law

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration authorities are attempting to quickly deport an Arizona woman who has lived in the U.S. for nearly 30 years, in what her lawyers are calling the first test of a federal law holding that longtime immigrants cannot be removed until they’ve had a chance to plead their case before a judge.

Lawyers for Mirta Amarilis Co Tupul filed a lawsuit Saturday night in U.S. district court in Arizona and are seeking an emergency stop to Co Tupul’s imminent deportation to Guatemala while the case plays out in court.

“Only this administration would go this far,” said Co Tupul’s lead attorney, Chris Godshall-Bennet, “because at the core of it is an underlying complete disrespect for the rule of law.”

Godshall-Bennet said the government’s move against Co Tupul is just the latest of many illegal actions being attempted by the Trump administration in its effort to remove as many immigrants as possible. If Co Tupul’s deportation is allowed to proceed, her defenders said, it could have wide implications for millions of other immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for many years and are at risk of deportation.

The lawsuit was filed against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons and Phoenix ICE Field Office Director John Cantu. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Federal law since 1996 allows the government to place immigrants in expedited removal proceedings if they have lived in the U.S. for under two years. The Trump administration appears to be using that law beyond its limits.

“They are going to start going around, grabbing people who have been here for decades and throwing them out without immigration court hearings,” said Eric Lee, another of Co Tupul’s attorneys.

Co Tupul’s lawyers don’t deny that she lacks legal status. At issue, they say, is how much due process she should receive.

Co Tupul, 38, entered the U.S. around 1996. She is a single mother of three U.S. citizens, ages 8, 16 and 18, and lives in Phoenix.

She was driving to work at a laundromat on July 22 when an officer wearing a green uniform — believed to be a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent — pulled her over and quickly asked about her immigration status. When Co Tupul declined to answer, the agent held her while he called ICE, who transported her to the Eloy Detention Center about 65 miles southeast of Phoenix.

Three days later, her attorney Mindy Butler-Christensen called Co Tupul’s deportation officer, who explained that her client had been placed in expedited removal proceedings and would be removed within one to three weeks.

“I asked the Deportation Officer to share with me why she would be placed in Expedited Removal,” Butler-Christensen wrote in a sworn declaration. “He told me that this was a ‘new policy’ that ICE would be implementing with immigrants who have just had ‘their first contact with ICE.’”

He refused to provide documentation of the policy, she said.

Under regular deportation proceedings, immigrants are entitled to plead their case before an immigration judge, with rights to appeal. Because of significant court backlogs, that process can be drawn out for years.

Under expedited removal, the immigration court process is bypassed and immigrants cannot appeal, though they are entitled to an asylum screening.

Initially, the faster process was only applied to immigrants who arrived at ports of entry, such as airports. By the mid-2000s, it had expanded to those who entered illegally by sea or land and were caught by border agents within two weeks of arrival.

Use of expedited removal was expanded again in June 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, to those present in the U.S. for under two years.

In January, the Trump administration announced that the government would now seek expedited deportation for those arrested not just within 100 miles of the border, but to those arrested anywhere in the U.S. The policy still applied only to those in the U.S. for under two years.

In the Federal Register notice announcing the change, then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman wrote that it “restores the scope of expedited removal to the fullest extent authorized by Congress.”

“First they expanded the geographical area, and now they seem to be challenging the two years,” said Godshall-Bennet.

Co Tupul’s brother assembled a large collection of documents, including 16 signed affidavits of close friends and family and vaccine records dating back to July 1996, proving that she has lived in the U.S. for decades, that she has no criminal history and that she is an upstanding member of her community.

According to emails reviewed by The Times, Butler-Christensen sent the evidence to Eloy Detention Center staff and to Cantu, the ICE regional field office director, saying that Co Tupul should be placed in regular deportation proceedings immediately.

The response came July 29 in an email from a deportation officer who said “the case was reviewed and she will remain in Expedited Removal proceedings.”

On a call the next day, a supervisory detention and deportation officer asked Butler-Christensen why she was so insistent that Co Tupul be placed in regular proceedings, telling her, “What is the difference?” according to her declaration.

“He told me that during the arrest, she refused to disclose to the officers how long she had lived here,” Butler-Christensen wrote.

She added: “I responded that according to the law, she doesn’t have to share that information, and that I, as her lawyer, had supplied plenty of evidence to [ICE] regarding how long she had resided in Arizona.”

The officer didn’t budge.

Another ICE official confirmed what that officer had suggested — that Co Tupul was being placed in expedited removal proceedings because she had declined to share her immigration status with the officer who arrested her.

“Upon the administrative arrest of your client, she invoked her right to not make a statement,” the official wrote in an email to Butler-Christensen. “Based on this, officers processed her as an Expedited Removal.”

Co Tupul’s eldest son, Ricardo Ruiz, said his mother had prepared him for the possibility of her being detained. She frequently watched the news and was afraid the reported ICE raids would eventually reach her doorstep.

In short calls from the detention center, Ruiz said she told him to look out for his brothers and to stay focused on his own school work as a freshman in college.

Ruiz works at Walmart and split the bills with his mother. Without her help, he said he’s quickly feeling the pressure to keep their family afloat. Ruiz described Co Tupul as a dedicated and hardworking woman who raised her kids to be good citizens who respect the law.

He said it’s unfair that immigration officials aren’t respecting the law themselves.

“I just don’t think she deserves this,” he said. “No one does.”

On Monday, Co Tupul’s youngest sons started their first day of the new school year. For the first time, it was Ruiz dropping them off instead of their mother.

Last week, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who shows more fealty to President Trump than to the U.S. Constitution she swore to uphold, filed a complaint against the only federal judge who has initiated contempt proceedings against the government for defying his orders.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, she alleged, had undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary by making “improper public comments” about Trump to a group of federal judges that included Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

What is Boasberg alleged to have said?

No transcript has emerged, but according to Bondi’s complaint, at a March session of the Judicial Conference of the United States, Boasberg is alleged to have expressed “a belief that the Trump Administration would ‘disregard rulings of the federal courts’ and trigger ‘a constitutional crisis.’ ”

The Judicial Conference is the perfect place to air such concerns. It is the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, and twice a year about two dozen federal judges, including the Supreme Court chief justice, meet to discuss issues relevant to their work. Recently, for example, they created a task force to deal with threats of physical violence, which have heightened considerably in the Trump era. But nothing that happens in their private sessions could reasonably be construed as “public comments.”

“The Judicial Conference is not a public setting. It’s an internal governing body of the judiciary, and there is no expectation that what gets said is going to be broadcast to the world,” explained former U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who spent seven years as director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, a kind of think tank for the judiciary. I reached out to Fogel because he is part of a coalition of retired federal judges — the Article III Coalition of the nonpartisan civic education group Keep Our Republic — whose goal is to defend the independence of the judiciary and promote understanding of the rule of law.

Bondi’s complaint accuses Boasberg of attempting to “transform a routine housekeeping agenda into a forum to persuade the Chief Justice and other federal judges of his preconceived belief that the Trump Administration would violate court orders.”

You know how they say that every accusation is a confession in Trump World?

A mere four days after Boasberg raised his concerns to fellow federal judges, the Trump administration defied his order against the deportation of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.

You probably remember that one. A plane carrying the deportees was already in the air, and despite the judge’s ruling, Trump officials refused to order its return. “Oopsie,” tweeted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele after it landed. “Too late!”

Thus began the administration’s ongoing pattern of ignoring or flouting the courts in cases brought against it. It’s not as if the signs were not there. “He who saves his Country does not violate any law,” Trump wrote on social media in February, paraphrasing Napoleon Bonaparte, the dictatorial 19th century emperor of France.

In June, Erez Reuveni, a career Department of Justice attorney who was fired when he told a Maryland judge the government had deported someone in error, provided documents to Congress that implicated Emil Bove, Trump’s one-time criminal defense attorney, in efforts to violate Boasberg’s order to halt the deportation of the Venezuelans. According to Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint, Bove, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time, said the administration should consider telling judges who order deportations halted, “F— you.”

