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Rain Forecast for Southern California Could Bring Mudslide Risk Amid Fires
Rain and cooler temperatures will bring relief to Southern California this weekend, after a prolonged stretch of dry, breezy weather that allowed wildfires to thrive.
The parched landscape between Los Angeles and San Diego hasn’t seen any significant precipitation so far this winter, providing plenty of dry vegetation to fuel the fires. A storm system forecast to move across the region Saturday through Monday will change that.
But there’s also a slight chance that the rain could be on the heavier side — up to half an inch per hour, said Brian Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist. That could trigger flash floods and mudslides in places scarred by the Palisades, Eaton and Hughes fires, and in areas burned by smaller blazes over the past two weeks.
Winds remained fairly strong on Thursday, requiring yet another round of red-flag warnings. But the warm, dry pattern and Santa Ana winds will begin to shift on Friday, with a coastal sea breeze pushing moist cool air off the ocean. Light showers could fall as early as Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, where fires are still burning.
The greatest chance for rain will come on Sunday, with light showers lingering into Monday. Parts of Los Angeles, including downtown, could receive as much as an inch of rain, said Brian Lewis, a Weather Service forecaster in Oxnard, Calif.
“We’re not expecting high rainfall rates unless a thunderstorm goes right over that area,” he said, adding that there was a 10 to 20 percent chance of isolated thunderstorms.
There’s also a chance for snow at elevations as low as 3,500 feet. The lower parts of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains could receive up to four inches of snow. Elevations above 5,000 feet could see six to 12 inches, with as much as two feet on the highest peaks.
Though the risk for mudslides is relatively low, officials were deploying crews across the region this week to clear debris and deploy sandbags. At a news conference, Mark Pestrella, Los Angeles County’s public works director, said that people living on or near scorched hillsides should be cautious, especially if their homes had not been inspected after the fires.
“Your best bet is not to be in that home when it rains,” he said.
Mudslides or debris flows — which Jason Kean, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, described as “a flood on steroids” — happen when burned soil becomes compact like concrete, funneling water down slopes that have lost any vegetation to keep it in check. That rushing water can claw up the landscape, unleashing a torrent of trees, rocks, brush and anything else in the way.
Residents can use burn maps created by the U.S.G.S. to determine if their home is at risk. The Eaton fire near Pasadena could be the most prone to mudslides. Peak rainfall — defined as more than 1.5 inches per hour, falling within a 15-minute interval — would be nearly certain to trigger a debris flow, the maps show.
The San Diego area will see the effects of the storm about 12 hours after Los Angeles, as the chance for rain, and chillier air, moves south on Sunday and Monday.
While the projected precipitation totals for the region went up slightly on Thursday, Mr. Hurley with the Weather Service said California residents didn’t need to worry about a major deluge. “It’s a drier storm, versus what an atmospheric river would give,” he said.
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Video: How Trump’s Tariffs Affected the Economy After One Year
new video loaded: How Trump’s Tariffs Affected the Economy After One Year
By Ana Swanson, Leila Medina and June Kim
February 2, 2026
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Kennedy Center will close for 2 years for renovations in July, Trump says, after performers backlash
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he will move to close Washington’s Kennedy Center performing arts venue for two years starting in July for construction.
Trump’s announcement on social media Sunday night follows a wave of cancellations since Trump ousted the previous leadership and added his name to the building.
Trump announced his plan days after the premiere of “Melania” a documentary of the first lady was shown at the storied venue. The proposal, he said, is subject to approval by the board of the Kennedy Center, which has been stocked with his hand-picked allies. Trump himself chairs the center’s board of trustees.
“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump wrote in his post.
Leading performing arts groups have pulled out of appearances, most recently, composer Philip Glass, who announced his decision to withdraw his Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” because he said the values of the center today are in “direct conflict” with the message of the piece.
Earlier this month, the Washington National Opera announced that it will move performances away from the Kennedy Center in another high-profile departure following Trump’s takeover of the U.S. capital’s leading performing arts venue.
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Minnesota citizens detained by ICE are left rattled, even weeks later
Aliya Rahman is detained by federal agents near the scene where Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer on Jan. 13 in Minneapolis.
Adam Gray/AP
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Adam Gray/AP
It’s a video many saw on social media soon after it happened: Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, dragging a woman out of her car and forcing her to the ground.
The woman in the video is Aliya Rahman, a Bangladeshi-American and a U.S. citizen. The day she was arrested, Rahman was on her way to the doctor, when she came across an ICE operation and a group of people protesting. She said the ICE officers told her to move her car, but the scene was chaotic and she received multiple instructions at once.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an earlier statement they arrested Rahman because she “ignored multiple commands.” But Rahman, who is autistic and also recovering from a traumatic brain injury, says it sometimes takes her a moment to understand auditory commands. Before she knew it, the officers were carrying her away by her limbs.

“I thought I might well die,” Rahman said. She was placed in an SUV with three ICE officers.
“I heard the laughing driver radio in, ‘we’re bringing in a body,’” she recalled. It took her a second to realize they meant her.
In recent days, federal officials have signaled a willingness to reduce the large number of immigration agents in Minnesota, though they say any decrease will depend on state and local cooperation. Even if a draw-down occurs, they’ll leave behind a changed community, including many citizens questioned and detained by immigration officers in recent weeks.
Rahman was taken to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where immigration agents have brought detainees before releasing them or sending them out of state. While at Whipple, Rahman experienced a severe headache, and asked for medical care for more than an hour. Eventually, she passed out. She says she woke up in a downtown hospital, where doctors told her she had suffered a concussion.
Her arrest was more than two weeks ago, but she can’t shake the fear.
“I do not feel safe being in my own home, driving these streets,” she said. “And even then, I am in a significantly better place than a lot of the other folks who have been detained.”

Rahman is far from the only U.S. citizen in Minnesota with such a story.
ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong man and U.S. citizen, was pulled from his home wearing only sandals, underwear and a blanket around his shoulders. Thao said the immigration agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and photographed him. He told reporters he feared they would beat him. They later brought him back to his house.
Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a Somali-American and U.S. citizen, also was detained by ICE.
“I wasn’t even outside for mere seconds before I seen a masked person running at me full speed,” Hussen said at a news conference last month. “He tackled me. I told him, ‘I’m a U.S. citizen.’ He didn’t seem to care. He dragged me outside to the snow while I was handcuffed, restrained, helpless and he pushed me to the ground.”
Hussen is now suing the Trump administration as part of a class action lawsuit, accusing it of racial profiling. According to the lawsuit, ICE eventually released Hussen outside the Whipple building, telling him to walk the seven miles back to where they detained him.
In a statement to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said “allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.”

But Walter Olson, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says many legal experts are coming to a different conclusion.
“This is no longer just a series of accidents that could have been due to someone being badly trained or being a bad apple. This is a systematic assault on constitutional rights,” he said.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from being stopped without reasonable suspicion and arresting without probable cause, a higher standard. Courts in the U.S. have decided skin color alone does not meet either bar.
Last fall, however, the Supreme court ruled that “apparent ethnicity” could be used to determine reasonable suspicion, as long as there were other factors too. Legal experts say the decision may give ICE more discretion.
Olson says even if the Minnesota immigration crackdown eases, these same concerns could arise elsewhere. He noted that judges ruled against the federal government during its crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.
“And they were not led to call off or rethink the campaign. They just regrouped and came back to another state,” Olson said.
Even citizens who were not arrested but still questioned are rattled after run-ins with immigration officers. Luis Escoto, the owner of El Taquito Taco Shop in West St. Paul, said immigration agents surrounded his wife Irma’s car in their restaurant’s alley when she went out to get more lettuce before the dinner hour. Escoto ran outside.
Luis Escoto poses for a portrait inside of his restaurant, El Taquito in West St. Paul, Minnesota.
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“I said, ‘Hey, hold on. That’s just my wife,’” Escoto said. “They said, ‘We need proof of U.S. citizenship,’ and I said, ‘She’s a U.S. citizen.’”
Luis and Irma Escoto are both citizens. Escoto showed one of the officers their passport cards, which he still had in his wallet after a recent trip to Mexico.
“He said, ‘Well, next time she should carry that all the time, because if she doesn’t have proof of citizenship we’re going to arrest her,’” Escoto recalled.
The immigration agents left. But weeks later, Escoto is still shaken and angry. Some of his customers are now escorting him and his wife home each night when the restaurant closes.
When he became a citizen 35 years ago, Escoto said he was nervous because the government took away his green card. He asked the judge about it.
Irma Escoto poses for a portrait inside of her restaurant, El Taquito in West St. Paul, Minnesota.
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“I said, ‘Sir, what happens if the immigration officers stop me?’ And he said ‘Well, today you’re proud to be a United States citizen,’” Escoto said.
The judge told him you don’t need documentation when you’re a citizen. But now, Escoto said, that doesn’t seem so true anymore.
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