By María G. Ortiz-Briones, The Fresno Bee

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has made changes to the naturalization civics test that will make it more challenging for immigrants to obtain their U.S. citizenship.

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The changes are part of the federal agency’s ongoing effort to overhaul the legal immigration naturalization process.

“These critical changes are the first of many,” said USCIS Spokesperson Matthew Tragesser.

USCIS posted in September a Federal Register notice about the implementation of the 2025 Naturalization Civics Test.

The implementation of the new test is part of President Trump’s executive order to protect the U.S. from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats signed when he took office, according to USCIS.

Immigrants who file their naturalization application Form N-400 on or after Oct. 20 will take the tougher 2025 Naturalization Civics Test. According to USCIS, the new test will better assess applicants’ knowledge and understanding of U.S. history and government.

The new test is based on the 2020 test with some modifications to how the test is administered by USCIS officers.

What to know about the 2025 Naturalization Civics Test

The new civics test increased the number of potential civics test questions from 100 to 128.

The number of test questions on the exam rose from 10 to 20.

The number of correct answers needed to pass the civics test increased from 6 answers to 12.

Starting Monday, applicants who submitted citizenship applications must answer 12 questions correctly out of the 20 questions asked by a USCIS officer during their citizenship interview appointment.

According to USCIS, a computer-generated list of 20 questions is selected randomly from the bank of 128 questions.

Citizen candidates during a naturalization ceremony held at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park to commemorate Constitution Day and Citizenship Day on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (María G. Ortiz-Briones/Fresno Bee/TNS)

Officers will only be required to ask questions until an applicant either passes or fails the test. So, if an applicant answers 12 questions correctly, the officer will stop administering the test. Similarly, when an applicant answers nine questions incorrectly and fails the test, the officer will stop administering the questions.

USCIS will update the Naturalization Test and Study Materials and Resources for Educational Programs that applicants may consult to study for the test.

Immigrants who already had filed a naturalization application or who applied before the Oct. 20 filing date will take the 2008 Naturalization Civics Test. USCIS will temporarily retain on its website the study materials for the 2008 Naturalization Civics Test to help immigrants prepare for the civic test.

The notice does not change the English language proficiency parts of the naturalization test including reading, writing, speaking, and understanding.

In the past months the USCIS has made several changes to the naturalization process including a robust vetting for all immigrants and stricter reviews of disability exceptions to the English and civics requirements. It also provided its officers guidance for immigrants’ good moral character and resumed neighborhood investigation.

©2025 The Fresno Bee. Visit fresnobee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Olivia Carville, Bloomberg News

Thousands of plaintiffs’ complaints, millions of pages of internal documents and transcripts of countless hours of depositions are about to land in U.S. courtrooms, threatening the future of the biggest social media companies.

The blizzard of paperwork is a byproduct of two consolidated lawsuits accusing Snap Inc.’s Snapchat; Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram; ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok; and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube of knowingly designing their platforms to addict users — allegedly resulting in youth depression, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorders, self-harm and even suicide.

The litigation, brewing for more than three years, has had to overcome numerous hurdles, including the liability shield that has protected social media platforms from facing user-harm lawsuits. The social media companies have filed multiple motions to dismiss the cases on the grounds that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act prevents them from being held accountable for content posted on their sites.

Those motions have been largely unsuccessful, and courtrooms across the country are poised to open their doors for the first time to the alleged victims of social media. The vast majority of cases have been folded into two multijurisdictional proceedings, one in state and the other in federal court, to streamline the pretrial discovery process.

The first bellwether trial is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles Superior Court in late January. It involves a 19-year-old woman from Chico, California, who says she’s been addicted to social media for more than a decade and that her nonstop use of the platforms has caused anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia. Two other trials will follow soon after, with thousands more waiting in the wings. If successful, these cases could result in multibillion-dollar settlements — akin to tobacco and opioid litigation — and change the way minors interact with social media.

“This is going to be one of the most impactful litigations of our lifetime,” said Joseph VanZandt, an attorney at Beasley Allen Law Firm in Montgomery, Alabama, and co-lead plaintiffs’ attorney for the coordinated state cases. “This is about large corporations targeting vulnerable populations — children — for profit. That’s what we saw with the tobacco companies; they were also targeting adolescents and trying to get them addicted while they were young.”

Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, makes a similar comparison to tobacco litigation in the Bloomberg documentary Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media. “In the case of Facebook, you have internal documents saying ‘tweens are herd animals,’ ‘kids have an addict’s narrative’ and ‘our products make girls feel worse about themselves.’ You have the same kind of corporate misconduct,” Bergman says in the film, which will be available to view on Bloomberg’s platforms on October 30.

Bergman’s firm was the first to file user-harm cases against social media companies, in 2022, after Frances Haugen, a former Meta product manager-turned-whistleblower, released a trove of internal documents showing the company knew social media was negatively impacting youth mental health. The first case, which is part of the consolidated federal litigation, alleged that an 11-year-old Connecticut girl killed herself after suffering from extreme social media addiction and sexual exploitation by online predators.

What set that case apart was how it got around Section 230’s immunity blanket. Bergman argued that his case wasn’t about third-party content, which the federal law protects. Instead, he said it hinged on the way social media companies were intentionally designing their products to prioritize engagement and profit over safety.

Since then, thousands of personal injury lawsuits alleging similar youth mental health harms have been filed. Almost 4,000 have been folded into the multijurisdictional proceedings — more than a quarter of them from the Social Media Victims Law Center. They have been joined by more than 1,000 school districts and about three-quarters of all U.S. state attorneys general. Some lawsuits, including one filed by New Mexico’s attorney general, are proceeding outside the framework of the consolidated cases and are also expected to go to trial early next year.

“All told, this is a massive legal siege on the social media industry,” said Previn Warren, a Washington-based lawyer at Motley Rice who is co-leading the federal cases. “We are the first major litigation to convince the court system that actually there are systemic wrongs on these platforms that victims should be compensated for. When the public becomes aware of the scale of evidence, I suspect that will have an impact on how they perceive their relationship — and their kids’ relationships — to social media.”

The pretrial discovery process closed in April, with the four defendants handing over more than six million documents and submitting to 150 depositions, including that of Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. In addition, more than 100 child psychologists, academics and experts have offered evidence.

The companies sought to bar all of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses in the state cases from testifying, arguing that they’re unreliable, cherry-pick from studies and over-extrapolate from data. That argument failed in state court in late September, with all but one of the proposed witnesses allowed to testify.

The defendants also filed a motion for summary judgment in state court in August, arguing that the plaintiffs haven’t produced enough evidence to warrant a trial. The companies said the plaintiffs hadn’t shown that mental health harms were caused by social media and that some of the claims, which stretch back to when the plaintiffs first started using social media, should be barred outright by California’s statute of limitations.

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“These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works, and the allegations are simply not true,” José Castañeda, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email. “YouTube is a streaming service where people come to watch everything from live sports to podcasts to their favorite creators, primarily on TV screens, not a social network where people go to catch up with friends.”

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the allegations raised in the lawsuits and pointed to safety tools the company has rolled out to support its youngest users, including limiting who teens can connect with and the content they see. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously in these cases,” the spokesperson said.

Snap and TikTok didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is presiding over the consolidated state cases, is expected to rule on the summary judgment motion in the coming weeks. Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a U.S. district court judge in Oakland, California, is overseeing the federal litigation. The first federal trial, in a case filed by a school district in Kentucky, is set to kick off in June.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Julia Marnin, The Sacramento Bee

The Department of Homeland Security says immigration officers are arresting accused criminals, the “worst of the worst.” But a federal lawsuit argues authorities are regularly jailing and deporting immigrants who are survivors of human trafficking, domestic abuse and other crimes.

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The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court on Oct. 14 says that a new U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement policy disregards legal protections previously established by Congress to protect immigrant crime survivors and allows ICE to detain and deport them even when they have been granted formal permission to stay in the U.S.

ICE is also targeting immigrant crime survivors who have pending applications for protections, according to a 76-page complaint.

In a statement to McClatchy News on Oct. 20, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin referred to the lawsuit’s accusations as “clickbait,” adding that “Every illegal alien ICE removes has had due process and has a final order of removal — meaning they have no legal right to be in the country.”

The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, one of the organizations representing eight individual plaintiffs, said in a news release that ICE’s new policy is “dehumanizing, unjust, and illegal” and “enables the widespread jailing and deportation of immigrant survivors.”

“The 2025 guidance reverses course from decades of agency practice under which immigration agencies generally refrained against enforcement against survivors of serious crime, unless warranted by adverse factors,” attorneys for the lawsuit wrote in the complaint.

According to the lawsuit, ICE’s new policy violates measures that were put in place by Congress to allow immigrant crime survivors to pursue legal status under the Violence Against Women Act, the “U visa,” and the “T visa.”

The Violence Against Women Act allows domestic violence survivors to petition for immigrant visas, the complaint notes. The U visa lets victims of serious crimes who help authorities in the investigation of those crimes apply for legal status. The T visa grants legal status, known as “survivor-based benefits,” to labor or sex trafficking survivors.

Plaintiff Jackie Merlos, 48, applied for a U visa, then received permission to stay in the U.S. in December 2024 after she and her husband were held at gunpoint outside their home in Portland, Oregon in June 2023, the complaint says.

Merlos, who is from Honduras, has lived in the U.S. for 22 years and is a mother of four U.S. citizen children, a 7-year-old and 9-year-old triplets, according to the complaint.

She is on deferred action status, meaning she is allowed in the U.S. for a certain period of time, the complaint says.

Despite this, ICE is detaining her at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, and refusing to release her from its custody, according to her attorneys.

Merlos has been in immigration detention since June 2025, when she had a family reunion with her parents, who were visiting from Honduras on a visa, and her sister’s family, at a park near the Canadian border, according to the complaint.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrived at the park and detained everyone, including Merlos, her children and her 71-year-old mother, according to the complaint.

CBP let Merlos’ sister, who legally lives in Canada, go a day later, the complaint says.

Merlos and her children were detained together in CBP custody for two weeks before she was separately transferred to ICE custody in July, according to the filing.

In a statement, Merlos said: “As the agent was processing us, as my children were sobbing, he said to us, ‘Do you know why you’re here? Because you are a criminal.’”

Merlos remains detained, without her children, and fears her husband has since been deported, the complaint says.

Her children are now being cared for by a friend, according to the National Immigration Law Center, which is advocating for her release.

So is Oregon Congresswoman Maxine Dexter, who said in an Oct. 16 news release that an immigration judge has terminated Merlos’ deportation proceedings, acknowledging that there is no reason for her to stay in ICE custody.

“Thanks to immense public pressure and a community that refused to stay silent, we not only stopped Jackie’s deportation and freed her children, but we also secured a ruling that there is no legal basis for ICE to detain or deport Jackie,” Dexter said in a statement.

“However, Jackie’s fight is not over,” Dexter added.

Merlos and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are also represented by Public Counsel, La Raza Centro Legal and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

The lawsuit seeks to secure the release for all plaintiffs in ICE custody, and for the return of plaintiffs who have been removed from the U.S.

“Now, because of this administration’s unlawful actions, immigrants are not reporting violent crimes, including domestic violence, rape, trafficking, and assault, out of fear of being turned over to the deportation machine,” Rebecca Brown, a supervising attorney in Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

“Worse still, survivors are being separated from their families — and in some cases being sent straight back to their abusers,” Brown added.

©2025 The Sacramento Bee. Visit at sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The instructions to Jim Mauer from his father were clear: As an emergency fill-in on a veteran crew, the first-time high school football official should not throw his flag nor blow his whistle.

“So there’s an obvious holding penalty and I do both,” Mauer said recently, recalling a night during the 1990s. “Half the players stop, half keep going and a kid runs for a touchdown.”

The head referee called the play back and led Mauer to one sideline. He told the irate coach he would receive an honest explanation.

“My kid (screwed) up and blew his whistle when he shouldn’t have,” Ken Mauer, Sr. said that night while pointing at his youngest boy, Jim. “We’re going to replay the down, 10 yards from the spot of the foul.”

The rest of that squad’s members, comprised of three of Jim Mauer’s four older brothers, give him grief about the episode to this day. And they have plenty of chances during the fall, when the five siblings often comprise an entire crew of football zebras.

“It’s like getting together with your best friends,” said Jim, a 1993 St. Cloud State graduate and former Huskies quarterback, who didn’t let the faux pas in his debut deter him from joining the family’s longtime side hustle.

“We all have home and work commitments and things going on in our lives that take time away, but we’ve made football a priority. It’s a chance to forget about the realities of life.”

Tom Mauer speaks with Johnson quarterback Ali Farfan during the Governors’ 26-8 win over Central at St. Paul Central High School on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (Tris Wykes / Special to the Pioneer Press)

Jim, Mark, Brian, Tom and Ken Mauer Jr., were standout athletes, though not quite to the extent of former Twins catcher Joe Mauer, their second cousin, once removed. The brothers were inspired to become officials by their father, a legendary, three-sport arbiter who also coached at St. Paul colleges and high schools.

Ken Mauer, Sr., who died in 2019, was the youngest of five brothers, all of whom played pro baseball. The 1945 Cretin High graduate starred in baseball and basketball at the University of St. Thomas. He also toiled in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm system and played pro basketball in Denver and St. Paul.

Mauer guided Macalester College to a conference baseball title during his lone year at the Scots’ helm and led Humboldt High to seven city championships, three Twin City crowns and three regional titles. He taught English in the St. Paul School District and coached football at Harding High, where his sons, all of them quarterbacks except for Brian, played for him.

The father of seven children with his wife, Thelma, Ken Sr. somehow found time to officiate football, basketball and baseball. He often worked with his brother, John.

“My father enjoyed it as much as coaching,” said Ken Jr., who took a junior college refereeing course more for the credits than as a career primer. The family’s eldest child, he began officiating junior high games for pocket money and enjoyed it enough to move on to high schools contests, sometimes with his namesake.

“I was a sponge,” said Ken Jr., who later played baseball for the Gophers. “It took the place of competing; now you’re competing against yourself.

“My father never schmoozed a coach, but there was a mutual respect. It wasn’t about how many state tournament games you were going to work. It was about doing the job well and never selling your (fellow officials) down the road.”

Ken Jr., 70, was an NBA official for 37 seasons and has refereed high school football for nearly 50 years. He’s the Mauer crew’s head referee while Brian, retired after teaching for 30 years at Minneapolis Roosevelt, is the umpire. Tom, who worked as a WNBA official for 22 years, is the back judge and Mark and Jim are the side judges.

There have been assorted combinations of Mauer brothers working on the same unit over the years, but they’re on a stretch of seven consecutive seasons as a crew.

“My parents raised us family first and we don’t have a lot of years left at this, so we’re making the most of it,” said Mark, who played football at the University of Nebraska from 1977-81 and later coached the sport at the collegiate level. “It brings you back to the game and you’re still an integral part of it.”

The Mauers almost always convene for a postgame meal to rehash a game’s events. It was a most unhappy discussion one night about 20 years ago after an Eden Prairie vs. Burnsville clash.

Burnsville led late and took an intentional safety, but its subsequent kickoff went out of bounds. The Mauers “sold it like we knew what we were doing,” said Jim, but they erroneously spotted the ball at the 40-yard line when it should have been five yards farther out.

An Eden Prairie receiver caught a pass as time expired, barely falling across the goal line for the winning points.

High school football official Ken Mauer works Minneapolis Washburn’s 49-0 victory over the Scots at Highland Park High School on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025. (Tris Wykes / Pioneer Press)

“You never want the game to be dependent on an official’s call,” Jim said, recalling that Ken Jr., later visited Burnsville to discuss the game’s ending with its players and coaches.

Ken, Jr. was also a key note speaker at the Capital City Officials Association preseason meeting this year. Dan Pelletier, the association assigner’s and a longtime high school and college referee, said the message was for officials to work on controlling that which they can control.

Uniform appearance, rules knowledge, positional correctness and how to interact with players, coaches and fans are examples, said Pelletier, who worked with Ken Mauer, Sr., and has done so with all his sons during a 34-year career.

“You can train people from the jump, but there’s no duplicating experience,” Pelletier said, noting that officials now view online video of their games to assess tendencies and study unique plays and situations.

He noted the Mauers “communicate well and know what to expect from each other, and so they’re almost always on the same page.”

That includes verbal battles, but the siblings have each other’s striped backs.

“We’re five athletic and competitive brothers, so we argue all the time, but not necessarily on the football field,” said Tom Mauer, recently retired as assistant director of athletics at Concordia University in his hometown. “I think we take a little more pride in refereeing correctly than most.”

Ken Mauer Jr., said he’s unsure how much longer he’ll officiate football, but added he’ll likely accede to the wishes of his brothers.

“We’re in the twilight of our officiating years,” he said. “I think we’ll probably all give it up at the same time.”