By AMY TAXIN and DAMIAN DOVARGANES, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California union leader has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer during a demonstration over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, authorities said Monday.

David Huerta, 58, is being held in federal custody in downtown Los Angeles and is expected to attend a bond hearing later Monday, federal prosecutors said.

Huerta is president of Service Employees International Union California, which represents thousands of janitors, security officers and other workers in the state.

The SEIU held a large rally in downtown Los Angeles Monday in support of Huerta and to stand up for his right to observe and document law enforcement activity. Union leaders from across the state led the crowd in chants of “Free Huerta now!”

Demonstrations were also planned in at least a dozen cities, from Boston to Denver.

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The union has been a strong Democratic supporter, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and California’s two Democratic senators wrote a letter to federal officials demanding answers regarding Huerta’s arrest. California Sen. Adam Schiff was at the court ahead of Huerta’s hearing.

“It is deeply troubling that a U.S. citizen, union leader, and upstanding member of the Los Angeles community continues to be detained by the federal government for exercising his rights to observe immigration enforcement,” the senators wrote.

Protests broke out last week in response to reports of immigration raids in the nation’s second-largest city. Tensions have since escalated with thousands of protesters taking to the streets after Trump took the extraordinary move of deploying the National Guard. Demonstrators blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas and rubber bullets to control the crowd.

Huerta was arrested Friday when law enforcement officers were executing a federal search warrant at a Los Angeles business suspected of hiring illegal immigrants and falsifying employment papers, a special agent for Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in a court filing.

A crowd of people including Huerta gathered outside the business yelling at the officers. Huerta sat down in front of a vehicular gate and encouraged others to walk in circles to try to prevent law enforcement from going in or out, the agent wrote, adding it was clear “he and the others had planned in advance of arrival to disrupt the operation.”

A law enforcement officer approached Huerta and told him to leave, then put his hands on Huerta to move him out of the way of a vehicle, the agent wrote. Huerta pushed back and the officer pushed Huerta to the ground and arrested him, according to the filing.

“Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are—if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,” Bill Essayli, U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said in a post on X. “No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”

Messages left for Huerta’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski, have not been returned.

The SEIU said in a statement that the union condemns the immigration raids and will continue to protect workers’ rights.

“We demand David Huerta’s immediate release and an end to these abusive workplace raids,” said April Verrett, SEIU’s international president.

Taxin reported from Santa Ana, Calif.

By SAFIYAH RIDDLE and CHARLOTTE KRAMON, Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests is the latest in a long history of U.S. elected officials sending troops in hopes of thwarting unrest connected to civil rights protests.

National Guard troops are typically deployed for a variety of emergencies and natural disasters with the permission of governors in responding states, but Trump, a Republican, sent about 1,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles despite the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.

Confrontations began Friday when dozens of protesters gathered outside a federal detention center demanding the release of more than 40 people arrested by federal immigration authorities across Los Angeles, as part of Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Trump said that federalizing the troops on Saturday was necessary to “address the lawlessness” in California. Newsom said Trump’s order was a “complete overreaction,” used to “purposely inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”

Some of the previous National Guard deployments have preserved peace amid violent crackdowns from local law enforcement or threats from vigilantes, but sometimes they have intensified tensions among people who were protesting for civil rights or racial equality.

FILE — In this June 4, 2020 file photo a member of the California National Guard stands in front of a mural depicting George Floyd in Los Angeles. On Thursday June 11, 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Administration announced it cost more than $24 million to deploy 8,000 National Guard members for 18 days during the recent protests of racial injustice inspired by the death of Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

On rare occasion, presidents have invoked an 18th-century wartime law called the Insurrection Act, which is the main legal mechanism that a president can use to activate the military or National Guard during times of rebellion or unrest. Other times they relied on a similar federal law that allows the president to federalize National Guard troops under certain circumstances, which is what Trump did on Saturday.

Here is a look at some of the most notable deployments:

George Floyd protests in Los Angeles in 2020

Almost five years ago, Newsom deployed approximately 8,000 National Guard troops to quell protests over racial injustice inspired by the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. Well over half of the troops deployed in California were sent to Los Angeles County, where police arrested more than 3,000 people. City officials at the time, including then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, supported Newsom’s decision.