Bove denied it. And last week, even though other Justice Department whistleblowers corroborated Reuveni’s complaint, Bove was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge.

“The Trump Administration has always complied with all court orders,” wrote Bondi in her complaint against Boasberg. This is laughable.

A July 21 Washington Post analysis found that Trump and his appointees have been credibly accused of flouting court rulings in a third of more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling. The cases have involved immigration, and cuts to the federal funding and the federal work force. That record suggests, according to the Post, “widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.”

Legal experts told the Post that this pattern is unprecedented and is a threat to our system of checks and balances at a moment when the executive branch is asserting “vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution.”

It’s no secret that Trump harbors autocratic ambitions. He adores Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has transformed the Hungarian justice system into an instrument of his own will and killed off the country’s independent media. “It’s like we’re twins,” Trump said in 2019, after hosting Orbán at the White House. Trump has teased that he might try to seek an unconstitutional third term. He de-legitimizes the press. His acolytes in Congress will not restrain him. And now he has trained his sights on the independent judiciary urging punishment of judges who thwart his agenda.

On social media, he has implied that Boasberg is “a radical left lunatic,” and wrote, “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Some of Trump’s lapdogs in the House immediately introduced articles of impeachment (which are likely to go nowhere).

Roberts was moved to rebuke Trump: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he said in a statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Some described his words as “stern.” I found them to be rather mild, considering the damage Trump’s rhetoric inflicts on the well-being of judges.

“It’s part of a longer term pattern of trying to … weaken the ability of the judiciary to put checks on executive power, ” Fogel told me. He is not among those who think we are in a constitutional crisis. Yet.

“Our Constitution has safeguards in it,” Fogel said. “Federal judges have lifetime tenure. We are in a period of Supreme Court jurisprudence that has given the executive a lot of leeway, but I don’t think it’s unlimited.”

I wish I shared his confidence.

Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who likes a dramatic comeback.

Remember when Heidi Klum drilled into our reality TV heads that, in fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out? Well, even she knows the past can come back in style. After a 16-season run on “Project Runway” as host and judge, Klum departed the fashion competition series in 2018 and, along with the show’s original mentor Tim Gunn, went on to create “Making the Cut,” their version of a fashion tournament for Prime Video that ran for three seasons. (Model Karlie Kloss assumed Klum’s “Project Runway” duties in subsequent seasons.) Now, as “Project Runway” launches its 21st season, moving homes yet again (to Freeform from Bravo), Klum brings the nostalgia factor to the show’s revamping, which includes the addition of super stylist Law Roach to the judges panel. Roach stopped by Guest Spot to discuss joining the ranks of the long-running reality competition.

Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our streaming recommendations include an illuminating documentary that explains how “The Ed Sullivan Show” amplified Black music and culture, and a collection of ‘90s films that defined an era through their soundtracks.

ICYMI

Must-read stories you might have missed

Luis Guzmán, Jenna Ortega and Catherine Zeta-Jones, photographed in London this month, return for the second season of Netflix’s “Wednesday.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

For Jenna Ortega, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán, ‘Wednesday’ proves ‘weird is beautiful’: The actors return for Season 2 of Netflix’s hit YA series, which brings Gomez and Morticia Addams into focus.

‘Chief of War’ centers Hawaiian history and a warrior’s story: Co-creator Jason Momoa stars as the late 18th century warrior Ka’iana in a story set at the intersection of the Hawaiian island kingdoms and the arrival of European colonists.

Go behind the scenes with the ‘Alien: Earth’ cast at Comic-Con 2025: Watch our exclusive follow-along with the cast of FX’s “Alien: Earth” cast at San Diego Comic-Con as they sign autographs, visit the show’s immersive activation and more.

As AI changes how movies are made, Hollywood crews ask: What’s left for us?: AI is supplying powerful new tools at a fraction of the cost, forcing below-the-line artists to wonder if the future of filmmaking has a place for them.

Turn on

Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Ed Sullivan with the Jackson 5 and Diana Ross.

(Netflix)

“Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan” (Netflix)

Ed Sullivan was so famous, such an institution in his time, that his name became the text of a number in the musical “Bye Bye, Birdie.” It’s been half a century since “The Ed Sullivan Show” ended its 24-season run, but Sullivan, who gave Elvis Presley a platform and introduced the Beatles to America, will be seen as long as they continue to matter, which is to say, forever. The “Untold” in Sacha Jenkins’ affecting documentary is the show’s history with the many Black artists it presented to an audience of many millions, through years in which television networks bowed to the bigotry of what it called the Southern audience. Yet even had you taken Black acts on “Sullivan” for granted, the extent of the host’s progressivism might come as surprise. Those sharing memories include the late Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson and the Temptations’ Otis Williams; seen in performance are Stevie Wonder, Jackie Wilson, Bo Diddley, James Brown, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and the Jackson 5, in all their youthful glory. — Robert Lloyd

Guided by the words of an ancient samurai text, Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is a professional killer able to dissolve into the night and move through the city unnoticed in “Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai.”

(Ghost Dog / Artisan Entertainment)

’90s Soundtrack Movies (Criterion Channel)

Now they exist as relics: banged-up soundtrack cassettes that slid around in the passenger side of everyone’s cars. But we all listened to them and in many cases, they ended up being more memorable than the films themselves. A lot of good was done when acts like U2, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave lent their drawing power to director Wim Wenders’ mystifying 1991 sci-fi art thinker “Until the End of the World.” The songs were an adventure (though I couldn’t quote you a single line from the script). More substantially, Jim Jarmusch introduced his fan base to Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, who contributed a superb head-bobbing soundtrack to 1999’s “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” proving there was plenty of crossover between Soho and Shaolin. David Lynch, always plugged in musically, drew from David Bowie’s underrated “Outside” album for the white-line opening credits of 1997’s “Lost Highway.” And even when Bowie wasn’t game — as with the bio-in-all-but-name “Velvet Goldmine” — an inventive glam-saturated soundtrack could carry the day. Criterion’s new series is programming you can play in the background and still enjoy. — Joshua Rothkopf

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching

“Project Runway” adds Hollywood stylist Law Roach to its judges panel.

(Rankin / Disney)

As one of Hollywood’s biggest stylists and image architects, Law Roach has bolstered the fashion profile of stars like Zendaya, Hunter Schafer and Anya Taylor-Joy and set the tone for every red carpet he’s touched with his viral styling choices. Now, he’s bringing his unparalleled fashion sense to the judge’s panel of “Project Runway.” The new season premiered Thursday on Freeform with two episodes; it will air weekly and also stream on Hulu and Disney+. Roach stopped by Screen Gab to discuss his feelings on constructive criticism, the fictional character he’d like to style and what he’s watching. — Yvonne Villarreal

As a creative in the fashion world, is “Project Runway” a show you watched at any point over its run? What value did you see in it and how do you hope your involvement elevates the show?

Yes, I watched it religiously, of course. The season that Christian won is hands down still my favorite. I think it gave me an inside look at an industry that I was craving to be a part of. I think my real-world experience and passion will come through not only to the viewers but also to the contestants.

You bring a bold and direct feedback style to the judges panel from the start. How do you prefer to receive feedback on your work and when do you trust it?

Criticism is a part of every job. I think it is important to hear it and if it fits you or can help you grow, take it in, and learn from it, but if it doesn’t, ignore it.

As a stylist and image architect, which fictional character of TV or film — past or present — would you most like to create a fashion profile for?

Jessica Rabbit because we only got to see her in one look!

What’s your go-to “comfort watch,” the film or TV show you return to again and again?

“Top Chef” [Peacock] or any cooking competition show. I love food and witnessing the thought that goes into making the food.

