U.S. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) secured a temporary restraining order Tuesday against a former boyfriend, saying in dozens of pages of court filings that he had bombarded her, as well as her family and colleagues, with hundreds of messages that she described as “persistent abuse and harassment.”

Porter, 50, alleged in a filing with Orange County Superior Court that her ex-boyfriend Julian Willis, 55, was contacting her and her family with such frequency that she had a “significant fear” for her “personal safety and emotional well-being.”

Judge Stephen T. Hicklin signed a restraining order Tuesday barring Willis from communicating with Porter and her children until a mid-December court hearing. He also barred Willis from communicating about Porter with her current and former colleagues.

In the court filing, Porter said that Willis had been hospitalized twice since late 2022 on involuntary psychiatric holds and had a history of abusing prescription painkillers and other drugs.

She said in a statement to The Times that Willis’ mental health and struggles with addiction seemed to have gotten worse since she asked him in August to move out of her Irvine home. She said she sought the court order after his threats to her family and colleagues “escalated in both their frequency and intensity.”

“I sincerely hope he gets the help he needs,” Porter said.

Willis declined to comment. He will have an opportunity to file a legal response to the temporary restraining order and challenge Porter’s allegations.

Porter is leaving the House of Representatives in January after losing in California’s U.S. Senate primary in March. She has been discussed as a front-runner in the 2026 governor’s race in California after Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out, but has not said whether she will launch a campaign.

The 53-page court filing, first reported by Politico, included 22 pages of emails, text messages and other communications among Porter, family members and colleagues who had received messages from Willis, as well as messages that Willis sent to Porter’s attorney and to her political mentor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

The filing also included messages between herself and Willis’ siblings as they discussed trying to help him during his psychiatric holds and while he was staying in a sober-living facility.

Porter said that since she ordered Willis to move out, he had sent her more than 1,000 text messages and emails, including texting her 82 times in one 24-hour period in September, and 55 times on Nov. 12 before she blocked his number.

Porter said in the filing that her ex-boyfriend had “already contacted at least three reporters to disseminate false and damaging information” about her and her children, which she said “poses a serious risk to [her] career and personal reputation.”

The filing includes an email that Porter said Willis sent to her attorney late Monday, in which Willis said he had visited Porter’s son at college in Iowa and told him that he would “bring the hammer down on Katie and smash her and her life into a million pieces.”

Another screenshot shows Willis telling Porter’s attorney that he would file a complaint about Porter, who has children ages 12 and 16, with child protective services.

One of Porter’s congressional staff members received a text message from Willis saying he would “punish the f—” out of him if he did not agree to “cooperate” with a New York Times reporter and Willis’ attorneys, according to a screenshot included in the court document.

Willis previously made the news in 2021, when he was arrested after a fight that broke out at a Porter town hall at a park in Irvine.

Times staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.

Incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan reacted to news of death threats against Trump nominees on Wednesday and said he now takes the death threats he has previously received seriously. 

“I have not taken this serious up to this point,” Homan told Fox News anchor Gillian Turner on “The Story” on Wednesday, referring to previous death threats made against him and his family. 

“Now that I know what’s happened in the last 24 hours. I will take it a little more serious. But look, I’ve been dealing with this. When I was the ICE director in the first administration, I had numerous death threats. I had a security detail with me all the time. Even after I retired, death threats continued and even after I retired as the ICE Director. I had U.S. Marshals protection for a long time to protect me and my family.”

Homan explained that what “doesn’t help” the situation is the “negative press” around Trump. 

HARRIS NEVER LED TRUMP, INTERNAL POLLS SHOWED — BUT DNC OFFICIALS WERE KEPT IN THE DARK

“I’m not in the cabinet, but, you know, I’ve read numerous hit pieces. I mean, you know, I’m a racist and, you know, I’m the father of family separation, all this other stuff. So the hate media doesn’t help at all because there are some nuts out there. They’ll take advantage. So that doesn’t help.”

Homan’s comments come shortly after Fox News Digital first reported that nearly a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees and other appointees tapped for the incoming administration were targeted Tuesday night with “violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” prompting a “swift” law enforcement response.

ARMED FELON ARRESTED FOR THREATENING TO KILL TRUMP ATTENDED RALLY WEEKS AFTER BUTLER ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives to speak at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The “attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting,’” according to Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” she told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “In response, law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those who were targeted. President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action.” 

Sources told Fox News Digital that John Ratcliffe, the nominee to be CIA director, Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the nominee for UN ambassador, were among those targeted. Brooke Rollins, who Trump has tapped to be secretary of agriculture, and Lee Zeldin, Trump’s nominee to be EPA administrator, separately revealed they were also targeted. 

Threats were also made against Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee, GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and former Trump attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz’s family. 

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024.  Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)

Homan told Fox News that he is “not going to be intimidated by these people” and “I’m not going to let them silence me.”

“What I’ve learned today I’ll start taking a little more serious.”

Homan added that he believes “we need to have a strong response once we find out is behind all this.”

“It’s illegal to threaten someone’s life. And we need to follow through with that.”

The threats on Tuesday night came mere months after Trump survived two assassination attempts.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report

In a major victory for Democrats, first-time candidate Derek Tran defeated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in a hotly contested Orange County congressional race that became one of the most expensive in the country.

Tran will be the first Vietnamese American to represent a district that is home to Little Saigon and the largest population of people of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam.

The race was the third-to-last to be called in the country. As Orange County and Los Angeles County counted mail ballots, Steel’s margin of victory shrank to 58 votes before Tran took the lead 11 days after the election. Tran was leading by 613 votes when Steel conceded Wednesday.

Tran was born in the U.S. to Vietnamese refugee parents. He said his father fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, but his boat capsized, killing his wife and children. Tran’s father returned to Vietnam, where he met and married Tran’s mother, and the couple later immigrated to the United States.

“Only in America can you go from refugees fleeing with nothing but the clothes on your back to becoming a member of Congress in just one generation,” Tran said in a post on X.

“This victory is a testament to the spirit and resilience of our community,” he said. “My parents came to this country to escape oppression and pursue the American Dream, and their story reflects the journey of so many here in Southern California.”

In a statement Wednesday, Steel thanked her volunteers, staff and family for their work on her campaign, saying: “Everything is God’s will and, like all journeys, this one is ending for a new one to begin.” Steel filed paperwork Monday to seek re-election in 2026.

The 45th District was among the country’s most competitive races, critical to both parties as they battled to control the House of Representatives.

With Steel’s loss, Republicans hold 219 seats in the House, barely above the 218-seat threshold needed to control the chamber.

Two races have yet to be called. A recount is underway in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where a Republican incumbent is leading her Democrat challenger by fewer than 800 votes. And in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, Democrat Adam Gray holds a slender lead over GOP Rep. John Duarte, but the race remains too close to call.

Steel and Tran both focused heavily on outreach to Asian American voters, who make up a plurality of the district. The district cuts a C-shaped swath through 17 cities in Orange County and Los Angeles County, including Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Buena Park and Cerritos.

Born to South Korean parents and raised in Japan, Steel broke barriers in 2020 when she became one of three Korean American women elected to the House. She leaned on anti-communist messaging to reach out to older voters who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Tran also focused on Vietnamese American voters and Vietnamese-language media, hoping that voters would leave their loyalty to the Republican Party in order to support a representative who shared their background.

Steel became a prime target for Democrats because, although she is a Republican, voters in the 45th District supported President Biden in 2020. The two-term congresswoman is a formidable fundraiser with deep ties to the Orange County GOP, including through her husband, Shawn Steel, the former chairman of the California Republican Party.

The Republican establishment and outside groups, including the cryptocurrency lobby and Elon Musk’s super PAC, spent heavily to defend Steel.

In a sign of the seat’s importance to Democrats, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former President Clinton and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) all joined Tran on the campaign trail in the weeks before the election.

The race was marked by allegations of “red baiting” after the Steel campaign sent Vietnamese-language mailers to households in Little Saigon that showed Tran next to the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Zedong.

Steel’s campaign said that the Tran campaign had been running Vietnamese-language ads on Facebook that accused Steel’s husband of “selling access” to the Chinese Communist Party and that said Steel could not be trusted to stand up to China.

Tran’s win is a key victory for Democrats, who fought to flip five highly competitive seats held by Republicans in California — more than any other state. Republicans were pushing to flip a district in coastal Orange County represented by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine).

Democrat Dave Min beat Republican Scott Baugh in the costly contest for Porter’s seat and Democrat George Whitesides flipped the district represented by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia in L.A. County’s Antelope Valley.

In the agricultural Central Valley, Republican Rep. David Valadao easily won reelection over Democrat Rudy Salas. The race in the San Joaquin Valley between Gray, the Democrat, and Rep. Duarte, who won two years ago by 564 votes, remained too close to be called.