A surge in solar activity fueled the vibrant display as the sun reached the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, a period marked by a sharp increase in sunspots and geomagnetic storms.
Around 2019–2020, the sun was at its quietest point; however, with more frequent bursts of solar wind erupting from those sunspots, Earth is now experiencing more substantial and more frequent auroral events.
“The court recognized what we’ve said all along: there is no rebellion, no invasion, and no justification for militarizing our communities,“ Rayfield said in response to the ruling. „The President cannot keep playing whack-a-mole with different states’ Guard units to get around court orders and the rule of law.”
Oregon and Portland went back to the court — this time with California as an additional party to the lawsuit — and asked U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut for a new temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from sending the California National Guard to Oregon.
In her ruling, Immergut barred any National Guard members from being relocated from any state for service in Oregon. One day earlier, she had temporarily blocked the Trump administration from federalizing the Oregon National Guard.
(October 5, 2025)
President Donald Trump deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland after a federal judge blocked the president’s call-up of Oregon’s National Guard, a workaround that has already drawn a new round of legal challenges.
Late Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Oregon leaders’ pending lawsuit, asking Portland-based U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut to block Trump’s effort to sidestep her initial ruling by deploying California troops.
The ruling barred the use of the act in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, which fall under the Fifth Circuit‘s purview. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department will almost certainly appeal to the wider appeals court or the Supreme Court.
Experts say the ensuing judicial dust-up it will clarify precedent in a murky corner of the law. But some warn it could also unearth a road map for future deployments in cities across the U.S.
“If Breyer sides with Newsom and the 9th Circuit sides with Trump, we now have a playbook to use the National Guard and maybe the military around the country,” said Mark P. Nevitt, a law professor at Emory University and one of the country’s foremost experts on the law at the heart of the case.
“He’d have a ruling from the most liberal circuit in America giving the legal go-ahead for this deployment,” Nevitt said. “That would make bad law for the country.”
(July 1, 2025)
Trump threatened to arrest Mamdani if as mayor he follows through on pledges not to assist federal officials enforcing immigration laws.
“Well then, we’ll have to arrest him,” Trump told reporters on July 1 while visiting a detention center in Florida. Trump said that he would “be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.”
Trump also said „a lot of people are saying he‘s here illegally,“ which is false. Mamdani is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda, who immigrated to the United States with his parents − film director Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani − at the age of seven.
(Today)
Department of Justice has argued Posse Comitatus does not apply to the military’s current actions in Southern California — and even if it did, the soldiers deployed there haven’t violated the law. It also claimed the 9th Circuit decision endorsing Trump’s authority to call up troops rendered the Posse Comitatus issue moot.
Some experts feel California’s case is strong.
“You literally have military roaming the streets of Los Angeles with civilian law enforcement,” said Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, “That’s exactly what the [act] is designed to prevent.”
But Nevitt was more doubtful. Even if Breyer ultimately rules that Trump’s troops are violating the law and grants the injunction California is seeking, the 9th Circuit will almost certainly strike it down, he said.
“It’s going to be an uphill battle,” the attorney said. “And if they find a way to get to the Supreme Court, I see the Supreme Court siding with Trump as well.”
(June 14, 2025)
On the streets of Los Angeles, protesters will continue to be met with platoons of armed soldiers. State and local officials remain in open conflict with the president. And in the courts, Trump administration lawyers are digging deep into case law in search of archaic statutes that can be cited to justify the ongoing federal crackdown — including constitutional maneuvers invented to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Thousands of heavily armed Guard troops, as well as 700 U.S. Marines have been deployed in the city’s downtown core for over a week in response to protests over ongoing ICE raids and abductions of the undocumented (and in some cases, the documented).
Governor Newsom‘s office quickly condemned the announcement, saying the new activation is the second set of 2,000 federalized National Guard members under Trump‘s June 9 order.
“This is clean up from the Pentagon. This isn’t a new deployment — it’s the same group of soldiers who have been diverted from critical wildfire work and work at the border, now twiddling their thumbs for Donald Trump’s political theater, the statement from the governor‘s office said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it “sickened my stomach — the manhandling of a United States Senator.” Padilla’s California colleague Adam Schiff called for an immediate investigation.
Several other Democrats were dropping the word “fascism” in conversations as they made their way out of the Capitol.
Security guards wrestled Padilla out of the conference room as he explained he was a senator and wanted to ask the homeland security secretary a question.
Speaking to reporters after the incident, Padilla said: ‚If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day labourers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country‘
About five minutes into a press conference at the Westwood federal building, Noem told the media that the Trump administration planned to “liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that the governor and the mayor have placed on this country.”
Padilla, who was standing near a wall on one side of the room, then tried to interrupt Noem to ask a question, video footage shows. Cameras turned toward him as two Secret Service agents tried to push him backward. “Sir, sir, hands up,” one said.
In addition to protecting government buildings and personnel, the Pentagon has said the troops will safeguard Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during raids.
ICE posted photos online on Tuesday of National Guard troops standing guard with weapons in hand as ICE officers handcuffed apparent migrants against the side of a car in Los Angeles.
An 1878 law, the Posse Comitatus Act, generally forbids the U.S. military, including the National Guard, from taking part in civilian law enforcement.
Images shared by ICE on X show authorities arresting individuals, as troops stand by, appearing to guard the area around the operation – in other words, serving as a security perimeter. The caption read: “Photos from today’s ICE Los Angeles immigration enforcement operation.”
Former senior ICE officials who spoke to CNN couldn’t recall any time the National Guard had been involved in an ICE interior operation.
“Even if lawful, however, the idea of the National Guard supplementing ICE officers on interior enforcement is almost certainly a first,” John Sandweg, former acting ICE director during the Obama administration, said.
“We have received disturbing reports of ICE enforcement actions in Ventura County, including in Oxnard, Port Hueneme, and Camarillo, where agents have reportedly stopped vehicles, loitered near schools, and attempted to enter agricultural properties and facilities in the Oxnard Plain. These actions are completely unjustified, deeply harmful, and raise serious questions about the agency’s tactics and its respect for due process.
“Let us be clear: these raids are not about public safety. They are about stoking fear. These are not criminals being targeted. They are hardworking people and families who are an essential part of Ventura County. Our local economy, like much of California’s and the country’s as a whole, depends on undocumented labor. These men and women are the backbone of our farms, our fields, our construction and service industries, and our communities.
“We are outraged by the cruelty and recklessness of this campaign. It is unconscionable. The Trump administration is deliberately inflicting harm on immigrant families and doing so without transparency, accountability, or even basic communication with Congress. Neither we nor our colleagues have received any notification or briefing from ICE about these activities. Our inquiries to the administration have gone unanswered. This total lack of transparency is unacceptable.
Authorities on Tuesday raided food facilities with predominantly immigrant workforces across two states – a move that has sparked outrage amid intensifying protests against immigration enforcement.
Several farms and agricultural properties in California’s Ventura County were raided by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), Congresswoman Julia Brownley of California said in a statement released Tuesday.
Following the detainment of agricultural workers by immigration officers, protesters flocked to Oxnard City Hall to rally. Tracey Leong reports for the NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city.
Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.
If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe.
Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.
In a later update, the union said Huertas—a veteran labor leader whose union represents over 45,000 janitors, airport workers, security guards, and other property service workers—had been released from the hospital where he received treatment for injuries sustained during his arrest, but that he remained in custody.
The union included remarks from Huertas, who said, „We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice.“
„This is about something much bigger“ than his own arrest, said Huertas. „This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice.“
(June 5, 2025)
ICE last week raided two San Diego restaurants in a search for workers allegedly living in the country illegally, setting off a confrontation with protesters outside. Immigration agents in April showed up trying to speak with students at two Los Angeles elementary schools; school administrators turned them away. That month they also detained a group of day laborers in the parking lot of a Pomona Home Depot.
The lawmakers’ proposals sailed through the Legislature so far, and passed the Senate this week with near-unanimous support from Democrats. They now head to the Assembly.
The White House said in a statement Saturday that Trump was deploying the Guardsmen to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester” in California.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, objected to the move and said in a post on X that the move from the Republican president was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”
“They have woke us up,” Tia Orr told me Saturday morning. She’s the executive director of the 700,000-strong Service Employees International Union California, of which Huerta is a part, and the first African American and Latina to lead the organization.
“And I think they’ve woke people up across the nation, certainly in California, and people are ready to get to action,” she added. “I haven’t seen that in a long time. I don’t know that I’ve seen something like that before, and so yes, it is going to result in action that I believe is going to be historical.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday criticized law enforcement‘s slow response to violent brawls that broke out between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter demonstrators on the UCLA campus Tuesday night.
“The limited and delayed campus law enforcement response at UCLA last night was unacceptable – and it demands answers,” Newsom said in a statement. “As soon as it became clear that the state assistance was needed to support a local response, our office immediately deployed CHP personnel to campus.”
At the University of Minnesota, police moved in during early-morning hours at the request of the institution, arrested nine people and cleared tents in a grassy expanse in front of the main library. That followed the arrest of 120 protesters at New York University on Monday night, according to the New York Police Department.
The developments at those two schools mirrored scenes at Columbia University on Thursday and Yale University on Monday. On the West Coast, California State Polytechnic University at Humboldt went into a lockdown after student protesters barricaded themselves inside a building.
(28.09.2023)
There has been talk that former talk show host and current magazine and book publisher Oprah Winfrey might be of interest. Winfrey, though, would have to take more than a year away from her many lucrative enterprises if she did this.
The passionate advocate for liberal priorities who broke gender barriers was the oldest member of Congress. She was 90.
(23.04.2023)
Geomagnetic storms occur when energy from the sun’s outermost atmosphere disrupts Earth’s magnetic field, causing bands of green and red to light up the night sky. The natural electrical phenomenon is especially visible near the North Pole, but sometimes stretches lower into Canada and the northern United States, where it is often captured by wildfire cameras.
From my segregated hometown to the halls of Congress, I’ve never stopped fighting for what’s right. Our country needs bold, progressive solutions to the problems we’re facing, and I’m prepared to deliver them.
But right now, experts say I’m facing a fundraising disadvantage – so I can’t win this race and become the only Black woman in the Senate without your help.
Donate now to send a true progressive to the Senate!
(Sept. 13, 2021)
My vote against the 2001 military force authorization remains the most difficult vote I’ve cast in my career in Congress. But I knew the last thing the country needed was to rush into war after 9/11, or ever, without proper deliberation by the people — represented by Congress — as the Constitution intended.
My father was a retired Army lieutenant colonel who fought in World War II and Korea. He was the first person who called me after that lonely vote. He reminded me that we should never send our troops into harm’s way without a clear plan, objective and exit strategy. Instead, we were asked to approve an authorization that gave the executive branch a blank check to carry out global war in perpetuity.
(February 25, 2023)
Both Porter and Schiff, like Lee, have progressive voting records. Both Democratic competitors have already amassed tens of millions of dollars, respectively, in campaign donations. Their early fundraising places them in a stronger position than Lee to win the 2024 Democratic primary which will be held about a year from now.