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    Stanford Protesters Charged With Felonies for Pro-Palestinian Occupation

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    Prosecutors filed felony charges on Thursday against 12 protesters, nearly all with ties to Stanford University, for breaking into an administration building and occupying it in 2024.Prosecutors on Thursday filed felony charges against 12 pro-Palestinian protesters — all but one of them a current or former student at Stanford University — for breaking into administration offices in June and causing extensive damage.The charges were among the most severe levied against participants in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. More than 3,000 people were arrested at college protests and encampments in the spring of 2024, but they generally faced misdemeanor charges or saw their charges dropped.Jeff Rosen, the district attorney for Santa Clara County, which includes the Stanford campus, charged the 12 protesters with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. They face up to three years and eight months in prison, as well as the payment of restitution to reimburse the university for the damage.Stanford is one of dozens of schools being investigated by the Trump administration for how they have handled pro-Palestinian protests and whether they have done enough to combat antisemitism on campus. The administration has also revoked the visas of several Stanford students and recent graduates, though the reason is unclear. .Mr. Rosen said that President Trump’s intense focus on Stanford and other universities played no role in the decision to charge the crimes as felonies.“What the federal administration is doing is what they’re doing. What I’m doing is applying the California Penal Code,” Mr. Rosen said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After losing homes and businesses, LA wildfire victims face a hurdle to rebuilding: Trump’s tariffs

