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Court Interpreters Stage Walkout In SF, Other Counties
sfist.com/2026/10/16/court-interpreters-stage-walkout-in-sf-other-counties/
Court Interpreters Stage Walkout In SF, Other Counties
By Jay Barmann
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October 16, 2026 · 10:50 AM PDT
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2 min read
Court Interpreters Stage Walkout In SF, Other Counties
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Unionized court interpreters planned a half-day walkout Friday at San Francisco's superior courts, after negotiations for a new contract have reportedly hit a wall.
Interpreters who provide language assistance in SF's superior courts walked off the job Friday morning, with union representatives saying that their workers want wage parity with interpreters in federal courts, who reportedly earn upwards of 35% more in salaries. The union, which represents state court interpreters in 12 California counties, is also seeking to limit the use of remote interpreters across all those counties.
As Mission Local reports, Friday's walkout is likely to cause delays for any cases that involve Spanish speakers and those for whom English is a second language.
"We need trained interpreters for us to do our jobs,” said defense attorney Jennie Stepanian, speaking to Mission Local. “We have so many Spanish-speaking clients that make up a significant population in our courthouse, and it’s vital that they have a fair trial. There need to be more interpreters. Not less."
SF's criminal courts currently employ 21 full-time interpreters, with 16 certified in Spanish, and the other five certified in Hindi, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, and Russian.
According to the union, the number of full-time interpreters employed by the state has shrunk over 40% over the last decade, and Mary Lou Aranguren, who is leading negotiations for the union, tells Mission Local this is due to low wages.
A shortage of interpreters has led to the court paying non-union contractors twice as much as the full-time interpreters, without benefits. And courts have been making greater use of online tools like Zoom since the pandemic, along with the use of remote interpretation. As the union tells Mission Local, this can be detrimental for those suspects in criminal cases who lose the ability to speak off the record with their attorneys, if there is no in-person interpreter available.
"The reason that the negotiations are so stalled is that there is a long-term neglect of interpreter compensation and really valuing this work for several decades," said Aranguren, in a statement to Bay City News. “A lot of people come to court and don’t get the interpreters they need, and that has to do with the courts’ failing to really develop a solid, adequate workforce of interpreters who are committed to just working in the courts and doing the public service."
The union represents full-time interpreters at state courts in San Benito, Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties collectively known as Region 2.
Alicia Vojnik, a spokesperson for the Region 2 Superior Courts tells Bay City News that the courts "remain committed to negotiating a fair agreement with the court interpreters employed within the Region."
"To that end, the Region has proposed that the parties enter mediation to assist in resolving the significant difference between their respective wage proposals, as well as other outstanding issues," Vojnik said.
Court Interpreters Stage Walkout In SF, Other Counties
sfist.com
Unionized court interpreters planned a half-day walkout Friday at San Francisco’s superior courts, after negotiations for a new contract have reportedly hit a wall.
City workers push for full pension divestment from Israel after Comptroller caves on bonds
Pension funds still have $285 million tied to country
thechiefleader.com/stories/city-workers-push-for-full-pension-divestment-from-israel-after-comptr…
A member of District Council 37 holds a sign imploring incoming Comptroller Mark Levine not to invest the city's pension funds in Israeli stocks, bonds and companies last year..jpeg
A member of District Council 37 holds a sign imploring incoming Comptroller Mark Levine not to invest the city's pension funds in Israeli stocks, bonds and companies last year.
HARPER FREEMAN/ THE CHIEF
Posted Friday, October 16, 2026 2:51 pm
BY HARPER FREEMAN
City workers who pushed their unions to pass resolutions calling on the city’s pension fund to divest from Israeli stocks and bonds celebrated City Comptroller Mark Levine’s announcement on Wednesday that the city’s five pension funds would not be reinvesting in Israeli bonds. But the workers and pro-Palestinian advocates say they plan to continue pushing Levine to fully divest the over $200 million in investments the city’s five pension funds still hold in Israeli securities and companies.
“It feels like a victory initially,” said Tomasia Kastner, co-chair of City Workers for Palestine, a cross-union, cross-agency organizing group of pro-Palestinian workers who coordinate actions and strategy. “But when you look at the numbers, it no longer feels like a victory. It feels like a punch in the gut after a victory. It feels like one step forward two steps back.”
The pledge Levine made this week marked a reversal from the comptroller who promised on the campaign trail last year to reinvest in Israel after former Comptroller Brad Lander allowed $40 million of the pension system's holdings in Israel to mature and expire.
Levine clarified in a social media post on Thursday that the city’s five funds still hold more than $285 million in investments tied to Israel, mainly through equities that he said are an “important part” of the funds’ portfolio. He said the decision not to reinvest in Israeli bonds was an “ordinary rebalancing and management of a pension portfolio,” and not a political decision.
“At present, a number of challenges, including constraints related to a rules change on our short-term investment desk made by the previous comptroller, prevent us from making direct purchases,” he said.
But supporters of Israel and former Comptroller Scott Stringer criticized Levine’s decision nonetheless, telling the New York Post that his move was, in essence, caving to the two-decade old Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement that seeks to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.
‘More work remains’
City workers have been an active and vocal part of BDS and specifically the movement pushing to divest the city’s pension funds from Israeli companies, stocks and bonds since the genocide in the Gaza Strip began. The Association of Legislative Employees was the first union of city workers to pass a divestment resolution and was followed by Local 3005, Local 1113 and the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY, although PSC’s resolution was later revoked.
Workers have held repeated protests to call for divestment, including just before the start of Levine’s tenure, outside of what soon became his office alongside Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish group that advocates for Palestinians.
Matt Molloy, president of the ALE, said that Levine’s move was a “positive step forward” but said that he must go further.
“More work remains to ensure that our city’s pension funds are fully divested, and we hope this decision is the beginning of that process,” he said.
Evan Rothman, a CUNY graduate student who introduced the divestment resolution that narrowly passed the PSC delegate assembly in early 2025 said Levine’s announcement was a “welcome development” and a “testament to the Palestine solidarity movement’s impact on city politics.”
“It also confirms what New York City public sector unionists have long said: investment in Israeli genocide and apartheid is not just a moral albatross, but a financial one as well,” he said.
Under former Comptroller Lander, the boards of all five of the city’s pension funds voted to divest from Russian securities shortly after that country’s invasion of Ukraine began in early 2022. At the outbreak of war in late February, the funds held $185.9 million in Russian securities.
Lander, who is the Democratic Party’s nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district said in a statement that Levine’s decision on Israeli bonds was the “right move.” He pointed out that the funds hold no other foreign bonds and argued that the decision of previous comptrollers to invest in Israeli bonds was a “political move, not a fiduciary one.”
Since the Islamic militant group Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Around 1,500 of those have been killed since Israel agreed to a ceasefire over a year ago.
Kastner said that City Workers for Palestine would soon meet to discuss their strategy moving forward in response to the union’s announcement. She stressed that workers would keep pushing until the $285 million in Israeli investments are no longer in the city’s portfolio.
“We're just going to stay the course and keep fighting and demanding full divestment,” she said. “We want to continue to create a strategy to fully divest the pension from Israel."
41 Roseville railyard workers, families sue Union Pacific over cancer, toxic exposure
www.sacbee.com/news/local/article317655725.html#storylink=cpy
By Madison Smalstig
October 17, 2026 9:00 AM
Union Pacific’s J.R. Davis Yard in Roseville, one of the largest railyards on the West Coast, is seen in a drone image taken Sept. 30, 2021. Forty-one current and former workers, including 11 who have died, were named in lawsuits filed this week against Union Pacific, alleging that exposure to toxic substances at the railyard caused serious illnesses. Xavier Mascareñas Sacramento Bee file Forty-one current and former workers at Union Pacific’s Roseville railyard, including 11 who have died, were named in six lawsuits filed Wednesday alleging the railroad failed to protect employees from toxic substances that caused cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other serious illnesses. Thirty of the workers are living with illnesses they attributed to workplace exposure, some of which did not develop until after decades of work at the J.R. Davis Yard, said Carisa German-Oden, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. The families of 11 deceased workers alleged that exposure to asbestos, diesel exhaust, benzene and other hazardous substances contributed to their deaths. The J.R. Davis Yard is “the largest rail yard west of the Rockies,” according to Union Pacific. It is one of the busiest rail terminals on the West Coast and a major hub for Northern California rail traffic. The workers named in the lawsuits were diagnosed with a range of illnesses, including COPD, kidney disease, pulmonary fibrosis, multiple myeloma, leukemia and cancers of the throat and blood. Some began working for Union Pacific as early as the 1950s, in jobs that included track maintenance, signal maintenance, conducting and engineering. About six continued to work for the railroad, German-Oden said. The plaintiffs requested jury trials to determine damages, according to the complaints filed in San Francisco Superior Court. The plaintiffs, represented by the law firms Poolson Oden and Grant & Eisenhofer, alleged that Union Pacific failed to provide adequate protective equipment or warn employees about hazardous exposures. The railroad had known about some of the dangers since the 1930s, German-Oden said. “They’ve known for a long time,” German-Oden said. “What has been clear is that even with that knowledge, they have not you know they did not develop warnings. They didn’t give proper PPE. There was nothing really given to the employees.” Toxic exposure is not unique to the Roseville railyard, German-Oden said. However, the J.R. Davis Yard had been studied more extensively than other rail facilities over the previous three decades. In a 2004 assessment, the California Air Resources Board estimated that locomotives operating at the railyard in 2000 emitted between 22.1 to 25 tons of diesel particulate matter annually within the yard and surrounding areas. The agency used computer modeling to estimate cancer risks for nearby residents, but not for railyard workers. For residents in an area northwest of the locomotive service tracks, the estimated additional cancer risk exceeded 500 cases per million people over 70 years of exposure. Railroad workers generally must seek compensation for job-related injuries through the federal courts under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act rather than through state workers’ compensation. To recover damages, they must establish that negligence by the railroad contributed to their injuries, said Danny Poolson, another attorney involved in the case. “These guys and gals go to a dangerous job every day, work crazy hours, miss tons of family events to provide for them… They put themselves in harm’s way every day, and that protection is not there for them,” Poolson said. The Roseville lawsuits followed similar litigation filed in September by more than 125 railroad workers against Norfolk Southern Railway Co. in Philadelphia, according to a spokesperson for the law firms representing the plaintiffs. Poolson said the immediate goal was to secure compensation for workers and their families. The attorneys also hoped the litigation would lead to changes in workplace safety practices that German-Oden alleged remained dangerous. This story was originally published October 17, 2026 at 9:00 AM with the headline "41 Roseville railyard workers, families sue Union Pacific over cancer, toxic exposure."
41 Roseville railyard workers, families sue Union Pacific over cancer, toxic exposure
www.sacbee.com
Six lawsuits filed Wednesday alleged Union Pacific failed to protect Roseville railyard workers from toxic substances linked to cancer and other serious illnesses.
Before You Vote on Props “D, E, A, and F
Before You Vote on Props “D, E, A, and F”
What the Board of Supervisor’s Budget and Legislative Analyst Analyst Found — and What It Left Out
Don’t hand over your lunch money to the schoolyard bully! He’ll only come back wanting more.
Dear Friends,
On July 14, Supervisor Shamann Walton asked the Board’s Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) to analyze Mayor Lurie’s three Charter amendments — Propositions D, E, and F — by September 8, so voters could weigh the findings before the November election ballots went out. The BLA missed that deadline by a month. An unfinished, undated draft surfaced September 25, buried in a Board agenda packet. The final report, dated October 8, only became available on October 12 in response to a public records request I had filed. By then, ballots had been in mailboxes for ten days.
BLA reports are policy documents meant to guide development of City policies on behalf of San Francisco residents. Here is what BLA’s final analysis shows, and what it doesn’t.
Proposition D: Shutting Out Grassroots Initiatives
Signatures to qualify a ballot initiative would quadruple, from 10,615 to 42,460. The BLA estimates a grassroots campaign’s cost would rise from about $320,000 to $1.5 million, with paid circulators alone costing over $1 million. The final report even contains a new error, claiming 70 percent of signatures collected are “invalid” when its own text says 70 percent are valid.
Meanwhile, Mayor Lurie’s own three measures — “Propositions D, E, and F” — reached the ballot by signature petition, given the $4.5 million Lurie’s “Clean Up City Hall” campaign committee (funded by billionaires, centimillionaires, and millionaires) spent to collect the necessary number of signatures to qualify for the ballot. Higher thresholds don’t stop big money; they stop everyone else. As of October 16, Lurie’s campaign committee has raised $14 million to pass the three ballot measures, plus another $425,000 seeking to pass “Proposition A.” That excludes the $9.9 million spent in November 2024 trying to pass the exact same “reforms” via the 2024 “Proposition D.” What are these billionaires trying to buy by raising close to $25 million just for the “D-E-A-F” ballot measure reforms package for Mayor Lurie?
Proposition E: Less Oversight of City Contracts
This is the BLA’s analysis report’s best work. Raising the Board of Supervisors contract-approval threshold from $10 million to $25 million would have cut Board review from 304 contracts to 115 between 2023 and 2025, leaving about $2.5 billion in unreviewed contracts.
Board of Supervisors review of contracts caught real problems. It cut a Mid-Market Foundation amendment from $7.7 million to $3.8 million after unnecessary overhead surfaced. It flagged a nonprofit facing insolvency, which had no chief financial officer. That discovery led to an audit that found $5.6 million paid without verifying eligibility.
Below the proposed $25 million contract threshold, the BLA admits: “There is no comparable public process.” The BLA meant that there is no independent review of a given contract proposed by a City Department, and no questions are ever raised in public. That’s because contracts below the threshold line ae approved administratively by the same department that chose the contractor, and only the City Department will manage the contract.
Eliminating public review is the opposite of public transparency, since public review exists precisely because outside eyes catch what Department insiders won’t flag themselves and don’t want you to know. Mayor Lurie and his campaign committee are complicit in trying to eliminate public scrutiny, which will lead to more corruption, not less.
Worse, only the City Administrator could introduce procurement laws if “Prop E” were to pass, which the Board couldn’t amend. New procurement rules would take effect automatically in 60 days unless disapproved, and the Mayor alone could kill one, while the Board would need a majority vote. What replaces Board oversight? In the BLA’s words: “No new oversight or audit mechanism is proposed.” In plain language, that means no substitute for Board of Supervisors review exists in “Proposition E.”
The report headlines $3.8 million to $23 million in procurement “savings.” Those figures are staff time, not cash, built on a cost estimate the BLA itself calls unreliable.
Between its draft and final analysis reports, the BLA also deleted the Human Resources Department’s statement that it knows of five training system contracts, not the 20 Proposition E claims in the legal text of the measure, as a justification and reason to consolidate all City contracting under the City Administrator. Clearly, it was eliminated from the final BLA’s analysis, given a clearly unsupportable false assertion.
Proposition F: More “Unitary Executive” Power to the Mayor
The Mayor could fire 27 of 62 department heads at will, up from five, including the heads of Police, Fire, Public Health, the MTA, the PUC, the Airport, and Recreation and Park. Commissions would need to forward only one candidate, instead of three names on a “short list” from which the Mayor could choose a new Department Head. Nearly all members of Boards, Commissions, and advisory bodies would become removable without cause, as so-called “at will” appointees.
The BLA calls the added cost “modest,” about $268,000 a year if Department Head turnover were to double. That figure spreads three severance payments across all 26 recent departures. But firing power adds involuntary departures, exactly the kind that trigger severance payment awards to Department Heads removed involuntarily. Counted properly, each added firing costs about $117,000, and doubles turnover costs to about $708,000 a year — roughly 2.6 times the BLA’s figure.
Between its draft and final analyses, the BLA deleted its finding that only one of those 26 departures was involuntary, along with research showing new administrations push out senior staff.
