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      Trump officials to send election observers to California and New Jersey

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      The Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic states holding off-year elections following requests from state Republican parties.The department announced it was planning to monitor polling sites in Passaic county, New Jersey, and five counties in southern and central California: Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno. The goal, according to the department, is “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law”.“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a statement to the Associated Press.Election monitoring is a routine function of the justice department, but the focus on California and New Jersey comes as both states are set to hold closely-watched elections with national consequences on 4 November. New Jersey has an open seat for governor that has attracted major spending by both parties and California is holding a special election aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts elsewhere ahead of the 2026 midterms.The justice department’s efforts are also the latest salvo in the Republican party’s preoccupation with election integrity after Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud.The announcement comes days after the Republican parties in both states wrote letters to the department requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states condemned the decision.New Jersey attorney general Matt Platkin called the move “highly inappropriate” and said the DoJ “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions”.Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic party, said: “No amount of election interference by the California Republican party is going to silence the voices of California voters.”The letter from the California GOP, sent Monday and obtained by the AP, asked Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s civil rights division, to provide monitors to observe the election in the five counties.“In recent elections, we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election,” wrote GOP chair Corrin Rankin.The state is set to vote 4 November on a redistricting proposition that would dramatically redraw California’s congressional lines to add as many as five additional Democratic seats to its US House delegation.Each of the counties named, they alleged, has experienced recent voting issues, such as sending incorrect or duplicate ballots to voters. They also take issue with how Los Angeles and Orange counties maintain their voter rolls.California is one of at least eight states the department has sued as part of a wide-ranging request for detailed voter roll information involving at least half the states. The department has not said why it wants the data.Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Governor Gavin Newsom, said the department has no standing to “interfere” with California’s election because the ballot contains only a state-specific initiative and has no federal races.“Deploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote,” he said.Orange county registrar of voters Bob Page described his county’s elections as “accessible, accurate, fair, secure, and transparent.”Los Angeles county clerk Dean Logan said election observers are standard practice across the country and that the county, with 5.8 million registered voters, is continuously updating and verifying its voter records.“Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.Most Californians vote using mail ballots returned through the postal service, drop-boxes or at local voting centers. But in pursuit of accuracy and counting every vote, California has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks – and sometimes longer.California’s request echoed a similar letter sent by New Jersey Republicans asking the DOJ to dispatch election monitors to “oversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots” and “monitor access to the board of elections around the clock” in suburban Passaic county ahead of the state’s governor’s race.The New Jersey Republican state committee told Dhillon federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county that was once a Democratic stronghold, but shifted to Trump in last year’s presidential race.David Becker, a former DoJ attorney who has served as an election monitor and trained them, said the work is typically done by department lawyers who are prohibited from interfering at polling places.But Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research, said local jurisdictions normally agree to the monitors’ presence.If the administration tried to send monitors without a clear legal rationale to a place where local officials did not want them, “that could result in chaos,” he said. 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      Daniel Lurie: the millionaire mayor who got Trump to back off (for now)

