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JUNEAU, Alaska — One of the most biting insults in Alaska politics is to be accused of being aligned with the “Lower 48,” code for candidates taking marching orders from powerful forces in the contiguous United States rather than sticking up for Alaskans.

It’s a central theme of the Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, one of a handful expected to determine control of the chamber in the November elections.

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan’s campaign has made it a key attack line against Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. He lumps her in with “Lower 48 liberals” who have opposed expanded oil and gas drilling in a state that has relied heavily on that industry for decades.

Peltola, an Alaska Native, has countered that she “took on” then-President Biden, a fellow Democrat, to help win approval in 2023 of the huge Willow oil project, which environmentalists strongly opposed. She also says she will “take on anyone, including Democrats — anyone in the Lower 48 who doesn’t understand what Alaska needs.”

The pejorative label reflects a mystique about Alaska, which outsiders often refer to as “The Last Frontier.” A state for less than 70 years, Alaska is renowned for its natural beauty, wildlife and vast landscapes. Its rural nature — isolated from the rest of the country and with many of its communities accessible only by air or water — breeds a self-reliance. It’s a place where many residents hunt and fish to fill their freezers for winter and take pride in their independence.

The two major Senate campaigns and some third-party groups have leaned into that sentiment — that Alaska is different — and cast their candidates as authentic voices for Alaskans.

“We love the persona Alaska is a tough place to live,” said Republican Andrew Halcro, a political podcast host and former state lawmaker who has lived in the state nearly all his life.

Abundance of oil and other resources has created friction with federal government

Alaska, rich in natural resources, has long had a love-hate relationship with the federal government, which owns about 60% of the state’s land. That relationship has been especially strained under Democratic presidential administrations that have sought to restrict logging, mining and the availability of areas for oil and gas development over environmental concerns.

Policies can shift dramatically from one administration to the next.

The Democratic Obama and Biden administrations banned leasing on roughly half the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which is home to wildlife such as caribou and polar bears and provides habitat for millions of migrating birds. Republican President Trump’s administration has rolled back those and other restrictions as part of a broader push for expanded oil and gas development in Alaska. The administration also is supporting lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The state also has bristled at Democratic efforts to stifle road building and logging in areas such as the Tongass National Forest, a temperate rainforest in southeast Alaska. That dispute dates to the Clinton administration.

Alaska’s share of royalty revenue from oil and minerals on federal land has been another ongoing source of tension. Some lawmakers say the state was promised a larger share at statehood and that the federal government has failed to uphold its end of the deal.

While oil production is a fraction of what it was at its peak in the late 1980s and has fallen in recent years, political leaders have pointed to signs of a turnaround. They cite in part the strong interest from major companies that snatched up leases in a sale earlier this year for the petroleum reserve, home to the Willow project.

Alaska communities have been hit hard by spikes in fuel prices caused by the Iran war. That is especially true for remote communities that must have their fuel flown in or delivered by barge before the rivers ice over.

Oil development is the top issue in this year’s election for Darryl Hugo, who lives in the small North Slope community of Anaktuvuk Pass. He is backing Sullivan and notes that revenue from oil development is largely responsible for his town’s health clinic, school, police and fire departments and water system.

“My region’s economy depends on oil,” he said via a messaging app.

Candidates are seen as trying to stake claim as ‘the real spokesperson for the real Alaska’

Robert Sewell, an independent from the Juneau area, said he sees the “Lower 48” taunts and Peltola trying to distance herself from national Democrats as examples of the candidates “fighting to establish who is the real spokesperson for the real Alaska.”

He also likens it a bit to the schoolyard jeer, “I know you are, but what am I?”

Peltola, during her unsuccessful 2024 congressional reelection campaign, refused to endorse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and said she would not vote for Trump. This year, before Alaska’s August primary, Harris sent a fundraising appeal that offered support of Peltola.

In response, Peltola’s campaign told reporters that she “isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48.”

In videos highlighting her backing of the Willow oil project, Peltola said she will work with Trump, who handily carried Alaska each of the three times he has run, to advance more oil and gas projects.

“I took on Joe Biden to secure the largest development project in decades,” she said in one video on social media. “And I’ll work with Donald Trump on more.”

Sewell, a Peltola supporter, said he does not begrudge that position. He said he does not think “for one moment that she likes Trump or Trump’s agendas” on other issues.

‘Lower 48’ jabs fill social media and airwaves, but do voters care?

Peltola, who is Yup’ik, is among the roughly 43% of Alaskans born in the state. She grew up fishing on the Kuskokwim River in western Alaska and prominently displays fishing photos on her website. Her campaign slogan, “Fish, Family, Freedom,” is intended to appeal to what she believes are Alaskans’ shared values.

Sullivan, originally from Ohio, came to Alaska in the late 1990s when he was in his early 30s. Now a retired Marine, he served as Alaska attorney general and natural resources commissioner, and was an assistant secretary of state in President George W. Bush’s administration.