Members of the National Guard watch as demonstrators march along Hollywood Boulevard on Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in Los Angeles during a protest over the death of George Floyd who died May 25 after he was restrained by Minneapolis police. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

Rodney King protests in 1992

Some have compared Trump’s decision on Saturday to George H.W. Bush’s use of the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992, after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King. In just six days the protests became one of the deadliest race riots in American history, with 63 people dying, nine of whom were killed by police.

FILE – President George H.W. Bush addresses the nation on May 1, 1992, from the Oval Office in Washington. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)

Syreeta Danley, a teacher from South Central Los Angeles, said she vividly remembers as a teen seeing black smoke from her porch during the 1992 uprisings.

Danley said that at the time it seemed like law enforcement cared more about property damage affecting wealthier neighborhoods than the misconduct that precipitated the unrest.

She said some people in her neighborhood were still more afraid of the police than the National Guard because once the troops left, local police “had the green light to continue brutalizing people.”

FILE – A fire burns out of control at the corner of 67th Street and West Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles, on April 30, 1992. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

The National Guard can enforce curfews like they did in 1992, but that won’t stop people from showing up to protest, Danley said.

“I have lived long enough to know that people will push back, and I’m here for it,” Danley said.

Watts protests in 1965

There were deadly protests in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965 in response to pent-up anger over an abusive police force and lack of resources for the community. Over 30 people were killed — two-thirds of whom were shot by police or National Guard troops. Many say the neighborhood has never fully recovered from fires that leveled hundreds of buildings.

Integration protests in the 1950-1960s

In 1956, the governor of Tennessee called the state’s troops to help enforce integration in Clinton, Tennessee, after white supremacists violently resisted federal orders to desegregate.

President Dwight Eisenhower called the Arkansas National Guard and the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army in 1957 to escort nine Black students as they integrated a previously white-only school.

FILE – A civil rights march is conducted on Sept. 4, 1966 in close quarters on Cicero Ave., a main street of this suburb of Chicago. At left, the police; then National Guardsmen with bayonets on rifles, then marchers, then crowd. (AP Photo, file)

A few years later, the Maryland National Guard remained in the small town of Cambridge for two years after Maryland’s Democratic Gov. J Millard Tawes in 1963 called in troops to mediate violent clashes between white mobs and Black protesters demanding desegregation.

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Selma, Alabama, voting rights protest in 1965

National Guard troops played a pivotal role in the march often credited with pressuring the passage of Voting Rights Act of 1965, when nonviolent protesters — including the late congressman John Lewis — calling for the right to vote were brutally assaulted by Alabama State Troopers in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

Two weeks later, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson sent National Guard troops to escort thousands of protesters along the 50-mile (81-kilometer) march to the state Capitol. Johnson’s decision was at odds with then-Gov. George Wallace who staunchly supported segregation.

Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and ’70s and beyond with such hits as “Everyday People,” “Stand!” and “Family Affair,” has died. He was 82.

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Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said Monday that Stone died surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments.

Formed in 1966-67, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible — riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk.

Sly’s time on top was brief, roughly from 1968-1971, but profound. No band better captured the gravity-defying euphoria of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the crash which followed. From early songs as rousing as their titles — “I Want To Take You Higher,” “Stand!” — to the sober aftermath of “Family Affair” and “Runnin’ Away,” Sly and the Family Stone spoke for a generation whether or not it liked what they had to say.

Stone’s group began as a Bay Area sextet featuring Sly on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass; Sly’s brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini horns and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album “A Whole New Thing” and earned the title with their breakthrough single, “Dance to the Music.” It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time.

Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. “Everyday People,” “I Wanna Take You Higher” and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as “different strokes for different folks.” The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting No. 1, and three million-selling albums: “Stand!”, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” and “Greatest Hits.”

For a time, countless performers wanted to look and sound like Sly and the Family Stone. The Jackson Five’s breakthrough hit, “I Want You Back” and the Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You” were among the many songs from the late 1960s that mimicked Sly’s vocal and instrumental arrangements. Miles Davis’ landmark blend of jazz, rock and funk, “Bitches Brew,” was inspired in part by Sly, while fellow jazz artist Herbie Hancock even named a song after him.

