The Brief

For many public colleges and universities in California, keeping their campuses safe includes owning military-grade weaponry — AR-15s, stun grenades designed to cause temporary blindness and sonic weapons that resonate so loudly they are known in the armed forces as the voice of God.

According to state law, campus police can only own military equipment if the college believes there is no other way to uphold civilian safety.

That law, which passed in 2021, also requires police to make all their equipment dealings exceedingly clear to the public. However, not every college follows every part of the law, according to an investigation by CalMatters into all 148 public campuses in the California Community Colleges, University of California, and California State University systems.

Each campus’s state or district governing board — which gives permission for police to procure such items — has to annually re-approve a use policy, a chronicle of when the equipment has been used and an inventory. Once the report is approved and published online, campus police have 30 days to hold a conveniently located and “well-publicized” forum for the public to learn about and give feedback on the equipment, according to state law.

CalMatters attempted to compile the 2025 annual reports and use policies from every public higher education police department in the state that owns military equipment. Here is what we found.

Questions prompt campuses to act

Several campus police departments created reports after CalMatters’ inquiries, though the law requires the documents to be posted online as long as the equipment is usable. Not all reports or policies contained the details mandated by the 2021 law; in many cases campuses left out information, including manufacturers’ product descriptions, up-to-date inventories and equipment quantities. The University of California Board of Regents approved UC Berkeley’s annual report last September, but university police only published their equipment list on April 7, after four CalMatters inquiries.

According to their own reports, San Jose State University and San Francisco State University own AR-15s even though Cal State’s policy does not authorize it. Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith said these AR-15s are standard issue, which would exempt them from the reporting requirement, even though San Jose’s report classifies them as specialized firearms and university police departments determine what equipment is standard issue. San Francisco’s semi automatic rifles are standard issue and won’t be listed in the annual report going forward, university spokesperson Robert King said.

Campus police also must submit their yearly report to their district or state governing boards. Chico State and Cal State Northridge police said their reports are sent to the Cal State chancellor’s office, which the systemwide policy requires. But Klarissa Garcia, executive assistant to the chief of police at Cal State Dominguez Hills, said her department does not submit its report to any governing body.

University of California campus police officers talk amongst each other while a San Diego Sheriff’s officer holds a weapon behind them during a pro-Palestinian protest at UC San Diego in San Diego on May 6, 2024.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Multiple police departments said they did not hold a campus forum in 2025, including Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal State Sonoma, nor did they respond to inquiries about when the required public meeting was held. Many departments said they held meetings, but did not answer questions about how they publicized them, or said they posted announcements on social media without any record of it on their accounts.

The Cal State Board of Trustees has not reviewed the systemwide equipment policy at a public meeting since 2022, though the policy is supposed to be renewed at least annually. Under the policy the board adopted, the trustees only need to check the policy again if the university system wants to authorize new types of equipment, Bentley-Smith told CalMatters. She added that Cal State will re-examine the policy to ensure it follows the law.

Bentley-Smith also said that the AR-15s at Cal State’s San Jose and San Francisco campuses are standard issue, which would exempt them from the reporting requirement, even though San Jose’s report classifies them as specialized firearms.

Several community colleges were missing military equipment policies and reports when questioned by CalMatters. The college system’s chancellor’s office does not track whether colleges follow the transparency law, according to its communications specialist Melissa Villarin.

CalMatters used annual reports to create a mass inventory of the equipment found at California higher education institutions, which includes hundreds of semi-automatic rifles, thousands of munitions containing the same chemical as chili peppers, and hundreds of thousands of rifle munitions. Some reports did not list quantities despite the legal requirement, so CalMatters sourced other documents posted to campus websites or directly asked for those figures.

The military equipment law, written by former Democratic Assemblymember David Chiu, now the city attorney of San Francisco, only applies to campus police departments with sworn police officers. Campus safety or security departments with unsworn personnel do not have to report their equipment. Over 40 community colleges told CalMatters they did not file a report.

