Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Officers swarmed around a sedan driving slowly near a downtown protest and demanded that the two black college students inside get out. “Open the goddamn door!” an officer shouted. “No, I don’t know what’s going on,” the young woman pleaded.As she started to exit the car, an officer, in riot gear, pointed a stun gun at her and fired. A different officer shattered the driver’s side window and tased the young man behind the wheel. His body shook and went limp.Atlanta’s mayor swiftly condemned the tactics and fired two of the officers...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Officers swarmed around a sedan driving slowly near a downtown protest and demanded that the two black college students inside get out. “Open the goddamn door!” an officer shouted. “No, I don’t know what’s going on,” the young woman pleaded.As she started to exit the car, an officer, in riot gear, pointed a stun gun at her and fired. A different officer shattered the driver’s side window and tased the young man behind the wheel. His body shook and went limp.Atlanta’s mayor swiftly condemned the tactics and fired two of the officers...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Abdishakur Elmi looked on in horror as flames raged and smoke billowed from the roof of the brick building next to his restaurant. A single truck and a few firefighters battled the blaze that had already consumed several neighboring businesses overnight in a gentrified section of East Lake Street, a major thoroughfare. The police station had been set alight down the street, and protesters who had overrun it milled with the curious in smoky morning light.The neighborhood was under siege. The blaze threatened Hamdi Restaurant, which...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Abdishakur Elmi looked on in horror as flames raged and smoke billowed from the roof of the brick building next to his restaurant. A single truck and a few firefighters battled the blaze that had already consumed several neighboring businesses overnight in a gentrified section of East Lake Street, a major thoroughfare. The police station had been set alight down the street, and protesters who had overrun it milled with the curious in smoky morning light.The neighborhood was under siege. The blaze threatened Hamdi Restaurant, which...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Gavin Newsom was the first governor to , shutting down California’s economy, the world’s eighth-largest, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The next day, Friday, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, followed suit. But not so in Texas and Florida, the nation’s second and third most populous states, where a small-government philosophy — less taxes, fewer regulation and a weaker safety net — has long held sway. About one-fifth of Texas’ 29 million people lacks health insurance, and nearly one-quarter of Florida’s 21 million...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Gavin Newsom was the first governor to , shutting down California’s economy, the world’s eighth-largest, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The next day, Friday, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, followed suit. But not so in Texas and Florida, the nation’s second and third most populous states, where a small-government philosophy — less taxes, fewer regulation and a weaker safety net — has long held sway. About one-fifth of Texas’ 29 million people lacks health insurance, and nearly one-quarter of Florida’s 21 million...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Breaking News Advertisement When Minnesota police advanced on peaceful protesters gathered at an intersection outside the Fifth Precinct late Saturday, I didn’t expect them to fire on reporters.I was wrong.For the record:At about 8:30 p.m., a group of about two dozen appeared from behind a chain-link fence opposite protesters. They were in riot gear and grasping batons.A young African American woman approached the police, arms raised. An officer sprayed her in the face with something that smelled like pepper spray, and the woman ran to seek help...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Breaking News Advertisement When Minnesota police advanced on peaceful protesters gathered at an intersection outside the Fifth Precinct late Saturday, I didn’t expect them to fire on reporters.I was wrong.For the record:At about 8:30 p.m., a group of about two dozen appeared from behind a chain-link fence opposite protesters. They were in riot gear and grasping batons.A young African American woman approached the police, arms raised. An officer sprayed her in the face with something that smelled like pepper spray, and the woman ran to seek help...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | A toddler’s muddy shoe.An empty wallet.A pink hairbrush.A line of Scripture. These and other possessions litter the dirt path leading uphill from the Rio Grande. Bright spots quickly coated with dust, they are what was carried and what was dropped by mothers, fathers and children, like the boy whose size 6 Batman underwear lay in a clearing beyond a thicket.Birth certificates. Scribbled phone numbers. Prized belongings hauled for weeks over hundreds of miles. These, too, are scattered along the trail by migrants, their footsteps quiet in the night...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | A toddler’s muddy shoe.An empty wallet.A pink hairbrush.A line of Scripture. These and other possessions litter the dirt path leading uphill from the Rio Grande. Bright spots quickly coated with dust, they are what was carried and what was dropped by mothers, fathers and children, like the boy whose size 6 Batman underwear lay in a clearing beyond a thicket.Birth certificates. Scribbled phone numbers. Prized belongings hauled for weeks over hundreds of miles. These, too, are scattered along the trail by migrants, their footsteps quiet in the night...