Politics
Tenant rights lawyer Ysabel Jurado will face Councilmember Kevin de León in runoff
Los Angeles City Council candidate Ysabel Jurado didn’t have any big-money backers spending lavishly on her behalf.
The Highland Park resident didn’t mail out glossy campaign mailers either, opting instead for an estimated 3,000 postcards, which were less expensive and personally handwritten.
What Jurado, a tenant rights attorney, did have was a supercharged canvassing operation. According to her campaign, she sent 20 paid staffers and about 250 volunteers to 85,000 doors across the 14th District, which stretches from Boyle Heights and downtown north to Eagle Rock and El Sereno.
That strategy is paying dividends. On Tuesday, she pulled ahead of Councilmember Kevin de León, who had been leading in the eight-way race to represent his Eastside district, according to the latest election results. Now in first place and headed to a Nov. 5 runoff, Jurado is yet another example of the electoral might being wielded in local elections by the city’s political left.
Jurado, in an interview, portrayed her campaign as a lean operation, one focused on supporting renters, fighting gentrification and “uplifting the voices of those who haven’t been heard.”
“We don’t have an office. We haven’t sent mailers. We are talking to voters one-to-one,” she said. “Everything involved in building this campaign has been an uphill battle.”
By Thursday, Jurado had 24.5% of the vote, compared with 23.4% for De León — a difference of nearly 400 ballots. Assemblymember Miguel Santiago was in third place with 21.3%.
Election officials said they still had an estimated 8,200 ballots left to process countywide. Those ballots were not expected to significantly change the outcome of the City Council contests.
De León, who is seeking a second four-year term, will face some serious challenges during the second round. A former state lawmaker, he was at the center of the 2022 scandal over leaked racist remarks that spurred the resignations of former council President Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, former head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
De León repeatedly apologized for his remarks during that conversation, and for failing to put a stop to those made by others. He resisted calls to step down from a wide array of politicians, including President Biden, showing up at meetings where he was frequently jeered at by audience members.
Less than a fourth of voters opted to keep De León in office.
With De León and Jurado in the top two, voters in the 14th District will have a clear choice on several of the city’s most contested issues.
De León voted last year for Mayor Karen Bass’ budget, which called for the hiring of 1,000 police officers. Jurado said she would have voted against the spending plan, pushing for funds to be allocated to social services instead.
De León also voted for a four-year package of police raises, which Jurado opposed. In addition, De León is a supporter of Municipal Code 41.18, which bars homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools, day-care centers and “sensitive” locations designated by the council, such as senior centers and freeway overpasses.
Jurado has called for 41.18 to be repealed, saying it has led to the criminalization of homelessness.
On Tuesday, a De León representative made clear that his campaign would highlight some of those differences.
“The voters have a clear choice in November between an experienced, results-driven elected official and someone who has promised to undo some of the progress we’ve made in housing Angelenos and cleaning up sidewalks,” said David Meraz, a De León spokesperson.
Meraz pointed out that 18 months ago, in the wake of the audio leak scandal, many political groups called for De León to step down. The results show that “the community makes the choice of the candidate, not outside organizations,” he said.
Jurado has been running to push the council to the left, expanding the size of the council’s ultra-progressive bloc if she wins. She would be the first Filipino American to serve on the council, representing a district that is 61% Latino, 16% white and nearly 15% Asian, according to a demographic breakdown posted by the city in 2021.
De León, who was born in Los Angeles, is of Mexican, Guatemalan and Chinese descent, Meraz said. During the campaign, De León highlighted his own efforts to reduce homelessness, aid renters and halt gentrification in downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights.
Brian VanRiper, a political consultant who does not have any clients in the race, said Jurado is in a strong position to prevail in the runoff. Still, he offered a word of caution for the Jurado camp, noting that the district has a “history of forgiving” incumbents with major political baggage.
District voters reelected Councilmember Jose Huizar in 2015, even after he was sued by a former staffer who alleged that he had sexually harassed her. In that contest, Huizar easily defeated former County Supervisor Gloria Molina, a political “titan” who had been in office for about three decades.
“[Huizar] doubled down on constituent services and making the case that he delivered for the district,” VanRiper said. “It seems like Kevin de León is following that playbook.”