Sullivan spokesperson Nate Adams said that for the senator, “being an Alaskan means loving this state, fighting everyday for his fellow Alaskans and making sure Alaskans, not Lower 48 liberals, decide our future.”

The SLF PAC, which supports a Republican Senate majority, has been keying in on that theme. In one of its ads, a speaker says of Peltola, “They dress her up, throw her out on a stream somewhere, make her look like an Alaskan.” Another says: “Mary Peltola sounds like Alaska, but toes a different line in Washington, D.C.”

Peltola’s campaign said Alaskans “won’t be fooled by mudslinging ads.” In a statement, her campaign sought to link Sullivan with “Lower 48 special interest donors.”

Halcro, the former lawmaker and podcaster, said Alaskans have been inundated with such ads and flyers, but he is not sure the messaging over which candidate aligns less with the “Lower 48” is one voters want to hear this year.

“It’s all of this stuff just to make us angry at a time where we really genuinely, genuinely just need stability,” he said. “We just need to elect somebody who’s not going to break anything.”

Bohrer writes for the Associated Press.

Crowd gathers on Garvaghy Road early on Sunday morning to protest against the ruling allowing the march.

Northern Ireland’s High Court has permitted the Orange Order, a Protestant organisation, to march through a mainly Catholic area in the town of Portadown for the first time in 28 years, reviving one of the region’s most contentious marching disputes.

The court rejected a final attempt by residents to stop the parade passing through the Garvaghy Road early on Sunday, after Northern Ireland’s Court of Appeal overturned a temporary injunction granted on Saturday.

Large crowds gathered on the road before the procession, with the Belfast Telegraph reporting that protesters planned to block the route peacefully by linking arms.

First Minister Michelle O’Neill, vice president of Sinn Fein, an Irish nationalist party that supports a united Ireland, joined residents opposing the march.

In a statement posted on X on Sunday, she backed their right to protest and urged restraint, saying, “I am calling for calm on all sides.”

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald also condemned the court decision in a post on X early on Sunday, calling it “disgraceful” and saying her party stood with the Garvaghy Road community.

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which supports Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, urged people to stay away from the area.

She said on Sunday that threats of violence were unacceptable and added: “No one in Northern Ireland wants violence or disorder.”

The Orange Order is a Protestant organisation closely associated with unionism, the political tradition that favours Northern Ireland remaining in the UK.

The Parades Commission, the independent body that rules on disputed marches in Northern Ireland, approved Sunday’s procession with a 35-person limit, barred bands and accompanying supporters, and required the march to finish by 9:30am (08:30 GMT).

The dispute over the Drumcree parade and Garvaghy Road became one of the most bitter marching confrontations of the “Troubles”, the decades-long conflict over Northern Ireland’s political status that largely ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Repeated attempts by the Orange Order to return from Drumcree church along Garvaghy Road triggered protests, violence and major security operations during the 1990s.

COMSTOCK, Texas — The Trump administration has started building a border wall through a west Texas section of the Big Bend region, marking the first major construction in an area of the U.S.-Mexico border where the administration’s plans have met heavy, bipartisan opposition.

The start of construction marks a milestone in the administration’s $46-billion efforts to line the border with walls, barriers, roads and technology as it seeks to make good on a campaign promise by President Trump to finish the wall. And it comes as Customs and Border Protection says it has doubled the pace at which it is building the wall across the border.

Customs and Border Protection said in a statement to the Associated Press that “border wall panel installation is underway” in a 47-mile stretch of Hudspeth County in west Texas known as Big Bend 1. There are five project areas that make up the roughly 500-mile Big Bend region stretching from an area of Hudspeth County south of El Paso to Lake Amistad.

CBP said the first panels were erected Wednesday. On a map on the agency’s website where it posts updates of wall construction along the southern border, a photo showed a crane lifting one of the 30-foot-tall steel wall panels into place as construction workers looked on.

The new activity was separate from a border infrastructure project in the nearby Big Bend National Park, where the administration has suspended construction in an attempt to reach out to opponents.

In the broader Big Bend region of Texas, CBP has run up against concerted opposition from landowners, environmental groups, business owners and ranchers who say the remote region isn’t a high-traffic area for illegal immigration. Political leaders from both parties, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), have joined the opposition.

Activists said Friday they would continue opposing the border infrastructure projects in the rest of the Big Bend region, even as the panels were being installed.

Clara Benson, one of the founders of the No Big Bend Wall Coalition, which has been fighting against CBP’s plans, said in an interview Friday that the organization had been receiving reports of trucks moving supplies into the remote area along the Rio Grande and that contractors had been clearing yards to stage supplies.

Speaking from Washington, D.C., where she and others in the coalition were meeting with lawmakers, she said that the organization and others would continue to fight the wall-building plans across the region.

“We will continue to fight for this land no matter what the outcome is. We will continue fighting to the end,” said Benson. “You talk to people in west Texas and they say even if they put it up, we’ll fight for them to take it down. So this fight is not over.”

The news comes as the administration is speeding forward with a plan to line the entire border with a combination of 30-foot-tall steel bollard walls, barriers designed to stop vehicles from crossing the border, new patrol roads, and various technologies to deter and detect migrants or smugglers from crossing the border.

Customs and Border Protection said it is building an average of 12 miles of barriers per week along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and recently reached a milestone of 200 miles of new barriers built since the second Trump administration took office. The 12-miles-a-week average is double the pace that the agency’s head, Rodney Scott, cited earlier this year.

The agency has faced opposition from environmental groups, a small town that worries the wall will cause flooding in its area, Native Americans who say the construction is disturbing sacred sites and landowners who say the construction will infringe on their land.

In Texas, much of the opposition has centered on the agency’s plans for Big Bend National Park, in the state’s southwest on the Rio Grande that is a draw for tourists from around the world. But up- and downriver outside the park, much of the land is owned by private landowners, many of whom have organized against the government’s efforts.

Earlier this week, landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage sued to stop the administration’s plans.

Activists and landowners have also shown up at county meetings to push their elected officials not to cooperate with contractors hired by CBP to build the wall, and many landowners have refused to allow government officials or contractors onto their land to survey it.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

Hikers trekking along trails around Los Angeles know that, by late summer, most creeks and rivers have dried up for the season.

However, recent rainfall across Southern California has replenished our waterways just enough to bring back a little of their spring and early summer glamour.

In this week’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will highlight three L.A. trails where you can still find water flowing, offering a cool relief in a year when L.A. residents are sick of humidity, heat and high electric bills.

Before heading out, here are a few things to remember:

• Familiarize yourself with what poison oak looks like, as it will be prominent on all of these trails. Its leaves this time of year range from glossy green to red, orange and yellow.
• Practice seven Leave No Trace principles, including never leaving anything behind such as toilet paper or orange peels.
• Rocks and boulders in and along creeks will often be slippery from years of erosion. Take good care when climbing them or using them for leverage as you traverse an area.
• Wear insect repellent. Mosquitoes and ticks are both found along the routes below.
• Riparian habitats, like creeks flowing through canyons, are home to sensitive creatures including California newts, frogs and toads. Take good care to watch where you’re stepping, ensuring you aren’t crushing one of these little sweeties as you tromp along.

Now that we’ve all agreed to recreate responsibly, let’s talk about those hikes!

The Santa Ynez waterfall is an 18-foot cascade through a canyon carved by water for thousands of years.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

1. Santa Ynez Waterfall Trail

Distance: 2.2 miles out and back
Elevation gained: About 200 feet
Difficulty: Easy in the beginning with technical aspects near the falls
Dogs allowed: No
Nearest to: Pacific Palisades
Accessible alternative: Inspiration Loop Trail at Will Rogers State Historic Park

The Santa Ynez waterfall trail is a 2.2-mile journey along Santa Ynez Creek in Topanga State Park, shaded by large sycamores, oak trees and the canyon’s walls. You’ll notice a small cave-like structure in the canyon wall shortly upon starting the hike. Unfortunately, other visitors have carved into its sides. Don’t be one of them.

To begin your hike, you will park along Vereda de la Montura. Note that parking isn’t allowed daily between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

A small cave-like structure in Santa Ynez Canyon in Topanga State Park.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I thought I was in the wrong place when I first pulled up, given the trailhead sits in the middle of a neighborhood. I walked northwest along the street and found an open gate with stairs leading down. This is where you’ll start the trail.

I was immediately reminded of Sullivan Canyon (which is about 3 miles away, as the crow flies), as the two canyons feature rocky canyon walls and tall old trees. There are a few times when the trail splits off and returns to itself. Just over half a mile in, though, the trail splits in two, with Santa Ynez Canyon Trail to the west (or left) and the waterfall trail, which you will take to the north or northwest-ish.

A lush tree canopy provides shade in Santa Ynez Canyon as hikers head to the waterfall.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

The first mile of this trail is primarily a nice stroll northward along a creek, the ground covered in green and brown leaves. However, just over a mile in, if you want to see the waterfall and small cave next to it, you will need to scramble up a large boulder and then rock hop through the creek. As of last week, there was a rope to aid hikers upward. (On my way down, I unintentionally slid quickly down the rock, feeling every peddle in the tuchus until I landed feet first in the creek — so take your time here.)

The waterfall isn’t roaring at the moment, but I found the trickling sound of water soothing. It’s also a geologically interesting area to look around, as the water has carved out the canyon walls into interesting shapes (and created a small cave near the waterfall).

The walls of Santa Ynez Canyon were carved by water, wind and time over centuries.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

As I was heading back from the falls, I noticed several bees circling an area high in the canyon wall where it appeared they’d built a nest. Pack accordingly if you are allergic to bee stings.

Slow down and look up as you hike through Santa Ynez Canyon, taking the opportunity to observe rock formations, plants and reptiles.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I only saw three other people along the trail while there on a weekday. I was mostly alone, though, listening to the wrentits and spotted towhees as blue dragonflies darted to and fro.

Cold Creek in the Cold Creek Valley Preserve near Calabasas.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

2. