The Brief

The assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has turbocharged the conversation — and fears — around political violence in the U.S. And, more than perhaps any other recent high-profile incident, it has fed claims that far-left extremists are primarily responsible for the worsening environment.

"From the attack on my life in Butler, Pa., last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives," President Donald Trump said, just hours after Kirk was killed.

So far, no information has been disclosed that clearly links the man charged with Kirk's killing to leftist groups or movements.

Still, the Trump administration's claim that domestic terrorism largely comes from the left has flown in the face of data. Federal law enforcement authorities and non-governmental researchers have, for years, found the far right to be the most "lethal and persistent" domestic terrorist threat. Among examples they cite are racially motivated mass killings at an African American church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, and a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022; and the 2018 massacre at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh.

But a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) posits that a reversal took place in the first half of 2025. It analyzed roughly 30 years of data and found that between Jan. 1 and July 4 of this year, the number of far-left terrorist plots and attacks outnumbered those from the far right.

"My hope was to bring some data to the discussion and to try to use the data to understand possible reasons left-wing terrorism might be increasing and right-wing terrorism might be decreasing," said Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats and Terrorism Program at CSIS. Byman co-authored the study with Riley McCabe, an associate fellow in the same program.

But the report itself has ignited a firestorm of debate within the field of counterterrorism and extremism research. For many, the conclusions are premature. And ultimately, critics say it does more to reveal the complications around collecting and analyzing data on domestic terrorism than it does to clarify the current state of the problem itself.

A claim that left-wing terrorism is rising — but with caveats

The CSIS study drew from a variety of sources that included information from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, the Anti-Defamation League and media reports. Because there is no public, official, unified and comprehensive database of domestic terrorism incidents in the U.S., researchers who wish to analyze trends are required to assemble their own data sets.

"There are a lot of ambiguities for really anyone who's trying to code terrorist attacks," said Byman. "Coding" refers to a process by which analysts apply sorting criteria to an incident to determine how it should be categorized. In the CSIS analysis, for example, there was the initial requirement to determine whether incidents even qualify as terrorism.

"If someone draws a swastika on a synagogue, do you say that's antisemitic terrorism? We tended to focus on risk of life, so that sort of violence would not count," Byman explained. "In a more political context, the arson attacks on Tesla would not count because there doesn't seem to have been any attempt or intent to kill individual people."

Additional coding happens after analysts compile their lists of domestic terrorism incidents. In this case, Byman and McCabe were interested in focusing on cases that, in their view, could be attributed to right-wing or left-wing motivations. During the first six months of 2025, they coded five instances as left-wing terrorism, and one as right-wing terrorism.

But Byman said the significance of these findings has caveats.

"Even the five [left-wing terrorist incidents] we get for the first half of 2025 — let's say that pace continues and it's 10 — that's a small number compared to right-wing terrorism when it was at its peak in recent years," Byman said. "And so the increase to me has to be taken in context."

In fact, Byman said that while several news outlets ran with headlines that highlighted a rise in left-wing plots and attacks, that was perhaps the less remarkable finding.

"The decline in right-wing attacks is actually much more striking," he said.

The single act that the CSIS study coded as right-wing terrorism during the first half of 2025 was the assassination of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shooting of Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife. Byman surmises the drop-off in frequency of right-wing incidents may be due to a feeling that the Trump administration has operationalized policy objectives, such as increased immigration enforcement, that previously animated violence on the right.

But several experts within the field of counterterrorism and extremism research have raised concerns about the methodology, conclusions and timing of the study.

'Five is a really low case number'

For Amy Cooter, deputy director at the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, the numbers found in the CSIS study are too small to support any robust conclusions.

"Five is a really low case number to try to make any kind of inference from and try to say that we're having a major increase in any kind of problem," said Cooter, who co-authored a critique of the report. "Compared to historical data, almost any increase in left-wing violence is going to look like a big jump."

By contrast, Byman and McCabe's count of right-wing terrorism tallies 144 incidents between 1994 and 2000. That suggests a rate of 12 incidents per six-month period, more than twice what they found in their analysis of left-wing terrorism during the first half of 2025.

"The primary thing that I'm worried about with that report is how some people are already interpreting that as projecting a real threat from the left, both through the rest of 2025 and through an undefined future period as well," Cooter said. "Not only are five incidents still objectively really small, we know historically we have seen a greater number of incidents that are more reasonably coded as right-oriented."

Beyond the distortions that may come from small numbers, others have raised additional red flags about the study.

"There have been methodological concerns that have been aired with that product," said Jacob Ware, research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. "I think part of the firestorm has been people pointing out individual cases that are included or are not included."

The study of domestic terrorism is highly subjective

From decisions about whether a particular incident should be coded as terrorism, to discerning a perpetrator's ideology or politics, whether those beliefs ultimately motivated the violence, and the extent to which mental health issues factored in — researchers may draw different conclusions. In many cases, those determinations simply cannot be made until court cases begin, and evidence relating to the suspect's background and planning are publicly available. As a result, there's surprising variance when it comes to analyzing domestic terrorism.

"There's a lot of subjectivity that goes into this," Cooter said. "Basically, it's up to teams of researchers deciding their own criteria for what counts or doesn't [in deciding what goes] into a particular dataset."

For those reasons, Cooter and Ware said they have different assessments about some of the incidents that the CSIS study included — and excluded — in its analysis.

"We really need to get statements or justifications, motivations from perpetrators," said Ware. "I don't think we have that in the Charlie Kirk assassination or the Minnesota assassination."

The Kirk assassination occurred after the time span that the CSIS analysis examined, but Byman said he considers that killing to be "a very obvious example" of an additional act of left-wing terrorism in 2025. Cooter, however, said she believes any coding of the killing, at this juncture, is premature.

"We're still waiting for more information on the Charlie Kirk shooting, quite frankly," she said.

Ware also noted that the CSIS study left off incidents that others might call acts of left-wing terrorism. For instance, it excluded the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., in May. Byman said the CSIS is adjusting how it codes violence committed in the name of Palestinian rights because of particular complexities around that issue.

The study also left out instances where vandals damaged Tesla vehicles and charging stations. There were several such examples of this during the early months of Trump's second term, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk was heading up the administration's efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency.

"To me, that might qualify as an act of terrorism, if somebody is using incendiary devices against civilian targets for political purposes," Ware said.

But the study does count the arson of 11 NYPD squad cars in June of 2025, a case that Ware said would not necessarily have made his list.

Other high-profile instances of violence, including the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare late last year, and two apparent attempted assassinations of Donald Trump in 2024, are further testing frameworks for analyzing domestic terrorism. In the case of the health care executive, the suspect charged with the killing has been celebrated as a kind of folk hero to some on the left. But little is still known about what might have motivated the violence. With the incidents involving Trump, the motives also remain unclear.

Byman said it is reasonable and expected that others might arrive at different conclusions about the same events.

"If you're changing your coding to try to be more inclusive or less inclusive, does it change your general trends?," he said. "And my take would be, no, we still see the relative increase in left-wing [terrorism], we still see the significant decrease in right-wing [terrorism], although the particular numbers, I would say, can vary depending on different legitimate coding systems."

'Salad Bar Extremism'

Across the field, counterterrorism and extremism researchers largely agree that in recent years, there has been an increase in violence that may be considered domestic terrorism. Many believe the increase has occurred within both the left and the right. And many agree that it is critical to achieve a firmer understanding of the source of the threat.

"If, hypothetically, we see 90% of attacks or plots coming from people of a particular political persuasion, it doesn't make sense to evenly divide our resources across the political spectrum," Cooter said, "because that's not going to pick up on the majority of those potential threats."

But some experts are questioning whether a left-right framework is sufficient to track the evolving nature of violence in the U.S. Former FBI director Christopher Wray often invoked the term "salad bar extremism" to refer to the disjointed assemblage of beliefs that violent actors increasingly seemed to hold. Earlier this year, the FBI established a new coding category called "nihilistic violent extremism" to capture a growing phenomenon of non-ideological crimes. And from a lethality perspective, the deadliest incident so far this year occurred on Jan. 1 when a self-radicalized Islamist perpetrator drove into a crowd on New Years Day in New Orleans, killing 14 people.

Ware said that for him, the shift in domestic terrorism is better defined by a change in who has been targeted.

"Terrorism is getting more personal," he said.

In the past, Ware said, domestic terrorists have tended to aim for higher body counts. He pointed to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people. But recently, Ware said that attacks have been circumscribed to far fewer victims — even when there was the opportunity to kill more.

"I think one of the really strange cases where you see this very strongly was the Washington, D.C., Capital Jewish Museum murders," he said. "[The suspect] executed two people in the street and then entered his target without launching further violence. ... It was almost like he felt he'd already achieved his goal with just those two pointblank, horrendous murders."

While the CSIS study has set off vigorous discussion and disagreement about the source of terrorism in the U.S., few believe that it will materially impact policy.

"The administration is going after anti-fascist groups or networks, movements. That's not really where the violence is coming from," Ware said. "So even if the findings are correct, that doesn't mean the administration is doing the right thing with those findings."

In fact, since Trump took office in January, some developments have elevated suspicion that this administration may go farther than simply ignoring data. In September, independent journalist Jason Paladino wrote that the Department of Justice appeared to have removed a study that found far-right extremists to be responsible for the most lethal terrorism since 1990. The study is still available through The Internet Archive. The DOJ's Office of Justice Programs did not respond to questions from NPR about this.

Additionally, in March the Department of Homeland Security discontinued funding for the Terrorism and Targeted Violence project at the University of Maryland. That project was the only publicly available centralized data project collecting information about terrorism and targeted violence in the country. Since 2020, that database has provided information used by professionals in areas of homeland security, school safety and violence prevention.

In response to an NPR query about the decision to discontinue its funding, a DHS spokesperson said the project had "biased and misleading data practices." It also said it "disproportionately focused on right-wing ideologies while downplaying left-wing extremism."

Ultimately, as the administration refocuses from terrorism to counternarcotics operations and immigration enforcement, Ware said Americans are increasingly at risk.

"We are seeing a higher drumbeat of violence across the board and now the onus shifts to the administration to be able to prevent that. And I think that is where the American people should be really concerned," he said. "Whether the violence is coming from the left or the right, the onus is on law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent it and to protect the American people. And they are not doing that right now."

On Wednesday, shovels hit the ground in Pomona, a city in the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, where construction has begun for a 10,000-plus capacity premier cricket stadium. It will serve as the venue for men’s and women’s games, played by six teams in each competition.

The stadium is being erected in the Fairplex fairgrounds as the home of the Los Angeles Knight Riders, a professional Major League Cricket team owned by the Mumbai-based Knight Riders Sports. The company is co-led by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.

The groundbreaking kicked off with a “bhumi pujan,” a ritual rooted in Hindu tradition, which often marks the start of a construction project as a way of seeking divine blessings and forgiveness for disturbing the earth.

Cricket is already woven into the cultural fabric of U.S. diaspora communities from all over the world, particularly South Asia, where it is followed with religious fervor. In the U.S., cricket fans, coaches and players view a dedicated cricket stadium in a major sports market like Southern California as a huge milestone.

Investors hope momentum from local major league cricket games carries into the Olympics, taking the sport to a mainstream American sports audience. Many also believe that this newfound visibility will help carve out promising pathways for homegrown cricketing talent.

Olympics could make cricket mainstream in America

Venky Mysore, CEO of Knight Riders Sports, said establishing the Knight Riders Cricket Field is just the first step in getting the average American fan engaged. Mysore is convinced of the sport’s commercial potential.

“People who watch the Olympics are not necessarily cricket fans,” Mysore said. “When cricket becomes an Olympic sport, that takes interest and awareness to the next level.”

Knight Riders Sports operates multiple teams worldwide — in India, the Caribbean and the United Arab Emirates. But the Pomona venue is the only stadium they’ve built from scratch, Mysore said. Only three international-level cricket stadiums operate in the U.S. — in Texas, Florida and North Carolina. The sport is also played in other multi-purpose venues like the Oakland Coliseum.

L.A. is one of a handful of dedicated US cricket venues

Peter Della Penna, who has been covering cricket in the U.S. for the past two decades, says this is the first time an international cricket event in the U.S. will have a dedicated venue. In 2024, a high-capacity modular stadium was specifically built for the T20 World Cup in New York, but was dismantled after the event.

But during the L.A. Olympics, it would not be ideal to hold the cricket matches in another part of the country, he said.

“Cricket players would want to be in the Olympic Village, walk shoulder to shoulder with U.S. track and field athletes, swimmers and basketball players,” he said. “Cricketers in America have not had such prominence and U.S. cricket really needs that.”

Cricket has had a long, rich history in the U.S. The first international cricket match was played between the U.S. and Canada in 1844 at St. George’s Cricket Club in Manhattan, New York. Canada beat the U.S. by a slim margin before thousands of spectators, with large wagers placed on the event.

A high point came in 2024, when the U.S. national team achieved a stunning upset over Pakistan in a T20 World Cup match.

Debjit Lahiri, a Wisconsin-based cricket historian, said Olympic cricket was last played in 1900 in Paris where the Summer Games were a chaotic sideshow to the World’s Fair, featuring events like live pigeon shooting. Cricket never made it to the 1904 Olympic Games held in St. Louis.

Cricket in Los Angeles began around 1900 with local clubs. It gained prominence in the 1930s with the Hollywood Cricket Club formed by expat British actors, drawing big names like Errol Flynn, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant and Boris Karloff. The club’s original home at Griffith Park was torn down to build an equestrian center for the 1984 Olympics. It moved to Woodley Park in the San Fernando Valley, where several aspiring cricketers learned to play the game, including Ayan Desai, a 22-year-old rising star who hopes to play for Team USA in 2028.

Desai, whose family owns a motel near the future Knight Riders stadium, said he was thrilled to hear about a world-class cricket venue almost in his backyard.

“To play the Olympics is special, but to do it in front of your home crowd, in your home city, that would be amazing,” he said.

Desai, a left-arm fast bowler, plays for the Seattle Orcas major league team and has competed in four international games as part of the U.S. national team.

“This is what we’ve needed to grow cricket in Los Angeles,” he said.

Questions remain about cricket’s sustainability

Antigua native Reggie Benjamin, a former U.S. cricketer and longtime coach based in Los Angeles, remains skeptical.

“I’m happy to see cricket get an opportunity to showcase itself here,” he said. “But if you can’t get average Americans to come to a game and sit in the stands for three hours, or if you can’t get American kids to play cricket, the game is not going to grow.”

Benjamin said he’s been disappointed to see homegrown talent and grassroots efforts cast aside as players from other countries are brought in to play for major league teams and the national team. He also points to poor management that has beset U.S. cricket and raised concerns about cricket’s inclusion in the 2028 Olympics.

Last year, those challenges came to a head as USA Cricket, a nonprofit tasked with developing the sport in the United States, filed for federal bankruptcy protection after ending a contract with American Cricket Enterprises, the group that created Major League Cricket. Since then, the International Cricket Council, which oversees cricket worldwide, has been temporarily running the U.S. national cricket team. ACE also filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination of the contract.

Yet big investors like Mysore are optimistic that a cooperative relationship is possible between USA Cricket and Major League Cricket. Both feed off each other, he said. National selectors often look to major league teams for star players.

“A strong national team is important because it keeps interest alive in the sport,” he said.

Walter Marquez, CEO of the Fairplex, says he believes in cricket’s future. A diehard baseball fan, Marquez said he’s been boning up on cricket recently. He now knows what a “yorker” means, and he sees real potential for the game to grow.

“For those who don’t know cricket, given an opportunity, they will learn what an exciting game it is, especially the T20 format,” said Marquez, referring to the truncated format the Olympics will use in 2028.

“We like home runs. We love the long ball. Cricket has a lot of those. American sports fans just don’t know they’re cricket fans yet.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Long Beach residents at risk of losing their housing can now apply for short-term rental assistance to help them stabilize their finances and, hopefully, stay in their homes.

The city says it’s rolling the program out quickly. Qualified renters could start receiving funds as early as the second week of May.

It’s among the first programs being funded by Los Angeles County Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase approved by voters in 2024 and specifically earmarked for programs to prevent homelessness in the region.

Long Beach’s program, called Long Beach Renter Aid, got $2.7 million in Measure A dollars. Officials estimated that’s enough to help between 175 and 250 households with up to 6 months of rental assistance or up to $9,000 per household, whichever is less.

The funds can also be used to pay for overdue rent, past-due utilities, moving expenses and/or security deposits.

To qualify, renters must be making 50% or less of the area’s annual median income. That amounts to $53,000 or lower for a household of one and increases for each household member — for instance, $75,750 for four, $100,000 for eight.

Long Beach residents can see if they qualify and apply online here or in person Monday through Thursday at the Multi-Service Center or on Friday at the city’s Housing Authority.

The application window closes on May 8. The financial assistance should start going out that same day, said Deputy City Manager Teresa Chandler.

There will be a new application window each month starting in June. The city plans to accept new applicants between the 5th and 12th of each month until funds are exhausted.

The program will prioritize applicants who are 55 and older, at imminent risk of eviction or are impacted by the loss of federal benefits, policy changes or immigration enforcement actions.

Long Beach is the first city to roll out such a program using county Measure A funds.

Another program funded by Measure A is also paying for legal aid to help renters stave off wrongful evictions. Two more planned to launch soon are aimed at preventing homelessness for Long Beach residents aged 55 and older and residents aged 18-25. Details will be announced in the coming months.

“These resources are a lifeline,” Mayor Rex Richardson said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Mayor Rex Richardson speaks at a press conference outside City Hall as Long Beach announces a new housing assistance program on Thursday, April 23, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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It will also be a huge help for families who have suffered financial hardship as a result of aggressive immigration enforcement tactics that began last May, said Susannah Sngiem, executive director of the nonprofit United Cambodian Community.

In many cases, “those that are detained are the breadwinners of these families,” Sngiem said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

After widespread reports last year of immigration agents interfering with patient care and privacy at local hospitals, Los Angeles County now has a policy that asserts the rights of detained patients and instructs county public hospital staff on how to handle the ICE agents that accompany them. 

The policy, which went into effect in March, clarifies that patients brought in by civil law enforcement officers, including immigration agents, have the right to communicate with family members, legal counsel and advocates. Implemented by the LA County Department of Health Services, the policy has been described as a “new gold standard of care” meant to safeguard patient rights as hospitals navigate an influx of federal immigration raids.

There’s one problem, though: Hardly anyone knows about it. 

To physicians and advocates with the People’s Care Collective, a network of health care workers and organizers, this policy marks a major shift in how hospitals handle patients in immigration custody. But they said awareness of it has been lacking within the health care system, even though the Department of Health Services said the policy has been shared with staff. 

“The vast majority of the [LA County Department of Health Services] workforce, which is the second largest health care system in the country — second only to NYC — is unaware of this policy, unaware of all of the rights of their patients under this policy, and how the policy empowers health care workers to protect these rights,” said a Department of Health Services physician who is a member of the People’s Care Collective. The doctor asked to speak anonymously due to fear of retaliation.

The policy follows a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors directive requiring the Department of Health Services to develop guidelines allowing patients detained by immigration authorities to authorize the release of information to family, counsel and government representatives. 

The policy also:

• Instructs staff to ask agents to remain outside of a patient’s room at all times, absent safety concerns
• Forbids unnecessary restraints, or shackling, of patients
• Requires agents to remain in public areas of the hospital unless they have a judicial warrant
• Requires agents to “remain identifiable at all times”
• Prohibits agents from acting as interpreters or surrogate decision-makers for detained patients
• Instructs staff not to physically interfere with ICE agents or assist a patient in hiding or fleeing
• Prohibits discharging the patient back into immigration custody “until custody is confirmed as lawful and documented.”

You can read the full policy here. 

These new guidelines only apply to public health care facilities and not private hospitals such as Adventist White Memorial in Boyle Heights, where doctors last year reported ICE agents violating the privacy rights of detained patients and prohibiting contact with patients’ family members. 

This article was published in collaboration with LAist.

People’s Care Collective members say they hope private health care facilities adopt similar measures — and they may have to if the state legislature passes several bills making their way through the legislature. But first, the members say, an education campaign is crucial to inform hospital workers and the public at large about the new guidelines.

“Being upfront about this really can set the precedent for places across the country to follow suit,” the LA County Department of Health Services physician said. “It’s our patients’ rights to know these rights. If we really care as a county that wants to live by our values [of caring] about all of its residents, including immigrant residents and folks who are being targeted by ICE, we need to walk the walk.”

The physician said members of the collective, who were aware of the Board of Supervisors’ directive, learned about the policy’s implementation last month only after searching through the Department of Health Services’ internal website. The department officially announced the policy a few days later by summarizing key points through email, according to the physician.

“The majority of health care workers are only going to know about the policy to the extent that is shared with them … and are not going to have the time and capacity to be digging deep into this internal website, finding the policy, reading it through [and] understanding it,” the physician said.

While health care facilities may fear retaliation by the Trump administration for being vocal about the rights of patients and immigrants, the physician said the Department of Health Services should “model the bravery and integrity” that its workforce has embodied since the beginning of the raids.

“These rights are not up for negotiation. They’re not flexible pending political circumstances,” the physician said.

A statement provided by the Department of Health Services said the policy is accessible to staff through a workforce portal, adding that a “guidance tool” has been distributed.

“We have also taken proactive steps to communicate this specific policy to all staff, supervisors, and managers through multiple internal channels, including all staff emails, hospital newsletters,” the statement said.

None of the hospitals or medical centers operated by LA Health Services have received a patient under civil custody, including ICE detention, since January 2026, according to the department.

This article was published in collaboration with LAist.

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J.W. Hendricks

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Rebecca Trotzky-Sirr, a physician at LA General who has worked closely with patients in criminal custody, said hospitals across the country were caught off guard when the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration tactics led to an influx of patients brought in by ICE for emergency care. Many hospitals, including LA General, have clear protocols for handling patients in criminal detention, for example, after being arrested by a police officer. 

But most patients accompanied by ICE are civil, not criminal detainees.

“It took a long time for people to understand that,” she said. Trotzky-Sirr spoke with LAist as an individual physician, not on behalf of the Department of Health Services or LA General. 

Initially, she said, many health care workers assumed ICE had the same authority as criminal law enforcement agencies in medical settings to take precautions like restricting a patient’s communications.

“But that’s not what we should do," she said. "That’s not what we’re legally obligated to do.”

Plus, Trotzky-Sirr said, hospital staff, like anyone, might feel intimidated by a masked, armed agent.

“It’s hard to stand up confidently to someone with a gun,” she said. 

But staff members’ deference to the demands of federal immigration agents over patients’ rights  has been slowly changing, the doctor said, as more staff become educated on policies for handling detained patients, and especially, the difference between patients in civil custody versus criminal custody. Most patients who have been apprehended by ICE are civil, not criminal detainees.

“It took a long time for people to understand that,” the doctor said.

To Henry Perez, executive director of InnerCity Struggle, the county can strengthen awareness by working with organizations “with deep roots in the community.”

Perez, who has been involved in community efforts to protect patient rights at White Memorial, thinks of the county’s outreach work around housing and renters’ rights, partnering with organizations like Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, Public Counsel and InnerCity Struggle. 

“There is a roadmap … and the county needs to reproduce that template that they already know how to do,” Perez said. “Just as housing is a critical issue in the community, so are immigrant rights and protections.

“A policy is only as good and as strong as its implementation and enforcement.”

Some Southern California legislators are trying to safeguard the rights of detained patients at the state level. State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, who represents Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, authored a bill, SB 915, that would, among other measures, prohibit immigration officers from remaining at a patient’s bedside unless there’s a credible risk of harm, or the officer has a valid judicial warrant.

A second bill, SB 1323, authored by state Sen. Susan Rubio, whose district stretches from El Monte to Ontario, would require hospital staff to immediately notify management when immigration agents show up. It would also require hospital management to instruct staff on how to respond to a detained patient’s request to notify family of their whereabouts. 

Both bills would apply to all health care entities in California, both public and private. 

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. This story will be updated if a response is received.

What screams Thai more than pad Thai? Nothing. And on Sunday, the utilitarian stir-fried noodles will be the main character in an attempt to break a Guinness World Record.

The challenge? To serve and sell 1,200 plates of the stuff in 60 minutes. The headline-grabbing gambit is part of 17th Thai New Year Festival happening Sunday in Hollywood Thai Town.

Chinnakrit Soonthornwan (he said you can just call him Oak) came up with the idea to break the old Guinness record of around 1,000 plates. As of Thursday, the team already has received about 700 orders from participants.

 "I think it [is] very possible," Oak said of their chances to make history.  "It is going to be epic."

Also epic is the setting of this record-breaking attempt.

"It's all outside," Oak said. " There will be 35 restaurants working at the same time with big woks — like, gigantic woks."

Not to mention the 1,200 (or more) people chowing down on said noodles.

Pad Thai wasn't the first dish of choice. The team first landed on mango sticky rice.

"It seemed like everyone can eat it. It's vegan," he said.

But the popular dessert is difficult to make, and Oak added,  "It's Thai, but the name is not Thai."

Again, what screams Thai cuisine more than pad Thai?

"This is Thai. This is how we do it together," he said. "This is how we do world history."

Oak is also a co-founder of DS Night Market, a weekly Thai gathering proffering music and food taking place in Chinatown for the past couple years. He said his team has been regular attendees of the New Year festival and those born-and-raised in Thai Town have always wanted to help out.

"And we were like, 'We not gonna do something like they had done for 16 years,'" Oak said. "So we pitched them the pad Thai world record thing."

The bigger goal is to shed a spotlight on the community and to support the mom-and-pops. The pad Thai challenge is just one of the highlights. The all-day Sunday New Year celebration includes  five stages focusing on food, music, a beer garden and even boxing.

"We want to drive the business sales and bring more good vibes to Thai business owners," he said.