By JACK BROOK and JOHN SEEWER

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Trump administration officials overseeing the immigration crackdown launched this week in New Orleans are aiming to make 5,000 arrests with a focus on violent offenders, a target that some city leaders say is not realistic.

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It’s an ambitious goal that would surpass the number of arrests during a two-month enforcement blitz this fall around Chicago, a region with a much bigger immigrant population than New Orleans.

In Los Angeles — the first major battleground in President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration plan — roughly 5,000 people were arrested over the summer in an area where 10 million LA county residents are foreign-born.

“There is no rational basis that a sweep of New Orleans, or the surrounding parishes, would ever yield anywhere near 5,000 criminals, let alone ones that are considered ‘violent’ by any definition,” New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said Thursday.

Census Bureau figures show the New Orleans metro area had a foreign-born population of almost 100,000 residents last year, and that just under 60% were not U.S. citizens.

“The amount of violent crime attributed to illegal immigrants is negligible,” Morrell said, pointing out that crime in New Orleans is at historic lows.

Violent crimes, including murders, rapes and robberies, have fallen by 12% through October compared to a year ago, from a total of 2,167 violent crimes to 1,897 this year, according to New Orleans police statistics.

A flood of messages about arrests

Federal agents in marked and unmarked vehicles began spreading out across New Orleans and its suburbs Wednesday, making arrests in home improvement store parking lots and patrolling neighborhoods with large immigrant populations.

U.S. Border Patrol agents stand on the street in New Orleans, La.,Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Alejandra Vasquez, who runs a social media page in New Orleans that reports the whereabouts of federal agents, said she has received a flood of messages, photos and video since the operations began.

“My heart is so broken,” Vasquez said. “They came here to take criminals and they are taking our working people. They are not here doing what they are supposed to do. They are taking families.”

Several hundred agents from Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are participating in the two-month operation dubbed “Catahoula Crunch.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is from Louisiana, is among the state’s Republicans supporting the crackdown. “Democrats’ sanctuary city policies have failed — making our American communities dangerous. The people of our GREAT city deserve better, and help is now on the ground,” Johnson posted on social media.

Operation is being met with resistance

About two dozen protesters were removed from a New Orleans City Council meeting Thursday after chants of “Shame” broke out. Police officers ordered protesters to leave the building, with some pushed or physically carried out by officers.

Protesters participate in an anti-ICE demonstration during a meeting at the City Hall in New Orleans, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Enan Chediak/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Planning documents obtained last month by The Associated Press show the crackdown is intended to cover southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi.

Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said agents are going after immigrants who were released after arrests for violent crimes.

“In just 24 hours on the ground, our law enforcement officers have arrested violent criminals with rap sheets that include homicide, kidnapping, child abuse, robbery, theft, and assault,” McLaughlin said Thursday in a statement. Border Patrol and immigration officials have not responded to requests for details, including how many have been arrested so far.

She told CNN on Wednesday that “we will continue whether that will be 5,000 arrests or beyond.”

Immigration arrests go beyond violent criminals

To come close to reaching their target numbers in New Orleans, immigrant rights group fear federal agents will set their sights on a much broader group.

New Orleans City councilmember Lesli Harris said “there are nowhere near 5,000 violent offenders in our region” whom Border Patrol could arrest.

Protesters participate in an anti-ICE demonstration during a meeting at the City Hall in New Orleans, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Enan Chediak/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

“What we’re seeing instead are mothers, teenagers, and workers being detained during routine check-ins, from their homes and places of work,” Harris said. “Immigration violations are civil matters, not criminal offenses, and sweeping up thousands of residents who pose no threat will destabilize families, harm our economy.”

During the “Operation Midway Blitz” crackdown in Chicago that began in September, federal immigration agents arrested more than 4,000 people across the city and its many suburbs, dipping into Indiana.

Homeland Security officials heralded efforts to nab violent criminals, posting dozens of pictures on social media of people appearing to have criminal histories and lacking legal permission to be in the U.S. But public records tracking the first weeks of the Chicago push show most arrestees didn’t have a criminal record.

Of roughly 1,900 people arrested in the Chicago area from early September through the middle of October — the latest data available — nearly 300 or about 15% had criminal convictions on their records, according to ICE arrest data from the University of California Berkeley Deportation Data Project analyzed by The Associated Press.

The vast majority of those convictions were for traffic offenses, misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies, the data showed.

