More stories

  • in

    A surge of visitors to Yosemite overwhelms a skeleton crew: ‘This is exactly what we warned about’

    Cars and RVs surged into Yosemite national park throughout the weekend, as visitors from around the world came to enjoy the crisp autumn weather, undeterred by a lack of park services and the absence of rangers.National parks have largely been kept open through the lapse in US federal funding that has left workers furloughed and resources for the parks system more scarce than usual. But as the US government shutdown enters its third week and legislators warn that their impasse could linger even longer than the one in Donald Trump’s first term – which currently holds the record at 35 days – concerns are mounting over how the nation’s treasured public lands will fare.Even with winter weather setting in along the Sierra, which will create more dangerous conditions, visitors continued to pour into the park, filling campgrounds and parking lots over the long weekend.Already, there have been widespread reports of illegal activity in Yosemite. People have been spotted Base jumping off high granite peaks, swimming in reservoirs where it is prohibited, camping and parking in unauthorized areas and climbing Half Dome’s cables without permits.The issues aren’t only affecting Yosemite. A fire ignited near a Joshua Tree campground on Sunday morning, forcing evacuations and closures in the park.Wildland firefighters are exempt from the shutdown and responded rapidly, according to a National Park Service spokesperson, and by Monday afternoon, crews had mostly contained the small blaze. But advocates voiced concerns that the fire – which is still under investigation but is believed to be human-caused, according to NPS officials – is a reminder of the increased risks posed by the public during staff shortages.In Yosemite, one of the limited park employees seen on duty during the holiday weekend, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to comment publicly, said it had been chaotic. “Then again, when is it not?” he added sardonically.Relying on funds pulled from entrance fees collected before the shutdown – a budget kept separate from federal appropriations – Yosemite has retained maintenance and emergency services to ensure bathrooms, trash and campgrounds are kept up and emergency operations continue. A concessionaire, Yosemite Hospitality, has also continued to operate.View image in fullscreenPrevious use of these fees, collected under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, to support park operations during shutdowns was found to be a violation of the law by a 2019 Government Accountability Office analysis.And, even with trash cans emptied and toilets cleaned, the loss of key staff could be keenly felt.“It felt like you showed up to school and none of the teachers were there,” said Mark Rose, the Sierra Nevada & clean air senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, after spending a portion of last week at Yosemite. “You could tell the janitors had been there the night before and maybe there were hall monitors there – but we are missing this big piece.”Workers who provide other essential functions such as trail maintenance, those who offer support and monitor visitation at entrance gates, and staff responsible for ongoing conservation or maintenance projects have not been able to continue working. Half of all staff at Yosemite have been furloughed, according to the NPCA.On Saturday, as droves of vehicles rolled through entrances where fees typically would have been collected and guidance given, they were met with signs on the empty booths that read: “During this lapse in appropriations parks will remain as accessible as possible. We are doing our best to take care of your parks at this time, but some amenities and services may not be available.”In one booth, the sign was accompanied by a second: a hand-drawn bluebird with the familiar scrawl of a child pleading: “Put park rangers first.”Dangerous, damaging and illegal activity was a chief concern among advocates when the administration opted to keep parks accessible without adequate staffing. Before the start of this shutdown, national park leaders and advocates had pushed the Trump administration not to repeat its previous policies of 2018-19, when the parks were kept open and unstaffed, leading to widespread destruction.View image in fullscreen“National parks don’t run themselves. It is hard-working National Park Service employees that keep them safe, clean and accessible,” 40 former superintendents said in a letter issued to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, in the week leading up to the lapse. “If sufficient staff aren’t there, visitors shouldn’t be either.”Irreversible damage was done at popular parks, including Joshua Tree in California, following a month-long shutdown in Donald Trump’s first term, when his administration demanded parks be kept open while funding was paused and workers were furloughed.Without supervision, visitors left behind trails of wreckage. Prehistoric petroglyphs were vandalized at Big Bend national park. Joshua trees, some more than a century old, were chopped down at Joshua Tree national park, as trash and toilets overflowed. Tire tracks crushed sensitive plants and desert habitats from illegal off-roading vehicles in Death Valley. There were widespread reports of wildlife poaching, search-and-rescue crews were quickly overwhelmed with calls, and visitor centers were broken into.“This is exactly what we warned about,” Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said in a statement issued following the reports of how visitors were behaving in Yosemite. “This shutdown is making an already bad situation at national parks and public lands far worse. And the longer this goes, the worse it is going to get. The situation is dangerous and reckless for our parks, public lands, and the visitors who love them.”Burgum called the Yosemite incidents “misinformation” in a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday, and falsely claimed the park was “fully staffed”.“Yosemite has a full team working to uphold public safety and preserve the integrity of the park,” he said, before blaming Democrats for the shutdown. “Unauthorized camping, squatting, and illegal activities like BASE jumping are being addressed with firm, appropriate law enforcement action.”Katie Martin, Department of Interior’s communications director, echoed Burgum’s claims and disputed that there are unmonitored campgrounds and widespread squatting.“Our on-the-ground teams confirm that these reports do not accurately reflect current operations or visitor conditions,” Martin said, adding that all law enforcement rangers in the park remain on duty and have been handling both frontcountry and backcountry patrols.There are 1,545 campgrounds within the park, but the 13 major sites are staffed, according to Martin, who also said visitor disputes and etiquette issues are not unusual and are being handled as they typically would under normal operations.“Yosemite remains safely managed. Law enforcement, emergency response, and campground staff are on duty, and visitation levels remain well within normal ranges,” Martin added.According to a recent National Park Service contingency plan created to guide parks during the shutdown, more than 9,200 employees were furloughed system-wide, reducing NPS staff by roughly 64%. Only workers deemed necessary to protect “life and property”, were set to remain on duty.Even before the shutdown began, sharp reductions in staffing that came as part of the Trump administration’s plans to shrink the federal government left gaps in an NPS workforce already stretched thin. According to Rose of the National Parks Conservation Association, the long-term strain has only been exacerbated by the shutdown as advocates grow exceedingly concerned that more cuts could be coming.Close to $1bn in funding cuts have been proposed by the administration, and Rose said there were fears that the administration may argue operations were successful during the shutdown as a way to validate their calls for a smaller workforce. With toilets clean and law enforcement on patrol in popular places like Yosemite, visitor experience has been prioritized while other important NPS responsibilities, including conservation, science and education, remain on the chopping block.“This is a skeleton crew and we have been seeing this from the beginning,” Rose said. “But you can only keep up the facade for so long before major cracks start showing.” More

