The judge called her a “predator,” scolded her for her spinelessness and sentenced an actor Monday to 90 months in prison — more than twice what prosecutors had requested — for her role in a multimillion-dollar fraud against a mentally ill doctor who wound up dead.
During a sentencing hearing Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson said the 7½-year prison sentence was necessary for Anna Rene Moore to reflect the seriousness of the offense against a “vulnerable victim.”
The government had recommended a 41-month sentence. Moore’s federal public defender recommended 27 months. In handing down a harsher sentence, Anderson referred to Moore as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Anderson said Moore and her ex-boyfriend, Anthony David Flores, had embarked on a scheme to exploit the victim, Mark Sawusch, and “hijack his fortune.”
Moore pleaded guilty last year to seven felonies, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy to engage in money laundering and money laundering. Flores was sentenced in June to nearly 16 years in prison.
During the hearing, Moore, dressed in a white prison jumpsuit, apologized to the Sawusch family for what she called her “unacceptable involvement.”
Moore said she’d struggled her whole life with depression, anxiety, insomnia, anorexia and “crippling co-dependence.”
“Had I had the confidence to stand up to [Flores] more assertively, things could have gone differently,” she said. “I know that, I see that and I am so sorry.”
But Anderson was unmoved.
“There comes a time when you have to be held accountable and accept responsibility,” Anderson said. “When you have to stop blaming your boyfriend … for your failings.”
Flores and Moore met Sawusch, a wealthy Malibu doctor and savvy investor worth more than $60 million, at an ice cream parlor off Venice Beach in June 2017. Sawusch, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had been experiencing severe episodes of mental illness that had led to his hospitalization and later his arrest.
At the time, Moore and Flores lived in Fresno, where they operated a window-cleaning business and yoga studio. Moore was also an actor, whose credits included one-episode roles in shows like Law and Order and Criminal Minds.
Within days of meeting Sawusch, federal prosecutors said, Flores and Moore moved into his beachfront Malibu home, where they lived rent-free. They wormed their way into his life, acting as his caregivers and new best friends and lived with Sawusch from September 2017 until his death in May 2018.
Flores admitted in his plea agreement that he persuaded Sawusch to grant him power of attorney during a mental breakdown so severe that it ended in the doctor’s arrest in September 2017. Flores opened three different bank accounts in Sawusch’s name and used funds to pay for his and Moore’s personal expenses and to finance his nascent public relations company.
According to the plea agreement, Flores represented to Moore and others that Sawusch approved his use of the funds “because the victim had purportedly become an ‘investor’ in all of defendant Flores’ ventures.”
Days before Sawusch’s death, Flores and Moore gave him LSD, which sent Sawusch’s mental health into a tailspin, authorities said. While Sawusch was under the influence, Flores changed the two-factor authentication on Sawusch’s brokerage account to go to Flores’ phone, then initiated two $1-million wire transfers that ended up in his and Moore’s bank accounts.
Sawusch died alone in his home that Memorial Day weekend. The plea agreement revealed that before his death, Flores and Moore had been watching Sawusch via the security cameras in his house from a luxury hotel in Santa Monica.
After his death, Flores and Moore continued to withdraw money from his accounts until Sawusch’s mother and sister sued them. The accounts were frozen, and Flores and Moore attempted to salvage the funds through various money-laundering schemes.
The pair moved to Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, where they later split up.
After serving her sentence, Anderson said, Moore will receive three years of supervised release. She and Flores have also been ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.
Twenty-two thrill seekers were left suspended in midair for more than two hours after a technical malfunction on a Knott’s Berry Farm ride brought their fun to a screeching halt.
The Sol Spin ride experienced technical difficulties, causing the ride to stop mid-cycle about 2 p.m., a Knott’s Berry Farm spokesperson said in a statement. Amusement park staffers were able to safely evacuate all riders by 4:30 p.m. Two female riders were taken to a hospital for further evaluation “out of an abundance of caution,” the spokesperson said.
The ride consists of six swinging arms that soar six stories high and rotate 360 degrees, offering riders the sensation of spinning in three directions at once. When the ride froze, riders were left dangling at multiple angles.
Footage from ABC7 News helicopters showed amusement park staffers using a crane to perform repairs on the malfunctioning ride about 3:30 p.m.
Staffers were then able to lower the arms of the ride and evacuate the riders by 4:30 p.m., with several people limping away and at least one person escorted away in a wheelchair, according to KTLA-TV.
The ride is located in the Fiesta Village section of the Buena Park amusement park.
The Los Angeles school board united in defense of immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community Tuesday, affirming the school system as a sanctuary for these students and employees and calling for a new focus on politically informed civics education.
In all, four resolutions were brought forward by L.A. Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg — and all passed without opposition.
“The guy is back,” Goldberg said, referring to President-elect Donald Trump, “and he’s going to try even harder to disrupt families, to disrupt people, to disrupt our communities.”
Goldberg was referring to Trump’s pledge to deport millions of immigrants who are living in the country illegally.
In one resolution, her goal was to reaffirm an immigrant sanctuary policy that the L.A. Unified board approved early in the first Trump administration.
District policy already prohibited staff “from voluntarily cooperating in any immigration enforcement action, including sharing information about students’ and families’ immigration status with any immigration agent or agency.”
Under the updated resolution, L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho must return within 60 days with a plan that includes “training for all teachers, administrators, and other staff on how to respond to Federal agencies and any immigration personnel who request information about students, families, and staff, and/or are attempting to enter school property.”
And district families are to be kept informed “in the language that they speak.”
Trump has accused immigrants of increasing crime and taking jobs from citizens. In a Monday social media post, he confirmed a report that he would order the military to be involved in deportations as part of a declared national emergency.
The sanctuary resolution calls Trump “the candidate whose previous administration created a brutal policy of immigrant family separation which did irreparable harm to thousands of immigrant children and parents.”
Trump has defended the policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, calling it an effective deterrent to immigration.
About 1 in 5 students are considered to be learning English; many of them are immigrants, although they are not necessarily in the country illegally.
The Central American Resource Center, an immigrant rights group, estimated Tuesday that, in the Los Angeles region, there are 1.6 million children with at least one immigrant parent and more than 20,000 recent arrivals who attend L.A. Unified schools.
