The Brief

Tens of thousands of people joined yesterday's "No Kings" rally in downtown L.A. for hours of peaceful protest before police enforced a dispersal order around a federal building. The enforcement caused tense confrontations between protesters and law enforcement and police deployed less-lethal munitions and mounted units.

Dozens of arrests related to protest activity were made by police on Saturday, according to LAPD. In all, there were 35 arrests for curfew violation, one for failing to disperse, one for obstructing a police officer, and one for resisting arrest.

It’s unclear how many protesters may have been injured due to police tactics. The department said in an emailed update that three officers were injured.

An estimated 30,000 people demonstrated, according to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

“I had the opportunity to go up in the helicopter with our Chief of Police and I went over all of the locations and every protest was peaceful, as was the one downtown,” Bass said in an interview with LAist media partner KCAL News.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell also told KCAL News that he was “disappointed” that there were some instances of violence later in the day.

“About mid-afternoon or so it got violent, when you had agitators in the group start assaulting officers with missiles, rocks, bottles, fireworks," McDonnell said.

The LAPD deployed munitions and mounted units.

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Protesters face off with police outside of a federal building in downtown Los Angeles Saturday for an anti-Trump "No Kings Day" demonstration.

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A curfew was in place from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. in certain areas of downtown, and officials said the curfew would probably last through the weekend.

What happened during the dispersal order?

Shortly before 4 p.m. on Saturday the LAPD had issued a dispersal order and told anyone remaining on Alameda Boulevard south of Aliso and north of Temple streets to "immediately leave the area." The area was also closed off to traffic.

Following the end of the organized march, some protesters gathered at the Federal Building on Temple Street and faced off with Marines standing guard. By the time the LAPD ordered people to leave, the scene had grown more chaotic as flash bangs were set off and mounted police pushed the crowd away.

Sergio Olmos, a reporter with LAist partner CalMatters, reported the LAPD was setting off tear gas at the site.

Bass said that the other side of the story was that police got rough with protesters first. She said “everything will be evaluated.”

The LAPD said there have been 561 arrests related to protest activity since last Saturday when demonstrators began hitting the streets in response to ICE sweeps in SoCal. The department said a dozen officers had been injured since then.

The scene earlier

Numerous "No Kings” demonstrations took place across the U.S., including in dozens of locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Thousands of people filled Gloria Molina Grand Park in downtown L.A. in the morning, with more pouring into the space outside City Hall and spilling into nearby streets.

The atmosphere through much of the day was festive, with creative signs and music, the protesters made a big loop around downtown, walking down Broadway to 5th Street before circling back to City Hall.

The official protest was scheduled to end at 2 p.m. While many left after that time, some protesters moved to the Federal Building on Temple Street, where the federal detention center is located.

The building was the site of skirmishes between protestors and law enforcement last weekend. By Saturday afternoon, a line of Marines faced protestors. The mood appeared largely upbeat, but there have also been boos and chants of "shame" aimed at the Marines standing guard.

The "No Kings" rally in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday.

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Many protestors were defending the constitution

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Earlier, while the message was serious, the vibe of the permitted demonstration was joyful, with minimum police presence.

John Perez, a former farmworker, was clear on why he came out. "Donald Trump cannot claim power that our Constitution does not give him," he said.

"For the military to be turned on its own people.... is just totally against everything this country stands for," he said. "We're the civilians, they are under our orders. He is breaking all the protocols of how civilian deployment should be happening in this country."

There was also plenty of art and live music, including a performance by long-time L.A. band Ozomatli from the bed of a truck.

"Art, music and culture is something that people can relate to," said Alex Favacho, a sound engineer for the band. "No matter the color of your skin, no matter the language you speak, it's universal."

Protestor Helen Taylor said the atmosphere was infectious. "It's almost like when you go to a concert, you know, when you just get so absorbed in the positivity of the community," she said.

See more of the eye-catching signs from marchers. Click here >

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What are the 'No Kings' protests?

Dubbed the “No Kings” protests, they're organized by 50501, a national group that stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement. The group has staged protests regularly against the policies of the Trump administration. Officials said they're aware of at least 200 protests across California on Saturday, with at least 40 events across L.A. County.

Why Saturday?

