The public release of a Young Republican group chat that included racist language, jokes about rape and flippant commentary on gas chambers prompted bipartisan calls for those involved to be removed from or resign their positions.
The Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40, called for those involved to step down from the organization. The group described the exchanges, first reported by Politico, as “unbecoming of any Republican.”
Republican Vice President JD Vance, however, has weighed in several times to speak out against what he characterized as “pearl clutching” over the leaked messages.
Politico obtained months of exchanges from a Telegram conversation between leaders and members of the Young Republican National Federation and some of its affiliates in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont.
Here’s a rundown of reaction to the inflammatory group chat, in which the operatives and officials involved openly worried that their comments might be leaked, even as they continued their conversation:
Vance
After Politico’s initial report Tuesday, Vance posted on X a screen grab from 2022 text messages in which Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate in Virginia’s attorney general race, suggested that a prominent Republican get “two bullets to the head.”
“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance wrote Tuesday. “I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”
Jones has taken “full responsibility” for his comments and offered a public apology to Todd Gilbert, who then was speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates.
Vance reiterated his initial sentiment Wednesday on “ The Charlie Kirk Show ” podcast, saying when asked about the reporting that a “person seriously wishing for political violence and political assassination is 1,000 times worse than what a bunch of young people, a bunch of kids say in a group chat, however offensive it might be.”
Vance, 41, said he grew up in a different era where “most of what I, the stupid things that I did as a teenager and as a young adult, they’re not on the internet.”
The father of three said he would caution his own children, “especially my boys, don’t put things on the internet, like, be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.”
“I really don’t want to us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives,” Vance said.
Republicans
Other Republicans demanded more immediate intervention. Republican legislative leaders in Vermont, along with Gov. Phil Scott — also a Republican — called for the resignation of state Sen. Sam Douglass, revealed to be a participant in the chat. A joint statement from the GOP lawmakers termed the comments “unacceptable and deeply disturbing.”
Saying she was “absolutely appalled to learn about the alleged comments made by leaders of the New York State Young Republicans,” Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York called for those involved to step down from their positions. Danedri Herbert, chair of the Kansas GOP, said the remarks “do not reflect the beliefs of Republicans and certainly not of Kansas Republicans at large.”
In a statement posted to X on Tuesday, the Young Republican National Federation said it was “appalled” by the reported messages and calling for those involved to resign from their positions within the organization. Young Republican leaders said the behavior was “disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents.”
Democrats
Democrats have been more uniform in their condemnation. On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer asking for an investigation into the “vile and offensive text messages,” which he called “the definition of conduct that can create a hostile and discriminatory environment that violates civil rights laws.”
Speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York on Tuesday described the chat as “revolting,” calling for Republicans including President Trump and Vance to “condemn these comments swiftly and unequivocally.”
Asked about the reporting, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the exchanges “vile” and called for consequences for those involved.
“Kick them out of the party. Take away their official roles. Stop using them as campaign advisers,” Hochul said. “There needs to be consequences. This bulls—- has to stop.”
Kinnard writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
The UK Government has issued an urgent reminder to all passport holders who are planning to travel abroad in the near future, whether it be for a holiday or business purposes
HM Passport Office has been sending out an alert(Image: krblokhin via Getty Images)
Passport holders across the UK have received a crucial warning from HM Passport Office. Officials are urging anyone planning holidays or business trips abroad to carry out one vital check.
Text messages circulating read: “Remember to check that your passport is valid for the country you are travelling to.” The guidance also emphasises the need to “check the entry requirements” via their official website. This resource lists numerous destinations and helps travellers access “advice and warnings about travel abroad, including entry requirements, safety and security, health risks and legal differences.”
France serves as a prime example of a popular holiday spot and travel guidance highlights that France operates under Schengen area regulations. Under these rules, your passport must have a ‘date of issue’ less than 10 years before the date you arrive, and have an ‘expiry date’ at least 3 months after the date you plan to leave the Schengen area (the expiry date does not need to be within 10 years of the date of issue).
Before you start packing your bags, you need to make sure you’re clued up on the requirements. The UK Government has issued a fresh warning to holidaymakers, which reads: “Do not book travel until you have a valid passport – your new passport will not have the same number as your old one.”
If it’s time for a renewal, head over to the official GOV.UK website to submit your application. You can replace, renew, apply for or update your passport and even make a payment online.
The cost of a passport can vary based on your age and whether you apply online or via post. Applying online could save you £12.50 compared to sending your application by post.
Princess Andre shows her dad Peter the sort of messages she’s been receiving online despite her only being 18
15:01, 10 Aug 2025Updated 15:01, 10 Aug 2025
Doting dad Peter Andre has been left horrified after seeing the “disgusting” messages his daughter Princess has been receiving from men online. The 18-year-old is all set to star in her own four-part series, The Princess Diaries, which airs on ITV2 tonight and she’s joined by her dad, 52.
In the very first episode, the teenager, who is 17 at the time of filming, is joined by a pal as they discuss the vile messages she’s been receiving online from men.
Her friend is left gobsmacked by the messages as Princess tells her: “”Usually it’s like old men, going on about my toes. Sometimes they’ll be like, ‘let me take you on a date.”
Princess has a chat with her dad on the first episode of The Princess Diaries(Image: ITV)
“I do love my job and I do love social media and I do love interacting with people but there is a dark side to social media that people don’t see, and there are a lot of inappropriate messages that…yeah some of them can be horrible. “Like I’m literally 17, that’s actually not OK.”
Later on in the episode, the beauty influencer is joined by her dad and talk soon turns to the messages she’s been receiving. A shocked Peter looks up and asks her what sort of messages as she tells him it’s normally older men asking for feet pictures.
He responds: “Please God that’s the only thing they ask for,” before she gives him bad news by telling him they also ask: “Are you finally legal now?”
Peter is in disbelief and puts his hand to his face as his little girl shows him the message she had earlier shown to her friend. As he reads the message, the shocked dad-of-five says: “Oh my God Biss I didn’t think it was going to be like that.”
After placing his face in his hands again and trying to come to terms with what he had just read, the Mysterious Girl singer adds: “That really made me feel sick, like in the pit of my stomach. I hate it because you’re still my baby.”
The four-part series will see the budding star carving out a career for herself as a beauty influencer as cameras follow her every move as she steps out of the shadow of her dad and mum Katie Price.
The influencer is carving out a career for herself away from her famous parents(Image: WireImage)
Princess and her older brother Junior, 20, appeared on This Morning on Friday 8 August and insisted they’re trying to step outside of their famous parents and just do their own thing.
She told guest hosts Joel Dommett and Emma Willis: “I got older and a lot more things have come in for me solo. A lot of things I used to do was with my parents and now I’m doing a show that is independent and actually focused on me. Now is the right time because my life is busy right now and I want people to see it.”
She’s already inked big money deals with huge brands including Morphe and Superdrug and no doubt her star will continue to rise following the airing of her series.
Meanwhile, Junior is becoming a force in the music industry after signing a major record deal with Columbia at the age of 16, who also manage Harry Styles and Calvin Harris.
The Princess Diaries airs tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and is available to watch on ITVX now
Democrats in the United States Senate have released a string of text messages and email correspondences that they say raises questions about the executive branch’s commitment to complying with court orders.
On Thursday, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released what he described as “whistleblower” evidence about government lawyer Emil Bove.
In his role as acting deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Bove directed his colleagues to ignore or mislead courts about President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts, according to Durbin.
“Text messages, email exchanges, and documents show that the Department of Justice misled a federal court and disregarded a court order,” Durbin wrote on social media.
