Environmental groups fear Trump’s order to speed deep-sea mining will harm ecosystems

• April 25, 2025

By SIBI ARASU and TAMMY WEBBER

Environmental groups are decrying an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to expedite deep-sea mining for ores and minerals, saying it could irreparably harm marine ecosystems and ignores an ongoing process to adopt international rules for the practice.

Trump’s order Thursday directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fast track permits for companies to mine the ocean floor in both U.S. and international waters.

The move comes as China controls many critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese used in high-tech manufacturing, including for military uses. Trump said his order “establishes the U.S. as a global leader in seabed mineral exploration and development both within and beyond national jurisdiction.”

The order also comes after Canada-based The Metals Company said it would request approval through a U.S. subsidiary for mining in international waters.

The company issued a statement on its website Friday, saying it plans to apply for permits this year to mine nodules that contain valuable minerals “to strengthen U.S. critical mineral supply chains.”

“As always, we remain committed to acting in the best interests of our sponsoring states, partners, investors, and the planet,” said Gerard Barron, the company’s chairman and CEO.

But environmentalists worry it could harm fisheries and even affect oceans’ ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide, the main driver of global warming caused by the burning of coal, gas and other fossil fuels.

More than 30 countries, as well as fisheries trade groups, environmentalists and some auto and tech companies, have called for a moratorium on seabed mining.

“Scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,” said Jeff Watters, vice president for external affairs at the Ocean Conservancy. “The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it.’

Such concerns prompted most countries in the 1990s to join a United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority to govern seabed mining in international waters. But the U.S. never signed onto the effort, which has not yet adopted rules.

Watters warned that ignoring those efforts “is opening a door for other countries to do the same” before safeguards are adopted. The ramifications could resonate beyond deep-sea mining, affecting agreements on fishing, shipping, navigation and marine research, warned Duncan Currie, legal advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

“This is a clear case of putting mining companies’ greed over common sense,” said Katie Matthews, chief scientist at the advocacy group Oceana. “Any attempt to accelerate deep-sea mining without proper safeguards will only speed up the destruction of our oceans.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

​ Orange County Register 

ICE is reversing termination of legal status for international students around US, lawyer says

• April 25, 2025

By JANIE HAR and KATE BRUMBACK

The federal government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students after many filed court challenges around the U.S., a government lawyer said Friday.

Judges around the country had already issued temporary orders restoring the students’ records in a federal database of international students maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The records had been suddenly terminated in recent weeks, often without the students or their schools being notified.

A lawyer for the government read a statement in federal court in Oakland that said ICE was manually restoring the student status for people whose records were terminated in recent weeks. A similar statement was read by a government attorney in a separate case in Washington on Friday, said lawyer Brian Green, who represents the plaintiff in that case. Green provided The Associated Press with a copy of the statement that the government lawyer emailed to him.

It says: “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated plaintiffs) will remain Active or shall be re-activated if not currently active and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination.”

Green said that the government lawyer said it would apply to all students in the same situation, not just those who had filed lawsuits.

SEVIS is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems database that tracks international students’ compliance with their visa status. NCIC is the National Crime Information Center, which is maintained by the FBI. Many of the students whose records were terminated were told that their status was terminated as a result of a criminal records check or that their visa had been revoked.

International students and their schools were caught off guard by the terminations of the students’ records. Many of the terminations were discovered when school officials were doing routine checks of the international student database or when they checked specifically after hearing about other terminations.

​ Orange County Register 

Learning from the master: Inside the ‘Meat Master Class’ in San Juan Capistrano

• April 25, 2025

Nestled within the River Street Marketplace in San Juan Capistrano, the Market by the Meat Cellar offers a comprehensive pit stop for food enthusiasts, serving as a hub for a variety of needs. Opening at the tail end of 2024, the venue combines a traditional butchery, a choice cheese shop, a culinary boutique and a full-service steakhouse. Beyond its daily offerings, the Meat Cellar hosts a monthly “Meat Master Class” series, presenting a multicourse dinner led by its expert in all things carnivorous.

Anthony Villegas, the charismatic meat master and co-founder of the Market by the Meat Cellar (which he founded alongside his wife, Sara) leads the dinner series. The new series not only offers guests a gastronomically-heightened dining experience for $250, but also an education. “We show you how to prepare the meals, how to take things home and cook them, and how simple, very good ingredients just need simple treatments,” he said.

The dinner series, which first started at the couple’s first Market by the Meat Cellar in Claremont, seats roughly 35 to 40 guests who gather at a handful of dining tables in front of a large screen with Villegas taking center stage. “We do a full demo of each course, and then it’s sent back to the kitchen and prepared for our guests,” he explained in a phone interview. “You get step-by-step instructions on how to make the sauces and the proteins, learn where the meat comes from and the method we’re preparing it.”

During a visit to the San Juan Capistrano location’s second “Meat Master Class” on April 14, the roughly four-hour dinner featured eight courses, with each dish, save a phenomenal chocolate bread pudding kicker, prepared by Villegas in front of a butcher block and stove with a screen behind him allowing for maximum viewing.

The first course, “Cheese School,” a thoughtful cheese plate prepared by head cheesemonger Kendric Antonio, featured a gouda, Spanish olives, duck prosciutto, goat cheese, a mimolette (a French cow’s milk described as “somewhere between gouda and cheddar”) and honeycomb candy.

A soft shell crab sandwich served on a brioche bun with Meyer lemon aioli and calamansi vinaigrette salad, the second course, had Villegas beer battering and gently frying the succulent crustacean as servers bring guests their own. A lobster poached in Grand Marnier butter, for course three, came accompanied by a glass of Sinegal Estate sauvignon blanc, a perfect pairing for any Neptunian meat.

ALSO SEE: How the fall of Saigon cultivated a culinary legacy in Orange County — and beyond

Moving onto land-based fare, the fourth course proved to be the stunner of the night, a steamed Wagyu beef cheek taco served with avocado chimichurri and lemon picked red onion, a hat tip to Mexico, where Villegas was born and raised. “It’s a rough piece of meat so you want to put a good amount of salt on it,” he said while going table to table showing off the raw cheek so diners could get a closer look.

The taco was followed by a veal schnitzel, pounded flat and soaked in buttermilk, dusted with flour and panko breadcrumbs and then fried to golden-hued crispness. The finished schnitzel, laced with a potent demi-glace, came with sauteed fingerling potatoes. (In between discussing cooking and preparation methods, Villegas peppers his conversation with interesting facts; did you know most veal meat comes from male dairy calves? Well, I didn’t. As he explained, they’re not needed for breeding in the dairy industry.)

ALSO SEE: River Street Marketplace restaurants officially open, offering something for everyone

The next two courses, a spring lamb and a bison strip loin, provided the heartiest moments of the evening, with the former being sous vide for six hours, resulting in an exceedingly tender dish. (Bonus points for the scattering of lamb cracklings.) The latter succeeds in preparing the infamously lean meat with heightened flavor care of a slightly sweet blackberry veal demi.

As the dinner continues, guests are served glasses of wine, sparkling or otherwise, to pair with each dish. Villegas’s sister, Sonya Villegas Kelsen, co-owner of Colony Wine Merchant in Anaheim, helped lead wine selection and pourings. “I think of wine as the perfect agricultural product,” she told the crowd.

Due to an alcohol allergy, I couldn’t imbibe any-proof libations. The Market by the Meat Cellar seamlessly swapped my wine for alcohol-free drinks found on the mocktail menu. (I opted for a Shirley Temple with housemade grenadine and the White Linen made with elderflower tonic, mint, cucumber and soda). Such seemingly small attention to detail turned an already chipper night into a unforgettable one — literally.

At the end of the dinner, Villegas told his audience that most of the recipes are also available on the Meat Cellar’s website, allowing us to try them at home.

