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The Brief

The most important stories for you to know today
  • Federal judge orders stop to ICE sweeps
    ICE officers and members of the National Guard confront protesters outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
    ICE officers and members of the National Guard confront protesters outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

    Topline:

    A federal judge in Los Angeles tonight ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out immigration sweeps in which she said federal agents have been indiscriminately arresting people across southern California without reasonable suspicion that they're in the country illegally.

    The backstory: Since early June, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have been roving Los Angeles and surrounding counties arresting thousands of people in what civil rights lawyers characterized in a lawsuit last week as an unconstitutional and "extraordinary campaign of targeting people based on nothing more than the color of their skin."

    What the judge found: In her order, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for Central California, said there is "a mountain of evidence" to support the claim that agents are arresting people solely based on their race, accents, or the work they're engaged in, in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable government seizure.

    A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out immigration sweeps in which she said federal agents have been indiscriminately arresting people across southern California without reasonable suspicion that they're in the country illegally.

    The backstory

    Since early June, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have been roving Los Angeles and surrounding counties arresting thousands of people in what civil rights lawyers characterized in a lawsuit last week as an unconstitutional and "extraordinary campaign of targeting people based on nothing more than the color of their skin."

    In her order, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for Central California, said there is "a mountain of evidence" to support the claim that agents are arresting people solely based on their race, accents, or the work they're engaged in, in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable government seizure.

    "The seizures at issue occurred unlawfully," Frimpong wrote.

    Understanding the restraining orders

    She issued two temporary restraining orders — one prohibiting immigration agents from arresting people without reasonable suspicion that they're in the country illegally, and the other requiring agents to give people they arrest immediate access to lawyers. The orders, which apply to Los Angeles and six surrounding counties, are temporary while the case moves forward. But they could severely restrict the Trump administration's ability to continue carrying out the raids that have sown fear and terror in immigrant and Latino neighborhoods since they started on June 6.

    "It's an extraordinary victory," said Mark Rosenbaum, a senior lawyer with Public Counsel, one of the legal advocacy groups that filed the suit. "It is a complete repudiation of the racial profiling tactics and the denial of access to lawyers that the administration has utilized, and it means that the rule of law is back in Los Angeles."

    Homeland Security reacts

    In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin criticized the ruling.

    "A district judge is undermining the will of the American people," McLaughlin said. "America's brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists — truly the worst of the worst from Golden State communities. Law and order will prevail."

    But the ruling is the latest potential roadblock for President Trump as he escalates his immigration crackdown by focusing on large, Democratic-run cities whose leaders he's accused of trying to sabotage his efforts to carry out his mass deportation plans.

    It came a little more than a week after Public Counsel, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed an emergency class action lawsuit alleging that ICE and Border Patrol agents are engaged in widespread racial profiling, arresting people they encounter in public solely because they have brown skin or because they're doing work often done by immigrants.

    Where things stand

    Since early June, agents have repeatedly raided known hubs for Latino workers, including car washes, day laborer gathering spots, and street vendor corners. They've also pulled people who appear to be Latino out of their cars, and picked them up from bus stops and on sidewalks. They've arrested immigrants without legal status and U.S. citizens alike. Many of the arrests have been filmed by bystanders and posted to social media.

    In a sworn declaration, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, said that on June 18, he and co-workers were sitting at a bus stop waiting for their ride to a construction job when armed, masked agents in plain clothes poured out of several unmarked cars and ran toward them. Vazquez Perdomo said he was afraid and tried to move away. The men grabbed and handcuffed him before ever asking for his identification, he said. He was arrested, detained for three weeks, and while now released, is facing deportation.

    He said he was never told why he was being arrested or informed of any warrant against him.

    "I think that I was arrested that day at the bus stop because of how I look," he said. "I was sitting with other workers and we all look Hispanic and were wearing construction work clothes."

    In a hearing at a downtown federal courthouse on Thursday, ACLU attorney Mohammad Tajsar argued that pressure to drive up immigration arrests has led agents to disregard legal and constitutional limits on their authority. In order to stop someone in public and arrest them without a warrant, an immigration agent must at least have "reasonable suspicion" that they're in the country illegally. Federal courts have ruled a person's appearance alone is not enough.

    But Tajsar pointed Judge Frimpong to numerous videos of recent immigration raids, press reports, and sworn declarations from Vazquez Perdomo and other people swept up that he said prove federal agents are detaining people who look Latino on the assumption that they're immigrants, even though they know nothing else about them.

