Latest news with #LosAngelesCityCouncil
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. City Council bans N-word and C-word at meetings
Speakers at Los Angeles City Council meetings will be banned from using the N-word and the C-word, the council decided Wednesday. The ban comes after years of tirades by a few speakers who attack officials' weight, sexual orientation or gender and who sometimes use racial slurs. Speakers will now receive a warning for using either word — or any variation of the word. If they continue with the offensive language, they will be removed from the room and possibly banned from future meetings. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is Black, has said that the use of the words during public comment has discouraged people from coming to meetings. 'It is language that, anywhere outside this building where there aren't four armed guards, would get you hurt if you said these things in public,' he said earlier this year. The council's decision to ban the words could be challenged in court, with some legal scholars saying it could violate speakers' 1st Amendment free speech rights. In 2014, the city paid $215,000 to a Black man who was ejected from a meeting for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood and a T-shirt with the N-word on it. Attorney Wayne Spindler, who often uses offensive language at council meetings, said Wednesday that he plans to sue the city over the ban. He said he will read Tupac Shakur lyrics, including offensive curse words, until he is banned from a meeting. 'I'm going to file my $400-million lawsuit that I already have prepared and ready to file. If you want to make me the next millionaire, vote yes,' he said during public comment Wednesday. Spindler was arrested in 2016 after submitting a public comment card showing a burning cross and a man hanging from a tree. On the card, he also wrote 'Herb = [N-word],' referring to Herb Wesson, the council president at the time, who is Black. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Spindler. Armando Herman, who attended the City Council vote Wednesday, is also a frequent offender. At a City Council meeting earlier this month, Herman said the council was trying to suppress his speech, repeatedly referring to himself as a white N-word. He also used the C-word to describe an official in the room. In 2023, a judge barred Herman from attending in person any public meetings at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, where the L.A. County supervisors meet, after he allegedly sent sexually suggestive emails to four female supervisors. He denied sending the emails. Numerous other members of the public have spoken against the new rule, saying it violates their freedom of speech. 'You're so weak you have to curb freedom of speech for everyone, and you know this is going to bring lawsuits,' said Stacey Segarra-Bohlinger, a member of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council who often punctuates her remarks with singing, at the council meeting earlier this month. 'This is an attack on free speech,' she added.
Politico
23-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
LA businesses open new front in battle with unions, target receipts tax
Los Angeles is one of only a handful of California cities, including San Francisco and Beverly Hills, to have a gross receipts tax on its books. The rate businesses pay varies by sector. The initiative is the latest salvo in a monthslong battle between business and labor that has focused on the city's minimum wage. In late May, the Los Angeles City Council approved a union-backed law to raise the minimum wage for tourism industry workers to $30 per hour by 2028, when Los Angeles is scheduled to host the Olympics. Within days of that law being signed, a coalition of airline and hospitality industry companies filed a referendum to repeal the law. The L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, backed by Delta and United Airlines as well as the American Hotel and Lodging Association, filed signatures late last month and is now waiting for word from the city clerk's office about whether it has qualified for the ballot. Meanwhile, Unite Here Local 11, which represents many of the hospitality workers who stand to benefit from the new minimum wage law, went on offense against the business interests behind the referendum. The group filed four initiative proposals last month: One would raise the minimum wage for all workers in the city to $30 per hour by July 2028, while others would require a public vote on the construction of large hotels, significant hotel expansions and 'event centers' like sports stadiums and impose new taxes and penalties on companies whose CEOs are paid more than 100 times what their median employee receives. Backers of the gross receipts tax repeal measure, who include leaders of local chambers of commerce and other business organizations, see it as a way to push back against the new minimum wage law and Unite Here's initiative proposals, which business leaders say will hobble economic activity at a pivotal time. The new minimum wage 'has an impact on every business,' said Stuart Waldman, one of the initiative's proponents and president of the Valley Industry & Commerce Association. 'Businesses are leaving in droves,' he added. 'They get to see what the cost is in Burbank. They get to see what the cost is in Santa Clarita. They get to see what the cost for doing business is in Texas. Not everyone can move out of California, but everyone can move out of L.A.' After the city clerk approves the initiative for circulation, the campaign will need to gather approximately 140,000 signatures within 120 days. The initiative could appear on the ballot as early as June 2026.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Stages Another Boffo Reality TV Episode In LA Park
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. The Apprentice isn't the only, or even the best, prism with which to view Donald Trump's approach to politics, but it is an essential one. Trump is always putting on a show in which he will always be, if not the hero, then at least the strong protagonist, and he needs villains. Lots and lots of villains to vanquish. But not just any villains. He needs villains whose defeat touches the deepest, darkest parts of the American psyche. And so the villains he picks often wind up being people of color, women and foreigners, and what they may lack in actual villainy he makes up for by casting them as derangedly violent or sexually deviant or otherwise sinister in comic book ways. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — a Black woman — fits the bill for Trump, and it appears that she will have a recurring role in Trump's rogue gallery. Yesterday, in a made-for-Fox-News stunt, heavily armed federal immigration agents swept through Los Angeles' MacArthur Park in a dramatic but mostly ineffectual set-piece that seemed designed more to antagonize locals than to serve any legitimate law enforcement purpose. On cue, Bass rushed to the park and later denounced the maneuver at a press conference. 'What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,' Bass lamented. Calling it a stunt doesn't make it any less threatening or alarming, but it does suggest a need to be self-aware about getting caught up in the Trump-created drama and playing to the type he has cast. That's easier for the rest of us than for local elected Democrats or others unwillingly caught in one of Trump's reality TV episodes, especially those who are powerless and vulnerable. The president of the Los Angeles City Council, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, understood the game, noting wryly: 'If you want to film in L.A., you should apply for a film permit like everybody else.' In preserving your self-awareness, it helps to remember your audience. Trump is playing to his own with a well-worn script that has the rough contours of a pro-wrestling bit. Leading the 'raid' of the park was Gregory Bovino, a Customs and Border Protection official who played the boastful tough guy with a puffed-out chest. 'Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon,' Bovino told a Fox News reporter. 'We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.' And then there is the right-wing propaganda machine. It gobbles up the Trump-generated content and eggs it on, as here where a host questions Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin about why Bass hasn't been arrested: Of course, the Trump administration already arrested Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) when she attempted to conduct oversight at a detention facility in New Jersey. Like Bass, McIver is a Black woman. Garrett Graff, on the One, Big Beautiful Bill and its insane funding level for immigration enforcement: 'As someone who has covered federal law enforcement for the last two decades and has spent recent years writing both about the state of democracy today and authoring history books about the fall of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, it's hard not to look at the new legislation and fear, most of all, how we're turbo-charging an increasingly lawless regime of immigration enforcement and adding superpowers to America's newly masked secret police.' My report from court yesterday on the U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis efforts to pin down the Trump administration on what it intends to do next to Kilmar Abrego Garcia. She ordered the Trump administration to produce a witness of its choice for a hearing Thursday. El Salvador told a United Nations body that the detainees shipped to CECOT by the Trump administration remain the 'jurisdiction and legal responsibility' of the United States. Lawyers for the detainees filed a UN document, which reported El Salvador's position, in the original Alien Enemies Act case in DC. Wisconsin state judge Hannah Dugan lost her motion to dismiss the criminal charges against her for allegedly interfering with an immigration enforcement operation in her courthouse. She can appeal the magistrate's ruling to a district judge. Jason Zengerle: The Ruthless Ambition of Stephen Miller Michael Feinberg, the senior FBI agent targeted by the Trump administration for his personal friendship with Peter Strzok, recounts his decision to resign after learning from his supervisor that his career would be intentionally stalled.
Los Angeles Times
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Some tenants are evicted to make way for renovations. Here's how L.A. plans to curb that
The Los Angeles City Council is inching closer to permanently protecting renters from 'renovictions.' On July 1, the City Council unanimously voted to amend a rule that granted landlords the ability to evict tenants in order to take on a substantial remodel or renovation of their property. Under the current 'just cause' ordinance, a substantial remodel that would allow a landlord to evict tenants included structural, mechanical or plumbing work. The approved amendment will prevent landlords from using a substantial remodel as a legal reason to evict their tenants, unless they get a Government Agency Order. A Government Agency Order happens when a local government agency, including the Los Angeles Housing Department, Los Angeles Building and Safety, the Los Angeles County Health Department or the Los Angeles Fire Department, gives a landlord an order to vacate or abate a unit based on the need to address housing code violations. Tenant rights groups say some landlords will use a renovation as an excuse to evict tenants, only to charge higher rents to a whole new set of tenants after the renovation. This is called a 'renoviction.' 'To make it clear, what we're doing today is we're denying renovictions, but we're also creating a clear pathway to renovations that works for both tenants and the landlords,' said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, an advocate of the proposed policy whose district includes Canoga Park, Reseda, Tarzana and Woodland Hills. The decision comes four months after the council voted in favor of an interim ordinance with the same goal: preventing landlords from using 'just cause' to evict tenants when implementing a remodel. The temporary protection lasts only until Aug. 1 because the city has been exploring permanent legislation for several months. In addition to the amendment, the city has instructed the Los Angeles Housing Department and the city attorney to create rules for relocation during the remodel and amend penalties for violators of the proposed ordinance. 'We want to have a clear pathway for legitimate renovations not renovictions,' Blumenfield said. In 90 days, the Los Angeles Housing Department will bring forth a proposal to the City Council to consider which will include what is required of a landlord if a tenant must be relocated during a remodel. The proposal will provide rules for: The proposal will also include an updated penalty for violators of three times compensatory damages including mental or emotional distress, reasonable attorney's fees and civil penalties of up to $10,000 but not less then $2,000 per violation, according to the city's report. Additional penalties could be added per violation if a tenant is older than 65 or is disabled.
Mint
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Federal troops' show of force at MacArthur Park, Los Angeles; Mayor calls it a 'political stunt'
A number of federal officers in tactical gear, backed by 90 California National Guard members and a convoy of 17 Humvees, stormed Los Angeles' MacArthur Park on Monday (July 7) in a surprise immigration operation that left residents stunned and officials outraged. For roughly an hour, troops swept through the mostly empty park — located in a dense immigrant neighborhood west of downtown — in what officials described as a show of protection for immigration enforcement agents. It remains unclear if any arrests were made. 'This morning looked like a staging for a TikTok video,' said Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson. 'If Border Patrol wants to film in LA, you should apply for a film permit like everybody else — and stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody.' Mayor Karen Bass condemned the show of force as 'a political stunt,' visibly shaken as she described the impact on families in the park. 'What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,' Bass said. 'The world needs to see the troop formation on horses walking through the park… where the children play.' She added that a frightened 8-year-old boy attending a nearby day camp told her he feared ICE agents. The raid took place in a neighborhood long known for its vibrant immigrant community — dubbed by officials as the 'Ellis Island of the West Coast' for its concentration of Mexican, Central American, and Asian families. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes the park, said the area was targeted 'precisely because of who lives there and what it represents.' Health outreach workers reported being confronted at gunpoint by federal officers while working with homeless residents. Vendors and locals fled the area as helicopters circled overhead and mounted units swept soccer fields. 'It's terror and, you know, it's ripping the heart and soul out of Los Angeles,' said Betsy Bolte, a nearby resident who rushed to the scene. 'I am still in shock, disbelief, and so angry and terrified and heartbroken.' President Donald Trump, who deployed thousands of troops and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles last month, has accelerated efforts to fulfill his pledge of mass deportations. Monday's raid follows a wave of immigration arrests and a hardline stance against so-called 'sanctuary cities.' 'This is not about going after dangerous criminals,' said California Governor Gavin Newsom. 'This is about destroying the fabric of this state.' Newsom called the military deployment a 'spectacle' that undermines California's values and autonomy. Legal advocates say the raid felt more like a media stunt than a serious enforcement action. 'This was a reality TV spectacle much more so than an actual enforcement operation,' said Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. 'The ghost town-ification of LA is haunting, to say the very least.' Federal officials claimed the troops were there to protect immigration officers from potential unrest, not to make arrests — though they admitted the operation might 'look like' a military maneuver.
