The Brief

Former President Donald Trump, whose bid for the White House has been dominated by his increasingly hardline anti-immigration rhetoric, is vowing to use an obscure, centuries-old law to expedite the removal of undocumented migrants from the U.S.

“I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil,” he said at a recent rally in California, one of several in which he has brought it up.

Trump is promising that, if reelected, he will use the act to initiate a federal effort called “Operation Aurora” — named after the Colorado town that he claims has been taken over by Venezuelan gangs, which residents and local officials dispute — to target undocumented migrant gang members for arrest and deportation.

He has also suggested that the act could be used to end sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, telling Fox News’ Harris Faulkner that “we can do things in terms of moving people out.”

The Alien Enemies Act is featured in more than just Trump’s stump speech.

It’s also name-checked in the Republican Party’s official 2024 platform, which says it will invoke the law to “remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of Illegal Alien gang violence once and for all.”

The act has gotten relatively little attention, let alone use, in the more than 200 years it’s been on the books, as Trump acknowledged.

“Those were the old days, when they had tough politicians,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona. “Think of that, 1798. Oh, it’s a powerful act. You couldn’t pass something like that today.”

So what exactly does the act do, and how likely is Trump to be able to use it as promised?

What’s the purpose of the Alien Enemies Act?

The Alien Enemies Act specifically allows the president to detain, relocate, or deport non-citizens from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime:

Congress, with the support of President John Adams, passed the Alien Enemies Act as part of the four Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 as the U.S. stood on the brink of war with France.

“There was a lot of fear-mongering about French supporters in the United States and about conspiracies to basically get the United States in on France's side,” explains Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck.

The controversial group of laws severely curtailed civil liberties, including by tightening restrictions on foreign-born Americans and limiting speech critical of the government.

After President Thomas Jefferson was elected in 1800, he either repealed or allowed most of the acts to expire, except for the Alien Enemies Act, which does not have an expiration date.

It not only remained on the books but continued to expand in scope: Congress amended it in 1918 to include women.

This 1918 photograph shows "enemy aliens" being corralled by Secret Service operatives at Gloucester, N.J., on their way to internment in the South.

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The Alien Enemies Act has been used three times in American history, all in connection with major military conflicts.

During the War of 1812, all British nationals living in the U.S. were required to report information including their age, length of time in the country, place of residence, family description and whether they had applied for naturalization.

A century later, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson invoked it against nationals of the Central Powers: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

According to the National Archives, U.S. authorities used the law to place over 6,000 “enemy aliens” — many of them Germans — in internment camps, with some remaining in detention up to two years after fighting had ended.

The U.S. Marshals Service says it registered 480,000 German “enemy aliens” and arrested 6,300 between the declaration of war in April 1917 and the armistice in November 1918.

Most recently, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the act after the attack on Pearl Harbor, designating Japanese, German and Italian nationals as “alien enemies” during World War II.

Roosevelt's proclamation required residents from all three countries to register with the U.S. government and authorized the internment of any alien enemy “deemed potentially dangerous to the peace and security of the US.”

By the end of WWII, over 31,000 suspected enemy aliens and their families — including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany — had been interned at camps and military facilities across the U.S., according to the National Archives. Several thousand of them were ultimately repatriated to their country of origin, either by choice or by force.

Vladeck says the Alien Enemies Act was used to detain mostly Italian and German nationals. The bulk of the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps during the war were U.S. citizens, detained under different legal grounds.

How strong is Trump’s case?

The act hasn’t been invoked since WWII, which Vladeck says is largely because the nature of war has changed over the last eight decades.

The fine print of the act says the president can only take on this authority once Congress has declared war, and — while the U.S. has been involved in plenty of conflicts over the decades — it hasn’t done so formally since 1942.

“It hasn't been a source of contemporary controversy because we haven't had a declared war,” he explains. “And no one has tried to argue that that invasion or predatory incursion language could be used in any context other than a conventional war.”

Until Trump, that is. The former president — who has a long history of using dehumanizing language against minority groups and political opponents — has repeatedly referred to the influx of migrants to the U.S. as an “invasion” and vowed mass deportations.

But he hasn’t blamed a specific country or conflict that would fall within the scope of the 1798 act, Vladeck says, which is one of the reasons he doesn’t think Trump’s argument will succeed.

Even some anti-immigration advocates in favor of deploying the act acknowledge those key legal challenges.

Defining illegal immigration as an invasion and migrant gangs as foreign nations would be an “uphill climb in federal court,” George Fishman, former deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Trump, wrote last year.

What are some possible outcomes?

Trump doesn’t need the Alien Enemies Act to go after undocumented immigrants, Vladeck says, noting that presidents already have the authority to arrest, detain and remove them.

“The issue that has hamstrung each of the last four presidents, of both parties, has not been legal authority — it’s a lack of resources,” he says. “The federal government doesn’t have the capacity to identify, track down, round up and remove every single one of the 11 million-plus undocumented immigrants in this country.”

One of the primary obstacles is a lack of funding for immigration enforcement, something that lawmakers sought to address in a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year. It would have put $20 billion toward border provisions and implemented several policy changes to adjust and expedite the asylum process.

Senate Republicans blocked the bill after pressure from Trump, which Democratic critics say he did so that he could campaign in part on fixing the chaos at the border.

“The irony that Trump is now trotting out this old, anachronistic statute to solve a problem that he could have solved much more directly and much less controversially, I think it ought not to be lost on the folks who are learning about these authorities for the first time,” Vladeck says

A 1942 poster notifies U.S. residents of Japanese, German and Italian nationality to apply at their nearest post office for a certificate of registration.

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If Trump were reelected and proceeded to invoke these powers — which he could do unilaterally, unless a majority of the House and Senate were to block him — Vladeck thinks he would be challenged in court immediately and have a tough time defending his case.

“The sort of the notion that the courts would look kindly upon using this kind of authority where, one, he doesn't need it, and two, it would really be a stretch in what is already a pretty controversial legal power, I think is pretty far-fetched,” he says.

Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel with the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, says it’s unclear whether courts would intervene to stop the Alien Enemies Act from being used in peacetime.

“The last time the Alien Enemies Act was challenged, in Ludecke v. Watkins in 1948, the Supreme Court upheld President Harry S. Truman’s extended reliance on the law three years after the end of World War II,” she wrote in a legal analysis. “The Court reasoned that the question of when a war terminates and wartime authorities expire is too ‘political’ for judicial resolution.”

On the other hand, she says, a lot has changed since then, including contemporary understandings of equal protection and due process.

Courts and the public have rejected the 1944 Korematsu case that upheld Japanese internment. Congress provided reparations to surviving Japanese Americans and formally apologized for the use of the Alien Enemies Act during WWII. If a president invokes the act again, she says, courts might look at those legal challenges differently — “on the merits instead of categorically deferring to the president.”

But the surest way to prevent the act from being abused, Yon Ebright writes, would be for Congress to proactively repeal it.

Some Democratic lawmakers — Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii — have tried in recent years by introducing the “Neighbors Not Enemies” Act, which would repeal the Alien Enemies Act, but hasn’t gained traction.

Omar has resurfaced her calls for action in light of Trump’s recent comments, writing on X that “it’s past time we put this xenophobic law in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

Reggae star Ziggy Marley has spent decades carrying one of music’s most celebrated legacies. But until now, he had never written a song directly about his father, Bob Marley.

That’s changed with “Many Mourn for Bob,” a track on Marley’s ninth solo album Brightside, his first release recorded in his new studio in North Hollywood.

Marley was just 12 when his father died of cancer in 1981. Now 57, Marley says the song instinctually emerged after years of life experience and producing the biopic One Love, which revisited his father’s struggles like an assassination attempt amid political violence in Jamaica.

“He went through some things that was really tough on a human being – and just understanding him in that light is to have a little bit more emotional, deeper connection to his experience,” Marley said in an interview at his studio.

Searching for the bright side

The deeply personal track is part of a splashy return for Marley, who's touring behind Brightside and will perform at the Hollywood Bowl on June 21.

The new album blends political themes, optimism and musical experimentation.

Its lead single, “Racism Is a Killa,” featuring Big Boi, pairs the heavy topic with an upbeat groove that he hopes will make the song more accessible to young people.

“We just wanna come out straightforward, like I never want to come out tiptoeing,” Marley said. “I want to say something that can catch your ears or catch your thoughts.”

That tension between darkness and hope runs throughout Brightside. Marley described the album as a reflection on enduring difficult periods – from the pandemic to the Los Angeles wildfires – without losing sight of optimism.

“Sometimes we get lost in that so much that we don't realize that there is always a bright side,” Marley said.

The 432 Hz experiment

The album also experiments sonically: Marley recorded Brightside using 432 hertz tuning instead of the standard 440 hertz in most mainstream music. Advocates of 432 hertz believe it produces a warmer, more meditative sound better synced to the natural world. (You can hear the difference for yourself here.)

“It's a lower musical frequency, but it's a higher frequency in a next sense of your spirituality and emotion,” he said. “So even though the numbers go down, the frequency actually go up.”

Marley sees the move as part of a larger search for new creative approaches.

“I'm very open-minded and always trying to evolve and just experiment with life and music,” Marley said.

The Grammy winner, who joins James Blake and Ed O’Brien of Radiohead as the most high-profile artists to record at the lower frequency, floated the idea of a larger movement among artists.

“Let's just have a revolution in the music industry,” he said. “Let's change the frequency.”

Building a dream

Marley works out of his Rebel Lion Studio in North Hollywood, its name a nod to his 2018 album Rebellion Rises while also a play on the word “rebellion.”

He described the studio as an extension of the independent spirit his father built with Tuff Gong Studio in Jamaica.

Musicians set up for rehearsal ahead of the next leg of Ziggy Marley's tour.

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“My father had a dream, and I had a dream too,” Marley said.

Like with Tuff Gong, Marley also plans to expand the studio operation to include vinyl pressing as records continue their resurgence in the streaming era.

“There’s always gonna be a vinyl present going on,” Marley said. “A thousand years from now, people that we're still gonna need vinyl records to listen to music.”

Ziggy Marley in the hallway of his new studio in North Hollywood.

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For years, Marley said, he worked out of smaller home setups and rented facilities before deciding to build a larger permanent space in L.A.

Marley said the city has become central to his own creative evolution over the last two decades of living and working here.

Drawn initially by music, friends and the city's small but tight-knit Jamaican community, he says being surrounded by creatives from different backgrounds helped push his artistry in new directions.

“I left my safety and my community, my tribe, and come out by myself to L.A.,” he said. “But it's a great experience. It really helped my growth as a human being being here.”

What’s next

Fresh off the release of Brightside, Marley says he’s already working on another album – a notably quicker turnaround since his last album, the family-music release More Family Time in 2020,

“We're doing back to back,” he said.

Ziggy Marley will be performing at the Hollywood Bowl on June 21 as part of a tour supporting his new album Brightside.

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He’s also busy writing a children’s book based on his feel-good hit anthem “True to Myself” and eyeing opportunities in front – or behind the camera – inspired by his time working on One Love and making the video for “Racism Is A Killa.”

“Same philosophy, same message, but within visuals, you know?” Marley said excitedly. “I want to create some stories and try out. I feel it coming. I can feel it.”

A new free record shop for survivors of last year’s Eaton and Palisades fires is celebrating with a grand opening party Saturday night.

After losing his home in the Eaton Fire, Brandon Jay founded Altadena Musicians to get instruments back into the hands of musicians who lost their gear in fires.

Now he’s doing that with vinyl records, too.

“We want to be here to help replace those items and support music in people’s lives that can’t necessarily afford it right now because they’re saving all their pennies just to live and also just to rebuild their homes,” Jay told LAist.

Jay says they’ve seen roughly 3,000 records donated so far. Now they have a dedicated space on Lincoln Avenue where fire survivors can sign up for time slots and shop for up to 10 records a month.

“It’s a really lovely distraction but it kind of keeps me going as well just to know that we’re trying to build something great for the community and keep us all moving forward,” Jay said.

The store will carry copies of the benefit album, Gimme Shelter: Songs for LA Fire Relief. The compilation features cover art by Shepard Fairey and L.A. specific tracks from artists like Elliott Smith ("Angeles" of course), Norah Jones, The Flaming Lips, as well as a cover of "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads performed by Jay and about 50 other fire-impacted musicians.

A City Council committee voted Friday to shelve a proposed ballot measure aimed at cutting L.A.'s “mansion tax” nearly in half.

The ad hoc committee on Measure ULA voted 2-1 to set aside a proposal by Councilmembers John Lee and Marqueece Harris-Dawson that would have asked voters in November to reduce the ULA transfer tax rate for multifamily and mixed-use properties to somewhere between 2% and 3.5%, down from the current rate of up to 5.5%.

However, the ballot measure proposal was also referred to the City Council’s rules, elections, and intergovernmental relations committee, which could still choose to move it forward.

Instead, the ad hoc committee advanced a narrower pilot program that would reduce the property transfer tax only for newly built affordable housing projects.

The pilot program won't need voter approval in the form of a ballot measure. Committee Chair Ysabel Jurado, who introduced the substitute language, said she believes the city should avoid a ULA ballot measure because it’s still too early to evaluate the measure’s long-term effects.

“ I'm against going to the ballot, but I'm for making fixes that make this better,” Jurado said.

Voters will see a separate proposal on their ballots by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to effectively repeal Measure ULA.

If the L.A. City Council does not approve reforming the measure, the only decision on the ballot in November may be whether to keep the mansion tax in its current form or end it.

About the mansion tax

L.A. voters approved Measure ULA in 2022 to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention. The measure taxes real estate sales over about $5 million. Since taking effect in April 2023, ULA has raised just over $1.1 billion from 1,633 real estate transactions, according to the city’s housing department.

The city projects it will generate about $500 million in the coming fiscal year — about half of what proponents initially promised. It has funded about 800 new affordable units and helped stabilize thousands of renters facing eviction, according to the housing department.

But critics say the tax has suppressed housing development. Several studies link the tax to a slowdown in apartment construction in Los Angeles, but ULA supporters say high interest rates and broader economic conditions are to blame.

The City Council's ad hoc committee on Measure ULA was formed earlier this year to study how the measure is working and develop potential reforms. That work took on more urgency inside L.A. city hall after the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association qualified a statewide ballot measure for November that would effectively repeal Measure ULA entirely.

Joe Donlin, director of the United to House LA coalition, which campaigned for the original measure, said the City Council committee made the right call by rejecting broader exemptions.

“By not taking up the extreme calls for broad, 15-year waivers that could cost the program about a third of its revenue, the committee acknowledged that ULA is working,” Donlin said in a statement.

A separate group of housing developers, union workers and advocacy groups calling itself the “Mend It, Don’t End It” coalition has been urging city hall to make changes to ULA. On Friday, the group said it supports the measure, but believes targeted reforms are still needed.

“Independent research shows that Measure ULA has slowed housing production in Los Angeles at a time when we need more housing, not less,” said Melanie Mendoza, a coalition spokesperson.

What the data show

The debate over ULA's impact played out in the committee room Friday morning. The city's chief legislative analyst reviewed seven independent studies on ULA’s impact. Three of those studies concluded ULA had suppressed housing production and reduced property tax revenues, while four found no meaningful negative impact.

Before ULA took effect, Los Angeles collected about $22 million a month in transfer tax. After that, it dropped to about $13 million. But city legislative analyst Henry Flatt told the committee a similar decline happened in cities without the tax, including Glendale, Long Beach, Pasadena and Santa Clarita.

“We are not currently convinced that Measure ULA has had an extremely negative impact on general fund revenues,” Flatt told the committee.

The county assessor's office read the same period differently. Scott Thornberry, an assistant assessor with L.A. County, told the committee that commercial and industrial property sales are falling in the city but not elsewhere in the county.

“We are seeing, we believe, a trend line of impact to property tax revenue growth in the city of L.A. specifically," Thornberry said.

What the committee did

Instead of the ballot measure, the committee voted to develop a five-year pilot program cutting the ULA tax to 1.5% for newly constructed affordable housing projects that meet specific requirements.

Lee, whose ballot measure was replaced with language advancing the pilot program, said he hadn't seen the substitute prior to Friday’s meeting and voted against it.

“This was just placed in front of me,” he said. Lee objected to a provision in the substitute recommendations calling for $30 million in new spending on homelessness support.

“Without knowing where this money's coming from, I'm going to have to vote no,” he said.

Lee told LAist he supports stronger oversight and technical improvements to Measure ULA, but believes a ballot measure is the right approach.

“Voters deserve the opportunity to consider targeted changes that would preserve the intent of the measure while addressing its unintended impacts on housing production and real estate activity in Los Angeles,” the councilmember said, in a statement.

Friday's meeting was the committee's final scheduled hearing. The committee, which is set to dissolve June 1, also voted to advance a narrower nonprofit tax refund limited to organizations that can prove all sale proceeds went directly to affordable housing.

The committee continued a separate motion on fire exemptions for Palisades fire victims, which will be heard by another council committee. A motion to loosen eligibility rules for the ULA Citizens Oversight Committee was noted and filed.

Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who introduced several of the committee's motions, said the process had been guided by a commitment to protect the measure.

"My goal has always been to listen carefully, bring people into the conversation, and protect ULA while honoring the voters' intent," she said at Friday’s meeting.

In her closing remarks, Jurado reflected on the three-member committee’s past work.

“We released $14 million in rental assistance to the most vulnerable Angelenos and $300 million for affordable housing,” she said. “We did in six or seven meetings what others couldn't do in five years.”

The ad hoc committee's recommendations now move to the full City Council.

Harris-Dawson and Lee’s ballot measure motion will be considered by the City Council’s rules committee at a later date, officials said.

Monsterpalooza, the annual movie-monster bash for horror fans, returns to the Pasadena Convention Center this weekend, starting Friday night (May 29) and lasting through Sunday.

What to expect

Now in its 18th year, devotees can rub elbows with legendary beastie creators, browse hundreds of vendors who traffic in the weird and unsettling, and marvel at practical effects that’ll make your flesh creep.

Dozens of panels and presentations are scheduled, including a deep-dive into the 95th anniversary of the Dracula and Frankenstein movies by writer Julian David Stone.

Writer Julian David Stone gives a presentation at a past Monsterpalooza event.

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Stone said that the two classic movies have left a lasting impact.

“Dracula is a movie about supernatural horror..... and Frankenstein is about technological or man-made horror," he said. "You can just trace those two themes all the way forward to this past year with Sinners and Megan 2.0."

Richard Redlefsen's Armageddon Rat at the PPI Booth at a past Monsterpalooza.

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Stone first attended the convention in 2008, returning over the years as a fan, spectator and presenter.

“It’s just a terrific convention that celebrates all things horror,” Stone said. “There’s a lot of celebrities you can meet who were in these horror films and you can get pictures with them." He added that he’ll never forget when he met Carla Laemmle in 2010 — the last living cast member of the original 1931 Dracula.

Mike Mekash and Chris Nelson re-created Twisty the Clown on Dan Gilbert at the PPI Booth at a past Monsterpalooza.

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Who's attending

If you’re jonesing to be photographed with high-profile entertainers (expect a fee for many), this year's event has a line-up that includes musician Alice Cooper, actress Lin Shaye from the Insidious movie franchise and David Howard Thornton, who plays Art the Clown in the popular Terrifier movie series.

Cosplay and crazy costumes are encouraged, although a T-shirt celebrating a classic horror movie will also do. Just come ready to adore all things that gnaw and gash.