It’s not just police using military-grade tools. The Cal State Monterey Bay 2025 report states its Emergency Management team owns three camera drones, which, being remotely piloted aircrafts, are classified as military equipment under state law. The Emergency Management team reports to the campus chief of police but is not itself made up of sworn officers, according to interim police chief Yvonne Gordon.

Following CalMatters’ inquiries, several campuses — as well as the Cal State system — said they are hereafter committed to following the military equipment transparency law in its entirety. In addition, some are downsizing their inventory.

Defense-style weaponry in schools

Military equipment forums held at universities are often sparsely attended, according to several police departments. But some students are impassioned about the issue. At a rally outside a UC Board of Regents meeting in January, UCLA’s chapter of the UC Divest Coalition, an anti-imperialism and anti-militarism student group, criticized the regents for spending tuition money on military equipment while the board convened yards away in a school ballroom.

UCLA police use long-range acoustic devices — which emit focused beams of high-volume sound — as giant loudspeakers to broadcast announcements to large crowds. In the 2024-25 school year, the department deployed these “voice of God” tools 71 times, all during crowd management situations, defined by the university as assemblies, protests and demonstrations. Police at UC Santa Cruz used a similar acoustic device to give dispersal orders during the 2024 pro-Palestine student encampments.

UCLA does not use the acoustic devices to produce high-pitched tones, which they are also capable of emitting, said Richard Mejia, the director of emergency communications and information for the university’s campus safety office. But pitch differs from loudness, which is measured in decibels: a long-range acoustic device can produce 160 decibels, and sounds over 120 can cause permanent hearing damage even during a short exposure. The university said it doesn’t prescribe a fixed decibel output, adding that it follows federal and scientific exposure regulations, including those from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which permits sudden noises up to 140 decibels. For reference, a bulldozer emits about 95.

A helicopter flies over a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on May 1, 2024. Groups of student protesters gathered at the encampment.

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Ted Soqui

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CalMatters

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Not all inventoried equipment is approved for use by district or state governing boards. An October 2025 memo from San Jose State University states its police department owns 33 tear gas grenades, which burst into clouds of choking chemicals when released and, for some brands, cause “psychological and physiological effects.” The Cal State military equipment policy does not authorize using grenades to deploy tear gas or oleoresin capsicum, the chili pepper irritant.

These grenades have “always been in our armory,” Captain Jermaine Thomas said. “We will never use them.” He added that the department plans to destroy them, along with the university’s submachine gun, which is also not authorized under Cal State policy.

Bentley-Smith told CalMatters that the submachine gun was never added to the systemwide policy manual because the university never used or requested permission to use it.

Campus forums vary in scope

A promotional website for San Jose State’s 2025 community forum says the event covers current police initiatives without specifically mentioning military equipment, but Thomas said that subject was indeed discussed.

About 21,500 students attend El Camino College in Los Angeles County, which announced its 2025 meeting, held in a gymnasium, during four other meetings held on campus: the College Public Safety and Security Committee, the Academic Senate, the College Council and the President’s Meeting. Police Chief Matthew Vander Horck said about 30 people attended. Meanwhile, Captain Jeffrey Chobanian of the UCLA Police Department, which serves about 49,000 students, said the department used social media to promote its 2025 forum, held on Zoom, but nobody attended.

Some of the forums become question and answer sessions, like the ones held by San Bernardino Community College District police, according to their chief Blake Bonnet. Students and faculty come prepared, read the policy — which includes when and where the equipment can be used — to the officers and press them directly on how it will be enforced, Bonnet said.

Bonnet said he publicizes the annual meeting through the police department’s online newsletter, Just the Facts, which contains crime logs and topical safety tips and is sent to students and staff every month.

“People ask questions and seek clarification,” Bonnet said. “If you don’t understand the police world — which some people do, some people don’t — if you have a question, I would rather you ask so that we can understand your concern.”

At UC Davis’ annual forum, meeting participants have asked about when and why officers can deploy weapons, which necessitates at least annual trainings, and how the equipment is shared with others — since the school has lent drones to other UC campuses for use in crowd control and can borrow equipment from other campuses in preparation for “major” protests and demonstrations. Last year, an attendee asked if other police forces can bring unauthorized military equipment to campus, according to meeting minutes. Captain Mark Brunet responded that they can.