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      Cory Singer, co-owner of the homebuilding firm Dolan Design & Build, raced to start construction as quickly as possible in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires. He was determined to stay ahead of the demand surge he saw coming and eager to help his clients begin to rebuild their lives.The firm broke ground in the Pacific Palisades on Saturday – one of the first companies to do so.But by that time, Singer had a new crisis to contend with: tariffs.Singer, whose firm is currently working on 10 homes in the Palisades, is in talks with clients to place shipping containers on their burned lots and store construction materials there, allowing him to order and stockpile materials in bulk before tariff price increases hit the market.“I’m definitely nervous,” he said.The Trump administration announced, walked back, and continually modified tariff policies in recent weeks, throwing the global stock market into chaos. The tariffs are widely expected to substantially increase construction costs in California and across the country.Singer is already dealing with tariff-related price hikes. One of his tile vendors placed a tariff surcharge on an order on 2 April, the same day the Trump administration announced sweeping tariffs, even though the materials had already been imported. Singer is especially worried about materials like plumbing, tiles and fixtures, which are often imported from China, and he is advising clients to factor in a 10% contingency to their budgets in anticipation of the costs.“If you don’t spend it, great,” he said, “but at least mentally prepare.”Three months after the worst wildfires in Los Angeles’s recent history flattened miles of city blocks and killed 30 people, signs of life are emerging. Insurance payouts have begun arriving. Contractors have plastered streets in Altadena and the Palisades with flyers and signs advertising their services. The Army Corps of Engineers is slowly clearing and flattening lots, replacing the charred and toxic mess of cars, washing machines and chimneys with the blank canvases of empty lots.View image in fullscreenBut homeowners, contractors, architects and developers across fire-ravaged Los Angeles are girding themselves for the tariffs. For homeowners seeking to rebuild, the tariffs add a new layer of stress to the uncertainties of navigating insurance, mortgages, short-term housing and piecing together plans for the future.The Trump administration is currently levying a 10% tariff on most countries, a 25% tariff on steel, aluminum and cars and car parts, and a massive 125% tariff on Chinese goods. The administration on Wednesday retreated on further planned global hikes after news of the tariffs prompted trillions in stock market losses worldwide, but Angelenos remain uncertain about what this means for their homes and plans.In Altadena, a middle-class neighborhood with fewer resources than the wealthy Palisades, the strain is especially acute. Homeowners worry tariffs will hinder their ability to afford rebuilding and exacerbate already widespread issues with underinsurance.“It’s really scary,” said Ken Yapkowitz, a longtime Altadena resident who lost his home and two rental income properties in the Eaton fire.Yapkowitz is waiting to see what his final insurance payouts will be and starting to map out how to rebuild his properties. He had already been factoring in a 25% bump in materials costs before the tariffs were announced, he said, and figured there would be a surge in demand for materials and labor. He expects tariffs to add substantial costs, and wonders if he will be able to rebuild on his lots as planned.Jose Flores, owner of JV Builders & Development, a small business in Pasadena, said many of his Altadena clients want to rebuild. But he worries that tariffs, paired with a painfully slow permitting process and other skyrocketing costs, will cause them to change their minds. He has three clients in the process of drawing up plans with architects, but many others have called him for estimates only to disappear.“By the time people are ready to start construction, I believe the prices are going to be higher,” he said. Flores has noticed the prices of lumber, copper and roofing tick up in recent months. But he can’t afford to stockpile materials, he said, and has no place to store them even if he could. He has no choice but to wait and see what happens.“I think that’s the case for most of us contractors in the area,” Flores said.Following the tariffs’ announcement, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, asked his administration to pursue independent trade relationships with other countries and to explore ways to protect access to construction materials in the wake of the California wildfires. But he did not specify what measures the state could deploy to do that.Flores, the contractor, said he doubted that the governor’s office could actually rein in prices.Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment.‘We just don’t know right now’Some residents and business owners are already seeing the tariffs affect wildfire response. Brett Taylor, an Altadena resident who owns a local window and door supplier and who lost his home in the Eaton fire, said his suppliers mostly manufacture domestically, but that many of them source parts from abroad. In late March, he reached out to approximately 10 window vendors to ask whether they would be open to providing package discounts to fire victims. Almost all of them said yes.But before the deals could be finalized, the administration announced tariffs. At least one of Taylor’s vendors walked back their commitment, citing price uncertainty, and Taylor anticipates others will do the same in coming days.View image in fullscreenOthers are tapping personal connections and devising makeshift plans to try to defray costs. James Peddie, an Altadena realtor who lost his home, has been helping develop plans for a group of homeowners hoping to rebuild collectively. He knows from his years in construction that a substantial portion of southern California’s lumber is imported from Canada, and when tariffs were announced, he understood that meant increased costs.Peddie went to high school in Montana, and has friends in the lumber industry there. He also knows a builder who personally went to Oregon to source lumber when prices soared during the rebuilding of Paradise, California, after the devastating 2018 Camp fire.So he called up his high school friends with a question: can you help me source lumber for LA?They were eager to help. They promised to keep their commissions low and to keep him updated on price fluctuations. “They’re people I can trust,” he said. “We can probably get the lumber for a really good deal.”This shift – from purchasing overseas to domestically – is exactly what the administration hopes the tariffs will prompt.But with the rebuilding process still in its earliest phases, and plans and permits far from finalized and approved, it felt premature to put a deposit down and commit to the lumber, Peddie said. Doing so would mean needing to find and pay for long-term storage, as well as betting that the cost of lumber was only going to increase.“Where is it going to be stored? Is it going to be more expensive to ship it in?” he said. “We just don’t know right now.”He estimated it would be seven months before he would be ready to order. It’s anyone’s guess what the tariff landscape – and market – would look like by then. More

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      Chinese Woman Detained in Arizona Border Station Dies by Suicide