Proposition F would also allow an unlimited number of deputy mayors, banned by voters since 1991. Copying Boston’s 14 Deputy Mayors would cost about $4 million a year with benefits. The Planning Department’s own organizational chart cites an anticipated “Charter Reform November 2026” step toward a merged permitting department, even before anyone has voted on “Prop F.”
What the BLA Report Ducked
Walton asked 14 questions. Two were dropped outright and several were narrowed, with no explanation. The final fixed surface errors — wrong dates, impossible numbers, a $1 million misstatement — but left most substantive problems standing. Proposition A, which moves nine commissions out of the Charter, got no BLA analysis at all.
Still, the BLA’s own conclusion states the stakes plainly: These measures trade fewer independent checks for faster executive action handing too much “unitary executive” power to the Mayor, at the cost of vastly reducing Board of Supervisors review and oversight over City contracts, Board control of procurement law, and citizens’ ability to reach the ballot.
A generative AI review of the final BLA report, graded as a policy analysis in a graduate government course, gave it a “C” for responsiveness to Walton’s request, a “D+” as a public service to voters, and a “C–” overall. The generative AI’s low grades were well deserved, given the AI’s overall summary, which reads:
“Many of the impacts appear to affect[democratic City] governance leaving the question of whether clearer executive accountability and faster administrationwarrant fewer independent checks [-and-balances to governance], and [public] oversight, [including] the loss of Board review for a substantial number and dollar value of contracts, the City Administrator's exclusive control over procurement legislation, and the higher bar for citizen [ballot measure] initiatives.”
If you haven’t voted yet, please weigh these facts before you do. And please forward this to anyone who hasn’t mailed in their ballot.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for voting.
Patrick
To see Supervisor’s Walton’s July 14 cost inquiry of Mayor Lurie’s Propositions D, E, and F, the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s draft and final inadequate cost analysis reports, and the two generative AI critique’s of the BLA’s deficient cost analysis, they can be accessed on-line,
The CSU Reaches Tentative Agreement with United Auto Workers
www.calstate.edu/csu-system/news/Pages/The-California-State-University-Reaches-Tentative-Agreemen…
10/16/2026
The tentative agreement includes 8% in salary increases plus a one-time payment for UAW members
csu-statement.jpeg
The California State University (CSU) has reached a tentative agreement with United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4123 that would provide meaningful compensation increases for Unit 11 employees. UAW 4123 represents over 10,000 academic student workers across the CSU system.
Under the tentative agreement, eligible UAW represented employees would receive:
A $3.2 million compensation pool for one-time payments
A 4% salary increase retroactive to July 1, 2026
An additional 4% salary increase effective July 1, 2027
“This agreement demonstrates the shared commitment of both parties to find common ground and take action in the best interests of the CSU’s valued employees,” said CSU Chancellor Mildred García. “While labor negotiations are never easy, they are essential to fairly compensating and supporting our dedicated employees, allowing the CSU to remain fiscally sustainable and ensuring that we stay on a path that advances student success for years to come.”
The agreement comes less than a week after the CSU reached a similar tentative agreement with the Academic Professionals of California.
The CSU remains committed to working with its labor partners to reach agreements that provide competitive compensation and high-quality benefits while supporting students and maintaining the university’s long-term financial sustainability.
For all labor relations updates, visit Labor and Employee Relations | CSU.
Techno Fascists Give Millions To Centralize Power In SF & Allow More Corruption
SF mayor's three ‘Clean Up City Hall’ measures get $12.8 million in support
www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/sf-mayors-three-clean-up-city-hall-measures-get-12-8-million-in-…
By Patrick Hoge | Examiner staff writer Oct 14, 2026
Raising the signature threshold for ballot measures — as Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Proposition D would do — would increase the cost of qualifying initiatives from $320,000 to $1.5 million, according to estimates in a new report from the Board of Supervisors Budget and Legislative Analyst.
The nearly 370% cost increase “would likely make qualification through predominantly volunteer signature gathering substantially more difficult and increase campaigns’ reliance on paid petition circulators” the report states.
That, in turn, “could disproportionately constrain citizen-led campaigns and reduce the range of organizations able to qualify measures for the ballot,” according to the report, which said community organizations and nonprofit coalitions generally have less capacity to raise funds for signature-gathering than “well-financed interests.”
The point goes to the heart of the main controversy arising from Lurie’s three Clean Up City Hall charter-reform measures on the Nov. 3 ballot — propositions D, E and F.
Critics of the measures contend that making initiatives more difficult to pursue would undermine democracy to the benefit of the rich. Their supporters argue that San Francisco’s comparatively lax access rules have led to bloated ballots, poorly conceived proposals and political gamesmanship.
Lurie promises the three charter-reform measures — which he unveiled together with Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman in March — will increase government efficiency and accountability while cutting down on waste and corruption.
Prop. D, in particular, would raise the signature threshold for qualifying ordinance initiatives for a regular election from 2% of registered voters to 8%, which today would mean an increase from an estimated 10,615 valid signatures to 42,460.
Mayor Daniel Lurie (seen in September) says his trio of ballot measures will increase government efficiency and accountability while cutting down on waste and corruption.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
Supporters say The City is an outlier for having such a low signature threshold. They say the statewide standard for signatures is 10%, as it is in Oakland.
In addition to requiring more signatures, Prop. D would eliminate the ability of a minority of supervisors to put measures on the ballot — something proponents say no other city in the state allows — mandating instead that a majority of the 11-member Board of Supervisors vote to put something on the ballot.
It would also eliminate the mayor’s ability to put measures on the ballot unilaterally — another thing proponents say no other city in the state allows— which Lurie said would “cement a fair balance of power.”
And Prop. D would allow proponents to withdraw a measure after it qualifies for the ballot — for example, if a drafting error is discovered, as happened in 2022, when proponents successfully appealed to a judge to let them remove a proposed tax initiative.
In sum, advocates say Prop. D will result in higher quality ballot proposals and shorter ballots, and it will push city officials to work together to achieve policy solutions.
“We’re the only city that allows a minority of supervisors to throw anything on the ballot without public vote or community input,” Lurie said in a recent video on Instagram. “We also require 80 percent fewer signatures than the state standard.”
“Special interests weaponize the system to push intentionally confusing measures instead of focusing on solving problems,” he said. “Prop. D ensures that measures that reach the ballot are shaped through transparency, compromise and community input.”
Prop. E, meanwhile, would centralize city contracting authority with the City Administrator. Prop. F would increase mayoral authority to hire and fire department heads, reorganize departments, and remove members of boards and commissions.
The Board of Supervisors and city boards and commissions would lose authority in those areas, the Budget and Legislative Analyst report said.
Prop. F would also let the mayor hire deputy mayors with authority over executive-branch departments, which would enhance mayoral authority, it said.
The 57-page, largely technical report was produced at the request of District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, who signed a ballot argument against Prop. D along with Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council and former president of Unite Here Local 2.
Supervisors Jackie Fielder and Myrna Melgar, among others, also appear as opponents.
Asked about the report, Walton said via text that “the entire focus of the mayor’s changes is to ensure that people with means have all of the say in San Francisco.”
“The wealth gap continues to grow, housing/rent costs are astronomical and the fact that it would cost so much to qualify ballot initiatives further demonstrates that the mayor’s oligarchy does not want anyone who is not well off to thrive in San Francisco,” Walton said.
On the other side, Max Szabo, a spokesman for the Clean Up City Hall campaign, said that the measures “will fix the most corrupt parts of the system.”
“San Franciscans are paying the cost of a City Hall system that only works for special interests and the insiders opposing reform,” he said. “They trick voters at the ballot, misuse taxpayer dollars and then escape accountability.”
“Insiders and narrow interests exploit the rules and hijack our democratic process at the expense of everyday people,” Szabo said.
Szabo called Prop. D “a common-sense reform that strengthens the citizen-initiative process, keeps San Francisco’s signature requirement one of the lowest in the entire state, and is widely backed by a coalition including labor unions, small businesses, and community advocates.”
The Clean Up City Hall campaign had raised a whopping $12.8 million via 47 contributions — more than all seven other November ballot measures combined.