“He had a way of talking, moving from playful to earnest at will. He had a look, belts, and hats and jewelry,” Questlove wrote in the foreword to Stone’s memoir, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” named for one of his biggest hits and published through Questlove’s imprint in 2023. “He was a special case, cooler than everything around him by a factor of infinity.”

In 2025, Questlove released the documentary “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius).”

Sly’s influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and the Black-Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after influenced by Sly, and countless rap and hip-hop artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots.

“Sly did so many things so well that he turned my head all the way around,” Clinton once wrote. “He could create polished R&B that sounded like it came from an act that had gigged at clubs for years, and then in the next breath he could be as psychedelic as the heaviest rock band.”

A jury has found a St. Paul man guilty of exchanging a flurry of gunshots with another man outside a White Bear Lake bar in 2023 after an argument over a spilled drink.

Kardell Baraka Otae Jackson, 51, was convicted Friday in Ramsey County District Court of all three charges against him: second-degree assault and two counts of possession of a firearm or ammunition by a prohibited person. The verdict followed a two-day trial before Judge Kellie Charles.

Kardell Baraka Otae Jackson (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Jackson was taken into custody after the verdict, and sentencing is scheduled for July 28.

His attorney, assistant public defender Tyler DeHaven, said in an email Monday after a request for comment, “Mr. Jackson is disappointed in the outcome, but will continue to explore his legal options.”

Jackson and Charles Edward Stevens-Thigpen fired a total of 13 rounds at each other in the parking lot of Doc’s Landing, including one that grazed a 48-year-old man who was sitting in the bar.

A bullet was found lodged in a dart machine, and three bullet holes were discovered in the bar’s roofline.

Stevens-Thigpen, 37, of St. Paul, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in July and faced a three-year prison term because he had no prior felony convictions. He was given three years of probation at his March sentencing after his attorney argued he was not the primary aggressor.

According to the charging documents, officers were called to the bar along White Bear Avenue just north of Interstate 694 shortly before 1 a.m. Sept. 24, 2023. The shooters had fled but were soon identified as Stevens-Thigpen and Jackson.

Surveillance video showed that Stevens-Thigpen and Jackson got into a “heated dispute” inside the bar. At one point, Jackson held a pool cue as if he was going to strike Stevens-Thigpen with it. Two women and a man intervened and blocked Stevens-Thigpen and Jackson from one another.

Jackson ran to his Chevrolet Tahoe and grabbed a gun, while Stevens-Thigpen grabbed one from his GMC Denali. When he rounded a corner of the bar, Jackson fired off a shot at him, and the two men exchanged gunfire, the charges say.

Stevens-Thigpen nearly shot a woman who ran toward Jackson’s Tahoe. Jackson helped her get into the SUV before he again shot at Stevens-Thigpen. Stevens-Thigpen “grimaced” and began to favor his right leg, the charges say.

As Jackson and the woman fled the parking lot, Stevens-Thigpen fired three to four more rounds at the Tahoe. He ran to the Denali and also fled.

Stevens-Thigpen voluntarily went to the police department two days later, turning over a Smith and Wesson 9mm handgun to police when he arrived.

He said he went to a doctor a day after the shooting because of severe bleeding from a gunshot to his thigh, and that his family convinced him to talk to police.

He told police he was at the bar when he bumped into a table, knocking over a glass of soda onto his ex-girlfriend’s sister. He said that caused an argument with the woman, who was Jackson’s girlfriend, and Jackson intervened.

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“The man told me that he got something for my (expletive) ass and he’s gonna pop me,” Stevens-Thigpen said at his July 8 plea hearing.

Stevens-Thigpen said he went to his Denali to get his 9mm as a “precaution.”

“I believe four shots were fired before I fired my first shot,” Stevens-Thigpen said at his plea hearing.

Jackson was arrested Sept. 27 in the parking lot of his workplace. His Tahoe had three bullet holes to its passenger side. He denied firing a gun at the bar. Officers executed a search warrant on his Tahoe and recovered a Glock 9mm handgun.

Jackson is not allowed to possess a firearm because of a previous felony domestic assault conviction.