order

Retired Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald has been granted a five-year restraining order against a woman he alleges has stalked him, threatened his son’s life and claimed to be his wife.

The restraining order against Janelle Anwar was issued during a Los Angeles County Superior Court hearing Wednesday in downtown L.A. Donald appeared remotely while his attorney attended in person. Anwar, who is representing herself in the matter, did not attend.

Donald, a three-time defensive player of the year and 10-time Pro Bowl selection, filed for a restraining order April 15, expressing concern for his own safety as well as that of his wife Erica; their children, ages 3 and 1; his children from a previous relationship, ages 12 and 9; and his brother, Archie.

“Respondent … has been harassing and stalking me and my family through various methods since 2020,” Donald wrote in the filing. “I have never met Respondent and have no idea who she is, however, she knows who I am.”

Donald alleged that Anwar has sent him “threatening, harassing and numerous emails” over the last several years, as well as packages and gifts to his home. In the month before to his filing, Donald wrote, Anwar’s messages “have been relentless” and have included what he perceived to be a threat to the life of his 3-year-old son.

“Respondent is delusional and I fear that Respondent’s delusions will lead to her attempting to harm me, my wife, my children, and my brother,” Donald wrote.

Also in the filing, Donald alleges that Anwar “falsely believes that we are married and … has filed a dissolution action
against me.” L.A. County Superior Court records show that Anwar filed for divorce from Donald in November 2024 — a filing that was voided the following month after Anwar failed to pay the required fees — and again on March 7. That case, in which Anwar seeks a “settlement” of $6.5 million, remains open.

On April 17, Anwar filed a response declaration to Donald’s request for a restraining order. In it, she denies threatening the life of Donald’s son, states that she feels threatened by Donald’s family and says she “would like to plea the 5th amendment” about the issue moving forward.

Anwar said she did not appear in court “due to the nature and content of the petition,” as well as her decision to take the Fifth Amendment, she wrote in an email to The Times. She added that she is “OK with the enforcement of a restraining order simply because I fear for my own safety.”

NEW YORK — American businesses that rely on Chinese goods reacted with muted relief Monday after the U.S. and China agreed to pause their exorbitant tariffs on each other’s products for 90 days.

Importers still face relatively high tariffs, however, as well as uncertainty over what will happen in the coming weeks and months. Many businesses delayed or canceled orders after President Trump last month put a 145% tariff on items made in China.

Now, they’re concerned a mad scramble to get goods onto ships will lead to bottlenecks and increased shipping costs. The temporary truce was announced as retailers and their suppliers are looking to finalize their plans and orders for the holiday shopping season.

“The timing couldn’t have been any worse with regard to placing orders, so turning on a dime to pick back up with customers and our factories will put us severely behind schedule,” said WS Game Company owner Jonathan Silva, whose Massachusetts business creates deluxe versions of Monopoly, Scrabble and other Hasbro board games.

Silva said the 30% tariff on Chinese imports still is a step in the right direction. He has nine containers of products waiting at factories in China and said he would work to get them exported at the lower rate.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the U.S. agreed to lower its 145% tariff rate on Chinese goods by 115 percentage points, while China agreed to lower its retaliatory 125% rate on U.S. goods by the same amount. The two sides plan to continue negotiations on a longer-term trade deal.

National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay said the move was a “critical first step to provide some short-term relief for retailers and other businesses that are in the midst of ordering merchandise for the winter holiday season.”

The news sent the stock market and the value of the dollar soaring, a lift that eluded business owners confronting another dizzying shift.

Marc Rosenberg, founder and CEO of Edge Desk in Deerfield, Ill., invested millions of dollars to develop a line of $1,000 ergonomic chairs but delayed production in China that was set to begin this month, hoping for a tariff reprieve.

Rosenberg said it was good U.S.-China trade talks were ongoing but that he thinks the 90-day window is “beyond dangerous” since shipping delays could result in his chairs still being en route when the temporary deal ends.

“There needs to be a plan in place that lasts a year or two so people can plan against it,” he said.

Jeremy Rice, the co-owner of a Lexington, Kentucky, home-décor shop that specializes in artificial flower arrangements, said the limited pause makes him unsure how to approach pricing. About 90% of the flowers House uses are made in China. He stocked up on inventory and then paused shipments in April.

“Our vendors are still kind of running around juggling, not knowing what they’re gonna do,” Rice said. “We ordered in what we could pre-tariff and so there’s stock here, but we’re getting to the point now where there’s things that are gone and we’re going to have to figure out how we’re gonna approach it.”

“There’s no relief,” he added. “It’s just kind of like you’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop.”