“Mr Bove spearheaded this effort, which demanded attorneys violate their ethical duty of candor to the court.”
Bove – formerly a personal lawyer to President Trump during his criminal trials – was recently nominated to serve in a lifetime position as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. But the Senate must first vote to confirm him to the role.
“Emil Bove belongs nowhere near the federal bench,” Durbin wrote. “This vote will be a litmus test for Senate Judiciary Republicans.”
Durbin indicated the emails and texts he released come from a Justice Department source: Most of the names in the correspondences have been redacted.
But they appear to corroborate allegations made in a complaint in June by Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department lawyer who worked under Bove until his dismissal in April.
In his complaint, Reuveni alleged that Bove told Justice Department lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*** you’” if they interfered with President Trump’s deportation plans.
The expletive came up in the context of Trump’s controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that, until recently, had only been used in the context of war.
Trump, however, has argued that undocumented immigration constituted an “invasion” and has attempted to deport people under the law’s authority, without allowing them to appeal their removal.
According to Reuveni, Bove explained to the Justice Department that Trump planned to start the deportation flights immediately after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. He “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what”.
Reuveni understood that interaction as an attempt to circumvent the power of the courts.
In another instance, Reuveni said he was discouraged from asking questions about the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite a court protection order.
When Reuveni admitted before a Maryland court that he did not have “satisfactory” answers about Abrego Garcia’s return, he said Trump officials pressured him to make assertions against Abrego Garcia that “were not supported by law or the record”. He was fired shortly afterwards.
The documents gathered by Senate Democrats appear to offer a look inside those incidents.
In one series of emails, dated March 15, Reuveni responded to a notification that planes bearing deportees under the Alien Enemies Act were still in the air.
“The judge specifically ordered us not to remove anyone in the class, and to return anyone in the air,” he wrote back.
The emails reflected an injunction from District Judge James Boasberg barring deportations and ordering the planes to turn around.
Nevertheless, the planes landed in El Salvador and delivered their human cargo to a maximum security prison, where many remain to this day.
In another instance, a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replied to an email thread by saying: “My take on these emails is that DOJ leadership and DOJ litigators don’t agree on the strategy. Please keep DHS out of it.”
Text messages also show Reuveni and an unnamed colleague discussing Bove’s request to tell the courts “f*** you”.
“Guess we are going to say f*** you to the court,” one text message reads.
In another, the colleague appears to react to Trump officials lying before the court. “Oh sh**,” they write. “That was just not true.”
In an interview published with The New York Times on Thursday, Reuveni underscored the grave dangers posed by an executive branch that he sees as refusing to comply with judicial authority.
“The Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” he told the Times.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has responded with defiance, repeating its claim that Reuveni is simply a “disgruntled employee” lashing out at the employer who fired him.
“He’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
“No one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.”
Bove himself denied ever advising his colleagues to defy a court order. The Senate is set to decide on his confirmation to the circuit court in the coming weeks.
If he passes the Senate Judiciary Committee – in a vote scheduled for July 17 – he will face a full vote on the Senate floor.
British number two Katie Boulter says she’s had “hundreds of messages” containing “love” and “appreciation” since BBC Sport published an article where she shared the abusive messages she receives on social media.
Boulter agreed to sit down with BBC Sport to provide unprecedented insight into the volume and nature of abuse received by players, including sharing screenshots of her private inbox.
And Paul has now revealed the two are already goading each other privately over social media – as all’s fair in love and war.
He said: “It was all nice, we’ve been cordial. He DMd me today like saying “LOL” to one of my training clips and then I sent him a “LOL” of of him getting knocked out.
“And so I guess like we’re kind of s*** talking, behind the scenes a bit. But I have a lot of love for Anthony Joshua.
“I think this type of stuff is funny and he’s a great guy and I think just a fight between us would be awesome and I do believe I can win.”
And Paul – who gorged on pasta, steaks and potatoes to bulk up – admitted the heavyweight jump was “brutal”.
Jake Paul reveals ‘hefty’ six-man hit-list of opponents for next fight including Anthony Joshua and world champ
The 28-year-old added: “It was just too much and my body wasn’t made for it and even when I got into the ring I just felt too fat.
“So cruiserweight is definitely the perfect weight for me.”
Paul will come down from 16st 2lb to the 200lb cruiserweight limit of 14st 4lb to face Chavez in California.
It followed after Canelo Alvarez, 34, pulled out of a shock deal to fight Paul in Las Vegas on May 3 – instead signing with Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh.
Canelo – who beat Chavez on points in 2017 – regained his undisputed super-middleweight titles with victory over William Scull in May.
But he said: “Chavez and I have been going back and forth for a long time and he’s always been a great opponent on the list of someone that I wanted to fight.
“And now it made perfect sense to go up against him as a former world champion and just continuing to further my resume and get more time under the lights.”
Paul also revealed he is in talks to fight current cruiserweight champions Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez, 33, and Badou Jack, 41.
And with Gervonta Davis, 30, also lined up for an exhibition bout – Paul says he is boxing’s most desired man.
He joked: I’m like like Megan Fox from Transformers movie like everyone wants me! So there’s not enough time to do it all and it could make sense. Look, it might.
“It might line up but at the end of the day, there’s 100 people that want to fight me. I got Canelo, Gervonta, Anthony Joshua, Badou, Zurdo, Tommy Fury, KSI, the list keeps on going.
“It’s just about what makes sense and we’ll see when the negotiations come but I would for sure entertain a fight with him.”
6
Jake Paul faces Julio Cesar Chavez Jr nextCredit: Reuters
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has come under heavy scrutiny for deleting the text messages she sent during the region’s disastrous January firestorms.
But she wasn’t the only elected official expunging her correspondence during those history-making days.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the area devastated by the Eaton fire, also routinely deletes her text messages, her spokesperson said.
“Supervisor Barger’s iPhone auto-delete setting is set to 30 days. She also manually deletes her texts sometimes,” Barger spokesperson Helen Chavez Garcia said last month.
The Times filed a public records request for Barger’s communications with Bass from Jan. 7 through late February. Barger’s office provided no written communications in response, despite Barger having publicly said that she was texting with Bass late into the night on Jan. 7, while Bass was in transit back to the city after a diplomatic trip to Ghana.
The other four supervisors — Lindsey Horvath, Hilda Solis, Holly Mitchell and Janice Hahn — do not use the auto-delete function on their phones, according to their spokespeople.
Chavez Garcia said in an email that there is “no pre-determined method that the Supervisor applies when selecting which messages to manually delete.”
Constance Farrell, a spokesperson for Horvath, said her understanding was that county officials were supposed to retain their text messages for two years to comply with the county’s record retention policy. Horvath’s office released some of her text messages in February after a Times public records request. The messages showed the supervisor sparring with Bass during the fires.
The county record retention guidelines make no mention of text messages but say that routine “administrative records” are supposed to be kept for two years.
The board’s executive office said the public record act applies to text messages, though some may be exempt from disclosure.
“Whether a supervisor’s text is a public record depends on whether it is a text regarding the conduct of the peoples’ business,” Steven Hernandez, the chief deputy for the executive office, said in a statement.
According to county policy, employees must sign an agreement every year acknowledging that all electronic communications, such as emails or instant messages, sent on county devices are the property of the county.
Bass previously kept her phone on a 30-day auto-delete setting, far shorter than the two-year retention period outlined in the city’s administrative code.
However, after being pressed by The Times, which had filed public records requests for the mayor’s correspondence during the Palisades fire, Bass’ office said it was able to recover the deleted messages using “specialized technology.”
