A Whole Lot of News About Recalls; What a Federal Government Shutdown Will Mean in California–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Sept. 29, 2025

Indy Digest: Sept. 29, 2025

Because I just can’t with the big news of the day (a church shooting … tomorrow’s likely federal government shutdown and whatever the heck Pete Hegseth is doing … racism and ignorance over the announcement of Bad Bunny as the next Super Bowl halftime performer), let’s instead use this space to focus on one of the more popular Indy Digest features: recall news!

• First up … corn dogs! The Associated Press reports:

About 58 million pounds of corn dogs and other sausage-on-a-stick products are being recalled across the U.S. because pieces of wood may be embedded in the batter, with several consumers reporting injuries to date.

According to a Saturday notice published by the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the recall covers select “State Fair Corn Dogs on a Stick” and “Jimmy Dean Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick” products from Texas-based Hillshire Brands, which is a subsidiary of Tyson Foods.

The contamination problem was discovered after Hillshire received multiple consumer complaints, the service notes, five of which involved injuries. The company later determined that a “limited number” of these products included “extraneous pieces of wooden stick within the batter,” Tyson said in a corresponding announcement—adding that it opted to initiate a recall “out of an abundance of caution.”

An abundance of caution after five injuries? Whatever, Tyson.

Next up … heat-and-eat pasta meals! The AP says:

Federal health officials are warning consumers not to eat certain heat-and-eat pasta meals sold at Walmart and Trader Joe’s because they may be contaminated with listeria bacteria previously linked to a deadly outbreak.

The U.S. Agriculture Department updated a public health alert Friday to include Trader Joe’s Cajun Style Blackened Chicken Breast Fettuccine Alfredo sold in 16-ounce plastic trays. The products have best-by dates of Sept. 20, Sept. 24 and Sept. 27 and still may be in customers’ refrigerators. The affected meals have the number P-45288 inside the USDA inspection mark.

Late Thursday the USDA issued a warning for Marketside Linguine with Beef Meatballs & Marinara Sauce sold at Walmart in refrigerated 12-ounce clear plastic trays. Those products have best-by dates of Sept. 22 through Oct. 1. The affected meals contain the establishment numbers “EST. 50784” and “EST. 47718” inside the USDA mark of inspection on the label. They were sent to Walmart stores nationwide.

Next up … in a similar vein, deli items from Albertson’s and Vons! Back to The AP:

Albertsons Companies has recalled several of its store-made deli products because they may contain listeria bacteria, in a move that arrives shortly after federal health officials warned consumers to not eat certain pasta meals sold at Walmart and Trader Joe’s over similar contamination concerns.

The Boise, Idaho-based supermarket giant on Saturday said it was pulling five deli items because they contain a recalled bowtie pasta ingredient made by Nate’s Fine Foods. Albertsons is urging consumers to not eat these products — which were supplied by refrigerated goods distributor Fresh Creative Foods — and is instructing those impacted to throw them away or initiate a return at their local store for a full refund.

The products under recall include certain ready-to-eat basil pesto pasta salad offerings, as well as pasta dishes with chicken, spinach and other ingredients. Consumers can determine if an item they bought is impacted by looking at the list of product names, sell thru dates and other identifying information on Albertsons’ website.

And, finally … freeze-dried fruit! We’ll go to the Miami Herald for this one, because the lede is kinda snarky, and I like it:

Freeze-dried strawberries covered in chocolate shouldn’t have metal—actual, hard metal—which is why Georgia Nut Company recalled two kinds of Tru Fru nationwide.

“Hard or sharp foreign objects in food may cause traumatic injury including laceration and perforation of tissues of the mouth, tongue, throat, stomach and intestine as well as damage to the teeth and gums,” the recall notice stated.

This recall includes some of the nation’s largest grocery sellers, such as Kroger, Albertson’s, Food Lion, H-E-B and Target. Also involved are CVS, Hungryroot, Ingles Markets and Stew Leonard’s.

Check your freezers and fridges!

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Our partners at Calmatters talk to an attorney who learned—the hard way—that using Chat GPT without double-checking things is a really terrible idea: “A California attorney must pay a $10,000 fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up. It also noted that numerous out-of-state and federal courts have confronted attorneys for citing fake legal authority. ‘We therefore publish this opinion as a warning,’ it continued. ‘Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations—whether provided by generative AI or any other source—that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified.’ The opinion, issued 10 days ago in California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal, is a clear example of why the state’s legal authorities are scrambling to regulate the use of AI in the judiciary. … (Amir) Mostafavi told CalMatters he wrote the appeal and then used ChatGPT to try and improve it. He said that he didn’t know it would add case citations or make things up.”