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      A woman detained by U.S. border officers for overstaying a visitor visa died by suicide while in custody, according to a Democratic congresswoman.A Chinese woman detained by U.S. border officers for overstaying a visitor visa died by suicide while being held at a border patrol station in Arizona, a Democratic congresswoman said.The woman had been taken into custody in California after officers determined that she had overstayed a visitor visa, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington said in a statement, citing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. She was transferred to a patrol station in Yuma, Ariz., the statement said.Ms. Jayapal, a ranking member of the House subcommittee overseeing immigration, said initial reports from the agency had raised concerns about whether officers had properly conducted welfare checks on the woman. While welfare checks were logged, officials at the agency investigating the death could not verify whether the checks had actually happened, Ms. Jayapal said.“There is no excuse for why agents cannot verify if some of the necessary welfare checks occurred — or why some of the documented welfare checks were incorrectly reported,” Ms. Jayapal said, adding that she was concerned about the conditions in facilities where immigrants are detained.“Another preventable death only increases that concern,” she said.The woman had been in the country on a B-1/B-2 visa, according to the statement, a temporary visa for people visiting the United States for tourism or business.The Customs and Border Protection agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the agency confirmed the death of a 52-year-old woman to The Tucson Sentinel, and said that the woman had become “unresponsive in a cell” at the Yuma Border Patrol Station.Border Patrol staff provided medical assistance to the woman, the spokesman said in a statement to The Sentinel, and emergency medical services transported her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. An office overseeing the agency’s conduct was investigating the incident, the statement said, and the agency also reported the death to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.The exact circumstances around the woman’s initial detainment were not immediately clear. Border Patrol officials for the Yuma sector, which includes parts of California and Arizona, said last week on social media that they had arrested two Chinese people, one of them a 52-year-old woman, in Needles, Calif., on March 26.According to the post, agents searched a minivan during a vehicle stop and discovered that two Chinese nationals were “illegally present in the U.S.” The agency had planned to charge the two people under a law that makes certain people ineligible to receive a visa or enter the country, including on the grounds of suspected money laundering or other criminal activity.More than $220,000 in cash was also seized from the van, and the agency said it believed the cash was linked to illegal activity. But it was not immediately clear on Friday whether the woman arrested in Needles was the same woman who died while in custody.Christine Hauser More

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      Republicans Invoke Newsom in a Hearing on Transgender Sports

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      California Democrats rejected two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports. In a rare turn, Republicans tried to use the Democratic governor’s own words to challenge Democrats.It was a discussion of a kind rarely, if ever, seen in the California State Capitol. For hours on Tuesday, Republicans repeatedly invoked the views of Gov. Gavin Newsom, while the governor’s fellow Democrats took pains to avoid saying his name.At issue were two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports, just days after Mr. Newsom had reiterated his personal belief that their participation was unfair to those who were born as girls.“For the first time ever, Gavin Newsom and I agree,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative advocacy group.Democrats, who control the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, ultimately quashed the bills after dozens of people spoke in a packed hearing room. The debate brought into stark focus an extraordinary rift among California Democrats on the issue of transgender participation in female sports.Mr. Newsom, a longtime supporter of expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights, publicly broke with his party last month when he said on his new podcast that he thinks it’s “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in female sports. The governor repeated that position Friday during an interview on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” in which he also said the Democratic Party brand is “toxic.”Mr. Newsom has not publicly weighed in on the transgender sports bills, and his office declined to comment on Tuesday. But his recent comments have scrambled the conventional coalitions in California’s Capitol, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the Legislature and occupy every statewide office. While it is common for Democrats to split on bills concerning the environment, economy, crime or education, divisions over L.G.B.T.Q. rights are rare.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Silver Fire in California Prompts Evacuations