Aug. 1 (UPI) — The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X said Friday that Britain’s newly-enacted Online Safety Act “seriously” is on the cusp of violating free speech masked as the fight to protect kids from explicit online content.

“Many are now concerned that a plan ostensibly intended to keep children safe is at risk of seriously infringing on the public’s right to free expression,” the Global Government affairs wing of the Bastrop, Texas-headquartered X said Friday.

Britain’s Online Safety Act created a new set of legal duties by which tech companies must abide.

It mandated they evaluate the potential of users encountering illegal Internet content and children being exposed to online harm, which included a required safety assessment.

“When lawmakers approved these measures, they made a conscientious decision to increase censorship in the name of ‘online safety,'” the letter stated.

The British parliament passed it in September 2023 in the quest to improve online safety for young people.

X argues the British people may not of been aware of the “trade-off” when London passed the bill.

The OSA covers more than 130 offenses ranging from harassment and “assisting or encouraging suicide” to terrorism, fraud and “unlawful immigration.” It targets tech entities that span “social media or video-sharing platforms, messaging, gaming and dating apps, forums and file-sharing sites.”

According to the social media platform, the act’s “laudable intentions” were at risk of “being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach.”

“While everyone agrees protecting children is a critical responsibility, it is also clear that an overly rigorous statutory framework layered with a ‘voluntary’ code and heightened police monitoring, oversteps the intended mission,” it continued.

On Friday, a British watchdog group indicated that those fears may be valid.

“The BBC is now reporting that information about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, UK rape gangs, and more is being censored online due to the government’s new Online ‘Safety’ Act,” Silkie Carlo, director of Britain-based Big Brother Watch, posted on X.

“Well done, lads,” she added in jest.

X’s government affairs office says free speech will suffer without a “more balanced, collaborative approach.”

Pornhub and other major pornographic websites had a targeted end of July date to implement its age verification mechanisms in order to comply.

Musk, 54, has characterized himself as a “free speech absolutist.”

The former White House DOGE adviser, for his part, has said the act’s purpose was “suppression of the people” as he tweeted a petition calling for its repeal that got more than 450,000 signatures.

OSA’s deadline required pornographic websites to implement “robust” age-verification methods or face fines close to $20 million or equal to 10% of company proceeds.

In addition to the increased government regulations, X officials also cite Britain’s new “National Internet Intelligence Investigations” team unit company officials say “sets off alarm bells” and will further “intensify scrutiny.”

The social media company said the Internet teams “sole” focus is to monitor social media for “signs of unrest, such as anti-immigrant sentiment, to prevent real-world violence.”

President Dina Boluarte has blasted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for its opposition to a recently passed bill that would grant amnesty to soldiers, police officers and other security personnel involved in Peru’s internal conflict from 1985 to 2000.

On Thursday, Boluarte asserted that the international court had overstepped its authority by seeking the law’s suspension.

“We are not anyone’s colony,” she said, posting a snippet of her speech to social media.

“And we will not allow the intervention of the Inter-American Court that intends to suspend a bill that seeks justice for members of our armed forces, our National Police and the self-defence committees that fought, risking their lives, against the insanity of terrorism.”

Since passing Peru’s Congress in July, the amnesty law has been awaiting Boluarte’s approval. She can either sign it into law, allow it to take effect automatically or send it back to Congress for revisions.

But the bill has prompted international outcry, not least because it is seen to shield security forces from accountability for the atrocities that unfolded during Peru’s war.

The legislation would also offer “humanitarian” amnesty to perpetrators over age 70 who have been convicted of wartime crimes.

Some 70,000 people were killed in the internal conflict, the majority of them from rural and Indigenous communities.

Soldiers and police officers were ostensibly tasked with combatting armed uprisings from rebel groups like the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. But the conflict became infamous for its human rights abuses and massacres of civilians with no ties to any rebel group.

Francisco Ochoa was 14 years old when residents in his Andean village, Accomarca, were slaughtered by soldiers. He told Al Jazeera earlier this week that he and other survivors felt “outraged and betrayed” by the new amnesty law.

International organisations have likewise denounced the law as a step backwards for Peruvian society.

Nine human rights experts with the United Nations signed a statement on July 17 expressing “alarm” at the bill’s passage through Congress. They called on the government of Peru to veto the bill.

“The proposed legislation would prevent the criminal prosecution and condemnation of individuals who committed gross human rights violations during Peru’s internal armed conflict,” they said.

“It would put the State in clear breach of its obligations under international law.”

A week later, on July 24, the president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Nancy Hernandez Lopez, ordered Peru to “immediately suspend the processing” of the bill. She ruled that the legislation violated previous rulings against such amnesty laws in the country.

“If it is not suspended, the competent authorities refrain from enforcing this law,” she said.

She noted that a session would be convened with survivors, Peruvian officials and members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

In previous rulings, the Inter-American Court has found that amnesty laws and statutes of limitations are unlawful in the case of serious human rights violations like forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

It also declared that age is not a disqualifying factor for suspects accused of grave human rights abuses. Such exemptions, the court said, are only acceptable under international law for lesser or nonviolent offences.

The National Human Rights Coordinator, a coalition of humanitarian groups in Peru, estimates that the country’s latest amnesty law could overturn 156 convictions and disrupt more than 600 ongoing investigations.

A previous amnesty law implemented in 1995, under then-President Alberto Fujimori, was later repealed.

Still, President Boluarte on Thursday sought to frame her government’s actions as in line with international human rights standards.

“We are defenders of human rights, of citizens,” she wrote on social media, while emphasising that her government was “free”, “sovereign” and “autonomous”, apparent jabs at the Inter-American Court’s decision.

As rebuilding ramps up in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles leaders are restricting the building of duplexes on single-family-home lots.

The move follows an executive order issued Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that allows exemptions for the Palisades and other areas devastated by January’s Palisades and Eaton fires from Senate Bill 9. The landmark 2021 law, passed in response to the state’s housing shortage, lets property owners divide single-family-home lots and build up to four units.

In recent days, Palisades residents have raised alarms about SB 9, worrying that their historically single-family-home community would be transformed by the additional density allowed under the law and become more dangerous in the event of future fires. On Jan. 7, the chaotic evacuation amid the flames led residents to abandon their cars on Sunset Boulevard and escape on foot, forcing bulldozers to clear the road so that emergency responders could enter the area.

No outcry has erupted over the addition of accessory dwelling units in the Palisades, even though they could bring similar increases in building, and have been far more common in permit applications.

Some 4,700 single-family homes were destroyed or severely damaged in the Palisades fire, the majority of which were in the city of Los Angeles.

Newsom’s order applies to the Palisades and parts of Malibu and Altadena — areas that burned and that are designated as “very high fire hazard severity zones” by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It mandates a weeklong pause on SB 9 projects to allow the city and county of Los Angeles and Malibu to develop restrictions.

In response, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who alongside City Councilmember Traci Park had urged Newsom to act this week, issued an executive order blocking future SB 9 development in the Palisades.

“I thank Governor Newsom for working with my office to provide some sense of solace for a community working to rebuild,” Bass said in a statement accompanying the order.

Since the fire, the prospect of greater density, including increased affordable housing, has raised tension in the neighborhood. Some of the debates have been mired in misinformation and conspiracy theories falsely asserting that the wealthy community would be rezoned for mass building of low-income apartments.

But residents retain deep scars from January’s tumultuous evacuation and fear that such a situation would be even worse with a larger population, said Larry Vein, founder of wildfire recovery group Pali Strong. They also want the area to return to the predominately single-family-home neighborhood it was, he said.

“The community does not want higher density,” Vein said.

Officials’ push to restrict SB 9 construction stands in stark contrast to their efforts to allow more building on single-family-home lots through different means.

Newsom and Bass each issued earlier executive orders to streamline permitting reviews for accessory dwelling units on single-family-home properties in burn zones.

There are some practical distinctions between the two ways of adding homes. Generally, ADU law permits up to three units on a lot. SB 9 can allow four or potentially more if combined with ADU law. SB 9 units often can be larger than ADUs as well.