U.S. Border Patrol Commander at large Gregory Bovino, 1st right, walks on the street in New Orleans, La.,Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

New Orleans, whose international flavor comes from its long history of French, Spanish, African and Native American cultures, has seen a new wave of immigrants from places in Central and South America and Asia.

Across all of Louisiana, there were more than 145,000 foreign-born noncitizens, according to the Census Bureau. While those numbers don’t break down how many residents of the state were in the country illegally, the Pew Research Center estimated the number at 110,000 people in 2023.

Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press journalists Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Aaron Kessler in Washington, D.C.; and Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed.

“Comptroller Brad Lander has proposed moving some of the city’s enormous pension fund business from dirtier to cleaner money managers,” the authors write. “If he gets the pension fund trustees to enact his late-game proposal, it’ll be a major boost in the global fight against climate change.”

Climate activists rallying outside Lander’s office in 2022, calling for the comptroller to divest the city’s funds from BlackRock. (Courtesy of New York Communities for Change)

Forty seven months into his 48 month term, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has proposed moving some of the city’s enormous pension fund business from dirtier to cleaner money managers. In particular, Lander proposes sending $42 billion worth of the city’s business with BlackRock, the world’s dirtiest money manager, to other, cleaner firms. If enacted as policy, that’d give Wall Street 42 billion reasons to clean up on climate.  

Yet the proposal means nothing if it isn’t enacted. And there’s exactly one pension fund board meeting before Lander is no longer comptroller. Now, at the 11th hour, it’s time for Lander to use his considerable political skills to get it done. If he gets the pension fund trustees to enact his late-game proposal, it’ll be a major boost in the global fight against climate change.

The stakes are high: if global pollution levels don’t decline much faster than they are currently, about 30 percent of the city will flood chronically as sea levels rise and rainstorms intensify in the coming decades. It’s imperative for the city to reduce pollution to save itself—and absurd for it to finance its own destruction by investing in oil and gas. Moreover, since it is a low-growth industry entering the beginning of its sunset, oil and gas companies have lagged the broader markets now for many years. 

Under previous Comptroller Scott Stringer, the largest of the city’s five pension funds committed to and then implemented divestment from oil, coal and gas. By the time Comptroller Lander took office, the city had dumped three of four billion dollars in stocks and bonds it had held from the likes of Exxon. Lander then finished out the city’s fossil fuel divestment program.

Meanwhile, as the city has divested from oil and gas, the red states and Trump have pushed the biggest Wall Street firms to keep pouring money into fossil fuels. As a result, instead of beginning to clean up, BlackRock—the city’s top money manager—has rolled back the very modest steps it took on climate. For example, BlackRock has returned to the worst shareholder voting record on climate action of all large money managers. 

Since BlackRock invests over $12 trillion (trillion!) and owns about 10 percent of every big, publicly traded firm, its power is immense. Yet its business practices run contrary to the city’s net zero pollution goals. Why is the city sending tens of billions of dollars in business to a company whose services can be replaced by other, cleaner managers? 

The city should align its money managers with its goals to achieve net zero pollution. Indeed, as a universal owner, the city can only achieve its goals if its money managers are aligned with it. Thanks to its size, the city’s leverage is also large: it currently sends about $50 billion in business to BlackRock alone. 

Now, Lander’s proposal for action comes very late, but is strong. He proposes to shift $42 billion worth of business from BlackRock based on the manager’s failure to act as a responsible shareholder advocate. Lander points out that BlackRock is knuckling under to Trump by failing to vote the shares it controls in U.S. companies where it holds more than 5 percent of stock. 

By failing to effectively use its voting authority, BlackRock is abdicating its oversight duty, including on climate. If shareholders aren’t vigilant over the companies they own, their interests, including New York City’s pension funds, are damaged. 

Thus, Lander’s demand that BlackRock either exercise its fiduciary responsibilities or lose the city’s business makes perfect sense. The problem is that by waiting until the virtual end of his career as comptroller, Lander has left precious little time to convince his fellow trustees to act.

Regardless of his process to reach his conclusions, the core logic of Lander’s proposal is sound: the city’s pension funds should enact it. After the city has acted to part ways with BlackRock, it can proceed to more comprehensive climate risk metrics to cover all of its managers, under incoming Comptroller Mark Levine. 

Such action could and should assess climate risk more broadly, rating all of the city’s managers in part on their capabilities to manage such risks. The city should give managers positive consideration in its business decisions for better policies—and negative consideration for future contracts if they have weaker policies.

