hundreds of thousands are expected to stay put in Gaza City because of logistical and financial difficulties, and that plans for large-scale displacement would amount to forced migration — a war crime under international law.

It remains unclear when the Gaza City invasion will start, though Israel has already called up tens of thousands of reservists and destroyed dozens of high-rise residential towers in recent days. The Israeli military said the towers were being used by Hamas, a charge Hamas denied.

The Israeli military says it controls some 40% of the city.

“All of this is only the introduction, only the beginning of the main intensive operation — the ground incursion of our forces, that are now getting organized and gathering, into Gaza City,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address on Monday.

“To the residents of Gaza, listen to me carefully: You have been warned; get out of there!”

Israel claims Hamas remains bunkered in Gaza City and has vowed to destroy its remaining bastions there to prevent it from regrouping, despite repeated warnings by the U.N. and rights groups that no area in the enclave could handle large-scale displacement.

“Gaza is being obliterated, reduced to a wasteland,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, in a social media post on Tuesday.

“There is no safe place in Gaza, let alone a humanitarian zone. It is a large and growing camp concentrating hungry Palestinians in despair,” Lazzarini wrote.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, meanwhile, called for “immediate protection” of hospitals and medical crews, and warned of “a humanitarian catastrophe that threatens the lives of thousands of patients and wounded individuals.”

The majority of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have already suffered multiple displacements since the war began, as Israel’s military campaign has attacked designated “safe zones” and left wide swaths of the Strip obliterated. Famine, spurred by a months-long total blockade by Israel, stalks additional victims every day.

Israel’s plans to invade Gaza City continue even as torturous back-and-forth negotiations with Hamas received a push from President Trump over the weekend.

On Sunday, Trump issued what he called a final warning to Hamas to accept a deal he proposed.

Details remain scant, but the agreement stipulates the Palestinian group release all hostages in its custody in exchange for the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel jail.

“The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”

Hamas responded in a statement on Sunday that it was ready to “immediately” sit at the negotiating table to release all hostages. In return, Hamas wants “a clear declaration” from Israel to end the war, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and the formation of an independent committee to administer the Strip.

It added that it wanted guarantees Israel would adhere to the agreement. Israel broke a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in March. It did not respond to another U.S. proposal in August that Hamas accepted.

Israel has also demanded Hamas surrender and lay down its arms. The group says it will not disarm until Israel agrees to the creation of an independent Palestinian state over Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which would have East Jerusalem as its capital. East Jerusalem is considered occupied under international law, though Israel says it is part of its capital.

Nabih Bulos

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September 9, 2025
Thousands of redheads celebrate their strands at a festival in the Netherlands

The southern Dutch city of Tilburg is seeing more color than usual this weekend, as thousands of redheads from all over the world gather in the Netherlands for a once-a-year festival to celebrate their flaming locks.The 2025 edition of the Redhead Days festival includes music, food trucks and workshops tailored to particular needs of redheads, from makeup explainers to skin cancer prevention.Organizers expect the three-day event to draw several thousand attendees from some 80 countries.Elounda Bakker, a Dutch festival veteran of 15 years, played cards with a group of redheaded friends from across the world who meet together every year at the festival.”I came out of curiosity mostly, just to see what it would be like not to stand out in the crowd,” said Bakker, 29. “It was really an interesting first experience and I just keep coming because I met some really nice friends here.”Magician Daniel Hank traveled six hours from Germany to join the festivities, now proud to flaunt the hair that made him the target of bullying when younger.”I think it’s really easy to recognize me because there are not that many people with a red beard, there are not many guys with long red hair,” he said.The festival is free and open to all, with the exception of the group photo on Sunday. That event is restricted to “natural” redheads.The 2013 edition set a Guinness World Record for the “largest gathering of people with natural red hair” with 1,672 people posing for the group photo.The tradition emerged two decades ago when Dutch artist Bart Rouwenhorst put out a call for 15 red-haired models for an art project in a local newspaper. He got 10 times the response he was expecting and brought the group together for a photo.The project got so much attention, Rouwenhorst organized a similar meetup the following year and has continued to oversee the festival as it has expanded into the multiday event it is today.”The festival is really amazing because all the people, they resemble each other and they feel like it’s a family,” he said.