Several billionaires topped the donor list, including venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who gave $2.6 million; blockchain pioneer Chris Larsen, the co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple Labs who along with his wife, Lyna Lam, gave a combined $2.5 million; and investor John Pritzker, who gave $1 million.
Moritz bankrolled a ballot measure voters rejected in November 2024 that would have increased the power of the mayor while halving the number of The City’s appointed commissions and advisory bodies.
While there are critics of Prop. E and Prop. F, there are no funded campaigns against them. Only Prop. D inspired an opposition campaign committee that has raised money — though the Fair Access, No on D campaign was grossly outmatched in terms of cash.
District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton (seen in January 2025): “The entire focus of the mayor’s changes is to ensure that people with means have all of the say in San Francisco.”
Craig Lee/The Examiner
Numerous organizations have taken positions against Prop. D, but the measure’s opponents had raised just $205,700. The largest contributions came from a nonprofit housing provider and several labor organizations.
The top donor was the affordable-housing nonprofit Tenants and Owners Development Corporation, which chipped in $80,000.
Peter Stevens, the director of advocacy and arts at TODCO, said his organization had issues with all three of the mayor’s charter reform measures, but chose to focus on Prop. D because it was the “most egregious.”
“From our position, this was something that would create basically second-class citizens who are not allowed to access a right that we’ve all had for a very long time,” Stevens said.
Citizens have long used initiatives in San Francisco to address important issues such as fighting corruption and “corporate overreach,” he said.
“We see this as an attack on democracy, just straight up,” he said. “Why is this small group of people spending so much money to remove this right from everyday citizens?”
Szabo said it was “ironic” that the top funder for the effort against Prop. D was TODCO, given that the organization got a judge to let it withdraw a proposed tax measure from the November 2022 ballot because a drafting error could have let Amazon avoid the desired levy.
Keeping ill-considered measures off the ballot is one of the goals of Prop. D, Szabo said.
The Clean Up City Hall campaign has many endorsements from unions and other entities, as well as from numerous political figures, including U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and six of The City’s 11 supervisors.
One is Mandelman, who said the low bar to qualify initiatives has encouraged people inside and outside of City Hall to pursue measures addressing complex issues that would be best addressed through the normal legislative process, with the result often being confusion and frustration for voters.
“It’s been very, very easy to get measures in front of the voters,” Mandelman said. “I don’t know that that leads to the best policymaking.”
The Budget and Legislative Analyst report said community organizers interviewed said Prop. D “would substantially change the resources needed for a grassroots campaign,” and that community groups interviewed said that predominantly volunteer signature-gathering efforts would become “impractical.”
Research on campaign finance in the context of direct democracy — including petition circulation — is limited, but it generally supports the perspective of local organizers that “higher signature thresholds can reduce access to the ballot and widen disparities between grassroots campaigns and campaigns backed by large donors,” the report said.
Daniel Anderson, a spokesman for the no on D campaign, said the report confirmed what the opposition had been saying about the increased cost of qualifying ballot measures, although he said the report estimated the added costs would be even higher.
Anderson contended that Prop. D will not necessarily reduce the number of ballot measures, but it will change who can get access to voters.
“Do you have $1 million or $1.5 million to spend on signature gathering?” he said. “If so, it’s open season on the ballot. And if you don’t have that kind of money to spend, then you’re pretty well locked out.”
But District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, who has been campaigning for the Clean Up City Hall measures, said higher signature requirements have not caused problems in other cities across the state.
“Ballot measures should be about existential things under the charter or larger tax measures that are really critical, and allowing people to weaponize the ballot box has led to gridlock, has led to a lack of affordability,” Sherrill said.
“Representative democracy is all about electing leaders who you then hold accountable, and allowing special interests to weaponize the ballot box doesn’t make a lot of sense, and has led to a lot of the problems that we see today,” he said.
Sherrill said a major takeaway from the Budget and Legislative Analyst report should be that the charter-reform measures won’t cost the city money. The city Controller’s Office also separately said the measures would have a minimal effect on the cost of city operations.
Sherrill predicted that the contracting-reform provisions of Prop. E “will almost undoubtedly save The City a significant amount of money over time as contracting processes get better.”
Prop. E would concentrate more contracting authority with the mayor and the city administrator, who would have greater authority to set contract standards by introducing ordinances or adopting rules, regulations or policies, the report states.
Prop. E would also increase thresholds for contract reviews by city supervisors, notably by from $10 million to $25 million for new expenditure contracts, which supporters say would account for inflation.
Increased efficiencies could potentially save millions of dollars depending on implementation, the Budget and Legislative Analyst report said.
Between 2023 and 2025, the supervisors reviewed expenditure contracts totaling about $12.5 billion. Had the proposed thresholds been in effect, the number of reviews would have fallen from 304 to 115, with about $2.5 billion in contracts — about $830 million per year — not subject to review by the board, the report said.
The current $10 million threshold for reviewing contracts is already significantly higher than for other selected peer jurisdictions, which generally require approval from the presiding city council or board of supervisors for contracts ranging from $25,000 to $5 million, it said.
The report said the legislative-review process generally adds about two to three weeks to the board’s approval process. That’s in addition to the broader contracting process, which can take six to 12 months, according to the City Administrator’s Office, the report said.
Prop. E would also grant the City Administrator authority to adopt and amend rules and regulations governing procurement, to establish policies and standards, and to direct and supervise The City’s information-technology systems. It would increase the city administrator’s term from five years to 10.
Control of introducing most procurement legislation would shift from the Board of Supervisors and mayor to the city administrator. The board’s authority to amend such legislation would be eliminated, the report said.
Prop. F, meanwhile, would bolster mayoral authority in various ways, including by increasing the powers of the mayor to hire and fire department heads and to reorganize and merge departments.
It would increase from five to 11 the number of department heads the mayor could solely hire, granting the mayor full appointment authority for the heads of several departments, including Building Inspection, the Entertainment Commission, Planning, Public Works, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and the Office of Small Business.
The report said the mayor currently has no appointment authority over 25 department heads — who are selected entirely by boards or commissions, or elected by voters — out of The City’s 62 departments, and he has limited authority for 32 more.
For 21 departments, commissions now submit at least three qualified applicants from whom the mayor may choose. Seven other department heads are appointed by the city administrator, with mayoral concurrence, and four others combine the mayor’s appointments with approvals by other appointing authorities, the report said.
The five agencies for which the mayor now has independent appointment authority are the Department of Early Childhood; the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families; the Office of Economic and Workforce Development; the Department of Emergency Management; and the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
Prop. F would increase the number of departments over which the mayor has sole authority to remove department heads from five to 27. Boards and commissions remove most others.
The mayor has no authority to remove the heads of 27 city departments. For another 30 departments, the mayor either shares removal authority with other city officials or bodies, or he has another role in the removal process.
Prop. F would let appointing authorities, including the mayor, remove board and commission members without cause, whereas currently official misconduct is required.
Though some say the current setup blurs lines of accountability, Walton said the mayor already has a great deal of sway.
“There is theory, and there is practice,” Walton said. “The mayor has a great amount of power under today’s governmental structure. Even though commissions may conduct a hiring process for certain department heads, in practice the mayor is still in control.”
Mandelman also sponsored a fourth measure — Proposition A, which a supermajority of nine supervisors sent to the ballot in July — to make 110 “fixes” to the city charter.
It is referred to in some official election materials as part of the Clean Up City Hall package, though it is not on that campaign’s website, and it has its own committee.
Prop. A would modify boards, commissions and advisory bodies; change departmental operations and reporting requirements; change how supervisors approve settlements or dismissals of legal proceedings recommended by the city attorney; remove provisions allowing disciplinary action against striking employees outside of the police and fire departments; and make edits and changes to the charter and past voter-approved ordinances, according to the city Controller’s Office.
It would save $365,000 to $450,000 annually by eliminating the Sanitation and Streets Commission; the Public Works Commission; and the Street Artists and Craftsmen Examiners Advisory Committee, with other costs and savings possible, the controller said.