(The Times sued the city in March over the mayor’s texts. Even though city officials ultimately provided some texts, The Times is contesting the city’s argument that releasing them was not required under state law.)
It also remains unclear whether Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who was filling in as acting mayor in Bass’ stead when the fires broke out, deleted his text messages from that time period.
After The Times filed a public records request seeking correspondence that Harris-Dawson sent to Bass or received from her between Jan. 6 and Jan. 16, Harris-Dawson’s office said it had “no responsive records.”
Harris-Dawson’s office did not respond to repeated questions over the course of several months about why there was no correspondence and whether it had been deleted.
“It’s very disappointing to see that that practice has spilled over up the street [to the County]. I was hoping it was just L.A. City Hall shenanigans and the absurdities of our two big leaders,” said Unrig LA founder Rob Quan, referring to Bass and Harris-Dawson.
Quan, who leads a transparency-focused good-government advocacy group, said he believed proper recordkeeping from January was all the more important given the historic importance of the fires.
NEW YORK — R&B singer Cassie was forced under cross-examination Thursday to read aloud explicit messages with her former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs, some of which expressed enthusiasm for sex with other men at Combs’ behest that she previously testified she “hated doing.”
Lawyers for Combs are seeking to show the jury that Cassie was a willing participant in his sexual lifestyle and say that, while he could be violent, nothing he did amounted to a criminal enterprise. Combs has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
Prosecutors say he exploited his status as a powerful music executive to violently force Cassie and other women to take part in these drug-fueled encounters with sex workers, called “freak-offs,” which sometimes lasted days. He’s also accused of using his entourage and employees to facilitate illegal activities, including prostitution-related transportation and coercion, which is a key element of the federal charges.
Messages between Combs and Cassie — both romantic and lurid — were the focus of the fourth day of testimony in a Manhattan courtroom. Defense attorney Anna Estevao read what Combs wrote, while Cassie recited her own messages.
Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, read messages to Combs containing graphic details about what she wanted to do during the freak-offs. At one point, she asked for a short break from the readings, which Judge Arun Subramanian granted.
In August 2009, Combs asked when she wanted the next encounter to be, and she replied “I’m always ready to freak off.” Two days later, Cassie sent an explicit message and he replied in eager anticipation. She responded: “Me Too, I just want it to be uncontrollable.” Combs’ lawyers have insisted that all the sex at the freak-offs was consensual.
Later that year, however, she also sent Combs messages that she was frustrated with the state of their relationship and needed something more from him than sex.
While reading their more affectionate conversations, Cassie testified that Combs was charismatic, a larger-than-life personality.
“I had fallen in love with him and cared about him very much,” Cassie said. Estevao spoke gently during the cross-examination, which had such a friendly tone at times that the lawyer and witness seemed like two friends chatting.
Cassie, however, did complain once that jurors weren’t hearing the full context of the messages the defense was highlighting, saying, “There’s a lot we skipped over.”
A packed courtroom watches Cassie’s testimony
As the messages were read, Combs appeared relaxed at the defense table, sitting back with his hands folded and his legs crossed. The courtroom was packed with family and friends of Combs, journalists, and a row of spectator seats occupied by Cassie’s supporters including her husband.
The 38-year-old Cassie — who is in the third trimester of pregnancy with her third child — has been composed on the witness stand. She cried several times during the previous two days of questions by the prosecution, but for the most part has remained matter-of-fact as she spoke about the most sensitive subjects.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has.
During a break, Combs stood at the defense table, huddling with his lawyers, holding a pack of Post-It notes in one hand and a pen in the other. At one point, he turned to the gallery and acknowledged a few reporters who were studying his demeanor. “How you doing?” he asked.
Combs’ daughters were not in the courtroom Thursday as the explicit messages were read and shown to the jury.
Jurors leaned forward in their seats to follow along as the messages were displayed on monitors in front of them in the jury box. One woman shook her head as a particularly explicit message was shown. A man stared intently at the screen, pressing his thumb to his chin. Other jurors appeared curious and quizzical, some looking at Cassie or jotting notes.
Cassie rejects ‘swingers’ label
Cassie’s testimony on cross-examination was in contrast to Wednesday, when she described the violence and shame that accompanied her “hundreds” of encounters with male sex workers during her relationship with Combs, which lasted from 2007 to 2018.
While prosecutors have focused on Combs’ desire to see Cassie having sex with other men, she testified that she sometimes watched Combs have sex with other women. She said Combs described it as part of a “swingers lifestyle.”
Estevao asked Cassie directly whether she thought freak-offs were related to that lifestyle.
“In a sexual way,” Cassie responded, before adding: “They’re very different.”
Cassie said Tuesday that Combs was obsessed with a form of voyeurism where “he was controlling the whole situation.” The freak-offs took place in private, often in dark hotel rooms, unlike Combs’ very public parties that attracted A-list celebrities.
She testified she sometimes took IV fluids to recover from the encounters, and eventually developed an opioid addiction because it made her “feel numb” afterward.
When questioned by Estevao, Cassie agreed that Combs once communicated to drug dealers in Los Angeles to stop delivering drugs to her, and he suggested she get treatment. Cassie said Combs wanted her to do drugs with him only, not friends.
Cassie’s lawsuit sparked case against Combs
Cassie testified Wednesday that Combs raped her when she broke up with him in 2018, and had locked in a life of abuse by threatening to release videos of her during the freak-offs.
She sued Combs in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. Within hours, the suit was settled for $20 million — a figure Cassie disclosed for the first time Wednesday — but dozens of similar legal claims followed from other women. It also touched off a law enforcement investigation into Combs that has culminated in this trial.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted.
Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. The AP’s Julie Walker in New York and Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivered the bad news last week to a room full of activists in South Los Angeles: With the city in financial trouble, jobs were on the chopping block.
Yet the way Bass framed the situation, it was hard to tell how bad the news really was.
“I’m going to have to propose layoffs,” she told the audience convened by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen, OK? I don’t. I don’t. But I have to propose that, because by law the budget has to come out on Monday, by April 21.
“But, but — I believe that there are some solutions, like from the state, that will help us so that we don’t have to do layoffs ultimately, because the budget won’t be signed for several more weeks,” she added.
The mayor released her proposed spending plan for 2025-26 three days later, and the outlook was indeed dire — perhaps the toughest city budget in 15 years. Her budget advisers produced a list of nearly 1,650 positions targeted for layoffs, plus nearly 1,100 vacant posts that would be eliminated.
On paper, the mayor has called for reductions to a wide array of agencies, including transportation, planning and street services. In person, however, Bass has sounded far more hesitant.
Bass, both before and after releasing her budget, said she is hoping that financial aid from Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature will help her close the budget gap and avoid layoffs. She made a trip to Sacramento on Wednesday to talk to state lawmakers.
City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said she, too, was in Sacramento this week, but heard little enthusiasm for an L.A. rescue package. She voiced concern about the heavy emphasis on state aid at City Hall, saying the city’s workforce is getting an unrealistic view of the unfolding budget crisis.
“It’s providing false promises and false hope on all fronts,” she said. “We have to be honest about what we’re confronting.”
The city’s labor negotiators have already begun meeting with union leaders to ask them to postpone this year’s pay raises, which are expected to add $250 million to the upcoming budget. As long as the focus is on financial assistance from the state, those unions will have little incentive to make the types of concessions that could bring the budget into balance, Rodriguez said.