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      Efforts to battle the 1,250-acre fire in eastern California were complicated by strong winds, which were expected to continue through Monday.A wildfire in eastern California that ignited on Sunday has spread to 1,250 acres and has prompted evacuations, state fire officials said.The wildfire, named the Silver fire, began around 2:11 p.m. north of Bishop, a city about halfway between Yosemite National Park and Death Valley National Park, according to Cal Fire, the state fire agency.The agency shared photos on social media that showed bright flames and clouds of smoke burning a grassy, rural area below towering mountain ranges.Timelapse video from an ALERTCalifornia camera showed plumes of smoke rising from the Silver fire on Sunday afternoon.ALERTCalifornia/UC San Diego via StoryfulStrong winds helped intensify the fire overnight, Cal Fire said on social media Monday morning, adding that it had “significantly increased” resources to stifle the blaze. “The fire is actively threatening structures, critical infrastructure, endangered species habitats, watersheds, and cultural and heritage resources,” the agency said.Officials ordered evacuations in parts of Inyo County and Mono County and closed a 30-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 6. The fire was zero percent contained, and there were no known injuries from the fire as of late Sunday night, according to Cal Fire.On Sunday, efforts to fight the fast-moving fire were complicated by strong winds that grounded some aircraft, Cal Fire said.The National Weather Service said a high wind warning was still in place in the region on Monday morning and would remain through the evening. The Weather Service warned that gusts could reach up to 65 miles per hour and that strong winds could blow down power lines and trees. More

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      USC enacts hiring freeze and makes cuts over Trump threats to funding

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      The University of Southern California announced an immediate hiring freeze for all staff positions, “with very few critical exceptions” in a letter to faculty and staff on Tuesday.The letter, from USC’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, said the hiring freeze was one of nine steps to cut the school’s operating budget amid deep uncertainty about federal funding – given sweeping cuts to scientific research, the reorganization of student loans, and an education department investigation accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish students during protests over Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.“Like other major research institutions, USC relies on significant amounts of federal funding to carry out our mission,” the university administrators wrote. “In fiscal year 2024, for example, we received approximately $1.35 billion in federal funding, including roughly $650 million in student financial aid and $569 million for federally funded research. The health system also receives Medicare, Medicaid, and Medi-Cal payments – a significant portion of its revenues – and the futures of those funds are similarly uncertain.”The other measures include: permanent budget reductions for administrative units and schools, a review of procurement contracts, a review of capital projects “to determine which may be deferred or paused”, a curtailment of faculty hiring, new restriction on discretionary spending and expenses for travel and conferences, an effort to streamline operations, a halt on merit-based pay increases, and an end to extended winter recess introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.Two weeks ago, USC was one of 60 schools notified by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights of “potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus”.The newly announced budget cuts follow a university statement in November of last year that informed staff that “rising costs require … budgetary adjustments”. In 2024, that statement said: “USC’s audited financial statement shows a deficit of $158 million.”“Over the past six years, our deficit has ranged from $586 million during legal cost repayments and COVID, to a modest positive level of $36 million in 2023,” USC administrators wrote in November.“Similar deficits are being reported at many peer institutions due to rising costs that outpace revenues across all of higher education,” they added. More

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      Democrats: Still Under Construction

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      More from our inbox:Domestic EnemiesNew housing under construction in Georgetown, Texas.Mike Osborne for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “There Is a Liberal Answer to the Trump-Musk Alliance,” by Ezra Klein (column, March 9):Mr. Klein gets some things right about government efficiency and some things absolutely wrong. I agree that Democrats should pursue policies of abundance rather than policies of constraint. But Democrats did make that argument repeatedly and provided real policy solutions — for example, an expanded child tax credit that reduced child poverty roughly by half within a two-year period.Mr. Klein underestimates the power of the media’s constantly hammering on the message of division and the false assumption that taking care of the poorest will disadvantage working- and middle-class white people. He also contrasts housing construction policy in California and Texas, blaming overregulation for California’s lack of progress in meeting needs. Earthquakes? Wildfires? Coastal erosion? Access to adequate water? Mr. Klein ignores those constraints. And has he been to Texas lately?I am from a large Texas family and lived in California for 40 years. “Accessible housing” in Texas has led to endless sprawl, long commutes, increasing air pollution alerts and limited access to amenities to improve the quality of life. With its diminishing investment in public goods like schools and parks, its poor family support and hostility to women and diverse people, and one of the most corrupt administrative and legislative governments in the United States, Texas is hardly a model.Terry L. AllisonMontrealTo the Editor:Ezra Klein suggests that “a politics of abundance” can defeat the “politics of scarcity” that fuels the fear driving people into the arms of authoritarians like Donald Trump. While I agree from a philosophical standpoint, I must ask: How can we pull that off in a world where more and more of our planet is becoming uninhabitable because of climate change?Climate change is at the root of most of the challenges we face today. Millions of people displaced by famine, fire or flood will move to the quickly dwindling parts of the planet that are habitable. People in these still habitable locations sense this at their deepest core, and thus the politics of scarcity are born — not from propaganda but from actual crisis.We cannot even begin to project any sense of “abundance” while this indisputable fact remains true. The only way to save not only our political representation but also our planet is to face this existential crisis squarely, so that maybe one day “abundance” becomes a word that we can use truthfully, and joyfully, once again.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chomps Recalls Beef and Turkey Sticks Over ‘Pieces of Metal’ Complaints

