Politics
Judge pumps brakes on Bonta’s push to take over L.A. County juvenile halls
A judge temporarily blocked California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s attempt to take over Los Angeles County’s beleaguered juvenile halls on Friday, finding that despite evidence of a “systemic failure” to improve poor conditions, Bonta had not met the legal grounds necessary to strip away local control.
After years of scandals — including frequent drug overdoses and incidents of staff violence against youths — Bonta filed a motion in July to place the county’s juvenile halls in “receivership,” meaning a court-appointed monitor would manage the facilities, set their budgets and oversee the hiring and firing of staff. An ongoing staffing crisis previously led a state oversight body to deem two of L.A. County’s halls unfit to house children.
L.A. County entered into a settlement with the California Department of Justice in 2021 to mandate improvements, but oversight bodies and a Times investigation earlier this year found the Probation Department was falling far short of fixing many issues, as required by the agreement.
On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Hernandez chastised Bonta for failing to clearly lay out tasks for the Probation Department to abide by in the 2021 settlement. Hernandez said the attorney general’s office’s filings failed to show that a state takeover would lead to “a transformation of the juvenile halls.”
The steps the Probation Department needs to take to meet the terms of the settlement have been articulated in court filings and reports published by the L.A. County Office of the Inspector General for several years. Hernandez was only assigned to oversee the settlement in recent months and spent much of Friday’s hearing complaining about a lack of “clarity” in the case.
Hernandez wrote that Bonta’s motion had set off alarm bells about the Probation Department’s management of the halls.
“Going forward, the court expects all parties to have an ‘all-hands’ mentality,” the judge wrote in a tentative ruling earlier this week, which he adopted Friday morning.
Hernandez said he would not rule out the possibility of a receivership in the future, but wanted more direct testimony from parties, including Probation Department Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa and the court-appointed monitor over the settlement, Michael Dempsey. A hearing was set for Oct. 24.
The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Department remains fully committed to making the necessary changes to bring our juvenile institutions to where they need to be,” Vicky Waters, the Probation Department’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement. “However, to achieve that goal, we must have both the authority and support to remove barriers that hinder progress rather than perpetuate no-win situations.”
The California attorney general’s office began investigating L.A. County’s juvenile halls in 2018 and found probation officers were using pepper spray excessively, failing to provide proper educational and therapeutic programming and detaining youths in solitary confinement for far too long.
Bonta said in July that the county has failed to improve “75%” of what they were mandated to change in the 2021 settlement.
A 2022 Times investigation revealed a massive staffing shortage was leading to significant injuries for both youths and probation officers. By May of 2023, the California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar shuttered due to unsafe conditions. That same month, an 18-year-old died of an overdose while in custody.
The county soon reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, but the facility quickly became the site of a riot, an escape attempt and more drug overdoses. Last year, the California attorney general’s office won indictments against 30 officers who either orchestrated or allowed youths to engage in “gladiator fights.” That investigation was sparked by video of officers allowing eight youths to pummel another teen inside Los Padrinos, which has also been deemed unfit to house youths by a state commission.
For the record:
6:26 p.m. Oct. 10, 2025An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Laura Faer, an attorney for the California Department of Justice.
In court Friday, Laura Faer, an attorney from the attorney general’s office, said that while she understood Hernandez’s position, she expressed concern that teens are still in danger while in the Probation Department’s custody.
“The youth in the halls continue to be in grave danger and continue to suffer irreparable harm every day,” she said.
Faer told the court that several youths transferred out of Los Padrinos under a separate court order in recent weeks showed up at Nidorf Juvenile Hall with broken jaws and arms.
She declined to comment further outside the courtroom. Waters, the Probation Department’s spokesperson, said she was unaware of the situation Faer was describing but would look into it.
Despite the litany of fiascoes over the last few years, probation leaders still argued in court filings that Bonta had gone too far.
“The County remains open to exploring any path that will lead to better outcomes. But it strongly opposes the DOJ’s ill-conceived proposal, which will only harm the youth in the County’s care by sowing chaos and inconsistency,” county lawyers wrote in an opposition motion submitted last month. “The DOJ’s request is almost literally without precedent. No state judge in California history has ever placed a correctional institution into receivership.”
Under the leadership of Viera Rosa, who took office in 2023, the Probation Department has made improvements to its efforts to keep drugs out of the hall, rectify staffing issues and hold its own officers accountable for misconduct, the county argued.
The department has placed “airport-grade” body scanners and drug-sniffing dogs at the entrances to both Nidorf and Los Padrinos in order to stymie the influx of narcotics into the halls, according to Robert Dugdale, an attorney representing the county.
Dugdale also touted the department’s hiring of Robert Arcos, a former high-ranking member of the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County district attorney’s office, to oversee security in the facilities.
The motion claimed it was the Probation Department that first uncovered the evidence that led to the gladiator fight prosecutions. Bonta said in March that his office launched its investigation after it reviewed leaked footage of one of the incidents.
“During today’s hearing, Judge Hernandez repeatedly made clear what we’ve been saying all along: Youth safety at Los Angeles County’s juvenile halls remains a serious and urgent issue,” Bonta said in a statement Friday.