The mayor’s appearance in South Los Angeles wasn’t the only time she expressed her desire to avoid job cuts. On Tuesday, addressing reporters in the San Fernando Valley, she sounded equally hesitant when asked about her plan to lay off 400 civilian city workers at the LAPD.
“Obviously we’ll do that very surgically, to make sure that the civilians who are laid off — if we get to that, which I am certainly hopeful we will not,” she said. “If we get to that, we will have to look at the ones that will have the least impact to public safety.”
In some ways, the mayor’s budget strategy resembles the one carried out 15 years ago by then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. During that financial crisis, Villaraigosa initially called for thousands of layoffs, in an effort to pressure public employee unions to return to the bargaining table.
That strategy drew a furious response from some of the city’s employee unions, who distributed posters comparing Villaraigosa to Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Scott Walker, viewed at that time as a strident foe of organized labor.
Bass, by comparison, has been working much more closely with the city’s labor unions. In an interview, she touted that collaborative approach — and pushed back against the idea that she is offering them false hope.
“I wouldn’t be up in Sacramento … if I did not believe there was a possibility that we could get support,” she said.
Bass, a former state lawmaker, said she is familiar both with Sacramento and with tough budget decisions, having served as state Assembly speaker in the wake of the 2008 global recession, when billions were carved out of the state budget.
The mayor’s proposed budget, now before the City Council’s budget committee, is aimed at closing a financial gap of nearly $1 billion by July 1, the start of the fiscal year.
The money needed to stave off layoffs is considerably less.
The city needs $282 million to prevent the elimination of more than 2,700 city positions, and just $150 million to stave off the 1,650 layoffs, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.
(The mayor’s proposed budget assumes layoffs would go into effect by the end of October, producing eight months of savings. After a full year, layoffs would generate $225 million in savings, Szabo said.)
The stakes for the city are high. On Friday, the ratings agency S&P Global lowered its bond rating on two types of city debt. Those reductions were driven in large part by the city’s ongoing financial woes and the reduction in the size of its reserve fund.
S&P said it could revise its outlook to a more favorable one if city leaders enact “sufficient budgetary cuts to offset stagnant economic recovery and revenue growth.”
Jack Humphreville, a member of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates, which weighs in on city spending, voiced his own doubts about the prospects for significant state aid. If state officials bail out L.A., he said, then they will also have to help San Francisco and all the other local governments facing financial difficulties.
“They might as well form a line,” he said.
If state aid isn’t forthcoming, the city could still find other ways to eliminate positions without laying off workers. For example, many could be reassigned to jobs in city departments that are unaffected by the budget crisis.
Efforts are already underway to identify vacant positions at the Port of Los Angeles, Los Angeles World Airports and the Department of Water and Power, all of which operate separately from the city’s general fund budget, which pays for core services such as police, firefighters and paramedics.
Those transfers could provide a replay of the 2008 recession, when several hundred workers were transferred to the DWP from various city agencies, sparing them from unemployment. Under that scenario, the city services provided by those workers still went away.
State of play
— BUDGET BLOWBACK: There were plenty of repercussions from the release of Bass’ budget proposal. Some voiced alarm over planned layoffs at the Department of Transportation. Others worried about street trees. Still others were focused on the Police Department, whose leaders warned that layoffs of civilian employees would result in the closure of three jails. Only the Fire Department received the go-ahead to make a significant number of hires — more than 200, per the mayor’s spending plan.
— A FULL PLATE: For L.A.’s mayor, the problems have been piling up. She is contending not only with a homelessness crisis, post-wildfire rebuilding and a budget meltdown, but also shrinking film and television production, a downturn in housing construction and a potential downturn in trade and tourism. Bass acknowledged the various challenges but told The Times they are not insurmountable.
— PERMIT PLUNGE: Speaking of housing, L.A. approved permits for 1,325 homes during the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of nearly 57% compared to the same period a year earlier. Those paltry figures — driven by a variety of causes — were only the latest batch of bad news about the city’s housing affordability crisis.
—CONTRACT CRUNCH: Unions representing L.A. County firefighters and sheriff’s deputies made a bid for public support for their increasingly testy contract negotiations, releasing a documentary highlighting their members’ work during the January wildfires. The pitch comes a month after county budget officials said they can’t afford raises during a time of major economic uncertainty.
— TREE TRAUMA: A homeless man was arrested this week on suspicion of taking a chain saw to trees in downtown Los Angeles, Westlake, Glassell Park and possibly other neighborhoods. The man was arrested at a homeless encampment that was the target of an Inside Safe operation in February.
— DO-OVER TIME: The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which stood empty in Pacific Palisades during the Palisades fire, will need to be emptied and repaired for a second time, after workers discovered more holes in the reservoir’s floating cover. The reservoir is currently one-quarter full.
— ALPHABET SOUP: L.A. voters have passed two tax increases over the last three years to pay for housing and homelessness programs. Now those measures have spurred the creation of a head-spinning number of oversight agencies, each with their own initialisms: ECRHA, LACAHSA, LTRHA and ULACOC. As the LAT’s Doug Smith points out, it’s a lot for the average voter to keep track of.
— DE LEÓN DINGED: Former Councilmember Kevin de León was fined $18,750 by the Ethics Commission for participating in decisions in which he had a financial interest and for failing to properly disclose income he received shortly before taking office. De León had worked for USC and a housing program run by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation shortly before joining the council in 2020.
— GETTING TO LAX: The LAX/Metro Transit Center is scheduled to open on June 6, moving a direct rail connection to Los Angeles International Airport one step closer to reality. The station, located at Aviation Boulevard and 96th Street, will eventually connect passengers to an automated people mover that will arrive at the actual airport.
— HOUSING HELP: The Board of Water and Power Commissioners, whose members are picked by the mayor, approved a housing allowance of up to $120,000 each for two new executives at the Department of Water and Power: Kendall Helm and Zoraya Griffin, both hired by the utility’s CEO, Janisse Quiñones. One DWP employee told the board during public comment that the housing allowance was a waste of money, saying there were already qualified internal candidates in the L.A. area.
— PICKEL’S PARTING SHOT: DWP ratepayer advocate Fred Pickel is retiring — this time for real. Pickel, who was originally scheduled to step down two years ago, used his final appearance at the DWP board to argue that the utility should review its rates far more frequently than once a decade. “With that, I’m going to depart,” he said. “Mic drop,” responded Commissioner Nurit Katz.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness went to two neighborhoods this week: Valley Boulevard in El Sereno, represented by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, and the area around Paxton Park in Pacoima, represented by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.
On the docket for next week: The City Council’s budget committee takes up the mayor’s 2025-26 spending all of next week, with labor leaders appearing on Monday, public safety agencies speaking on Wednesday and the homelessness budget discussed on Thursday.
Stay in touch
That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Vance dismisses bipartisan outrage over offensive Young Republican messages as ‘pearl clutching’
The public release of a Young Republican group chat that included racist language, jokes about rape and flippant commentary on gas chambers prompted bipartisan calls for those involved to be removed from or resign their positions.
The Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40, called for those involved to step down from the organization. The group described the exchanges, first reported by Politico, as “unbecoming of any Republican.”
Republican Vice President JD Vance, however, has weighed in several times to speak out against what he characterized as “pearl clutching” over the leaked messages.
Politico obtained months of exchanges from a Telegram conversation between leaders and members of the Young Republican National Federation and some of its affiliates in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont.
Here’s a rundown of reaction to the inflammatory group chat, in which the operatives and officials involved openly worried that their comments might be leaked, even as they continued their conversation:
Vance
After Politico’s initial report Tuesday, Vance posted on X a screen grab from 2022 text messages in which Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate in Virginia’s attorney general race, suggested that a prominent Republican get “two bullets to the head.”
