Mendocino County Today: Thursday 9/25/2025

Warm | Richard Gardiner | Richard Found | Community Priorities | Open-Carry Drinks | CEO Report | Kai Poma | Coop Trouble | Disaster Preparedness | Drum Circle | AVFD 70th | Public Survey | Meeks Celebration | Yesterday's Catch | September Rain | Green Apple | Cricket Friendly | Cut Rates | Giant Cockroaches | Right-Wing Hypocrisy | Vindictive Prosecution | Welcome Democrats | Partisan Rhetoric | Over With | Best Friends | Warming Up | Hippie Days | Giants Win | Wrigley Field | Homelessness Dropping | Adhering | Hearings Postponed | Apostrophes | Forest Service | Climate Promises | Backyard Burial | Gender Vote | Cookie Monster | September 1939 | Greek Resistance | Lead Stories | Patriot Worthy | Gotta Wonder | Dallas Shooting | NYC 1955 | Shared Wall | Stormy Sky

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WARM AND DRY weather will persist this week. Dry northerly flow will clear out most of the coastal stratus this week, allowing for better duration of coastal sunshine. Rain chances arrive late Sunday, with increasing probability for widespread rainfall through early next week. The opportunity for additional rainfall may continue through mid next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A balmy 57F with overcast skies this Thursday morning on the coast. Mixed skies today then a mostly sunny weekend. Rain arrives with feeling Sunday night with a system dropping down from the northwest lasting into Wednesday morning. Maybe an inch total, we'll see?

ED NOTE: This fine witticism in Mr. Dunlap’s Tuesday weather report should not go without further notice: “The stratus quo likely to return after that.”

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RICHARD GARDINER MD
(November 23, 1940-September 12, 2025)

Dr. Gardiner was named a Fellow of the American College of Radiology. He completed a second residency and then moved to California as a psychiatrist in private practice in 1989, on staff at Adventist Health Hospital, and as a consultant at Mendocino County Jail in Ukiah. He served as an oral board certification examiner and earned a Distinguished Life Fellowship in Psychiatry. Richard cared deeply about every patient; he loved practicing and teaching psychiatry. Richard was a delegate to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He served on the Board of the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research. He volunteered with the Mendocino County AIDS Volunteer Network and the Potter Valley Community Health Clinic. He loved wordplay, took all jobs seriously, practiced Spanish, played chess, and enjoyed opera. Richard dearly loved and was loved by his family. He was predeceased by his father and mother, Eli and Gertrude Gardiner; and his brother and sister-in-law, Peter and Rockie Gardiner. He is survived by wife of thirty-six years and the love of his life, Pattie Field Gardiner; sister and brother-in-law, Nancy and David Milstein; children Jay DiMaggio, Viveca Gardiner (partner David Gallo), Tracy Field (husband Barry Watkins), and Carita Gardiner (husband Chris Oostenink); and grandchildren Annika and Eden Oostenink, and Michael (wife Claire) and Lauren Dragas.

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UPDATE: Richard has been found and has returned home safely. Thank you to everyone who shared, reached out, and kept him in your thoughts.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY LEADERSHIP [sic] FOCUSES ON PUBLIC SAFETY, EMERGENCY READINESS, AND HEALTH PROGRAMS

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors met on September 9 and 10, 2025, to address key community priorities, including public safety, wildfire preparedness, and health services. Over the two meetings, the Board moved forward on critical fire mitigation projects, strengthened emergency operations planning, and launched the first in a three-part workshop series exploring state and federal health policy changes and their impact on Mendocino County.

At its September 9 meeting, the Board took several important actions to enhance community safety and wildfire readiness:

Fire Mitigation in Hopland – Approved an application to CAL FIRE for a Shaded Fuel Break project in the Hopland area, continuing efforts to reduce wildfire risk and protect residents.

Radio Communication Support – Authorized loaning County-owned radio equipment to the Mendocino County Fire Chiefs Association to improve emergency response coordination.

Emergency Preparedness – Adopted the Mendocino County Operational Area Emergency Operations Plan, ensuring a coordinated and effective response to emergencies and disasters across the County.

On September 10, CEO Darcie Antle led an informative health summit workshop, the first in a three-part series, focused on changes in State and Federal health policies and their impact on services, programs, and access in Mendocino County.

The workshop was presented in collaboration with the Executive Office, Department of Social Services, Public Health, Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, and community healthcare partners, including Adventist Health, Mendocino Coast Clinic, Mendocino Community Health Clinics, and Partnership HealthPlan of California.

Community members are encouraged to view the full presentation online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwDJP5YYa7U

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SARAH STIERCH: Fort Bragg approved a pilot “entertainment zone” downtown that could allow open-carry drinks at special events. If the state signs off, it’ll be the first city on the North Coast with one.

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CEO ANTLE’S OTHER CEO REPORT

by Mark Scaramella

On Tuesday, we wrote that Supervisor John Haschak had said that he read something in CEO Darcie Antle’s CEO report about the County not meeting its attrition/cost savings targets that we had not found in the CEO Report. Then on Wednesday, we received a second CEO report for September. (CEO Antle usually prepares one CEO report per month.) In this special one-day-later second report we did find the Budget remarks from CEO Antle that Haschak was probably referring to.

They are disturbing:

Antle: “To balance the Fiscal Year 25/26 Budget, $6 million dollars in anticipated attrition savings was assigned to each County department…”

Bad wording, Antle probably means a $6 million total estimated cut was apportioned to the departments. Attrition, meaning leaving positions vacant that were made randomly vacant by staff departures for whatever reason.

Antle: “…This attrition savings was based on a salary and benefit calculation and the average turnover rate across all County General Fund departments…”

We said at the time that the calculation by Antle and her staff was not only dumb (no thought was given to which departments, no distinction was made between general fund and non-general fund departments, no attempt was made to establish key positions that were important to be retained, etc.), but the assumptions made were ridiculous and appeared to be backed into by starting the CEO’s $6 million estimated budget gap, not on a realistic staff turnover rate. Nevertheless Antle and the Supervisors pretended it was a legit target because it made the budget look balanced. But in reality, it just meant postponing the inevitable, again.

Antle: “…The CEO’s Office has been monitoring the progress made toward realizing the $6 million attrition savings and has determined that the budget is on track to save approximately half of the $6 million savings projected…”

They are not “on-track” for anything. The entire process is random and no effort is being made to save money; they’re just sitting back and watching who quits. They are lagging well behind their own dumb assumption. Back in May, the CEO’s office had promised to deliver monthly progress reports so that we could all see how the “Strategic Hiring Process” was going. Now more than four months later, all the CEO provides is an unverifiable claim that the (ridiculously calculated) $6 million is not expected to be reached by “attrition.”