  • in

    Newsom to sue Trump over California national guard deployment to Oregon

    California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Sunday that he is suing Donald Trump over the alleged deployment of 300 California national guard personnel to Oregon.“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said in a press statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.”Newsom’s proposed lawsuit follows a federal judge’s ruling that blocked the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon national guard to Portland. US district judge Karin Immergut agreed with arguments it would inflame rather than calm tensions in the city.Immergut said in her ruling, which delays sending the guard until at least 18 October, that there was a lack of evidence that the recent protests in Portland justified the move.Caroline Turco, Portland’s senior deputy attorney, said that there had been no violence against Ice officers for months and that recent Ice protests were “sedate” in the week before the president declared the city to be a war zone, sometimes featuring fewer than a dozen protesters.“This isn’t about public safety, it’s about power,” Newsom said. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”In a statement on X, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said the state is “quickly assessing our options and preparing to take legal action.“The President is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” he wrote. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”The California national guard referred questions to the defense department. A department spokesperson declined to comment.“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement. For once, Gavin Newscum should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country,” read a response from the White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson.The news from Oregon came just a day after Trump authorized the deployment of national guard troops to Chicago, the latest in a string of similar interventions across several US states.Trump had first announced the plan on 27 September, saying he was “authorizing full force, if necessary” despite pleas from Oregon officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who said there had been a single, uneventful protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.For years, Trump has amplified the narrative that Portland is a “war-ravaged” city with anarchists engaging in chaos and unlawful behavior.During his first term in 2020, he deployed federal forces to the city amid the protests over the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests spread across the US but were especially heightened in Portland. Despite protests against Ice being relatively small in the state this year, Trump has used them as a justification to deploy troops.Speaking on X about the latest move from Trump, Newsom said: “It’s appalling. It’s un-American, and it must be stopped.” More

  • in

    California measure brings rideshare drivers one step closer to unionizing

    More than 800,000 ride-hailing drivers in California will soon be able to join a union and negotiate for higher wages and better benefits under a measure signed Friday by the governor, Gavin Newsom.Supporters said the new law will open a path for the largest expansion of private-sector collective bargaining rights in the state’s history. The legislation is a significant compromise in the years-long battle between labor unions and tech companies.California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors; Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights.“Donald Trump is holding the government hostage and stripping away worker protections,” Newsom said in a statement, referring to the estimated 750,000 federal employees who are furloughed as a result of the first federal government shutdown since 2018, with the administration planning to implement another sweeping wave of cuts.“In California, we’re doing the opposite: proving government can deliver – giving drivers the power to unionize while we continue our work to lower costs for families. That’s the difference between chaos and competence,” he added.The new law is part of an agreement made in September among Newsom, state lawmakers and the Service Employees International Union, along with rideshare companies Uber and Lyft. In exchange, Newsom is expected to sign a measure supported by Uber and Lyft to significantly cut the companies’ insurance requirements for accidents caused by underinsured drivers.Lyft CEO David Risher said in September that the new insurance rates are expected to save the company $200m and could help reduce fares.Uber and Lyft fares in California are consistently higher than in other parts of the US because of insurance requirements, the companies say. Uber has said that nearly one-third of every ride fare in the state goes toward paying for state-mandated insurance.Labor unions and tech companies have fought for years over drivers’ rights. In July of last year, the California supreme court ruled that app-based ride-hailing and delivery services like Uber and Lyft can continue treating their drivers as independent contractors not entitled to benefits like overtime pay, paid sick leave and unemployment insurance.A 2019 law mandated that Uber and Lyft provide drivers with benefits, but voters reversed it at the ballot box in 2020 with a measure known as Proposition 22. Uber and Lyft spent more than $200m in their efforts to bar app-based workers from being classified as traditional employees. Drivers and labor groups opposed Prop 22, saying it would allow companies to sidestep their obligations to provide benefits and standard minimum wages to their workers even as they make billions.The collective bargaining measure now allows rideshare workers in California to join a union while still being classified as independent contractors and requires gig companies to bargain in good faith over issues such as driver deactivations, paid leave and earnings. The new law doesn’t apply to drivers for delivery apps like DoorDash.“Trump is gutting workers’ fundamental right to come together and demand fair pay and treatment,” said Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California. “But here in California, we are sending a different message: when workers are empowered and valued, everyone wins. Shared prosperity starts with unions for all workers.”The insurance measure will reduce the coverage requirement for accidents caused by uninsured or underinsured drivers from $1m to $60,000 per individual and $300,000 per accident.The two measures “together represent a compromise that lowers costs for riders while creating stronger voices for drivers – demonstrating how industry, labor, and lawmakers can work together to deliver real solutions,” Ramona Prieto, head of public policy for California at Uber, said in a statement.The new law arrives as Uber and Lyft continue negotiating a settlement with California and the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, which sued the companies for allegedly withholding wages from thousands of drivers before Proposition 22 took effect.Rideshare Drivers United, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group of 20,000 drivers, said the collective bargaining law isn’t strong enough to give workers a fair contract. The group wanted to require the companies to report their data on pay to the state.New York City drivers’ pay increased after the city started requiring the companies to report how much an average driver earns, the group said.“Drivers really need the backing of the state to ensure that not only is a wage proposal actually going to help drivers, but that there is progress in drivers’ pay over the years,” said Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United. More