Huizar was later charged in a sweeping federal corruption case and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. De León was elected to the seat in 2020.
In recent months, many of the groups that supported De León four years ago lined up behind other candidates. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Western States Regional Council of Carpenters and other groups spent a combined $687,000 on efforts to elect Santiago, the state lawmaker who was in third place.
A representative of the Santiago campaign declined to comment.
Jurado, for her part, secured endorsements from an array of politicians and community groups, many of them at the left end of the political spectrum.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and former mayoral candidate Gina Viola all backed Jurado. Volunteers from the Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles, Ground Game LA and Boyle Heights Vota — formerly known as Boyle Heights for Bernie — have knocked on doors for her.
Caleb Elguezabal, who lives in Eagle Rock and is a member of the Democratic Socialists, said the district has not “had the best representation” over the last decade.
Elguezabal, who volunteered on Jurado’s campaign, said he expects her to bring change to City Hall with a new approach to homelessness, fighting for a tax on vacant residential units and helping renters purchase their apartment buildings.
“Having someone with integrity would be a massive sea change,” he said.
Times staff writer Angie Orellana Hernandez contributed to this report.
James Gagliano on anti-ICE protests and threats against agents
Retired FBI Special Agent James Gagliano discusses anti-ICE protests and threats against agents in Newark, New Jersey. A new curfew has curbed chaos after violent clashes, with one Brooklyn man arrested for threatening to kill an ICE agent. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin vows ‘zero tolerance’ for attacks, while Sen. Cory Booker, D- N.J., calls ICE ‘out-of-control.’ Gagliano warns against allowing these protests to continue.
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A Canadian national accused of slapping a teen wearing political clothing at the Jersey Shore has been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a representative for the local jail told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Kaitlyn Tracey, 33, was reportedly seen on surveillance video confronting a group of teens in Point Pleasant Beach, some of whom were wearing pants with the words “Trump” and “ICE” on them, local media reported.
Tracey, a Canadian national who entered the U.S. on a passport in 2024, then allegedly struck one of the girls and recorded the confrontation, according to court documents reported by NJ.com.
An official who picked up the phone at the Ocean County Jail in Toms River confirmed to Fox News Digital that Tracey had been released into ICE custody as of Monday.
ICE CLASHES WITH AGITATORS INTENSIFY OUTSIDE DELANEY HALL
She was reportedly taken to Delaney Hall in Newark – the site of months-long clashes between left-wing agitators and ICE.
NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR, DEMOCRATIC SENATOR SPEND MEMORIAL DAY PROTESTING ICE FACILITY
Billboard at Trump rally in Wildwood declaring historical blue New Jersey is “Trump Country.” (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)
Tracey’s criminal charges include endangering the welfare of a child and simple assault, according to reports.
The alleged victim was reportedly uninjured.
NJ TAXPAYERS ON THE HOOK FOR $12M MORE AS DEM GOVERNOR PROTECTS ILLEGAL ALIENS BATTLING DEPORTATION
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While New Jersey at a state level has adopted sanctuary-type policies, Ocean County is known as one of the few Republican strongholds remaining, and retains the state’s longest-serving lawmaker of any party: Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., in office since 1981.
People enjoy the Jersey Shore in Seaside Heights, N.J., as businesses prepare for the holiday weekend on May 23, 2025. (Asbury Park Press via IMAGN)
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It was not immediately clear on what immigration basis ICE initiated proceedings against Tracey. Fox News Digital reached out to DHS for clarification and comment.
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday for Todd Blanche, President Trump’s pick for attorney general, will be a referendum on far more than his individual merits.
Blanche, the acting attorney general, served as Trump’s defense attorney before taking office and has been closely linked to many of the most consequential — and controversial — issues that have dominated the first two years of Trump’s second term.
Blanche is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to approve his nomination and send it to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. The committee hearing will continue Thursday.
“I would expect committee Democrats to treat Mr. Blanche’s hearing as an opportunity to conduct oversight of the Department of Justice,” said Phil Brest, president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal nonprofit and a former top Democratic staffer on the committee. “It’s a test of the Senate’s willingness to probe the department’s operations and to actually serve as a check on the department and the administration more broadly.”