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      Donald Trump rarely has kind words for Democrats, especially those who stand in his way. But on Thursday the president offered something unfamiliar: a compliment.As federal agents mobilized at a US Coast Guard base in the Bay Area, Trump credited San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for “very nicely” persuading him to stand down from a planned immigration enforcement “surge” in the city this weekend.“I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” Trump wrote, without hurling an epithet or nickname. “I told him, ‘It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?’”Speaking later at a midday news conference at city hall, Lurie said it was the president who initiated the conversation: “He picked up the phone and called me.”Trump had conveyed “clearly” that he was calling off the deployment of federal troops, Lurie told reporters, clarifying that the president had “asked nothing of me” in return.It was not Lurie’s assurances alone that changed Trump’s mind. According to the president’s Truth Social post, “friends of mine who live in the area” called to vouch for the “substantial progress” San Francisco had made since Lurie took the helm in January. Trump specifically cited “great people” such as Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce who ignited a firestorm when he suggested the president should send national guard troops to his native San Francisco before apologizing and backtracking, as well as Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia.“They want to give it a ‘shot’,” Trump wrote, summarizing the feedback he had received. “Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”Lurie, the 48-year-old heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, swept into city hall promising a reset for a city that had struggled with both real post-pandemic challenges – an empty downtown, an enduring homelessness emergency, an addiction crisis, repeated reports of corruption – and a caricatured portrayal by Trump and his rightwing allies as a Democratic-run hellscape awash in decay and crime. His victory over incumbent London Breed last November was widely viewed as a rebuke of San Francisco’s political status quo, and a test of whether a political newcomer and centrist pragmatist could help the city overcome its woes – and the perception that it was worse off than it was.So far, the statistics have trended in the right direction. The California governor’s office said earlier this month that San Francisco saw a 45% decrease in homicides and 40% drop in robberies from 2019 to 2025. The city is on track to have the lowest number of homicides in more than 70 years, according to a recent San Francisco Chronicle analysis.Yet looming over Lurie’s early months in office were questions over how he would fare in a showdown with the mercurial president who has made his antagonism towards the city clear for years. It’s a calculation every Democratic mayor and blue state governor has made as Trump threatens a widening federal crackdown on major US cities.At a moment when Democrats across the country are yearning for a confrontational foil to Trump, Lurie stuck to a “heads down” approach, insisting his top priority was keeping residents safe. Lurie rarely, if ever, refers to the president by name, and even when criticizing the administration, he avoids attacking Trump in personal terms. It is a stark contrast to Gavin Newsom, the California governor (and a former San Francisco mayor), who has emerged as a leading figure in the anti-Trump resistance and pillories the president daily on social media.In recent days, as tensions rose and Trump signaled he was prepared to send troops into San Francisco, Lurie carried on as he had, “laser-focused” on boosting the “greatest city in the world”. While he was firm that the city opposed a federal deployment, he refrained from criticizing the president directly. The mayor kept residents informed with a series of video messages in his signature direct-to-camera style, promising to protect the city’s immigrant communities and urging residents to protest peacefully. “While we cannot control the federal government, here in San Francisco,” he said earlier this week, “we define who we are.”The ties he has forged with Silicon Valley’s prominent leaders, as part of his mission to keep tech companies in San Francisco, appeared to have also helped defuse the situation, at least for now.At the press conference on Thursday, Lurie said he welcomed San Francisco’s “continued partnership” with federal authorities to tackle drugs and crime. He touted the city’s progress, noting that crime was down – violent crime particularly. The city had added police officers, workers were returning to the office, and downtown buildings were being leased and purchased, Lurie said he impressed on the builder turned president. The mayor’s message, too, was clear: “San Francisco’s comeback is real.”Lurie’s management of the city – and the president – has earned glowing reviews. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who represents San Francisco, said Lurie had “demonstrated exceptional leadership in his steadfast commitment to the safety and wellbeing of San Franciscans”.“I salute Mayor Lurie for standing up for our City and reinforcing San Francisco’s strength, optimism and recovery,” she said on X.Yet much remained unclear – whether Trump was calling off the anticipated national guard deployment or a ramped-up immigration enforcement effort, or whether he might send troops elsewhere in the Bay Area. The president has mentioned Oakland as another possible target – and, as ever, reserved the right to change his mind. Unlike Lurie, Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, received no such call from the president, but said she was ready to “engage with anyone, at any level of government, to protect Oakland residents”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt his press conference, Lurie said he could only repeat what the president told him during their call.“Our city remains prepared for any scenario,” he said. “We have a plan in place that can be activated at any moment.”Trump’s sudden reversal came as a surprise to local leaders and advocates, as protests against the federal intervention amassed at the Coast Guard base in Alameda on Thursday morning.Rights groups and community activists have urged Lurie and other city officials to take bolder steps to defend immigrants, some calling for a state of emergency if a federal deployment takes place, a designation that could help quickly boost resources for targeted communities. Others have called on Lurie to establish “safe zones” that federal agents cannot enter and declare an eviction moratorium, since raids and fears of ICE enforcement can force people to hide out and miss work.Outside San Francisco’s city hall, local leaders and organizers were also grappling with the whiplash.“At this time, we do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the national guard. We don’t know if it’s ICE, if it’s border patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood. She said any federal agents deputized to help Trump “carry out his mass deportation plans” were “absolutely not welcome in San Francisco”.Newsom, who has made a sport of publicly clashing with Trump, said Trump’s decision to call off the deployment was proof of the president’s capriciousness and warned residents not to take the president at his word. “Business leaders made the phone call to Donald Trump – now we know who he listens to,” the governor said at an event in San Jose on Thursday, adding: “If you think this story just ended – that it’s got a period or exclamation point – you know better.”Even as Trump boasted of his own restraint, Lurie’s instinct was the opposite: deflect attention and press ahead. Asked on Thursday whether his approach could serve as a model for other Democratic mayors facing an unwanted federal intervention, Lurie demurred, suggesting the question was better left to the political chattering class.“Every day I’m focused on San Francisco,” he said. “Heads down. How do we keep our city safe?”Maanvi Singh in San Francisco and Sam Levin in Los Angeles contributed reporting More