Goldberg made no attempt to contain her anger at Trump: “I am so sick and tired of people calling people who have come to this country from terrible situations that they had to flee — and calling them crooks and murderers and all of that other stuff. I don’t care what anybody says. Immigrants built this country, and everybody in this room is related to an immigrant, unless you’re Native American. So all of us are immigrants.
“The people yelling on the other side yell really loudly,” she added. “We’ve got to yell louder.”
Board member Rocio Rivas had to pause to compose herself as she spoke and said she wants schools to be a place where students and staff are “safe, respected and affirmed.”
“I did not become a citizen until I was 22 years old,” Rivas said. “And all throughout my education, and even when I was at UC Berkeley, I always felt that fear, and I know fully well what it is to grow up undocumented and knowing that at any moment, the life that we have here can be taken away.”
Speakers in favor of the board action included former school board member Monica Garcia, who brought forward the original resolution during her time on the board.
No one spoke against it.
“The words we speak here are spoken in a safe place,” said board member George McKenna. “If, in fact, the dangerous people that are trying to and seem to have taken control of our government start acting on this, it will require more action than you probably are accustomed to.”
McKenna, 84, the board’s oldest member and a veteran of the civil rights movement in the South, said the potential for turmoil and danger could surpass what he experienced in his youth.
Public schools are required under federal law to enroll any student within their jurisdiction, and in California, school officials are not allowed to ask about immigration status. Many families have mixed immigration status — with some family members in the U.S. legally but others not.
A separate Goldberg resolution referred to “a documented increase in anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in the United States,” stating that “these narratives divide communities, elevate risk factors, and compromise mental health and school engagement.”
Although it noted that LGBTQ+ students already are specifically protected by the school district’s nondiscrimination policies, the resolution would extend such protections to family members of students as well as to employees and their families.
The LGBTQ+ resolution also updates district policy — with language about enforcing “the respectful treatment of all persons to include gender identity and gender expression.”
The resolution describes the 2024 presidential race as resulting in the “election of the candidate who campaigned on an anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.”
“Lesbian and gay kids and trans kids and non-binary kids are really going to hear a lot of crap in the society as a whole,” Goldberg said in an interview. “And we just want them to know we have their backs.”
Under the banner of parent rights, Trump wants to end school board policies that limit the ability of school staff to notify parents if their child changes gender identity or pronouns at school.
Trump recently voiced strong support for this view of parental rights at a conference organized by the conservative group Moms for Liberty.
“Some of these people on the boards, I think they don’t like the kids very much,” he said at that gathering. “You have to give the rights back to the parents.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July that shields teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender student rights and prohibits K-12 “forced disclosure” rules.
A third Goldberg resolution takes aim at the education portion of Project 2025, a think tank effort that set out policy goals for a second Trump administration. In terms of education, there is broad but not complete alignment between Project 2025 and Trump’s statements on education.
Project 2025 emphasizes giving parents the right to use their share of public education funds to subsidize private school tuition, a goal that Trump supported in his first administration. The policy framework also calls for “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.” Backers say they want to remove what they call liberal politics and “indoctrination” from the classroom.
Critics see this policy proposal as an effort to whitewash history, limit diverse perspectives and shut down discussion of controversial topics.
The Goldberg resolution vows that “we will do everything in our power to protect and defend students, families, and staff from the harm intended by Project 2025, and to defend all students’ right to a public education.”
Under the resolution, Carvalho was directed to present a report with a “comprehensive overview of all of the Project 2025 policies that impact public education and public school students, families, and staff, and a detailed overview of the District’s plan to defend public education and the students, families, and staff we serve.”
The fourth Goldberg resolution takes aim at recent widespread efforts to remove the discussion of controversial subjects or current events from classrooms.
The resolution states that, to make students “ready for the world,” they must become “critical thinkers, to be able to understand current events, to be able to understand how events impact our politics, to know the effects of specific policy proposals, and to be able to understand all sides of key political issues.”
Moreover, “it is the district’s responsibility to prepare students to be able to make distinctions between news and opinion in an increasingly fractured information environment rife with misinformation, polarization and questionable sources.”
England and France, Goldberg said, “start what I would call political education in the upper elementary grades all the way through high school, and their kids have a lot better take, in my opinion, of what’s going on in modern, contemporary political issues.”
An example, she said, is “what can Trump actually do, and what things does he say he can do but he really can’t.”
Within 160 days, Carvalho would have to report “about the feasibility of establishing a Contemporary Political Issues course” for the high school level and whether it could be required for graduation.
The staff analysis also would cover “what credentials and professional development would be required to ensure the district has the workforce to implement this new course, and what would be the most appropriate grade or grades for students to take this course.”
Also under review would be changes needed to curriculum at all grade levels to prepare students for high school coursework in this area.
After voters across the nation chose President-elect Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom cautioned against buying into the first wave of hot takes and “punditry” about what went wrong for Democrats.
“I think this will reveal itself, and I think we have a responsibility to interrogate ourselves. I’m not naive about that, and that includes all of us, individually,” Newsom said in a video address. “We have to look into the mirror and really reflect on what happened more broadly.”
Some Democrats say California politics are part of the problem.
The party’s loss to a candidate they often liken to a fascist dictator “says something is broken with the vanguard of Democratic policies and Democratic messaging that starts in places like California,” said Mike Gatto, a former Democratic state Assembly member.
“We don’t want to ever get into a position where we’re not sticking up for the least among us. But at the same time, we also have to focus on things that the majority of voters care about and those things are affordability and the perception that some of the more extremes of the left wing of the Democratic party have gone too far.”
The GOP tried to cast Harris, a Californian, as epitomizing a West Coast liberalism that the party portrays as more focused on identity politics than on the bread-and-butter issues that mattered most to American voters: their ability to pay rent and buy groceries.
Many factors contributed to Trump beating Harris, the first Black female presidential nominee of a major political party, in a chaotic election season that included assassination attempts and a candidate switch that left the vice president with 107 days to win over the public.
As a bastion of liberal ideas, the Golden State and Newsom himself also play an outsize role in the “culture war” debate over ideology in America, driven in part today by the governor’s relentless campaign against Trumpism.
Newsom has denounced GOP leaders, alleging they want to reverse the nation’s progress, as he campaigned for President Biden, Harris and other Democrats around the country. California, he likes to say, is where the future happens first.
The governor touted the state’s “first in the nation” study on providing reparations for the descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in the United States, an issue that polled so poorly in California and on the national level that the governor and legislative Democrats distanced themselves from the call to deliver remedies in an election year. Democrats boast about the state’s aggressive fight against climate change that includes a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035, but haven’t solved the state’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices.