Antle: “…The CEO’s Office recommends the County continue to follow the Strategic Hiring Plan and existing hiring freeze to avoid losing anticipated savings and to realize further savings over the course of the 25/26 Fiscal Year. The CEO Budget team will continue to monitor and provide regular status reports through the CEO and Quarterly Budget Reports…”

They did not “lose savings.” There were no savings to be “lost.” There were simply fewer people quitting than they wrongly assumed. Now the formerly promised “monthly” vacancy reports have become “regular” and/or “quarterly” vacancy reports, which means whenever the CEO feels like it, if at all. We have yet to see even one. The CEO also suggests that the path forward is to follow the hiring freeze. But already this year several departments have reported that they have hired new staff without CEO or board review or approval.

Antle: “… Fiscal Year 24/25 Non-Departmental revenue [i.e.,. property, sales and bed tax] is expected to come in higher than originally projected, with final actuals pending Auditor year-end close. The 1st Quarter Report for FY25/26 will include information on the potential impacts of the increased revenue and CEO recommendations for use of the potential funds…”

“Use of the potential funds”? Since there’s no monthly budget reporting of expenses or revenues, whatever the CEO and Auditor determine the close out to be will come as a surprise to the Supervisors, so they will have no ability to consider in advance how to use any “potential funds.” Apparently the CEO thinks that “higher than originally projected” means a significant portion of the budget deficit will be covered. We doubt it.

Antle: “…The CEO’s Office will be working with County Departments starting at 1st Quarter to track funding sources more accurately for each County employee…”

“Will be”? September 30 is the end of the “1st Quarter.” Funding sources are not connected to “each County employee.” They are allocated to departments to cover departmental salary expenses.

Antle: “…This improved fund accounting will help in understanding which funding streams fund which positions and create greater opportunities for utilization of grant and reimbursement funding…”

Pure hot air. By using their random vacancy approach, there’s no point in trying to connect funding to positions. Fund accounting improvements, if there are any, will do nothing to reduce the looming deficit. As long as there’s no budget reporting we all have to take the CEO’s highly dubious word that the budget gap will be significantly reduced.

Meanwhile, the Board seems stuck in their zero sum budget game with the only significant cost savings idea being mentioned being resignations and layoffs, with no consideration given to revenue enhancement or the much larger range of options the Board and CEO considered back in 2010 when comparable budget shortfalls had to be managed. But back then Mendo had a more competent Board and CEO who, flawed as they may have been, did the hard and unpopular work of balancing the budget.

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COOP IS IN TROUBLE

Editor,

Ever tried to attend a board meeting of the Ukiah Natural Foods store? Then you know how hard it is to jump through all the hoops. Ever tried to read the minutes of those board meetings? Then you know how hard it is to make sense of the cryptic shorthand.* Have you read the annual report earlier this year? Then you know the Coop is in trouble, and it is time to end the business-as-usual complacency of the board and management.

In June, I offered the board some suggestions for their “Strategic Planning”, an agenda item that has been postponed time and again. For example, co-op membership may be outdated and no longer serve its intended purpose. The Co-op should survey members how they feel about the costs vs. benefits of membership. Members did not receive a “patronage dividend” this year. Membership and sales have been stagnant while labor costs have been increasing over the years. Can the Co-op afford 106 employees? The store may have reached its optimum size but needs to control labor costs to be sustainable. The Co-op could save money by giving the collected funds of the “Round-up at the Register” and the other Community Donation Programs to the Community Foundation to be used for any of the donor-advised funds of the Co-op’s choice.

Upon my recent follow-up inquiry, the board’s response was: Thank you, but no thank you, not now.

So it’s time for you to get involved. Insist that a schedule of monthly board meetings be displayed prominently in the store and online. If it is a Zoom meeting, insist that the link be posted online, as other organizations do. Demand that at least one meeting per quarter is in-person, as promised, with a rotating meeting place. Insist that you have direct access to the board president and the new manager. Demand more transparency in the decision making and the finances.

Let them know your ideas and concerns, whether you are a member or just a frequent shopper. Do you like your co-op to look like Whole Foods (with the accompanying slogan Whole Paycheck)? Or would you like to see more affordable bulk foods and local produce? It’s high time for Strategic Planning so that we have a sustainable co-op for the future.

*To find the minutes, go to the website ukiahcoop.com, then click the heading “Play a Part”, then “Board of Directors” and scroll down to “Board Minutes”.

Bruni Kobbe

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CALLING ALL MYSTICS

Full Moon Drum Circle is on Oct. 5 at Pudding Creek Beach

The October Full Moon Drum Circle will be on Sunday, October 5th at 5 PM at Pudding Creek Beach in north Fort Bragg.

We have been Drumming at Pudding Creek Beach on most of the Full Moons for about 3 years.

Come drum with us on the evening of October 5th. We’ll gather in the sand just to the east of the Trestle. Everyone is welcome, and the event is FREE. We’ll start about 5:00 PM and continue till about 7:00 PM. The sun will set and the moon will rise at about 6:55 PM.

Bring drums, shakers, tambourines, bells, washboards, pots and pans. We will have a few extra drums. No experience is necessary.

Bring a friend and you may want to bring a chair.

For more information, contact Sandy at 707 235-9080 or at [email protected]

We are also looking to buy or have donated a few extra drums, especially Bongos, Djembes, or Doumbeks. If you have one or two you’d like to sell or donate, contact us.

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70TH ANNIVERSARY OF AV FIRE AND AMBULANCE, OCTOBER 18, 2025

Anderson Valley Fire Department would like to invite you to our 70th Anniversary celebration coming up on October 18th, 1pm to 4pm at the Anderson Valley Brewery at 17700 Boonville Rd (intersection with Highway 128), Boonville, CA 95415.

This is a kids and family friendly event, There will be free food and your first beer is on us! Designated drivers get a free 70th anniversary baseball cap. There will be live music, a bounce house, and some limited swag. Bring a chair, a good story, and spend the afternoon in good company as we celebrate 70 years of fire and ambulance service!

We hope to see you there!

Andres Avila

Executive Director / Fire Chief

Anderson Valley Community Services District / Fire Dept.

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THE COUNTY OF MENDOCINO IS LOOKING FOR YOUR INPUT ON THE PUBLIC SURVEY FOR THE COUNTY HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN

(As for the rest of the County’s business: not interested.)