The attorney general added: “We appreciate and share the Court’s desire to move swiftly to ensure that the County makes necessary changes to comply with the 2021 judgment. We remain committed to protecting the rights and safety of youth detained in the juvenile halls.”
Politics
Congress eyes rare bipartisan housing win with or without Trump’s help
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
The House has officially shipped a colossal bipartisan housing package to President Donald Trump, and lawmakers are hoping that, at the very least, he doesn’t veto it.
Trump was supposed to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week, but his last-minute decision to ghost the signing ceremony with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put into question whether the bill was dead.
His refusal to sign the bill, which passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in both chambers, was to leverage the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which doesn’t currently have the votes to succeed in the Senate.
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump has refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump appears to be in no hurry to sign the bill, despite Republicans who are hungry for a win in the affordability fight ahead of the midterm elections.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
“Here’s what I would like to sign, much more than a bill that — big deal, it’s a yawn,” he continued. “Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
GOP INFIGHTING OVER TRUMP’S VOTER ID BILL ERUPTS AS TOP SENATOR CALLS STRATEGY ‘FANTASY’
It’s legislation that is loaded with nearly 60 provisions from both sides of the aisle in both chambers that’s designed to make it easier for homes to be built and for younger Americans to buy their first home. It also includes a ban on hedge funds buying up housing stock that Trump pushed Congress to include during the State of the Union earlier this year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the architects behind the bill in the upper chamber alongside Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., charged that Congress handed the bill to Trump “on a silver platter.”
“When you ask me what happens next, if he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damned thing, and we’d be underway,” Warren said on WCVB’s “On the Record” on Sunday.
But Trump doesn’t have to put his signature on the bill for it to become law.
IRATE REPUBLICANS ACCUSE TRUMP OF HANDING DEMOCRATS A WIN AFTER BLOWING UP HOUSING PACKAGE
The Senate advanced a massive, Trump-backed housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Constitution grants presidents the ability to veto a bill within 10 days of it being transferred over to the White House. In that scenario, Congress could override a veto of the housing package.
It’s happened before under the Trump administration. In early 2021, Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act — a massive Pentagon funding authorization package that some House Republicans are trying to use as a vehicle to pass the SAVE America Act.
But during that 10-day period, if Trump doesn’t sign the bill, it would automatically become law. That’s unless Congress completely adjourns, in which case a “pocket veto” could happen. The Senate is currently in recess and the House is scheduled to leave town by week’s end, but neither count as a full adjournment.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Johnson, who spent the last few days meeting with Trump at the White House about the housing bill and the SAVE America Act, said: “I hope he does sign it.”
“If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said. “We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively. And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
Politics
British regulator may challenge Paramount takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery
Britain’s culture minister may challenge Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — presenting a potential speed-bump to David Ellison’s plan to wrap up his $111-billion deal by September.
Earlier this month, Paramount secured the U.S. Justice Department’s blessing to buy the Warner assets, which include CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet and the Warner Bros. film and TV studios in Burbank.
Paramount also must win the approval of British and European regulators, who are known for drilling deeply into media matters because of their influence on society.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority took a preliminary step this month by opening an investigation into Ellison’s proposed merger.
On Tuesday, Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, notified Parliament that she was inclined to intervene in the blockbuster deal.
In a written statement, Nandy cited her ability to weigh in on “public interest grounds,” due to concerns about maintaining a competitive media market in Britain.
“The UK’s move to intervene in the Paramount–WBD deal confirms what we’ve been saying for months. The real regulatory risk was never in the US — it’s in Europe,” Forrester VP Research Director Mike Proulx said Tuesday in a statement.
While Nandy cautioned she has not made “a final decision on intervention at this stage,” she has invited Paramount and Warner Bros. to respond to her concerns by July 6.
June 2026 photo of Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy arriving at Downing Street for the weekly Government cabinet meeting in London.
(Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)
Paramount did not offer immediate comment.
The company owns CBS News, children’s channel Nickelodeon and Channel 5, one of the largest over-the-air television broadcasters in the United Kingdom.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, Cartoon Network and TNT Sports, which broadcasts the Olympics, Champions League and Premier League soccer matches.
“I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature,” Nandy wrote in her statement. “In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences, including Channel 5, TNT Sports, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and CNN International, as well as Paramount+ and HBO Max.”
If Nandy decides to intervene, the Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, would launch an assessment of the deal. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority also would determine how the merger might reshape the competitive landscape.
Teams from the two companies have been huddling for months to plan for the melding of the two operations as soon as Paramount receives all of its regulatory approvals.
Australia, New Zealand, China, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Serbia, France and Italy have already given their approvals to the deal.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is planning to contribute $10 billion to help the billionaire Ellison family pull off the merger, which would make the Saudi royal family a significant, although passive, equity owner. In addition, the royal families of Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to each contribute $7 billion in equity financing.
The Federal Communications Commission must evaluate the foreign ownership stakes due to Paramount’s holding of CBS broadcast licenses. U.S. antitrust regulators already have concluded the combination would not violate federal anticompetition laws.