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      The snack sticks included in the recall were packaged at a single facility in Idaho from Jan. 16 through Jan. 23, the company said.Nearly 30,000 pounds of ready-to-eat beef sticks were recalled on Thursday after consumers complained that they had found metal fragments in them, food safety and company officials said.The voluntary recall affects Chomps Original Beef Sticks, but the company said in a statement posted online on Thursday and Friday that it was including Original Turkey sticks and additional product lots that were produced at Idaho Smokehouse Partners, based in Shelley, Idaho.The Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said in a statement that the agency was informed of “two consumer complaints reporting that pieces of metal were found in the product.”The products subject to the recall were packaged at a single facility from Jan. 16 through Jan. 23, according to Chomps. The Food Safety and Inspection Service said that the recalled items were shipped to retail locations in California and Illinois.The company said the turkey products added to the recall were not included in the 29,541 pounds of recalled beef sticks reported by federal regulators, but it did not provide a weight for the additional items.There have been no confirmed injuries from consuming the products, the Food Safety and Inspection Service said, adding that anyone who is concerned about an injury should contact a health care provider.Consumers who purchased the recalled items are urged to throw them away or return them to the store.Idaho Smokehouse Partners said in a statement on Saturday that after becoming “aware of the two complaints,” it “worked with regulatory authorities on the best way to protect consumers from this issue.”“We are taking this action because we are committed to the highest food safety standards for the consumers of our products,” the company added.Chomps said in a statement on Saturday that the decision to recall the items was “made following a thorough investigation conducted alongside our manufacturing partner” and under the oversight of the Agriculture Department.The company said it “chose to broaden the scope of the recall beyond what was required, ensuring that all product packaged during that time frame was fully accounted for and removed from the market.”Chomps also said that it had added “further safeguards to prevent this from happening again.” More

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      In California, Confusion Abounds Over Status of 2 National Monuments

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      A week after the White House indicated it would eliminate two national monuments in California, many remain unsure whether President Trump has actually revoked the lands’ protected status.Mr. Trump announced last Friday that he would rescind a proclamation signed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. a week before he left office that established the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments, which encompassed more than 848,000 acres of desert and mountainous land.The White House then released a fact sheet that included a bullet point stating that Mr. Trump would be “terminating proclamations” declaring monuments that safeguarded “vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production.”The New York Times confirmed last Saturday that Mr. Trump had indeed rescinded that proclamation. But later that day, the bullet point listing termination of national monuments disappeared from the White House fact sheet.A post on X sent by a verified White House account last week still included the terminations of national monuments, and has not been edited or removed as of Saturday morning.The White House declined to answer questions about the discrepancy.“We were obviously very disappointed to see that fact sheet go up and then confused to see it come back down,” Mark Green, the executive director of CalWild, a nonprofit in California that advocates for wild spaces on public lands. “There’s very little clarity about what’s going on, and there’s such a lack of transparency with this administration that it’s just really hard to know what’s happening.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More