Yet the possibility of increased ADU construction has not attracted the same opposition in the community; instead, data indicate that it’s been popular.

The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety does not specifically track permit requests for ADUs or SB 9 projects among home rebuilds, and could not immediately verify their numbers. However, department rebuilding data analyzed by The Times includes a description of each proposed development that is supposed to note if an additional unit is planned.

As of July 28, 500 homeowners had submitted permitting applications to rebuild in the Palisades, The Times’ analysis of department data found. Of those, 73 — nearly 15% — included at least one ADU, according to project descriptions. Per the descriptions, three intend to use SB 9, but that number is an undercount, said Devin Myrick, the department’s assistant deputy superintendent of building. Myrick said the department was still analyzing its data to come up with the actual number of SB 9 projects.

Property owners have cited ADU construction as a way to return to the Palisades more quickly, with some planning to build an ADU before tackling their primary home. For others, the opportunity for building any additional unit, under ADU law or SB 9, provides a financial benefit that could be used to cover gaps in the cost to rebuild.

Vein said Palisades residents are friendlier to ADUs because their construction may not necessarily lead to a larger population. Many people, he said, would use an ADU to work from home, as a guesthouse or allow members of multigenerational families to have their own space. By contrast, he said, SB 9 duplexes inevitably will add people.

“You’ve just doubled the density,” he said.

Some pro-development organizations are blasting the SB 9 restrictions. Matthew Lewis, a spokesperson for California YIMBY, which advocates for greater home building across the state, said that residents’ evacuation concerns are legitimate but that officials should focus on resolving that issue rather than limiting duplexes.

Lewis said the proliferation of ADUs in the area’s rebuild shows that it’s not actually the potential for increased building that’s motivating the opposition. Instead, he said community groups and L.A. politicians are using that argument to thwart a law they’ve long disliked because it expressly calls for changes to single-family-home neighborhoods.

“What we’re talking about is a powerful constituency making enough noise to cause a suspension of laws that were duly passed by the state Legislature,” Lewis said. “That’s very concerning.”

Bass believes her backing of ADUs and opposition to SB 9 in the Palisades do not conflict, mayoral spokesperson Zachary Seidl said. SB 9 was not anticipated to be used after a major wildfire, he said, while streamlining ADU permitting assists property owners with reconstruction.

“The mayor with both of these positions is supporting community members in the Palisades rebuild,” Seidl said.

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on a party-line vote on Tuesday confirmed Emil J. Bove, President Trump’s defense lawyer and loyal ally atop the Justice Department, to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The vote was 49 to 50.

Bove, 44, was a highly controversial judicial nominee, not because of his legal views, but because he led a purge of prosecutors and FBI agents who had worked on cases growing out of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Before this year, the Justice Department held to a tradition of keeping politics out of law enforcement. But Bove and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi saw their missions as carrying out the wishes of President Trump, including his plans for retribution against the prosecutors and investigators who brought charges against him or the 1,500 Trump allies who stormed the Capitol and fought with police.

In the first weeks of Trump’s second term, Bove served as the acting head of the Justice Department before Bondi was confirmed by the Senate.

Bove also ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop bribery and corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The move prompted several of them to resign over what they saw as an unethical deal to win the mayor’s cooperation in the administration’s plan to round up immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Bove also played a key role in the new administration’s clash with a federal judge over deporting Venezuelans to a brutal prison in El Salvador. A former Justice Department attorney-turned-whistleblower said Bove told government lawyers they should ignore orders from the judge who sought to halt the deportations.

When Bove appeared before a Senate committee as a judicial nominee, he said he had been misunderstood and unfairly criticized.

“I am not an enforcer” or “anybody’s henchman,” he said.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, who partnered with Bove in defending Trump last year, said he had been smeared by unfair criticism.

“Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,” he wrote in a Fox News opinion column.

Democrats said Bove did not deserve a promotion to the federal courts.

Sen. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) described Bove as a partisan loyalist who served Trump as “the instrument of his vengeance.”

“When Trump wanted to purge the department of prosecutors who had proved to juries beyond a reasonable doubt that the violent offenders who attacked police officers that day did so to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, Emil Bove was there to punish not the criminals, but the prosecutors,” Schiff said in opposing the nomination.

On Tuesday, Bove was called a “diligent, capable and fair jurist” by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the Associated Press.

Bove is not likely to have much influence on the 3rd Circuit Court. Its 14 judges hear appeals from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Bove has no experience as a judge and has not written on legal or constitutional issues.

However, if Justices Clarence Thomas or Samuel A. Alito were to retire in the next three years, Trump could nominate him to the Supreme Court.

His nomination drew unusually broad opposition from the legal community.

In a July 15 letter to the Senate, 80 former and retired judges said confirming Bove to a life-term judgeship undercuts the rule of law and respect for the federal courts. They said his “egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.”

More than 900 former Justice Department attorneys signed a letter to the Senate saying “it is intolerable to us that anyone who disgraces the Justice Department would be promoted to one of the highest courts in the land.”

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, became the first Republican to declare her opposition to his nomination.

“We have to have judges who will adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution and do so regardless of what their personal views may be,” she said in a statement. “Mr. Bove’s political profile and some of the actions he has taken in his leadership roles at the Department of Justice cause me to conclude he would not serve as as impartial jurist.”

Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans to vote against Bove.

Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to issue an executive order Wednesday allowing Los Angeles-area governments to limit development in wildfire-affected neighborhoods by exempting them from provisions of a landmark housing law, a spokesperson for his office said.

The proposed order would let the city and county of Los Angeles and Malibu restrict construction that was allowed under Senate Bill 9, a 2021 law that allows property owners build as many as four units on land previously reserved for single-family homes.

The order would apply to Pacific Palisades and parts of Malibu and Altadena — areas that burned in January’s Palisades and Eaton fires that are designated as “very high fire hazard severity zones” by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said.

The decision came after concerns about the potential of a significant population increase if there were widespread use of SB 9 developments in rebuilding areas, making future fire evacuations even more difficult, Gallegos said.

The governor’s plan follows pressure this week from elected officials in Los Angeles. On Monday, City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, sent a letter to Newsom requesting that he suspend SB 9, warning that otherwise there could be “an unforeseen explosion of density” in a risky area.

“When SB 9 was adopted into state law, it was never intended to capitalize on a horrific disaster,” Park wrote.

On Tuesday, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass released a statement supporting Park’s request, citing similar concerns about SB 9 straining evacuation routes and local infrastructure in the Palisades.

“It could fundamentally alter the safety of the area,” Bass said.

A former labor relations employee at Netflix is suing the company, claiming she was wrongfully terminated after raising concerns over her superiors’ discrimination against women of color and allegations of sexual harassment.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that the employee’s managers broke laws and policies that protect employees from race- and gender-based discrimination, and from retaliation for reporting alleged discrimination or harassment.

Nhu-Y Phan was hired at Netflix as legal counsel in labor relations in May 2021. She was fired due to “unspecified performance issues” in September 2024, her lawsuit said. According to the complaint, Phan had never been subject to any discipline and had received overwhelmingly positive performance reviews and feedback throughout her time at the company.

She is seeking punitive damages, emotional distress damages, past and future lost income and other forms of relief, as well as a jury trial.

A Netflix spokesperson said in a brief statement the claims outlined in the suit “lack merit and we intend to defend this matter vigorously.”

For the first year of her Netflix career, Phan was supervised by Ted Sinclair, who is named as a defendant in the suit. Phan alleges that Sinclair repeatedly excluded her and other women of color on her team from professional opportunities that he offered to white colleagues, and that he “encouraged a white employee” to take credit for her work.

Phan made multiple verbal and written complaints about this unequal treatment, including through meetings with both the human resources department and with Sinclair directly, but was still denied opportunities, the lawsuit said. She asked to be removed from Sinclair’s direct supervision in the summer of 2022.