California also has some of the tightest gun control laws in the country. On the campaign trail, Harris repeatedly mentioned that she owns a firearm in an attempt to distinguish her support for gun control from the unsubstantiated claim from the right that she and Democrats want to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
A law Newsom signed this year to ban school districts from requiring that teachers inform parents when a student wants to be identified as a different gender inflamed conservatives and led Elon Musk to pledge to move SpaceX from California to Texas.
The Democratic platform in 2024 became synonymous with abortion access, climate change and LGBTQ+ rights, top issues in the modern Golden State zeitgeist. But that played out in an America concerned about jobs, affordable housing and inflation.
Republicans made the image of homeless encampments in San Francisco and Los Angeles and stories about people leaving the state for Texas because of crime and housing costs part of their standard talking points, said David Kochel, a veteran Iowa GOP strategist who worked for the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.
Kochel pointed to an ad Trump ran focusing on Harris’ support in the 2019 Democratic primary for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgery for inmates. The ad featured Harris talking about her past efforts to provide access to care for transitioning inmates in California prisons.
Harris countered that her position was consistent with Trump administration policy at the time.
The ad, frequently aired during college and NFL games, alleged that Harris supports transgender women competing “against our girls in their sports.” Trump said he would ban transgender women from women’s athletics.
“Kamala is for they/them,” the ad said. “President Trump is for you.”
Vice President Kamala Harris at Capitol Pride DC in 2022
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Sam Garrett, a Democratic strategist who was previously the managing director of Equality California, a group that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, rejected the notion that his party must decide whether to focus on social issues or economic fears, arguing it could do both.
“It’s the second half of that ad — that Donald Trump is for you — that’s what voters are reacting to,” Garrett said. “That’s what Democrats need to do a better job of explaining — we’re for you. It’s not mutually exclusive making sure everyone, including trans kids, has access to healthcare.”
He added that economic issues such as housing affordability affect broad swaths of voters, including members of the LGBTQ community.
“We need to grow the tent, not shrink it,” Garrett said.
However, California’s emphasis on such liberal issues pushes the boundaries for many moderate voters, even those who may be sympathetic to some progressive policies, Kochel said.
Kochel warned that what he called “virtue signaling” from Democrats could have real-world implications for vulnerable communities and lead to a revolt against California-style “hyperprogressive activism.”
“What frustrates me as a Republican who supports LGBTQ rights and who supports marriage equality, things like that … the backlash is going to catch a lot of people in it that don’t deserve to be targeted,” he said. “So I’m concerned about the state of marriage equality. It feels like it’s because a lot of this stuff [has gone] too far.”
Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party and now a registered independent who opposes Trump, said there’s no question that the GOP has been very effective at “demonizing California as a dangerously liberal state” to scare other parts of America, whether it’s true or not.
“They have painted California to be so liberal that if we let the rest of the country become like California, the whole operation will collapse,” Horn said.
That’s what happened in Iowa, where GOP politicians essentially ran against California issues, said Jeff Link, an Iowa Democratic strategist who worked for former President Obama’s 2008 campaign and former Vice President Al Gore’s presidential run in 2000.
“I mean that’s all the Iowa legislative Republicans essentially advertised on,” he said, noting the frequency of ads around transgender youth in sports, use of public bathrooms, defunding the police or raising taxes.
But the Democratic Party didn’t just miss the mark with voters in swing states and Republican strongholds. It was too liberal even for many California voters.
The California Democratic Party and Newsom opposed Proposition 36, a statewide ballot measure to increase penalties for repeat theft and drug crimes. Harris declined to take a position. The measure prevailed with 69% voter approval. Voters also disagreed with the state party’s endorsements on four other measures, including a failed initiative that sought to ban involuntary servitude in prisons.
“That was a huge disconnect by the Democratic Party and certainly Gavin Newsom and everyone else running around amplifying [liberal social] positions, which doesn’t do us any good,” said John Shallman, a veteran Democratic consultant based in Los Angeles. “We just again have to be focused on bread-and-butter, kitchen-table, middle-class issues, and get away from identity politics, get away from the notion of fighting these culture wars.”
The defeat of Harris, a preeminent California Democrat who served as the state’s attorney general and U.S. senator, raises the question of how Newsom would fare in a presidential race if he seeks the nomination in 2028.
Immediately after the election, Newsom appeared to pick up the same playbook he used during his first two years in office to elevate himself as a leader of the Democratic resistance to Trump.
The governor announced a largely symbolic special session to increase funding for the state to fight legal battles to protect women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and climate change against the incoming federal administration two days after the race was called.
Trump responded by highlighting California’s cost of living and accusing “Newscum” of trying to kill the nation’s “beautiful California.”
“They are making it impossible to build a reasonably priced car, the unchecked and unbalanced homeless catastrophe, & the cost of EVERYTHING, in particular groceries, IS OUT OF CONTROL,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
On the hood of an electric car in 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order requiring all new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emission by 2035.
(Daniel Kim / AP Pool)
Horn and others say California Democrats should continue to stick up for their values. But if the state party sees itself as a leader for the party nationally, then it may need to refocus its messaging.
“The country needs Democrats to defeat MAGA and that means Democrats need to be more honest with themselves about not just the positions that they take, but the disconnect of those positions with the majority of Americans,” Horn said.
At a town hall with Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles on Saturday, outgoing U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler said Democrats are advancing economic policies that speak to Americans’ concerns, but they aren’t resonating.
“What you’re seeing is a growing gap between the reality of everyday people and those who, with good intention, want to work on their behalf,” she said.
Butler, the first lesbian of color in the U.S. Senate, cautioned California leaders against leaning too hard into the culture wars.
“I don’t believe Gov. Newsom was elected to be the governor of the resistance,” Butler said. “I don’t believe Senator-elect [Adam] Schiff was elected to be the senator-elect of the resistance. I hope that the lesson from any of this is a reminder for all of us that we are public servants, that we are here to serve the people who send us, and the governor of California has to be the governor of all of California.”
Across Southern California, and for that matter much of the country, housing is unaffordable for many, whether someone is trying to buy a house or rent an apartment.
Voter concern over the nation’s cost of living, including housing, appears to have played a big role in returning Donald Trump to the White House.
Now, can he fix it?