The Prop. A campaign had raised about $410,000. The top contribution of $150,000 came from Moritz, followed by $100,000 from Larsen.
Clean Up City Hall reforms draw $12.6 million
www.sfexaminer.com
Hugely outspent opponents say democracy is on the line.
UCLA disciplined a pro-Palestinian protester behind closed doors. Now he’s suing
www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-31/ucla-pro-palestinian-protest-discipline-lawsuit
Pro-Palestinian protesters at the UCLA campus on May 1, 2024.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at the UCLA campus on May 1, 2024. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Jaweed Kaleem staff headshot at LA Times Photo Studio in El Segundo, CA on Thursday, July 24, 2025.
By Jaweed Kaleem
Staff Writer
Aug. 31, 2026 3 AM PT
A UCLA student is suing the UC system after a nearly two-year disciplinary process over pro-Palestinian protests in which he was suspended and his degree was withheld.
Nearly all his conduct charges were dismissed, the suit says, even as the student faced a lengthy campus ban.
The lawsuit offers a rare window into campus discipline at UCLA.
In a prolonged case that offers a rare look into the fiercely private student discipline process, a UCLA computer science doctoral student is suing the University of California, asking a judge to reverse his two-quarter suspension and release a master’s degree withheld for more than 600 days.
The case centers on one of the most volatile chapters in UCLA history — the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests that racked the university, culminating in a violent spring attack at a campus encampment. The demonstrations helped fuel a relentless Trump administration campaign against UCLA and other elite universities over their handling of antisemitism allegations.
The campus turmoil divided UCLA and the nation. Protesters demanded UC divest from companies tied to the Israeli military’s war in Gaza. Some Jewish students and faculty called the demonstrations antisemitic, though others joined them.
Dylan Kupsh, 27, emerged as a vocal UCLA protester and an outlier in the campus movement. He did not mask his identity at rallies and has gone public about the discipline against him, while hundreds of others in similar proceedings have stayed anonymous.
He filed the civil lawsuit last week in Los Angeles Superior Court against the UC Board of Regents, two UCLA student conduct administrators and a UCLA police captain. Los Angeles-area civil rights lawyers and attorneys from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee represent him.
The suit alleges viewpoint discrimination and due process violations, including a lack of meaningful notice of cases against him.
A UCLA spokesperson said the university “will respond to this lawsuit as appropriate in court.”
The university, like campuses nationwide, is barred by federal privacy law from discussing individual discipline cases or internal deliberations, even when a student goes public.
A person poses in front of a brick building.
Dylan Kupsh, 27, is suing the University of California over a student conduct discipline process at UCLA. He is shown at Royce Hall on campus. (Gary Coronado / For The Times)
How the case unfolded
Kupsh’s case grew out of the protests that followed UCLA’s spring 2024 encampment — which some pro-Israel Jewish students alleged blocked them from part of the campus. That claim was cited in a civil rights case that cost UC $6.45 million in a settlement and set the stage for a Justice Department lawsuit. Kupsh’s charges stem not from the encampment itself but from a year of smaller protests that came after it.
He originally faced 14 campus citations — issued between August 2024 and June 2025 — for blocking pathways, disrupting campus and defying orders at five demonstrations from June 2024 to May 2025, the suit said. The charges were later amended twice, most recently in April 2026.
The allegations are university conduct violations, not crimes. Kupsh was arrested at a June 2024 demonstration but never criminally charged. Campus police still urged the university to act, the suit said.
In a May 2025 email, UCLA police Capt. Jeff Chobanian told Steve Lurie, UCLA’s chief safety officer, that Kupsh was “a known organizer and public face” of the suspended Students for Justice in Palestine, and urged “firm and immediate action,” the suit said. Within half an hour, Lurie forwarded the email to two student conduct administrators, saying, “perhaps Jeff’s narrative can help us make a determination on an interim suspension.”
Chobanian and Lurie declined to comment about the suit to The Times. Bryan Murotake, a defendant and former UCLA assistant dean of students who signed charging notices against Kupsh, did not respond to a request for comment.
The university issued an interim suspension in June 2025, barring Kupsh from campus for 291 days as the disciplinary process proceeded, the lawsuit said. The ban lifted in March 2026.
The lawsuit alleges Kupsh was not told what evidence the university had against him before it imposed interim suspension. Under university policy, a student can be barred from campus once a conduct case is open, without any finding that the student broke the rules.
On the day the interim suspension took effect, UCLA filed new citations from a May 2025 protest alleging obstruction, disorderly conduct and failure to follow orders, the suit said. Kupsh, who taught a class online, was allowed on campus Monday afternoons for lab meetings.
“I felt like half my life was basically ripped off,” Kupsh told The Times. “I was not even able to visit my next-door neighbor, who lives on university property.”
Student conduct proceedings unfold behind closed doors, and college campuses typically decide cases on a “more likely than not” standard — a far lower bar than criminal proceedings. Three-member UCLA panels of faculty, staff and students heard Kupsh’s cases.
Over five hearings between June 2025 and May 2026, panels dismissed all but two of the citations, the suit said. UCLA had shown Kupsh was present at most of the demonstrations, they ruled, but not that he organized them, gave orders or blocked access.
The university did find him responsible for violations at two separate protests, one for not showing his student ID to authorities and another for failing to move out of a walking student’s path. An appeal of a June finding was denied July 31.
In the lawsuit, Kupsh acknowledges attending most of the demonstrations but denies being a ringleader, blocking anyone from campus walkways or refusing orders.
“He was disciplined for what he believes, not what he did,” Thomas B. Harvey, one of the lawyers representing Kupsh, alleged in an interview with The Times.
The two-quarter suspension runs through Dec. 11, 2026, barring him from classes, teaching duties and pay, the suit said. His master’s degree in computer science, submitted for conferral in December 2024, remains unawarded.
Under UCLA policy, he cannot resume his doctorate when the suspension lifts. Kupsh must apply for readmission.
The suit alleges his punishment threatens a doctorate seven years in the making and two quarters from completion. It values his lost pay at more than $17,000. He is seeking unspecified damages, including punitive damages against two administrators and the police captain, and attorney fees.
Campus discipline by the numbers
Last year, city and county prosecutors declined to charge all but two of the nearly 350 people arrested at UCLA and USC pro-Palestinian protests. UC reported more than 400 protest-related internal discipline cases from spring 2024 alone.
A May 2025 UC systemwide review of hundreds of spring 2024 cases found those reaching a hearing took 225 days on average — three times as long as those settled without one. The longest, at UCLA, ran 361 days.
Overall, UC campuses issued 14,231 sanctions in 2023-24 — most unrelated to protests. Suspensions accounted for 3%. They were reserved, the review said, for the most serious cases such as violence and repeated drug offenses. Interim suspensions, imposed before any hearing, numbered 131 systemwide.
Most students received milder penalties — warnings, probation or requirements to attend counseling or workshops, which together made up 93% of sanctions.
Two years later, the demonstrations have largely disappeared from UC amid strict enforcement of campus protest rules.
UCLA has faced some of the Trump administration’s toughest sanctions on any university: a $584-million funding freeze a federal judge later lifted, a $1.2-billion settlement demand the university refused and multiple Justice Departmentantisemitism investigations and lawsuits growing out of the protests.
Some faculty have praised the university for not settling. Others say it has cracked down on free speech to fend off further federal action.
Several Jewish community or faculty groups say UCLA has not gone far enough to discourage anti-Israel protests. The AMCHA Initiative argues that UC campuses, including UCLA, have been too lenient with pro-Palestinian activists. The nonprofit tracks anti-Jewish bias on college campuses. Kupsh and pro-Palestinian activists have rejected the antisemitism charge.
The UCLA Jewish Faculty Resilience Group has complained that the university has unevenly enforced rules, such as those against masking and blocking walkways, and must “hold those that break them accountable.”
Members of the UCLA Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Racism and Faculty for Justice in Palestine accuse leaders of using the discipline process to quash pro-Palestinian voices. This year, 148 Jewish faculty signed an open letter critical of “insinuation and misdirection” that painted student activists as antisemitic. The professors expressed fear of UC responding to government actions over protests with “draconian limits on academic freedom and free speech.”
Kupsh said he sued because he had run out of options.
“I do want to attain a PhD, and UCLA is trying to take that away from me,” he said.
UCLA disciplined a pro-Palestinian protester behind closed doors. Now he's suing
www.latimes.com
UCLA PhD student Dylan Kupsh, who was a pro-Palestinian campus protester, is suing UC over its student discipline process. The lawsuit alleges viewpoint discrimination and due process violations. UCLA…
AI robots are roaming L.A. grocery store aisles. Shoppers and workers are worried
www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-10-15/ai-robots-are-roaming-la-grocery-store-aisles-shoppers-…
Tally, an autonomous, AI-powered inventory robot, monitors shelves in a Ralphs supermarket in Los Angeles.
Tally the robot monitors shelves in a Ralphs supermarket on Sept. 30 in Los Angeles. The autonomous, AI-powered inventory robot created by Simbe Robotics patrols retail aisles to scan shelves, track stock levels and check prices. (Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Tarbell fellow Ella Chakarian
By Ella Chakarian
Staff Writer
Follow
Oct. 15, 2026 3 AM PT
Tally, a six-foot inventory robot, is rolling through Ralphs and other Los Angeles grocery stores, scanning shelves for missing products and misplaced items.
The bots help employees manage inventory, but grocery workers and unions worry automation could cut hours, threaten jobs and monitor staff.
Some shoppers also worry the machines are another step toward fewer human interactions in stores.
The robot takeover looks a lot different from what we see in Hollywood thrillers.
Even as artificial intelligence-powered humanoid robots dance, box and beat human running-speed records, the physical bots showing up in our daily lives in Los Angeles are less Terminator and more R2-D2.
On a Wednesday afternoon at Ralphs on Pico Boulevard, a skinny, six-foot-tall tower of sensors rolled through the aisles. It made low beeping noises, its lights flickering purple and green. A small screen on the top of the tower had two blinking eyes and a small line of text. “Hi, I’m Tally!”
“Robot! Robot!” a young boy yelled. Some adults looked confused; others laughed.
Ricardo Valadez, a 62-year-old real estate agent from Mid-City and Ralphs regular, said he felt like the robot was stalking him around the store but was reassured by an employee that it just checks the shelves to see what is missing or out of place.
“I was kind of like, ‘What the hell is that?’” Valadez said. “I don’t know why; I felt that it was following me.”
With a recent rollout in some L.A. grocery stores, the inventory bot, built by Burlingame-based company Simbe Robotics, joins the other free-range forms of physical AI that are already a part of everyday life in L.A. such as food-delivery bots and Waymos.
From inventory management to marketing and checkout, retailers are increasingly adopting automation. The retail automation market could jump to $77 billion by 2034 from $28 billion in 2025, according to estimates from market research company Fortune Business Insights.
Simbe says more than 3,000 of its bots have been contracted to monitor shelves worldwide. Kroger, the parent company of Ralphs, is using hundreds of them after pilot projects that started in Indianapolis and Cincinnati, and recently spread to California.
“Simbe provides shelf intelligence technology that helps store teams more easily identify and address products that are low or out of stock, giving associates better information to support store operations and serve shoppers,” said a spokesperson for Simbe Robotics in an email.
Simbe says Tally helps employees dedicate more time to shoppers. In January, the company revealed its latest model of the robot, Tally 4.0, which uses newer Nvidia chips and software that speeds up scanning shelves to create insights.
Tally alerts employees to any misplaced or out-of-stock items. Simbe said the robot “is designed to understand shelf conditions, not identify or track humans.”
In a recent news release, Simbe said its bots do more than count; they help stores determine the best shelf placement and pricing for products.
“Every deployment expands Simbe’s understanding of how conditions change, revealing patterns across entire store chains—from inventory availability and product location to prices, promotions, and merchandising conditions,” the release said.
Other retailers in Los Angeles have also introduced Tally to their aisles, such as Bristol Farms in Santa Monica. Tally has also been spotted at retailers across the country, including Kroger, Lowe’s, Tesco and BJ’s.
“Last year, Kroger began using robotic technology to gain real-time insights on product inventory,” a Ralphs spokesperson said. “This technology means our associates can more easily and quickly identify and address shelves where products are low or out of stock.”
The spokesperson declined to provide information about how many Tally bots have been deployed at its Los Angeles locations. A LinkedIn post from a store manager at Kroger-operated Smith’s Food and Drug stores said Kroger deployed its 500th robot across all of Kroger in August.
During Kroger’s earnings announcement in March, Chief Financial Officer David Kennerley said the company was “investing aggressively” in artificial intelligence and that has helped it save money.
Thousands of customer service workers face the ax as AI takes over
Rachel Fournier, an employee at Ralphs on Vermont Avenue and Adams Boulevard, said the Tally bot “just showed up out of nowhere” a few months ago.
“One day, they were there wandering around the store,” she said.
Unions are concerned the bots — which Simbe claims can save employees up to 50 hours of work per week — could put human employees out of work.
In July, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union branch representing employees in Washington, northeast Oregon and northern Idaho released a statement outlining concerns about deploying Tally across Kroger-owned Fred Meyer locations.
“Union members regularly do this work,” the statement said. “We believe outsourcing our union jobs to robots will erode our unity in the worksite, reduce available hours for those who need them to pay the rent, and threaten the stability of our benefits.”
Ralphs employee Fournier said she and others worry about job automation and whether the bots could be used to monitor employees. With self-checkout and digital shelf tags already reducing the need for employees, some workers wonder what is next.
“Even an inventory job, like now, that’s being shopped out to a computer,” Fournier said. “What are they trying to do here?”
Wilmington, CA – September 07, 2026: Members of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters shout in support of Nithya Raman for Mayor during the 47th Annual Labor Day Parade, Picnic & Rally at Banning Park on Monday, Sept. 7, 2026 in Wilmington, CA. The event began with a parade along Avalon Blvd and ended at Banning Park where a free picnic and rally were held. Live entertainment, picnic food, and beverages Unions, labor organizations, and community members were encouraged to attend (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
CALIFORNIA
Union workers at Labor Day rally sound alarm over automation, job losses, affordability
There needs to be more discussion ahead of time and sign-off from employees before more robots are deployed, said a local union.
“Our members should not be finding out about major changes to their workplace only after new technology shows up in their stores,” said Kathy Finn, president of UFCW Local 770. “Checking shelves, identifying out-of-stock products, and maintaining store conditions are all areas where our members perform important work every day.”
While it is not the kind of employee that would be doing inventory, Kroger said this week that it will lay off 3,000 corporate employees over the next three years as it ramps up its use of artificial intelligence to streamline operations.
Some unions have been pushing back on earlier automation efforts at stores.
Last year, union members helped push for an ordinance in Long Beach that requires grocery chains to increase the number of employees relative to self-checkout stands. Meanwhile, consumers are concerned that digital price tags could be used to charge different customers different prices.
Long Beach enforces first-in-nation self-checkout staffing rules to combat retail theft
The robot makers and the companies using them say the bots aren’t to replace humans; they are just shouldering the less-interesting work to free up human employees to be more productive in other areas.
Still, some grocery store customers worry the robots mark a further reduction of interactions between humans as well as fewer jobs.
Jennifer Boulanger, a 63-year-old Mid-City resident, posted a video on Nextdoor complaining about the new Ralphs bot. “More lost jobs to AI junk,” she said.
Boulanger now wants to shop somewhere with less automation, even if that means dealing with crowded parking lots and a longer drive.
“I’m going to start going to Trader Joe’s more,” she said in an interview.
AI robots are roaming L.A. grocery store aisles. Shoppers and workers are worried
www.latimes.com
AI robots are roaming Ralphs in L.A. They are scanning inventory and the union is trying to stop them.
“It’s total lawlessness,” Strater said.
Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns and national vice president of UFW, said farmworkers began reporting the immigration enforcement patrols Oct. 6. She said it was unclear how many people had been detained so far.