    "They're engaging in roving patrols in which they're stopping people first and asking questions later," Tajsar said. "They're not going to admit this, but the evidence is clear. They're looking at race."

    Sean Skedzielewski, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, denied that.

    "There's no documented evidence of agents deciding to ignore the law or just pick people up because of race," he told the judge. "That kind of conduct is just not happening."

    Skedzielewski said agents out on patrol are instead trained to consider "the totality of circumstances," which can include considering someone's appearance along with other factors like the location of a stop, their workplace, or whether a person gets nervous when encountering an agent.

    "What might seem like an arbitrary stop that comes out of nowhere," he said, "agents are performing work in the field all the time before these interactions occur. Prior surveillance of the area, of that person, of their interactions – that the person being stopped might be totally unaware of – are informing the agents' decisions to approach in the first place."

    The judge's decision

    Judge Frimpong said during Thursday's hearing that she was skeptical of the government's general assurances that immigration agents are not arresting people arbitrarily.

    "What they are considering should be things that give them reasonable suspicion that this person does not have status, and I'm not seeing that," the judge said. She said the government could have been more convincing by explaining the specific reasons that agents arrested Vasquez Perdomo or several other plaintiffs in the case. But it chose not to do that.

    In their own declarations, four other plaintiffs, including U.S. citizens, described similar encounters with hard-charging agents who they said detained or arrested them before asking any questions.

    Whether immigration agents will scale back their aggressive tactics in response to the judge's order is unclear. Attorneys for the civil rights groups have said it will be the government's responsibility to ensure its agents are following the law and the Constitution as they continue their immigration enforcement operations. But lawyers also said they'll aggressively enforce the judge's order in court if they think the government is failing to comply.

    Read the ruling

    Copyright 2025 NPR

  • Roman launched today, with cosmic aims

    Topline:

    A new NASA space telescope launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and other mysteries of the universe.

    Details: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off at 4:26 a.m. PT on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space.

    What's next: Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter — mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos.


    A new NASA space telescope launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe.

    The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off at 4:26 a.m. PT on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space.

    "What a glorious dawn launch," NASA's Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, said at a press briefing soon after liftoff. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."

    More good news came shortly after launch as the telescope began deploying its solar panels and other instruments. "Ground controllers at NASA Goddard have been receiving telemetry data from Roman, and apparently all systems are nominal," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

    The journey to Roman's new home

    Roman has an unusual origin story: Initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office, the spacecraft was donated to NASA instead. The new telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer who was known as the 'Mother of Hubble' for her championing of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Her namesake telescope will have the sharpness of Hubble but a field of view that is at least 100 times larger, allowing it to image huge swaths of the sky at once.

    Before it can do that, the Roman Space Telescope will have to get to its new home in the sky about a million miles away. Roman will live at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point known as L2. There, the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Sun help the telescope keep a steady orbit while using minimal fuel. The James Webb Space Telescope orbits at this point, which gives the spacecraft an unobstructed view of the sky.

    "It takes us a good three-plus months to get out there, and we're spending that time checking everything out and doing a whole bunch of calibrations and making sure everything is working the way we know it can," said NASA's Jeremy Perkins, an integration and test scientist on the mission. "It's basically like our time to kick the tires and just make sure that the focus is right, the pointing is right."

    Uncovering cosmic mysteries

    Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter — mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos. Roman will study how gravity subtly affects the path of light along great distances throughout a massive survey of the sky. By doing this, the telescope will help map both normal and dark matter, giving scientists a better understanding of just what this elusive substance might be.

    Astronomers will also use Roman's observations to uncover dark energy, the strange force that is believed to drive the expansion of the universe. Scientists' understanding of dark energy comes from observations of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. These supernovas appear to shine at known and predictable brightness throughout the cosmos, giving them the nickname "standard candles." By cataloguing even more of these supernovas, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of how dark energy works, which could fundamentally change the way astronomers view the universe.

    Roman will also search for planets outside our solar system. Since astronomers confirmed their existence in the 1990s, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified. With Roman, NASA expects to identify more than 100,000 of them by identifying dips in starlight caused by a planet passing in front of its own star. The telescope also hopes to find some 1,000 through microlensing — a technique that searches for tiny changes in background starlight caused by the gravity of a far-off planet.

    "Why do we care so much about exoplanets? Because one of our main goals at NASA is answering the question: Are we alone in the universe?" Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator of the science mission directive, said at the Sunday morning briefing.

    The spacecraft is poised to bring scientists a step closer to answering that question: It will demonstrate technology that can take a picture of a planet by selectively blocking out the light from its home star.

    "We are going to make this giant leap forward with the coronagraph technology that is going to allow us to look at these distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know if they could be habitable," she said.

    A deluge of data

    The telescope will beam back 1.4 terabytes of raw science data each day, using a refrigerator-sized high-gain antenna. The data will be available immediately to scientists and the public.

    "Roman's database at the end of its prime mission after five years is going to be bigger than your standard music streaming platform," Perkins said.

    Because of the massive amounts of data, NASA is making it available to anyone through a cloud-based system called Roman Nexus. For Perkins, that's what makes this mission unique — anyone can look at the raw data and find new discoveries.

    "It's all the things that we are not expecting to see," he said. "It's all these one-in-a-million things that we're going to be able to see with Roman that really excites me."
    Copyright 2026 NPR

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  • Newsom strikes deal with Dems, rolls back proposal
    People rally outside a government building holding signs reading 'Stand With Real Wildfire Survivors' and 'No Utility Bailout'.
    Eaton Fire survivors protest outside the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento on Aug. 25.

    Topline:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom backed off his plans to ease costs for utilities following wildfires they cause, striking a narrower deal with Democratic lawmakers on Saturday.

    Details: Newsom and Senate and Assembly leaders agreed on a narrower package of wildfire policies, including prohibiting private equity groups from investing in wildfire claims and denying utility CEO bonuses in the years their companies cause fatal fires.

    Why it matters: Homeowners, insurers and fire survivors have said his original plan would have shifted those costs onto them.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday backed off his proposal to reduce costs for electrical utilities after their equipment sparks wildfires, agreeing instead to a narrower deal after homeowners, insurers and fire survivors argued his original plan would have shifted those costs onto them.

    Instead, Newsom and Senate and Assembly leaders agreed on a narrower package of wildfire policies, including prohibiting private equity groups from investing in wildfire claims and denying utility CEO bonuses in the years their companies cause fatal fires.

    The deal is a victory for lawmakers who refused to reduce damages to victims and shift costs away from utilities. Opponents included insurance companies, consumer advocates and survivors of the January 2025 Eaton Fire caused by Southern California Edison equipment that killed 19 people in Altadena.

    Under the agreement announced Saturday, the state would create a “fast-pay” program for survivors’ property loss, pain and suffering in the wake of a utility-caused fire. It would include deadlines for determining which claims are valid within 60 days of receipt, and settlement offers within 30 days after that, but survivors could still pursue the long process of suing utilities if they choose.

    The state also commits to improving its local wildfire mitigation efforts and sharing more data on insurance coverage in areas with fire risk.

    The final agreement, which lawmakers will vote on in Senate Bill 492, caps a contentious series of closed-door negotiations between Newsom’s office and legislative leaders on how much utility companies should pay after fires.

    Newsom wanted utilities to have to pay less to insurance companies, some wildfire survivors, local governments and corporations claiming damages after a fire. His administration is concerned the mounting costs threaten investor confidence in the state’s three major for-profit utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He said that could lead to higher borrowing costs for the companies and higher electricity bills for Californians.

    Newsom also argued his plan would prioritize paying survivors who lose their homes. In past fires, investors have funded lawsuits or claims have been sold to hedge funds, increasing the number of third parties seeking to profit from wildfire payouts, Newsom’s office has said.

    SB 492 does not include most of the proposals Newsom wanted and does not substantially change how much utilities must pay after fires they cause. California’s $18 billion wildfire fund that utilities draw from to pay fire damages — and which would fund claims in the fast-pay program — is funded 50-50 by utility customers and shareholders. Proponents of Newsom’s proposals remain concerned that another catastrophic fire could drain that money, leaving utilities facing a mountain of costs and another round of potential bankruptcies.

    Nine of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires were caused by electrical equipment or power lines.

    “This system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday morning. “I urge the Legislature to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”

    Negotiations may resume next year

    Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat who was closely involved in the negotiations, acknowledged that lawmakers would likely have to return to the issue of utility liabilities under a future governor.

    “What I heard very clearly, certainly from senators, from the Assembly and even from all the stakeholders was that they’re willing to do that,” he said. “They’re willing to start getting around the table and looking at some of those structural issues. But that takes time. We ran out of time in this session.”

    “We certainly stood with fire survivors,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Palisades Fire survivors. “Challenges with affordability of electricity (remain). That’s not going away.”

    The utilities agreed and said there needs to be a long-term solution.

    “While we appreciate the efforts made, we are disappointed that the state couldn’t develop comprehensive wildfire reform,” said Southern California Edison spokesperson David Eisenhauer.

    San Diego Gas & Electric would not comment and referred questions to Wildfire Victims First, the utility-backed campaign whose priorities aligned with the governor’s wish list.

    Campaign spokesperson Nathan Click said the state still needs to make urgent structural reforms “to ensure a fair recovery system.”

    PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the company is reviewing the bill and is “focused on helping wildfire survivors recover faster, making communities safer, and protecting customer utility bills.” Company stocks tumbled Friday after reports of a potential agreement that did not include any utility cost-shifts.

    Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, the Santa Barbara Democrat whose caucus opposed Newsom’s cost-shifting proposals, said in a statement the agreement “supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers, and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.”

    Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who led negotiations for the Assembly, in a statement called the deal “an important step forward.”

    “We held the line to protect the people who needed it most,” she said.

    The biggest sticking point was the governor’s insistence on eliminating subrogation, which allows insurance companies to sue utilities to recoup their costs for wildfire claims. Lawmakers were staunchly opposed to eliminating that avenue out of concern that it would disrupt the state’s fragile insurance market, raise premiums and cause insurers to flee the state, and they rejected it.

    “This outcome keeps costs with the parties responsible for wildfires and helps protect the progress California is making in stabilizing its insurance market,” said Denni Ritter, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

    While the deal is a win for the insurance industry, a senator who represents Eaton Fire survivors said it’s important to also hold insurers accountable.

    “We know that in many cases, insurance companies delayed and denied fire survivors’ claims and payments, delaying recovery,” said Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez. “We need all industries to come to the table in a real way.”

    State lawmakers also resisted the governor’s effort to limit survivors’ non-economic damages, an important victory for the Eaton Fire survivors who relentlessly campaigned against the proposal.

    Fire survivors and consumer advocates credited the Senate, especially Limón, for pushing back on Newsom.

    “In the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network.

    Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which worked in concert with fire survivors, called the negotiations “an exercise in the democratic process.”

    “(The Legislature) told (Newsom) they wouldn’t bend in closed-door negotiations,” said Jamie Court, president of the group.

    Pérez commended survivors for pressuring lawmakers over the past couple of weeks.

    “The fire survivors have shaped this entire conversation,” Pérez said. “They made a tremendous impact.”

  • Composer Jim Lang and his band are on tour
    The cartoon character Arnold from Hey Arnold! is on a kick drum
    The music of 'Hey Arnold!' is going on tour.

    Topline:

    Hey Arnold! composer Jim Lang is taking the jazzy, funky music he composed for the show on tour, with a few stops in SoCal.

    Keep reading ... for tour details and from LAist reporter Robert Garrova's conversation with Lang about the show’s endearing music legacy.

    For many millennials, '90s Nickelodeon shows such as Hey Arnold!, Doug, and Rocko’s Modern Life represent a golden age of animation, with theme songs and music scores often just as weird and offbeat as the characters and storylines.

    Take the theme song of Hey Arnold! — an earworm that introduced a generation of young TV viewers to acid jazz, funk, hip-hop and more, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

    Hey Arnold! composer Jim Lang is taking the show's music on tour, with a few stops in SoCal.

    LAist’s Robert Garrova caught up with Lang to talk about the show’s endearing music legacy.

    On whether he and the other musicians on the show set out to introduce young people to new musical genres

    Lang:  I wish I could take credit for being that intentional about it. But we weren't really hoping to introduce anybody to jazz. That was just a wonderful kinda side benefit of the way the show played out.

    Was the music too good for a kids' show? Take for instance the theme music for the fan-favorite Pigeon Man episode

    Lang: I don't think there's any such thing as music that's too good for a kids' show. I think children have the hugest imagination for absorbing things that they've never seen before, for being delighted by the unusual.

    Those things [music scores] all work because the writers and the animators and the background artists and everybody did such an incredible job before it ever showed up at my studio. That's it. You just kind of shut up and get out of the way and let the image kind of play through you in a way.