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      Trump cancels plans to send federal troops to San Francisco for immigration crackdown

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      Donald Trump has canceled plans for a deployment of federal troops to San Francisco that had sparked widespread condemnation from California leaders and sent protesters flooding into the streets.The Bay Area region had been on edge after reports emerged on Wednesday that the Trump administration was poised to send more than 100 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agents to the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city in the East Bay, as part of a large-scale immigration-enforcement plan.But on Thursday, the president said he would not move forward with a “surge” of federal forces in the area after speaking with the mayor, Daniel Lurie, and Silicon Valley leaders including Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO who recently apologized for saying Trump should send national guard troops, and Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia. Lurie said he spoke with the president on Wednesday night, and that Trump told him he would call off the deployment.“In that conversation, the president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning,” Lurie said in a statement.Trump confirmed the conversation on his Truth Social platform, saying: “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”The operation had been expected to start as early as Thursday.The sudden reversal came as protesters had mobilized in anticipation of a surge in troops. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the US Coast Guard base in Alameda on an overcast Thursday morning, holding signs with slogans such as “No ICE or Troops in the Bay!” Police used flash-bang grenades to clear a handful of demonstrators from the entrance as CBP vehicles drove through.View image in fullscreenLater on Thursday morning, protesters were walking in a slow circle at the gates of the Coast Guard base. Many were carrying signs that read: “Protect our neighbors, protegemos nuestros vecinos.” There was at least one person dressed as Batman, and Marvin Gaye was blasting through a loudspeaker.Josh Aguirre, 39, had come to participate in his first ever protest. “It’s scary what’s going on right now, and we’ve got to just stand in solidarity,” said Aguirre, who had come, along with his dog, from East Oakland – a largely Latino and immigrant community.He found out that federal agents would be deployed to the Bay Area from his four-year-old daughter’s school administrators. “And the first thing I thought was the families that I know who bring their kids to school are going to be affected the most,” he said. “It’s important to show up for your community.”Raj, an educator who asked to be identified only by his first name, had come with his 10-year-old daughter. “In the Bay we’re involved … and our kids know what’s happening,” he said. “When federal troops come in here, they won’t just see what they think they’re gonna see, which are like violent agitators. They’re going to see entire communities come out with their kids, with their families, with their teens.”By Thursday afternoon, local leaders and organizers had gathered outside San Francisco’s city hall, where they grappled with the whiplash. It remained unclear whether Trump’s decision to pull back was focused only on San Francisco, or if other Bay Area cities such as Oakland would still be targeted.“At this time, we do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the national guard. We don’t know if it’s ICE, if it’s border patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood.Fielder also criticized Benioff, Elon Musk and other tech leaders who had voiced support for a national guard deployment in the Bay Area. “I condemn every tech billionaire who supported this,” she said. “This city doesn’t belong to them.”Fielder and other organizers emphasized that even as the region awaits clarity on whether and where there will be a federal deployment, and the extent to which the administration plans to ramp up immigration enforcement in the city, local leaders are going to continue to mobilize rapid response networks, legal aid and other support systems for the residents most affected.“We don’t need to get ready because we’ve been ready,” Fielder said. “This is not a time for panic. It is a time for power across this area.”Trump had signaled for weeks that San Francisco could be the next Democratic city to face an administration crackdown. In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, the president claimed “unquestioned power” to deploy the national guard and argued that San Francisco residents want the military in their city.It was unclear if the national guard would have played a role in operations in the region. But state and local leaders on Wednesday had responded swiftly and strongly to the news of the CBP operations, and vowed to fight any potential deployment of the military.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called Trump’s moves “right out of the dictator’s handbook”.“He sends out masked men, he sends out border patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving for that by sending in the [national] guard,” Newsom said in a video statement. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”Lurie said earlier in the week that his city was prepared.“For months, we have been anticipating the possibility of some kind of federal deployment in our city,” he said.Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, said: “Real public safety comes from Oakland-based solutions, not federal military occupation.”View image in fullscreenRob Bonta, California’s attorney general, vowed to “be in court within hours, if not minutes”, if there is a federal deployment, and the San Francisco city attorney, David Chiu, has promised the same.San Francisco’s district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, said she was ready to prosecute any federal agents who violated California law.San Francisco has been the latest major US city to face Trump’s threats. The administration has previously sent the military to Los Angeles and Chicago, and has tried to deploy troops in Portland. All deployments have faced legal challenges from local and state authorities.Trump in recent weeks argued that a federal operation in San Francisco was necessary to combat crime. “Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot” he said at an appearance on 16 October.Local leaders, including the city’s mayor and district attorney, have said crime in the city is under control, pointing to falling crime rates and growing police recruitment. The city’s homicide rate this year is expected to be the lowest since 1954, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.Community groups had readied themselves to support affected residents. Organizers have mobilized to stage a mass rally in the city, as well as vigils at local libraries.City supervisor Jackie Fielder told reporters last week she and her constituents in the Mission district had been bracing for this moment.“The moment that people stop going to work, when anyone Black or brown can’t freely walk outside without the fear of Trump’s federal agents racially profiling and arresting them, the moment when parents stop sending kids to school, become too afraid to go to the grocery store or doctor,” Fielder said. “What we have been preparing for in the Mission is essentially a shutdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since Covid.” More