Later, a female colleague confided in Phan, alleging that her new supervior, Jonah Cozien, was sexually harassing her, the complaint said. Cozien is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Phan reported the behavior to human resources, and after doing so, Cozien became “frequently hostile” toward her, limiting her professional opportunities and giving her critical feedback despite never having provided feedback before she made the report, according to the suit.

Sinclair and Cozien did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and their lawyers could not be identified.

After Phan was fired, her lawyers say Netflix filed a lawsuit against her to compel arbitration. Brian Olney, one of the attorneys from Pasadena-based Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai who is representing Phan, said forcing her into arbitration proceedings is a violation of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which became law in 2022.

Because records in arbitration are protected, employers that have arbitration clauses in their employment contracts can avoid public attention on cases involving sexual harassment and assault. The House Judiciary Committee said passing the law would bring justice to victims who were “locked out of the court system and are forced to settle their disputes against companies in a private system of arbitration that often favors the company over the individual.”

“Netflix fired Nhu Phan and tried to force her into secretive arbitration proceedings to silence her voice,” Olney said in a statement. “With her lawsuit, she is standing up to this corporate bully and their outrageous and despicable conduct.”

DAKAR, Senegal — U.S. singer Ciara is one of the first public figures to become a citizen of Benin under a recent law by the small West African country granting citizenship to descendants of enslaved people.

The Grammy-winning performer’s acquisition of citizenship at a ceremony Saturday in the city of Cotonou is part of a broader initiative by Benin to attract the Black diaspora, acknowledge the country’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and promote tourism focused on slavery-related sites of remembrance.

“By legally recognizing these children of Africa, Benin is healing a historical wound. It is an act of justice, but also one of belonging and hope,” Justice Minister Yvon Détchénou said at the ceremony.

Here’s what to know about Benin’s efforts to welcome descendants of enslaved people:

Benin’s Afro-descendant citizenship law

In September, Benin passed a law granting citizenship to those who can trace their lineage to the slave trade.

It is open to anyone older than 18 who doesn’t already hold other African citizenship and can provide proof that an ancestor was deported via the slave trade from anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Beninese authorities accept DNA tests, authenticated testimonies and family records.

Last week, the government launched My Afro Origins, the digital platform that processes applications.

Although Benin is not the first country to grant citizenship to descendants of enslaved people, its citizenship law carries added significance, in part because of the role it played in the transatlantic slave trade.

A national reckoning with its role in the slave trade

European merchants deported an estimated 1.5 million enslaved people from the Bight of Benin — a region that includes present-day Benin, Togo and parts of Nigeria — to the Americas.

Beninese kings actively participated in capturing and selling enslaved people to Portuguese, French and British merchants. The former kingdoms and the communities they raided still exist today as tribal networks.

Benin has long been working to reconcile with its legacy of complicity. It has openly acknowledged its role in the slave trade, a stance not shared by many other African nations that participated.

In the 1990s, it hosted an international conference to examine how and where enslaved people were sold. In 1999, then-President Mathieu Kérékou apologized to African Americans during a visit to a church in Baltimore.

‘Memorial tourism’

Alongside this national reckoning, “memorial tourism” around the legacy of the slave trade has become a key approach of Benin’s government to attract Afro-descendants.

Memorial sites are mostly in Ouidah, one of Africa’s most active slave-trading ports in the 18th and 19th centuries. They include the Slave Route, which was the path marking enslaved people’s final journey to ships, and the Door of No Return, a haunting doorway that opens to the Atlantic Ocean where they left Africa, and their families, for the last time.

Sindé Chekete, the head of Benin’s state-run tourism agency, said these sites give Afro-descendants the opportunity to learn about and honor the struggles and resilience of their ancestors.

“It may inspire some people to say ‘I want to return to Africa and choose Benin to understand this history’,” Chekete said.

Following her citizenship ceremony, Ciara toured the historic city, where she walked the Slave Route to the Door of No Return.

“Between emotion, reflection and heritage, I experienced a profound return to what truly matters,” she said.

Ciara is best known for chart-topping hits such as “Goodies” and “Level Up,” her dynamic choreography as well as her work in fashion and philanthropy.

Banchereau writes for the Associated Press.

CANTON, Ohio — Vice President JD Vance used a speech in his home state on Monday to promote the GOP’s sweeping tax-and-border bill as a small group of protesters outside a northeast Ohio steel plant brandished signs critical of the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

Vance spoke to a crowd of steel workers in neon green, orange, yellow and red hard hats and safety glasses gathered inside a rolling mill at Metallus Inc. in Canton, about 60 miles from Cleveland. It was his second trip this month as chief promoter of the hodgepodge of conservative priorities that Republicans have dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Echoing themes expressed at an industrial machine shop in West Pittston, Pa., Vance said American workers should be able to keep more of their pay in their pockets and U.S. companies should be rewarded when they grow. He highlighted the law’s new tax deductions on overtime and its breaks on tipped income.

Vance decried Democrats — including U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes, whose competitive House district he was visiting — for opposing the bill that keeps the current tax rates, which would have otherwise expired later this year.

The legislation cleared the GOP-controlled Congress by the narrowest of margins, with Vance breaking a tie vote in the Senate for the package that also sets aside hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump’s immigration agenda while slashing Medicaid and food stamps.

The vice president is also stepping up his public relations blitz on the bill as the White House tries to deflect attention from the growing controversy over Jeffrey Epstein.

The disgraced financier killed himself, authorities say, in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Trump and his top allies stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death before Trump returned to the White House and are now reckoning with the consequences of a Justice Department announcement earlier this month that Epstein did indeed die by suicide and that no further documents about the case would be released.

Vance insisted that the administration of President Trump isn’t trying to cover up information from the investigation that’s in the public interest.

Vance said Trump asked Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to release all “credible information” but that the process “takes time.” The Justice Department has asked for grand jury transcripts to be made public, but a judge in Florida has rejected that bid while requests remain pending in New York.

Vance said Trump, who was an acquaintance of Epstein before they had a falling out, wants “full transparency” in the case and alleged that prior administrations went “easy on this guy.” A few heads could be seen nodding amid the crowd.

Questions about the case continued to dog Trump in Scotland, where he on Sunday announced a framework trade deal with the European Union.

Asked about the timing of the trade announcement and the Epstein case and whether it was correlated, Trump responded: “You got to be kidding with that.”

“No, had nothing to do with it,” Trump told the reporter. “Only you would think that.”

The White House sees the new law as a political boon, sending Vance to promote it in swing congressional districts that will determine whether Republicans retain their House majority next year.

In a navy jacket and white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, Vance leaned into folksy word choices and characterized the administration’s immigration crackdown as an effort to keep gangs trafficking deadly fentanyl out of the country.

Vance’s decision to visit Sykes’ district comes as the National Republican Congressional Committee has named her narrowly split district as a top target this cycle. His northeastern Pennsylvania stop was in the district represented by Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a first-term lawmaker who knocked off a six-time Democratic incumbent last fall.

A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called his visit “another desperate attempt to lie to Ohioans about the devastating impact the Big, Ugly Law will have on working families,” in a statement.

In the statement, Katie Smith said Sykes “fought tooth and nail against this disastrous law.”

Polls before the bill’s passage showed that it largely remained unpopular, although the public approves of some individual provisions such as increasing the child tax credit and allowing workers to deduct more of their tips on taxes.

Smyth and Kim write for the Associated Press.

CHICAGO — A judge in Illinois dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit Friday that sought to disrupt limits Chicago imposes on cooperation between federal immigration agents and local police.

The lawsuit, filed in February, alleged that so-called sanctuary laws in the nation’s third-largest city “thwart” federal efforts to enforce immigration laws.

It argued that local laws run counter to federal laws by restricting “local governments from sharing immigration information with federal law enforcement officials” and preventing immigration agents from identifying “individuals who may be subject to removal.”