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | As darkness fell on the banks of the Rio Grande a few miles west of , cellphones glowed amid the reeds. Smugglers could be heard inflating rubber rafts they have been using to ferry hundreds of migrant families and youths to the U.S. along this one stretch of the river.“Put it in the water,” they hissed at the migrants in Spanish. “Get inside!”With border crossings from Mexico , such scenes and sounds of migrants streaming across the water take place nightly in the Rio Grande Valley, . More than 130,000 migrants have already been encountered there...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | As darkness fell on the banks of the Rio Grande a few miles west of , cellphones glowed amid the reeds. Smugglers could be heard inflating rubber rafts they have been using to ferry hundreds of migrant families and youths to the U.S. along this one stretch of the river.“Put it in the water,” they hissed at the migrants in Spanish. “Get inside!”With border crossings from Mexico , such scenes and sounds of migrants streaming across the water take place nightly in the Rio Grande Valley, . More than 130,000 migrants have already been encountered there...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Members of armed right-wing groups that in blind support of President Trump’s to stay in office said they supported the mob attack, calling it the beginning of another American revolution.As the rabble pushed through barricades and swept through government corridors, Trump’s followers — wearing camo, backpacks and MAGA hats — created a disturbing, surreal scene that revealed the loyalty and violent inclinations among the extreme elements of the president’s base. In the wake of the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, the top two Democrats...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Members of armed right-wing groups that in blind support of President Trump’s to stay in office said they supported the mob attack, calling it the beginning of another American revolution.As the rabble pushed through barricades and swept through government corridors, Trump’s followers — wearing camo, backpacks and MAGA hats — created a disturbing, surreal scene that revealed the loyalty and violent inclinations among the extreme elements of the president’s base. In the wake of the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, the top two Democrats...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | This holiday season many Texans will feast on turkey and roast beef and, being Texans, barbecue. Some will dine on pork, but not just any kind of pork. Call it “wild boar.”How this meat reaches the table is a story that is quintessentially Texan, involving rugged individuals, a love of the outdoors and, yes, guns. To tell that story, let’s go back to earlier this year, before the coronavirus, to a wheat field in north-central Texas at dusk.Peering through an infrared night-vision scope atop his customized AR 15-style rifle, Fred Jones spied his...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | This holiday season many Texans will feast on turkey and roast beef and, being Texans, barbecue. Some will dine on pork, but not just any kind of pork. Call it “wild boar.”How this meat reaches the table is a story that is quintessentially Texan, involving rugged individuals, a love of the outdoors and, yes, guns. To tell that story, let’s go back to earlier this year, before the coronavirus, to a wheat field in north-central Texas at dusk.Peering through an infrared night-vision scope atop his customized AR 15-style rifle, Fred Jones spied his...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Like plenty of young people in Texas, 19-year-old Carissa Timpf felt compelled to vote, even if it wasn’t easy. She requested an absentee ballot to vote by mail. But the University of Houston sophomore never got it.So she plans to make the four-hour drive home to Fort Worth to cast her first vote in a national election. A good friend of hers will make the opposite journey; living in Forth Worth, she’ll drive four hours to vote at her polling place in Houston.In 2020, the hours on the road seem worth it to Timpf, emblematic of...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement Like plenty of young people in Texas, 19-year-old Carissa Timpf felt compelled to vote, even if it wasn’t easy. She requested an absentee ballot to vote by mail. But the University of Houston sophomore never got it.So she plans to make the four-hour drive home to Fort Worth to cast her first vote in a national election. A good friend of hers will make the opposite journey; living in Forth Worth, she’ll drive four hours to vote at her polling place in Houston.In 2020, the hours on the road seem worth it to Timpf, emblematic of...WW…

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement As football fans tailgated without masks outside Texas Tech University’s 60,000-seat stadium in West Texas this weekend ahead of the Red Raiders’ homecoming game, it was easy to forget that Lubbock — a rural county of 310,000 — has one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the country.The outbreak at Texas Tech, which has infected at least 2,200 students, comes as the U.S. reported a national single-day record of new infections — 83,757 — Friday. Part of what’s driving the national increase in infections has been where...…Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | | | | Advertisement As football fans tailgated without masks outside Texas Tech University’s 60,000-seat stadium in West Texas this weekend ahead of the Red Raiders’ homecoming game, it was easy to forget that Lubbock — a rural county of 310,000 — has one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the country.The outbreak at Texas Tech, which has infected at least 2,200 students, comes as the U.S. reported a national single-day record of new infections — 83,757 — Friday. Part of what’s driving the national increase in infections has been where...WW…