Politics

Jesse Ceja, left, and his grandfather Paulo Torres, 69, stand on Emden Street in Wilmington near their home adjacent to the Phillips 66 refinery. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) With President Trump in the Oval Office, California officials are bracing for the possibility that the new administration will undermine the state’s landmark policies on … Read more

Capping eight years of contentious debate, the Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation Wednesday to preserve 6.3 million more acres of the California desert, an action that virtually assures the sweeping environmental measure of becoming law this year. The California Desert Protection Act would create 74 wilderness areas and three new national parks, including the 1.2-million-acre Mojave … Read more

Somerston Estate Winery & Vineyards in St. Helena Calif., seen above on Sept. 30, 2020, was among the many wineries that did not produce a 2020 vintage due to the wildfire season. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) Wine grapes damaged by smoke are among the crops covered under a $28.6-billion disaster assistance bill for … Read more

Soybeans are harvested near Wamego, Kan. The Biden administration said Wednesday it was banning the use on food crops of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has been linked to potential brain damage in children. (Associated Press) The Biden administration said Wednesday it was banning the application of chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide long targeted by environmentalists, … Read more

Krissy Shields sits with her daughter after assembling a flower display in support of abortion rights Friday outside the Supreme Court. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) The Supreme Court on Friday ruled for the Biden administration to preserve legal access in most of the nation to an abortion pill that is part of the … Read more

Color Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s new congressional district green. As in money, lots of it. From the Gold Coast of Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills above Studio City, the newly drawn 29th Congressional District cuts a swath across some of the richest real estate–and the most generous political givers–in the United States. It’s every … Read more

Ally Bolour, an immigration attorney, says extra visa expenses have made some clients delay planned expansions to the U.S. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) When his entertainment industry clients want to hire foreign actors for a film shoot, Los Angeles immigration attorney Ally Bolour has to time the visa filings carefully, to secure … Read more

When John Edwards was a lad of 11 and a teacher assigned an essay on career aims, he wrote “Why I Want to be a Lawyer” — a lofty ambition for the son of a millworker growing up in a tiny North Carolina town. Now Edwards wants to be president. And the 20 years he … Read more

A woman walks in a cemetery in Kabul, Afghanistan. Civilian casualties in the Afghan war rose 23% in the first half of this year, the United Nations reported. (Shah Marai / AFP/Getty Images) The United Nations mission in Afghanistan reported recently that U.S. airstrikes and Afghan security forces killed more civilians in the first half … Read more

Feels bad, man. Denizens of the darker corners of the Internet turned an innocent frog comic into a hate symbol of the “deplorable” alt-right.  “Pepe the Frog” first appeared in 2005 in the comic “Boy’s Life” by artist and illustrator Matt Furie. The comics depict Pepe and his anthropomorphized animal friends behaving like stereotypical post-college bros: playing … Read more