The County of Mendocino wants your feedback on the Hazard Mitigation Plan update. Please share your thoughts through our public survey. This plan identifies risks from natural hazards and finds ways to reduce them. It also ensures the county, and its communities remain eligible for federal mitigation grant funding. Residents can share their thoughts on hazard risk and recommend ways to reduce our community’s vulnerability to hazards. Your input will be shared with the Core Planning Team to guide the update.

The update will cover the following hazards:

• Coastal Hazards: Coastal Flooding, Sea-Level Rise, and Erosion
• Dam and levee incident
• Drought
• Earthquake
• Extreme cold or freeze
• Extreme heat
• Floods
• Landslides, Rock Falls, & Debris Flows
• Severe storms
• Tsunamis
• Wildfire

This plan covers all of Mendocino County, including the unincorporated county and the cities of Fort Bragg, Point Arena, Ukiah, and Willits. It also includes some special districts, including the Covelo Fire Protection District, the Mendocino County Office of Education, the Noyo Harbor District, and Redwood Coast Fire.

The survey will be open September 19 – October 19, 2025

The survey can be accessed at the following website: https://bit.ly/MendoHMP

For more information, contact the Office of Emergency Services at 707-234-6398 or [email protected]

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, September 24, 2025

CELESTINO GUTIERREZ-CRUZ, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ILIJAH NELSON, 38, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, parole violation.

MARISOL RODRIGUEZ, 44, Covelo. Kidnapping, assault with firearm, carjacking.

LEE RUPERT, 50, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

LILLIAN SAYAD, 21, Willits. Failure to appear.

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SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN

lyrics by Al Dubin (1937)

The leaves of brown
Came tumbling down, remember
In September
In the rain

The sun went out just like a dying ember
That September
In the rain

To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed
To play a sweet refrain

Though spring is here
To me, it's still September
Ooh, that September
In the rain

To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed to play a sweet refrain

Though spring is here
To me it's still September
That September
In the rain
I said that September
In the rain

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YORKVILLE BIBLIOPHILE, BOB SITES, AT GREEN APPLE

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A CRICKET-FRIENDLY ECOSYSTEM IS HEALTHIER FOR EVERYONE

Editor:

On evening walks in Santa Rosa, I can make eerily accurate predictions. Houses with large expanses of lawn will sit in silence. Yards with more diverse plantings, however, rock with cricket song. I am not a biologist, but apparently crickets are one indicator species for the health of an ecosystem. They act as decomposers, eat smaller insects, such as aphids, and serve as dinner for larger insects, birds and some mammals. A lack of crickets can signal that an ecosystem is in distress.

My guess is that lawns, being monocrops without nutritional value to insects, don’t appeal to crickets. The chemicals often used on them are likewise bad news for expressive Grylloidea and for other species, including humans. Evidence is clear that lawns have virtually no ecological benefits but do considerable harm by wasting water, destroying soil vitality and displacing native plants that feed insects we urgently need for a healthy planet.

Lawns are ecologically expensive — must crickets pay the price? As habitat destruction, climate change, pesticide use and other factors decimate insect populations, maybe more people should explore Santa Rosa Water’s generous “Cash for Grass” rebates.

Leah Halper

Santa Rosa

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CUT ELECTRICITY RATES

Editor,

The new extension to cap and trade is a critical step in keeping California on top of the energy revolution, but it stumbles in one key area — bringing every Californian along on the decarbonization journey.

The new bill gives money back to ratepayers in the form of a quarterly dividend, in part to offset the increase in PG&E bills from cap and trade. It’s good to give money back to consumers, but this structure fails to incentivize people to use more electricity instead of gas. This partly defeats the purpose of cap and trade.

The California grid has high renewable content, and we should be giving people cash to use it. If the California Public Utilities Commission can turn the quarterly dividend into a simple decrease in electricity rates, this will make the change easier to understand and more clearly help everyone to go electric, save money and reduce emissions.

Suzanne O’Meara

San Francisco

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HYPOCRISY IN THE RIGHT’S REACTION TO KIRK SLAYING

Editor:

Right-wing activists seeking to expose anyone making disparaging remarks about the Charlie Kirk killing reminded me of the attack on Rep. Nancy’s Pelosi’s husband in San Francisco in 2022. Kirk called for a “patriot” to bail out David DePape, who attacked Paul Pelosi. Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing commentator, tweeted that the attack on Pelosi was “fake,” so “ridiculous” he was laughing about it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claimed Paul Pelosi knew his attacker. Donald Trump called Nancy Pelosi “crazy” after the attack and asked sarcastically, “How’s her husband doing anyway, anybody know?” to a clapping, laughing Republican crowd in California. Republican Rep. Clay Higgins from Louisiana said that Pelosi’s attacker was “a male nudist hippie prostitute.” Rep. Devin Nunes claimed falsely the attacker was in his underwear. Rep. Claudia Tenney, Elon Musk, and Republican Royce White of Minnesota said Paul Pelosi was having a gay affair. The right-wing media crowd’s cries for revenge are hideously hypocritical.

Pam Walton

Santa Rosa

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TRUMP V. THOSE HE HATES

Here's a clear case of
Vindictive prosecution:
U.S. v. Comey.

— Jim Luther

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PARTISAN RHETORIC TURNS UP THE HEAT ON VIOLENCE

Editor:

We all remember Donald Trump’s reaction when a bullet nicked his ear. He raised his fist, and yelled, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The implication was that Democrats tried to kill him. Therefore, all Democrats are guilty by association, and MAGA should get even. He has used that incident as a rallying cry ever since, even though the person was a registered Republican and left no indication that he was part of any organization trying to kill Trump.

When Charlie Kirk was assassinated by some nut in Utah, Jesse Waters, on Fox News, growled, “They’re at war with us!” Before the suspect was caught, and while nothing was known about them, Waters implied to his followers that Democrats were guilty by association. The president’s reaction was to blame Democrats and suggest they should be investigated. Some in Congress declared all Democrats are terrorists. Free speech be damned.

Real leaders might want to lower the temperature of public discourse at a time like this, but we don’t have one. Utah is a Trump-friendly state. He hasn’t threatened to send troops to bring law and order there, but imagine if Kirk had been assassinated in California.

D.C. Galloway

Sebastopol

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START EVERY DAY OFF with a smile and get it over with.

— W.C. Fields

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A STATUE OF TRUMP AND EPSTEIN HOLDING HANDS Is Removed From the National Mall

The United States Park Police said it had removed the statue, which included lines from President Trump’s birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender.

by Ali Watkins

The two bronze-colored figures appeared mysteriously on Tuesday, rising a dozen feet tall on the National Mall: One, President Trump, the other, the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Best Friends Forever,” the title read on a plaque nestled below the two figures that held hands, frolicking before the U.S. Capitol.

By Wednesday morning, the statue had been removed by the United States Park Police. Its provenance was unknown, its creators anonymous. But its brief dalliance on the National Mall, hardly a mile from the White House, took aim at a lingering albatross for Mr. Trump: his friendship with Mr. Epstein.

(nytimes.com)

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FOREVER FREE

Listening to a LIVE Navarathri (Nine Nights of Worship to the Divine Mother) celebration on YouTube, from the Sivananda Ashram in Muni-ki-Reti, INDIA.

In 1973, Swami Swananda of the Berkeley Vedanta Society said that he wanted me to know what the Vedantic view of life is. He explained: “You are going down a slow moving river in your boat. What is happening in life is actually happening on the river’s banks. Remember that you will always have some space between you in your boat, and what is happening on the river’s banks!”

In 1993, Swami Satchidananda at the Yogaville Community in Buckingham, Virginia told me that you have to have an ego. Otherwise, you couldn’t do anything. He said that it all depends on what you do with the ego. He said that he gave his ego to God.

In 2025, while sitting in front of a public computer at the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library in Washington, D.C., Craig Louis Stehr identified with “that which is prior to consciousness”, and promptly left to go to The Yard House, to enjoy the German beers being served for Oktoberfest, plus a shot of the Glenlivet 14, and a pork chop with the bone in. He is warming up for his 76th birthday on September 28th. Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr

Wishing everybody the very best Autumn season. Follow your bliss, and be forever free.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

What have we done? Hippie days; we believed in something which has been replaced with our morphing into idiot consumers, always wanting more and trading all virtues and principles for stuff! It may be that the Christian revival of the current youth might turn this around but the forces that are enslaving us run deep. Hippies had cohesion. The current divisions are planned and fed by some dark force. Prepare your garden indeed! Oh and I haven’t heard from my brothers in many years, their egos dictating their silence. I don’t miss them, it’s just bizarre how in the same family unit, 3 people came out very differently.

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RAFAEL DEVERS' SPLASH HIT highlights Giants' rally against Cardinals

by Shayna Rubin

The San Francisco Giants are out of the postseason picture and a much more humbling quest is on the table. With a 4-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday at Oracle Park, the Giants are 78-81 and still have a shot to finish 81-81, a slight improvement from last year.

They’ll have to sweep the Colorado Rockies this weekend to avoid a losing season, but this is still San Francisco’s fourth consecutive year without a winning record. With three games remaining, individual goals and growth are the focus.

Rafael Devers hit his first Splash Hit as a Giant, tying the score 2-2 in the third inning and giving fans another peek at the level of power he may offer for the next eight seasons in San Francisco. Devers, who struck Sonny Gray’s 3-0 fastball in, hasn’t pulled the ball for power much at Oracle Park, but he hit the homer sky-high with a 43 degree launch angle.

“He hit it high so I didn’t know if it was going to clear the walkway out there,” Giants first baseman Bryce Eldridge said.

The only other time in his nine-year career Devers hit a home run with at least a 43-degree launch angle happened earlier this month in Denver: On that two-run home run off Kyle Freeland, he watched the baseball for a second too long for Freeland’s liking, igniting a heated scuffle with the Rockies.

Devers also played his 160th game of the year … with three left to play. Yes, the 28-year-old has a chance to become the first player to play 163 games since Minnesota Twins first baseman Justin Morneau in 2008. It’s a rare feat. Since the American League adopted a 162-game format in 1961 and the National League followed suit, only 32 players in baseball have played more than 162.

Tiebreakers and mid-season trades are usually the reason for the odd number. Devers played 73 games with the Boston Red Sox before the Giants traded for him on June 15, and he has played in all 87 games with San Francisco since the trade. He was left out of the starting lineup for a game in Milwaukee, but entered as a pinch hitter late.

Andrew Knizner’s two-RBI night ensured the win, including his first career triple on a line drive that skidded past center fielder Victor Scott II to the wall.

Casey Schmitt had a three-hit game and Eldridge had his first career multi-hit game, in front of the home crowd, doubling to center field following Devers’ blast and singling into a defensive gap at third base in the seventh inning. He struck out twice, but is encouraged by his plate discipline in his first few big league games.

“These guys have a specific plan to get me, they’re trying to get me to chase, and I feel like I haven’t been chasing as much as I have in the minor leagues,” Eldridge said. “That’s just an approach thing. Obviously I have to get better at hitting balls in the zone, the slow stuff and offspeed, but that comes with experience. A lot of these guys have the best stuff I’ve ever seen. That’s an adjustment, and with reps it’ll get better. Being here at 20 and starting that development now is pretty important. Hopefully it’s a long road of playing ball here and getting better every day.”

The Giants’ official elimination from playoff contention on Tuesday night made it unnecessary for Robbie Ray to make his scheduled start on Wednesday, allowing JT Brubaker the opportunity for his first start since 2022 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2023 and missed all of 2024.

Brubaker was solid, allowing two runs over his four innings with four strikeouts and a walk. Carson Seymour pitched three no-hit innings in relief.
The decision came down to preserving Ray’s health as he had only pitched a combined 34 innings between the 2023 and 2024 seasons following Tommy John surgery. He’ll finish with 182⅓ innings this year, the most he has thrown since 2022.

Signs that Ray was wading into a less comfortable workload showed over the past month, as his velocity fluctuated, his mechanics wavered and he compiled an 8.13 ERA over his final six starts. Logan Webb and Ray formed a fearsome tandem for the majority of the season, both earning All-Star nods; Ray held a 2.85 ERA over his first 26 starts.

“I feel good,” Ray said. “Obviously I haven’t been in that situation in a while, so there was a little bit of fatigue. Ultimately, I felt like I was still able to go out there and give us a chance to win. I never felt bad at all this year going out and competing. I felt pretty strong all the way through.”

Meanwhile, Randy Rodriguez — the third All-Star — underwent successful Tommy John surgery, which was performed by Dr. Keith Meister in Dallas on Wednesday. The surgeons who perform Tommy John are typically backed up with patients, which explains why there is nearly a month between Rodriguez deciding on the surgery and the actual surgery. He will take at least a year to recover and miss the entire 2026 season.

Along with Trevor McDonald, Webb and Justin Verlander will pitch over the weekend against the Rockies. Both have stats at stake. Webb is within reach of leading baseball in innings pitched (he’s 3⅔ back of Boston’s Garrett Crochet) and is in a three-way tie with Philadelphia’s Jesus Luzardo and Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes for National League lead in strikeouts. Skenes and Luzardo pitched their last games of the regular season on Wednesday and all three currently sit at 216.

Verlander, of course, will try for his fourth win of the season in his pursuit of the 300 win club — his stop in San Francisco at age 42 certainly didn’t get him much closer, now at 265.

(sfchronicle.com)

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HOMELESSNESS IS DROPPING IN CALIFORNIA COUNTIES. BUT FUNDING CUTS COULD DERAIL THAT PROGRESS

by Marisa Kendall

California counties are reporting decreases in homelessness, suggesting the state is finally making progress in solving one of its most difficult and persistent problems.

But even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials are celebrating, the money that made those wins possible is at risk of evaporating.

President Donald Trump’s administration this month tried to block organizations that don’t support its social agenda from accessing federal homeless housing funds — causing experts in the field to worry that politically liberal California could find itself blacklisted from crucial dollars.

Cuts to state homelessness funding are also on the horizon, and some local jurisdictions are pulling back funds as they struggle with their own budget deficits. That has counties, nonprofits and industry experts worried California’s homeless counts will soon go right back up.

“I do think that we’re doing something right,” Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, said of the recent decreases. “That all may come to a crashing end with a lot of concerns with what’s happening at the federal level, federal policy changing and funding cuts happening.”

Of the 29 places in California that reported an official homeless census this year, more than half saw a decrease compared to 2024, according to an analysis of point-in-time counts by the Hub for Urban Initiatives. That includes drops of about a quarter in Contra Costa and Sonoma counties, 20% in Santa Cruz County, 16% in Ventura County and 14% in Merced County.

San Diego and Los Angeles counties each saw a decrease of less than 10%. For LA County, this marks the second year in a row that homelessness is down.

But funding worries loom like a black cloud over those promising results. As purse strings tighten, service providers will have to cut staff, programs and bed capacity, meaning they can help fewer homeless people. For years, California cities, counties and nonprofits have been pushing the Newsom administration to provide an ongoing source of homeless funding, so service providers can plan ahead without worrying each year about how much money they’ll get.

Some organizations already are feeling the squeeze.

From December through July, Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles County turned away 700 families who needed housing, said CEO Katie Hill.

“We just don’t have anything available for them,” Hill said.

The county cut housing vouchers as the city and county struggled with financial fallout from recent wildfires, falling property tax revenues and increasing legal payouts.

Other organizations are closing their doors for good. Downtown Streets Team, which helps unhoused residents in 16 California cities find housing while earning money cleaning up local streets, plans to close next month after two decades of service.

“The financial and political environment we operate in has shifted dramatically in recent months,” CEO Julie Gardner said in an emailed statement. “During this time, (Downtown Streets Team) lost several significant contracts and grants, creating a multi-million-dollar loss in overall funding. When combined with other factors, including rapidly rising operational costs, these losses made it impossible to continue running the organization in a financially sustainable way.”

Congress in 2023 appropriated $75 million for something called the Continuum of Care Builds grant, which was supposed to help support the construction of new homeless housing. Former President Joe Biden’s administration started the application process for those grants in 2024. When Trump took the helm in 2025, his administration re-started the process with new criteria, making applicants apply again.

Then, at the start of September, the Trump administration made everyone apply a third time — with a very different set of criteria seeming to disqualify organizations that support trans clients, use “harm reduction” strategies to prevent drug overdose deaths or operate in a “sanctuary city.”

Applicants had to attest that they don’t deny the “sex binary in humans or promote the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic.” They had to promise not to distribute drug paraphernalia or allow the use of drugs on their property.

Applicants also had to attest that they operate in a city, county or state that cooperates with federal immigration enforcement. Newsom has resisted Trump’s immigration crackdown at a state level, and recently signed a set of bills intended to further check ICE.

And applicants were required to operate in a city, county or state that prohibits public camping and enforces that rule. That one could be an easier lift: Arrests and citations for camping-related activities have soared in some California cities over the past year, after the U.S. Supreme Court gave cities more leeway to crack down, and Newsom encouraged cities to ban camping. But two recent statewide attempts to ban homeless camps from near schools and other areas fell flat.

The new funding rules were a major blow to Contra Costa County-based Hope Solutions, which was initially selected to receive $5.5 million to build 15 tiny homes for homeless 18-24-year-olds in Pittsburg. After staff spent at least 100 hours completing the project proposal, they learned this month that they’d no longer qualify because of the new criteria. The Pittsburg Police Department says it does not participate in immigration enforcement. In addition, the new program rules specify the money must go to buildings that serve elderly residents — an about-face that takes Hope Solutions’ youth project out of the running.

“It felt like a gut punch,” said CEO Deanne Pearn, “and really disheartening to know that we had spent so much time and asked so much of our county partners and others, and that that time could have been spent elsewhere.”

Hope Solutions is still moving forward with the project, which Pearn hopes the organization can fund with its own financial reserves. But that means the nonprofit won’t have that money for its next project.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness recently sued the Trump administration over the new grant conditions, claiming that all projects in California and three dozen other states would be ineligible for funds. Earlier this month, a federal judge sided with the Alliance, and temporarily barred the federal government from distributing those funds.

Now, that $75 million is frozen as the case moves forward.

While the new conditions at issue in the lawsuit apply only to one specific federal homelessness grant, experts worry it’s an ominous sign for California. Service providers expect applications to open this fall for the main source of federal homelessness funding — the Continuum of Care Program — which funneled about $600 million to California counties in 2023.

If that application poses similar requirements, California could be in trouble.

“Personally, I just don’t think we’re going to see that funding,” said Hill, of Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles County.

In a separate lawsuit, San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties sued the Trump administration over contracts that prevented recipients of federal homeless funds from using the money to promote “gender ideology,” “elective abortions” and “illegal immigration.” The counties won an early victory last month, when a judge temporarily blocked the administration from imposing those conditions.

Other federal cuts are looming, too. The Emergency Housing Vouchers program, which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and now helps more than 15,000 Californians pay their rent, is expected to run out of money next year.

That’s not even counting the cuts to housing vouchers and other federal housing and homelessness programs Trump proposed in May, which are still being negotiated in Congress.

California turning a corner on homelessness

California appears to be decreasing its homeless population, according to the Hub for Urban Initiatives, a California organization that helps local communities shape their homelessness policy, apply for grants and survey their homeless populations.

The 29 California communities that counted and reported their homeless populations this year tallied a total of 131,209 people — a 4% decrease from what those same communities reported last year. That’s a significant step for a state where the homeless population has been stubbornly rising for years.

That data comes from the federally mandated homeless point-in-time count, where teams of volunteers count the unhoused people they see on the street on one night in January. The counts are imperfect, as volunteers can overlook people sleeping in out-of-the-way places, and different counties use different methods — while some places count every year, others count every other. Of the 44 “continuums of care” required to count in California (some small, rural communities combine multiple counties into one continuum of care), 14 didn’t count this year.

The federal housing department will release an official total for the state later this year.

Newsom trumpeted the initial decreases, taking credit for pouring money into homeless housing and other services. He’s not wrong.

Contra Costa County, which saw the state’s biggest drop in homelessness this year, attributes its success largely to the recent boost in state funding, said Christy Saxton, director of Health, Housing and Homeless Services for Contra Costa County. Over the past two years, the county increased its homeless shelter and housing capacity by more than a third.

A big piece of that was the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, which Newsom launched in the 2019-20 budget year to fill what until then had been a void of state homelessness funds. For the past few years, that program gave cities and counties $1 billion each year.

Those funds support programs such as Contra Costa County’s Delta Landing temporary housing site in Pittsburg, which opened 172 units in 2021. Until then, that part of the county had about 20 beds for its unhoused residents, Saxton said.

But instead of making that state funding ongoing, Newsom’s administration opted to dole it out in one-time grants each year, leaving cities and counties continually guessing what next year’s budget will bring.

This year, that state program will get no new funding (because of the glacial pace at which the state distributes these funds, cities and counties have yet to receive money from the last round). Next year, the amount is set to shrink to $500 million.

“We are significantly concerned about the cuts that are coming,” Saxton said, “because it has taken an influx of money in order to see those decreases, and we need that to continue on now more than ever.”

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CALIFORNIA WATER BOARD POSTPONES BAY-DELTA WATER QUALITY HEARINGS AFTER LEGISLATIVE DEFEAT

by Dan Bacher

Sacramento, California — The struggle to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and its once abundant fish and wildlife continues as Governor Gavin Newsom and Big Ag oligarchs do everything that they can to divert even more water from the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas.

On September 15, the California State Water Resources Control Board cancelled workshop dates scheduled for September 24 and 25 that were intended to allow public comment on the proposed update to the failed 30-year-old Bay-Delta Plan, according to a press release from Save California Salmon (SCS). 

This announcement came less than a week after Governor Newsom’s trailer bill that would exempt the plan from CEQA was defeated in the California legislature. The announcement was also made at a time when the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is in its worst ever environmental crisis. 

Tribal, rural and environmental organizations and fishing groups are now urging the Board to abandon the corporate agribusiness-backed “Voluntary Agreements.”

"We are not surprised to see the public comment notice rescinded,” said Save California Salmon’s Science and Policy Director Efraim Lopez. “The latest version of the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan and related Voluntary Agreements are not grounded in reality and contradict what the science and law says should be required. Without the CEQA exemptions in the trailer bill- which failed - this plan is indefensible.”…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/17/2344087/-Breaking-California-Water-Board-Postpones-Bay-Delta-Water-Quality-Hearings-after-Legislative-Defeat

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THE DISMANTLING OF THE FOREST SERVICE

Trump looks to cripple the storied agency

by Jonathan Thompson

In the 1880s, giant cattle companies turned thousands of cattle out to graze on the “public domain” — i.e., the Western lands that had been stolen from Indigenous people and then opened up for white settlement. In remote southeastern Utah, this coincided with a wave of settlement by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The region’s once-abundant grasslands and lush mountain slopes were soon reduced to denuded wastelands etched with deep flash-flood-prone gullies. Cattlemen fought, sometimes violently, over water and range.

The local citizenry grew sick and tired of it, sometimes literally: At one point, sheep feces contaminated the water supply of the town of Monticello and led to a typhoid outbreak that killed 11 people. Yet there was little they could do, since there were few rules on the public domain and fewer folks with the power to enforce them.

That changed in 1891, when Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, which authorized the president to place some unregulated tracts under “judicious control,” thereby mildly restraining extractive activities in the name of conservation. In 1905, the Forest Service was created as a branch of the U.S. Agriculture Department to oversee these reserves, and Gifford Pinchot was chosen to lead it. And a year later, the citizens of southeastern Utah successfully petitioned the Theodore Roosevelt administration to establish forest reserves in the La Sal and Abajo Mountains.

Since then, the Forest Service has gone through various metamorphoses, shifting from stewarding and conserving forests for the future to supplying the growing nation with lumber to managing forests for multiple uses and then to the ecosystem management era, which began in the 1990s. Throughout all these shifts, however, it has largely stayed true to Pinchot and his desire to conserve forests and their resources for future generations.

But now, the Trump administration is eager to begin a new era for the agency and its public lands, with a distinctively un-Pinchot-esque structure and a mission that maximizes resource production and extraction while dismantling the administrative state and its role as environmental protector. Over the last nine months, the administration has issued executive orders calling for expanded timber production and rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, declared “emergency” situations that enable it to bypass regulations on nearly 60% of the public’s forests, and proposed slashing the agency’s operations budget by 34%.

The most recent move, which is currently open to public comment, involves a proposal by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to radically overhaul the entire U.S. Department of Agriculture. Its stated purposes are to ensure that the agency’s “workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities,” and to consolidate functions and eliminate redundancy. This will include moving at least 2,600 of the department’s 4,600 Washington, D.C., employees to five hub locations, with only two in the West: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Fort Collins, Colorado. (The others will be in North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana.) The goal, according to Rollins’ memorandum, is to “bring the USDA closer to its customers.” The plan is reminiscent of Trump’s first-term relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. That relocation resulted in a de facto agency housecleaning; many senior staffers chose to resign or move to other agencies, and only a handful of workers ended up in the Colorado office, which shared a building with oil and gas companies.

Though Rollins’ proposal is aimed at decentralizing the department, it would effectively re-centralize the Forest Service by eliminating its nine regional offices, six of which are located in the West. Each regional forester oversees dozens of national forests within their region, providing budget oversight, guiding place-specific implementation of national-level policies, and facilitating coordination among the various forests.

