The Brief

The man arrested for his alleged role in Tupac Shakur’s death pleaded not guilty on Thursday, more than 27 years after the rapper was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip.

Duane Keith Davis, 60, has been charged with one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further, or assist a criminal gang by a grand jury in Clark County, Nevada. Prosecutors said they will not be seeking the death penalty.

Davis was taken into custody on Sept. 29 outside his Nevada home. In body-camera footage released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Davis can be heard telling the arresting officer he was being taken in for the “biggest case in Las Vegas history.”

Davis was scheduled to be arraigned twice before, on Oct. 4 and Oct. 19, but his court appearances ended up only lasting a few minutes. Davis told District Court Judge Tierra Jones his attorney needed more time.

Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said in court they’ve long suspected Davis was involved with the 1996 shooting, but his 2019 autobiography Compton Street Legend helped them gather the evidence they needed.

Davis is not accused of shooting Shakur, but DiGiacomo said he was the ringleader behind the plan. In Nevada, you can be charged with a crime if you helped someone commit that crime, including murder.

“He acknowledges that he is in fact, the person that ordered the death of Mr. Shakur and the attempted murder of Mr. Knight,” DiGiacomo said in court on Sept. 29.

DiGiacomo said Davis had been trying to get revenge on Shakur for a physical fight between the hip-hop icon and Davis’ nephew, a member of the Southside Crips.

Sekyiwa ‘Set’ Shakur, Tupac’s sister and President of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, said Davis’ arrest was a pivotal moment.

“The silence of the past 27 years surrounding this case has spoken loudly in our community,” Shakur said in a statement. “It’s important to me that the world, the country, the justice system, and our people acknowledge the gravity of the passing of this man, my brother, my mother’s son, my father’s son. His life and death matters, and should not go unsolved or unrecognized. So yes, today is a victory, but I will reserve judgment until all the facts and legal proceedings are complete. There have been multiple hands involved and there remains so much surrounding the life and death of my brother Tupac, and our Shakur family overall. We are seeking real justice, on all fronts.”

California’s school finance watchdog agency has found the Los Angeles Unified School District is at high risk of financial insolvency.

The Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team presented its analysis at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

A July assessment from the Los Angeles County Office of Education found LAUSD was at risk of becoming insolvent, which triggered FCMAT’s evaluation.

“FCMAT’s role is not to determine which programs the district should preserve, which reductions it should make or what agreements it should reach with the labor [unions],” Jennifer Noga, an intervention specialist with the agency, told the board. “That is 100% a local decision. Our goal is to help identify the fiscal risk and help the district understand what needs to be addressed to restore fiscal stability.”

The analysis found that LAUSD's deficit spending, declining enrollment and increasing costs of employee salaries and special education put the district at risk of exhausting its reserves by the end of next school year.

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents LAUSD educators, said in a memo to the board and in public comments that FCMAT’s analysis penalized the district for paying teachers more and overstated financial risk.

“There are different ways to tell a story with numbers and statistics and data, and we just think that FCMAT is presenting the most austere version of that and we have to fight back against that,” said Julie Van Winkle, the union's vice president. “There is declining enrollment in the district, and who is going to want to put their kids in schools if we keep cutting programs because of austerity?"

The district has a plan to cut spending, which includes eliminating thousands of jobs and funding for high-needs schools. The district must also bargain with employee unions before implementing furlough days planned for the 2027-28 school year.

More than 100 cannabis businesses in L.A. that were expected to lose their licenses at the end of the year may be able to stay open after a City Council vote Tuesday.

A city ordinance that took effect in August would only have allowed cannabis businesses to renew their licenses if they owed less than $1 million in unpaid city taxes and had been delinquent on their taxes for less than four years.

The limits were set to get more strict each year until 2030, when businesses would need to owe less than $100,000 in unpaid taxes.

The City Council voted to delay the restrictions for one year because a separate program intended to provide an exception to businesses who agreed to follow a tax payment plan could not begin on time.

There are more than 1,000 licensed cannabis businesses in the city of L.A., according to the Department of Cannabis Regulation, and 125 of those would not have been eligible to renew their licenses had Tuesday’s vote not passed.

In October 2025, City Treasurer Diana Mangioglu reported that 500 cannabis businesses owed a total of $500 million in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties. Of those businesses, 48 owed more than $2 million.

Owners of many cannabis retailers, manufacturers and distributors have asked local government leaders for help as they face higher taxes than most industries and strong competition from unlicensed businesses — which pay no taxes and typically sell at a lower price in the illicit market.

Evelyn Scott gave public comment during the City Council meeting and said these challenges led her business to close.

“Losing our license will make it even harder to reopen, generate revenue, create jobs and meet our obligations to the city,” Scott said.

What is the tax amnesty program?

When the city enacted licensing restrictions based on cannabis businesses’ unpaid taxes, local officials also intended to make a pathway for delinquent businesses to come back into compliance.

The cannabis tax amnesty program allowed for some businesses that would otherwise be prevented from renewing their licenses to agree to a payment plan that could last up to five years. If the businesses kept to the agreement, they could continue to renew their licenses, would have penalties and interest on unpaid taxes forgiven and wouldn’t face criminal charges for not paying those taxes on time.

Could the agreements help the city?

L.A.’s Office of Finance, which is in charge of the program, estimates it could bring in $10 million in city tax revenue in the first year.

