JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Rescue dogs Merlin and Siska are readying for an important mission out in the Mojave Desert: find animal poop.

As the fall brings cooler temperatures, the pups will trot among the Joshua trees wearing orange vests, “doggles” to shield their eyes from the sun and booties to protect them from the prickly cholla cacti....Read more

The pitch behind California’s billionaire tax proposal is simple: Tax the richest residents in the nation’s wealthiest state to offset steep federal cuts to healthcare, food assistance, and education.

But if approved by voters in November, it’s unclear how much money the ballot initiative would raise, how quickly the funding would become ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — When a county judge put the brakes on what would be the largest data center in California, ruling the whole project needed extensive environmental review, Kristian Salgado was relieved.

The community organizer lives in Imperial County, where the nearly one-million-square-foot facility was proposed. The rural county near the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The woman didn’t have much time to talk.

Speaking in Mandarin, she told a police dispatcher she was being held against her will in a Sun Valley home. She pleaded for officers to arrive quickly. If her captors caught her using a phone, she said she’d be beaten.

The call for help in 2024 ended up pulling back the curtain on ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — In 2019, two years before Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang began amassing a family of more than 20 surrogate children, Zhang was accused of misdemeanor child abuse after leaving her then-8-year-old daughter in a hot car for hours.

That case — detailed in a recent motion by prosecutors opposing bail for the couple and a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The man was sure only his lawyers and family knew about his lawsuit against Los Angeles County over sexual abuse he says he endured inside a juvenile hall as a teenager.

The case, filed under a pseudonym, was one of thousands resolved by county officials last year in a historic $4 billion sex abuse settlement. He asked to remain...Read more

President Donald Trump’s new top congressional liaison has entered the job in limbo, with control of the House and Senate too close to call and a boss who could be slowed by a slew of investigations over his final two years in office if Democrats take the majority in one or both chambers.

Trump on Saturday announced that Katie Bailey would ...Read more

CHICAGO — As three women got ready for their very first fraternity party on Saturday, reports of a gang rape at Cornell University lingered in their minds. If nothing else, they figured, the upstate New York allegations might offer a lesson in staying safe.

So they told their two male friends to stay close. They pledged to hold hands whenever...Read more

The ex-boyfriend accused of pushing a young mother to her death off a Bronx building balcony as she desperately held her baby, saving the infant’s life, pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

Angel Carrasco, 31, appeared virtually before a Bronx judge from a hospital bed in a psychiatric ward where he is being evaluated following the push-and-...Read more

The parents of an 8-year-old California girl who died after an extended asthma attack in her family's squalid San José home have been charged with felony child neglect, Santa Clara County prosecutors announced this week.

The girl's mother, Gabrielle Hanson, 32, and stepfather, Jacob Randolph, 39, were arraigned Tuesday in Santa Clara County ...Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice threatened legal action Tuesday if California fails to take action on what it claims are thousands of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.

In letters sent to Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan, acting-U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter gave the state 48 hours...Read more

OAKLAND, Calif. — Ex-Mayor Sheng Thao betrayed Oakland by making herself “open for business” to illegal bribes before stepping foot into the mayor’s office, federal prosecutors declared Wednesday at the start of a federal corruption trial detailing the East Bay’s largest political scandal in decades.

Yet that narrative came under ...Read more

CHICAGO — After more than seven years of reform efforts, the Chicago Police Department has reached preliminary compliance with almost all paragraphs of the ongoing federal consent decree, according to the team that reviews the city’s adherence.

The consent decree monitoring team, led by attorney Maggie Hickey, announced the progress Tuesday...Read more

President Donald Trump called for executing individuals who leak information to the media during a campaign rally as he railed against what he saw as critical coverage of the Iran war.

“In my opinion, leakers should be shot. They should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers,” Trump said at the campaign event in Bullhead City, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A new lawsuit accuses Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, of unlawfully exercising significant government power by acting as one of the administration’s “go-to foreign policy negotiators” without Senate confirmation or compliance with federal ethics rules.

The complaint was filed Wednesday by Citizens for ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Since the Eaton and Palisades fires, there has been report after report documenting how woefully unprepared city, county and fire officials were. This week’s upcoming Santa Ana winds will provide one of the first major tests of whether Los Angeles has applied those painful lessons.

A red flag alert is in place across most of ...Read more

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nixed a trailblazing California law on Wednesday, permanently barring the state's efforts to force federal immigration agents to display identification while on duty.

"As before, we conclude ... the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions," ...Read more