Before Trump started the latest U.S. tariff battle with China, Miami-based game company All Things Equal was preparing to launch its first electronic board game. Founder Eric Poses said he spent two years developing “And the Good News Is,” a fill-in-the-blank game covering topics like politics and sports. He plowed $120,000 into research and development.

When the president in February added a 20% tariff on products made in China, Poses started removing unessential features such as embossed packaging. When the rate went up to 145%, he faced two options: leave the goods in China or send them to bonded warehouses, a storage method which allow importers to defer duty payments for up to five years.

Poses contacted his factories in China on Monday to arrange the deferred shipments, but with his games still subject to a 30% tariff, he said he would have to cut back on marketing to keep the electronic game priced at $29.99. With other businesses also in a rush to get their products, he said he is worried he won’t be able to his into shipping containers and that if he does, the cost will be much more expensive.

“It’s very hard to plan because if you want to go back to production in a couple of months, then you’re worried about what will the tariff rate be when it hits the U.S. ports after that 90-day period,” Poses said.

Jim Umlauf’s business, 4Knines, based in Oklahoma City, makes vehicle seat covers and cargo liners for dog owners and others. He imports raw materials such as fabric, coatings and components from China.

Umlauf said that even with a lower general tariff rate, it’s hard for small businesses to make a profit. He thinks the U.S. government should offer small business exclusions from the tariffs.

“I appreciate any progress being made on the tariff front, but unfortunately, we’re still far from a real solution — especially for small businesses like mine,” Umlauf said. “When tariffs exceed 50%, there’s virtually no profit left unless we dramatically raise prices — an option that risks alienating customers.”

Zou Guoqing, a Chinese exporter who supplies molds and parts to a snow-bike factory in Nebraska as well as fishing and hunting goods to a U.S. retailer in Texas, also thinks the remaining 30% tariff is too high to take comfort in.

With the possibility Washington and Beijing will negotiate over the 20% tariff Trump imposed due to what he described as China’s failure to stem the flow of fentanyl, Zou said he would wait until the end of May to decide when to resume shipments to the U.S.

Silva, of WS Game Company, said he planned to begin placing his holiday season orders this week but won’t be as bold as he might have been if the ultra-high tariff had been suspended for more than 90 day.

“We will order enough to get by and satisfy the demand we know will be there at the increased pricing needed, but until we get a solid foundation of a long-term agreement, the risks are still too high to be aggressive.”

Anderson and D’Innocenzio write for the Associated Press.

President makes push to bring down drug prices that have long been a source of financial strain for US patients.

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that he says will bring down the price of prescription drugs in the US by as much as 90 percent.

In an announcement on Monday, Trump said drug companies who have been “profiteering” will have to bring prices down but laid the blame for high prices primarily on foreign countries.

“We’re going to equalise,” Trump said during a news conference. “We’re all going to pay the same. We’re going to pay what Europe pays.”

People in the US have long been an outlier when it comes to the prices they pay for numerous types of life-saving medication, often paying several times more than their peers in other rich countries for nearly identical drugs.

That phenomenon is often attributed to the substantial economic and political influence that the pharmaceutical industry wields in the US.

The high cost of medical drugs has been a source of popular discontent in the US for years, and Trump accused the pharmaceutical industry of “getting away with murder” in 2017.

But in his remarks on Monday, the US leader also seemed to say that US pharmaceutical companies were not ultimately to blame for the difference in prices. Trump instead framed those high prices in the familiar terms of a trade imbalance with partners such as the European Union and said the US has been “subsidising” lower drug prices in other nations.

That perspective seems to align with the framing of the pharmaceutical industry itself. The industry’s most powerful lobbying arm stated the cause of high prices for US consumers is “foreign countries not paying their fair share”.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a left-wing politician who has railed against the high prices paid by US patients for years, said Trump’s order wrongly blames foreign countries rather than US companies for those prices.

“I agree with President Trump: it is an outrage that the American people pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.

“But let’s be clear: the problem is not that the price of prescription drugs is too low in Europe and Canada. The problem is that the extraordinarily greedy pharmaceutical industry made over $100bn in profits last year by ripping off the American people.”

A fact sheet shared by the White House said the administration will “communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal”.

The stock prices of US drugmakers ticked upwards after the announcement. Experts have cast doubt on Trump’s optimistic assertion that drug prices would drop quickly and substantially.

“It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point which is not known,” Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, told The Associated Press news agency.

“If they do not lower their prices to the desired point, HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] shall take other actions with a very long timeline, some of which could potentially, years in the future, lower drug prices.”

May 12 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday night said he will sign an executive order to reduce drug prices in the United States by between 30% and 80% with the aim of equalizing global prices.

No details of the executive order, which Trump said he’d sign Monday morning, were released, and it was not immediately clear how exactly the order would work.

He made the announcement in a post to his Truth Social platform, calling the executive order “one of the most consequential … in our Country’s history.”

“Prescription Drug and Pharmaceutical prices will be REDUCED, almost immediately, by 30% to 80%. They will rise throughout the World in order to equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!”

In the statement, Trump said he would be instituting a “MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price.”

He said the executive order would be signed 9 a.m. EDT Monday at the White House.

Trump had tried during his first term to institute a Most Favored Nation policy via executive order to tie U.S. prescription drug prices for Medicare to the world’s cheapest price tags but was met with successful legal challenges from the pharmaceutical industry.

PhRMA, a pharmaceutical trade group, criticized the original version of the plan from Trump’s first term as “bad policy,” stating it will limit seniors’ access to existing medicine and hamper development of new drugs.

Dr. Houman David Hemmati, a California physician and critic of California’ s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said the policy is “a strong step toward fairness” but does present risks.

On X, he said it could limit patient access to drugs in those countries where the drugs’ prices are cheapest, as drug makers might pull out of those markets. It could also affect development, especially of generic drugs, which could also be pulled from shelves.

“A generic priced very low abroad might disappear if the U.S. demands that price, impacting access to essentials like insulin,” he said, adding that countries reliant on low prices might face drug access issues, and the United States might see delays in new drug launches.

According to a January 2024 report from the Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the prices across all drugs in the United States were at least 2.78 times higher than in comparison countries and at least 3.22 times as high for brand drugs.

In his Sunday night statement, Trump said that with his new policy, “Our Country will finally be treated fairly and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before.”

He said the United States will save trillions of dollars.

In April, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to standardize Medicare payments to reduce the price of prescription drugs.

May 10 (UPI) — The Trump administration is appealing a district judge’s order that temporarily blocked plans to reduce the federal workforce and reorganize 21 departments and agencies.

Late Friday, attorneys asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to review Judge Susan Illston‘s temporary restraining order earlier in the day. Illston, who serves in California, was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

She said plaintiffs need to file their motion for preliminary injunction by Wednesday and plans to hear further arguments on May 22.

The judge said the “plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of at least some of their claims.”

The lawsuit was filed April 28 by a coalition of nonprofits, unions and local governments, including San Francisco.

Her 42-page order puts on hold Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency “Workforce Optimization Initiative.” The order also includes similar memos issued by the Office of Personnel Management and DOGE.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 11 calling for significant cuts to the federal workforce, as well as reorganization of various departments and agencies.

During Trump’s first 100 days in office, at least 121,000 workers have been laid off or targeted for layoffs, according to a CNN analysis. There are more than 3 million workers among civilian and military personnel.

“The President has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch,” Illston wrote after hearing arguments from both sides.

“Many presidents have sought this cooperation before; many iterations of Congress have provided it. Nothing prevents the President from requesting this cooperation — as he did in his prior term of office. Indeed, the Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime.”

Illston said she believes there is “no statutory authority whatsoever” that allows the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Management and Budget or DOGE the authority to direct other federal agencies to make cuts through buyouts or layoffs.

The agencies are the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Interior, Labor, State, Treasury, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.

Six additional agencies that have a statutory basis elsewhere in the United States Code are AmeriCorps, General Services Administration, National Labor Relations Board, National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

The only executive department not named in this suit is the Department of Education, which Trump wants to disband.

Federal agencies were directed to submit phase 1 plans by March 13 and phase 2 by April 14.

The Trump administration said plaintiffs lacked timeliness because the relevant executive order was issued nearly three months ago.

“Defendants cannot have it both ways,” Illston wrote. “The Court finds that plaintiffs reasonably waited to gather what information they could about the harm they may suffer from the Executive Order, the OMB/OPM Memorandum, and the [agency reduction in force and reorganization plans].”

Eric Hamilton, an attorney for the Department of Justice, told the judge the executive order is not a mandatory order but merely a planning process.

“There’s case law in the Ninth Circuit as well as federal district courts in the state of California that have recognized that delays of much less are by itself enough for a court to deny a motion for a temporary restraining order,” he told the judge.

“The Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to reorganize the federal government has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation,” the coalition said after the ruling in a statement. Each of us represents communities deeply invested in the efficiency of the federal government – laying off federal employees and reorganizing government functions haphazardly does not achieve that.”

“We are gratified by the court’s decision today to pause these harmful actions while our case proceeds,” they said.

In a separate case, Senior U.S. District Judge William Alsup, also a Clinton appointee, ordered the government to rehire thousands of workers it fired. The Supreme Court said the nonprofits did not have legal standing to sue and the judge then ordered the agencies to give fired workers letters they were not fired based on their performance.

In April, U.S. District Judge James Bredar of Maryland, appointed by President Barack Obama, also ordered 19 federal agencies to reinstate probationary workers fired.

CBS News reported that more than 24,000 workers at 18 agencies were fired as part of Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of government were rehired as part of the judge’s order, although an appeals court later cleared the way for the mass firings.

President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to create a center for homeless veterans on its West Los Angeles campus.

The order set a goal of housing up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the center, which Trump named the National Warrior Independence Center, and ordered federal agencies to “ensure that funds that may have been spent on housing or other services for illegal aliens are redirected to construct, establish, and maintain” it.

Trump ordered VA Secretary Doug Collins to prepare an action plan to create the housing by Jan. 1, 2028. He also ordered Collins to report within 60 days on “options like expanding office hours, offering weekend appointments, and increasing the use of virtual healthcare.”

“Too many veterans are homeless in America,” the order said. “Each veteran deserves our gratitude. Yet the Federal Government has not always treated veterans like the heroes they are.”

As part of the action plan, Trump ordered the secretary of Housing and Urban Development to consult with Collins on using “vouchers to support homeless veterans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and around the Nation with respect to this effort.”

The Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, commonly known as HUD-VASH, provides vouchers that veterans can use for housing on the campus and in rentals in the community. Delays in processing applications and landlord resistance to accepting the vouchers have left many of them unused. In 2024, the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System reported that there were 8,453 HUD-VASH housing vouchers available for greater Los Angeles but only 62% were in use.

The initiative comes amid the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to VA staffing that have sparked criticism from Democratic lawmakers of widespread disruptions across the agency’s healthcare system.

“There are real-life dangerous impacts for veterans,” Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania said Thursday following an investigation by the investigative news site ProPublica.

The order comes at a critical moment in a trail of litigation over the VA’s management of the campus. A decision is expected any day from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a federal judge’s ruling that the VA had failed a fiduciary duty to provide housing for veterans. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered the VA to immediately create about 100 units of temporary housing on the 388-acre campus and to build more than 2,000 units of permanent and temporary housing. He also invalidated leases of portions of that land to civilian entities including UCLA and a private school.

The VA appealed the decision, contending, in addition to other legal arguments, that the cost would irreparably harm other services to veterans.

Although the immediate effect on the case was unclear, veterans took Trump’s executive order as a positive sign.

“A lot of the veterans I’ve spoken to so far are very happy to see that the White House has taken this position about the West Los Angeles VA,” said Rob Reynolds, an Iraq war veteran who testified in the case about his frustrations helping homeless veterans seeking housing on the campus. “Just to know that there was an executive order signed for more housing on VA land, that’s a huge win for us. That’s something vets have been fighting for for years.”

The Veterans Collective, a development and service partnership that has a VA contract to construct about 1,200 units of supportive housing on the campus, issued a statement saying that it “enthusiastically applauds President Trump’s plan for a national center for homeless veterans” and said it looks forward to welcoming him to the campus soon.

The group is working to complete the 1,200 units by the end of Trump’s term, it said.

“With more than 1,000 Veterans already living on campus today, it would be a wonderful opportunity for them to meet with the Commander-in-Chief,” the statement said. “He would also be the first President to see our progress.”

Another veteran who has been critical of the VA’s handling of the campus development was more guarded.

“The President’s Executive Order is a right thing but not yet the right thing,” said Anthony Allman, executive of Vets Advocacy, a nonprofit created to monitor development of a master plan that arose from an earlier lawsuit.

Allman notes that the order outlines a plan for more than just housing and envisions a center of activity and services for veterans on and off the campus.

“We look forward to working with the administration to make the right things — housing, community, workforce development — available to veterans at the historic Pacific Branch property,” Allman said, using the historic name for the disabled soldiers home created there in the 19th century.

In a lengthy preamble, Trump’s executive order alluded to some of that history, including the closing of veterans’ housing in the 1970s and improper leases of veterans’ land that led to the two lawsuits.

“The campus once featured a chapel, billiard hall, 1,000-seat theater, and housed about 6,000 veterans, but the Federal Government has since allowed this crown jewel of veteran care to deteriorate over the last few decades,” it said. “The Department of Veterans Affairs leased parts of the property to a private school, private companies, and the baseball team of the University of California, Los Angeles, sometimes at significantly below-market prices.

“As of 2024, there were approximately 3,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles, more than in any other city in the country and accounting for about 10 percent of all of America’s homeless veterans. Many of these heroes live in squalor in Los Angeles’s infamous ‘Skid Row.’”

The order also required an action plan to expand the Manchester VA Medical Center in New Hampshire to a full-service medical center “so that it is no longer the only State in the contiguous United States” without one.

While California voters are sharply divided along partisan lines when it comes to election integrity and voter fraud, they broadly support a politically-charged proposal from President Trump and other Republicans to require first-time voters to provide government-issued identification proving their citizenship in order to register, according to a new poll.

A majority of voters in both parties back the proof of citizenship requirement for registering, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times. Most Californians also supported requiring a government ID every time a voter casts a ballot, though by a slimmer majority and despite most Democrats opposing the idea.

Mark DiCamillo, co-director of the Berkeley IGS Poll, said the bipartisan support for first-time voters showing proof of citizenship stood out, as many of the poll’s other findings showed a stark political divide and a majority of Californians at odds with Trump and his recent edicts on voting — which California and other states are suing to block.

Still, DiCamillo said his biggest takeaway was the sharp distrust in the state’s election system that the poll found among California Republicans, which he said should be a “serious concern” for state elections officials — even if a majority trust the system. Democratic voters in the state are largely confident in the state election system and doubtful of prevalent voter fraud, while many Republican voters feel the opposite, the poll found.

“It is significant to me that the Republicans in this state are not of that view. And that’s something that has to be dealt with,” DiCamillo said. “In an election system, you want both sides to be on board.”

Overall, 71% of respondents said they supported new voters having to prove citizenship upon registering, including 59% of Democrats, the poll found. Nearly all Republicans — 95% — backed the proposal, as did 71% of voters registered to other parties or as “no party preference.”

A separate proposal to require voters to show proof of citizenship every time they vote also drew support from a majority of poll respondents, but a much slimmer one — with 54% support. While 88% of Republicans backed that idea, about 60% of Democrats opposed it. Among independents and Californians registered with other parties, 54% supported it.

Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento have repeatedly rebuffed proposals for stricter voter ID laws in the state, including in recent weeks, when they shot down a voter ID bill from Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego). DeMaio also has launched a campaign to place a voter ID and proof of citizenship requirement on the 2026 ballot.

DeMaio said the poll showed there is “broad public support” for his measure — which would require both proof of citizenship upon registering for the first time and a photo ID for confirming identity each subsequent time voting — and that California Democrats are “out of touch” with the electorate.

“Overwhelmingly, voters support this ballot measure,” he said. “The only people who don’t support it? Sacramento politicians.”

The proposed ballot measure would require mail-in ballots to include the last four digits of the voter’s valid government-issued form of identification, along with the current requirement to have the signature of a voter on the ballot verified.

The polling was conducted April 21-28, about a month after Trump issued a March 25 executive order presuming to dictate to the states a slate of new election requirements that Trump said were necessary to restore integrity in U.S. elections, but many experts said were outside the scope of his authority.

Trump has alleged for years, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that voter fraud is widespread, including among immigrants who are in the country illegally. Neither of those things is true.

Trump’s executive order says voters must show a U.S. passport, Real ID or some other government-issued photo identification in order to register to vote. It says states also must limit their counting of ballots to those received by election day — not postmarked by then, as California and some other states currently allow — or risk losing federal funding.

The order also directs the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent, bipartisan body outside the president’s control, to mandate the proposed restrictions and other, Trump-determined requirements for state voting systems, and to rescind its certifications of voting equipment in states that don’t comply.

Parts of Trump’s order — including the proof of citizenship requirement — have been blocked in federal court while litigation challenging the order continues. California is one of many states suing, with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta calling Trump’s order “a blatantly illegal power grab and an attempt to disenfranchise voters.”

In a statement on the poll results, Bonta said it was fortunate that a majority of Californians still have confidence in the state election system despite Trump “spreading lies” about voter fraud and other election issues for years. He said state law “already contains robust voter ID requirements with strong protections to prevent voter fraud,” and that his office “is committed to removing barriers to voter registration and to promoting greater participation in the democratic process — in and out of court.”

Dean C. Logan, registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County, said in a court filing earlier this week that Trump’s order — if left intact — would “divert time, resources, and attention from other critical departmental responsibilities and election preparation, including assisting voters displaced by the Palisades and Eaton Canyon fires; upgrading the County’s Election Management System (‘EMS’) which serves as the backbone of the voter registration intake and database; and engaging in a site by site analysis of all 600-plus Vote Center locations to ensure they meet accessibility standards.”

The poll found Californians are largely at odds with Trump’s attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections, which is perhaps not surprising in a state where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans nearly 2 to 1.

For instance, the poll found that a majority of Californians — and strong majorities of Democrats — believe voter fraud is rare, express confidence in the integrity of the state’s voting system, oppose efforts by the federal government to take more control over voting from the state and counties, and oppose Trump’s proposal to prohibit the counting of mail ballots after election day.

Among the respondents who participated in the poll — 6,201 registered voters in the state — more than two-thirds, or 68%, expressed confidence in the overall integrity of the state’s election system. The same percentage opposed Trump’s recent proposal to prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked but not received by election day.

Well over half — or 57% — said they believed voter fraud in the state is very or fairly rare, while a similar percentage, 58%, said they were opposed to Trump’s proposal for the federal government to take greater control over state elections.

On all of those questions, however, Californians were heavily divided along partisan lines.

For instance, 61% of Republican voters said they are not very or not at all confident in the integrity of the state’s election system, which compared to just 13% of Democrats. And while 74% of Republicans said fraud was somewhat or very prevalent in state elections, just 14% of Democrats felt the same, the poll found.

A majority of voters — 58% — opposed the federal government taking more control over elections from the state, despite more than three-quarters of Republicans supporting the move.

And, while 57% of Republican voters backed Trump’s proposal to prohibit the counting of mail ballots postmarked but not received by election officials by election day, just 9% of Democrats agreed — with 86% of Democrats disagreeing.

Rick Hasen, a voting rights expert at UCLA Law School, said the poll results — including Californians’ overall confidence in the state’s election system, disbelief in prevalent fraud and opposition to federal takeover — were in line with other polling and what he’d expect.

“Most people in most states believe that their own state’s election system is run well, and that if there is any kind of problem, it’s elsewhere,” he said.

It was equally unsurprising that “Republicans have a much more cynical view of the process,” he said.

“Party supporters tend to follow their elites, and the top of the Republican Party has been making false and unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud for decades now,” Hasen said. “It’s no surprise that it’s seeped through to the electorate.”

Hasen said the results on proof of citizenship also made sense, as “voter ID has polled positively, so requiring proof of voter citizenship also tends to poll positively.” But, he questioned whether poll respondents really understood the implications of such a requirement.

Asked whether it would be easy or difficult to “present a government-issued photo ID as proof of citizenship when voting in an election,” 93% of respondents said it would be easy. But Hasen, many Democrats and most voting rights groups have argued just the opposite — that millions of U.S. citizens would be blocked from voting by the measure because they lack the required documents, which don’t include birth certificates, which don’t have photos, or many California driver’s licenses.

“I just don’t think people recognize that a lot of government-issued photo IDs would not qualify, and they certainly wouldn’t qualify under the president’s proposed rules,” Hasen said.

The Justice Department unit that ensures compliance with voting rights laws will switch its focus to investigating voter fraud and ensuring elections are not marred by “suspicion,” according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press.

The new mission statement for the voting section makes a passing reference to the historic Voting Rights Act, but no mention of typical enforcement of the provision through protecting people’s right to cast ballots or ensuring that lines for legislative maps do not divide voters by race. Instead, it redefines the unit’s mission around conspiracy theories pushed by Republican President Trump to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s attorney general at the time, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in that election. Repeated recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss, including some led by Republicans, affirmed Biden’s win and found the election was run properly. Trump and his supporters also lost dozens of court cases trying to overturn the election results.

But in Trump’s second term, the attorney general is Pam Bondi, who backed his effort to reverse his 2020 loss. The president picked Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party lawyer and longtime ally who has echoed some of Trump’s false claims about voting, to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where the voting section is housed.

“The Civil Rights Division has always worked to make sure Americans have access to the polls and that their votes matter,” said Stacey Young, an 18-year Department of Justice veteran who left that division days after Trump’s inauguration in January and founded Justice Connection, an organization supporting the agency’s employees. “The division’s job is not to promote the politically expedient fiction that voting fraud is widespread.”

The department did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has already demonstrated his interest in using the Justice Department to pursue those who stood up for the 2020 election by directing the department to investigate one of his former appointees who publicly vouched for the safety and accuracy of the 2020 vote count.

“The mission of the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion,” the new mission statement declares.

It adds that the unit will “vigorously enforce” Trump’s executive order seeking to reshape how elections are run. Parts of that order have been put on hold by a judge.

The executive order signed late last month calls for people to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship each time they register to vote; would require all mail ballots to be received by election day, which is counter to the law in 18 states; and directs an independent federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, to amend its guidelines for voting machines.

Several legal analysts say much of the order is unconstitutional because only states and, for federal contests, Congress, can set election procedures. The Constitution provides no provision for the president to set the rules for elections.

The new mission statement for the Civil Rights Division also says the voting unit will focus on ensuring that “only American citizens vote in U.S. federal elections.” It’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote. People have to attest they are U.S. citizens when they register and attempts to vote by noncitizens can lead to felony charges and deportation.

Repeated investigations have turned up just a tiny number of noncitizens casting ballots, often doing so accidentally, out of the hundreds of millions of votes over recent contests. A proof-of-citizenship requirement in Kansas a little over a decade ago blocked 31,000 eligible U.S. citizens from registering to vote before it was overturned by the courts.

But Republicans, including Trump, have continued to insist there must be far more noncitizens casting votes and are pushing to tighten election laws to screen them out.

Notably, the roughly 200-word statement on the voting rights section mentions fighting “fraud” twice, as well as investigating “other forms of malfeasance.” The Department of Justice already investigates and prosecutes voting fraud, but in a separate division on the criminal side. The voting section is a civil unit that does not investigate potential crimes.

Now, however, it will “protect the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated,” according to the statement. It was unclear what that refers to. There have been no widespread cases of votes being improperly tabulated.

Justin Levitt, who served as President Biden’s senior policy advisor for democracy and voting rights, noted that because the voting rights section does not pursue prosecutions, its power is sharply limited by the specifics of civil rights laws and what judges will approve.

“For the civil section of the Civil Rights Division, courts need to be buying what they’re selling,” he said.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — The Dodgers had the right runner on base, but the wrong matchups at the plate.

And, in a sign of what’s perhaps been their biggest roster vulnerability early on this season, manager Dave Roberts had no way to alter the situation.

After trailing by four runs to the Atlanta Braves early on Sunday night, the Dodgers positioned themselves for a potential comeback in the top of the ninth.

With the deficit down to one, Andy Pages stayed alive in a two-strike count for a leadoff infield single. Rookie speedster Hyeseong Kim then entered the game as a pinch-runner and wreaked instant havoc on the bases, stealing second off Braves closer Raisel Iglesias before daringly dashing to third when a dropped third strike was being thrown to first.

“That was great,” Roberts said of Kim’s speed on the bases. “That was exciting.”

In a 4-3 loss to the Braves, however, the Dodgers left him stranded 90 feet away.

Infielder Miguel Rojas came up and fanned on three straight changeups. In the next at-bat, backup catcher Austin Barnes chased a two-strike slider that was down and off the plate, ending the game with a strikeout as Shohei Ohtani loomed on deck.

It was a reminder that, for all the strengths the Dodgers have built with their $400-million payroll this year, the depth of their offense has thus far been a weakness.

Which is why, in the two most important at-bats of Sunday night’s game, Roberts had no other choice than to let Rojas and Barnes — in right-on-right matchups that were always unlikely to be successful — step up to the plate.

“We put ourselves in a great position,” Rojas said. “Kim did an amazing job coming off the bench, stealing that bag. And I couldn’t deliver.”

On the whole this season, the Dodgers’ lineup balance hasn’t been much of a problem. The superstars at the top of their order have gradually heated up after relatively slow starts. An offense that slumped through much of April now ranks third in the majors in scoring.

Still, the bottom half of the team’s batting order hasn’t been productive. Entering Monday, the team still had four hitters batting .200 or worse. Six were stuck with an OPS below .700. Even with recent improvements from the likes of Pages and Max Muncy, the club’s .211 batting average and .647 OPS from the Nos. 6-9 spots in the order ranked in the bottom third of the majors. And though they are seven-for-16 in pinch-hit situations, none of those knocks have come from a lefty.

The Los Angeles Dodgers actually have one of the best records in baseball, but no one seems to be too thrilled by it. Injuries, question marks and hitters not hitting are issues.

In the big picture, it’s a problem the Dodgers will have to monitor this year.

Down the stretch of Sunday, they saw just how costly it could be.

Roberts first had to dip into his bench in the seventh inning, pinch-hitting Rojas for Michael Conforto as the Braves brought left-handed reliever Dylan Lee into the game.

Hitting for Conforto, the $17-million offseason signing the Dodgers were anticipating a bounceback season from, is something Roberts acknowledged he didn’t expect to do much this year. But after opening the season with a six-game hitting streak, the veteran slugger has been frozen in the deepest of slumps.

Since April 4, Conforto is batting a stunning .088, with as many hits (six, all singles) as double-play grounders. His two strikeouts earlier Sunday — both looking, a strangely common occurrence for him early this year — left him 0 for his last 29.