Strater said similar ICE arrests were occurring in the Coachella Valley and in Ventura County, where a preliminary injunction is in place restricting civil arrests without a warrant. Authorities are investigating multiple vehicle accidents in Oxnard and Simi Valley involving ICE agents.
www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-10-14/very-few-people-out-in-streets-ice-surge-rattles-cali…
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is shown during an operation in Chicago in January 2025. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Brittny Mejia staff headshot at LA Times Photo Studio in El Segundo, CA on Thursday, July 24, 2025.Los Angeles Times reporter Ruben Vives
By Brittny Mejia and Ruben Vives
Oct. 14, 2026 Updated 3:25 PM PT
A surge in ICE operations kicked off last week across California’s Central Valley.
Across California’s Central Valley, a reported surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations that began last week has disrupted agricultural communities, sparked confrontations and left families scrambling to locate detained relatives.
In the city of Kerman, Mayor Maria Pacheco confronted ICE agents on Thursday as they detained people.
“You’re not welcome in my city,” she told an agent in a video posted on Facebook. “You’ve taken enough people yesterday. We don’t want you here.”
The following day, a 72-year-old Fresno resident shot and wounded an ICE agentwhom police said had fallen asleep on the resident’s daughter’s front lawn, appeared “intoxicated and agitated” and allegedly assaulted the resident. Prosecutors have charged the agent with assault, elder abuse and other crimes.
In Madera, organizers postponed the third annual Oaxacan Guelaguetza festival, amid growing fears, according to the group’s Facebook account.
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias said the enforcement operations led to a drop in school attendance and sparked student protests Friday.
“We’re seeing across-the-board reduction of school attendance, substantial reduction in employees showing up to farm operations, packing sheds and in the fields. Construction has essentially come to a halt,” Arias said. “We’re seeing very few people out in the streets.”
In a written statement, Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, condemned what she described as a “brutal ICE surge.”
“Warrantless stops and roving patrols by masked federal agents across California, especially the Central Valley have been terrorizing farm workers … and the chaos is escalating,” she wrote. “These are not criminals. These are hard-working, long term members of our communities being unlawfully targeted simply for looking Latino and working class.”
After reports of increased enforcement activity and detentions in the city of Mendota, Democratic U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California, along with U.S. Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced), wrote a letter demanding answers from ICE about the operation’s purpose and scope, as well as the number of those detained.
“Mendota is a hardworking agricultural community, and families should not have to fear going to work or taking their kids to school,” the lawmakers wrote. “Federal immigration laws must be enforced, but how that happens matters. We need answers about what’s taking place, who is being targeted and whether people’s rights are being protected.”
OXNARD, CA – DECEMBER 19, 2025 – Oxnard residents Oscar and Edith Nunez dance to the music of mariachis Francisco Guarardo, 79, and Rodrigo Castaneda, 77, right, at La Vero's Mexican restaurant in downtown Oxnard on December 19, 2025. "Economy's been hard," said Oscar, who believes the immigration raid in nearby Camarillo had an effect on the city. The Nunez', both U.S. citizens, have lived in Oxnard since 1996. The immigration raid that happened 6 months ago on the Glass House cannabis farms continues to have cascading effects on the economy and families in Oxnard, a tight-knit community where families work in the surrounding fields and live in modest homes just south of Ventura. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns and national vice president of UFW, said farmworkers began reporting the immigration enforcement patrols Oct. 6. She said it was unclear how many people had been detained so far.
Strater said similar ICE arrests were occurring in the Coachella Valley and in Ventura County, where a preliminary injunction is in place restricting civil arrests without a warrant. Authorities are investigating multiple vehicle accidents in Oxnard and Simi Valley involving ICE agents.
“It’s total lawlessness,” Strater said.
In a written statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the increased reports of federal immigration agents across the state were the result of President Trump using “fear and panic as a weapon — putting families at risk, undermining our economy, and terrorizing communities.”
In an emailed response to The Times, an unidentified Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that “for operational security and the safety of our officers, ICE will not disclose or discuss law enforcement operations.”
“Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country including in California,” the spokesperson said.
A Times review of reported arrests found that some of those detained had recent arrests, while others appeared to have no criminal record.
In Fresno, the children of Noelia Bautista and Cipriano Lopez launched a GoFundMeafter their parents were detained. They contend their parents were racially profiled.
An unidentified Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed that ICE arrested the couple last week and said they had “illegally entered the U.S. at unknown times and places.”
“All of their claims will be heard by immigration judges and they will receive due process,” the spokesperson said. “This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”
The spokesperson called allegations of racial profiling “disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” adding that “what makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”
A farmworker, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, told The Times that he was pulled over by ICE officers on his way to work Oct. 6, as he drove with three others. He said the officers didn’t know his name. When he declined to answer their questions about where he was born and when he crossed the border, he said the officers let him go.
LOS ANGELES, CA – SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 – – Angie Vargas, with bullhorn, and another activist, yell at an ICE agent who was stationed in a black SUV near the USCIS Application Support Center at 3747 S. La Brea Ave. in Los Angeles on September 17, 2026. Eventually the ICE agent drove away. The USCIS office specifically fingerprints, photographs, and record digital signatures, by immigration authorities, to confirm an applicant's identity. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
CALIFORNIA
In a written statement, the California Farm Bureau reaffirmed its support for agricultural workers, noting that the state is home to one-third of the nation’s agricultural workforce.
Gloria Hernandez, a volunteer with the Valley Watch Network, a rapid response group that tracks ICE arrests and helps families of those detained, said she noticed increased activity at ICE’s downtown Fresno office in the days before the reported surge. She spotted 17 black vehicles and what she described as “a bunch of new ICE people.”
“They’re hitting the small towns, the rural areas, the farmworkers,” she said. “This surge is really horrible.”
Last week, Prudencio Rivera, 31, was driving home from a night shift at a poultry farm when he noticed a truck with Texas plates following him. After a couple of miles, the truck’s emergency lights came on, and he pulled over in Kerman, he said.
Rivera began livestreaming on Facebook. Two officers wearing green vests marked “ICE” stood outside his vehicle.
“I have my papers in order. Everything’s good,” the livestream showed him saying in Spanish through his closed driver’s window.
Rivera told The Times that he entered the U.S. in 2023 through an asylum process, has a work permit and checks in with ICE once a month.
The livestream showed an officer asserting that Rivera’s work permit didn’t give him permission to live here, before saying, “We’re going to break the window.”
After a discussion about Rivera’s immigration status, an officer warned him to look away because they were going to break the back window. Rivera’s video then captured the sound of glass shattering.
Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on what prompted officers to stop Rivera.
Rivera told The Times that agents detained him and took him to the ICE office in Fresno, later releasing him after checking his documents and his record.
“When they told me they were going to let me go, I was relieved,” he said. “Imagine, thinking they’re never going to let you leave.”
'Very few people out in the streets': ICE surge rattles California’s Central Valley
www.latimes.com
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias said the enforcement operations led to a drop in school attendance and sparked student protests Friday.
Trump Wanted Minneapolis 15 Case To Be Another Prarieland, Instead, Twin Cities Rallied Behind Anti-Ice Activists
theintercept.com/2026/10/12/minneapolis-15-ice-protesters-prairieland-unions/
The mainstream of Minnesota’s left-of-center politics — including unions, the backbone of Democratic power — are behind the radical left.
cropped-cropped-bw_granger-sledge-headshot-1-180×180.jpg
Matt Sledge
October 12 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – JANUARY 23: Demonstrators participate in a rally and march during an "ICE Out” day of protest on January 23, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Community leaders, faith leaders and labor unions have urged Minnesotans to participate in what they are calling a "day of action" as local businesses are expected to close during a statewide general strike held in protest against immigration enforcement operations in the region. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Demonstrators rally and march during an “ICE Out” day of protest on Jan. 23, 2026, in Minneapolis. Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images
AS THE TRUMP administration unveiled an indictment earlier this year against 15 anti-ICE activists, many of whom identify as radicals, for purportedly tormenting federal agents last winter, a top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official took the podium.
There were two types of protests, said Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge Michael McCarthy, who oversaw the ICE agents in a St. Paul, Minnesota, field office who conducted the investigation.
“Peaceful protest is a protected right, and a cornerstone of our democracy,” said McCarthy. “When protest turns into rioting, violence or criminal activity, it becomes unlawful and it will not be tolerated.”
McCarthy’s comments stood in stark contrast with ICE’s record in Minneapolis, where a federal judge had been forced to issue an injunctionto stop federal agents from pepper-spraying and arresting peaceful protesters during their enforcement blitz, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.
Legal experts, too, had criticisms of the indictment: The Justice Department, one pointed out, had concocted a federal conspiracy out of what would normally be misdemeanor charges.
Secret ICE Agent Tried to “Entice” Minneapolis Activists Into Confrontational Tactics
In the months since, criticisms of the case have only grown louder. Court filings revealed that McCarthy’s agents secretly infiltrated groups that preach nonviolence, including labor unions and nonprofits. They also wielded subpoenas in a fruitless hunt for financiers of “domestic terrorism,” taking a cue from President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 labeling swaths of the far left as terrorists.
The Trump administration has won some success in going after left-wing protesters under NSPM-7, but the Minneapolis case is proving to be more challenging.
In other prosecutions targeting activists, like the Prairieland case in Texas, mainstream groups have shied away from supporting the defendants. In Minnesota, though, groups once wary of being associated with the 15 defendants, many of whom are self-described anarchists, have rallied to their side.
Powerful labor unions that make up the backbone of the state’s progressive movement have raised funds on behalf of the defendants, incensed at the infiltration from federal undercover agents. Rather than dividing and conquering the left, the case has united it.
“They’re trying to split the movement and absolutely failing.”
Supporters of the defendants, who have collectively come to be known as the Minneapolis or Minnesota 15, recently packed a bowling alley for a fundraiser. On October 3, hundreds of labor union members marched through downtown Minneapolis, demanding that the charges against the activists be dropped.
Meanwhile, the defendants themselves have so far mounted a unified, joint defense; none of them have taken a plea deal.
“They’re trying to split the movement and absolutely failing,” said Emmett James Doyle, a defendant in the case. “There’s been just complete solidarity behind us from basically every sector of Twin Cities life.”
Doyle’s ruddy face and wild beard would have been at home in Big Bill Haywood’s Industrial Workers of the World a century ago. By day he’s a union carpenter, by night he plucks a banjo and sings songs about America’s radical past.
Federal prosecutors allege that he brought those songs to life on the streets of Minneapolis.
In a 94-page indictment, prosecutors claim that Doyle and the other 14 defendants were members or associates of a group called Direct Action Minnesota that “infiltrated and exploited lawful protests” to target ICE.
Prosecutors painted a dark picture of DAMN. Their tactics allegedly included blocking access to a federal building used by ICE with disabled cars or trailers, bringing shields and gas masks to protests, and, in one instance, following an ICE agent across state lines to his home in Wisconsin.
Government attorneys also leaned heavily on the defendants’ comments to each other in private messages about their frustration with more mainstream protesters and the need for “militant” action.
Despite the prosecutors’ claims about rioting and violence at the June press conference, however, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, was unable to identify injuries to federal officers when reporters pressed him.
There are committed anarchists among the defendants charged in the indictment, several defendants told The Intercept, but there was little difference between what they did and what thousands of Minneapolis residents did during the federal immigration crackdown.
Ordinary Minnesotans walked frigid streets with whistles dangling from their necks to alert their neighbors about ICE raids. They sent license plate numbers of federal vehicles to Signal group chats. Members of rapid-response networks trailed suspected agents in their cars.
Trump’s War on America
The indictment is replete with examples of protesters trailing agents in vehicles, a tactic known as “commuting.” Yet that was a tactic so widely employed by rapid-response groups in Minneapolis that it was even adopted by a congressional candidate in a suburban district who recently won his Democratic primary.
“I think there are people in the government who really do believe that there is like a small cabal of people who are fomenting all the dissent, and if you get rid of them, that everyone will be quiet,” Doyle said. “And that’s fundamentally wrong.”
Doyle, like the four other defendants interviewed by The Intercept, declined to discuss the specific allegations in the indictment, citing advice from his attorney.
“They’re just trying to find people to make examples of.”
Still, another defendant, Treasure Thoreson, was adamant that none of the defendants ever used violence. Thoreson is a special education teacher whose elementary school’s lanyard was still dangling from her neck during a recent interview. She believes the group was targeted because of its radical views.
“They clearly had people that they had identified as problematic in some way and have been trying to tie these people to leading the resistance,” Thoreson said. “They can’t indict 100,000 people, so really, they’re just trying to find people to make examples of.”
Thoreson said she has received steady support from her teachers union since the indictment.
She and many other defendants believe the charges against them are a way of attacking Minnesota’s powerful labor movement. By the count of defendants who spoke to The Intercept, at least 11 of the 15 have been involved in union organizing.
How Did the Feds Get Into Anti-ICE Activists’ Signal Messages?
The internal Homeland Security Investigations files unearthed by the defense team lend credibility to this theory. Undercover agents attended an organizing meeting at the United Labor Centre, a building that houses multiple unions. HSI, the investigative wing of ICE, also subpoenaed the financial records of the SEIU and the Communications Workers of America as part of an overlapping probe into “domestic terror financing.”
Several defendants interviewed by The Intercept were amused at the idea that they were receiving funding from mainstream organizations. They have long lobbed critiques at the labor movement’s institutional core from its fringes.
After some initial hesitance, unions and nonprofit groups responded in force to the case. Days after the indictment, some labor groups signedonto a joint statement denouncing the charges. After a court filing from the defendants revealed the subpoenas of the unions’ financing, more labor organizations raised their voices.
“Generally speaking, the labor movement is awfully conservative — too conservative — on issues like this, and can sometimes be scared out of solidarity with people who are fighting back,” said Kieran Knutson, the president of CWA Local 7250 in Minneapolis.
More unions rallied, Knutson said, as it became clear that prosecutors could not point to examples of physical harm, as union locals pressured statewide organizations, and as the defendants themselves articulated why the case was important.
“These are active people in the labor movement, and I think in many ways people see them as an expression of the movement as a whole,” Knutson said. “And these charges were an attack on the movement as a whole.”
Knutson said he knows the value of solidarity: In 1993, he was chargedwith assaulting a man wearing neo-Nazi patches during an antiracist demonstration on the University of Minnesota campus, according to news reports from the time. He was acquitted with the help of attorney Keith Ellison, who later went on to win election as the state’s attorney general.
“I know what it’s like to have the weight of the charges just hanging over you,” Knutson said.
The leading candidate in the Hennepin County Attorney race, state Rep. Cedrick Frazier, who also works as a lawyer for labor union Education Minnesota, told The Intercept in a recent interview that the charges should be dismissed.
“I think they’re trying to, for lack of a better word, ‘Trump’ up some charges to continue his pursuit of retribution against Minnesota,” said Frazier. “I mean, look, they don’t like labor groups.”
A broad coalition of labor groups including the state AFL-CIO endorsed an October 3 rally and march in support of the defendants, another sign that skepticism of the case has gone mainstream.
Hundreds of janitors, teachers, public employees, and hospitality workers joined the march, said Isaac Sant, a defendant and longtime labor organizer. He said seeing them on the streets was “humbling.”
Sant recently joined defendants from other cases with political overtones, including Prairieland, to form what they are dubbing the NSPM-7 Defendants Union.
“I can only speak for myself, but I don’t have any problem linking my case to the Prairieland cases. I think what happened to them was a travesty and a miscarriage of justice,” Sant said. “I think it’s very important that we stand in solidarity with people who are in that position, and especially with people who are getting railroaded even worse than we are.”
theintercept.com
The mainstream of Minnesota’s left-of-center politics — including unions, the backbone of Democratic power — are behind the Minneapolis 15.