    The music of 'Hey Arnold!' on tour

    Jim Lang and his P.S. 118 All Stars band will hit a number of SoCal venues this fall and winter, including Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown on Oct. 26 and The Observatory in Santa Ana on Nov. 29.

    Tour dates and more on their Instagram.

    On what it felt like being at Nickelodeon in the '90s when the bosses were saying, 'Hey, yeah, let's do some acid jazz on a kids show'

    Lang: Well, the women that started Nickelodeon and that ran that company in that era were a really unusual breed, and they were super adventurous. They didn't discourage, you know, people doing crazy stuff.

    On what fans' reactions are at the live shows

    Lang: Oh, it's just such a love fest. It is nostalgic. The music is meaningful to them because the show, after five seasons, there was a sound to it, and people found it relatable. So getting to hear a band actually play that stuff live, it sounds familiar to the audience in a way that I think people were just thrilled by.

  • Before Yaamava’, San Bernardino had a bingo hall
    A close up of a yellow and red slot machine with multiple sevens on it and jackpot selections. Other slot machines are in the background.
    Slot machines at Yaamava’ Resort & Casino.

    Topline:

    The tribe behind Yaamava’ Resort & Casino, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, is celebrating 40 years of gaming. The enterprise started as a bingo hall, when tribal gaming was under scrutiny in the state.

    Who are the Yuhaaviatam? The tribal nation is formerly known as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. Their reservation is near Highland in San Bernardino County, but their ancestral land stretches much farther.

    About the bingo hall: Early on in tribal gaming, this was how some tribes chose to support themselves. The high-stakes bingo halls weren’t always welcome, though, and some state and local leaders tried to shut them down.

    Why does this matter? The Yuhaaviatam got into the business because they needed to pay for critical resources in the community and keep their government funded. Yaamava’ has also become a major employer.

    Read on…. to learn about how the tribe went from bingo hall to casino.

    Before the 1980s, tribal leaders of the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation were struggling to care for their people. That’s when, like many tribes, they decided to open a bingo hall on their reservation in San Bernardino County.

    The enterprise eventually became the powerhouse Yaamava’ Resort & Casino, a place famous across the Southland for its snappy “you in?” slogan and roster of concert billboards, featuring the likes of Pitbull, Stevie Nicks and the Jonas Brothers.

    The tribe is celebrating 40 years of gaming. But in between the high-limit gaming rooms, intimate performances and the  biggest gaming floor in the West — with over 7,500 slot machines — you’ll find a story of self-determination in the face of California bureaucracy.

    A brief history

    The Yuhaaviatam’s homeland is the San Bernardino mountains, valleys and high deserts. They were previously known as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, but recently reclaimed their ancestral name, Yuhaaviatam (yu-HAH-vee-ah-tahm), which means “people of the pines.” According to the tribe, the community was forced to leave after decades of violence, colonization and displacement.

    One big change came in the mid 1800s when a San Bernardino militia killed Native people. The Yuhaaviatam’s leader at the time, Paakuma, who was known outside the tribe by his Spanish name of Santos Manuel, led the couple dozen remaining members out of the mountains.

    The tribe moved around the region, but the federal government eventually placed them on the San Manuel Reservation in 1891. Johnny Hernandez Jr., the Yuhaaviatam’s vice chairman, told LAist it was a time of hardship.

    “ We were put up against the hillside there with non-fertile land and really in an area where people probably didn’t think that we were going to survive,” he said.

    The Yuhaaviatam had to rebuild largely on their own. The tribe got by financially with apricot orchards and other small ventures. When members needed money, they’d sell some of their livestock or hold bake sales. Hernandez said it wasn’t enough to fund what people needed.

    The bingo hall origin

    A wide view of San Manuel Bingo from the front entrance. Some cars are in front. The building facade has curved entryways with red and blue neon accent lighting.
    The entrance of San Manuel Bingo.
    (
    Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation
    )

    By the ‘80s, other tribes across the United States were in a similar predicament. Looking for ways to generate other forms of revenue, some turned to bingo halls, often outside the jurisdiction of states’ gambling regulations, as their economic springboard.

    Under the leadership of tribal chairman Henry Duro, the Yuhaaviatam proposed opening a high-stakes bingo hall. According to newspaper reports, they faced immediate opposition.