Saturday is Flag Day, and Trump is hosting a military parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday.

June 14 is also Trump’s 79th birthday, which is why the protests are falling on that day, according to the "No Kings" website.

What law enforcement told protesters

Authorities had warned that anyone who engaged in violence or vandalism would be arrested this weekend at the rallies.

“ We will not allow violence, vandalism or threats to public safety to undermine the rights of those who are demonstrating lawfully," McDonnell said Friday.

The scene elsewhere in Southern California

One person attending the No Kings protest in Claremont today was Tony Baltierra, a 79 year old Vietnam veteran who's lived in the community since he was a kid.

He brought to the demonstration a homemade sign that nods to a recent nickname that has emerged from President Trump's on-again off-again tariff threats.

" I read in the paper that he was very annoyed when they were calling him, "taco" — Trump always chickens out," he said. "I played with it for a while, but I liked it."

Tony Baltierra and his "Don Taco" homemade sign

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Baltierra says he’s started going to protests a few months ago, and stepped it up over the past month. And he always invites his friends at the Claremont Senior Center to join him.

Meanwhile in Torrance, a protestor, who gave her name as Shelly, said thousands had turned up even before the event was due to start, despite Torrance being traditionally a Republican city. Her friend, Leah MacKinney-Buckley, had dressed up for the occasion.

Leah MacKinney-Buckley at the protest in Torrance

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In Laguna Woods, Karen Miller said along with the large crowd, there was a lot of honking from drivers and semi trucks driving past.

"The honking and the support of the people driving by is just exhilarating," she said. "I mean, it's very encouraging given that Orange County can be pretty red. [We're] just maybe feeling somewhat hopeful being out here."

Looking ahead

The protests come after a federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard and deployment in L.A. were illegal and violated the Constitution.

The judge ordered the troops to be brought back under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s control. However, an appeals court put that on hold until at least June 17, when a hearing on the matter is scheduled.

Local and state officials say Trump’s decision to deploy Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in response to immigration enforcement protests have only fanned tensions and made things worse.

Listen

How we're reporting this story

Jared Bennett and Robert Garrova are reporting from L.A. City Hall. Makenna Sievertson, Aiko Offner , Sharon McNary and Dañiel Martinez are making calls and contributing reporting. Josie Huang is LAist's Weekend Edition host, Suzanne Levy is writing and editing. Megan Garvey, Fiona Ng, and Tiffany Ujiiye are contributing editing.

This is a developing story. We fact check everything and rely only on information from credible sources. Sometimes, however, we make mistakes and/or initial reports turn out to be wrong. In all cases, we strive to bring you the most accurate information in real time and will update this story as new information becomes available.

California Democrats went all in on redistricting last year in a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to gerrymander red states and preserve their U.S. House majority.

Ultimately, though, it appears such a gamble wasn’t even necessary.

The “blue tsunami” that engulfed the country was enough to sweep away Republicans in ruby-red districts that Trump won by double digits two years ago as Democrats improved on their 2024 margin by a stunning 15 percentage points.

At least five of California’s nine-member Republican delegation were among the political casualties.

It’s not clear yet whether California Democrats could have picked up those seats under the old district lines drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission, known as the gold standard for map drawing.

“There was no need to undermine the work of independent redistricting when there has been so much good work done to improve representation,” said Carah Ong Whaley, executive director of the group Better Choices for Democracy, which opposed Proposition 50, the voter-approved measure to temporarily suspend the commission and redraw the maps to oust five Republicans.

She said it was party elites with large public platforms, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who drilled into voters’ psyches that California voters would suffer from Texas’ “rigging” of the midterm elections.

“It wasn’t that a lot of voters all of a sudden organized and said, ‘We need to get back at Texas,’” Ong Whaley said. “It was party elites telling voters they shouldn’t take this.”

‘People were despondent about Trump’

Still, the party faithful are adamant that Prop. 50 was a crucial unifying force for California voters who felt helpless in the face of a mercurial second Trump administration.

“It gave Democrats and voters an opportunity to do something and to realize that they, in fact, did have power to act,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who leads the California Democratic delegation, in an interview with CalMatters Wednesday. “People were despondent about Trump.”

