Prompted by ongoing concerns for riders and bus operators on Metro, the Los Angeles City Council approved a motion Friday seeking to bolster safety measures on the transit system. The council members voted 10-0 to instruct the Los Angeles Police Department and the Metro officials to report to the Public Safety Committee regarding the current statistics on the agency’s trains, buses, platforms and at stations from 2017 to 2024, and include a demographic breakdown of all victims. Council members Kevin de León, Imelda Padilla, Nithya Raman, Heather Hutt and Hugo Soto-Martinez were absent during t ..read more

By Molly Quell | Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands — South Africa urged the United Nations’ top court Friday to issue more emergency measures to restrain Israel, saying its military incursion in Rafah threatens the “very survival of Palestinians in Gaza.” The request marks the fourth for additional measures by South Africa, which filed a genocide case against Israel late last year at the International Court of Justice. According to the latest request, the previous preliminary orders by The Hague-based court were not sufficient to address “a brutal military attack on the sole remaining re ..read more

California’s state budget has a $27.6 billion deficit, but it can be balanced without new taxes or major cuts to core programs, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday. Unveiling his revised $288 billion May state budget for 2024-25, Newsom laid out a plan that relies on taking some money from “rainy day” reserves set aside in prior years, while also delaying some state programs, leaving 10,000 state jobs unfilled, and reducing spending on other programs — from new water storage to middle class scholarship programs to housing assistance for low-income people. “We have to be responsible. We have to be ac ..read more

Kacen Bayless | (TNS) The Kansas City Star JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A Cole County judge will decide whether the Missouri Republican Party can block a candidate with alleged ties to the Ku Klux Klan from running for governor as a Republican. Circuit Court Judge Cotton Walker held a one-day trial in Jefferson City on Thursday over a lawsuit from the state party seeking to remove the candidate, Darrell Leon McClanahan III, from the August ballot. McClanahan, who resides in Milo, a small village in southwestern Vernon County, filed to run for governor as a Republican and paid his $500 filing fee ..read more

Matt Vasilogambros | (TNS) Stateline.org Preventing people who are not United States citizens from casting a ballot has reemerged as a focal point in the ongoing Republican drive to safeguard “election integrity,” even though noncitizens are rarely involved in voter fraud. Ahead of November’s presidential election, congressional and state Republican lawmakers are aiming to keep noncitizens away from the polls. They’re using state constitutional amendments and new laws that require citizenship verification to vote. Noncitizens can vote in a handful of local elections in several states, but alre ..read more

David Matthews | New York Daily News Stormy Daniels blasted Donald Trump on social media Thursday night, just a few hours after she finished testifying against the former president in his Manhattan hush-money trial. “Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh…wait. Nevermind,” she wrote in a post on X — a taunting reference to Trump not testifying in the case and using his own social media accounts to rail against the proceedings. The zinger came after Trump’s lawyers unsuccessfully requested a mistrial based on Daniels’ testimony. If ..read more

By Molly Crane-Newman, Josephine Stratman | New York Daily News A bid by Trump’s lawyers to show he was concerned about how his family would take the news of the Stormy Daniels sex tryst allegations fizzled Friday as testimony in the ex-president’s hush money trial resumed. Former top White House aide Madeleine Westerhout, who famously lost her job after saying she had a better relationship with Trump than his daughters, testified that she couldn’t recall Trump mentioning his wife or kids at all in a conversation after the news broke. Prosecutors are attempting to prove tha ..read more

John T. Bennett | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is headed back to California to raise more campaign cash Friday and Saturday after he sent shockwaves around the globe with a potential landmark change to U.S. foreign policy. Biden sat down with CNN anchor Erin Burnett Wednesday during a campaign stop in battleground Wisconsin. As he did during recent official White House and campaign events, he jabbed at Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and defended his economic record. The president has joked that his staff dreads when he goes of ..read more

By Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking | Associated Press WASHINGTON — Hard-line Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried and failed in a brazen push to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, but the resounding rejection by Republicans and Democrats tired of the turmoil does not guarantee an end to the GOP chaos. One of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress, Greene stood on the House floor late Wednesday and read a long list of “transgressions” she said Johnson had committed as speaker, from his passage of a $95 billion national security package with aid for Ukraine to his reliance on Democrats to wield ..read more

The CSU San Bernardino campus on April 22, 2024. (Jules Hotz for CalMatters)   BY MIKHAIL ZINSHTEYN | CalMatters Nathan Reyes lives with his family five minutes from Cal State Los Angeles, where he’s paying close to nothing to earn a bachelor’s degree that typically lands graduates a salary of $62,000 within five years of completing college. He’s one of hundreds of thousands of California low-income students who attend colleges that, because they’re affordable enough, cost the equivalent of a few months of a typical salary that students earn within a few years of graduation. A new report ..read more