The post Expect Road Closures in Goleta in February as Crews Prepare to Open New Roundabouts appeared first on edhat.

The post The Center of the Universe appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

The post What’s Happening in Downtown Santa Barbara: February 19-25 appeared first on edhat.

By Kaanita Iyer, Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — A controversial pastor who supports repealing women’s right to vote and believes homosexuality should be a crime led a worship service at the Pentagon this week, saying he was invited by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

During a 15-minute sermon in the Pentagon’s auditorium and broadcast live on the department’s internal TV network, Douglas Wilson delivered a sermon sprinkled with military-themed jokes about putting Jesus Christ first and what Jesus can accomplish through believers.

“God can do what he likes, and as we should know by now, what he likes to do is to take the most unlikely materials and do something glorious with it,” Wilson said, according to video of the sermon obtained by CNN. “Take a prayer meeting at the Pentagon for a possible example. Many stranger things have happened. God is great.”

A source who attended the service told CNN Wilson’s message was “pretty vanilla” and steered clear of political rhetoric. Attendees didn’t hear Wilson’s stance on women in the military and in combat.

The service from Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist, was part of a regular monthly Christian worship series Hegseth started at the department last summer that critics say has underscored the erosion of the separation of church and state under the Trump administration.

The pastor, who founded his church in Moscow, Idaho, in the 1970s and has since grown it to a network of more than 150 churches internationally, is part of an ascendant group of Christian religious leaders finding influence among MAGA conservatives. Hegseth is the pastor’s most prominent and public follower in the Trump administration.

Wilson has publicly described his belief in a patriarchal society where women are expected to submit to their husbands and supports repealing the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Women are banned from leadership positions in his church and are not allowed to vote in congregational decisions.

He has also advocated for the idea that the US should adopt a Christian theocracy and adhere to a biblical interpretation of society.

Hegseth is a member of one of Wilson’s churches in Tennessee and has said he moved to the state in 2022 to send his kids to a school that’s part of a Christian network that Wilson helped found.

In a previous statement to CNN, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said: “The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

The Pentagon’s rapid response X account posted photos confirming Wilson’s attendance on Tuesday.

Hegseth joined Wilson on stage after his sermon, but said he had been running from another meeting and missed the pastor’s remarks.

Kris Fuhr, co-founder of the Women in the Service Coalition, said bringing Wilson to the Pentagon was “beyond inappropriate” given his well-established views on the treatment of women and women in the military.

“It was an absolute insult to everyone that room, that someone who represents views that are a total 180 from Army values would be allowed to speak at a denominational-specific, Christian religious service in the Pentagon,” Fuhr said. “When you have a secretary of defense who is so strongly influ

By Devan Cole, Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge in Minnesota held a Trump administration attorney in civil contempt for “flagrant disobedience of court orders” in the case of a noncitizen swept up in the immigration crackdown there earlier this year.

The contempt finding by US District Judge Laura Provinzino on Wednesday appears to mark the first time a federal attorney has faced court-ordered sanctions during President Donald Trump’s second term.

It comes as judges in the Twin Cities and elsewhere have grown increasingly impatient with the administration’s repeated violations of court orders, particularly in fast-moving immigration cases.

The appointee of former President Joe Biden said that starting Friday, the lawyer, Matthew Isihara, must pay $500 each day that the immigrant is not given back identification documents that weren’t initially returned to him when he was released last week from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, as she had ordered.

As Provinzino imposed the sanction, she brushed aside Isihara’s attempt to explain that the violation wasn’t intentional, but instead a result of the case slipping through the cracks amid an “enormous volume of cases” stemming from Operation Metro Surge.

“The government’s understaffing and high caseload is a problem of its own making and absolutely does not justify flagrant disobedience of court orders,” the judge said during a hearing Wednesday, according to a transcript obtained by CNN.

“I don’t believe I need to do additional hand-holding on this. I think it’s clear what needs to happen,” she added. “Petitioner needs to get his documents immediately, and there will be a $500 sanction any day beyond tomorrow that they are not received by his attorney.”

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

Isihara is a military attorney who went to the Twin Cities to help the Justice Department handle a flood of immigration cases brought by noncitizens seeking to be released from ICE custody, which had overwhelmed its team on the ground, leading to non-compliance issues in other cases.

Provinzino on February 9 ordered the government to release the man, a Mexican national who had lived in Minnesota since 2018, after she determined that he was being unlawfully detained. Her order mandated that he be released in Minnesota no later than February 13 and that all his property be handed over to him. But the government flouted that order in three different ways, the judge said, including by releasing him in Texas, where he was being held, and not giving him back his identification documents.

“It’s very troubling, in the court’s review of this record,” the judge said as she ticked through the various violations. She noted later that Isihara and his colleagues hadn’t done any work on the case until that morning.

“It’s a capacity issue, your honor, and that’s the fundamental underlying issue,” Isihara told the judge. “It’s not any willful attempt to defy the court.”

Provinzino and her colleagues on the bench in Minnesota had regularly been threatening to hold Justice Department lawyers or immigration officials in civil contempt in recent weeks as non-compliance issues in dozens of cases stemming from Operation Metro Surge continued to add up. But the monetary sanctions represent a turning point.

“We’ve seen other cases in which district judges have opened more formal contempt proceedings, but this is the first time we’ve seen a court directly use its coercive power to try to compel immediate compliance with a court order,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN legal analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“The notion that lawyers must themselves pay a price for their client’s non-compliance with co