Approval had been expected because President Trump — who has friendly ties with Ellison and his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison — favors the deal.
Trump has been eager for changes at CNN.
The U.S. government stopped short of asking Paramount to make concessions or divestitures. Many expect that Paramount may have to reconfigure its children’s television holdings abroad due to the proposed combination of two large players — Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
Nandy suggested that Britain also should scrutinize the impact of combining two major streaming services HBO Max, a Warner property, with Paramount+.
HBO programming, including “Game of Thrones,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Succession,” has long been popular in Britain.
A coalition of state attorneys general, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, also is expected to challenge the deal, in part, due to concerns about news media consolidation. Bonta’s office has said the matter remains under review.
Opposition to the deal has been building in the U.S. for months. A group of Hollywood activists — led by actors Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo — have spearheaded a “block the merger” campaign that now has support from more than 5,000 entertainment workers.
The group’s open letter calls on Bonta to take action to thwart the Ellison expansion effort. Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim has blasted the campaign, calling it “fear-mongering” and a partisan distortion of antitrust law.
Forrester’s Proulx noted differences in attitudes toward the deal among the various constituencies.
“For US consumers, this merger has become a proxy fight about political influence and control of media,” Proulx said. “In the UK, it’s being treated as a structural competition issue where regulators, not consumers, will decide how this deal plays out and how long it takes.”
Politics
Fetterman unleashes on ‘dirtbag’ wing of Dems after far-left victories: ‘Orgy of socialism’
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., unloaded on his own party on Sunday evening, blasting a series of victories for progressives he called “anti-America.”
“Big night for the dirtbag left,” Fetterman said, referring to New York’s recent primaries, where two members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won primaries.
“I’ve said the party is becoming an orgy of socialism. Clearly anti-America, anti-Western Civilization,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman’s striking calls give a rare look at how some moderates may view the developments on their far-left flank that have dominated the party’s momentum in recent months, sparking concern that their high visibility is dragging the party further and further left.
FETTERMAN WARNS DEMOCRATS ‘DRIFTING FIRMLY INTO COMMUNISM’ AFTER SOCIALIST PRIMARY WINS
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber during votes on Nov. 10, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
His comments come on the heels of a handful of key progressive victories.
In Maine, Graham Platner, a controversial Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, has attracted controversy for denying knowledge of the meaning behind a Nazi-linked tattoo, for off-color comments about race and calling himself a “communist” in a deleted Reddit post.
In New York, one DSA member, Claire Valdez, won a primary on a platform of abolishing ICE and a Green New Deal-style approach to climate change. Similarly, Darializa Avila-Chevalier, another DSA candidate, beat out incumbent Rep. Adriano Espillat, D-N.Y., a high-ranking Democrat and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
WINNERS AND LOSERS EMERGE AFTER SOCIALIST EARTHQUAKE ROCKS NYC PRIMARIES
Graham Platner, Democratic Senate candidate for Maine, speaks at a primary election night event at the Blue Hill YMCA in Blue Hill, Maine, on June 9, 2026. Platner won the party’s Senate primary after a campaign marked by accusations of past misbehavior and voter concerns. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Both Chevalier and Valdez had the backing of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a socialist.
The wins have captured national attention and drawn criticisms from Republicans who have pointed to their success as emblematic of the direction of the Democratic Party.
Fetterman, who has not shied away from confrontations, has been one of the few Democrats to express alarm about the kind of candidates carrying the party’s banner.
“I mean, you look at some of the things that people have said. Abolish prison, abolish the border, abolish ICE, I mean these crazy people — I have colleagues in my caucus that refuse to even call this out,” Fetterman said.
FETTERMAN REACTS TO MAMDANI’S REFUSAL TO ACCEPT SUPREME COURT’S IMMIGRATION RULING
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., walks through the Senate Subway during the Senate War Powers vote on April 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“Between P-hustle in Maine and some of the other winners in New York, they should form their own party and run on all the things that they’ve had to delete on social media,” Fetterman said, referring to Platner.
“That’s where our party has moved,” he added.
-
Texas4 minutes agoTexas man admits embezzling $3.2 million to pay student loans, fuel online gambling, prosecutors say
-
Utah11 minutes ago
‘I was duped’: Utah senator apologizes for sharing Kevin O’Leary’s ‘Chinese Communists’ claim
-
Vermont14 minutes agoOutright Vermont calls Supreme Court transgender athlete ruling ‘devastating’
-
Virginia19 minutes agoNew Virginia laws starting July 1: Pay transparency, rent rules and more
-
Washington26 minutes agoConcert News: The Washington Chorus Celebrates 65th Anniversary During 2026-2027 Season
-
Wisconsin29 minutes agoWisconsin Unveils Culver’s Uniform Patch in New Video Ahead of 2026 CFB Season
-
West Virginia34 minutes agoPutnam County man identified as victim in homicide investigation – WV MetroNews
-
Wyoming41 minutes agoFree Crow Culture Program at Fort Phil Kearny