Judge Lindsay Jenkins of the Northern District of Illinois granted the defendants’ motion for dismissal.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that he was pleased with the decision and that the city is safer when police focus on the needs of Chicagoans.

“This ruling affirms what we have long known: that Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance is lawful and supports public safety. The City cannot be compelled to cooperate with the Trump Administration’s reckless and inhumane immigration agenda,” he said in a statement.

Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, welcomed the ruling, saying in a social media post, “Illinois just beat the Trump Administration in federal court.”

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security and did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The administration has filed a series of lawsuits targeting state or city policies it sees as interfering with immigration enforcement, including those in Los Angeles, New York City, Denver and Rochester, N.Y. It sued four New Jersey cities in May.

Heavily Democratic Chicago has been a sanctuary city for decades and has beefed up its laws several times, including during President Trump’s first term in 2017.

That same year, then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, signed more statewide sanctuary protections into law, putting him at odds with his party.

There is no official definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities. The terms generally describe limits on local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but sometimes seeks state and local help.

Ukrainian leader faces domestic international pressure after signing law critics say curbs the powers of the country’s anitcorruption agencies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has submitted a new draft bill to the country’s legislature, in an effort to calm outrage over a previously passed law that critics say paves the way for corruption.

The country’s anticorruption agencies quickly hailed the bill’s introduction on Thursday, saying it would restore their “procedural powers and guarantees of independence”.

The Ukrainian leader has contended with protests and condemnation from both within Ukraine and from its closest European allies after a separate controversial law was passed on Tuesday.

That law placed the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under the direct authority of the country’s prosecutor general – a position appointed by the president.

Zelenskyy initially maintained that the law was needed to respond to suspected “Russian influence” within the agencies amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Critics, however, said the law would strip the bodies of their independence and could allow political interference, while failing to address any potential Kremlin-linked operatives.

On Tuesday, thousands of Ukrainians defied martial law – which has been in place since the beginning of Russia’s war – to take to the streets of Kyiv and other major cities to protest against the law.

European officials also questioned the law, noting that addressing corruption remains a core requirement both for Ukraine’s future European Union membership and in assuring aid flows to combat Russia.

Amid the pressure, Zelenskyy backed away from the new law, promising to submit new legislation that would assure “all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place” and that there would be no Russian “influence or interference”.

Opposition lawmakers have also separately prepared their own legislation to revoke the law passed on Tuesday.

“They heroically solved the problems that they created just as heroically. Grand imitators,” Yaroslav Zhelezniak, from the opposition Holos party, said on Telegram, criticising Zelenskyy and his allies about-turn.

Before the new draft bill’s introduction, Zelenskyy spoke with the leaders of Germany and the United Kingdom on Thursday.

In a statement, Zelenskyy’s office said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had “offered to involve experts who could contribute to long-term cooperation” on the issue.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy said he invited Friedrich Merz to “join the expert review of the bill”.

“Friedrich assured me of readiness to assist,” he said.

It was not immediately clear when Ukraine’s legislature, the Verkhovna Rada, would vote on the new bill.

When Children’s Hospital Los Angeles first told thousands of patients it was shuttering its pediatric gender clinic last month, Jesse Thorn was distraught but confident he could quickly find a new local care team for his kids.

But by the time the Center for Transyouth Health and Development officially closed its doors on Tuesday, the father of three was making plans to flee the country.

“They’re targeting whoever they can,” Thorn said. “[I’m afraid] the police will show up at my door because I took my child to see their doctor.”

Until this week, Children’s was among the largest and oldest pediatric gender clinics in the United States — and one of few providing puberty blockers, hormones and surgical procedures for trans youth on public insurance.

The closure of the renowned program signals a wider unraveling in the availability of care across the country, experts said. That includes in former safe havens such as California, New York and Illinois, where state laws protecting trans-specific healthcare are crumbling under mounting legal pressure and bureaucratic arm-twisting by the Trump administration.

In the last week, University of Chicago Medicine and Children’s National in D.C. announced they will end or dramatically scale back services for trans youth, following similar moves by Stanford Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“There’s a rapid collapse of the provision of this care in blue states,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and legal instructor at Harvard. “By end of 2025, most care will effectively be banned.”

Some parents in L.A. say they fear the Department of Justice will use private medical data subpoenaed from California’s largest pediatric safety-net hospital to take their children away from them.

“It’s absolutely terrifying,” said Maxine, the mother of a Children’s Hospital patient, who declined to give her last name for fear of attacks on her son.

“I’m very afraid that the DOJ and this acting Attorney General are going to come after parents and use the female genital mutilation law … to prosecute parents and separate me from my child,” she said.

On July 9, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced the Department of Justice was subpoenaing patient medical records from more than 20 doctors and clinics, the latest in a cavalcade of legal and technical maneuvers against providers who care for trans youth.

“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Bondi said in a news release announcing the move.

Children’s would not say whether it had been subpoenaed or if it had turned over records responsive to the government’s demand.

The Justice Department was already investigating pediatric specialists for a litany of alleged crimes, from deceptive trade practices to billing fraud. Federal health agencies have vowed to withhold funding from institutions that continue to provide affirming care.

“These threats are no longer theoretical,” Children’s Hospital executives wrote to staff in an internal email announcing the closure June 12. “[They are] threatening our ability to serve the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on CHLA for lifesaving care.”

Advocates say gender-affirming care is also lifesaving. They point to statistics — contested by the federal government and some experts — showing high rates of suicide among trans youth.

In June, the decision to shutter the clinic was widely condemned. Advocates said Children’s Hospital L.A. had “thrown trans kids under the bus” in disregard of state law.

Few are saying that now.

“You could see kids with leukemia being cut off their chemo therapy unless these hospitals stop provide care to trans people,” Caraballo said. “If one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country couldn’t shoulder that burden, I don’t see many others being able to do so.”

Others agreed.

“No matter what California or any other state has done to say, ‘We want to protect these kids,’ unless they can write checks that equal the amount of money that’s being lost, [programs close],” said Dara E. Purvis, a law professor at Temple University.

So far, the Trump administration has painted parents as victims of “radical gender ideology.”

Some experts warned that as the government tightens the screws on doctors and hospitals, trans teens and their families are likely to seek hormones outside the medical system, including through gray market channels.

“We’ve seen this with abortion,” Caraballo said. “People are going to go about getting it whichever way they can.”

There are fears that families could face prosecution for continuing to seek medications, similar to charges being filed against mothers who have secured abortion pills for their teenagers.

“We’re working with Congress on existing criminal laws related to female genital mutilation to more robustly protect children,” Justice Department Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle said during a Federal Trade Commission workshop entitled “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.”

“We are using all of the tools at the Department of Justice to address this issue,” Mizelle said.

For now, dozens of hospitals across California still provide gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and surgical procedures.

But the list changes almost day to day.

“Even programs that may have been operating a month ago are not operating now,” said Terra Russell-Slavin, chief impact officer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “There’s a lot of concern about even being public about offering care because those agencies become targets.”

With the medical care their children rely on under threat and few promised protections from the state, some families are unsure what the coming months will bring.

For one Orange County father, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation against his trans son, plans for future travel are suddenly in jeopardy.

He said only about half of his son’s identity documents match his gender, and they’ve been warned not to try to change others.

“He won’t be able to leave the country because he can’t get a matching passport,” the father said.

For Maxine, the L.A. mom, balancing the banal with the existential is a daily strain.

“My kid is just living their life. They want to go to concerts, they want to go shopping for back to school — they don’t know any of this is happening,” the mother said. “You have to experience this intense fear while maintaining a normal household for everybody else.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised to introduce new legislation amid continuing protests and international criticism over a law passed earlier this week that critics say undermines Ukraine’s fight against corruption.

The controversial law, passed on Tuesday, places the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under the direct authority of the country’s prosecutor general – an official appointed by the president. Critics say the law strips the agencies of their independence and could allow political interference.

While Zelenskyy has defended the law as a necessary response to suspected “Russian influence” within the agencies, European Union officials and rights groups say that it contains no specific provisions to target Kremlin-linked operatives and warn it could derail any Ukrainian accession bid to the European Union.

“I have analysed all concerns,” Zelenskyy wrote on X following a meeting with top government and law enforcement officials.

Writing about the proposal of the new bill, he said: “We will prepare and submit a bill to the Verkhovna Rada [parliament] that ensures the strength of the rule-of-law system. There will be no Russian influence or interference … and all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place.”

Public anger and European backlash

On Tuesday night, thousands of Ukrainians rallied in Kyiv and other major cities in rare wartime protests. More than 1,000 demonstrators defied martial law, which bans large public gatherings, to express their anger at the government, while on Wednesday, more protests took place in the capital.

“This is complete nonsense from the president’s office,” 20-year-old student Solomiia Telishevska told the news agency Reuters, referring to the law signed by Zelenskyy on Tuesday. “This contradicts what we are fighting for and what we are striving for, namely to [join] the European Union.”

Cleaning up systemic corruption has long been a core requirement for Ukraine’s EU membership and for unlocking billions in foreign aid. The law’s passage risks alienating Kyiv’s Western allies as the war grinds on.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has demanded “explanations” from Zelenskyy, with a spokesperson confirming on Wednesday that she conveyed “strong concerns about the consequences of the amendments”. Germany’s Johann Wadephul, deputy leader of the Christian Democratic Union, warned on X that the restrictions were “hampering Ukraine’s path to the EU”.

Anticorruption bodies targeted

The storm erupted days after law enforcement raided NABU offices and arrested an employee on suspicion of spying for Russia. Another employee was accused of illegal business ties to Moscow. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) agency also carried out searches and arrests related to other alleged infractions, including a traffic incident.

Zelenskyy suggested these incidents justified the law passed on Tuesday, but Ukrainian analysts have warned the changes could erode public trust in Zelenskyy’s leadership during a critical phase of the war.

NABU was created in 2015 after Ukraine’s 2014 pro-European revolution to tackle deep-rooted government corruption. The agency has investigated multiple high-profile cases, including figures close to Zelenskyy’s administration.

Transparency International Ukraine denounced the raids as “an attempt by the authorities to undermine the independence of Ukraine’s post-Revolution of Dignity anti-corruption institutions”.

Some Ukrainians believe the government is protecting loyal insiders at the expense of transparency. “Those who swore to protect the laws and the constitution have instead chosen to shield their inner circle, even at the expense of Ukrainian democracy,” said veteran Oleh Symoroz, who lost both legs in 2022 fighting Russian forces.

The political firestorm risks creating deeper rifts within Ukraine at a time when unity is vital in Kyiv’s war against Russia. Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties, warned the law could play directly into the Kremlin’s hands. “This is a gift to Putin,” she said.

Russian officials have already seized on the controversy. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked there was “a lot of corruption” when asked about the protests in Kyiv.

Information, in the second Trump administration, is a currency of power and fear. Last week, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced sweeping subpoenas targeting physicians and medical providers who offer care for transgender youth. The aim is not to initiate prosecutions: Indeed, the legal theories upon which such prosecutions might rest are tenuous at best.

By filing these investigative demands, the government plainly hopes to chill medical providers from offering expert care. This strategy can work even if, at the end of the day, the government’s threats are hollow as a matter of law. The White House’s plainly unconstitutional attacks on law firms, for example, have substantially worked — even though the minority of firms to challenge the orders rapidly won relief.

Fortunately, the legal system is not powerless in the face of such overreaching: Federal district courts have the authority, and the obligation, to recognize that patient-physician dealings are akin to attorney-client and spousal discussions. Both of the latter benefit from judicially created privileges — or legal shields that individuals can invoke against the state’s probing. At a moment when not just gender medicine but also reproductive care more generally is in peril, federal courts can and should step in and shield intimately private medical data as well.

We suspect that many people believe that what they tell their doctors is already private. They’re right, but only sort of. There’s a federal law called HIPAA that limits what your doctor can do with the information. It says that your doctor can’t, for instance, sell your medical records to the newspaper. In 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services also issued a HIPAA “privacy rule” that heightened protections for reproductive healthcare information. (Last month, a federal district court in Texas declared the rule unconstitutional — so its future is uncertain.)

Even with the privacy rule, however, HIPAA hides a gaping hole: It allows disclosures “required by law.” And the law explicitly permits disclosures pursuant to subpoenas of all kinds — judicial, grand jury or administrative — including those issued by Bondi. So if the Justice Department subpoenas your intimate and sensitive healthcare information, HIPAA won’t stop that.

In previous academic work, we’ve urged Congress and state legislatures to fill this gap. Blue states have acted to curtail cooperation with other states — but there’s a limit to what states can do when the federal government demands information.

Yet there remains one entity that can, and should, act immediately to shield reproductive healthcare information: the same federal district courts that have been at the forefront of pushing back on the Trump administration’s many illegal and constitutional actions. We think federal courts should extend existing “privileges,” as evidentiary shields are called, to encompass both records of gender-affirming and transgender medical care, and also records of reproductive care more generally.

A privilege not only bars protected information from being admitted into evidence at trial, but also blocks subpoenas, warrants and other court orders.

Federal district courts have a general power to create privileges, and they often do so when people already have a reasonable expectation that their conversations will not be disclosed. Most people have heard of the attorney-client privilege, which means that you can confide in your lawyer without worrying that what you say will end up being used in court. But privileges can apply to all sorts of other information as well: what you tell your spouse, what you tell your spiritual advisor and even highway safety data that your state reports to the feds in exchange for funding. Existing court-created privileges protect not only attorney-client but also executive-branch communications.

Federal courts should recognize a privilege for doctor-patient communications in gender and reproductive medicine. They could do so if one of the physicians subpoenaed recently goes to court. The protection they seek is simply an extension of widely recognized legal principles and expectations of privacy. Federal courts already have recognized a privilege for patient communications with psychotherapists, and many state courts also offer privilege protections for broader doctor-patient communications.

Importantly, it is the job of federal district courts to craft evidence-related rules. After all, these are the judges who are closest to litigants and the mechanics of evidence protection. District courts don’t need to wait around for the Supreme Court to act on this, because the Federal Rules of Evidence left privileges to common law development in the district courts. And under the well-established balancing test that lower federal courts should follow when they create new privileges, we think our proposed privilege is an easy case: It serves a public purpose and protects what should be recognized as a valued interest of “transcendent importance” — privacy for our most intimate medical care.

The case for recognizing the privilege in respect to the recent subpoenas is especially strong: The attorney general is seeking to chill physicians from providing advice that is protected by the 1st Amendment and care that is guaranteed by federal statutes. Such subpoenas are directly at odds with the rule of law.

Today, it is trans kids; tomorrow, it will be people seeking an abortion or contraception. We should not have to wait for the federal government to go this far before our privacy gets the shield that it deserves.

Aziz Huq and Rebecca Wexler are professors of law at the University of Chicago Law School and Columbia Law School, respectively.

Former president has been indicted on additional charges as a special prosecutor continues investigations.

Disgraced former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has been indicted over his declaration of martial law last year as investigators widened an insurrection probe.

The prosecution indicted Yoon on charges including abuse of power and obstruction of special official duties, prosecutor Park Ji-young told reporters on Saturday.

Park said Yoon also did not follow the required procedure to declare martial law, including holding a meeting with all government cabinet members.

He was also charged with “drafting and discarding a false document” that stated the prime minister and defence minister endorsed martial law.

Yoon has denied all wrongdoing.

He plunged South Korea into a political crisis when he sought to subvert civilian rule in December, sending troops to parliament in a bid to prevent lawmakers from voting down his declaration of martial law.