During the campaign, the former president promised to bring down mortgage rates, cut costly red tape, open federal lands to development and deport millions of people in the country illegally — which the campaign said would lower costs by opening housing for citizens.
Interviews with economists and other housing experts paint a complicated picture of how that all could play out, with some warning that pieces of Trump’s agenda could make a bad situation worse, while others could help.
“It depends on what Trump does,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist with real estate brokerage Redfin.
One big question is mortgage rates.
Presidents do not set borrowing costs, though policies that their administrations enact can influence the price of a loan.
When it comes to mortgages, interest rates are heavily influenced by the expectation for inflation. A growing federal deficit can also put upward pressure on rates.
Supply-chain problems coming out of the pandemic emergency, coupled with pandemic economic stimulus under Presidents Trump and Biden, have been blamed for contributing to the inflation surge in recent years, though the rate of cost increases has since ebbed to more normal levels.
Whether that slowing trend will continue is unclear.
A preelection survey from the Wall Street Journal found most economists believed inflation and interest rates would be higher under policies proposed by Trump than Vice President Kamala Harris.
In particular, economists say the former and soon-to-be-again president’s stated plans for sweeping tariffs and tax cuts could reignite inflation and significantly raise the deficit, thus putting upward pressure on home loan costs.
“There definitively is a risk,” Fairweather said.
Ed Pinto, co-director of the Housing Center at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said such fears may not come to pass.
He said he views tariffs mostly as a negotiating tactic and noted that Trump has put forth other proposals that could reduce mortgage rates by decreasing inflation and deficits. These include lowering energy costs through more fossil fuel production and appointing the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to slash government spending.
Another big component of housing is supply — the lack of which economists tend to single out as the main culprit driving rents and home prices higher.
Trump has called for cutting regulations that make it more difficult to build, but many of those rules are the domain of local authorities, giving the federal government limited options to change course, Fairweather said.
The president-elect has also called for building new homes on federal lands, which Pinto said could improve affordability in states such as Utah and Nevada, where the federal government owns large tracts of land and people fleeing California have pushed up prices.
Even within the Golden State, Pinto said there’s likely lots of federal land on which to build.
“This would be huge for the western third of the country,” Pinto said.
Others are more skeptical. In a report last week from banking giant UBS, analysts wrote that “the federal land initiative could be challenged by a lack of existing infrastructure in these generally rural areas.”
Immigration is another wild card. Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation of people here illegally that the country has ever seen.
As of 2022, there were an estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, and mass deportations would break up mixed-status families and could send shock waves through parts of the economy.
Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said that if Trump succeeds in carrying out mass deportations, it could lower housing costs somewhat in places such as Los Angeles as hundreds of thousands of people are forced out and homes are left vacant.
At the same time, Green noted, deportations also could raise rent and home prices because many of those in the nation illegally work in construction, building the homes that are needed to improve affordability.
There’s evidence this has happened before. A recent paper from researchers at the University of Utah and University of Wisconsin found that greater immigration enforcement led to less home building and higher home prices.
For now, the Southern California for-sale and rental markets seem to be slowing down, but remain too expensive for most.
Last month, rent in L.A. County fell 1.7% from a year earlier, but is up 7.5% from October 2019, according to Apartment List. Home prices across Southern California have slid for three straight months, but remain near their all-time highs, according to Zillow.
What happens next is difficult to know. The reason, according to Green? “It’s hard to say what Trump policies are actually going to happen.”
A Los Angeles-based celebrity who is keeping his identity secret is suing an attorney representing 120 alleged victims of Sean “Diddy” Combs, alleging the lawyer tried to extort a payout in return for not identifying him as a sexual abuser tied to the hip-hop mogul.
The celebrity — referred to in the lawsuit as a “high-profile individual” and identified only as John Doe through his lawyers — says Houston attorney Tony Buzbee wrote demand letters in which he made “wildly false horrific allegations.” Buzbee said the individual raped minors at a Combs party and that — unless he agreed to a mediated settlement — there would be consequences, according to the lawsuit.
The allegations mark a new twist in a sprawling and complex Hollywood legal drama that includes an ongoing federal probe into sex trafficking allegations and a growing number of civil lawsuits against Combs and others accused of being involved in wrongdoing.
Federal prosecutors allege the founder of Bad Boy Entertainment used his empire for decades to coerce victims into sex at gatherings known as “freak-offs.” Authorities have suggested they are still examining others in the entertainment business who might have enabled Combs or participated in the alleged assaults.
The federal case alleges a complicated scheme that would have required the knowledge and involvement of multiple people to recruit victims, organize the freak-offs, clean up after the wild affairs and cover the tracks so law enforcement would not investigate.
In the latest twist, federal prosecutors accused Combs on Friday of using secretive methods to contact outsiders from jail, aiming “to blackmail victims and witnesses either into silence or [to] provide testimony helpful to his defense.” The music mogul’s lawyers responded Monday that investigators seized “attorney-client privileged material” from Combs’ jail cell, including handwritten notes by Combs.
Combs, 54, remains in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied multiple abuse claims.
Buzbee’s law firm has filed many of the civil lawsuits against Combs since his arrest in September. The accusers’ lawyers say that other celebrities participated in rapes and sexual assaults at freak-offs organized by Combs and that some victims were minors.
Attorneys for the celebrity said Buzbee, in communications, threatened to “unleash entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault.”
“This is textbook extortion,” the lawyers added.
Buzbee allegedly confronted the man this month with “vile” allegations. According to the lawsuit, Buzbee accused the celebrity of raping “multiple minors, both male and female, who had been drugged at parties hosted by Combs.” The lawyer said that if the celebrity did not agree to a “confidential mediation,” then the lawyer would “take a different course,” the suit claims. Buzbee attached an image of a ticking clock to the message, according to the lawsuit.
Buzbee said he and his firm would not “allow the powerful and their high-dollar lawyers to intimidate or silence sexual survivors” and warned that a lawsuit against the unnamed plaintiff was looming.
“It is obvious that the frivolous lawsuit filed against my firm is an aggressive attempt to intimidate or silence me and ultimately my clients,” Buzbee wrote in a statement. “That effort is a gross miscalculation. I am a U.S. Marine. I won’t be silenced or intimidated. Neither will my clients. Since our professional efforts at resolution obviously have failed, we will instead disclose the demand letters we sent at the time we filed suit.”
