The Brief

The second deadly shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis is raising the prospect of a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.

Senate Democrats say they will not vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security without new guardrails for immigration enforcement.

But that opposition may also torpedo the larger $1.3 trillion spending package needed to keep large swaths of the federal government operational past Friday night.

"The appalling murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis must lead Republicans to join Democrats in overhauling ICE and CBP to protect the public," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote on Sunday. "People should be safe from abuse by their own government."

Democrats were already raising alarms about the conduct of immigration officers before the latest killing in Minneapolis on Saturday.

Last week, all but seven House Democrats voted against the funding bill covering homeland security, which includes money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

At the time, a few Senate Democrats also pledged to vote against the funding when it reached them this week, though the response across the Capitol was far from the near-unified opposition in the House.

That is because the House sent the DHS funding over to the Senate tied together with billions in spending for defense, health, transportation and other federal agencies, in part to expedite the process as Congress races to meet a Friday deadline to keep the government fully open.

"The hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee, wrote in a statement last week saying she would vote for the total package.

After Pretti's shooting on Saturday by a Border Patrol agent, Murray said she would join her Democratic colleagues in opposing the funding.

Congress faces Friday deadline to avert a partial shutdown

The timeline was already tight once a winter storm delayed the first Senate votes of the week until Tuesday night. But the renewed debate over immigration enforcement is complicating the task more.

Schumer wants to cleave the DHS measure from everything else. The other remaining spending measures have overwhelming bipartisan support. Democrats want to continue negotiating the DHS funding bill without shutting down large parts of the government.

The funding measure needs to reach a 60-vote threshold to pass, meaning some Democratic support is needed for it to clear the Senate. But disentangling different parts of the legislation requires buy-in from Republicans, and so far, GOP leadership has not indicated that they are willing to separate the funding bills.

Flowers, signs and mementos are seen Monday at a makeshift memorial in the area where Alex Pretti was shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. On January 24, federal agents shot and killed Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, while scuffling with him on an icy roadway.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune's communications director, Ryan Wrasse, wrote on X on Monday that the Senate will proceed as planned to consider all the funding bills together.

"A government shutdown, even a partial one, does not serve the American people well," he wrote. "Hopefully Senate Democrats, who are actively engaged in conversations, can find a path forward to join us before this week's funding deadline hits."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the appropriations committee chair, told The New York Times over the weekend, "I'm exploring all options. We have five other bills that are really vital, and I'm relatively confident they would pass."

Collins, who is up for reelection and whose state is also a target of immigration raids by the Trump administration, is among the Republicans who have expressed fresh concerns about the tactics, calling for an investigation.

A handful of Republicans have called for congressional hearings or offered sharper criticism.

"My support for funding ICE remains the same," Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., wrote in a statement. "But we must also maintain our core values as a nation, including the right to protest and assemble."

Even if Democrats could convince Republicans to agree to separate DHS funding from the rest, that would mean the legislation needs approval again in the House, which is on recess until Feb. 2. It is unlikely that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., would call members back to Washington early, increasing the risk of a partial shutdown.

Why Democrats are willing to risk another shutdown

Before this weekend, few lawmakers expressed appetite for another shutdown after a record 43-day one this fall. For weeks, Democrats withheld their votes from a short-term funding measure to reopen the government without a deal to extend expiring health insurance subsidies.

Eventually, a handful of Democrats joined with Republicans to reopen the government, with the promise of a vote on the subsidies. That vote failed in December. The deal included the passage of three bipartisan spending packages for veterans, agriculture and other areas through the end of September 2026 and a short-term extension for everything else through Jan. 30.

Congress has already passed several more full-year funding bills through September, but the measures still awaiting final passage in the Senate account for 75% of annual federal discretionary spending.

But even Democrats who ultimately voted with Republicans to end the last funding stalemate now say they will vote against the DHS funding despite the risk of another shutdown.

"We have bipartisan agreement on 96% of the budget," Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, D-Nev., wrote in a statement. "We've already passed six funding bills. Let's pass the remaining five bipartisan bills and fund essential agencies while we continue to fight for a Department of Homeland Security that respects Americans' constitutional rights and preserves federal law enforcement's essential role to keep us safe."

Federal agents look on as demonstrators gather near the site of where Alex Pretti was fatally shot by.

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Holding up the DHS funding bill would not halt the administration's immigration crackdown. Last summer, Congressional Republicans allocated $75 billion for ICE over four years in President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill."

Democrats say they do not want to give ICE the roughly $10 billion base funding that is on the line now. But more so, Democrats see this as rare leverage in the minority to extract policy changes.

Democrats already negotiated to include $20 million in funding for officer-worn body cameras, plus more funding for oversight and a reduction in funding for enforcement and removal operations and detention bed capacity. But most Democrats said this did not go far enough.

Democrats want more sweeping reforms to reign in the tactics, such as prohibiting ICE from deploying excessive force and explicitly preventing them from raiding places of worship, hospitals and schools. Republicans previously rejected these demands.

The DHS funding bill also includes funding for the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Democrats are betting that the American public is on their side. A recent New York Times poll found that a majority of respondents said the federal immigration tactics have gone too far.

Nearly $1.3 trillion in federal funding is at stake

The funding fight over DHS is the latest dispute over funding in Congress. Last year, the Trump administration moved to rescind billions in federal funding appropriated by Congress for foreign aid and public broadcasting — and proposed a budget slashing nondiscretionary funding by some 20%.

Instead, the final legislation keeps federal nondiscretionary spending essentially flat. For example, the administration called for cutting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budget by 50%. Under the bipartisan health spending bill, the agency's funding would remain roughly unchanged.

Bill Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former longtime appropriations committee staffer, said this is striking considering Congress has mostly followed Trump's lead.

"Congress is starting to show a little bit of backbone," Hoagland said. "I think there is increasing recognition of the need to have Congress exert its power of the purse."

Hoagland also notes that Congress is nearly a quarter of the way into the fiscal year, so once lawmakers greenlight the remaining funding, it will not be too long before the appropriations process begins again.
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It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”