More than just an indulgence, the new dinner-class series at the Market by the Meat Cellar serves as an oral treatise on the meat industry. “People buy meat without knowing the living conditions,” Villegas explained. “Large companies, the big meat producers out there, they don’t really own any cattle themselves…they usually farm it out and buy whatever is the cheapest on the market.”

In contrast, the Meat Cellar sources from smaller farms, emphasizing quality — an ethos reflected in his simple philosophy: “It’s hard to (mess) up food if you keep it simple, he declared during dinner. “Just let the protein, starch or vegetable come through.”

The next Meat Master Class is slated for Monday, June 16. For more information, call the restaurant at 949-503-1548.

​ Orange County Register 

Negotiations between Iran and the US over Tehran’s nuclear program return to secluded Oman

• April 25, 2025

By JON GAMBRELL

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — Negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program will return Saturday to the secluded sultanate of Oman, where experts on both sides will start hammering out the technical details of a possible deal.

The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the U.S. has imposed on the Islamic Republic closing in on half a century of enmity. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Neither Iran nor the U.S. has offered any explanation on why the talks will return to Muscat, the Omani capital nestled in the Hajar Mountains. Oman has been a mediator between the countries. Last weekend’s talks in Rome offered a more-equal flight distance between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, who are leading the negotiations.

But Rome remains in mourning after the death of Pope Francis, whose funeral will be Saturday. And Iranian state television, in covering last weekend’s talks, complained at length on air about the “paparazzi” gathered across the street from the Omani Embassy in Rome’s Camilluccia neighborhood.

Iranians on Friday in Tehran remained hopeful the talks could be successful, as the Iranian rial has rebounded from historic lows.

“It’s OK to negotiate, to make the nuclear program smaller or bigger, and reach a deal,” Tehran resident Farzin Keivan said. “Of course we shouldn’t give them everything. After all, we’ve suffered a lot for this program.”

‘Peaceful use of nuclear energy’

The Muscat talks come as Iran appears to have lined up Chinese and Russian support. Araghchi traveled to Moscow last week and this week visited Beijing.

On Thursday, Chinese, Iranian and Russian representatives met the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog that likely will verify compliance with any accord like it did with Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That deal included China and Russia, as well as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, in addition to Iran and the U.S.

However, Iran has greatly restricted the IAEA’s inspections — leading to fears internationally that centrifuges and other nuclear material could be diverted.

The IAEA offered no readout from the talks, but China’s state-run Xinhua news agency on Friday described the three nations as saying the agency has “the necessary potential and expertise to contribute constructively to this process.”

“China, Russia and Iran emphasized that political and diplomatic engagement based on mutual respect remains the only viable and practical path for resolving the Iran nuclear issue,” the report said. It added that China respects Iran’s “right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

The Trump administration has kept France, Germany and the U.K. out of its direct negotiations with Iran, something similarly reflected in Witkoff’s negotiations with Russia over ending its war on Ukraine. Witkoff traveled Friday to Moscow ahead of Saturday’s meeting in Muscat.

Araghchi meanwhile has said he’s open to visiting Berlin, London and Paris to discuss the negotiations.

“The ball is now in the E3’s court,” Araghchi wrote on the social platform X on Thursday, using an acronym for the countries. “They have an opportunity to do away with the grip of Special Interest groups and forge a different path.”

U.S. stance on enrichment hardens

Two Iranian deputy foreign ministers, Majid Takht-e Ravanchi and Kazem Gharibabadi, are expected to lead Tehran’s expert team, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. Takht-e Ravanchi took part in the 2015 nuclear talks, while Gharibabadi as well as been involved in atomic negotiations.

The U.S. technical team, which is expected to arrive in Oman on Friday, will be led by Michael Anton, the director of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s policy planning staff. Anton does not have the nuclear policy experience of those who led America’s efforts in the 2015 talks.

However, he was an early supporter of Trump, describing the 2016 election as a “charge the cockpit or you die” vote. “A Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto,” Anton wrote. “With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.” He also criticized “Iran sycophancy” in the same essay.