“He’s grinding,” Roberts said. “I just felt that Miggy had a better chance in that moment.”

That move worked, with Rojas capitalizing on the right-left advantage for his first home run of the season; and second pinch-hit homer from any Dodger this year.

But when Rojas’ spot came back up in a far less advantageous matchup against Iglesias in the ninth, Roberts had no more cards to play.

Entering the ninth, Roberts had one primary goal: Get starting catcher Will Smith, who was getting a scheduled day out of the starting lineup Sunday, to the plate with a chance to have an impact on the game.

After Pages’ leadoff single, Roberts pulled the trigger. Rather than wait for Barnes’ turn to come up later in the inning, he pinch-hit Smith for Kiké Hernández with one out.

Smith ultimately struck out, but not before Kim — who was called up for his MLB debut the previous day after signing out of South Korea this offseason — had scooted to the other corner of the diamond with his steal of second base and aggressive break for third.

“That’s an instinctual play,” Roberts said, praising Kim for reading catcher Drake Baldwin’s soft throw to first on a dropped third-strike that nearly changed the game.

“For him to get the jump that he did and then to get over there to third base … that just shows that he’s got really good instincts.”

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, they couldn’t advance him all the way home.

As Rojas and Barnes came up, the only player left on the team’s bench was Chris Taylor, another right-handed hitter who has taken a grand total of 20 at-bats all season.

Roberts considered calling for a squeeze bunt from Rojas, but was wary of the Braves infield playing in.

“I just thought that Miguel could put the ball in play and give us a chance to tie the game up,” Roberts said.

He couldn’t. Neither could Barnes. And as the game ended, the Dodgers’ offensive depth concerns became all the more clear.

Most nights, of course, this is all unlikely to matter. But on any given night, it could.

That’s why, as the Dodgers take stock of the first part of this season, lineup depth remains a primary concern. On Sunday, it cost them an opportunity to steal a win from the Braves.

President Trump said he plans to reopen the notorious Alcatraz prison to house the “most ruthless and violent” criminals on land that has been a Bay Area tourist attraction and national recreation area for decades.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social site Sunday that, “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office suggested Trump’s announcement was a ploy to draw attention away from his actions as president.

“Looks like it’s distraction day again in Washington, D.C.,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom. “Trump is pledging to reopen Alcatraz as American consumers feel the financial pinch of his unpopular tariffs and he continues to tussle with the courts over mass deportations of immigrants.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said on the social media site X that “the President’s proposal is not a serious one.”

The history of Alcatraz Island as a detention center dates back to 1868 when the U.S. military created a disciplinary barrack on site. The famous prison building known as the Rock was built in 1912 and transferred to the Department of Justice in 1933 for use as a federal prison.

The prison closed in 1963, and Alcatraz Island is currently operated as a tourist site by the National Park Service. Visitors to the island learn about famous prisoners like Al Capone, escape attempts and the occupation by a group of Native American activists that lasted from 1969 to 1971.

John Martini, an Alcatraz historian, said the prison was closed in part because it was built with bad construction methods, was decaying and “would be such a money pit to bring it up to standards … that it was easier to build a new penitentiary.”

“It’s nowhere near what you’d consider to be modern standards for housing incarcerated people,” he said, adding it would be challenging to reopen it as a prison.

Last year, the National Park Service awarded a nearly $50-million contract to “address deterioration and structural deficiencies associated with the Alcatraz Main Prison Building,” according to a news release.

The contractor, Tutor Perini Corp., said the work would include the “abatement of hazardous materials” and be substantially completed by summer 2027, so as to “provide a safe facility for the 1.4 million annual visitors.”

The order to return the island to a prison comes as Trump has been clashing with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process. Trump has also talked about wanting to send American citizens there and to other foreign prisons.

In Trump’s post Sunday, the president said “we will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally.”

In the United States, judges have the ability to rule whether a president has violated the law and at times have ruled Trump has overstepped his authority since returning to office.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) called the order “unhinged.” But he said that doesn’t mean he is dismissing what Trump said on social media.

“It’s an absurd idea,” Wiener said in an interview Sunday evening. “But on the other hand, we’ve learned that when Donald Trump says something, he means it. … He specifically refers to the judges who won’t let him deport people without due process, so it looks like he wants to open a gulag here in the U.S.”

Martini, the historian, said the news took his breath away.

“It’s been preserved by the National Park Service to tell multiple stories, including incarceration, crime in America, rehabilitation and stories like the Native American takeover in 1969,” Martini said. “If this was to happen, what happens to all the history?”

Los Angeles Times reporter Melody Gutierrez and the Associated Press contributed to this report.