At first, Lofgren said, the delegation hoped that the mere threat of California redrawing its own districts would be enough to call Trump’s bluff. She said Newsom wrote a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — who lost his own reelection bid Tuesday night — and proposed a detente: If you stop your gerrymandering, we’ll stop ours. Texas forged ahead.

Gov. Gavin Newsom meets with attendees during a campaign event on Proposition 50 in Los Angeles on Nov. 1, 2025.

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The energy from the Prop. 50 win, along with off-year victories in New York City’s mayoral race and gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, helped propel Democrats out of the political wilderness, said Paul Mitchell, who drew the new maps.

“That victory put wind in the sails for a lot of folks who went on to help create this blue tsunami,” Mitchell said. “It was the only way the Democrats were fighting back.”

In addition to ousting five Republicans, the maps were also drawn to shore up support for incumbent Democrats in Southern California swing districts. Mitchell estimated that protecting those members in one of the most expensive media markets in the country freed up more than $100 million that the cash-strapped party could spend in newly competitive districts elsewhere.

But critic Mike Madrid said it was unethical to try to save democracy and preserve good governance by actively dismantling the voter-created redistricting commission designed to keep map drawing out of the hands of partisan operatives and lawmakers.

“It's like a textbook warning of what the founders were concerned about when they warned about political parties,” said Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and an anti-Trump Republican who opposed Prop. 50. He called the move to prioritize party loyalty over democratic norms a “very, very dangerous” precedent.

“What they were literally saying is, ‘Let's undo democracy to protect democracy,’” Madrid said. “There's something very Orwellian about it.”

‘Can all meet in one car’

Tuesday’s blue tsunami dealt a seismic blow to California’s Republican delegation, which is expected to drop from nine to just four or even three members.

The handful who survived were in solidly red districts that shielded them from voters’ fierce pushback elsewhere.

Prop. 50 packed conservative voters into just a few reliably Republican districts, including those of Central Valley Rep. Vince Fong and Sierra Nevada Rep. Tom McClintock, whose races were called shortly after polls closed Tuesday night. In Southern California, two incumbents were still duking it out for the state’s last safe Republican seat.

“I guess the good news is that they can all meet in one car,” quipped longtime Republican consultant Jon Fleischman of the waning California GOP delegation.

Fong defeated Democratic challenger Sandra Van Scotter with 63% of the vote as of Wednesday in a district with a 20-percentage-point Republican voter registration advantage.

Campaign spokesperson Ryan Gardiner declined to make Fong available for an interview or comment on Republicans tumultuous losses elsewhere. In a statement, Fong said he would “continue fighting to lower costs, protect our communities and deliver critical investments for our region.”

To the northeast, McClintock’s victory over Democrat Michael Masuda was a narrower but comfortable lead with 56% of the vote as of Wednesday.

Jon Huey, a campaign manager for McClintock, declined an interview request from CalMatters and did not respond to questions about the GOP’s losses but McClintock signaled in a statement that perhaps his Republican colleagues had acquiesced to Trump too much.

“The American people spoke loudly and clearly that they are hurting and angry about the economic impact of the war in Iran and the tariffs on their quality of life,” McClintock said in a statement. “Congress has surrendered too much of these responsibilities to the executive branch and it is time for Republicans and Democrats alike to restore the constitutional balance.”

Rep. Ken Calvert, who moved to run in Orange County’s 40th Congressional District after his Inland Empire district was redrawn, was leading with about 54% of the vote against Republican colleague Rep. Young Kim Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Mojave Desert Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte was hanging on for his political life against Tessa Lynn Hodge, a Democrat, in a race that wasn’t even considered competitive before Election Day. On Wednesday, Obernolte was leading with 51% of the vote.

“Everyone else was caught in the blast zone,” GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said.

Coming out of a ‘massacre’

Tuesday’s results could spell more trouble for congressional Republicans in future elections. National party leaders will have even less of an incentive to invest in California candidates if there are simply fewer of them.

Trump’s botched redistricting maneuver in red states and his failure to respond to California’s gerrymander ultimately left the California delegation out to dry, Stutzman said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the fundraising arm responsible for electing House Republicans, will likely focus on competitive seats in North Carolina, Texas and Florida going forward, he said.

“It’s a complete disaster, and these California Republicans just got the worse end of the stick.”

NRCC spokesperson Christian Martinez did not immediately return a phone call, voicemail and text message requesting comment Wednesday.

The few remaining GOP members are unlikely to challenge the president despite his all-time unpopularity, Fleischman said.

“None of them are mavericks,” he said. “I don’t see our four most conservative Republicans from California bucking the president and bucking House leadership.”

Next steps for Democratic gerrymandering

As part of their promise to win over voters for the mid-decade redistricting last year, California Democrats promised to roll back the new House maps ahead of 2030 and pass legislation to ban gerrymandering.

The ball is now in their court, said Ong Whaley. “They promised it was just this one time.”

Lofgren, who has repeatedly introduced legislation aimed at banning mid-decade redistricting and establishing independent commissions in each state, said she was optimistic that a Democratic-controlled Congress would be open to ending partisan gerrymandering.

“Congress has the right to legislate on this,” she said. “The idea that this will be bipartisan, I'm skeptical because of their prior actions. But we'll see.”

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

Take the escalator to the third floor of a sprawling plaza on San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood and you’ll find Perse, a different kind of Persian restaurant.

Farinaz “Naz” Pirshirazi and her brother, Farbod, opened Perse in February to challenge how Angelenos think about Persian food.

Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran, and for decades, nearby Westwood’s “Tehrangeles” has defined what Persian dining looks like here: kabob, a few familiar stews and rice.

Frozen in time

When Pirshirazi arrived in Los Angeles in 2011, she was surprised by what she saw when it came to food from her home country.

“It felt like they took 18 foods of that wonderful 3,000-plus types of dishes that we have in Iran… and kind of copy-pasted,” she said.

Walking into some restaurants felt like stepping into the pre-revolution Iran she’d seen in old movies.

“For me it was time travel,” she said.

She isn’t the only one who sees it. Naz Deravian — author of the cookbook Bottom of the Pot and a New York Times Cooking contributor who has lived in L.A. since 1996 — said the city’s Iranian food scene “was getting a little stagnant” over the past two decades.

Buffet shelves in Perse’s main dining room hold old books and black-and-white photographs, a nod to the decor found in traditional Iranian homes.

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“I hate to say this because I love L.A. so much,” she said.

Deravian quickly added that the classic kabob houses still matter: “Those restaurants have their place in the food culture.”

Why it stalled

It's hard to pin down why Persian food here hasn’t evolved the way Korean or Mexican food has. Pirshirazi thinks immigrant parents steered their kids away from the restaurant business. Deravian points to geopolitics.

“We can’t leisurely travel to Iran and experience the food there,” she said. “It’s not like just going to Italy for the summer.”

Still, there are exceptions. Azizam, which started as a pop-up, opened in Silver Lake in 2024, and Atlanta-based Rumi’s Kitchen opened in Century City in September. But restaurants that break from the kabob-house format remain few and far between.

Mazandaran and her mom

Pirshirazi’s upbringing shaped Perse's menu. During the Iran-Iraq War, her parents left Tehran to escape the bombing and settled in Sari, in Mazandaran province along the Caspian Sea. There, neighbors taught her mother to cook northern Iranian food, rich in herbs, seafood, and duck, with pomegranate molasses and sour orange for acidity.

The family returned to Tehran in 1989, and Pirshirazi was born the next year. But northern cooking stayed on the table, and as a kid she realized her classmates had never heard of most of the food she ate every day. She also remembered childhood road trips across Iran, when her father often stopped at local grocers and asked about regional favorites.

Regional differences

That regional range shows up across Perse's menu. Start with the fesenjoon, a slow-simmered walnut-and-pomegranate stew from Gilan, on the Caspian Sea. The stew is silky with an earthy texture from the ground walnuts, and it balances sweet and tart almost like a tangy mole. On top sits duck confit, which adds a rich, gamey note to every bite.

From Tehran comes the Bazari koobideh, which Pirshirazi modeled on the version served at the city’s Grand Bazaar, where she says older men eat it four or five times a week.

The Bazari koobideh, modeled on the kabobs served at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, comes with a saffron egg yolk sauce that, stirred into the rice, turns it almost carbonara-like.

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“Whenever they have their koobideh, they crack an egg yolk on top of the rice, mixing everything together with some butter, some sumac, some lemon juice, and then it becomes like a carbonara pasta,” Pirshirazi said.

At Perse, a skewer of ground beef and lamb arrives over flatbread with saffron rice, a grilled tomato, sumac, and a ramekin of egg yolk sauce. The sauce is her answer to the raw yolk.

“You can literally close your eyes, and it feels like you are eating koobideh in the Grand Bazaar of Tehran,” she said.

Next steps

Starting next year, Pirshirazi is considering a monthly four-course dinner, limited to 20 to 24 guests, built around a single city or region, such as Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, or northern or southern Iran.

“I think that would be a wonderful, wonderful idea to showcase each region,” she said.

That’s the kind of focus Deravian hopes to see more of, comparing Persian cooking to Italian food, which evolved beyond red-sauce joints into more regional cooking.

“Iranian cuisine is hyper regional, and we haven’t gotten to that place yet,” she said.

Ultimately, she wants Persian food to be an everyday choice rather than something saved for special occasions.

“It just needs to become … a popular cuisine to think of on a Wednesday night,” she said. “‘Oh, let’s go out for Persian food.’”

Democrats are now poised to take control of Congress by wide margins — and a critical driver of their success has been voter fury about how the war in Iran has driven up the cost of fuel.

Before the war, about one fifth of the world's oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz. As the war throttled that waterway, the price of oil rose: A barrel of Brent crude cost about $70 in late February, spent months hovering around the $110 mark, and is now close to $95.

That's driven up the price of everything that's refined from crude. A gallon of gas costs $4.12 on average — about $1 higher than a year ago. The price of diesel hit a record high in September at $6.52, and while it's fallen a bit since then, a gallon remains about $2.50 higher than this time last year, according to AAA.

These soaring prices helped major oil companies rake in huge profits over the past two quarters, while making the cost of fuel at the pump uncomfortably high for drivers, and boosting the price of nearly everything in a nation that is heavily reliant on trucking.

So now that the midterm results are in, could drivers see lower gasoline and diesel prices anytime soon?

Not so fast, experts say. Here's why.

What could Democrats do?

Nothing yet — members of the new Congress won't be sworn in until January.

And once they are seated, U.S. legislators have limited powers to directly affect the price of oil, which is dictated by a complex global market.

In the run-up to the election, most of the actions taken by the federal government to lower fuel prices came through the White House, not Congress. Hoping to stave off losses for his party, President Trump tried to ease the cost of diesel by loosening federal rules on dyed diesel, which is normally used for farming. He also announced a deal that would bring more Russian diesel to global markets, including the U.S., by temporarily lifting sanctions. Neither of these did much to move the needle.

But the new Congressional Democrats will have the power to push the president to end the war in Iran, in part by making it harder to authorize new war spending. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-NY) told reporters on Wednesday that Democrats are intent on ending the war and bringing down the cost of living, saying that "relief is on the way."

"What a unified Democratic Congress can do is make escalation considerably more costly: both chambers can pass resolutions, attach conditions to war spending and hold back confirmations of key officials," Claudio Galimberti, chief economist of Rystad Energy, wrote in a market note to the media.

Still, the president has veto power over legislation, as well as executive powers. " President Trump still retains full discretionary authority over military strikes, over blockades and sanctions, licenses, and so on," said Jorge León,  head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, in an interview with NPR.

Trump has sent mixed messages about whether he wants to end or escalate the war. In the past few weeks, he warned Gulf Arab countries to prepare for a new military campaign after the midterms. The U.S. struck Qeshm, an island in the Strait of Hormuz that Iran uses to launch its own strikes, on Nov. 2.

But on election night, Trump told The New York Times that he knew voters were unhappy about gas prices. And the next day, as the extent of the election rout became clear, Vice President JD Vance posted on social media: "The reason we lost is the war."

If the war ends, when would prices fall?

Jaime Brito, executive director of refining and oil markets for Dow Jones Energy, says if there's a deal to end the war, traders could be very excited. Brito said they might look for formal announcements from both Iran and the U.S. that the strait is reopening, and that both sides are pulling back their military presence in the area.

If market traders are convinced the peace will last? "If that scenario happens, then I personally see crude prices dropping, you know, $15, $20 [a barrel] immediately, in the next two, three days from the announcement," he said.

But for gasoline and diesel prices to fall, too, oil would have to start moving again. Ships that have been running long, alternative routes to avoid passing through the Strait of Hormuz would have to return to their points of origin, and then resume their former routes through the strait. León pointed out, that could lead to traffic jams.

From there, that crude will still need to be refined and make its way onto the market.

In the most optimistic scenario, Brito said, it could take three months after a ceasefire or deal is announced for gasoline and diesel prices to hit their prewar levels.

León thinks it would take more like six months for the price of crude to hit its prewar level, and then another month or two for gasoline and diesel to follow. But that's assuming all goes well. And, both of them said, there could be hiccups along the way that stretch the recovery timeline out for up to a year after a deal is announced.

" I don't want to say this, but, you know, expensive gasoline prices could be a new normal," Brito said.

The X factors

The first big X factor: the war in Ukraine.

If Ukraine continues attacking Russian refineries, the price of diesel may not drop as precipitously as gasoline might. That's because Russia's refineries normally bring much of the world's diesel to global markets. Resuming traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will help lower the price of diesel — but it may take longer to reach its prewar level, León said.

Other scenarios could make for a less rosy picture, León said. U.S. refineries have been running above 90% capacity — what if they need emergency maintenance just at the moment when there's more oil ready to bring to market? Or, what if hostilities restart again, despite a deal?

Brito agreed. Before the end of the year, there could theoretically be new attacks in the strait, he wrote, "if the current administration sees it as a 'window' to complete unfinished tasks before the new Congressional layout takes their seat in January."

And there's also one more factor at play: The war has raised the price of moving oil itself around the world.

Since the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked off for so long, freight costs have gone up; ships carrying oil have had to skirt around the strait, take longer routes and use more fuel in the process. Plus, the price of insuring those ships has gone up, since transit around the strait has gotten so much riskier.

That means that even the oil industry is paying more to be in the oil business. And if hostilities persist and those freight costs remain high, that could keep the price of Brent crude elevated for longer.

"Bottom line," Brito wrote, for any hope of a return to normal prices, "you need to see a definitive end of the conflict."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Billionaire Leon Black on Wednesday filed a federal defamation lawsuit against California Rep. Robert Garcia for public comments the Democratic congressman made tying him to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The court filing comes less than two months after the House approved a resolution holding Black in contempt of Congress for defying the Oversight Committee’s subpoenas in its investigation into Epstein.

In June, Black appeared for a voluntary interview at the committee during which he denied any knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking network.

Weeks later, Garcia said during a TV interview that “Leon Black is at the center of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes” and that Black “was one of the last people to actually interact” with Epstein before he committed suicide in prison.

In addition, Garcia said that he had “talked to survivors that have credibly named Leon Black as someone that was involved in direct abuse of women and was directly involved” with Epstein.

Those statements were false and were made maliciously, Black asserts through his lawyers. The defamation lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeks a jury trial and $7.25 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

“Congressman Garcia’s knowing lies have caused real and significant ongoing harm to Mr. Black. His physical safety has been threatened, he has received a barrage of hateful calls, emails, and social media posts, and his business and philanthropic endeavors have suffered,” the filing states.

Garcia’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

In September, Garcia called the contempt resolution against Black “an important step toward justice and accountability.”

Black had refused to respond to subpoenas asking him to appear and to turn over any potential nondisclosure agreements involving the investigation into Epstein.

Black’s lawyers have repeatedly denounced the Oversight Committee’s pursuit of the former head of a private equity firm as an abuse of congressional power. They have maintained he had no knowledge of any of Epstein’s criminal conduct.

Black was among several prominent figures, including Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, who had been asked to appear as part of the Oversight Committee’s long-running probe of Epstein. Survivors of Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse have told personal stories of being young women in a trafficking enterprise organized by Epstein and his colleague Ghislaine Maxwell.

Black co-founded the private equity firm Apollo Global Management and stepped down in 2021 during the fallout over his ties to Epstein.

Lawmakers have alleged that Black paid Epstein $180 million during their yearslong relationship.

A 2021 review commissioned by Apollo found that Black paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017, after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The review said the payments were for “bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services.”