Right now, though, Lander should make the rubber hit the road at the upcoming New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS) pension fund board meeting. If Lander gets it done, he’ll establish a legacy to match previous Comptroller Stringer, who set divestment into place. Conversely, if Lander fails to enact his proposal, he’ll have ended his four years with precious little in the way of results of his own. 

As the adage goes: better late than never. 

Jose Gonzalez and Pete Sikora are climate campaigners for New York Communities for Change. Dorian Fulvio serves on the steering committee of 350NYC.

The post Opinion: Will NYC’s Pension Funds Once Again Lead the Nation on Climate Change? appeared first on City Limits.

Just two months ago, the state argued in court that it couldn’t halt the all-electric buildings law even if it wanted to. Then it abruptly changed course.

After Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration agreed, a federal judge finalized a deal last month that will likely suspend New York’s gas ban for at least a year. (Background screenshot: NYSERDA; Photo: Office of Governor Kathy Hochul. Illustration: Leor Stylar)

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

When New York abruptly backed down last month from its plans to implement a nation-leading ban on gas in new buildings, some legal observers had questions.

Lawmakers passed the All-Electric Buildings Act, which requires most new buildings to have only electric appliances, in 2023 as a step toward reducing pollution from the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and advancing New York’s legally mandated emissions targets. It was set to take effect in January.

Delaying the law’s implementation past then would cause the state “irreparable harm,” lawyers argued in an Oct. 1 brief. They’d spent two years successfully defending the law against industry opponents. 

But the law is now on hold—with the state’s signoff. After Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration agreed, a federal judge finalized a deal last week that will likely suspend New York’s gas ban for at least a year and potentially two or more.

New York’s sudden retreat came after a series of actions from Hochul this year walking back the state’s climate commitments: shelving a promised carbon pricing program and vowing to fight a court ruling to revive it; signing off on a thrice-rejected underwater gas pipeline after talks with President Donald Trump; and granting permits to a gas-powered cryptocurrency mining facility that regulators had long said violated the state’s climate law.

In late October, Hochul made it clear that she was having second thoughts about the building mandate, too. “On the electric building issue, I’m looking for an all of the above approach,” she told reporters in Rochester at the time. “I’m going to look at this with a very realistic approach and do what I can, because my number one focus is affordability right now.”

Republicans and upstate Democrats had been pressuring Hochul to press pause on the electric buildings law, and industry opponents of the law were still trying to persuade a judge to block it, but the state was holding its ground in court. Then, on Nov. 12, New York’s lawyers filed an agreement with the law’s opponents to delay implementation until four months after a federal appeals court and even the U.S. Supreme Court weigh in. The judge’s signoff made it legally binding—notably, delaying enforcement until after next year’s gubernatorial election. 

Hochul’s office is now framing the court deal as a pragmatic step that will help uphold the law in the long term. “The Governor remains committed to the all-electric-buildings law and believes this action will help the State defend it, as well as reduce regulatory uncertainty for developers during this period of litigation,” said Spokesperson Ken Lovett in a statement. 

Some legal experts are skeptical. 

“The state’s move, while it was done under the cover of litigation, was 100 percent a political move,” said Amy Turner, director of the Cities Climate Law Initiative at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. 

If the governor had sought to put the electric buildings mandate on hold through executive action, climate groups almost certainly would have sued. With the court agreement, Turner said, “they found a way to do it that makes it seem like their hands were tied.”

Here’s a closer look at what New York argued in court in early October—and why its recent backtracking is raising eyebrows among some legal observers.

1. Plaintiffs would need to meet a really high legal bar to put the law on hold.

The saga started when a coalition of gas and construction industry interests, including building trades unions, sued New York state in the federal Northern District over the freshly passed electric buildings law in 2023. They argued that under federal law, the state does not have the power to ban fossil fuel appliances. 

Judge Glenn Suddaby ruled in favor of the state this July and dismissed the case, but the plaintiffs went back to him in September, pleading for him to suspend the law anyway while they appealed the ruling. They argued that they had a strong case, citing a federal appeals court in California that had overturned Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation gas ban on the basis of the same federal law. 

It was not unusual for the New York plaintiffs to seek such an injunction, said Daniel Carpenter-Gold, an attorney at the Public Health Law Center who has been tracking the case. “But it’s also very difficult to win,” he said. 

In their Oct. 1 brief, New York’s lawyers stressed just how high of a bar the plaintiffs would have to meet to secure an injunction at this stage—particularly since it was the first time in the two-year case that they’d asked the judge to take such a step.