Rubio, speaking on a podcast released this week, also kept up a Trump line that Iran needed to stop its enrichment of uranium entirely.

“If Iran wants a civil nuclear program, they can have one just like many other countries can have one, and that is they import enriched material,” Rubio said.

However, former CIA director Bill Burns, who took part in the secret negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal, expressed skepticism Iran would give up its program like Libya did in 2003.

“I don’t personally think that this Iranian regime is going to agree to … zero domestic enrichment,” Burns said in a talk Monday at the University of Chicago. “To hold out for the Libya model is virtually to ensure that you’re not going to be able to reach an agreement.”

Iran ‘on high alert’

But Iran has insisted that keeping its enrichment is key. Witkoff also has muddied the issue by first suggesting in a television interview that Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67%, then later saying that all enrichment must stop.

Meanwhile, one more wildcard is Israel, whose devastating war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip grinds on. Trump initially announced the Iran talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side. But Israel, which for years has targeted Iran’s nuclear program with attacks on its facilities and scientists, has kept open the possibility of airstrikes to destroy Tehran’s enrichment sites.

On Monday, Israel’s military conducted drills preparing for possible new Iranian missile attacks, the country’s public broadcaster KAN reported.

“Our security services are on high alert given past instances of attempted sabotage and assassination operations designed to provoke a legitimate response,” Araghchi wrote on Wednesday in a post on X.

Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

​ Orange County Register 

Nepal marks 10-year anniversary of earthquake that killed thousands

• April 25, 2025

By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal marked the 10th anniversary of the devastating 2015 earthquake with a memorial service on Friday that was attended by top officials who pledged to be better prepared to face future disasters.

At exactly 11:56 a.m., which was the time of the earthquake on April 25, 2015, Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, top ministers, officials and diplomats stood up and held a minute of silence in memory of those killed at the site of a tower that collapsed and crushed 180 people.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed early 9,000 people, wounded more than 22,000 and damaged some 1 million houses and buildings.

“There was a huge loss of both lives and property then but were able to successfully recover and reconstruct.” Oli said. “Nepal has shown resilience.”

Oli was joined by ministers and diplomats from countries helped Nepal with rescue, recovery and later reconstruction efforts to light candles in memory of the lives that were lost in the disaster.

“We could not have done all that just by ourselves,” Oli said. “We want to thank all our partner nations and agencies for their support.”

Some 80% of structures that were damaged by the earthquake have been rebuilt, with almost all schools and public buildings upgraded to new safety standards, according to Anil Pokhrel, who headed the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority for years until he retired last month.

As many as 95% of houses damaged in the rural areas have been rebuilt, while there is less in urban areas mainly due to issues like disputes over ownership or rebuilding plans.

Families were given $3,000 to reconstruct their homes and offices were set up by the government in all the districts that were staffed with engineers and experts to help them rebuild.

“Nepal’s reconstruction, given the time, given the scale, given the process it went through and working with development partners, it is really considered as one of the exemplary reconstruction and recovery experiences,” Pokhrel said.

​ Orange County Register 

How the public’s shift on immigration paved the way for Trump’s crackdown

• April 25, 2025

By JILL COLVIN

PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) — Alleged gang members without criminal records wrongly sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

International students detained by masked federal agents for writing opinion columns or attending campus demonstrations.

American citizens, visa holders and visitors stopped at airports, detained for days or facing deportation for minor infractions.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign of immigration enforcement that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. But unlike in his first term, Trump’s efforts have not sparked the kind of widespread condemnation or protests that led him to retreat from some unpopular positions.

Instead, immigration has emerged as one of Trump’s strongest issues in public polling, reflecting both his grip on the Republican base and a broader shift in public sentiment that is driven in part, interviews suggest, by anger at the policies of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.

The White House has seized on this shift, mocking critics and egging on Democrats to engage on an issue that Trump’s team sees as a win.

“I think this is another men/women’s sports thing for the Democrats,” Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published Friday, referring to the cultural wars debate over transgender rights that Trump campaign aides saw as a key driver of support in November.

“America’s changed,” said pollster Frank Luntz, a longtime ally of Republicans who has been holding focus groups with voters to discuss immigration. “This is the one area where Donald Trump still has significant and widespread public support.”

Luntz said voters dismayed by the historically large influx of migrants under Biden are now “prepared to accept a more extreme approach.”

“Make no mistake,” he added. “The public may not embrace it, but they definitely support it. And this is actually his strongest area as he approaches his 100th day (in office).”

Changing views

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that immigration is a relative high point for Trump compared with other issues, including his approach to the economy, foreign policy and trade negotiations. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults, 46%, say they approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, compared with his overall job approval rating of 39%, according to the survey.

The poll was conducted April 17-21, a period that included a trip by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to El Salvador to demand that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be released from prison after the U.S. government admitted he was wrongly deported.

In the 2020 election, few voters considered immigration the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of registered voters in all 50 states.

Four years later, after Republicans and conservative media had hammered Biden for his policies and often cast migrant U.S.-Mexico border crossings as an invasion, immigration had risen above health care, abortion and crime. It was second only to the economy.

Under Biden, migrant apprehensions spiked to more than 2 million two years in a row. Republican governors in border states bused migrants by the tens of thousands to cities across the country, including to New York, where migrants were placed in shelters and hotels, straining budgets.

Voters in the 2024 election were also more open to tougher immigration policies than the 2020 electorate. Last November, 44% of voters said most immigrants living in the United States illegally should be deported to their home countries, according to AP VoteCast, compared with 29% in 2020.

Immigration remains a relative strength for Trump today: 84% of Republicans approve of Trump’s immigration approach, according to the April AP-NORC poll, compared with 68% who approve of how he is handling trade negotiations.

The poll found about 4 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor Trump’s policy of sending Venezuelan immigrants who authorities say are gang members to El Salvador, with an additional 22% saying they neither favor nor oppose it. About 4 in 10 were opposed.

Americans are more opposed, broadly, to revoking foreign students’ visas over their participation in pro-Palestinian activism, with about half opposed and about 3 in 10 in support.

The changing views are evident in places like northern New Jersey’s suburban Passaic County, one of the former Democratic strongholds where Trump overperformed in November.

Trump became the first Republican to win the county in more than 30 years. He carried the heavily Latino city of Passaic and significantly increased his support in Paterson, the state’s third-largest city, which is majority Latino and also has a large Muslim community. He drew 13,819 votes after winning 3,999 in 2016. Having lost New Jersey by nearly 16 percentage points to Biden in 2020, Trump narrowed that margin to 6 percentage points last year.

Paterson resident Sunny Cumur, 54, a truck driver who immigrated from Turkey in the late 1990s, describes himself as a Democrat who doesn’t usually vote. But he wanted Trump to win, he said, because he was concerned about the border under Biden.

While studies show immigrants are generally less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, local news in New York and other cities frequently featured what Trump took to calling “migrant crime.”

“What Biden did, they opened all the borders, and a lot of people come here for political asylum. Come on! They don’t even check if they are terrorists or not,” Cumur said. He complained that newcomers willing to work for lower wages have been undercutting workers like him.

“Throw ’em out. I don’t want to live with criminals,” he said.

Still, other supporters worry Trump is taking things too far.

Republican Manuel Terrero, 39, a real estate agent from Clifton, said he was drawn to Trump because of what felt like “chaos” under Biden, with too many people crossing the border and too much crime in neighboring New York.

“It shouldn’t be allowed,” said Terrero, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic.

Trump “is doing a lot of good things. And that is one of them, stopping the people that are coming here to create chaos. And the people that have criminal records, send them back. But I am against (deporting) the people that are working,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the right way to do it.”