The southern Dutch city of Tilburg is seeing more color than usual this weekend, as thousands of redheads from all over the world gather in the Netherlands for a once-a-year festival to celebrate their flaming locks.

The 2025 edition of the Redhead Days festival includes music, food trucks and workshops tailored to particular needs of redheads, from makeup explainers to skin cancer prevention.

Organizers expect the three-day event to draw several thousand attendees from some 80 countries.

Elounda Bakker, a Dutch festival veteran of 15 years, played cards with a group of redheaded friends from across the world who meet together every year at the festival.

“I came out of curiosity mostly, just to see what it would be like not to stand out in the crowd,” said Bakker, 29. “It was really an interesting first experience and I just keep coming because I met some really nice friends here.”

Magician Daniel Hank traveled six hours from Germany to join the festivities, now proud to flaunt the hair that made him the target of bullying when younger.

“I think it’s really easy to recognize me because there are not that many people with a red beard, there are not many guys with long red hair,” he said.

The festival is free and open to all, with the exception of the group photo on Sunday. That event is restricted to “natural” redheads.

The 2013 edition set a Guinness World Record for the “largest gathering of people with natural red hair” with 1,672 people posing for the group photo.

The tradition emerged two decades ago when Dutch artist Bart Rouwenhorst put out a call for 15 red-haired models for an art project in a local newspaper. He got 10 times the response he was expecting and brought the group together for a photo.

The project got so much attention, Rouwenhorst organized a similar meetup the following year and has continued to oversee the festival as it has expanded into the multiday event it is today.

“The festival is really amazing because all the people, they resemble each other and they feel like it’s a family,” he said.

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August 31, 2025
‘Moment of crisis’: Unions in somber mood this Labor Day

Thousands of workers and union organizers from across California will gather for picnics and marches this weekend to honor the contributions of the nation’s working people.

But the Labor Day celebrations will be tempered by a sobering reality: Unions face mounting pressure to protect their members from the Trump administration’s immigration raids, cuts in Medicaid services and a weakened National Labor Relations Board.

“We know how important we are to preserving and protecting democracy,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation. “We have a special role in that. We are not going to get silenced, and we’re not going to be paralyzed.”

From farm fields to car washes, labor groups have scrambled to support families of the hundreds detained and deported in numerous chaotic and violent raids that have resulted in the deaths of two people —a day laborer and a farmworker — killed while fleeing federal agents.

The raids reverberated across the state’s local labor community in June when David Huerta of SEIU California was injured and detained by law enforcement while documenting the first major immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles.

“Farmworkers are afraid….They don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next with these raids, but they understand the only way we’re going to have power is if we come together,” said Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers.

Romero and other union leaders said their focus remains on organizing more workplaces, while also working to educate people on their rights and staging legal and nonviolent protests against government policies.

“We are all under attack by the federal government right now,” said Jeremy Goldberg, executive director of the Central Coast Labor Council. “The need is tremendous.”

In early August, the Trump administration moved forward with a plan to end collective bargaining with federal unions across a swath of government agencies. The government said the changes were necessary to protect national security, but unions viewed it as retaliation for their participation in lawsuits opposing the president’s policies.

The Trump administration has also proposed sweeping cuts to the staff of the National Labor Relations Board — which is tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions — and canceled leases for regional offices in many states.

Union officials contend the changes could hobble the board and prevent it from investigating unfair labor practice charges filed by workers and carrying out its other responsibilities, such as overseeing elections.

“Important rules and regulations that were put in place during the Biden administration that were helpful to workers — those are systematically being rolled back,” said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Unions are bracing for further challenges that could arise when Trump finally makes appointments to the federal labor board, which is currently nonoperational, because it doesn’t have enough board members to rule on cases.

But even as many labor leaders have openly opposed the Trump administration, others have taken a more muted approach. Major national unions, such as United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, have supported aspects of the Trump agenda on tariffs abroad and a push for manufacturing jobs at home.

The changes portend tough times ahead for California unions.

John Logan, a professor of U.S. labor history at San Francisco State, said that Trump’s hostility toward California and withholding of federal funds from universities, healthcare facilities and other institutions will squeeze the state budget, with major effects on public sector workers in the form of layoffs and other cost-cutting. And the administration’s relentless immigrant raids are consuming the time, attention and resources of unions, he said.

Although California has a larger share of its workforce represented by unions compared with many other states, that density is overly reliant on public sector workers, and membership of those unions is likely to shrink in the coming years, Logan said.

Unions are “ill-equipped to deal with this moment of crisis,” Logan said. “The labor movement is fighting for its survival over the next four years.”

Challenges are especially acute in the healthcare industry.

Unions representing in-home care providers, nurses and other healthcare workers said their members are already feeling the squeeze wrought by the lead up to and approval of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes tax spending cuts that will affect millions of Medicaid recipients while growing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by thousands of workers.

SEIU Local 2015 President Arnulfo De La Cruz said many in-home care providers who have cared for people for decades are now faced with the prospect that the people they care for are going to lose their healthcare, and that they themselves may lose their healthcare and their jobs.

“To have our healthcare under attack, to have our families under attack — that’s a huge reversal in how we are recognizing essential workers,” De La Cruz said.

Major medical facilities, including Sharp HealthCare, UC San Diego Health and UCSF Health, have in recent months announced plans to cut public health services and conduct hundreds of layoffs, citing significant financial headwinds and the uncertainty of federal funding.

“It’s a nasty bill. There’s nothing beautiful about that bill,” said Cynthia Williams, an Orange County resident and member of AFSCME Local 3930. Williams is a full-time caregiver for both her daughter, who is blind and has cerebral palsy, and her sister, who is a veteran living with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

Williams said the In-Home Supportive Services program — funded primarily by Medicaid — has preemptively cut funding for transportation to her sister’s weekly appointments. The hours Williams is paid for to care for her daughter have been reduced.

“The last few months have been very stressful and very unpredictable,” Williams said.

Suhauna Hussain

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August 30, 2025
Surprise! Baby girl born at Burning Man to mother who says she wasn’t expecting

After decades of debauchery and an untold number of conceptions, revelers at Burning Man celebrated a rare birth at Black Rock City on Wednesday morning, after a festivalgoer unexpectedly went into labor on the Playa.

Some longtime Burners have dubbed the infant “Citizen Zero.”

“Baby girl arrived weighing 3 lbs 9.6 oz and measuring 16.5 inches long,” the infant’s aunt Lacey Paxman wrote in a GoFundMe appeal for the family. “She is currently in the NICU, gaining strength every day. Mom and baby are both doing OK, but she will need to stay in the hospital until she is ready to come home.”

Family members said the woman did not know she was pregnant until she felt the baby coming early Wednesday morning. According to one Redditor, an obstetrician and a pediatric trauma nurse were both camped nearby and rushed to aid the delivery when she went into labor.

The parents then drove themselves to the campground’s medical facility before being airlifted to a major hospital where the baby could receive specialized intensive care, the Redditor said.

“Since this is their first child and the pregnancy was completely unexpected, my brother and his wife don’t have anything prepared — no baby supplies, no nursery, nothing at all,” Paxman wrote.

“On top of that, the unexpected circumstances have created a heavy financial burden: NICU care (with no release date yet), medical bills, and travel and lodging expenses while they are far from home,” she said.

Surprise deliveries are uncommon but far from unheard of, experts say. About 1 in every 500 pregnant women discovers she’s expecting more than 20 weeks along — a phenomenon known as “cryptic pregnancy.”

Cryptic pregnancies are more common among very young mothers, as well as those who may have other health conditions that mask pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, exhaustion and even missed periods. Like the Burner mother, a subset of such parents only discovers they’re pregnant when they go into labor.

Pregnant women, young children and even babies are a regular feature of the nine-day Burning Man festival, which draws tens of thousands of people each year to a desolate strip of the Nevada desert about 120 miles north of Reno.

Still, births are all but unheard at the celebration of “community, art, self-expression and self-reliance.”

The surprise delivery occurred just hours after a white-out dust storm ground incoming traffic to a halt as festivalgoers streamed in and attempted to set camp on Monday.

The dramatic weather recalled torrential rains that flooded the camp in 2023, leaving thousands stranded in deep, sticky mud.

Sonja Sharp

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August 29, 2025