Source: New York Focus/ New York State Unified Court System

They would need to convince the district court judge to block a law that was passed through the democratic process and that he himself had just upheld. To do so, they would need to show both that they had a good chance of winning at the appellate level, and that they would face “irreparable harm” if the law were allowed to proceed. 

“Plaintiffs fail to satisfy any of these requirements,” the state’s lawyers argued.

2. New York State couldn’t block the law even if it wanted to.

The state went a step further in its Oct. 1 filing, arguing that it couldn’t suspend the law even if it wanted to. The Code Council had already finalized the new building code, the culmination of a lengthy process that takes place every five years and is meant to take into account new laws like the All-Electric Buildings Act that are passed in the interim. 

Once the new code is published, it’s up to local code enforcement officials—not the state—to enforce it. In other words, New York’s lawyers argued, it was too late for a court to force the state to block it.

Source: New York Focus/ New York State Unified Court System

3. Delaying implementation would cause the state “irreparable harm.”

The final issue at stake in the recent court exchange was which side would suffer “irreparable harm” if their opponents prevailed. The plaintiffs argued that they would: Propane gas companies, for example, could lose much of their new business, and union plumbers and pipefitters could lose jobs.

The state countered that it would, because new fossil fuel buildings constructed while the law is on hold would last for decades to come, irreversibly setting back the state’s efforts to meet its legally binding climate targets.

Source: New York Focus/ New York State Unified Court System

As the political battle over building electrification heated up in early November, there was no sign that Judge Suddaby was wavering on his decision. 

On Nov. 3, the plaintiffs said they would move the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals if he didn’t file an injunction within a week. He didn’t. 

“The state has a strong case,” said Carpenter-Gold, of the Public Health Law Center. There was “nothing that I could see that would have indicated that their position had weakened in any way,” he said. So he was surprised when New York’s lawyers suddenly conceded the plaintiffs’ demand. 

The deal suspends the law for at least a year: until the appeals court rules on it, which could easily take six months; while the plaintiffs potentially appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could add several months more, even if the high court declines to take up the case; and for another four months either way.

Climate hawks are furious at the Hochul administration’s decision. After it was first reported, lawmakers and advocates lined up to demand that the governor reverse course. That would be hard for her to do. Now that the judge has signed off on the Nov. 12 deal, the state is under court order to keep the law on ice. The New York Department of State issued a notice late last week that the all-electric section of the building code is on pause. 

It’s not yet clear whether the notice fully satisfies the court order, or whether the code council will take further action to codify the delay. Climate advocates are planning to rally outside its next meeting, on Dec. 5, either way.

The post Why Did Hochul Back Down on New York’s Gas Ban? appeared first on City Limits.

By JONATHAN MATTISE and DAVID A. LIEB

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — As a leader of the College Democrats at Vanderbilt University, Luci Wingo knew the odds of a Democrat winning one of Nashville’s three U.S. House seats weren’t great. Yet her hope grew as the party mounted an aggressive campaign for its candidate, Aftyn Behn, in a special election to replace a Republican who had resigned.

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In the end, high Democratic enthusiasm and millions of dollars in spending weren’t enough. Republican Matt Van Epps won Tuesday’s vote by 9 percentage points — a closer margin than the district’s last election, yet still a victory for the GOP that seemed all but certain based on how the district was drawn. Republicans had split the unified Democratic stronghold of Nashville into three GOP-leaning districts after the last census.

As states wage a mid-decade redistricting battle initiated by President Donald Trump, Tennessee’s special election illustrates the power of manipulative mapmaking and provides a window into what lies ahead in the states that are rushing to redraw their congressional maps for next year’s midterm elections.

Such gerrymandering can help parties in power maintain and even expand their majorities, but it’s also a source of frustration and anger for voters in the minority party who lose the chance to be represented by someone of their choice.

“It’s a hard battle to fight because it’s so intentional, it’s so in your face — and it’s hard to not just want to get frustrated and kind of give up,” said Wingo, a college sophomore who grew up in Nashville.

She said she’s become accustomed to what she called “purposeful pessimism.”

“We don’t try to get our hopes up too much, because we kind of know the outcomes,” she said, adding that Behn’s campaign nevertheless created a surge of enthusiasm among local Democrats.

For Republicans, the Nashville gerrymander worked

Nashville had been represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper for 20 years when the Republican-controlled state Legislature decided in 2022 to use the latest census data to carve up the city in a quest to flip his seat to Republicans.