Yoon became the first sitting president in the country to be taken into custody when he was detained in January after resisting arrest for weeks, using his presidential security detail to thwart investigators.

He was released on procedural grounds in March even as his trial on insurrection charges continued.

Last week, he was detained again after an arrest warrant was issued over concerns he might destroy evidence in the case.

Yoon appeared in court on Friday at a hearing to argue for his arrest warrant to be cancelled.

The ex-president’s legal team told reporters Yoon defended himself for more than 30 minutes and noted his “limited physical mobility and the challenges he was facing”.

The court denied the request.

State prosecutors have already indicted Yoon on other criminal charges, including masterminding a rebellion, a charge with conviction carrying only two sentences — capital punishment or life imprisonment.

Meanwhile, a demonstration with thousands attending took place in the South Korean capital, Seoul, as well as other parts of the country against the policies of current President Lee Jae-myung.

Lee won a snap election in June after Yoon was removed from office.

Many South Koreans are angry because they believe the new government has not addressed their concerns in its reform plans.

At the moment most easyJet and Ryanair passengers are only allowed to take a small personal bag on board for free

Passengers flying with Ryanair and easyJet may soon be able to take two cabin bags onboard without paying any extra charges. At the moment, these airlines allow those on a basic fare to bring one small personal item onto the plane, with any extra luggage incurring additional fees.

Ryanair has recently had to expand the dimensions of its personal bag allowance, due to a change in EU regulations. Under a new rule, travellers with the budget carrier will be entitled to take hand luggage measuring up to 40 x 30 x 20cm, representing a 20% expansion from the previous 40 x 20 x 25cm size limits.

easyJet’s dimensions are already in line with the new rule. And an additional EU law change could mean passengers are able to bring both a cabin bag measuring up to 100cm and a personal bag without extra charges.

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The proposed legislation will only be given the greenlight, though, with backing from a minimum of 55% of EU member nations. Discussions are scheduled to begin later this month.

Should it receive approval, the rule would apply to all journeys within the EU, plus routes travelling to and from the EU. European Parliament members (MEPs) are also pushing for children under 12 to be seated alongside an adult companion without additional fees.

Currently, airlines face no legal requirement to ensure children sit with family members, though the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) suggests they should do so. The CAA states: “Young children and infants who are accompanied by adults should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult.

“Where this is not possible, children should be separated by no more than one seat row from accompanying adults. This is because the speed of an emergency evacuation may be affected by adults trying to reach their children.”

White House features crypto industry leaders investigated by the government, as critics highlight Trump’s personal business interests.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has signed into law new cryptocurrency legislation that advocates say represents a watershed moment for the industry.

Speaking from the White House on Friday, the US president hailed the GENIUS Act, which establishes regulations and consumer protections for stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency whose value is linked to a fixed currency or commodity.

The signing capped what Trump dubbed “crypto week”, as a total of three cryptocurrency bills made their way through the US legislature.

In the end, only the legislation related to stablecoin landed on Trump’s desk

Two other bills — one that would bar government-issued digital currencies and another that would more clearly define regulatory classifications for cryptocurrency products — were sent from the US House of Representatives on Thursday to the Senate, where they have yet to undergo a vote.

Still, Trump hailed Friday’s bill-signing ceremony as “a giant step to cement the American dominance of global finance and crypto technology”.

Industry advocates have said bills like the GENIUS Act will help to make cryptocurrency more mainstream in the US. They say a lack of regulatory clarity has hindered wider public adoption of digital currencies.

But critics have voiced concern about the Trump family’s close ties to the crypto industry, including its stake in World Liberty Financial, a company that launched its own stablecoin, USD1.

They highlight the fact that the recent flurry of Republican-led legislation does not address whether a president can hold interests in cryptocurrency, leaving an opening for corruption.

Democrats also criticised the GENIUS Act for creating an inadequate regulatory framework that could pose longterm financial risks and open the door for major corporations to issue their own private cryptocurrencies.

Still, speaking on Friday, Trump pledged to continue his embrace of the crypto industry, including by furthering his pitch to create a national “crypto reserve”.

Trump also framed his administration as a hard pivot away from the policies of former President Joe Biden, who took a more aggressive approach to investigating cryptocurrency-related crimes.

Since taking office for a second term in January, Trump ended several Biden-era cryptocurrency investigations and suspended a special Department of Justice enforcement team.

Some of the cryptocurrency leaders previously investigated by the US government were in the audience at the White House.

“You’ve come a long way since the Biden administration, when they had no idea what you were all talking about, and half of you were under arrest for no reason whatsoever,” Trump told them at the signing ceremony.

He addressed certain industry leaders by name, including Brian Armstrong, Chris Pavlovski and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, all of whom faced probes from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations under Biden.

“Let me say the entire crypto community, for years you were mocked and dismissed and counted out,” Trump said.

“You were counted out as little as a year and a half ago, but this signing is a massive validation.”

There have been numerous legal challenges to President Trump’s immigration sweeps across California that have led to at least 3,000 arrests.

But one lawsuit has the potential to dramatically alter the policy.

The ruling

A coalition of civil rights groups and private attorneys sued the federal government, challenging the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens swept up in chaotic arrests that have sparked widespread protests since early June.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, temporarily blocked federal agents in the Southland from using racial profiling to carry out immigration arrests after she found sufficient evidence that agents were using race, a person’s job or their location, and their language to form “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard needed to detain an individual.

Frimpong ruled that using race, ethnicity, language, accent, location or employment as a pretext for immigration enforcement is forbidden by the 4th Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

The order covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

The judge also ordered that all those in custody at a downtown detention facility known as B-18 must be given 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.

On Monday, the administration asked a federal appeals court to stay the judge’s order blocking the roving patrols, allowing it to resume raids across the seven California counties.

“It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly ‘restructure the operations’ of federal immigration enforcement,” the appeal argued. “This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand.”

What experts are saying

Legal experts say it’s hard to say just how successful the federal government will be in getting a stay on the temporary order, given the current political climate.

“This is different from a lot of the other kinds of Trump litigation because the law is so clear in the fact finding by the district court,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “So if you follow basic legal principles, this is a very weak case for the government on appeal, but it’s so hard to predict what will happen because everything is so ideological.”

In the past, legal scholars say, it would be extremely uncommon for an appeals court to weigh in on such an order. But recent events suggest it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Courts have backed Trump’s immigration policies in other cases.

• In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the federal government to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” even if they lack a prior connection to those countries.
• That same month, it also ruled 6 to 3 to limit the ability of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders blocking the president’s policies, which was frequently a check on executive power.
• In June, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to leave troops in Los Angeles in the hands of the Trump administration while California’s objections are litigated in federal court, finding the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities. California had sued against the deployment.

It’s not an easy case for the government, said Ahilan Arulanantham, professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

“I think one thing which makes this case maybe a little bit harder for the government than some of the other shadow docket cases is it really does affect citizens in an important way,” he said. “Obviously the immigration agent doesn’t know in advance when they come up to somebody whether they’re a citizen or a noncitizen or if they’re lawfully present or not.”

What is next?

The Frimpong ruling is now on appeal.

The plaintiffs argued in their complaint that immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at car washes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful arrests without warrants.

Government lawyers argued in their motion that “ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances — for instance, if agents are acting on a tip that identifies that ethnicity — even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” lawyers stated in their motion.

Attorneys said in the motion that speaking Spanish, being at a particular location or one’s job “can contribute to reasonable suspicion in at least some circumstances.”

Government lawyers said Frimpong’s injunction was a first step to placing immigration enforcement under judicial monitorship and was “indefensible on every level.” They asked the higher court to pause the order while the appeal is heard.

The government is also appealing another injunction imposed by a federal judge in the Eastern District of California after Border Patrol agents stopped and arrested dozens of farmworkers and laborers — including a U.S. citizen — during a days-long operation in the Central Valley in January.

That case is likely to be heard later this year.