Elaborating on what he had done in the case, Buzbee said: “On behalf of two clients who allege sexual assault, we sent a standard demand letter to a New York lawyer that we know represents an alleged perpetrator and potential defendant. The letters were sent seeking a confidential mediation in lieu of filing a lawsuit. No amount of money was included in the demand letters. No threats were made. The demand letters sent are no different than the ones routinely sent by lawyers across the country in all types of cases.”
Buzbee’s more than two dozen civil lawsuits have, for the first time, accused celebrities other than Combs of participating in assaults during parties hosted by the Bad Boy Records founder. The stars, however, have not been identified by name.
Buzbee has previously vowed to name celebrities who he says were involved in the alleged sexual abuse. He said during a news conference in September that the names contained in the suits would “shock.”
In one federal lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, a woman identified as Jane Doe says she was 13 when she was raped by Combs and a male celebrity, identified only as Celebrity A, while a female celebrity, referred to as Celebrity B in court papers, watched.
The woman alleges in the legal filing that the night of Sept. 7, 2000, began with her outside Radio City Music Hall in New York City, trying to talk her way into the Video Music Awards. Later, at a freak-off hosted by Combs, the unnamed male celebrity allegedly raped the girl while Combs and the unidentified female celebrity watched. Combs then raped the girl as the other two celebrities watched, according to the lawsuit.
Combs’ attorneys denied Buzbee’s allegations. “Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”
Attorneys at L.A. law firm Quinn Emanuel, who filed suit Monday on behalf of the unnamed celebrity, said Buzbee “capitalizes on the bravery of those victims who came forward” against Combs to win unearned settlements from “innocent celebrities, politicians, and business people.”
“Defendants devised a scheme to obtain payments through the use of coercive threats from anyone with any ties to Combs — no matter how remote,” lawyers for the unnamed plaintiff wrote. “Defendants claim to be investigating the facts, but the reality is they are finding deep pockets and trying to smear all of them with the same brush.”
Separately, lawyers for the government and Combs have sparred over Combs’ request to be released on bail, which the Justice Department opposes.
In Friday’s motion, federal prosecutors alleged that Combs attempted to tamper with witnesses and influence potential jurors from his prison cell by working through family members. Evidence seized from Combs shows a pattern of influence by the mogul while in custody, prosecutors alleged in their motion, along with “relentless efforts to contact potential witnesses, including victims of his abuse who could provide powerful testimony against him.”
Combs’ lawyers responded in court papers Monday that the search and seizure of material from Combs’ cell violated his constitutional rights. “The targeted seizure of a pre-trial detainee’s work product and privileged materials — created in preparation for trial — is outrageous government conduct amounting to a substantive due process violation,” they contended.
In a court filing, prosecutors said the material was obtained in a routine sweep of federal prisons and screened to prevent them from seeing privileged materials.
A private Christian high school in Merced withdrew its girls volleyball team from a state playoff game against a team with a transgender athlete in a decision a school official said was based on “God’s Word” and the belief that gender is not changeable.
Stone Ridge Christian High School forfeited Saturday night’s California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) NorCal Division VI volleyball match against San Francisco Waldorf, a Bay Area private school. Neither school immediately responded to a request for comment.
Last week, Stone Ridge Christian academic dean Julie Fagundes sent a message to families saying this was a “heartbreaking end” to the team’s season but the school’s priority was to “care for the health and safety of our athletes” and uphold its religious principles.
“At SRC we believe that God’s Word is authoritative and infallible. It is Truth. And as Genesis makes clear, God wonderfully and immutably created each person as male or female,” she wrote. “We do not believe sex is changeable and we do not intend to participate in events that send a different message.”
CIF spokesperson Rebecca Brutlag said Stone Ridge Christian was informed that any team that withdraws from CIF playoffs is subject to sanctions at the section and state level. So far, no decision has been made about potential sanctions, she said in a statement.
Brutlag also pointed out that the California Educational Code and CIF’s bylaws both state that all students should have the opportunity to participate in athletic activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, regardless of the gender on their student records.
The school’s decision to forfeit the game feeds into a fierce national, and international, debate on transgender athletes’ place in sporting competitions.
“Transgender athletes want to participate in school sports for the same reasons as anybody else: to find a sense of belonging and social engagement, to be a part of a team, to boost fitness, and to challenge themselves,” said Amanda Goad, the Audrey Irmas director of the LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California, in a statement on the school’s decision.
“Excluding them from sports sends a terrible message that they are not worthy of being treated the same as cisgender teammates and classmates,” she said.
Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer and activist who opposes trans women’s participation in female sports, shared a photo of the Stone Ridge Christian girls volleyball team on X and urged her 1.3 million followers to “show them some love for standing firm!”
People opposed to trans athletes’ inclusion say it’s unfair, and potentially unsafe, for people born with male traits to compete against athletes designated female at birth. President-elect Trump, for example, has repeatedly made promises to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Tony Hoang, executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Equality California, condemned Stone Ridge Christian’s refusal to allow its volleyball team to play against a transgender athlete.
“It’s disappointing that this school would deny their students the opportunity to grow and learn together and instead embrace the divisive and hateful rhetoric of extremists like Donald Trump,” Hoang said in a statement.
More than 20 states have laws that ban transgender students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. California is not among them, but the issue remains controversial among Golden State residents.
San Jose State University, for example, is currently being sued for allowing a transgender athlete to play on the women’s volleyball team.
The complaint was filed by SJSU’s volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser and 10 athletes from other schools, who allege that their Title IX rights are being violated by allowing the transgender athlete to play for a women’s sports team. Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational settings.
Four schools have withdrawn from games against SJSU’s volleyball team in protest, and Trump has also directly criticized the school for allowing a transgender player on the team.
In spring of last year, two trans athletes withdrew from state high school track-and-field finals after facing a torrent of online and in-person vitriol for their participation in women’s track events.
At the time, the CIF issued a statement saying the federation was “disappointed for two of our student-athletes and their families because due to the actions of others, they found it necessary to withdraw from the State Track and Field Championships out of concern for the students’ well being.”
A Native American-led coalition is pressing the Biden administration to designate three new national monuments in California, with some fearing the chance to protect these areas from mining, drilling and logging could be jeopardized after President-elect Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20.
The lands being sought for monument status encompass more than 1.2 million acres, the largest being the proposed Chuckwalla national monument on more than 620,000 acres stretching from the Coachella Valley near the Salton Sea to the Colorado River. Backers led by the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and other tribes also want neighboring Joshua Tree National Park expanded by nearly 18,000 acres.