Rollins’ memo does not explain why the regional offices are being axed, or what will happen to the regional foresters’ positions and their functions, or how the change will affect the agency’s chain of command. When several U.S. senators asked Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden for more specifics, he responded that “decisions pertaining to the agency’s structure and the location of specialized personnel will be made after” the public comment period ends on Sept. 30. Curiously, the administration’s forest management strategy, published in May, relies on regional offices to “work with the Washington Office to develop tailored strategies to meet their specific timber goals.” Now it’s unclear that either the regional or Washington offices will remain in existence long enough to carry this out.

The administration has been far more transparent about its desire to return the Forest Service to its timber plantation era, which ran from the 1950s through the ‘80s. During that time, logging companies harvested 10 billion to 12 billion board-feet per year from federal forests, while for the last 25 years, the annual number has hovered below 3 billion board-feet. Now, Trump, via his Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production order, plans to crank up the annual cut to 4 billion board-feet by 2028. This will be accomplished — in classic Trumpian fashion — by declaring an “emergency” on national forest lands that will allow environmental protections and regulations, including the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, to be eased or bypassed.

In April, Rollins issued a memorandum doing just that, declaring that the threat of wildfires, insects and disease, invasive species, overgrown forests, the growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface and more than a century of rigorous fire suppression have contributed to what is now “a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”

Emergency determinations aren’t limited to Trump and friends; in 2023, the Biden administration identified almost 67 million acres of national forest lands as being under a high or very high fire risk, thus qualifying as an “emergency situation” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Rollins, however, vastly expanded the “emergency situation” acreage to almost 113 million acres, or 59% of all Forest Service lands. This allows the agency to use streamlined environmental reviews and “expedited” tribal consultation time frames to “carry out authorized emergency actions,” ranging from commercial harvesting of damaged trees to removing “hazardous fuels” to reconstructing existing utility lines. Meanwhile, the administration has announced plans to consolidate all federal wildfire fighting duties under the Interior Department. This would completely zero out the Forest Service’s $2.4 billion wildland fire management budget, sowing even more confusion and chaos.

The administration also plans to slash staff and budgets in other parts of the agency, further compromising its ability to carry out its mission. The so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, fired about 3,400 Forest Service employees, or more than 10% of the agency’s total workforce, earlier this year. And the administration has proposed cutting the agency’s operations budget, which includes salaries, by 34% in fiscal year 2026, which will most likely necessitate further reductions in force. It would also cut the national forest system and capital improvement and maintenance budgets by 21% and 48% respectively.

The goal, it seems, is to cripple the agency with both direct and indirect blows. The result, if the administration succeeds, will be a diminished Forest Service that would be unrecognizable to Gifford Pinchot.

(High Country News)

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OVER 40 GROUPS CALL OUT NEWSOM ON BACKSLIDING ON CLIMATE, BANNER DROPPED IN NYC

by Dan Bacher

After signing a climate and energy package last week that would expand oil drilling in California by 2,000 wells per year, Governor Gavin Newsom’s office on Monday announced a new campaign on video urging 1 million Californians to take “everyday climate actions for collective action.” 

The actions to combat climate change include reducing waste, composting food scraps, supporting local farmers, planting trees and native plants, starting a community garden and walking, biking, using public transit, carpool or considering a zero-emission vehicle. More information can be found on the new Climate Action Counts website.

“Every day, Californians are taking small actions that collectively are helping us create a better world for our kids and grandkids,” Newsom claimed in a statement in the LA Times. “The Climate Action Counts campaign will empower Californians to be a part of something big and impactful.”   

Yet climate advocates report that as the Governor is set to appear at New York Climate Week today, over 40 groups, led by environmental advocacy organization Food & Water Watch, delivered a letter demanding he stops backsliding on the climate progress he has made so far throughout his term, according to a statement from Food and Water Watch. 

“We are writing as organizations and leaders representing millions of Americans across the country to urge you to live up to your climate and consumer protection rhetoric in the face of Trump’s assault on our climate,” the letter states. “Now is not the time to step back, rather we need your strong leadership in taking on the fossil fuel industry and ushering in a clean energy future.”…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/24/2345204/-Over-40-groups-call-out-Newsom-for-backsliding-on-climate-promises-banner-dropped-in-New-York-City

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DO YOU FEEL LIKE A FAILURE?

by Emily Witt

Last Autumn, during a particularly enervating phase of the United States presidential election, it became clear that one of the themes of the campaign was going to be men. Never mind the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the demonization of immigrants and the plans to put thousands of them in for-profit jails, the genocide in Gaza, climate change… The Democrats, according to the polls, had lost their appeal to men. We read about the voter gender gap.

We read that the disparity was greatest between divorced women (who lean heavily Democratic) and divorced men (who tend to vote Republican). We read that Black men were no longer loyal to the Democratic Party, that they were going to vote for Trump or not at all. Men, men, men: their diminished career prospects, their loneliness crisis, their suicide rates. In the final stretch of the campaign, the Democrats made a desperate attempt to appeal to them. The film director Tyler Perry gave a speech about being a self-made billionaire; Michelle Obama gave a speech about the person bleeding out in the delivery room being your wife. Kamala Harris promised to “protect crypto.”

It didn’t work.

Donald Trump was better at pandering to the mythology of the patriarchy. Men didn’t need to listen to a lady lawyer lecturing them about how to live their lives, nor did they need a social safety net. A real man didn’t care about the minimum hourly wage or Medicaid. He was an independent agent. His windfall was always just around the corner, with the right crypto investment, the right sports bet, the right meme stock. It was the sweepstake election, with Elon Musk handing a giant cardboard check for a million dollars to a real estate agent called Jason who homeschools his six children in Michigan. No, it was the podcast election. We read that the left needed more podcasts, more men offering hour after hour of meandering banter that made listeners feel as if they were hanging out with the bros. “Whatever happened to the strong silent type?” a friend of mine grumbled. A few months later, we learned that Democratic Party operatives had proposed a project called “Speaking with American Men” to study male “syntax, language and content.”

Among my friends, the sort of women J.D. Vance likes to mock as miserable losers, the male loneliness crisis became a bitter joke. We discussed possible cures: becoming a Deadhead, getting into cycling, poker nights. We made approving comments when we saw straight guys doing things together, like the time a group of dads showed up at someone’s Pilates class.