“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance wrote Tuesday. “I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”
Jones has taken “full responsibility” for his comments and offered a public apology to Todd Gilbert, who then was speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates.
Vance reiterated his initial sentiment Wednesday on “ The Charlie Kirk Show ” podcast, saying when asked about the reporting that a “person seriously wishing for political violence and political assassination is 1,000 times worse than what a bunch of young people, a bunch of kids say in a group chat, however offensive it might be.”
Vance, 41, said he grew up in a different era where “most of what I, the stupid things that I did as a teenager and as a young adult, they’re not on the internet.”
The father of three said he would caution his own children, “especially my boys, don’t put things on the internet, like, be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.”
“I really don’t want to us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives,” Vance said.
Republicans
Other Republicans demanded more immediate intervention. Republican legislative leaders in Vermont, along with Gov. Phil Scott — also a Republican — called for the resignation of state Sen. Sam Douglass, revealed to be a participant in the chat. A joint statement from the GOP lawmakers termed the comments “unacceptable and deeply disturbing.”
Saying she was “absolutely appalled to learn about the alleged comments made by leaders of the New York State Young Republicans,” Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York called for those involved to step down from their positions. Danedri Herbert, chair of the Kansas GOP, said the remarks “do not reflect the beliefs of Republicans and certainly not of Kansas Republicans at large.”
In a statement posted to X on Tuesday, the Young Republican National Federation said it was “appalled” by the reported messages and calling for those involved to resign from their positions within the organization. Young Republican leaders said the behavior was “disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents.”
Democrats
Democrats have been more uniform in their condemnation. On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer asking for an investigation into the “vile and offensive text messages,” which he called “the definition of conduct that can create a hostile and discriminatory environment that violates civil rights laws.”
Speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York on Tuesday described the chat as “revolting,” calling for Republicans including President Trump and Vance to “condemn these comments swiftly and unequivocally.”
Asked about the reporting, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the exchanges “vile” and called for consequences for those involved.
“Kick them out of the party. Take away their official roles. Stop using them as campaign advisers,” Hochul said. “There needs to be consequences. This bulls—- has to stop.”
Kinnard writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
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UK passport holders may receive urgent text messages
The UK Government has issued an urgent reminder to all passport holders who are planning to travel abroad in the near future, whether it be for a holiday or business purposes
Passport holders across the UK have received a crucial warning from HM Passport Office. Officials are urging anyone planning holidays or business trips abroad to carry out one vital check.
Text messages circulating read: “Remember to check that your passport is valid for the country you are travelling to.” The guidance also emphasises the need to “check the entry requirements” via their official website. This resource lists numerous destinations and helps travellers access “advice and warnings about travel abroad, including entry requirements, safety and security, health risks and legal differences.”
France serves as a prime example of a popular holiday spot and travel guidance highlights that France operates under Schengen area regulations. Under these rules, your passport must have a ‘date of issue’ less than 10 years before the date you arrive, and have an ‘expiry date’ at least 3 months after the date you plan to leave the Schengen area (the expiry date does not need to be within 10 years of the date of issue).
READ MORE: Urgent message to anyone who takes statins, iron tablets, ibuprofen or NaproxenREAD MORE: ‘I visited the biggest Haven campsite in the UK and one thing impressed me straight away’
Before you start packing your bags, you need to make sure you’re clued up on the requirements. The UK Government has issued a fresh warning to holidaymakers, which reads: “Do not book travel until you have a valid passport – your new passport will not have the same number as your old one.”
If it’s time for a renewal, head over to the official GOV.UK website to submit your application. You can replace, renew, apply for or update your passport and even make a payment online.
The cost of a passport can vary based on your age and whether you apply online or via post. Applying online could save you £12.50 compared to sending your application by post.
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Peter Andre left ‘feeling sick’ over ‘disgusting’ messages Princess receives from men
Princess Andre shows her dad Peter the sort of messages she’s been receiving online despite her only being 18
15:01, 10 Aug 2025Updated 15:01, 10 Aug 2025
Doting dad Peter Andre has been left horrified after seeing the “disgusting” messages his daughter Princess has been receiving from men online. The 18-year-old is all set to star in her own four-part series, The Princess Diaries, which airs on ITV2 tonight and she’s joined by her dad, 52.
In the very first episode, the teenager, who is 17 at the time of filming, is joined by a pal as they discuss the vile messages she’s been receiving online from men.
Her friend is left gobsmacked by the messages as Princess tells her: “”Usually it’s like old men, going on about my toes. Sometimes they’ll be like, ‘let me take you on a date.”
Speaking directly to the camera in her confessional, she added: “”I can’t even read this message out, it’s actually disgusting.” It comes after Princess Andre says she’s ‘independent’ from parents as she breaks silence after Katie Price row.
READ MORE: Katie Price’s daughter Princess admits ‘there weren’t many rules’ as she talks home life
READ MORE: Katie Price accused of ‘last act of desperation’ hours before Princess Andre’s show
“I do love my job and I do love social media and I do love interacting with people but there is a dark side to social media that people don’t see, and there are a lot of inappropriate messages that…yeah some of them can be horrible. “Like I’m literally 17, that’s actually not OK.”
Later on in the episode, the beauty influencer is joined by her dad and talk soon turns to the messages she’s been receiving. A shocked Peter looks up and asks her what sort of messages as she tells him it’s normally older men asking for feet pictures.
He responds: “Please God that’s the only thing they ask for,” before she gives him bad news by telling him they also ask: “Are you finally legal now?”
Peter is in disbelief and puts his hand to his face as his little girl shows him the message she had earlier shown to her friend. As he reads the message, the shocked dad-of-five says: “Oh my God Biss I didn’t think it was going to be like that.”
After placing his face in his hands again and trying to come to terms with what he had just read, the Mysterious Girl singer adds: “That really made me feel sick, like in the pit of my stomach. I hate it because you’re still my baby.”
The four-part series will see the budding star carving out a career for herself as a beauty influencer as cameras follow her every move as she steps out of the shadow of her dad and mum Katie Price.
Princess and her older brother Junior, 20, appeared on This Morning on Friday 8 August and insisted they’re trying to step outside of their famous parents and just do their own thing.
She told guest hosts Joel Dommett and Emma Willis: “I got older and a lot more things have come in for me solo. A lot of things I used to do was with my parents and now I’m doing a show that is independent and actually focused on me. Now is the right time because my life is busy right now and I want people to see it.”
She’s already inked big money deals with huge brands including Morphe and Superdrug and no doubt her star will continue to rise following the airing of her series.
Meanwhile, Junior is becoming a force in the music industry after signing a major record deal with Columbia at the age of 16, who also manage Harry Styles and Calvin Harris.
The Princess Diaries airs tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and is available to watch on ITVX now
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Democrats publish leaked Justice Department messages on US deportation push | Donald Trump News
Democrats in the United States Senate have released a string of text messages and email correspondences that they say raises questions about the executive branch’s commitment to complying with court orders.
On Thursday, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released what he described as “whistleblower” evidence about government lawyer Emil Bove.
In his role as acting deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Bove directed his colleagues to ignore or mislead courts about President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts, according to Durbin.
“Text messages, email exchanges, and documents show that the Department of Justice misled a federal court and disregarded a court order,” Durbin wrote on social media.
“Mr Bove spearheaded this effort, which demanded attorneys violate their ethical duty of candor to the court.”
Bove – formerly a personal lawyer to President Trump during his criminal trials – was recently nominated to serve in a lifetime position as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. But the Senate must first vote to confirm him to the role.
“Emil Bove belongs nowhere near the federal bench,” Durbin wrote. “This vote will be a litmus test for Senate Judiciary Republicans.”
Durbin indicated the emails and texts he released come from a Justice Department source: Most of the names in the correspondences have been redacted.
But they appear to corroborate allegations made in a complaint in June by Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department lawyer who worked under Bove until his dismissal in April.
In his complaint, Reuveni alleged that Bove told Justice Department lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*** you’” if they interfered with President Trump’s deportation plans.
The expletive came up in the context of Trump’s controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that, until recently, had only been used in the context of war.
Trump, however, has argued that undocumented immigration constituted an “invasion” and has attempted to deport people under the law’s authority, without allowing them to appeal their removal.
According to Reuveni, Bove explained to the Justice Department that Trump planned to start the deportation flights immediately after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. He “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what”.
Reuveni understood that interaction as an attempt to circumvent the power of the courts.
In another instance, Reuveni said he was discouraged from asking questions about the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite a court protection order.
When Reuveni admitted before a Maryland court that he did not have “satisfactory” answers about Abrego Garcia’s return, he said Trump officials pressured him to make assertions against Abrego Garcia that “were not supported by law or the record”. He was fired shortly afterwards.
The documents gathered by Senate Democrats appear to offer a look inside those incidents.
In one series of emails, dated March 15, Reuveni responded to a notification that planes bearing deportees under the Alien Enemies Act were still in the air.
“The judge specifically ordered us not to remove anyone in the class, and to return anyone in the air,” he wrote back.
The emails reflected an injunction from District Judge James Boasberg barring deportations and ordering the planes to turn around.
Nevertheless, the planes landed in El Salvador and delivered their human cargo to a maximum security prison, where many remain to this day.
In another instance, a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replied to an email thread by saying: “My take on these emails is that DOJ leadership and DOJ litigators don’t agree on the strategy. Please keep DHS out of it.”
Text messages also show Reuveni and an unnamed colleague discussing Bove’s request to tell the courts “f*** you”.
“Guess we are going to say f*** you to the court,” one text message reads.
In another, the colleague appears to react to Trump officials lying before the court. “Oh sh**,” they write. “That was just not true.”
In an interview published with The New York Times on Thursday, Reuveni underscored the grave dangers posed by an executive branch that he sees as refusing to comply with judicial authority.
“The Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” he told the Times.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has responded with defiance, repeating its claim that Reuveni is simply a “disgruntled employee” lashing out at the employer who fired him.
“He’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
“No one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.”
Bove himself denied ever advising his colleagues to defy a court order. The Senate is set to decide on his confirmation to the circuit court in the coming weeks.
If he passes the Senate Judiciary Committee – in a vote scheduled for July 17 – he will face a full vote on the Senate floor.
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Katie Boulter: British tennis player receives hundreds of positive messages after social media abuse story
British number two Katie Boulter says she’s had “hundreds of messages” containing “love” and “appreciation” since BBC Sport published an article where she shared the abusive messages she receives on social media.
Boulter agreed to sit down with BBC Sport to provide unprecedented insight into the volume and nature of abuse received by players, including sharing screenshots of her private inbox.
READ MORE: Tennis player Boulter reveals scale of online abuse
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Jake Paul leaks ‘s***-talking’ private messages with Anthony Joshua goading him about being KO’d as trash talk ramps up
JAKE PAUL revealed he is goading Anthony Joshua about being knocked out – as their “s*** talking” ramps up behind the scenes.
Paul audaciously called out the two-time heavyweight champion on his podcast earlier this year – vowing to knock Joshua out.
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It did not take long for AJ to quite literally call the prankster-turned-prizefighter’s bluff by phoning him up – but Paul countered by suggesting a 2026 fight date.
And Paul has now revealed the two are already goading each other privately over social media – as all’s fair in love and war.
He said: “It was all nice, we’ve been cordial. He DMd me today like saying “LOL” to one of my training clips and then I sent him a “LOL” of of him getting knocked out.
“And so I guess like we’re kind of s*** talking, behind the scenes a bit. But I have a lot of love for Anthony Joshua.
“I think this type of stuff is funny and he’s a great guy and I think just a fight between us would be awesome and I do believe I can win.”
Joshua, 35, is yet to fight since being KO’d by Daniel Dubois, 27, at Wembley in September having undergone elbow surgery in May.
Promoter Eddie Hearn revealed AJ hopes to return before the year is over – meanwhile Paul faces ex-middleweight world champ Julio Cesar Chavez Jr on June 28.
It comes after he stepped up to heavyweight in November to face Mike Tyson – who controversially made a comeback aged 58.
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CASINO SPECIAL – BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS
Still over 100 MILLION tuned in to watch Paul’s eight-round points win on Netflix – but it came at the cost of piling on TWO STONE.
And Paul – who gorged on pasta, steaks and potatoes to bulk up – admitted the heavyweight jump was “brutal”.
The 28-year-old added: “It was just too much and my body wasn’t made for it and even when I got into the ring I just felt too fat.
“So cruiserweight is definitely the perfect weight for me.”
Paul will come down from 16st 2lb to the 200lb cruiserweight limit of 14st 4lb to face Chavez in California.
It followed after Canelo Alvarez, 34, pulled out of a shock deal to fight Paul in Las Vegas on May 3 – instead signing with Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh.
Canelo – who beat Chavez on points in 2017 – regained his undisputed super-middleweight titles with victory over William Scull in May.
And now he defends the 168lb thrown in a September 13 super-fight against unbeaten American Terence Crawford, 37, as Paul was forced to look elsewhere.
But he said: “Chavez and I have been going back and forth for a long time and he’s always been a great opponent on the list of someone that I wanted to fight.
“And now it made perfect sense to go up against him as a former world champion and just continuing to further my resume and get more time under the lights.”
Paul also revealed he is in talks to fight current cruiserweight champions Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez, 33, and Badou Jack, 41.
And with Gervonta Davis, 30, also lined up for an exhibition bout – Paul says he is boxing’s most desired man.
He joked: I’m like like Megan Fox from Transformers movie like everyone wants me! So there’s not enough time to do it all and it could make sense. Look, it might.
“It might line up but at the end of the day, there’s 100 people that want to fight me. I got Canelo, Gervonta, Anthony Joshua, Badou, Zurdo, Tommy Fury, KSI, the list keeps on going.
“It’s just about what makes sense and we’ll see when the negotiations come but I would for sure entertain a fight with him.”
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Like Mayor Bass, Supervisor Kathryn Barger also deleted her fire text messages
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has come under heavy scrutiny for deleting the text messages she sent during the region’s disastrous January firestorms.
But she wasn’t the only elected official expunging her correspondence during those history-making days.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the area devastated by the Eaton fire, also routinely deletes her text messages, her spokesperson said.
“Supervisor Barger’s iPhone auto-delete setting is set to 30 days. She also manually deletes her texts sometimes,” Barger spokesperson Helen Chavez Garcia said last month.
The Times filed a public records request for Barger’s communications with Bass from Jan. 7 through late February. Barger’s office provided no written communications in response, despite Barger having publicly said that she was texting with Bass late into the night on Jan. 7, while Bass was in transit back to the city after a diplomatic trip to Ghana.
The other four supervisors — Lindsey Horvath, Hilda Solis, Holly Mitchell and Janice Hahn — do not use the auto-delete function on their phones, according to their spokespeople.
Chavez Garcia said in an email that there is “no pre-determined method that the Supervisor applies when selecting which messages to manually delete.”
Constance Farrell, a spokesperson for Horvath, said her understanding was that county officials were supposed to retain their text messages for two years to comply with the county’s record retention policy. Horvath’s office released some of her text messages in February after a Times public records request. The messages showed the supervisor sparring with Bass during the fires.
The county record retention guidelines make no mention of text messages but say that routine “administrative records” are supposed to be kept for two years.
The board’s executive office said the public record act applies to text messages, though some may be exempt from disclosure.
“Whether a supervisor’s text is a public record depends on whether it is a text regarding the conduct of the peoples’ business,” Steven Hernandez, the chief deputy for the executive office, said in a statement.
According to county policy, employees must sign an agreement every year acknowledging that all electronic communications, such as emails or instant messages, sent on county devices are the property of the county.
Bass previously kept her phone on a 30-day auto-delete setting, far shorter than the two-year retention period outlined in the city’s administrative code.
However, after being pressed by The Times, which had filed public records requests for the mayor’s correspondence during the Palisades fire, Bass’ office said it was able to recover the deleted messages using “specialized technology.”
(The Times sued the city in March over the mayor’s texts. Even though city officials ultimately provided some texts, The Times is contesting the city’s argument that releasing them was not required under state law.)
It also remains unclear whether Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who was filling in as acting mayor in Bass’ stead when the fires broke out, deleted his text messages from that time period.
After The Times filed a public records request seeking correspondence that Harris-Dawson sent to Bass or received from her between Jan. 6 and Jan. 16, Harris-Dawson’s office said it had “no responsive records.”
Harris-Dawson’s office did not respond to repeated questions over the course of several months about why there was no correspondence and whether it had been deleted.
“It’s very disappointing to see that that practice has spilled over up the street [to the County]. I was hoping it was just L.A. City Hall shenanigans and the absurdities of our two big leaders,” said Unrig LA founder Rob Quan, referring to Bass and Harris-Dawson.
Quan, who leads a transparency-focused good-government advocacy group, said he believed proper recordkeeping from January was all the more important given the historic importance of the fires.
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Cassie forced to read aloud explicit messages with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs at his sex trafficking trial
NEW YORK — R&B singer Cassie was forced under cross-examination Thursday to read aloud explicit messages with her former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs, some of which expressed enthusiasm for sex with other men at Combs’ behest that she previously testified she “hated doing.”
Lawyers for Combs are seeking to show the jury that Cassie was a willing participant in his sexual lifestyle and say that, while he could be violent, nothing he did amounted to a criminal enterprise. Combs has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
Prosecutors say he exploited his status as a powerful music executive to violently force Cassie and other women to take part in these drug-fueled encounters with sex workers, called “freak-offs,” which sometimes lasted days. He’s also accused of using his entourage and employees to facilitate illegal activities, including prostitution-related transportation and coercion, which is a key element of the federal charges.
Messages between Combs and Cassie — both romantic and lurid — were the focus of the fourth day of testimony in a Manhattan courtroom. Defense attorney Anna Estevao read what Combs wrote, while Cassie recited her own messages.
Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, read messages to Combs containing graphic details about what she wanted to do during the freak-offs. At one point, she asked for a short break from the readings, which Judge Arun Subramanian granted.
In August 2009, Combs asked when she wanted the next encounter to be, and she replied “I’m always ready to freak off.” Two days later, Cassie sent an explicit message and he replied in eager anticipation. She responded: “Me Too, I just want it to be uncontrollable.” Combs’ lawyers have insisted that all the sex at the freak-offs was consensual.
Later that year, however, she also sent Combs messages that she was frustrated with the state of their relationship and needed something more from him than sex.
While reading their more affectionate conversations, Cassie testified that Combs was charismatic, a larger-than-life personality.
“I had fallen in love with him and cared about him very much,” Cassie said. Estevao spoke gently during the cross-examination, which had such a friendly tone at times that the lawyer and witness seemed like two friends chatting.
Cassie, however, did complain once that jurors weren’t hearing the full context of the messages the defense was highlighting, saying, “There’s a lot we skipped over.”
A packed courtroom watches Cassie’s testimony
As the messages were read, Combs appeared relaxed at the defense table, sitting back with his hands folded and his legs crossed. The courtroom was packed with family and friends of Combs, journalists, and a row of spectator seats occupied by Cassie’s supporters including her husband.
The 38-year-old Cassie — who is in the third trimester of pregnancy with her third child — has been composed on the witness stand. She cried several times during the previous two days of questions by the prosecution, but for the most part has remained matter-of-fact as she spoke about the most sensitive subjects.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has.
During a break, Combs stood at the defense table, huddling with his lawyers, holding a pack of Post-It notes in one hand and a pen in the other. At one point, he turned to the gallery and acknowledged a few reporters who were studying his demeanor. “How you doing?” he asked.
Combs’ daughters were not in the courtroom Thursday as the explicit messages were read and shown to the jury.
Jurors leaned forward in their seats to follow along as the messages were displayed on monitors in front of them in the jury box. One woman shook her head as a particularly explicit message was shown. A man stared intently at the screen, pressing his thumb to his chin. Other jurors appeared curious and quizzical, some looking at Cassie or jotting notes.
Cassie rejects ‘swingers’ label
Cassie’s testimony on cross-examination was in contrast to Wednesday, when she described the violence and shame that accompanied her “hundreds” of encounters with male sex workers during her relationship with Combs, which lasted from 2007 to 2018.
While prosecutors have focused on Combs’ desire to see Cassie having sex with other men, she testified that she sometimes watched Combs have sex with other women. She said Combs described it as part of a “swingers lifestyle.”
Estevao asked Cassie directly whether she thought freak-offs were related to that lifestyle.
“In a sexual way,” Cassie responded, before adding: “They’re very different.”
Cassie said Tuesday that Combs was obsessed with a form of voyeurism where “he was controlling the whole situation.” The freak-offs took place in private, often in dark hotel rooms, unlike Combs’ very public parties that attracted A-list celebrities.
She testified she sometimes took IV fluids to recover from the encounters, and eventually developed an opioid addiction because it made her “feel numb” afterward.
When questioned by Estevao, Cassie agreed that Combs once communicated to drug dealers in Los Angeles to stop delivering drugs to her, and he suggested she get treatment. Cassie said Combs wanted her to do drugs with him only, not friends.
Cassie’s lawsuit sparked case against Combs
Cassie testified Wednesday that Combs raped her when she broke up with him in 2018, and had locked in a life of abuse by threatening to release videos of her during the freak-offs.
She sued Combs in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. Within hours, the suit was settled for $20 million — a figure Cassie disclosed for the first time Wednesday — but dozens of similar legal claims followed from other women. It also touched off a law enforcement investigation into Combs that has culminated in this trial.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted.
Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. The AP’s Julie Walker in New York and Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.
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How serious is L.A. City Hall about layoffs? The messages have been mixed
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivered the bad news last week to a room full of activists in South Los Angeles: With the city in financial trouble, jobs were on the chopping block.
Yet the way Bass framed the situation, it was hard to tell how bad the news really was.
“I’m going to have to propose layoffs,” she told the audience convened by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen, OK? I don’t. I don’t. But I have to propose that, because by law the budget has to come out on Monday, by April 21.
“But, but — I believe that there are some solutions, like from the state, that will help us so that we don’t have to do layoffs ultimately, because the budget won’t be signed for several more weeks,” she added.
The mayor released her proposed spending plan for 2025-26 three days later, and the outlook was indeed dire — perhaps the toughest city budget in 15 years. Her budget advisers produced a list of nearly 1,650 positions targeted for layoffs, plus nearly 1,100 vacant posts that would be eliminated.
On paper, the mayor has called for reductions to a wide array of agencies, including transportation, planning and street services. In person, however, Bass has sounded far more hesitant.
Bass, both before and after releasing her budget, said she is hoping that financial aid from Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature will help her close the budget gap and avoid layoffs. She made a trip to Sacramento on Wednesday to talk to state lawmakers.
City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said she, too, was in Sacramento this week, but heard little enthusiasm for an L.A. rescue package. She voiced concern about the heavy emphasis on state aid at City Hall, saying the city’s workforce is getting an unrealistic view of the unfolding budget crisis.
“It’s providing false promises and false hope on all fronts,” she said. “We have to be honest about what we’re confronting.”
The city’s labor negotiators have already begun meeting with union leaders to ask them to postpone this year’s pay raises, which are expected to add $250 million to the upcoming budget. As long as the focus is on financial assistance from the state, those unions will have little incentive to make the types of concessions that could bring the budget into balance, Rodriguez said.
The mayor’s appearance in South Los Angeles wasn’t the only time she expressed her desire to avoid job cuts. On Tuesday, addressing reporters in the San Fernando Valley, she sounded equally hesitant when asked about her plan to lay off 400 civilian city workers at the LAPD.
“Obviously we’ll do that very surgically, to make sure that the civilians who are laid off — if we get to that, which I am certainly hopeful we will not,” she said. “If we get to that, we will have to look at the ones that will have the least impact to public safety.”
In some ways, the mayor’s budget strategy resembles the one carried out 15 years ago by then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. During that financial crisis, Villaraigosa initially called for thousands of layoffs, in an effort to pressure public employee unions to return to the bargaining table.
That strategy drew a furious response from some of the city’s employee unions, who distributed posters comparing Villaraigosa to Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Scott Walker, viewed at that time as a strident foe of organized labor.
Bass, by comparison, has been working much more closely with the city’s labor unions. In an interview, she touted that collaborative approach — and pushed back against the idea that she is offering them false hope.
“I wouldn’t be up in Sacramento … if I did not believe there was a possibility that we could get support,” she said.
Bass, a former state lawmaker, said she is familiar both with Sacramento and with tough budget decisions, having served as state Assembly speaker in the wake of the 2008 global recession, when billions were carved out of the state budget.
The mayor’s proposed budget, now before the City Council’s budget committee, is aimed at closing a financial gap of nearly $1 billion by July 1, the start of the fiscal year.
The money needed to stave off layoffs is considerably less.
The city needs $282 million to prevent the elimination of more than 2,700 city positions, and just $150 million to stave off the 1,650 layoffs, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.
(The mayor’s proposed budget assumes layoffs would go into effect by the end of October, producing eight months of savings. After a full year, layoffs would generate $225 million in savings, Szabo said.)
The stakes for the city are high. On Friday, the ratings agency S&P Global lowered its bond rating on two types of city debt. Those reductions were driven in large part by the city’s ongoing financial woes and the reduction in the size of its reserve fund.
S&P said it could revise its outlook to a more favorable one if city leaders enact “sufficient budgetary cuts to offset stagnant economic recovery and revenue growth.”
Jack Humphreville, a member of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates, which weighs in on city spending, voiced his own doubts about the prospects for significant state aid. If state officials bail out L.A., he said, then they will also have to help San Francisco and all the other local governments facing financial difficulties.
“They might as well form a line,” he said.
If state aid isn’t forthcoming, the city could still find other ways to eliminate positions without laying off workers. For example, many could be reassigned to jobs in city departments that are unaffected by the budget crisis.
Efforts are already underway to identify vacant positions at the Port of Los Angeles, Los Angeles World Airports and the Department of Water and Power, all of which operate separately from the city’s general fund budget, which pays for core services such as police, firefighters and paramedics.
Those transfers could provide a replay of the 2008 recession, when several hundred workers were transferred to the DWP from various city agencies, sparing them from unemployment. Under that scenario, the city services provided by those workers still went away.
State of play
— BUDGET BLOWBACK: There were plenty of repercussions from the release of Bass’ budget proposal. Some voiced alarm over planned layoffs at the Department of Transportation. Others worried about street trees. Still others were focused on the Police Department, whose leaders warned that layoffs of civilian employees would result in the closure of three jails. Only the Fire Department received the go-ahead to make a significant number of hires — more than 200, per the mayor’s spending plan.
— A FULL PLATE: For L.A.’s mayor, the problems have been piling up. She is contending not only with a homelessness crisis, post-wildfire rebuilding and a budget meltdown, but also shrinking film and television production, a downturn in housing construction and a potential downturn in trade and tourism. Bass acknowledged the various challenges but told The Times they are not insurmountable.
— PERMIT PLUNGE: Speaking of housing, L.A. approved permits for 1,325 homes during the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of nearly 57% compared to the same period a year earlier. Those paltry figures — driven by a variety of causes — were only the latest batch of bad news about the city’s housing affordability crisis.
—CONTRACT CRUNCH: Unions representing L.A. County firefighters and sheriff’s deputies made a bid for public support for their increasingly testy contract negotiations, releasing a documentary highlighting their members’ work during the January wildfires. The pitch comes a month after county budget officials said they can’t afford raises during a time of major economic uncertainty.
— TREE TRAUMA: A homeless man was arrested this week on suspicion of taking a chain saw to trees in downtown Los Angeles, Westlake, Glassell Park and possibly other neighborhoods. The man was arrested at a homeless encampment that was the target of an Inside Safe operation in February.
— DO-OVER TIME: The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which stood empty in Pacific Palisades during the Palisades fire, will need to be emptied and repaired for a second time, after workers discovered more holes in the reservoir’s floating cover. The reservoir is currently one-quarter full.
— ALPHABET SOUP: L.A. voters have passed two tax increases over the last three years to pay for housing and homelessness programs. Now those measures have spurred the creation of a head-spinning number of oversight agencies, each with their own initialisms: ECRHA, LACAHSA, LTRHA and ULACOC. As the LAT’s Doug Smith points out, it’s a lot for the average voter to keep track of.
— DE LEÓN DINGED: Former Councilmember Kevin de León was fined $18,750 by the Ethics Commission for participating in decisions in which he had a financial interest and for failing to properly disclose income he received shortly before taking office. De León had worked for USC and a housing program run by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation shortly before joining the council in 2020.
— GETTING TO LAX: The LAX/Metro Transit Center is scheduled to open on June 6, moving a direct rail connection to Los Angeles International Airport one step closer to reality. The station, located at Aviation Boulevard and 96th Street, will eventually connect passengers to an automated people mover that will arrive at the actual airport.
— HOUSING HELP: The Board of Water and Power Commissioners, whose members are picked by the mayor, approved a housing allowance of up to $120,000 each for two new executives at the Department of Water and Power: Kendall Helm and Zoraya Griffin, both hired by the utility’s CEO, Janisse Quiñones. One DWP employee told the board during public comment that the housing allowance was a waste of money, saying there were already qualified internal candidates in the L.A. area.
— PICKEL’S PARTING SHOT: DWP ratepayer advocate Fred Pickel is retiring — this time for real. Pickel, who was originally scheduled to step down two years ago, used his final appearance at the DWP board to argue that the utility should review its rates far more frequently than once a decade. “With that, I’m going to depart,” he said. “Mic drop,” responded Commissioner Nurit Katz.
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