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      Major highway in California to shut down as US marines fire live artillery over it

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      A celebration marking the US marines’ 250th anniversary will shut down a major freeway artery through southern California on Saturday as the military plans to fire live 155mm artillery shells over the site.The California highway patrol announced the closure at 6am Saturday, saying it would shut down an approximately 17-mile (27km) stretch of Interstate 5 for four hours near Camp Pendleton, a 125,000-acre (50,585-hectare) base in Oceanside in north-western San Diego county. The closure will remain in effect from 11am to 3pm.The event in question will include a live-fire amphibious capabilities demonstration at Red Beach, according to a statement from the US marine corps. JD Vance, a former enlisted marine who served in Iraq, is scheduled to speak to at least 15,000 marines, sailors, veterans and families expected to attend. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth will also deliver remarks.“The capabilities demonstration will feature integrated Navy and Marine Corps operations across air, land and sea,” the Marines’ statement said.The US Marine Corps insisted that the event will comply with established safety protocols, and “no public highways or transportation routes will be closed”.The CHP said in a statement that the military event will involve “live ammunition being discharged by the federal government over the freeway” and made the call to temporarily close a portion of the freeway due to the safety risk and distractions to drivers.Earlier in the week, California governor Gavin Newsom had decried the plans to fire live rounds over Interstate 5, calling it an “absurd show of force” and “totally uncalled for ”.On Saturday morning, Newsom was concerned that the stunt could put Californians in harm’s way. “Flying live rounds over a busy highway without coordination between state, federal, and local partners isn’t just wrong – it’s dangerous,” Newsom posted on social media.The criticism underscored the growing tensions between Donald Trump and the California governor, who has frequently called out decisions by the president’s administration.This celebration was granted no exception from Newsom’s ire. “Using our military to intimidate people you disagree with politically doesn’t make you look strong,” Newsom said. “It makes you look weak. It’s reckless, it’s disrespectful, and yet another action beneath the office of the presidency.”Earlier in October, the navy hosted the president aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of Virginia to celebrate the same military anniversary. Trump turned that event into a political rally.This show of force coincides with No Kings rallies and marches being held across the US, including several locations in California, aligning behind a message that the nation’s slide into authoritarian rule under Trump needs to stop.Newsom cautioned those participating in the rallies: “I urge our nation to use this weekend’s No Kings marches as a declaration of independence against the tyranny and lawlessness currently running this country. Use your voice. ACT PEACEFULLY. Protect yourself and your community. THERE ARE NO KINGS IN THE UNITED STATES.”In a statement to the New York Times, a spokesperson for Vance, William Martin, said Newsom was misleading the public about the safety risk for the event on Saturday. He said it was routine training.“If Gavin Newsom wants to oppose the training exercises that ensure our Armed Forces are the deadliest and most lethal fighting force in the world, then he can go right ahead,” Martin said.Matt Rocco, the California department of transportation spokesperson, said: “This is all because of the White House-directed military event, that for the safety of the public, we need to shut down the freeway since they’re sending live ordnances over the freeway.”Rocco said the I5 closure could cost up to another two hours of trip time for those commuting between San Diego and Los Angeles. The freeway carries 80,000 travelers and $94m in freight through the corridor daily, according to the governor’s office. Passenger rail services running parallel to the I5 have also been canceled for the afternoon. More

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

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      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

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      Newsom to sue Trump over California national guard deployment to Oregon

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      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

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      California measure brings rideshare drivers one step closer to unionizing

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      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

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

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      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