There were movies and TV shows about the problems of contemporary manhood, some concerned (Adolescence), some satirical (Friendship). Mark Zuckerberg, whose male-to-male transition included bulking up, putting on an XL T-shirt and a gold chain, and becoming a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, told Joe Rogan that the corporate world is “culturally neutered” and needs more “masculine energy.” He has proposed AI friends as one solution.

On the dark edge of all this has been the manosphere, the network of male supremacist websites, influencers and YouTube channels. The manosphere is confusing, because it’s a place where one can find both benign advice about protein consumption and ideas that have led to mass shootings, for theories of evolutionary biology, mostly concerning what women were “built” to do, are reposted on social media by people such as Musk. It’s annoying to have to take it seriously, just as it’s annoying to have to take the Taliban’s gender theories seriously. But in recent years the manosphere has forced us to pay attention through acts of extreme violence and many of its advocates and theories have been taken up by democratically elected governments.

(London Review of Books)

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SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

What We Know About the Shooting at a Dallas ICE Facility

White House Eyes New Round of Mass Layoffs if Government Shuts Down

China for First Time Promises to Reduce Its Greenhouse Gas Emissions

With Sobs and Doubts, Greenlandic Women Receive Apology for Forced Contraception

Jimmy Kimmel’s Return Draws 6.2 Million Viewers, Ratings Show

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“SAMUEL JOHNSON SAID ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ but I consider myself a patriot. The fact that the United States of America is the birthplace of the blues, jazz, rock-and-roll, and Muhammad Ali is argument enough for me that we are a place worthy of pride.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SHOOTING at a Dallas ICE Facility

One detainee was killed and two others were wounded after a gunman opened fire on Wednesday. The gunman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

by Pooja Salhotra

A shooter opened fire at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas Wednesday morning, leaving one detainee dead and two others wounded. No law enforcement officers were hurt.

The gunman died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said. Three people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly identified the shooter as Joshua Jahn.

Department of Homeland Security officials, along with some state and national leaders, have said the shooting was a targeted attack on law enforcement agents. They have pointed to ammunition the shooter left behind that had the phrase “ANTI-ICE” in blue writing. But officials have not released other details about the shooter or his potential motive, and The New York Times has not independently verified the D.H.S. officials’ claims.

Here’s what we know about the shooting so far.

What Happened in the Attack

The Dallas police responded to a call for assistance at 6:40 a.m. on Wednesday around the ICE field office.

Officials determined after their initial investigation that a gunman, whom they described as a “sniper,” had fired at the ICE building from a nearby rooftop. The attacker fired “indiscriminately,” they said, including at a van where the victims were hit.

One detainee died and two others were in critical condition. Officials have not released the names of the victims, but Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement that one of the people injured is a Mexican national.

Following the shooting, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, directed the department to enhance security protocols at ICE facilities nationwide.

What We Know About the Suspect

One of the people familiar with the investigation said Mr. Jahn was 29.

Public records show that he was raised in a suburb of Dallas and, as recently as a few months ago, had been living with his parents, who are from Kansas. The family home is in a rural area north of Dallas and Fort Worth that is rapidly developing.

Mr. Jahn’s political leanings are unclear from what has been uncovered so far. On two Reddit accounts, he wrote mostly about video games, cars, “South Park” and marijuana.

He voted in a Democratic primary in March 2020 in Texas, records show, but he also was registered to vote as an independent in Oklahoma, where his parents own property and where he voted in the 2024 general election.

Mr. Jahn was indicted in 2016 for selling marijuana, records show. A few years later, he was released from court supervision for the charge, and the proceedings were dismissed.

The Site of the Shooting

The Dallas building where the attack occurred is one of 25 ICE field offices across the country. Part of the building is an office used by ICE employees for administrative work. The other part is a processing center for immigrants who have been arrested and are booked into ICE custody.

Detainees who are brought to the building usually undergo fingerprinting, a biometric screening and paperwork. They are then either released or kept in a “hold room” while they await transfer to a long-term facility. The hold room, a waiting area with three or four cells, has held an average of 55 people a day at the Dallas facility. Most detainees spend less than 24 hours in the building before they are moved elsewhere.

Outside the field office, a few dozen community members have been gathering weekly to hold prayer vigils. They have carried signs with messages such as “families belong together.”

Recent Tensions With ICE

Wednesday’s episode was at least the second shooting at an ICE facility in Texas this year.

On July 4, a police officer was shot outside an ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas, about 28 miles south of Fort Worth. More than a dozen people have been charged in connection with that shooting, which officials have called a coordinated plan to ambush local and federal law enforcement officers. The officer was wounded in the neck but survived.

Three days after the Alvarado shooting, a gunman opened fire at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection station in McAllen, a South Texas border town. Three people, including two officers, were injured.

Homeland security officials have blamed such episodes on “hateful rhetoric” against immigration officers, calling for the end of what they said was a “demonization” of them. President Trump pointed the finger in the Wednesday shooting at “Deranged Radical Leftists,”, calling on Democrats to “STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE.”

The shootings came amid months of unrest surrounding Mr. Trump’s escalation of immigration enforcement.

Protests and demonstrations have erupted outside of federal detention facilities nationwide in recent months, leading to confrontations with law enforcement in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Last week, federal officers arrested 11 Democratic elected officials inside a federal building in Lower Manhattan after the officials sought to access the cells where ICE detains migrants.

(nytimes.com)

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THE SOLDIER, HIS WIFE AND THE BUM

by Charles Bukowski (1992)

I was a bum in San Francisco but once managed
to go to a symphony concert along with the well-dressed people
and the music was good but something about the
audience was not
and something about the orchestra
and the conductor was
not,
although the building was fine and the
acoustics perfect
I preferred to listen to the music alone
on my radio
and afterwards I did go back to my room and I
turned on the radio but
then there was a pounding on the wall:
“SHUT THAT GOD-DAMNED THING OFF!”

there was a soldier in the next room
living with his wife
and he would soon be going over there to protect
me from Hitler so
I snapped the radio off and then heard his
wife say, “you shouldn’t have done that.”
and the soldier said, “FUCK THAT GUY!”
which I thought was a very nice thing for him
to tell his wife to do.
of course,
she never did.

anyhow, I never went to another live concert
and that night I listened to the radio very
quietly, my ear pressed to the
speaker.

war has its price and peace never lasts and
millions of young men everywhere would die
and as I listened to classical music I heard them making love, desperately and
mournfully, through Shostakovich, Brahms,
Mozart, through crescendo and climax,
and through the shared
wall of our darkness.

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IT IS NO EASIER, I’m convinced, to make a good painting than to find a diamond or a pearl.

— Vincent van Gogh