But it wasn’t possible to start the program for 2027 licenses, according to Matthew Crawford, assistant director of the finance office.

He told LAist in an email that the office wouldn’t be able to begin the program in time without exposing the city to “unacceptable levels of risk to both [a tax administration] system replacement project and the integrity of the amnesty program.”

Crawford said the finance office still expects the city to receive the same amount of revenue once the program begins.

An Arcadia couple has been arrested on child abuse charges following an investigation into a surrogacy scheme involving at least 21 children ranging in age from a few months to 13 years, authorities said Tuesday.

Guojun Xuan, 66, and his wife, Silvia Zhang, 39, face several counts of child abuse, as well as conspiracy to commit child abuse, accessory after the fact, and dissuading a witness, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

“This case is unprecedented. It is horrific,” Hochman said during a news conference Tuesday morning. “The physical abuse, beating and punishment that these very young children received is despicable.”

Prosecutors are seeking $100 million bail for the couple because of the serious nature of the charges and because they are flight risks, Hochman said. They were scheduled to be arraigned at the Pasadena courthouse later Tuesday.

Fifteen children were removed from the couple’s opulent home in Arcadia last year after an allegation of abuse, and another six living elsewhere were also located. They ranged in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3. Police believe Zhang gave birth to one or two of the children while the rest were carried and delivered by surrogates.

Hochman said the couple set up a surrogacy agency that they operated from their home and used that agency to hire surrogates throughout the U.S.

“The house could only be described as a house of horrors for these incredible young children,” Hochman said.

Prosecutor says videos show nannies and Xuan abusing children

Zhang and Xuan were first arrested in May 2025 after a hospital reported that their 2-month-old infant had a traumatic head injury, the result of a nanny at the home violently shaking the baby, according to Arcadia police.

Arcadia police did not file charges at the time, saying they needed to complete the investigation.

Hochman said the couple set up three rooms they called learning centers, where the children spent several hours a day sitting at desks under the supervision of nannies.

Through an extensive surveillance system including motion-activated cameras, the couple watched as the nannies subjected the children to physical abuse including daily beatings, he said.

In one video, Xuan enters one of the rooms and tells a nanny to strike a child harder, and in another he joins the nanny in hitting the child, Hochman said.

He said the nannies were told “not to leave any physical marks on the children,” and when police arrived to investigate in May 2025, the couple told the children to deny they had been beaten.

After examining the surveillance footage, police issued an arrest warrant for Chunmei Li, the nanny seen hurting the 2-month-old infant, but she could not be found.

Hochman said “there will be a reckoning” for the defendants, one of whom faces more than 17 years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutor says motive for discipline remains under investigation

When asked about the couple’s motivation, Hochman said that was part of the ongoing investigation, as was the parentage of each child.

Mitchell Krems, Xuan’s attorney, previously told ABC7 that Xuan’s goal was to raise children who become productive adults.

“The reason he has all these children is because he wants them to contribute to society. He is not a man who is self-indulgent,” Krems said. “Some who are wealthy might spend on jewelry or cars, but he is actually spending his resources to help his children become educated so that they can be the philosophers, the physicians, the researchers and the inventors that help society.”

Krems did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Tuesday’s arrests.

Surrogates say they were misled

Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman agrees to carry and deliver a child for another person or couple, often after an embryo transfer.

There is no comprehensive federal law regulating surrogacy, leaving most rules to the states.

California is considered a “surrogacy-friendly state” because it has clear laws governing the process. Both sides are required to have lawyers, and there must be a written, notarized contract before an embryo transfer takes place.

Investigators have said they were looking into whether the couple had misled surrogates around the country and that at least eight women came forward to say they were aggressively pursued by the couple to serve as surrogates.

The women, many of whom were first-time surrogates, say they were given misleading or incomplete information about the couple’s family situation and intentions.

At least one, Kayla Elliott, is now trying to get custody of a baby she birthed for the couple.

A day after President Donald Trump said he would start paying for controversial taxpayer-funded ads with a campaign account, there’s no sign he plans to refund the millions of federal dollars already spent on them.

Nearly $12 million worth of ads have already aired, according to AdImpact, as part of the $20 million the Homeland Security Department tapped for the contract.

But Trump’s plan to pay for the ads with MAGA Inc. doesn’t mean there’s any reimbursement coming, said a White House official who was not authorized to talk publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said the ads were “really good” and “promotion for the country, done by many presidents before.” Asked whether he’d repay the already spent funds, he said, “we’ll decide.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer slammed Trump for not committing to reimbursement and said he believes the president’s plan for covering future costs represents illegal coordination with his super PAC.

“Trump must return this money to the American people and there must be a full investigation into this gross waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Schumer told The Associated Press.

The four ads, which began airing in late September, glorify Trump and echo his political messaging going into the midterms. One features a clip of Trump talking about the threat of communism and another is a replay of an ad from his last presidential campaign.

Republicans and Democrats alike have said the ads aren’t an appropriate use of U.S. government money. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said they shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.

Legal experts said the ads might even violate federal statutes, including a law against congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda” and another limiting the partisan political activities of government employees.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements similar to what past administrations have done to promote policies. Trump on Monday posted on his Truth Social platform calling the ads “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.” while also promising to pay for them with “money I raised for MAGA Inc.”

That is Trump’s political war chest, which had amassed more than $400 million by the end of July. Trump has begun to tap it to boost Republican candidates around the country in the midterm elections.