In addition, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe is seeking to establish the 390,000-acre Kw’tsán national monument on nearby desert lands in the southeast corner of California, abutting the Colorado River and hugging the border with Mexico. And the Pit River Nation is requesting designation for roughly 200,000 acres of their ancestral territory and spiritual sites in Sáttítla, or the Medicine Lake Highlands, which encompasses striking volcanic formations in Northern California.
Separately, some environmentalists are pushing Biden to set aside 1.4 million acres between Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Yosemite national parks — dubbed the Range of Light national monument.
The campaigns have assumed heightened urgency with Trump set to retake the White House with GOP majorities in the House and Senate. Trump downsized monuments in the West during his first term, and some conservative groups are calling on Congress to abolish the Antiquities Act, the 1906 law that allows presidents to designate national monuments.
“Time is running out,” Brandy McDaniels of the Pit River Nation said last month at COP 16, the United Nations biodiversity summit in Colombia, bringing the plea to a world stage.
An aerial view of the proposed Kw’tsán national monument located on desert land in the southeastern corner of California.
(Bob Wick)
Opponents contend that the lands are safeguarded by existing designations and that giving them monument status will unfairly choke off recreation, such as offroading, and small-scale mining. Some conservatives say the Antiquities Act has been misused as a tool for unchecked land grabs.
Supporters for the tribal-led proposals, which includes top California officials, conservation groups and businesses, say the lands at stake are home to unique but at-risk animals and plants, as well as spiritually and culturally significant areas. They also say the lands aren’t being adequately protected from those seeking to pillage natural resources and visitors who trash sacred sites.
The state Senate and Assembly passed resolutions urging Biden to act on the three new monuments.
The desert landscape comprising the envisioned Chuckwalla and Kw’tsán monuments connected tribes in the region, according to Lena Ortega of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe.
“It was through our ancient trail systems that we traveled to bring news of good harvest, war, death and celebration,” Ortega, project lead for Kw’tsán, said at the COP16 meeting.
Tribes consider these ancestral lands to be sacred. Pottery shards, cremation sites and rock art can be found throughout the region.
Wild inhabitants include vulnerable bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, as well as the stocky Chuckwalla lizard that enjoys basking in the sun. There’s also a rare, bizarre-looking parasitic plant, known as sandfood, found in the region’s sand dunes.
Donald Medart Jr., a Fort Yuma Quechan Indian tribal council member, said the tribe has long fought mining and mineral exploration in the area and felt current protections weren’t sufficient.
“Every 20 years, we were having to fight the same fight in order to protect these lands that are sacred to us and the objects that are contained within these lands and the landscape as a whole,” he said.
The starting point for the proposed Chuckwalla monument is Painted Canyon, an area near the eastern edge of the Coachella Valley where the mountainside is stained deep red, pink, green and gray. To the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, it represents the bleeding heart of their creator, Mukat.
Thomas Tortez Jr., tribal council chairman for the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, said that monument status will pave the way for better oversight, protecting the area from trash dumping and graffiti.
Thomas Tortez Jr., council chairman of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Tribe, describes Painted Canyon as a “paradise” that his ancestors treasured as a place to forage, take refuge from floods and practice their culture.
(Tyrone Beason/Los Angeles Times)
“It gets desecrated more and more every year,” Tortez said.
The area is also the home to a former World War II-era training center used by Gen. George Patton to prepare troops to fight in the North African deserts.
“There’s an immense amount of military history out there,” said Janessa Goldbeck, a former U.S. Marine and chief executive for the Vet Voice Foundation, who supports the designation. Remnants of that history include the altar of a church built for service members made out of rocks from the desert, she said.
Other veterans oppose the designation. James Gregory Herring, 65, a retired Marine Corps major who lives in Pioneertown, said the Chuckwalla proposal will wipe out more than 350 small-scale mining claims, which he said he and other disabled veterans “have found so helpful and therapeutic in our own ability to cope with various mental and physical disabilities.”
Herring said he and his wife have a small claim in the Eagle Mountains, which would be partially subsumed by Joshua Tree National Park under the Chuckwalla proposal.
The military camp remnants are already protected by wilderness or National Conservation Lands designations, he said. An online petition he started to oppose Chuckwalla has more than 2,200 signatures.
Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a nonprofit that focuses on preserving recreation access, said a trail included in Chuckwalla called Meccacopia is popular with off-roaders. And he also fears the Kw’tsán monument could curtail access to the heavily trafficked Glamis and Imperial sand dunes — even though they lie outside the envisioned boundaries — due to “spillover management effects.”
“The monument supporters will always say we will still allow recreation, but it’s only very limited forms of recreation that get allowed in these,” Burr said. “And that’s the part that’s never said out loud.”
Medart maintains that areas outside the monument won’t be impacted, and said tribal leaders want to work collaboratively with stakeholders to hammer out a vision for the area.
Volcanic craters sit within Sáttítla, a proposed national monument nestled in the Shasta-Trinity, Klamath, and Modoc national forests.
(Bob Wick)
Near the Oregon border, another coalition is seeking monument status for an area known as Sáttítla that extends over parts of the Shasta-Trinity, Klamath and Modoc national forests. They say local tribes and numerous Californians depend on the area’s aquifers — which flow into the Fall River and beyond — for clean drinking water and renowned fisheries. The geologically unique area is a spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc tribes and serves as habitat for protected species, including the bald eagle and northern spotted owl.
“We rely on the waters and the food and the medicines that come from this area, and we need it to be a healthy, whole and intact place,” the Pit River Nation’s McDaniels said. “But not only for us. It really serves as a headwaters of California.”
Industry groups representing loggers, mills, private timberland owners, biomass energy producers and others claim the designation would lead to heightened wildfire risk.
In a joint letter to Biden opposing the designation, the presidents of the American Forest Resource Council and California Forestry Assn. said the monument status would add management restrictions that could complicate and thwart existing initiatives, including the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.
Supporters of the monument have stressed that fire agencies retain their authority to battle blazes within monument areas.
The envisioned Range of Light monument — a nod to naturalist John Muir’s moniker for the Sierra Nevada — was endorsed by more than 50 state legislators in an August letter. But it’s faced pushback as well, including rejection from a county supervisor who represents areas being floated for protection.
Supporters and opponents say the designations are not necessarily the safeguard some believe in light of a fierce ideological debate over the power given to presidents to make them.
“I would say any monuments that Biden has already designated or is going to designate in the coming two months are at severe risk of being shrunken or eliminated by the Trump administration,” said Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which maintains that presidents do not have the authority to undo monuments.
Critics of the way the Antiquities Act has been used often point to a mandate for monuments to be limited to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
Burr said that Biden setting aside vast swaths of land in the waning days of his term could lead to backlash from federal lawmakers — such as eliminating funding for the designations or enacting permanent changes to the Antiquities Act.
“Part of me is, like, if he goes big, that’s fine for what we want because then there will be the [momentum] to just settle this once and for all with unified control of the federal government by Republicans,” said Burr, who supports repealing the Antiquities Act.
Trump sharply reduced the boundaries of two monuments in Utah — Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase — and stripped protections from a marine monument off the coast of New England to allow commercial fishing. The Biden administration reversed the changes.
Biden has designated six monuments and expanded four, including enlarging the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument near Los Angeles by nearly a third earlier this year. That amounts to more than 1.6 million acres of public land, and granting the pending tribal-led proposals would tack on more than 1.2 million more. Setting aside such vast landscapes will bring federal and state officials closer to meeting their goals of safeguarding 30% of lands and coastal waters by 2030, supporters say.
Given Biden’s record, some think the president is highly likely to approve one or more of the monuments before Trump’s inauguration. Advocates for the designations say setting them aside now will provide a bulwark against potential attacks.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) is confident Biden will act on Chuckwalla, which has an established campaign and widespread approval. He’s hopeful that a proclamation will arrive in November, which is Native American Heritage Month.
Trump could pose a threat, he acknowledged, “but once it’s confirmed, it’s going to be very difficult to reverse.”
On election night, a Southern California pastor in a red MAGA hat filmed a message for his Instagram followers, cheering President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
Rob McCoy thanked God — and Charlie Kirk, one of the Republican Party’s most influential power brokers.
“This is the epicenter of a rebirth of freedom,” McCoy said from the Phoenix headquarters of Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA.
Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative firebrand, rallied his millions of online followers to support Trump, prompting conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly to say, “It’s not an understatement to say that this man is responsible for helping the Republicans win back the White House and the U.S. Senate.”
The Atlantic dubbed Kirk “the right’s new kingmaker.”
And the man the kingmaker calls his pastor is McCoy, of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Newbury Park.
God saved us
— Rob McCoy on Donald Trump’s victory
McCoy gained notoriety during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when he defied public health orders and continued to hold mask-free indoor church services.
He sees in Trump a man persecuted by the left, who, while “flawed like the rest of us,” was chosen by God to lead a sinful nation that, in his opinion, allows too many abortions and is too accepting of transgender rights.
“God saved us,” McCoy told his congregants in his first sermon after Trump won. “He gave us mercy. We didn’t deserve this.”
McCoy, a vaccine skeptic who has been senior pastor at Godspeak for 25 years, told The Times he considers Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist whom Trump has chosen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, “a good friend.” At his church he has hosted MAGA luminaries like Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, and Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor. And, of course, Kirk.
Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, speaks during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Kirk, a millionaire known for his memes and college campus tours meant to “own the libs,” has credited McCoy for persuading him to meld his right-wing politics, nationalism and evangelical faith.
Although Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 as an avowedly secular youth organization, he now declares that God is on the side of American conservatives, and that pastors have a divine duty to preach against progressive policies. There is, he has said, “no separation of church and state.”
In a speech to Trump supporters in Georgia last month, Kirk said that “the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates” and that “there is a spiritual battle happening around all of us.”
Kirk’s online reach is vast: 1.5 million followers on Rumble, 2.7 million on YouTube, 4 million on X and 5 million on TikTok. His nonprofit, Turning Point Action , largely ran Trump’s ground game in swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin.
After Trump’s victory, McCoy joked from the pulpit: “This week, Charlie’s going back to Washington to meet with the president because he’s going to call in his markers.”
Kirk, in recent days, has posted to social media from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where the president-elect has been naming MAGA loyalists to his Cabinet. After Trump tapped former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Kirk posted a video to X from the passenger seat of a vehicle. Gaetz was behind the wheel and joked that his new job was “Charlie Kirk’s driver.”
Asked if Kirk is advising the president-elect or being considered for a role in the administration, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, in a statement, said only that Trump’s appointments “will continue to be announced by him when they are made.”
McCoy ran unsuccessfully for state Assembly in 2014. But as Kirk’s reach has grown, so, too, has McCoy’s.
In early April 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, McCoy, a former mayor of Thousand Oaks, resigned from the City Council, saying he planned to violate public health orders that banned in-person church services because they were deemed nonessential and dangerous.
He dubbed Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom as “Newssolini,” decried government “tyranny” and had his YouTube page shut down — “censored,” he says — when the platform cracked down on misleading and inaccurate content about the virus and vaccines.
After a San Diego judge allowed strip clubs to reopen, McCoy followed the suggestion of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and pretended his church was an “essential” adult entertainment venue; in the sanctuary, he danced to striptease music, throwing his tie into the congregation, where worshipers held up dollar bills.
Ventura County sued McCoy‘s church for defying public health orders. The county eventually dropped its suit, but Godspeak sued back, alleging its 1st Amendment rights had been trampled. In 2022, a state appellate court sided with the county, but one effect of the pandemic, McCoy says, was his congregation quadrupling to about 1,500.
Kirk, whose college speaking gigs were hampered by campus closures, was welcomed in churches like McCoy’s.
In a 2021 interview, Kirk said that McCoy, in their first meeting, told him: “You’re a Christian, and I want to tell you that not only does the Bible say a lot about civil government, not only does the Bible say a lot about how we should interact with our leaders, but I think you should talk more publicly about that.”
Pastor Rob McCoy, in a 2020 photo, resigned from the Thousand Oaks City Council because he was at odds with government-imposed restrictions on gatherings during the pandemic.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Three years ago, Kirk shared the power of his Turning Points brand with McCoy, who helped launch TPUSA Faith, which offers training and networking for pastors wanting to be more politically outspoken.
Turning Point USA and TPUSA Faith did not return requests from The Times for comment.
Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, said that “Rob McCoy was the person who turned Charlie Kirk to Christian nationalism, and very specifically the Seven Mountains Mandate,” the idea that Christians should try to influence the seven pillars of cultural influence: arts and entertainment, business, education, family, government, media and religion.