Rage against assault rifles 

In February 2025, a Mt. San Antonio College police advisory committee composed of college and police personnel and two students met to discuss adding AR-15s to the department’s arsenal. Before long, other students caught wind of the plans. Student César Tlatoāni Alvarado said fellow students, especially veterans and students of color, were not comfortable with their campus becoming militarized.

“The entire campus was talking about it,” said Tlatoāni Alvarado, who studies political science and world languages and global studies. They also served as the campus’s student trustee for two terms, from 2023 to 2025.

By CalMatters’ count, over 25 public colleges own semi-automatic rifles, which shoot with more precision, accuracy and distance than handguns, according to several school policies.

Tlatoāni Alvarado said they were fearful of the impact of a militarized police force on the campus protesting scene, which they said is active but peaceful.

“I knew for a fact that this was being done to silence dissent on our campus,” Tlatoāni Alvarado said.

University of Sourthern California Public Safety officers tape off an area of Alumni Park during a pro-Palestinian protest on campus in Los Angeles on April 24, 2024.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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The student led a coalition of campus clubs to demonstrate against the proposed purchases and vehemently protest at multiple police town halls. That April, nearly 20 students, faculty and alumni condemned the plan to buy AR-15s at the college district’s board of trustees’ monthly meeting. The protestors included the student trustee, who said several hundred students were involved in the overall effort.

“There were so many students that were yelling,” Tlatoāni Alvarado said. “They were screaming at the administration. They were upset, they were frustrated. They felt betrayed.”

As of June 2026, the college does not own semi-automatic rifles. “The discussion is still ongoing” on whether the college will seek them in the future, according to campus police chief Kelli Florman.

Still, Tlatoāni Alvarado considers the students’ work a success.

“It was a lot of work,” they said. “I was one of the students that had led the way in that campaign. But I couldn’t have done it alone. There were so many of us.”

Fast track to compliance

Compton College President Keith Curry said a February inquiry from CalMatters put the military equipment law on his radar for the first time. Campus police had issued semi-automatic rifles to patrol officers for over seven years, arguing that standard-issue pistols did not effectively protect civilians and officers during the 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery and shootout. The campus police department also owns incapacitating tasers and a submachine gun, the latter of which the college reports is for potentially lethal situations and to shoot through barriers. However, after some research, Curry realized his college never adopted an equipment use policy.

“Once I understood that it was not implemented correctly, I went into action mode,” Curry said. “I was calling around, I was calling a police chief that I know, I looked on different websites. I had to dissect the bill to understand it, myself, about what’s going on.”

Ultimately, Curry and Compton’s attorney wrote up a Corrective Action Plan that his district’s board of trustees unanimously approved on March 16. In accordance with the plan, the college approved an official policy in April, held a community engagement meeting in May, reviewed an annual use report in June and will update the police policy manual by September.

The compliance review served as a general reminder to build transparency between campus police and their constituents, Curry said. In April, he announced the establishment of three new forms of oversight for campus police: a student committee, a community advisory committee, and a task force reviewing police procedures and policies.

“As a leader, you have to understand what mistakes are made. You have to fix the mistakes,” Curry said.

After a CalMatters inquiry, Chaffey College officials also discovered they had no policy, which Chief Steven Griffin amended by writing a policy that his college board then passed in April. Cal State Monterey Bay updated its website with an equipment policy. Southwestern College modified its annual report with munition quantities. And San Joaquin Delta College, Cuesta College, and the Riverside Community College District all said they are unsure whether their past documentation follows the law, but are working to ensure future compliance.

Other college officials said adjusting their documentation to conform to state law made them reconsider the tools they have. After taking “immediate steps” to update MiraCosta College’s report, public and governmental relations director Kristen Gonzales said the campus police chief plans to “responsibly reduce (munition) inventory to a level that aligns with our actual operational needs and best practices.”

Tlatoāni Alvarado said that while campus militarization is deeply concerning, he’s witnessing a growing trend of students resisting it.

“College campuses are a focal point for where our activism can translate into real-world change,” they said. “Colleges are trying to quash that dissent. But what they need to know, and they need to be made aware of, is that there’s many more of us than there are of them.”

Phoebe Huss is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Public pushback over municipal police drones is boiling over across California, turning routine local policy hearings into high-stakes battles over the boundaries of neighborhood surveillance.

The increasingly heated public debates are driven by landmark privacy litigation and a 2021 law that mandates explicit local board approvals for the use of “military equipment,” including drones. Those disclosures make clear that police are increasingly looking to drones as potential “first responders” in cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Ana and Stockton — forcing local leaders to face skeptical residents in public hearings required before drone programs can expand.

At those appearances, law enforcement agencies are pushing to broaden their drone use beyond emergency-only response to aid in everyday patrols, while citizens are concerned about drones conducting warrantless searches, if municipalities are hoarding too much data collected by drones, and whether drone makers have too much power and information.

Those tensions were on stark display earlier this month in San Francisco, when a policy debate at a police commission meeting drew a packed room of opposing residents.

The San Francisco Police Department asked commissioners to approve a policy allowing drones for a wide array of uses, including “public safety response,” active investigations, training, and “community outreach.” While prohibiting random “general surveillance” or tracking activities protected by the First Amendment, the draft stipulated that public footage would be retained for 30 days unless tied to an open investigation.

“With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking.”

Supporters argued the technology is vital for modern crime-fighting. “Public safety and personal privacy shouldn't be competing interests,” said Anna Carney, president of Stop Crime SF, urging commissioners to give officers every responsible advantage to save lives.

But privacy advocates and skeptical residents saw a slippery slope toward unchecked surveillance, drawing explicit parallels to the contentious rollout of automated license plate readers across the state. In recent years, cities like San Francisco and Stockton built extensive fixed camera networks supplied by vendors like Flock Safety. Now, communities fear that attaching drones to those same networks creates an inescapable, multi-dimensional dragnet — one that tracks citizens not just by car on the street, but from the air above their homes.

“We are all here today because these drones are impacting all of our communities, " said Manny, a member of the privacy advocacy group DeFlock SF, who urged the commissioners to cancel the department’s contract with drone manufacturer Skydio. "If SFPD truly cared about operating these drones with any respect to privacy, the very least that can happen is one of you make an amendment to require a warrant,” he added, referring to language used in the department’s proposed policy.

Although commissioners voted to advance the policy to labor negotiations without adding a warrant mandate, the friction displayed in San Francisco reflects a statewide reckoning.

Legal uncertainty and the policy vacuum

The 2021 rules governing military equipment in law enforcement still leave a policy vacuum confronting municipalities across California: Local agencies that deploy drones are stepping into a legal gray area where technology is far outpacing state regulation.

A lawsuit against Sonoma County underscores the uncertainty. Privacy concerns festered for years in the county after officials launched a drone program in 2019 for code enforcement. But investigators with the American Civil Liberties Union later uncovered hundreds of warrantless searches over private yards, homes, and windows — all conducted without a published policy in sight. In 2025, the ACLU of Northern California sued Sonoma, and last month, the county settled. Sonoma pledged to reel in its drone use, obtain warrants or consent before conducting residential property code inspections, restrict data retention, and directly notify residents if their property was subjected to aerial surveillance.

The case brought to the forefront the complex legal matrix officials must navigate in deploying unmanned aircraft.

"There's three main buckets," explained Katie Inman, a drone policy expert and attorney at Holland & Knight who previously worked at the Federal Aviation Administration. "You've got the broad … constitutional law principles, then you've got state statutes, and then you've got the third bucket, which is FAA operating rules."

Inman noted that California belongs to a category of states that lack a comprehensive state statute explicitly governing law enforcement drone use, leaving municipalities on their own to read and comply with constitutional Fourth Amendment case law, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

She said the Supreme Court has ruled that aircraft surveilling areas that are visible to the naked eye from lawful altitudes do not violate Constitutional protections.

"But those were manned aircraft; they are not drones,” she said. ”With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking, you can get just a lot of hovering — a lot of surveillance potential there that you would not normally have."

Across the state, nearly 60 law enforcement agencies use drone programs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Most foundational policies, including those in Chula Vista, Fremont, and the policy proposed in San Francisco, prohibit random surveillance, but programs diverge when it comes to deployment triggers and public oversight. Departments like Chula Vista deploy automated "Drone as First Responder" units broadly ahead of ground officers for routine 911 calls, whereas newer or more heavily scrutinized frameworks, such as San Francisco's proposed policy, attempt to draw tighter lines by limiting flights to active criminal investigations, vehicle pursuits, or specific, incident-based emergencies.

Multimillion-dollar contracts and unproven safety claims

Beyond constitutional and policy questions, the rapid growth of drone programs is closely tied to an aggressive push by defense and surveillance technology vendors.

Both the San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments rely on hardware manufactured by San Mateo-based Skydio, while industry peers like Axon, which makes body cameras, and license-plate-reader manufacturer Flock Safety have also aggressively expanded into the market. Skydio originally launched to give extreme sports athletes a way to track and film themselves doing parkour or snowboarding. But after the U.S. government labeled Chinese drone maker DJI a national security risk in 2020, Skydio pivoted to fill the void for military, police, and enterprise customers.

At a recent customer conference, Skydio CEO Adam Bry laid out an ambitious roadmap: small drones for tactical flights inside buildings, mid-range aircraft for vehicle pursuits, and high-speed models capable of traveling 100 mph up to a 30-mile radius. Bry also outlined a future driven by AI, envisioning software that analyzes 911 calls in real time to automatically recommend dispatching an autonomous drone to a scene.

Executing that vision requires major investments — from taxpayers and billionaire backers alike. Santa Ana recently greenlit $682,900 for its Drone as First Responder initiative in partnership with Skydio, while the Stockton City Council approved a $3.15 million contract expansion with Flock Safety to integrate six drones into its existing network of 120 license plate reader cameras. In San Francisco last year, the police department received a $9.4 million donation from the crypto billionaire and Ripple cofounder, Chris Larsen, to expand its drone program and surveillance systems, Mission Local reported.

“The premise of the Bill of Rights is respect for liberty of the individual, and that used to mean something in this city,” a San Francisco resident named Ilona said at the Oct. 14 Commission meeting, lambasting officials for accepting Larsen’s drone donation. “But it doesn't anymore because now we have sold out to tech billionaires. ... SFPD has been sloppy and reckless with our privacy. How can we trust them with these tools?”

Venture-backed drone vendors have spent heavily to influence local officials to support their expansion — Flock Safety, for instance, has reportedly spent millions of dollars on local and federal lobbying, claiming its technology helped “solve” a million crimes last year alone. Yet researchers are increasingly skeptical of what vendors and law enforcement say the technology can help accomplish.

Police argue that drones help them respond to incidents more quickly, help them deescalate potentially dangerous situations, and improve crime clearance rates. A February 2026 study by the UC Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center found that while first-responder drones can improve response times, there is no evidence they reduce officer-involved shootings, lower overall use of force, or improve case resolution rates.

The rapid rollout has also intensified community anxiety over interconnected surveillance networks, and intensified the brewing nationwide backlash against AI-powered police tech.

Jesus Gabriel Yanez, a recently-retired police commissioner, spoke at the San Francisco commission meeting. He briefly read a passage from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” before expressing his opposition to the drone use policy outlined by his former peers.

“SFPD should tie deployments to specific incidents that cannot be addressed without compromising officer safety — period,” Yanez said. “Those are the only times when we should allow for the deployment of a drone. No general routine patrol. No general surveillance.”

Opponents like Yanez point to past instances where California law enforcement agencies illegally shared license plate tracking data with federal immigration authorities, as well as technical missteps like a recent leak that exposed live police drone video feeds online due to vendor misconfigurations. That anxiety over vendor overreach and AI surveillance isn't confined to California—similar resistance is bubbling up across the country. In Minneapolis, the city council voted to reject a police drone contract with Skydio following community protests over privacy and dual-use military technology. In New Orleans, advocacy group Eye on Surveillance successfully mobilized against a proposed policy that would have allowed weapons on police drones.