Some parts of Nashville were placed in two sprawling rural districts to the east and west, both represented by Republicans. The portion retaining Cooper’s district number was redrawn to twist southward into another rural Republican-leaning area.

Cooper, a moderate-leaning lawmaker, decided not to seek reelection that year, and Republicans won all three seats by comfortable margins.

Republicans carried all three districts again last year. They won by 17 percentage points in Cooper’s former 5th District, by nearly 22 points in the westward 7th District — which includes downtown Nashville, well-known historically Black areas and major universities — and by 36 points in the eastward 6th District.

Republican candidate Matt Van Epps waves to supporters at a watch party after announcing victory in a special election for the U.S. seventh congressional district, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/John Amis)

Van Epps’ special election victory this week in the 7th Congressional District was close enough to encourage Democrats looking for momentum ahead of next year’s midterms. But it also showcased how the district remains reliably Republican thanks to the recent redrawing of its boundaries.

“In this case, gerrymandering worked,” said John McGlennon, a longtime professor of government at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. “But it may be at the price of seats in other places in Tennessee and around the country.”

Kevin Mittelmeier, who says he’s in the political middle, cast his ballot for Behn. He said voters’ voices won’t have much meaning as long as the districts remain the same.

“I can just see from the outside looking in, unbiased, it’s actually frustrating how it’s being controlled, and how it’s being dealt with, and how people of Nashville’s opinions really are taken away,” he said.

For some voters, the split-up districts remain confusing. Maggie Tekeli, who brought three young children to the polls planning to vote for Behn, only to learn her Nashville home wasn’t in the 7th District.

“It’s just discouraging from a democratic process standpoint,” she said.

Gerrymandering is spreading in the states

What Republican mapmakers did to Nashville, they now are looking to replicate in other states as Trump pushes for mid-decade redistricting, which he hopes will lead to his party maintaining its majority in the U.S. House next year.

In Texas, the first to answer Trump’s call, Republican lawmakers redrew congressional district boundaries in Dallas, Fort Worth and their suburbs to extend a Democratic seat into a Republican region far outside the metro area.

In Missouri, Republican officials approved a new U.S. House map that shaves off portions of a Democratic-held seat in Kansas City into two rural Republican-held districts and stretches the remainder of the seat eastward into another predominantly Republican area.

Officials in North Carolina and Ohio also approved new U.S. House maps intended to boost Republican chances of winning additional seats.

Democrats countered with their own gerrymandering in California. Voters in November approved a new Democratic-drawn congressional map that merges farming and ranching areas favoring Republicans with some of the state’s wealthiest and most liberal coastal communities.

Some residents in each of those states expressed concern about being adequately represented under the new districts. But that didn’t deter the politicians from drawing the maps because the stakes are so high. Democrats need a net gain of just three seats in next year’s midterms to win control of the U.S. House and break a Republican grip on power that has enabled Trump to advance his agenda.

Indianapolis could become another Nashville

The splintering of Nashville from one Democratic congressional district into three that favor Republicans is a mirror of what’s being debated by Republicans in Indiana, which could be the next state to act on partisan redistricting.

Republicans currently hold seven of the state’s nine U.S. House seats. But a proposal in the Republican-led state General Assembly would give the GOP a shot at winning all nine seats.

Under the plan, a congressional district for the state’s largest city, Indianapolis, would be split up and grafted onto four Republican-leaning districts. The district has been represented for the past 17 years by Democratic Rep. André Carson, the state’s lone Black member of Congress.

His district would be stretched southeast to the border with Kentucky and Ohio, combining residents of the state’s largest city with those in its least populated county. Another district would span westward to the Illinois border.

During a public hearing this week, Democratic state Rep. Robin Shackleford warned colleagues that the redrawn congressional districts would “be crippling” for her Indianapolis constituents.

“These maps crack apart historic Black neighborhoods, weakening our voting power and silencing the voices of the very people who are already fighting the hardest for economic stability, safer streets, better schools and access to affordable health care,” she said.

Yet the revised districts, if approved, appear likely to accomplish their purpose of boosting Republican representation in Congress.

Laura Merrifield Wilson, a political scientist at the University of Indianapolis, said she had no doubt that there will be enough Republicans in the newly drawn congressional districts to overwhelm the Democratic vote in future elections.

But she added: “When you’re connecting some of Indianapolis to some of those very rural areas, both groups are ultimately going to lose out.”

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri.