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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

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      Trump cracks down on homelessness with executive order enabling local governments

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      The federal government is seeking to crack down on homelessness in the US, with Donald Trump issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.The order the US president signed on Thursday will seek the “reversal of federal or state judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees” that restrict local governments’ ability to respond to the crisis, and redirect funds to support rehabilitation and treatment. The order aims to “restore public order”, saying “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe”, according to the order.The action comes as the homelessness crisis in the US has significantly worsened in recent years driven by a widespread shortage of affordable housing. Last year, a single-day count, which is a rough estimate, recorded more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness across the country, the highest figure ever documented.Cities and states have adopted an increasingly punitive approach to homelessness, seeking to push people out of parks and city streets, even when there is no shelter available. The supreme court ruled last year that cities can impose fines and even jail time for unhoused people for sleeping outside after local governments argued some protections for unhoused people prevented them from taking action to reduce homelessness.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told USA Today, which first reported on the executive order, that the president was “delivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again” and end homelessness.“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.The president’s order comes after last year’s US supreme court ruling, which was one of the most consequential legal decisions on homelessness in decades in the US.That ruling held that it is not “cruel and unusual punishment” to criminalize camping when there is no shelter available. The case originated in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city that was defending its efforts to prosecute people for sleeping in public.Unhoused people in the US have long faced crackdowns and sweeps, with policies and police practices that result in law enforcement harassment, tickets or jail time. But the ruling supercharged those kinds of aggressive responses, emboldening cities and states to punish encampment residents who have no other options for shelter.In a report last month, the American Civil Liberties Union found that cities across the US have introduced more than 320 bills criminalizing unhoused people, the majority of which have passed. The crackdowns have taken place in Democratic- and Republican-run states alike.Advocates for unhoused people’s rights have long argued that criminalization only exacerbates the housing crisis, shuffling people in and out of jail or from one neighborhood to the next, as they lose their belongings and connections to providers, fall further into debt and wind up in increasingly unsafe conditions.During his campaign last year, Trump used dark rhetoric to talk about the humanitarian crisis, threatening to force people into “tent cities”, raising fears that some of the poorest, most vulnerable Americans could end up in remote locations in settings that resemble concentration camps. More

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      I was on New York’s rent board. Zohran Mamdani’s ideas aren’t pie in the sky | Leah Goodridge

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      During the New York City mayoral primary campaign, Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for a citywide rent freeze became a contentious topic. The Democratic nominee says to achieve a cap on annual rent increases for the city’s 1m rent-stabilized apartments, he would appoint members to the city’s rent guidelines board who support it. Critics decry a rent freeze as a pie-in-the-sky, unrealistic proposal.I served as a rent guidelines board member for nearly four years, appointed by then mayor Bill de Blasio in 2018. And it’s clear this controversy isn’t just about rent freezes – there’s a larger agenda to deregulate rent-stabilized housing, under which rent ceilings prevent landlords from raising the rent too high and tenants must be offered renewal leases (unless the landlord shows legal reason not to).Rent freezes are lifelinesIn 2023, a report revealed that half of New Yorkers couldn’t afford basic needs such as housing, transportation, food and healthcare. This is the New York that I grew to know intimately before I joined the board. I’d been a tenants’ rights attorney for years under the city’s right-to-counsel program, representing hundreds of low-income families facing eviction who could not afford their own attorneys. Each week, I entered housing court to find my clients – families with toddlers, seniors with disabilities and food delivery drivers – anxiously awaiting possible eviction. It’s not just low-income tenants at the mercy of landlords. Over the last 12 years, I’ve listened to thousands of stories and the one common thread is how easy it is for a moderate-income person to wind up homeless. Sudden unemployment, unexpected disability coupled with a rent increase, and now you’re fighting like hell to survive housing court and not join the 350,000 homeless New Yorkers. For these New Yorkers, a rent freeze isn’t some out-of-touch idea; it’s a lifeline.The people who make that decision are nine board members, all appointed by the mayor – two tenant members (my former role), two landlord members and five public members whom the tenants and landlord members vie to win over to reach a majority vote. We don’t rely on feelings or vibes – we’re poring over reports and hours of public testimony, and engaging in spirited policy debates. In 2020, those reports revealed record unemployment spurred by the pandemic and an already high homelessness rate and rent burden (most tenants were paying 30% or more of their income on rent). Weighing that with landlord operating costs, the board voted to approve a rent freeze that year, and a partial rent freeze (for six months) the following year. In fact, the board voted for a rent freeze four times over the last 10 years under the de Blasio administration (the board votes every summer on these rent levels and they take effect in the fall). This is why criticisms of Mamdani’s rent freeze ring hollow for me – it’s painted as out of touch, yet there’s already a precedent, backed by government reports and data.Rent stabilization is under attackIt is essential for the public to understand that there is a broader agenda behind the “rent freezes are bad” argument. Undermining freezes is part of a larger goal to weaken rent stabilization, which landlords have consistently sought to do – and they were nearly successful recently.While I was on the board, landlords sued the rent guidelines board and all of its members (including me!) in federal court, claiming that rent stabilization amounted to an “unconstitutional taking”: if the government tells me how much I can increase my rent by and when I can terminate a lease, then the government is interfering with my private property without just compensation, the argument goes.For years, there had been whispers that New York landlords were rubbing their hands together, eager to devise ways to get such a case before the US supreme court – and this one came dangerously close. I still remember when I got the call four years after the case traveled its way up the federal appeals court chain: “The court declined to hear the case!”Supreme court cases aren’t selected in a vacuum – the court often grants certiorari , or agrees to hear a case, when there is a broad public interest, leading some parties to drum up support for their cause strategically. When I was on the board, I often heard the dichotomy of the good landlord versus the bad tenant. It’s become so popular, you’ve probably been inundated with these stories too. “Professional tenants” who sign a lease, then never pay rent. TikToks about tenants leaving an apartment in disarray. Squatters. Rent-stabilized tenants who are secretly wealthy, gaming the system by paying low rent. All designed to lead you to the conclusion that “rent stabilization shouldn’t exist”. You’d never know that the median household income for rent-stabilized tenants is a modest $60,000. Or that eviction rates are so high that the New York City housing court doesn’t have enough judges to handle the volume of cases it sees daily.Just last year, in yet another case that landlords asked the supreme court to review, the court declined, but Justice Clarence Thomas signaled the court would be interested in hearing a rent stabilization challenge and even provided a legal roadmap for how to bring it. Landlords don’t want to reform rent stabilization – they want it done away with.At the end of the day, when the goal is profit and power is unchecked, it will be profits over people. Mamdani’s proposals are a threat to the real estate industry because they signal a mayorship that doesn’t ascribe to the tenet that government must sit back and let the market come to its own conclusion – all while millions of New Yorkers are trying to avoid housing court.

      Leah Goodridge is a former member of the New York City rent guidelines board and an attorney who spent 12 years in legal services representing tenants More

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      Trump says he’s ‘seriously considering’ taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public

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      Donald Trump said he will make a decision in the near future about taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, a move which he said he is giving “very serious consideration”.In a post on Truth Social, the US president said he will speak with treasury secretary, Scott Bessent; commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick; and federal housing finance director, William Pulte, about doing so.He added: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right. Stay tuned!”These two companies are the backbone of the US housing market. Together they support about 70% of US mortgages.Fannie and Freddie, which operate as for-profit corporations with private shareholders, were created by the US Congress to expand the national home lending market by buying home loans from private lenders and repackaging them as mortgage-backed securities.When the housing market collapsed in 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered overwhelming losses. To avoid catastrophic effects for the US economy, they were placed in conservatorship under the newly created Federal Housing Finance Agency.Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York and member of the Housing for US coalition, on Wednesday called on Trump to invest the expected $250bn in proceeds from the sale of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into middle-income housing, after the commander-in-chief announced he’s moving forward to release the government-sponsored enterprises from conservatorship.“President Trump is right to free Fannie and Freddie. But even better, let’s use the proceeds – some $250bn – to build middle-class housing for American workers by American workers. Housing for US stands ready to work with President Trump to make it happen.”Previous attempts to rid government control of the organizations, including under Trump’s first term in office, have been unsuccessful.In February, Bessent said the release of Fannie and Freddie from their conservatorship would depend on mortgage rate implications.“The priority for a Fannie and Freddie release, the most important metric that I’m looking at, is any study or hint that mortgage rates would go up,” Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Newsom calls on California cities to ban homeless encampments ‘without delay’

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      Gavin Newsom has called on California cities and counties to clear and effectively ban encampments “without delay” as the governor intensifies a crackdown on homelessness in the state.Newsom on Monday announced a new model ordinance to address “persistent” camps, in hopes of reducing the most visible signs of a worsening crisis, as well as $3.3bn in voter-approved funding to increase housing and drug treatment programs.“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets. Local leaders asked for resources – we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity – the courts delivered,” Newsom said in a statement.“Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”California has the largest population of unsheltered people in the US with more than 180,000 people in the state experiencing homelessness, including 123,000 people living outside, according to a 2023 count. The state – and local governments across California – have begun enacting harsher anti-camping policies following a US supreme court’s ruling last year that cities can criminalize unhoused people for sleeping outside – even if there are no available shelter spaces.Newsom has escalated efforts to force local governments into action since the 2024 supreme court decision, warning counties that he could withhold state support if they did not do more sweeps. In February, he told cities and counties they could lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding if they do not make progress in eradicating encampments and reducing homelessness.In a statement this week the governor’s office pointed to its own approach that it said had cleared more than 16,000 encampments and was “effective and scalable”. The model ordinance introduced by the office includes provisions it said can be modified to suit local needs, including a ban on persistent camping in one location, a ban on encampments blocking sidewalks and a requirement for local officials to provide notice and offer shelter before clearing an encampment.The governor is seeking to help municipalities set “rules around encampments and establish effective enforcement procedures that prioritize notice, shelter and services”, according to the statement.“Encampments pose a serious public safety risk, and expose the people in encampments to increased risk of sexual violence, criminal activity, property damage and break-ins, and unsanitary conditions,” the news release said. More

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      California’s economy surpasses Japan’s as it becomes fourth largest in world

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      California’s economy has surpassed Japan’s, making the Golden state the fourth largest economy in the world, governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday.The state’s nominal GDP reached $4.1tn, according to data from the International Monetary Fund and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, edging out Japan’s $4.02tn nominal GDP. California now ranks behind the US at $29.18tn, China at $18.74tn and Germany at $4.65tn.Along with the tech and entertainment industry capitals, the state, which has a population of nearly 40 million people, is the center for US manufacturing output and is the country’s largest agricultural producer.“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world – we’re setting the pace. Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation,” Newsom said in a statement.The state has outperformed the world’s top economies with a growth rate in 2024 of 6% compared with the US’s 5.3%, China’s 2.6% and Germany’s 2.9%. This week’s new rankings come six years after California surpassed the United Kingdom and became the world’s fifth largest economy.Newsom noted, however, that the Trump administration’s agenda endangers California’s economic interests.“And, while we celebrate this success, we recognize that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the current federal administration. California’s economy powers the nation, and it must be protected.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia last week became the first state to sue the federal government over Donald Trump’s tariff policies, and has argued that the president’s actions are unlawful and that constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to impose tariffs.“No state is poised to lose more than the state of California,” Newsom said during a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “It’s a serious and sober moment, and I’d be … lying to you if I said it can be quickly undone.”California is a major contributor to economic growth nationally, with the money it sends to the federal government outpacing what it receives in federal funding by $83bn, according to a statement from Newsom’s office.Despite an enormous shortage of affordable housing that has fueled a homelessness crisis in the state, the population has grown in recent years. Meanwhile, last year the state reported its tourism spending had hit an all-time high – though California has seen a drop in some areas.Canadian tourism in California was down 12% in February compared with the same month last year amid Trump’s tariff war. In response, the state has announced a new campaign to draw Canadians back, while one city has put up pro-Canada signs across its downtown. More

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      Trump ally pushes DoJ unit to shift civil rights focus, new messages show

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      The justice department’s civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towards Donald Trump’s priorities including hunting for noncitizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian.The new priorities were sent to several sections of the civil rights division this week by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who was confirmed a little more than two weeks ago to lead the division. Several of them only give glancing mention to the statutes and kinds of discrimination that have long been the focus of the division, which dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Several of the mission statements point to Trump’s executive orders as priorities for the section.The mission statement for the voting section, for example, barely mentions the Voting Rights Act and instead says the section will focus on preventing voter fraud – which is exceedingly rare – and helping states find for noncitizens on their voter rolls (non-citizen voting is also exceedingly rare). The guidance for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section does not make a single mention of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark 1968 civil rights law that has long been a central part of the department’s work.“It’s absolutely astonishing,” said Sasha Samberg-Champion, a former appellate lawyer in the justice department’s civil rights division. “This reflects the complete abdication of the core responsibilities of each of these sections.”The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The decision to send new mission statements to the sections is itself unusual. While the priorities of the sections often change from administration to administration, the core work often remains the same and the department’s career attorneys are expected to be apolitical. Trump has moved to end the independence of the justice department and use it as a tool to further his political goals and punish rivals.“To me, these new mission statements signal a significant change in the priorities that each of these sections will be expected to pursue,” said Jocelyn Samuels, who led the civil rights division from 2013 to 2014. “Some of this is explicit – where, for example, the new statements specifically call out enforcement of some of the president’s executive orders as the guide for the section’s work. Some of it is a matter of omission.“I suspect that the descriptions don’t themselves dictate what the sections will do, but they certainly manifest the expectations that leadership of the division will impose,” added Samuels, who is currently suing the Trump administration for firing her from her position on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.The justice department has already begun to pull back on its civil rights cases. It has withdrawn from several of the voting cases filed under Joe Biden’s administration, terminated an environmental justice settlement on behalf of Black residents in Alabama, and dropped a pay discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a Black lawyer against the Mississippi senate.The primary focus of the department’s voting section has long been ensuring that voting laws and practices aren’t tainted with discrimination. The new guidance this week shifts that focus and echoes Trump’s rhetoric around fraud.“The mission of the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion,” the new mission statement says. “The Section will work to ensure that only American citizens vote in US federal elections and do so securely. Other section priorities include preventing illegal voting, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error. All attorneys within the Voting Section will advocate with zeal on behalf of the United States of America in furtherance of all objectives as tasked.”It also says the voting section will work with the Department of Homeland Security to help states access citizenship data so that they can remove noncitizens from their voter rolls. The section will also “vigorously enforce the statutes, orders, and priorities” in a recent Trump executive order that requires states to require proof of citizenship to vote and to decertify voting machines. Several civil rights groups are already challenging that order in court and say it is illegal.“What’s missing from here is the idea that we’re going to protect the right to vote on a nondiscriminatory basis,” Samberg-Champion said. “Silly me, I always thought was the core purpose of the voting section and the core purpose of the Voting Rights Act.”Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and a top official in the civil rights division during the Obama administration, noted that federal law puts certain restrictions in place “before anybody in the federal government, civil rights division included, can lawfully touch state database information”.Noting that much of the language in the mission statement was broad, Levitt said he would be watching to see how it was implemented.“Read through the lens of all of the rest that the administration is doing, this is a further example of how off-course the administration is. This isn’t the statement that any administration in the last 68 years would have written,” he said in an email. “But the way this gets cashed out is far more important.”The new mission statement for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section says the section will focus on protecting the rights of members of the military and enforcing the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which prevents zoning discrimination. “The aggressive and even-handed deployment of RLUIPA to restore religious liberty will be a top priority,” the document says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe guidance also says the section will “focus on challenges to racially discriminatory lending programs”. Samberg-Champion said that was a “code red”.“They’re going to look for opportunities to challenge special purpose credit programs and other lending programs that are meant to enhance credit opportunities for people who have been starved of credit historically,” said Samberg-Champion, who served as deputy general counsel for enforcement and fair housing during the Biden administration. “It’s just astonishing that what they’re trying to do is actually diminish the availability of credit for people and go after banks, go after lenders who presumably are trying to make their credit availability fairer.”Guidance for the educational opportunities section focuses on preventing discrimination against white applicants and cites the supreme court’s 2023 ruling saying that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional. It also says the department will focus on anti-transgender issues.“This mandate includes protecting the rights of women and girls to unfettered access to programs, facilities, extracurricular activities, and sports or athletic opportunities that exclude males from presence or participation,” the statement reads. “The mandate also includes preventing racial discrimination in school admissions policies and preventing antisemitism in education wherever it is found.”The new mission statement for the disability rights section appears to have nothing to do with disability. “The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires dedication of the section’s resources, actions, attention, and energy to the priorities and objectives of the President,” the guidance says. It then goes on to list a series of executive orders that target transgender Americans.Eve Hill, who served as a top lawyer in the civil rights division under the Obama administration, said she wasn’t “overly alarmed” by the message to the disability rights section.“It’s hard to tell what effect it will have other than preventing [the disability rights section] from working for people with the disability of gender dysphoria. Which is important, but they hadn’t done much work in that space anyway,” she said.Several of the mission statements include a similar line that says attorneys are expected to enforce the law “faithfully and zealously”.That language is significant, Samberg-Champion said.“They’re anticipating – and I think correctly – that they’re going to get considerable pushback from the career staff as to what they’re being asked to do,” he said. “This reflects their understanding that they are radically changing what each of these sections historically has understood its mission to be. And that this is not going to go over well with the people who have made it their life’s work to enforce these important laws.” More

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      Republicans take aim at subsidies that help tens of millions of women

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      As they prepare to take control of the White House and Congress next month, conservatives are eyeing cutbacks to federal programs that help tens of millions of women pay for healthcare, food, housing and transportation.Slashing or overhauling social support programs, long a goal of Republican lawmakers, could be catastrophic for women experiencing poverty. Supporters contend the social safety-net programs are already grossly underfunded.“With this new administration that is coming in … I really am concerned about the lives of women. We are seeing so many policies, so many budget cuts,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women.Republicans say they want to keep campaign promises to cut government spending, and three major programs make easy targets: Medicaid, the joint state/federal health insurance program for people with lower incomes; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a cash-allowance program that replaced welfare; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), widely known as food stamps.While conservatives frame cuts as making government more efficient and even restoring freedom, advocates for and experts on families with little or no income say reducing these programs will throw more people – especially women and children – further into poverty.“It is going to fall heavily on women,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization.Predicting precisely what Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration will do is difficult. Congressional leaders are close-mouthed about negotiations, and the president-elect has not finished putting together his advisory team. None of the spokespeople contacted for this story returned calls or e-mails.But organizations known to advise top leaders in Congress and the previous Trump administration have laid out fairly detailed roadmaps.Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the incoming administration, denies its proposed changes will harm women, saying instead that marriage and “family values” will improve their economic situations. “Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy are virtually ignored in terms of priorities, yet these goals can reverse the cycle of poverty in meaningful ways,” reads the section on proposed changes to TANF and Snap.Numerous other groups that have studied the problem say forcing or even encouraging marriage will not make poverty disappear. And a recent study by a team at the University of South Carolina found that when state laws make it harder for pregnant women to get divorced, they’re more likely to be killed by their partners.Trump has promised not to attack the two most expensive and popular government programs: social security and Medicare. But he and Congress are up against a deadline to extend his 2017 tax reforms, which raised the federal deficit. They’ll have to cut something, and social spending programs, especially the $805bn Medicaid program, are low-hanging fruit for conservatives.Trump repeatedly tried to slash Snap during his last tenure in office: his 2021 budget proposal would have cut the program by more than $180bn – nearly 30% – over 10 years. Conservatives in Congress have continued these efforts and, with majorities in the House and Senate, they may be able to get them through next year.The Republican Study Committee, whose members include about three-quarters of the House Republican caucus, recommends more work requirements for Snap and TANF.“SNAP and our welfare system should embrace that work conveys dignity and self-sustainment and encourage individuals to find gainful employment, not reward them for staying at home,” their plan, released in March, reads.A large body of research questions whether widening work requirements does anything other than force people off benefits without helping them find employment. “I think there is a misperception that people in need of help are not working,” said Mei Powers, chief development and communications officer at Martha’s Table, a non-profit aid organization in Washington DC. “People are a paycheck, a crisis, a broken-down car away from needing services.”Snap currently helps 41 million people buy groceries and other necessities every month. Women accounted for more than 55% of people under 65 receiving Snap benefits in 2022, according to the National Women’s Law Center, a gender justice advocacy group. About one-third of them were women of color, the NWLC said.Among other things, cutting these programs will trap women in dangerous situations, the NWLC said: “SNAP helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault establish basic economic security.”TANF, which provides cash assistance, overwhelmingly benefits women. In 2022, 370,000 TANF adult recipients were female and 69,000 were male, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.Perhaps Medicaid is the most tempting target for conservatives because they can use it to undermine the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The GOP has been gunning for the ACA since it was signed into law without a single Republican vote in 2010.The federal government shares the cost of Medicaid with states. The ACA aimed to make Medicaid cover more people by offering to pay for virtually all the extra costs. Many Republican-led states resisted for years, but as of November, all but 10 states had expanded coverage to an extra 21 million people, or about a quarter of all Medicaid recipients.Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the US, plus it covers new mothers for post-pregnancy-related issues for 60 days. It also pays for medical care for 60% of all nursing home residents, more than 70% of whom are women.According to the health research organization KFF, expanding Medicaid helped improve care for women before and during pregnancy and after they gave birth.But most Republicans in Congress have never approved of this federal spending. Proposed cuts to Medicaid funding, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars, are laid out by the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health thinktank headed by Brian Blase, a top health adviser to the first Trump administration.Experts predict states would be unable or unwilling to make up the difference. “Facing such drastic reductions in federal Medicaid funding, states will have no choice but to institute truly draconian cuts to eligibility, benefits and provider reimbursement rates,” Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an analysis.That would mean women, children, older adults and people with disabilities would lose coverage as facilities closed and providers stopped seeing patients.The effects, says the National Organization for Women, “will be widespread, devastating, and long-lasting”.This story is published in partnership with the Fuller Project, a non-profit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world. 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      We can still have progress under Trump. We just need to focus on our mission | Aaron Glantz

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      Welcome to Fighting Back, the Guardian’s new pop-up newsletter from our opinion desk. From now until the inauguration, you will hear from big thinkers on what we can all do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. If you aren’t already a subscriber, you can sign up here.***Take a deep breath. Go on a walk. Meditate if it’s your practice. Talk with your family, friends and longtime collaborators. And then, when you are ready, sit down and write a personal mission statement rooted in an issue that’s important to you.Think about all the levers of power – local, state, federal, corporate and in the broader civil society. Sketch how each of them relate to the problem you hope to tackle. Most likely, Donald Trump and his administration will have a lot of say on this issue, but they won’t be the only players. Move forward with the intention to confront that issue, rather than attack the US president-elect, and you may find unexpected allies. By doing so, you will give yourself a chance to make a meaningful difference.
      It struck me, in 2016, that many in the media were overlooking the fact that the US had elected a real estate developer president
      As an investigative reporter, I spent the first Trump term focused on housing and economic equity. It struck me, after Trump’s surprise win over Hillary Clinton in 2016, that many in the media were overlooking the fact that the US had elected a real estate developer president – one who had been forced to settle a federal discrimination suit, at that.Housing is central to the American dream. It is nearly every family’s largest expense and the single most important source of wealth for homeowners. But on Barack Obama’s watch, homeownership slipped to a 50-year low. Black and brown families bore the brunt of the decline. I and my colleagues at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting set out out not to confront Trump per se, but to attack the following problem:Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, which banned discrimination in mortgage lending, the homeownership gap between Black and white families is larger than during the Jim Crow era. What can we do to ensure equal access to credit and a fair shake at the American dream?Confronting Trump directly seemed like a fool’s errand. His treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, was a Wall Street executive who personally profited off the foreclosure crisis. The man Trump appointed as the country’s top bank regulator, the comptroller of the currency Joseph Otting, was former chief executive of Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank. From 2010 to 2015, the years Otting was in charge, OneWest made just 1% of its home loans to Black families and 3% to Latinos, despite being headquartered in southern California. But Trump, Mnuchin and Otting were not the only people with power over mortgages. State, local and corporate officials could also be held accountable.In February 2018, my colleague Emmanuel Martinez and I published an investigation, Kept Out, which used an analysis of 31m mortgage records to expose modern-day redlining in 61 US cities. In Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Washington DC and dozens of others, we found people of color were far more likely to be denied a home loan even when they made the same amount of money, sought the same size loan and wanted to buy in the same neighborhood.This was a year into Trump’s first term. Republicans also controlled both houses of Congress. But our approach, simultaneously sweeping and local in scope, gave communities the tools they needed to hold public officials and corporations accountable.Six state attorneys general launched investigations. In Philadelphia, where we conducted our field reporting, the city created a $100m revolving loan fund to help first-time homebuyers. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank, visited the city and promised a major expansion in community lending. After Trump left office, three states and the justice department reached a $20m settlement with one of Warren Buffett’s mortgage companies, which had been the largest home purchase lender in Philadelphia.That inquiry, launched by then Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro, found loan officers and mortgage brokers at Buffett’s companies shared pictures of Black people holding wheelbarrows filled with watermelons. One sent a message that read “PROUD TO BE WHITE!” Another complained: “When I call you N****r, K*ke, Towel head, Sandn***r, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink … You call me a racist.” A top company official posted a picture with the Confederate flag. In addition to settling the case, the company shut down.
      We, the public, would be well-served to step back from this partisan tit-for-tat and focus on whether political leaders get stuff done
      This history is worth revisiting as Trump returns to power and once again stacks his administration with cronies. Some blue-state governors, including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, have positioned themselves to lead the resistance, with Newsom convening a special legislative session to “Trump-proof” the state.But we, the public, would be well-served to step back from this partisan tit-for-tat and focus on whether political leaders “get stuff done”, as Shapiro said in his post-election statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHousing is a major concern for Americans of all political perspectives. A recent Pew Research survey found 69% percent of respondents were “very concerned” about housing costs – with overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats worried. On this metric, the blue states are failing.California and New York have the lowest homeownership rates and the highest rents, according to the US Census Bureau. In California, a family must make $221,000 a year to qualify for a loan on a “mid-tier” home, according to an October report from the state legislative analyst office. If you’re a working-class person of any race, it’s no wonder Trump’s outrage is attractive. Democratic politicians aren’t solving the problems most important to you.Homelessness is also on the rise – especially in blue states and especially in California. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, California accounted for 49% of all unsheltered people in the United States last year (123,423 people) – nearly eight times the number of unsheltered people in second-place Florida.None of this is Trump’s fault. California is the fourth-largest economy in the world with a state budget approaching $300bn. The Golden state has poured $24bn into solving its homelessness crisis over the last five years, but a state audit found it didn’t adequately track whether all that money was spent effectively. In San Francisco, where residents voted to oust their mayor in favor of the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, the city spends nearly a billion dollars a year fighting homelessness – and likewise has little to show for it.
      Center an issue you care about, ask who is responsible for solving it, find allies and move forward with intention
      So where does this leave us? Back where we started. It sounds basic, but it’s true. People want a government that works for them. Center an issue you care about, ask who is responsible for solving it, find allies and move forward with intention. Not only will this approach bring results for you and those you care about, it will also provide an opportunity to dull the political polarization that feeds Trump’s power. You may not be able to lessen Trump’s rage or his desire for retribution, but you will be able to get something done – and that’s the most important step to creating the world you want to live in.What gives me hopeI derive hope and strength from the community around me. I know that all of us, pushing together, can weave a tapestry of strength that propels impact. In this time, consider supporting organizations that provide space to mission-driven journalists to find common cause together, including the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Carter Center, home of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.***Aaron Glantz, a two-time Peabody award winner and Pulitzer prize finalist, is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences. His books include Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream (HarperCollins). More