Democrats on the committee are expected to push Blanche on a host of topics, including the $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization fund” that critics derided as a slush fund for the president’s allies, the Justice Department’s rollout of the so-called Epstein files, and the department’s prosecution of several perceived enemies of Trump, notably former FBI Director James Comey.
“While deploying the Justice Department as a shield for the president and his cronies, Blanche has also used our top law-enforcement agency as a sword against Trump’s political opponents,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the committee last month. “The independence of DOJ has been decimated under Blanche’s authority.”
Blanche was confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general in March, 2025, and was elevated to his current role after Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi was fired in April.
More critical to the success of Blanche’s nomination will be whether he can win the support of two lame-duck Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who expressed some reservations about Blanche soon after his nomination was announced.
Cornyn raised concern about Blanche’s independence from Trump, while Tillis said Blanche’s stance on protesters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, would be critical to his consideration.
Some of those Jan. 6 protesters were expected to be the beneficiaries of the $1.8-billion fund announced as part of a settlement to a lawsuit Trump and his sons and business brought against the IRS.
In a scathing ruling this week, the federal judge wrote that the lawsuit was improper and recommended sanctions against two Justice Department attorneys who worked on the case, though not Blanche himself.
Cornyn told Semafor on Tuesday that the ruling raised a number of issues, including “the potentially collusive nature of the lawsuit.”
He has said previously that he will hold off on making a decision about whether to approve Blanche until after the hearing.
Tillis, meanwhile, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday that the weaponization fund would need to be completely off the table for him to support Blanche’s nomination.
Trump touted Blanche’s record ahead of the hearing.
“Todd Blanche is doing a PHENOMENAL job as Acting Attorney General of the United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “He is a great lawyer, always very fair, and every Republican Senator should vote to CONFIRM Todd Blanche, ASAP!”
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death means that Republicans currently only enjoy a one-seat majority, but a replacement for Graham on the committee could be in place before it votes on whether to move his nomination to the Senate floor, which will likely come two weeks after the hearing.
Blanche, 51, spent 12 years working for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, working largely on drug and violent crime cases, and rose to the level of co-chief of the district’s White Plains division.
He left the office in 2014 for private practice and joined the prominent law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2017 as a partner. He left the firm in 2023 and went independent after other partners expressed concern when he took Trump on as a client.
Blanche went on to represent Trump in several criminal matters, including the New York case about hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith about Trump’s alleged efforts to block the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election and his alleged retention of classified documents.
He listed all three as among the 10 most significant cases of his career in the questionnaire he completed ahead of the hearing, along with his work at the Justice Department on a lawsuit challenging the construction of a new White House ballroom.
A group of more than 1,200 former Justice Department attorneys wrote a letter opposing Blanche’s nomination, asserting that his leadership has resulted in mass departures of career staff. That has “meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable,” the lawyers wrote.
Former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer is scheduled to testify as a witness for Democrats on Thursday. She has said she was fired for refusing to recommend the restoration of actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
Oyer will be joined Thursday by Dani Bensky, one of many victims of the deceased sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein who has criticized Blanche’s handling of the release of the so-called Epstein files — millions of pages of records detailing the Justice Department’s investigations into Epstein’s crimes.
Numerous victims have said that their names and other sensitive information were not properly redacted in the files and criticized Blanche and the department for failing to investigate Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.
Blanche has also come under criticism from survivors of Epstein’s abuse for the interview he conducted in July, 2025, with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in facilitating and participating in Epstein’s abuse.
Days after their interview, Maxwell was moved from her prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison in Texas.
Politics
Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’
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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.
Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”
LEGAL WAR ON TRUMP’S AGENDA GAINS FIREPOWER AS FEDERAL LAWYERS DEFECT TO DEMOCRATS
Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)
Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.
Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICES HEAD TO CAPITOL HILL FOR FIRST CONGRESSIONAL APPEARANCE SINCE 2019
Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”
The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.
OBAMA-APPOINTED JUDGE TORCHES TRUMP ADMIN IN LATEST COURTROOM SHOWDOWN, REFERS ATTORNEY FOR BAR REVIEW
Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.
Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.
He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”
Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”
“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.
Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
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