Rep. Nellie Pou, D-N.J., who was elected last year to represent the area in Congress, said her constituents believe strongly in border security but stand by her advocacy for immigrants. She recently joined Democrats on a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I do not want anyone that may be a danger to come to our country to harm any of our citizens. No one wants that. And I firmly believe that’s what people in our district and across America want,” she said. At the same time, she said, “Our country was made of immigrants. … So I believe there’s a place for someone who comes in the legal ways.”

A new paradigm

Trump burst onto the political scene in 2015 by labeling Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists and pledging to build “a great wall.” He spent much of his first term focused on the border.

One of his first actions in office was to impose a travel ban barring the entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. That caused chaos at airports and protests across the nation. The policy was quickly blocked by the courts, forcing his administration to offer three broader iterations, the last of which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.

The next flashpoint came in 2018, when border officials began separating families detained after illegally crossing the border. In some cases, children were forcibly removed from their parents under a “zero tolerance” policy, and the parents were sometimes deported without their kids.

Images of children held in cages at border facilities and audio recordings of young children crying for their parents drew intense backlash, with thousands participating in hundreds of marches across the country. The protesters included soon-to-be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who was photographed in 2018 breaking down outside a facility in Texas being used to detain migrant children.

Republicans joined in that condemnation.

Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, called the separations “tragic and heartrending” in a letter that urged Congress to act. “This disgraceful condition must end,” he wrote.

“All Americans are rightly horrified by the images we are seeing on the news, children in tears pulled away from their mothers and fathers. This must stop,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. He introduced legislation mandating that apprehended families be kept together.

Bowing to pressure and concerned about the impact on the upcoming midterm elections, Trump halted the policy.

This time around, with border crossings down, Trump has shifted focus to expelling people already in the United States. He is expanding the limits of executive power and jousting with judges as he uses old laws and rarely used provisions to label hundreds of men gang members so they can be deported without being able to challenge their cases in court.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who as a senator once tried to negotiate a bipartisan immigration package — has moved to expel people in the U.S. legally over political beliefs he deems counter to U.S. foreign policy interests.

Their targets have included hundreds of students and others with legal status, including those on student visas or holding green cards conferring permanent residency, as well as those who have sought asylum using legal channels.

Jorge Loweree, of the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy group, said Trump was doing something “that’s wholly new in historical terms.”

“It’s critical that people understand what the administration is doing,” said Loweree, the council’s managing director of programs and strategy. “We have an administration that believes they can disappear who they want, where they want, to anywhere they want.”

Loweree argued that even if voters in November rejected what they saw as chaos at the border, that “doesn’t necessarily mean that they support these very draconian measures that are being implemented today.”

Few elected Republicans are speaking out, though some of Trump’s outside allies have criticized what they see as overreach.

Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host who endorsed Trump late in the campaign, voiced alarm at the case of Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela with no criminal record who was among those sent to El Salvador’s maximum-security CECOT prison.

“You gotta get scared that people who are not criminals are getting like lassoed up and deported and sent to like El Salvador prisons,” Rogan told his listeners. “That’s horrific. And again, that’s bad for the cause. Like the cause is let’s get the gang members out. Everybody agrees. But let’s not (have) innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs.”

Signs of change?

The April AP-NORC poll found that about half of Americans say Trump has “gone too far” when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, compared with about 6 in 10 who say he’s “gone too far” on imposing new tariffs on other countries.

It found Americans split on mass deportations, with about 4 in 10 in favor of deporting all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and a similar share opposed. The percentage who support mass deportations is down slightly from an AP-NORC poll conducted in January, just before Trump took office.

Still, about one-third of U.S. adults say Trump’s actions have been “about right” on immigration, and about 2 in 10 think he hasn’t gone far enough.

One case that has gained traction nationally is that of Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident from El Salvador who was sent to CECOT despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation. Trump officials have said that Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang, a claim Abrego Garcia’s attorneys deny, and noted that his wife once sought a protective order against him.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has said he will not let Abrego Garcia leave the country.

More Democrats have traveled to El Salvador to highlight the case. And people angry about the situation have confronted Republican lawmakers, including at a contentious town hall Wednesday hosted by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, during which several members of the audience shouted at him to push for Abrego Garcia’s return.

The White House has embraced the fight. “A request for Democrats — please continue to make defending criminal illegal immigrants your top messaging point,” wrote Trump’s director of communications, Steven Cheung.

Some in the party have urged it to steer clear. Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., called the case a “distraction” from issues such as tariffs that have emerged as a bigger weakness for Trump.

“This is the debate (Republicans) want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it,” he said of Republicans on his podcast. “It’s a tough case, because,” he said, it risks people wondering, “are they defending MS-13?”

But Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, is urging Democrats to seize on the case. He says border issues are “much more nuanced than ‘immigration good for Trump, bad for Democrats’” and believes that voters are on their side.

“If we can’t stand up against the illegal rendition of the father of a U.S. child to a prison known for torture, then I don’t really know what we’re doing,” he said.

Associated Press polling editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

LA-area congressmembers seek mortgage relief for wildfire victims

• April 25, 2025

Two congressmembers representing communities hit hardest by the Palisades and Eaton fires that tore through Los Angeles County early this year have introduced legislation to provide mortgage relief to homeowners in areas declared a disaster by the president.

The Mortgage Relief for Disaster Survivors Act would allow homeowners with a federally backed mortgage whose property was damaged or destroyed by a major disaster or emergency to seek forbearance — allowing them to skip mortgage payments without being assessed additional interest, penalties or fees — for up to nearly a year. The initial forbearance would last 180 days, with an opportunity to extend it another 180 days.

The relief would apply to homeowners impacted by any federally declared disaster, be it a wildfire in California, hurricane in Florida or tornado in Oklahoma, for example.

Introduced by Reps. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, whose constituents were directly impacted by the Eaton fire, and Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, who represents the Palisades, the proposed legislation is modeled after similar mortgage forbearance provisions in the bipartisan CARES Act that President Donald Trump signed in 2020, during his first term, to provide relief during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chu said survivors shouldn’t have to worry about missing a mortgage payment while dealing with the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster.

“Congress has already worked with President Trump during the coronavirus crisis to provide bipartisan and near-unanimous support for such relief for pandemic victims, and the Los Angeles wildfires have made clear to us that all natural disaster victims should receive that relief as well,” she said.

Sherman said just as Congress acted with urgency and compassion during the pandemic, it’s critical for lawmakers to address the scale of the devastation caused by the January wildfires. He stressed the importance of ensuring that “wildfire victims have the financial relief and stability they need to rebuild.”

Over 11,000 homes were destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires.

Co-sponsors of the bill include California Democratic Reps. Laura Friedman of Glendale, Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles, Linda Sánchez of Whittier, Lou Correa of Santa Ana and Jared Huffman of San Rafael.

Other congressmembers co-sponsoring the bill include Reps. Cleo Fields of Louisiana, Sylvia Garcia of Texas, Joe Neguse of Colorado, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Shri Thanedar of Michigan and Jill Tokuda of Hawaii. All six are Democrats.

In a statement provided by her office, Chu said that “given natural disasters know no state lines or political affiliation, I welcome all Republican support for this critical legislation modeled after the bipartisan CARES Act.”

This is not the first bill that lawmakers from California have sought to provide mortgage relief to wildfire victims.

In the state legislature, Assemblymembers John Harabedian, D-Pasadena, and Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, authored a bill that would allow affected homeowners to seek up to 12 months of mortgage forbearance. That bill passed out of the Assembly this month but still needs to be voted on in the state Senate.

​ Orange County Register 

Lawmakers know CEQA is a bust, so why won’t they fix it?

• April 25, 2025

SACRAMENTO—It’s not that typical that an acronym for an arcane regulation would be a household word, but in California the term CEQA—pronounced see-kwa—is as well-known as terms such as OMG and LOL. Signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, the voluminous statute provides a laundry list of terms and conditions on developers of every manner of construction project. CEQA has created a regulatory nightmare, although it still has defenders. LOL indeed.

As the Planning and Conservation League explains, “The California Environmental Quality Act … is California’s premier environmental law. It allows public agencies to make informed decisions about activities that could degrade public health and damage the environment. It also provides California residents with the legal framework to hold their public agencies accountable.”

That sounds so unobjectionable. Who doesn’t want public agencies to make informed decisions and provide community members with tools to protect the environment and hold officials accountable? But the reality is far different than what these Pollyannaish civics-textbook explanations suggest. California lawmakers refuse to substantively reform the law, but what’s the first thing they do whenever they want a particular project built?

You guessed it—they provide a CEQA exemption or streamlining. When the Sacramento Kings wanted to build a new downtown arena and keep the team from leaving town, Senate President Darrell Steinberg (later elected the city’s mayor) ushered through an exemption. We’ve seen multiple examples—or attempts—to reduce the application of CEQA to other professional sports projects, as well as other favored projects including one tied to LA’s effort to lure the Olympics.

It’s always the sign of a bad law when it constantly requires exemptions. That reminds me of Assembly Bill 5, which banned most independent contracting—but its supporters exempted more than 100 industries from its grip because it threatened so many people’s livelihoods. A recent national example: Donald Trump’s tariffs posed an existential threat to many businesses, so he’s been exempting certain industries. All these regulatory edicts empower the politically well connected, who have lobbyists who can secure special favors.

So what’s wrong with CEQA? Whenever the government has discretionary approval authority, the law requires the agency to conduct a review. It usually requires the developers to conduct an extensive environmental analysis. It triggers an initial-study process and then often a costly, time-consuming full Environmental Impact Report. Agencies can then mandate remediation or reject the project. It gives any stakeholder the right to file a lawsuit challenging the agency’s approval.

As is now well documented, interest groups often file lawsuits that are not related to improving the environment. No-growthers file suits to stop—or reduce the size—of projects they don’t like. Neighbors can file lawsuits because they don’t want more traffic. Unions threaten suits as a way to gain leverage to secure project-labor agreements and other union-friendly conditions. As the law firm Holland & Knight reported in 2015, “64% of those filing CEQA lawsuits are individuals or local ‘associations,’ the vast majority of which have no prior track record of environmental advocacy.”

And if you think these cynical efforts to gum up the construction process help the environment, then consider this alarming point from that analysis: “Projects designed to advance California’s environmental policy objectives are the most frequent targets of CEQA lawsuits.” These include transit projects, multi-family housing, parks, schools and libraries. It notes that 80% of the CEQA lawsuits are in infill locations, which is where environmentalists want us to build.

CEQA criticism has grown even on the political Left thanks largely to the law’s stifling effect on new housing construction. As everyone here knows, California faces a severe housing crisis as the median home price statewide has soared above $800,000 and well over $1 million in many coastal metros. That has led to massive rent spikes and has exacerbated our homelessness situation. Lawmakers have—to their credit—passed targeted exemptions and streamlining provisions for particular types of housing projects (infill, multi-family, duplexes) but it’s not enough.

A 2022 report for the Center for Jobs and the Economy by Holland & Knight attorney Jennifer Hernandez notes that despite those new laws, “CEQA lawsuits targeting new housing production, in contrast, continue to expand—with 47,999 housing units targeted in the CEQA lawsuits filed just in 2020.” The California Air Resources Board (CARB) “acknowledges that two-thirds of CEQA lawsuits allege violations of climate impacts.”

Look, if CEQA can be used to stop projects based on climate impacts, then it can be used against any project. It’s been weaponized as a no-growth tool—constraining housing, energy projects, freeways, rail, you name it. Unless we’re happy just grinding progress to a halt, we need to repeal—or significantly reform—this monstrosity and get beyond occasional exemptions for ballparks and public housing. We all know CEQA by name and deed, so why won’t elected officials do anything about it?

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at [email protected].

​ Orange County Register