Politics
In the crowded race for D.A., who can break out of the pack to challenge George Gascón?
The candidates vying to become L.A. County’s next district attorney could barely fit on stage together for a debate.
Scrunched into a dozen studio chairs that left political foes and ideological opposites inches apart at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, the largest field of contenders ever to run for the office spent close to an hour slogging through opening statements. The candidates — mostly longtime judges and prosecutors — challenging Dist. Atty. George Gascón cried out for microphone time, which they mainly used to deliver messages as similar as their resumes.
Former federal prosecutor Jeff Chemerinsky said his “No. 1 priority is public safety.” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami is running to “make sure your children are safe.” L.A. County Superior Court Judge Debra Archuleta asked if voters were “safer now than they were three years ago.”
Challenger Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Between the packed stage and a feisty crowd that occasionally interrupted the discussion, the Feb. 8 event left little room for substantive policy discussion.
In some ways, the forum reflected the state of the race: crowded, chaotic and confusing for voters. Recent polls indicate many Angelenos are fed up with Gascón and anxious about crime, yet two-thirds of voters remain undecided in the March primary, according to a recent USC/Dornsife poll.
Though Gascón is likely to glide into the general election, observers believe he is vulnerable in November. But the tight pack has made it hard for a true threat to emerge, with no challengers rising above single digits in polls.
“I think a lot of the other candidates smell blood in the water, hence they are hopping in this thing just to see what would happen,” said political consultant Brian Van Riper, who is not involved in the race. “The interesting question is: How do they pop through?”
Nearly all of the challengers want to roll back some or all of Gascón’s restrictions on the use of the death penalty, sentencing enhancements and prosecuting juveniles as adults. The test is to find a way to stand out not from the district attorney but one another — without pulling too far right of an increasingly progressive L.A. electorate.
Standing head and shoulders above the pack in fundraising is Nathan Hochman, the onetime Republican candidate for state attorney general who is now running as an independent to “get politics out” of the D.A.’s office. Hochman has raised well over $1.5 million and bought television advertisements that often prove key in communicating with L.A. County’s more than 5 million registered voters.
Hochman is a longtime federal prosecutor and defense attorney who once served as president of the L.A. Ethics Commission, and his fundraising prowess could prove pivotal in a November matchup with Gascón, who pulled in $12.4 million when he ousted Jackie Lacey in 2020.
Challenger Nathan Hochman.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Arguing that he’s been miscast as the conservative in the race, Hochman described his politics as “socially moderate” and his approach to criminal justice as “the hard middle.”
He said his approach requires figuring out “who the true threats are to public safety and have to go to jail, and quite honestly the ones that aren’t.” A first time, nonviolent offender, he said, “still has to be held accountable for their actions, but community service or diversion might be the play.”
Hochman wears his defense background as a mark of distinction in a race against many experienced prosecutors. He has called for expanded use of mental health and drug courts to push lower level offenders into treatment, but has also made aggressive prosecution of fentanyl dealers a hallmark of his campaign message.
Hochman bristles at any suggestion that he’s too conservative for L.A.’s electorate. He says he’s never voted for Donald Trump, but he sometimes talks about crime in apocalyptic terms that echo right-wing criticisms of California, frequently comparing L.A. to “Gotham City.” He has accused Gascón of ushering in “the golden age of criminals.”
Gerard Marcil, a Republican mega-donor who pumped significant funds into campaigns to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom and Gascón, has given a quarter of a million dollars to a committee supporting Hochman. Hochman‘s campaign has also paid more than $100,000 to the Pluvious Group, a Republican firm that organized Trump fundraisers in 2020.
“My campaign employs a bipartisan mix of Democrat and Republican fundraisers, which reflects the independent approach that I’ll bring to the D.A.’s office. Criminals don’t ask for your party registration when they rob you,” said Hochman, who estimates half of his major donors are Democrats or independents.
Rival candidates have been quick to try to paint Hochman as incapable of beating Gascón one on one.
During a January debate, Deputy Dist. Atty. Eric Siddall referenced Hochman’s 2022 defeat to Rob Bonta in the attorney general election. “There is no way in God’s green earth that he is going to beat George Gascón in a general election,” Siddall said.
In 2020, Gascón swept into office on a raft of endorsements from national Democrats after a summer of protests demanding criminal justice reform. But his first term has been marked by legal battles with his own prosecutors, two failed recall bids and controversial decisions that have led opponents to blame him for acts of violence. Some of his reform policies were blocked by a judge early in his term.
Participants show unanimous support in response to a question posed at the D.A. debate in October.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Polls show voter anxieties about crime are surging, and several polls show more than 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Gascón’s job performance.
Van Riper, the political consultant, said such a low rating can be a political “death sentence” in a competitive race. “People typically don’t change their minds about who they don’t like,” he said.
Gascón scoffed at the polling during a recent interview.
“During my campaign in 2020, I was polling around 27%. I got 54% of the vote,” he said. “The reality is the poll that counts is the one on election day.”
The field, the incumbent D.A. said, has failed to make any substantive “policy argument” to voters beyond a promise to erase his tenure.
Of the four members of Gascón’s office in the race, Hatami might have the best chance of unseating his boss. The USC poll placed Hatami in second in the primary, with support from 8% of voters compared with Gascón’s 15%. Hochman was third with 4%, and no other candidate garnered more than 2% support.
Hatami is one of only three candidates to raise over half a million dollars in the race and has been a thorn in Gascón’s side, frequently challenging the D.A. in public and on television. A longtime prosecutor of crimes against children, he is best known for winning convictions in the gruesome torture murders of Anthony Avalos and Gabriel Fernandez. He has built up a base of crime victims frustrated with what they perceive as leniency from Gascón.
“I think sometimes when you vote for a D.A. it’s not just policies, I think people want a leader,” he said. “I think people want someone who is going to fight for them.”
Promising to govern “with a heart,” Hatami has promised to be flexible on some public safety issues: He believes most juveniles should not be tried as adults and rejects the idea of prosecuting in a way in which every defendant “is getting slammed with the most severe punishment.”
Hatami cozied up to conservative talk radio host Larry Elder and former Sheriff Alex Villanueva during the recall campaigns against Gascón, which could turn off some general election voters.
“I don’t run from them or hide from them,” Hatami said of those connections. “I’ve joined forces with a lot of people that I don’t politically agree with.”
At a recent debate, when asked to rate how safe he felt in L.A. County on a scale of 1 to 10, Hatami said “zero.”
In L.A. County, violent and property crime are up roughly 8% from 2019 to 2022, according to California Department of Justice data. Criminologists say it is disingenuous to solely blame, or credit, crime trends on a district attorney’s policies. LAPD records show homicides and robberies trending down in recent years.
That’s the kind of nuance Chemerinsky hopes will carry him to the November ballot. The most progressive of Gascón’s top challengers — with a war chest second only to Hochman’s — the former federal prosecutor is hoping to scoop up Angelenos unhappy with the incumbent but squeamish about an overcorrection that would erase reforms they demanded four years ago.
“I believe strongly in criminal justice reform,” he said. “I think we need reform at each and every stage of the process.”
Chemerinsky says he would undo all of Gascón’s initial policies except for his ban on the use of the death penalty. Like Hatami, he believes “juveniles should be treated as juveniles” outside of extreme cases, but rejects Gascón’s initial blanket ban on seeking to try some teens as adults. (Gascón retreated from his absolutist policy on juveniles in 2022.)
But Chemerinsky is more measured on the use of sentencing enhancements in gang crimes. In an interview, he noted flaws in law enforcement databases tracking gang members, and said that the use of such enhancements should be carefully considered.
“I think [gang enhancements] have been abused in a couple of ways. … Are we talking about actual gang-related conduct as opposed to a gang-related individual?” he asked.
Comments like that have opened Chemerinsky up to attack. Siddall labeled him “mini-Gascón,” and other critics have noted his father, legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, was on Gascón’s transition team in 2020. The elder Chemerinsky says he had no hand in drafting Gascón’s policies.
Also running as a moderate but struggling to match Chemerinsky in fundraising, Siddall has taken up the role of attack dog in the race, labeling Hochman as too right-leaning and Chemerinsky as a Gascón sequel.
Claiming to represent a “new generation of prosecutors,” Siddall rejects the death penalty and wants to refocus the office on prosecuting what he believes to be the true drivers of violent crime — gang leaders and enforcers, as well as those who organize “smash and grab” retail thefts.
But he thinks others in the field are giving unrealistic assessments of crime in L.A.
“I think it is overblown to say that we live in Gotham,” he said. “The idea that we’re at a zero [safety level] is absurd and it doesn’t bear out in reality.”
With less than three weeks before the primary, the rest of the field is fighting for air and tends to echo itself.
Archuleta and Deputy Dist. Atty. Maria Ramirez have both struggled to raise money. While Ramirez has cast herself as a steady hand whose wealth of management experience can restore confidence in the office, Archuleta has leaned heavily into concerns about public safety and dismissed statistics that show crime is down.
Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney is the longtime major-crimes prosecutor who convicted Nipsey Hussle’s killer in 2022, but it’s unclear how his record of trial success helps him stand out in a field replete with courtroom veterans.
Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell, founder of the Skid Row Running Club, says he is uniquely qualified to help tackle L.A.’s spiraling homelessness crisis. Another judge, David Milton, frequently champions the death penalty and has proudly invoked his Republican bona fides in a county where most registered voters are Democrats and independents.
Dan Kapelovitz, a defense attorney running to Gascón’s left, refers to the rest of the field as “mass incarcerators,” but has spent more time on debate stages making jokes than offering policy solutions.
The last to enter the race was a cold case prosecutor named Lloyd “Bobcat” Masson, who believes his focus on property crime and made-for-prime-time moniker will give him a boost with voters who find themselves dazed and confused by the long list of alternatives.
“Each candidate saw there was no one coalescing, and for different reasons they all thought they could do it better,” he said of the primary.
Masson sounds confident for a complete unknown in the race. But after 10 challengers threw their hat into the ring, he figured, why not him, too?
“If it’s a party, I’m coming,” he said.
Politics
Trump renews bridge, power plant threat against Iran in push for deal, mocks ‘tough guy’ IRGC
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President Donald Trump mocked the Islamic Revolutionary Guard on Sunday morning for staking claim to a Strait of Hormuz “blockade” the U.S. military had already put in place.
“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing.
“In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’”
Trump declared Saturday’s IRGC fire was “a total violation” of the ceasefire.
“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” his post began.
“Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations.”
Trump remains hopeful about diplomacy, but is not ruling out a return to force, where he once warned about ending “civilation” in Iran as they know it.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump’s stern warning continued.
“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!
“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Judge Troy Nunley was fed up.
Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver’s license or other personal effects. The judge’s demand that the items be returned were met with silence.
And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine.
In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it’s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer.
By Yu’s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney’s claim he’d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause.
Court filings show many California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.
Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the country’s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits.
The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars.
“The Court is not persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.
The order came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a “judicial emergency” in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: More than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there last winter.
People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer has been “like being hit over the head with a bat.”
“We’re up all night doing these cases,” he said.
So far this year, the Eastern District’s six active judges have ordered almost people 2,000 freed.
“The majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.”
Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to “mandatory detention” — a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border.
The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.
“This has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,” said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Almost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.”
Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home — where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers — are instead being held indefinitely.
Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist.
“People are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you’re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,” Ngo said. “Detaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.”
The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district.
“When the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,” Nunley said. “Initially we had more cases than anyone else.”
Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley’s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.
The cases rely on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants.
DOJ lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they’re being crushed under paperwork.
Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming.
In California’s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting “terror against noncitizens.”
Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court.
“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.
A woman holds a “ICE not welcome here!” sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare.
Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer — then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”
A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.
“Most of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,” Reisz said.
In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases.
“There’s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
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