• So if there is indeed a government shutdown tomorrow, Calmatters explains what that will mean for Californians. The lede: “John Lauretig remembers the filthy bathrooms, the overflowing trash cans and the community of people who rallied to clean up Joshua Tree National Park the last time the U.S. Government shut down. For more than a month from December 2018 through January 2019, thousands of National Park Service employees were furloughed nationwide—but the Trump administration kept many national parks open. Unsupervised, visitors drove through wilderness and historic sites, camped where they weren’t supposed to, and vandalized plants and buildings at parks across California. The trash—and the feces—piled up. In the days after the shutdown ended, park staff found at least 1,665 clumps of toilet paper littering Death Valley alone, where an estimated half-ton of human waste had been left outside the restrooms. … Now, facing the prospect of another imminent shutdown, conservation groups and retired park service employees including Lauretig are calling to keep the gates locked at national parks and historic landmarks. They’re among many Californians bracing for the shutdown, which is expected to begin Wednesday unless Democrats and Republicans can make a deal by 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday.“

• The president, yet again, is saying he’ll enact a tariff on films made outside of the U.S. The Los Angeles Times reports: “President Trump again suggested that films made outside the U.S. should be subject to a 100% tariff, a move he said would help rejuvenate film production in America but that has been greeted with skepticism by many in Hollywood. ‘Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing “candy from a baby,”’ Trump wrote in a post Monday morning on his Truth Social platform. ‘California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.’ The post did not include details on how such a tariff would work or how it would be levied. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. … In May, Trump said he was authorizing the Commerce Department and U.S. trade representative to begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on ‘on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.’ That announcement surprised studio executives, who said at the time that they had no advance notice of the move. Shortly afterward, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reached out to the White House, offering to work together to create a federal film tax incentive, which many in the industry have said they would prefer over a tariff.”

• The Trump administration has taken another step in its insane war against Harvard University. The New York Times says: “The Health and Human Services Department on Monday started the process for blocking Harvard University from receiving future research grants, three months after finding that the university violated civil rights law by failing to address the harassment of Jewish students on campus. Debarment is the government’s formal way of blacklisting contractors. Monday’s announcement that the Trump administration was initiating the debarment process represented a shift from May, when Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued a letter that simply disqualified Harvard from future federal funding. …  Judge Allison D. Burroughs of Federal District Court in Boston sided with Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, when she ruled earlier this month that the administration had broken the law by freezing billions in research dollars in the name of stamping out antisemitism. She left open the possibility that the government could seek to use its ‘constitutional, statutory or regulatory authority’ to try to challenge Harvard again.”

• YouTube is the latest media company to settle a questionable lawsuit by the president. NPR reports: “YouTube will pay $24.5 million to President Trump to resolve a 2021 lawsuit that claimed he was the victim of censorship when the site suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters, according to federal court papers filed on Monday. YouTube parent company Google will dedicate $22 million of the settlement toward the construction of a $200 million Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom in the White House, according to the settlement documents, which state that a nonprofit called the Trust for the National Mall is being tapped to finance the renovations. It’s the latest settlement reached by a tech company sued by Trump in the wake of the Capitol riots. In January, Meta paid the president $25 million over Facebook’s and Instagram’s decision to suspend Trump after Jan. 6. Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, paid out $10 million over similar allegations. … ‘This is straight influence-peddling,’ said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University and an expert on online speech. ‘This YouTube settlement is not a sign of any legal merit.’”

• And finally … after an acting U.S. attorney told the Border Patrol that it needed to follow the law, she was fired. The Los Angeles Times says: “The acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento has said she was fired after telling the Border Patrol chief in charge of immigration raids in California that his agents were not allowed to arrest people without probable cause in the Central Valley. Michele Beckwith, a career prosecutor who was made the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California earlier this year, told The New York Times that she was let go after she warned Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that a court injunction blocked him from carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in Sacramento. Beckwith did not respond to a request for comment from the L.A. Times, but told the New York Times that ‘we have to stand up and insist the laws be followed.’ Bovino presided over a series of raids in Los Angeles starting in June in which agents spent weeks pursuing Latino-looking workers outside of Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and other areas. The agents often wore masks and used unmarked vehicles. But such indiscriminate tactics were not allowed in California’s Eastern District after the American Civil Liberties Union and United Farm Workers filed suit against the Border Patrol earlier in the year and won an injunction.”

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