Whether through public city council debates sparked by AB 481 or court-enforced settlements like Sonoma County's, California communities are trying to make it clear that adopting cutting-edge public safety technology will not come at the cost of privacy. The automated eye in the sky may arrive in seconds, but citizens are demanding to know exactly who is watching — and who holds the remote.

CalMatters Technology Reporter Khari Johnson contributed to this report.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Free events centered around Dia de Los Muertos are coming to MacArthur Park where people can celebrate the memory of their loved ones. 

Music, Arts & Community Los Angeles (MAC·LA) kicked off the holiday by hosting two hands-on art making workshops led by artist Marelené Nancy Lopez this past Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and this Monday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the MacArthur Park Bandshell. 

Lopez will be gathering art and stories from residents that will be part of a large canvas mural and also a part of the community altar that’s going to be built for their main “Dia de Los Muertos” event on November 1st. 

“This is free and open to all ages, and a wonderful way for people to embrace the diverse cultures of the Westlake community,” said Allegra Padilla, executive director of MAC·LA. 

Since 2007, MAC·LA, formerly known as the Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles, has turned the MacArthur Park Bandshell into a space for concerts in the summer and community events. 

The Dia de Los Muertos event on Nov. 1 will start at 3:30 p.m. with a procession on Alvarado and Sixth streets led by the Project for the Arts and Dreams of Indigenous Oaxacan Heritage in collaboration with the Westlake Theater Community Alliance. 

According to the PADIOXH website, the nonprofit is on a mission to save and share the vibrant culture of Oaxacan communities in Mexico and the U.S. through a mix of educational programs like dance, artisan workshops, traditional cuisine and indigenous language courses. 

The Westlake Theater Community Alliance is a nonprofit organization with the goal of  turning the Westlake Theatre into a community space for the arts, events, spaces for vendors and more. 

The group will arrive at the park at 4 p.m. to kick off the event and there will be an opening prayer and ceremony with local indigenous leaders. 

Although primarily associated with Mexico, Dia de Los Muertos is a holiday that’s also celebrated in different Central and South American countries where families welcome back the souls of loved ones who have passed away in a celebration that includes altars, prayer and traditional food and drink.

The theme for this year’s event at MacArthur Park is “Ancestral Protection,” according to MAC·LA.

The event will include dance performances, a fashion show, music, community organizations hosting resource booths and there will be a community altar that people can participate in.

The event organizers encourage rideshare, carpooling, walking, biking and public transportation whenever possible. 

The post Dia de Los Muertos celebrations starts early in MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.

An appeals court on Monday declined to rule on whether California elections officials can count roughly 20,000 ballots that the Justice Department alleges likely belong to noncitizen voters.

The 2-1 decision sets the Trump administration and state officials up for another legal showdown on the matter on Tuesday in front of a federal district judge, giving the federal government a very short window to compel California to sequester votes before the Nov. 3 elections.

The decision marks the latest in a string of legal setbacks for President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to assert greater federal control over state-run elections. Noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s political messaging for years, although available data indicates it is exceedingly rare.

Although the panel primarily ruled it was premature for an appeals court to get involved, two of the three judges also wrote separate concurrences making it clear they wouldn’t support setting aside ballots at this late date. They questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s list of alleged noncitizen voters and argued that to set aside votes risks disenfranchising citizens.

One judge dissented, arguing that federal law bars noncitizens from voting and compels California to vet the potentially illegal ballots before they are counted. The failure to do so, he wrote, would cause irreparable harm to the election.

Trump administration sued California officials over list of 20,000 names

The Republican administration sued election officials in the heavily Democratic state in mid-October, accusing them of failing to meet a 48-hour deadline to review a list of 20,000 people it alleged were likely noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. The administration asked the judge to stop the state from counting those ballots until immigration status checks could be completed. The Justice Department made similar demands Monday in Washington, another state with races that will help determine control of the U.S. Senate and House.

Both state and federal law prohibit noncitizens from voting. But California officials say it’s not even clear the administration’s purported 20,000 noncitizen voters are actually not U.S. citizens. In court papers, Los Angeles election officials said the majority of a random sample of voters that the Department of Justice identified as immigrants seemed to have been born in the United States. The Justice Department, for its part, has said there is as much to lose from keeping the potentially illegal ballots in the count.

After a district judge had scheduled an Oct. 27 hearing on the issue, the federal government appealed to the 9th Circuit Court, arguing that a faster decision was needed to prevent the further counting of votes.

But two of the three 9th Circuit Court judges rejected that argument on Monday, writing that the federal government “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” their initial request to sequester the ballots in question.

The time-sensitive emergency that the federal government used to justify the appeal, wrote Gabriel Sanchez, a circuit judge appointed by President Joe Biden, was at least in part “the product of the United States’s own decisions” to file so close to the elections, after votes had already started to get counted.

The federal government was delayed “in realizing that existing California state law governs the issuance and processing of ballots, in recognizing that California has millions of registered voters and processes ballots on a schedule aligned with that scale, and in communicating to the court its desired relief,” Sanchez wrote.

One judge wrote that setting ballots aside would invite ‘electoral chaos’

He wrote that setting aside the ballots at this stage “would transform California’s election rules for an election that is already underway” and “usher in electoral chaos.”

Judge Mark J. Bennett, who was nominated by Trump, also said that the federal government’s arguments weren’t supported by the law, writing that it appeared the administration had no power under the Constitution to force California to separate the ballots.

Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, forcefully dissented against the ruling. He argued that federal law precludes “California from commingling ballots likely cast by aliens with legitimate ballots, because it encourages and induces illegal voting. Stopping that practice for those identified as likely noncitizens is the bare minimum.”

Bumatay also affirmed the federal government’s arguments about the need for an urgent ruling to sequester the ballots. While he conceded that the federal government could potentially prosecute fraudulent voters after the election, Bumatay said that the federal government “has an interest in stopping the illegal voting in the first place.”

California’s attorney general called ruling a ‘welcome speed bump’ against Trump’s attacks

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, hailed Monday’s ruling against the Republican administration as a “welcome speed bump to Trump’s disgusting attacks on the Constitution and our country’s democracy.”

In a statement, he urged voters to cast ballots early and “participate in democracy, don’t become disillusioned.”

The 9th Circuit decision sends the case back to a federal judge in Southern California, who will hear arguments from both sides on Tuesday at 1 pm.

Neither the Justice Department nor the Office of the U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California immediately responded to an emailed inquiry asking for comment.

The man who has helped produce the Super Bowl halftime show is stepping into the spotlight: Jay-Z will headline the show himself.

The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced Monday night that Jay-Z will be the featured performer for the halftime festivities on Feb. 14 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he had one request when the league first reached an agreement with Roc Nation: that Jay-Z take the stage himself “whenever the moment felt right to him.”

“From ‘Reasonable Doubt’ to standing on the Super Bowl halftime stage, this has been a journey,” Jay-Z said in a statement. “Thirty years of music, work, and culture on the world’s biggest stage. This run continues to be a dream come true.”

After days of speculation, Jay-Z is set to return to the stadium where he closed his celebration of the 30th anniversary of “Reasonable Doubt,” the mogul’s 1996 debut album. The concerts included three sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium and sold-out performances in London and Paris ahead of a stop at SoFi Stadium over the weekend.

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has partnered with the NFL since 2019 to advise on and help produce the league’s entertainment presentations, including the Super Bowl halftime show. At the time, Jay-Z said he had told Goodell, “If this is about me performing at the Super Bowl, then we can just end this conversation now.”

Seven years later, Jay-Z is ready to perform after all.

Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, has won 25 Grammy Awards and received 89 nominations, the second-most in history behind his wife, Beyoncé — who has performed at two Super Bowls. His catalog also includes the albums “The Blueprint” and “The Black Album,” and hit songs such as “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” “99 Problems” and “Empire State of Mind,” his collaboration with Alicia Keys.

Last year, “Reasonable Doubt” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.