  • in

    LA 2028 Olympics: fears of mass displacement and homeless sweeps as Trump threat looms

    In the lead-up to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the city deployed 30 police officers on horseback to rid downtown of unhoused people and, in the words of a captain, “sanitize the area”.Some people were arrested and transported to detox centers. Others were forced from public view while their possessions were trashed.Now, as the city prepares to host the games once more in 2028, civil rights advocates are fearful history will repeat itself, and authorities will again banish unhoused communities in ways that could exacerbate the region’s humanitarian crisis.Karen Bass, Los Angeles’s Democratic mayor, has vowed not to bus unhoused people out of the city and repeat the tactics of 1984, telling the Los Angeles Times her strategy will “always be housing people first”. But the scale of the problem in LA is larger than it was four decades ago, and the Trump administration’s forceful stance on homelessness could increase pressures on Bass and the unhoused population.LA county is home to an estimated 72,000 unhoused people, including 24,900 people in shelters and 47,400 people living outside in tents, makeshift structures and vehicles. In the last two years, Bass and county leaders have reported some progress in moving people indoors, which they attributed to their strategy of targeting people in encampments with shelter options and resources.But the dramatic shortage of affordable housing in the region will make it difficult to get tens of thousands of people stably housed in less than three years and stop new encampments from rising up.Meanwhile, Trump, who appointed himself White House Olympics taskforce chair, has made it clear he wants to see encampments disappear from American cities, signing an executive order in July to push local governments to clear encampments and making it a point of focus during the federal crackdown in Washington DC.Combined with a supreme court ruling allowing governments to fine and jail unhoused people when no shelter is available, Trump’s ongoing deployment of troops to Democratic cities, significant support from California residents for tougher policies towards the unhoused, and California governor Gavin Newsom’s push for aggressive sweeps, experts fear the Olympics could force out many of LA’s poorest residents.“The pressures are going to come from the White House, from the state and from local government as we get closer to the Olympics,” said Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, an anti-poverty group that advocates for unhoused people and is based in Skid Row, a downtown area with a high concentration of homelessness. “My fears come from being an Angeleno and seeing our communities attacked and displaced when major events come our way.”‘I remember the arrests’There is a long history of Olympics host cities trying to get rid of their most disenfranchised communities.In Moscow in 1980, organizers pledged to “cleanse” the city of “chronic alcoholics” and dumped people outside city limits. In Atlanta in 1996, officials arrested thousands of unhoused people under anti-loitering and related ordinances. In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, more than 70,000 people were displaced. And last year in Paris, thousands of unhoused people, including asylum seekers, were bussed out.The 1984 LA games led to the increased militarization of the LA police department (LAPD) and an escalation of racist and aggressive policing that targeted Black and Latino youth, experts say.“I remember the pre-Olympics arrest of my older cousins,” said White, 56, who grew up within walking distance of the Coliseum, a stadium that served as an Olympics venue then and will be used for the 2028 opening and closing ceremonies. “Young Black and brown men were afraid to be in the streets, because they were sweeping people up under the pretext of addressing gang violence.”View image in fullscreenThe games helped LAPD acquire flashbang grenades, specialized armor, military-style equipment and an armored vehicle, which it used a year later to ram a home where small children were eating ice cream, Curbed LA reported. The Olympics-fueled law enforcement expansion also paved the way for LAPD’s notorious Operation Hammer, a crackdown that led to mass arrests of Black youth.In 2018, after LA won the 2028 bid, then-mayor Eric Garcetti said the games would present an opportunity to improve homelessness, which he said could be eliminated from the streets by the games.“Garcetti kept saying: ‘We’ll end homelessness in LA,’” said Eric Sheehan, a member of NOlympics, a group founded in 2017 to oppose the Olympics in LA. “And we have been warning that the only way they can actually end homelessness is by disappearing people.”Increasing sweepsCalifornia, LA and LA 2028 officials have not released plans for a homelessness strategy.But on the streets, there are already fears that sweeps of people living outside are escalating due to the Olympics – and as LA prepares to also host the World Cup next year.In July, the city shut down a long-running encampment in the Van Nuys neighborhood in the San Fernando valley, north-west of downtown and visible from the 405, a major freeway. The site, which residents called the Compound, was across from the Sepulveda Basin where the Olympics is planning events. The sweep displaced roughly 75 people. The city said it offered 30 motel rooms to the group and other shelter options.Carla Orendorff, an organizer working with the residents, said she was aware of at least 10 displaced people now back on the streets, including several who had been kicked out of the motels, which have strict rules. Residents were dispersed to eight motels, and in one, staff ran out of food and people were left hungry, she said.Those still out on the street “are just forced further underground, in places that are harder to reach, which makes it incredibly dangerous for them”, Orendorff said.Giselle “Gelly” Harrell, a 41-year-old displaced Compound resident, said she lost her motel spot after she was gone for several days. She was temporarily staying in a hostel with help from a friend, but would soon be back in a tent, she said. Before the Compound, she was at another major encampment that was swept.View image in fullscreen“They’re strategically cleaning out the area for the Olympics,” Harrell said. “They’re destroying communities. It’s traumatizing … I wish all that money for the Olympics could go toward housing people … but they are not here to help us.”It was hard to imagine the Olympics taking place in an area where so many people were living outside and in cars, Orendorff added: “The city has all these plans, but our people don’t even have access to showers.”Bass denied that the Compound closure was Olympics-related, with the mayor telling reporters the site was a hazard. Officials had worked to shelter everyone and keep people together and would aim to transition residents into permanent housing, she said, while acknowledging some “might be in motels for long periods”. “I will not tolerate Angelenos living in dangerous, squalor conditions,” she added.The mayor’s office continued to defend the Van Nuys operation in an email last week, saying an outreach team had built relationships with encampment residents over several months and offered resources to all of them: “Coming indoors meant access to three meals a day, case management and additional supportive services.”Zach Seidl, Bass’s spokesperson, did not comment on the city’s Olympics strategy, but said in an email that since the mayor took office, street homelessness had decreased by 17.5% and placements into permanent housing had doubled: “She is laser-focused on addressing homelessness through a proven comprehensive strategy that includes preventing homelessness, urgently bringing Angelenos inside and cutting red tape to make building affordable housing in the city easier and more efficient.”Inside Safe, Bass’s program addressing encampments like the Compound, has brought thousands of people indoors and “fundamentally changed the way the city addresses homelessness by conducting extensive outreach, working with street medicine providers and offering other supportive case management services while they are in interim housing”, he continued. “This is why she ran for office and this is progress she would’ve made regardless of the Games.”The White House did not respond to inquiries about the Olympics, and a spokesperson for Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (Lahsa), the lead public agency responsible for addressing homelessness in the region, declined to comment.‘Legal restraints are gone’Advocates’ concerns are partly fueled by a supreme court ruling last year that gave local authorities significantly more leeway to criminalize encampments.“The legal restraints are gone, to the extent they were meaningful, and there is broad policy-level agreement by liberals and conservatives that sweeps are an acceptable approach,” said John Raphling, associate director of Human Rights Watch, a non-profit.He authored a report last year on LA’s policing of unhoused people, which found that unhoused Angelenos were routinely subject to aggressive LAPD crackdowns, misdemeanor arrests and sweeps that destroy their belongings.Homelessness-related arrests and citations, such as anti-camping violations, increased 68% in LA in the six months after the supreme court ruling, a recent CalMatters analysis found. The crackdowns are happening even as LA has vowed to not rely on criminalization and has promised a more restrained approach than other California cities.View image in fullscreenSheehan said he was concerned LAPD would work with federal authorities to target people during the Olympics, especially after officers aggressively attacked protesters and journalists during demonstrations against Trump’s immigration raids in June, in violation of the department’s own protocols.Newsom, meanwhile, has pushed California cities to ban encampments by adopting ordinances that make it a violation to camp in the same spot for three days, and advocates fear his presidential ambitions could lead him to continue to push punitive strategies as the Olympics approaches.“We’re already seeing a contest between Trump and Newsom as to who is going to appear tougher on homelessness, with tough being defined as how one responds to visible homelessness,” said Gary Blasi, professor of law emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles, who co-wrote a report last year on the 2028 Olympics in LA and the unsheltered population. “There aren’t good signs from either of them. Newsom offers the promise of alternatives he doesn’t identify and Trump offers the promise of some equivalent to incarceration.”In a statement to the Guardian, Newsom said the state has a “strong, comprehensive strategy for fighting the national homelessness and housing crises” and was “outperforming the nation”. “I’ve emphasized that our approach is to humanize, not criminalize – encampment work is paired with shelter, services [and] behavioral health support,” he said, citing his Care court program, which is meant to compel people with severe psychosis into treatment.“Bottom line: encampments can’t be the status quo. We’re cleaning them up with compassion and urgency, while demanding accountability from every level of government. There is no compassion in allowing people to suffer the indignity of living in an encampment for years and years,” the governor added.Tara Gallegos, Newsom’s spokesperson, said the governor’s approach was distinct from the president’s, writing in an email: “The Trump administration is haphazardly bulldozing and upending encampments without creating any sort of supportive strategy to go along with it. It is about fear, not support … California’s strategy pairs urgency with dignity and care, creating wrap-around services addressing the root causes of homelessness.”An LA 2028 spokesperson did not comment on homelessness, but said in an email: “We work closely with our local, state and federal partners on Games planning and operations, and remain committed to working collaboratively with all levels of government to support a successful Games experience.”Organizers and providers prepareHomelessness service providers and advocates said they hoped LA officials would pursue bold solutions that quickly get people housing and resources without the threat of criminalization.A key part of the region’s strategy during the early pandemic was getting people out of tents and into motels, but those programs are costly and not a good fit for all of LA’s unhoused residents; it can also be challenging to transition participants into permanent housing. Blasi noted that that approach would become even harder during the Olympics when hotels face an influx of tourists.Blasi advocated for direct cash payments to unhoused people, akin to the 2020 stimulus checks, which could help some unhoused people get off the streets at a faster and cheaper rate than the traditional process, he argued: “There are a lot of people who can solve their own homelessness if they just have a little bit more money.”Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said LA has seen success with rapid rehousing programs that offer people rental subsidies, and that he hopes those efforts can be scaled up: “We know how to move people back into housing and do it quickly. It’s just a matter of whether we can marshal the political will to bring the money to make that happen.”Funding cuts, including from Trump’s slashing of federal homelessness resources, will be a barrier.The Union Rescue Mission, a faith-based group that runs the largest private shelter in LA, has recently seen an influx of people needing services as other providers have faced cuts, said CEO Mark Hood. Hood, however, said he has had productive conversations with the Trump administration and remained optimistic the Olympics would provide an “opportunity to collaborate with our city, county, state and federal government in ways that we never have before”.He said he hoped the Olympics would lead to increased funding for providers, but was so far unaware of any specific plans.White, the longtime organizer, said he expected grassroots groups to come together to defend unhoused people, especially as mutual-aid networks have grown in response to Trump’s raids: “The kidnappings of immigrants and the attempted clearing of houseless people as we get closer to the Olympics gives us an opportunity to bring various communities together, and that’s when we can build the power necessary to push back.” More

  • in

    A Trump ally in California is fighting redistricting. Is that what his constituents want?

    Inside a packed banquet hall in northern California in early August, tensions were flaring. As the representative Doug LaMalfa spoke to constituents in his district, he faced immediate pushback from frustrated audience members who shouted the Republican down.It was the first public town hall LaMalfa had held in Chico, the largest city in his district, in eight years. The booing and shouts grew louder still as the Republican representative, a loyal supporter of Donald Trump, talked about “waste and fraud” in government programs, and the uproar continued for more than an hour as people expressed fear and anger over immigration raids, tariffs, cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and the impacts on rural hospitals. Some called for his resignation, while one attendee yelled: “No fascism in America.” The rowdy scene made headlines across the US.It came before a crucial moment for the representative – just days later, California’s governor announced plans to move forward with a proposal to redraw the state’s voting map in an effort to create five new Democratic seats in the US House of Representatives. The redistricting plan is a direct response to gerrymandered maps in Texas. Now voters will decide on the proposal in a special election in November. If the proposition is approved, LaMalfa, a seven-term representative, could lose his seat in the war over control of the House.With less than six weeks before the election, the fight is on in the first congressional district, which covers a vast swath of northern California from the almond orchards and rice fields of the Sacramento valley to the forested and fire-prone foothills of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. Audrey Denney, a previous Democratic challenger who came closer than any prior candidate to unseating LaMalfa, has said she will run again if Proposition 50 passes. LaMalfa, meanwhile, “is committed to running in his current district and ensuring that Proposition 50 fails”, his office said in a statement.Democratic and Republican groups alike are preparing for a contest that could dramatically reshape the area’s political representation and ultimately determine the US president’s ability to advance legislation after the midterm elections.“Overwhelmingly, the reason people care is the belief that the Democrats [winning] control of the House of Representatives next year is the only possible meaningful impediment to Donald Trump’s implementation of his authoritarian agenda,” said David Welch with the Democratic central committee of Butte county, where Chico is located.Conservatives in this area argue that Prop 50 represents an existential threat that will erode the already limited Republican representation in the state.“We already only have nine seats throughout the entire state of California on the Republican side and we could go down to four seats if 50 passes. It’s not a fair representation for the parties – it’s not fair for both sides,” said Teri DuBose, the chair of the Butte county Republican party, who also works for LaMalfa’s office. “The voters should be picking their representatives, not the representatives picking their constituents.”Residents of this part of northern California, with its remote mountain communities, frequent wildfires and vast agricultural industry, often say it’s different from the more densely populated areas of the state.“We’re very rural here,” DuBose said. “As I drive from Chico to Orland right now, all I see are almond trees and open fields and walnuts and tractors. We don’t have the big-city high-rises and freeways with traffic.”The first congressional district is among the most conservative, and whitest, in the state.Water, wildfires, housing and homelessness have been key issues for voters in recent years. The area was already struggling with a severe housing shortage when several years of large wildfires destroyed thousands of homes, worsening the crisis and pushing more people onto the streets.Over the last decade, wildfires have scorched nearly 40% of land in the county, including the 2018 Camp fire, which destroyed the community of Paradise and killed 85 people, 2020’s North Complex fire, which wiped out Berry Creek and left 16 people dead and last year’s Park fire, one of the largest blazes in state history.While there was a strong base of Democratic supporters in the region in the mid-20th century, much of what is now California’s first congressional district has largely voted Republican since the 1980s. Trump has consistently carried the area since 2016 and in 2024 received 61% of the vote.Butte county, where LaMalfa is from, is more evenly politically split due to the more liberal community of Chico, a university town, and the more conservative agricultural areas – in 2008, it supported Barack Obama, in 2020 backed Joe Biden, but in 2016 and 2024 went for Trump.LaMalfa, a rice farmer who previously served as a state lawmaker, has represented the district since 2013. In an interview this year with the Chico Enterprise-Record, he cited the work his staffers have done assisting people having issues with social security, Medicaid and Veterans Affairs as his proudest accomplishments in office.“It’s defending these folks and giving them a level of hope that somebody is actually listening to them,” he said.He’s garnered attention – and criticism – in recent years as an ally of the president who challenged the 2020 election outcome and voted against certifying the result and has expressed skepticism about the climate crisis and its cause. Efforts to unseat LaMalfa have been unsuccessful, but the 2018 and 2020 elections revealed some level of discontent.“He does not at all differ from Trump’s line-by-line mandate of what he says Republicans should say,” Denney said, adding that LaMalfa has introduced “anti-LGBTQ, anti-public health” legislation that “harms our communities”.In the 2018 race, Denney, an educator and consultant with a background in agriculture, pledged to represent working families in the district. She closed the representative’s more than 30-point lead in the primary down to 9.5%, and raised $1m, but LaMalfa ultimately prevailed, and did so again in 2020.“At the end of that election, I was feeling pretty defeated. And then when they redrew the maps in 2022, it was just clear to me that it was not a winnable district,” she said.But this year, frustrations in some corners of the district have continued to mount over the Trump budget, which is expected to have a significant impact on rural areas and hospitals with its cuts to Medicaid and new work requirements for food stamps. That anger was on full display at LaMalfa’s town hall.LaMalfa did not agree to be interviewed, but in a statement, Paige Boogaard, his communication director, said the representative had anticipated as much but stated that most constituents back Trump’s agenda.“Congressman LaMalfa purposefully chose highly contentious areas of his district so that they feel heard. Their reactions were completely expected,” she said. “Raucous townhalls in Chico do not change the fact that District 1 and Northern California remain overwhelmingly conservative and overwhelmingly supportive of both Congressman LaMalfa’s and the President’s policies.”Meanwhile, the area is already grappling with the loss of one rural hospital. Glenn medical center will close its emergency room in just a few days, leaving Glenn county without a hospital, after the federal government moved to eliminate its “critical access” designation. The representative “continues to work on issues related to Glenn Medical Center and rural healthcare”, Boogaard said.‘Not a fair representation for the parties’Ten days after the town hall, Gavin Newsom announced California would move ahead with a plan to put a redistricting proposal before voters. The governor described it as “neutralizing” Texas’s new maps that could flip up to five seats. The referendum would temporarily suspend the use of maps from California’s independent redistricting commission and instead use legislatively drawn maps until after the 2030 census. The special election could cost as much as $282m.LaMalfa has sharply criticized the effort.“No state should be doing mid-decade redistricting unless directed by a court or forced to. Voters in California have voted overwhelmingly twice to prevent partisan redistricting,” he said in a statement at the time. “I will fight to make sure Northern California is represented by someone they elect, not someone Sacramento Democrats selected in a back room.”Under the new map, Butte county and much of district 1 would be joined with counties further to the west and south, including Sonoma county. Democrats have praised the proposal, not just for what it will mean locally, but to the country.“I think Governor Newsom doing Prop 50 has got Democrats all across America saying to themselves: ‘Hey, we got a chance to retake the House to defeat Trump,” said Bob Mulholland, a veteran Democratic strategist and Butte county resident.Denney argued it was a necessary course of action for the current political era in which the Trump administration is “tearing down institutions and norms”.“In this moment of time that we’re living in, with the scope and the scale of the threat that we’re up against, I think it’s absolutely the right move,” she said.“I love the new district. I love how it combines the two college towns on each end, Santa Rosa and Chico. Both have been historically devastated by wildfires, both surrounded by agriculture,” she said, adding that it will bring together areas where natural resources and land management are of deep concern.Republican and Democratic chapters across the district are working to rally voters before the November election, spreading signs far and wide and door-knocking. In Denney’s Chico home earlier this month, she had boxes with thousands of pieces of pro Prop 50 literature.Further south, in Yuba county, the local Republican party has purchased 10,000 yard signs to spread across the state, said Johanna Lassaga, the county party chair.“I think [Prop 50] would be devastating to our area. Putting the urban areas with the rural areas, we don’t get that fair representation,” she said.West of Chico, in the farmlands of Glenn county, Lee McCorkle, the local Republican party chair, has also been posting signs far and wide. He argued LaMalfa has been a valuable representative, citing his role in securing federal money to build a reservoir and nearby levee.“Doug, he’s a conservative guy, he’s a rice farmer, he spends a lot of time to be a congressman,” McCorkle said. “It’s a heck of a job. I wouldn’t want it.”Texas shouldn’t have moved ahead with their new congressional maps, DuBose said, but she argued what’s happening in California is also wrong. People are frustrated the state is moving forward with a costly special election, she said, when the governor did not fully fund Prop 36, a measure approved by voters last year that implements harsher penalties for theft and drug offenses. (Newsom’s budget did not initially include funding for that proposition, which he said was a result of shortfalls, but he later approved $100m to support the legislation.)And the speed at which the proposition has moved ahead has forced the party to quickly jump into gear, she said.“We really kind of got blindsided. It didn’t give us much time, so we just went all out [with the campaign],” she said. “Every moment that I’m not working, I am doing this.”In a historically conservative district, the local Democratic party has relatively few resources, said Welch with the Butte county Democrats, but they too are doing “everything we can to mobilize and motivate people”.“It’s almost certain the spending [to] defeat this will be enormous,” he said. “Really our best hope of overcoming that is with motivating individuals to volunteer to work at a grassroots level.”For her part, Denney, who also chairs the Democratic Action Club of Chico, has been traveling to the far reaches of the district in north-eastern California to talk to voters about Prop 50.“Even up to a month ago, I had zero belief that anything would ever change,” she said. “It’s gonna have a different ending this time.” More

  • in

    Trump fires US attorney who told border agents to follow law on immigration raids

    Donald Trump fired a top federal prosecutor in Sacramento just hours after she warned immigration agents they could not indiscriminately detain people in her district, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times.Michele Beckwith, who became the acting US attorney in Sacramento in January, received an email at 4.31pm on 15 July notifying her that the president had ordered her termination.The day before, Beckwith had received a phone call from Gregory Bovino, who leads the Border Patrol’s unit in El Centro, a border city 600 miles south of Sacramento. Bovino was planning an immigration raid in Sacramento and asked Beckwith who in her office to contact if his officers were assaulted, the Times reported, citing Beckwith.She informed Bovino that agents were not allowed to indiscriminately stop people in her district, north of Bakersfield, per a federal court order issued in April that prevents the agency from detaining people without reasonable suspicion. The US supreme court overturned a similar court order issued in Los Angeles earlier this month.In a 10.57am email on 15 July, Beckwith repeated her message, telling Bovino she expected “compliance with court orders and the constitution”. Less than six hours later, her work computer and cellphone no longer functioning, she received a letter to her personal email account notifying her that she had been terminated.Two days later, Bovino proceeded with his immigration raid at a Sacramento Home Depot.“Folks, there is no such thing as a sanctuary city,” he said in a video he shared from the California state capitol building.“The former acting US attorney’s email suggesting that the United States Border Patrol does not ALWAYS abide by the constitution revealed a bias against law enforcement,” Bovino said in a statement to the New York Times. “The supreme court’s decision is evidence of the fact Border Patrol follows the constitution and the fourth amendment.”On 8 September, the supreme court ruled that federal immigration agents can stop people solely based on their race, language or job, overturning the decision of a Los Angeles judge who had ordered immigration agents to halt sweeping raids there.Beckwith’s firing is one of a series of federal firings, including of prosecutors who did not abide by the president’s agenda. Last week, US attorney Erik Siebert resigned under intense pressure and Trump replaced him with his special assistant Lindsey Halligan just hours after ordering his attorney general Pam Bondi to do so in a since deleted social media post.Siebert had been overseeing investigations into Letitia James and James Comey. Beckwith has appealed against her termination, according to the Times.“I’m an American who cares about her country,” she told the paper. “We have to stand up and insist the laws be followed.” More

  • in

    Trump cuts threaten futures of 250,000 children of migrant farm workers: ‘We felt like crying’

    When Regina Zarate-Garcia was a child, she recalled being uprooted from one school district and planted in another as often as the seasons changed.Zarate-Garcia, now 18, was born in Salinas, California, to farm workers from Mexicali, a city just south of California on the US-Mexico border. “I remember my parents getting home and seeing their pants splashed in strawberries, mixed with that familiar smell of pesticides,” she recalls.Her family’s life followed California’s planting and harvest seasons: starting school in Monterey county, where her parents worked April through November in the strawberry fields, then moving to Inyo county near the Nevada border – or sometimes back to Mexico – while her parents chased winter jobs or tried to live frugally while unemployed.It took a toll on her. She described the isolation of struggling through a disrupted school curriculum alone, while her parents, exhausted from long days in the fields, and unable to read English, could offer no help. “My kindergarten teacher told my mom that I was gonna flunk,” Zarate-Garcia said.Then came a turning point: her mother learned about the Migrant Education Program (MEP), a federal initiative that supports children whose families move from place to place for seasonal agricultural work.From first grade onward, Zarate-Garcia went to after-school tutoring, Saturday school, summer enrichment, speech and debate tournaments, college readiness workshops, and was provided lunch, snacks, mentors and a community of kids who were navigating similar educational disruptions, cultural and language barriers, as well as social isolation.“I didn’t feel like I had two different worlds coming against each other, and I felt more like a cohesive world that we were building together,” said Zarate-Garcia. The MEP opened up the doors that got her where she is now: studying biology as a freshman at University of California San Diego.But the future of this safe haven for the more than 250,000 eligible migratory children and youth, like Zarate-Garcia, is now in jeopardy and could be slashed under the Trump administration. If this happens, Zarate-Garcia fears the American dream will be out of reach for future generations of kids whose parents’ labor forms the backbone of the country’s economy and food system.View image in fullscreenTrump’s 2026 budget, which is set to be debated by Congress this fall, proposes eliminating all funding for the MEP, a program that has been in place for nearly 60 years. (This budget is separate from the Republican budget bill passed this summer, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.)‘The migrant program changes lives’The MEP was also thrown into chaos this summer, when the Trump administration abruptly froze nearly $7bn in congressionally approved education funds from the 2025 budget. The funds were eventually released in late July after a coalition of 24 states, including California, sued the Trump administration, and 10 Senate Republicans signed a public letter urging the White House to release them.Nowhere would the impact of these proposed cuts be felt more than in California, where one out of three migrant students in the US lives. In California, the MEP serves nearly 80,000 youth ages three to 21, most of whom live in rural areas. In Monterey county, an agricultural region about two hours south of San Francisco where Zarate-Garcia was born, there are more than 10,000 students who are eligible for this support.“The migrant program changes lives,” said Constantino Silva, senior director of migrant education services at the Monterey county office of education in Salinas.He knows this firsthand; Silva too went through the program. Born in Michoacán, Mexico, Silva remembers his family traveling to the US embassy in Mexico City when he was six to obtain green cards before resettling in King City, California, where his father laid the pipes to irrigate crops.“We have the misfortune of having the word ‘migrant’ in our title,” Silva said of the cuts to the MEP.The justification for targeting the migrant program’s funding is that it is deemed costly, ineffective and harmful to students’ stability, arguing it encourages mobility and allows ineligible non-citizens to strip resources from US university students.But that’s not true, Silva says, explaining that agricultural work is by its nature seasonal and migratory.“Being migratory is really difficult,” Silva said, describing the toll on children who are always “the new kid”, out of place, and struggling with disrupted schooling. Families often live two or three families to a house, moving whenever work dries up. Farm labor, he added, is grueling, low-paid and unpredictable, leaving entire families at the mercy of the weather and crop cycles.Food insecurity, inadequate or nonexistent healthcare, and chronic absenteeism combined with inconsistent credit transfers from one school district to another often puts these kids at high risk of school failure or dropout. A number of studies have found migrant children and youth to have high rates of grade repetition and about 50% drop out of high school.The US Department of Education doesn’t track graduation rates for students in the Migrant Education Program, so it’s hard to get accurate data on how many kids follow their parents into the fields versus moving on to better-paying jobs. US federal labor law allows farm worker children to pick crops with their parents’ consent, outside school hours, from as young as age 12.The program was set up to address some of these disadvantages. Silva said he flourished in the program and runs through a list of teachers, vice-principals, principals, program directors, assistant superintendents and a superintendent, all of whom found success in education because of their childhood experience in the program.“We look back on it and say: ‘Had it not been for that, I don’t know that I would be where I am today.’” said Silva. “‘This is where I can be myself and not feel out of place, where I’m safe to say that I don’t know, that I’m not sure, that I have questions.’ That’s the type of environment that we create for the migrant students.”Support beyond the classroomSilva says the key part of the program – along with all the tutoring, socializing and yummy snacks he got – was that his mother also received parent education services that helped her advocate for him as they navigated the US education system, even after he no longer qualified for the program.Starting at three years old, Silva’s team visits children’s houses to get parents reading bilingual books to their children, empowering “parents to be the first teacher”.Silva said they don’t check children’s legal status before providing services, but said that many students are US citizens, like Zarate-Garcia, or residents with legal status, like him.“It’s worth investing in these children’s future, because it’s America’s future,” said Silva, whose own job is now on the line due to the cuts.In Salinas, many children of farm workers assume they will follow their parents into the fields; becoming an attorney or doctor seem beyond their possible horizons. But starting in third or fourth grade, Zarate-Garcia said the MEP drew a different path – literally – on the floor out of chalk to change these narratives.Each summer, MEP staff sketched a giant game of hopscotch in chalk, each square a milestone: grades one through five, middle and high school and graduation. A student volunteered to stand there in a cap and gown waving at Zarate-Garcia as she hopped across a milestone, living proof of what was possible. Beyond that, new boxes branched out – college, university, trade school, the military – options that once felt out of reach.For Zarate-Garcia this unlocked possibilities: “It showed you the timeline of everything and really put it into perspective for the kids.”View image in fullscreenAfter-school tutoring provides students with academic support, meals like flautas and burritos, and a safe place to be while parents work, while also engaging parents through monthly activities and parent-teacher nights.Zarate-Garcia spent seven years doing speech and debate tournaments, which taught her about teamwork, how to write argumentative essays, do research backed by credible sources, defend her claims, enunciate, project her voice and debate in a way that is respectful.Zarate-Garcia found that she loved public speaking, storytelling and improvising speeches on the spot: “I could make my voice into something powerful. I could make a language that I always struggled in, into something powerful.”The program also helped students buy presentable outfits for their debate tournaments.Her team even won second and third place at county and state level speech and debate tournaments over the years. Now, Zarate-Garcia aspires to become a pediatric oncologist.“The power of your voice is something that nobody else can take away,” she said. Once you have an education, nobody can take that away from you.”When Zarate-Garcia found out about the budget cuts, she was volunteering in the MEP’s summer program and the kids were all practising a dance to show their parents. “Honestly, we felt like crying,” she said, realizing that all the kids she coaches in speech and debate – kids who look up to her – may never thrive without the crucial support that she benefited from.“You meet these kids that have so much potential, but their potential can’t be tapped into because they don’t have that support at home … It’s just so disappointing.” More

  • in

    Jury finds LA protester not guilty of assaulting border patrol agent

    A Los Angeles protester charged with assaulting a border patrol agent in June was acquitted on Wednesday after US immigration officials were accused in court of lying about the incident.The not guilty verdict for Brayan Ramos-Brito is a major setback for the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in southern California and for Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who has become a key figure in Trump’s immigration crackdown. The 29-year-old defendant, who is a US citizen, was facing a misdemeanor and was the first protester to go to trial since demonstrations against immigration raids erupted in LA earlier this summer.Border patrol and prosecutors alleged that Ramos-Brito struck an agent during a chaotic protest on 7 June in the south Los Angeles county city of Paramount outside a complex where the Department of Homeland Security has an office. But footage from a witness, which the Guardian published days after the incident, showed an agent forcefully shoving Ramos-Brito. The footage did not capture the demonstrator assaulting the officer.The jury delivered its not guilty verdict after a little over an hour of deliberations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Bovino testified earlier in the day and faced a tough cross-examination from public defenders.Bovino was one of four border patrol agents who testified as witnesses, but was the only one to say he saw the alleged assault by Ramos-Brito, according to the LA Times. Videos played in court captured the agent shoving Ramos-Brito, sending him flying backward, and showed the protester marching back toward the agent, the paper reported. The videos did not capture Ramos-Brito’s alleged assault.There were multiple factual discrepancies in DHS’s internal reports on the protest, which initially led to charges against five demonstrators, the Guardian reported in July. A criminal complaint suggested Ramos-Brito and others had attacked agents in protest of the arrests of two sisters, but records showed the women had been arrested in a separate incident that occurred after Ramos-Brito’s arrest.A supervisor later documented the correct timeline and “apologized” for errors, records showed.At trial, Cuauhtemoc Ortega, a federal public defender, sought to cast doubt on Bovino’s credibility, questioning him about facing a misconduct investigation several years ago, which resulted in a reprimand for referring to undocumented people as “scum, filth and trash”, the LA Times reported.After Bovino responded that his comment was in reference to a “specific criminal illegal alien”, Ortega read from the reprimand, signed by Bovino, which said he was describing “illegal aliens”, the newspaper said.Ortega also argued the agent who Ramos-Brito allegedly assaulted lied about the incident and Bovino was “trying to cover up for him”.Bovino has previously faced scrutiny for making false and misleading statements. He defended a major immigration sweep in January by claiming agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records, but documents showed that 77 out of 78 people taken into custody during the operation had no prior record with the agency, a CalMatters investigation revealed.And in June, while defending the arrest of a US citizen in a high-profile case, Bovino falsely claimed on social media that the man was charged with assaulting an officer.In Ramos-Brito’s trial, videos also contradicted initial claims of a border patrol agent who had said he was chasing a man who assaulted him, but was stopped by Ramos-Brito and Jose Mojica, another protester, the LA Times said. The footage showed no chase.Mojica first shared his account of the incident with the Guardian days after his arrest, saying he was assaulted and injured and had not attacked officers. The US attorney’s office subsequently dismissed felony assault charges it had initially filed against Mojica and Ramos-Brito, but then filed a lower-level misdemeanor against Ramos-Brito.Ramos-Brito’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.A spokesperson for Bill Essayli, the US attorney appointed by the president earlier this year, declined to comment on the acquittal. Border patrol officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry and requests for comment from Bovino.Essayli’s office has aggressively prosecuted protesters and people accused of interfering with immigration arrests, with more than 40 cases filed in June and July. But prosecutors have repeatedly dismissed some of the felony charges soon after filing them.Carley Palmer, an attorney who served as a supervisor in the US attorney’s office in LA until she left last year, said Thursday it was notable that the federal government had devoted significant resources to a misdemeanor case against an individual with no reported criminal history. Bovino, a senior official, flew in from Chicago for the trial.It is challenging to win convictions in cases like these without video evidence, she said: “The government bears the burden of proof, and if you don’t have footage of the relevant events, then everything is going to rise and fall on the credibility of your witnesses. If the witnesses are law enforcement officers and jurors believe they had bias … that’s really going to hurt their credibility.”The discussion at trial of Bovino’s past misconduct could create challenges for the government moving forward, she added: “In addition to harming the individual case, if a law enforcement witness has their credibility impeached on the stand, that can impact if they can testify in future cases and if their word can be relied on in sworn affidavits going forward.”Meghan Blanco, an attorney who represented Mojica, said it was significant that jurors did not believe the statements of such a senior official.“These jurors had the opportunity to listen firsthand to the CBP officer overseeing enforcement nationally and could not have found his testimony to be credible,” said Blanco, a former federal prosecutor. “It is a bad sign for the federal government. They are doing everything they can to try to legitimize their prosecutions, and thank God the jury and the public are seeing right through it.” More