    Local officials feared the operation would disrupt nearby neighborhoods and foster illicit activity. One critic was San Bernardino City Councilmember Steve Marks, who reportedly instructed city officials to find “every legal way possible to stop the project.”

    “ I think from the community, there was a lot of concern about having gaming in their backyard,” Hernandez said, who’s Duro’s nephew. “Everybody understands that gaming can lead to issues with not only the person, but the families …  so we really take that responsibility seriously.”

    City leaders tried to push the bingo hall off the reservation and even tried to delay construction in court. The Yuhaaviatam had talks with San Bernardino to find a solution, but according to reports in October 1985, that effort broke down.

    Ultimately, the Yuhaaviatam moved forward with building San Manuel Indian Bingo on the reservation, which opened on July 24, 1986. It was a hit. They had sold out nights.  People even climbed over the back walls to play.

    “A funny story that my chairwoman Lynn always tells is that those ones that really were against [the bingo hall] and had the biggest concerns were the first ones in line to go into the bingo and to game,” Hernandez said.

    He grew up next door to the bingo hall and would sit outside to watch the stream of people go in and out. He said the building looked like a box compared to the casino they have now. But inside, hundreds of hopeful bingo winners packed rows upon rows of tables.

    “ They would have costume contests and everything, and it was real lively,” Hernandez said. “I remember a lot of people were excited to be there.”

    As controversial as the bingo hall was to some, it was also a source of employment for San Bernardino. Kenneth Shoji, the tribe’s spokesperson, told LAist how when the hall opened, much of the area around was in an economic downtown.

    “ The air base had closed. Kaiser Steel was closing. Santa Fe [Depot] had down-scaled significantly,” Shoji said. “Many people who came to work here were coming from those industries.  In fact, many tribal elders … also came from those businesses.”

    The rise of tribal gaming

    San Manuel Indian Bingo opened the door to financial stability, but tribal gaming enterprises still faced trouble in California. State and local leaders wanted to shut them down.

    One fight ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Two Native reservations, Cabazon and Morongo, ran bingo and card games in Riverside County, which began a few years before the Yuhaaviatam’s enterprise. Officials argued the state had the right to ban tribal gaming to discourage gambling.

    The Supreme Court ended up siding with the tribes in part because California already permitted multiple forms of gaming, like horse racing, card games and a state-sponsored lottery.

    The ruling led to the creation of the  Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, a landmark piece of legislation that Congress signed into law in 1988. It paved the way for tribal nations to run more profitable forms of gaming, like craps and slot machines.

    A wide look of a casino gaming room with a bright row of slot machines and chairs.
    Casino games at Yaamava’ Resort & Casino.
    (
    Cato Hernández
    /
    LAist
    )

    The act established regulations that split gaming into three classes and created a system where tribes would have to make agreements with states before offering the highest level.

    Randall Akee, a professor of economic development in Indigenous communities at Harvard University, told LAist it took awhile for California to get on board.

    “Tribal gaming really as an industry, larger scale in California, took off in the post-2000 era,” he said.

    That came with the passage of Prop. 1A and Prop. 5, which permitted compacts for Class III gaming on tribal lands in California. The deals have been moneymakers. According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, California and northern Nevada (which are calculated together) lead the nation in gross gaming revenue, bringing in $12.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.

    Akee said the Yuhaaviatam people have created a large gaming footprint in California despite their small population and geographical size. Overall, the tribe is one of San Bernardino County’s top employers with nearly 8,000 employees, according to Shoji.

    They’ve also expanded their gaming enterprise into new, larger buildings. When San Manuel Casino (as the bingo hall was later named) opened in 2021, it was rebranded to Yaamava’ Resort & Casino. The $760 million expansion, with a 17-story hotel tower and 432 rooms and suites, brought their footprint to over 700,000 square feet. A parking structure now stands in place of the former bingo hall.

    Hernandez said tribal gaming has helped his community thrive. They use the revenue to pay for critical resources, like supplying medical care to elders, hiring teachers for schools and buying generators to curb power outages. The tribe has also donated over $450 million to local communities.

    “  I think the thing that people always forget or don’t understand is that every time we buy a piece of land, we’re just going to throw a casino there,” Hernandez said. “First and foremost, we’re a tribe. We have the needs for our people, and [want to] protect our cultural resources.”

    The Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation is a financial supporter of LAist. Like other funders, the tribe has no influence on our coverage.