Christian nationalism holds that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that Christianity should have primacy in government and law.
“Charlie Kirk has tremendous power both in the evangelical world and Trump world and nationally, and he has tremendous resources that he is putting into all seven areas of cultural influence,” said Boedy, who is writing a book about Kirk. “Trump has allowed him to do that, given him space to do it. But Rob McCoy is the person that convinced him to do it.”
In an interview with The Times, McCoy insisted he is “not a dominionist” — one who believes the country should be governed by Christians. He said Trump appears to be “searching” and growing in his own faith, but that he has been successful in each of the seven pillars and that God appears to be working through him.
“He’s a bull in a China shop,” McCoy said. “But he also keeps his promises. … I’m not looking for a pastor in chief. I’m looking for a bodyguard for Western civilization.”
McCoy, like pastors on both sides of the political aisle, openly flouts the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that bars tax-exempt organizations from participating in political campaigns and endorsing candidates. (Trump has said he wants to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment, which would require an act of Congress.)
McCoy said he is disgusted by Christians saying they “don’t do politics because politics is dirty, as though the rest of the world and they themselves are pure.”
He also bristles at the term “Christian nationalist,” saying there’s nothing wrong with loving God and his country at the same time.
Trump — who, polls show, won the support of 8 in 10 white evangelical voters in this election — is one of many Republican politicians who have courted evangelicals.
But Trump, more than most others, has cast himself as a divinely chosen and wrongly persecuted protector of Christians, telling his supporters that he’s “standing between you and the secular left that is out to get you,” said Barry Hankins, a history professor at Baylor University who has written books about evangelicalism.
As the United States has become more progressive and secular — at the same time congregations are shrinking and aging — Christians have lost much of their cultural power, leaving many to feel under assault, Hankins said.
“Trump is brilliant at just picking up on this and marketing it and branding it for his own political purposes,” he said.
The Republican Party platform, while vague on many topics, specifically says the GOP will champion prayer and reading the Bible in schools.
McCoy, citing Trump’s ability to weather indictments, setbacks and assassination attempts, called his election a “miracle.”
He likens Trump to Samson, a flawed biblical figure who was used by God for a greater purpose. “He’s got iconic hair and a propensity for women,” McCoy said of Samson. “Trump’s got iconic hair and a propensity for women.”
As for restricting abortion, Trump — who has vacillated on the issue — is not exactly where the pastor would like him to be, but “has done more for the life movement than any other president in modern history, period,” McCoy said.
Evangelical activists say they expect him to do more. In a letter to the Trump transition team, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention urged the Trump to take steps to curtail access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
McCoy said that with Trump returning to the White House, he sees a golden era for his efforts and those of TPUSA Faith to “remove wokeness” — including diversity initiatives and critical race theory — from the American church.
He said he plans to start a podcast in which he discusses politics. And next July, he will step down as senior pastor at Godspeak (though he will still have a speaking role), because of his growing role with TPUSA Faith.
Days before the election, McCoy had preached that if Trump lost “life is going to take on catastrophic conditions” because of the evil espoused by the left.
But after Trump’s victory, he changed his tune.
“People who disagree with us are not the enemy,” he posted on Instagram. “They are the opportunity.”
Southern California home prices dipped in October for the third straight month, but values remain near all-time highs and unaffordable for most households.
The average home price in the six-county region was $864,586 last month, down 0.4% from September and 1% below the record reached in July, according to data from Zillow.
Though prices have now fallen for three consecutive months, that doesn’t mean they will keep doing so. It’s not uncommon for home prices to fluctuate month to month, or dip starting in the late summer and fall due to seasonal patterns. Home prices are still nearly 4.5% higher than a year earlier in October 2023.
That said, the rate of home price growth is slowing, something many economists expected to happen given the mismatch between incomes and prices.
Home price growth peaked at nearly 9.5% in April and has declined every month since.
Helping to moderate price growth is a housing shortage that, while not going away, is getting slightly less severe.
In recent months, the number of homes listed for sale has steadily grown. Real estate agents say homeowners who once balked at giving up their ultralow mortgage rates from the pandemic and prior are increasingly choosing to move, deciding a larger home is more important than low borrowing costs.
In October, the number of homes on the market had risen in all six counties over the prior year, ranging from a 25% gain in San Bernardino County to 49% in San Diego County. In Los Angeles County, inventory climbed 33%.
Housing prices by cities and neighborhoods in L.A. County
Average home price
Mortgage interest rates are another factor hammering affordability. Borrowing costs fell through the summer, but have been on the rise since October. As of Nov. 14, the rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 6.78% as of Nov. 7, up from 6.08% at the end of September, according to Freddie Mac. Experts have attributed the rise to an economy that has been stronger than expected, as well as the policies former President Trump may institute upon taking office.
Trump has proposed sweeping tariffs and large tax cuts, something experts say would likely boost inflation and the nation’s deficit — two things that typically put upward pressure on mortgage rates.
Note to readers
Welcome to the Los Angeles Times’ Real Estate Tracker. Every month we will publish a report with data on housing prices, mortgage rates and rental prices. Our reporters will explain what the new data mean for Los Angeles and surrounding areas and help you understand what you can expect to pay for an apartment or house. You can read last month’s real estate breakdown here.
Some experts have said they don’t expect home prices to decline in the near future unless there’s a recession. That’s because while inventory is improving, it’s still low historically. Prices, however, should climb more slowly, or remain relatively flat, giving incomes a chance to catch up.
However, Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, cautioned it’s difficult to say what comes next, because it’s unclear which of Trump’s proposed policies will become a reality.
Explore home prices and rents for October
Use the tables below to search for home sale prices and apartment rental prices by city, neighborhood and county.
Rental prices in Southern California
In the last year, asking rents for apartments in many parts of Southern California have ticked down.
Experts say the trend is driven by a rising number of vacancies, which have forced some landlords to accept less in rent. Vacancies have risen because apartment supply is expanding and demand has fallen as consumers worry about the economy and inflation.
Additionally, the large millennial generation is increasingly aging into homeownership, as the smaller Generation Z enters the apartment market.
Prospective renters shouldn’t get too excited, however. Rent is still extremely high.
In October, the median rent for vacant units of all sizes across Los Angeles County was $2,069, down 1.7% from a year earlier but 7.5% more than in October 2019, according to data from Apartment List.
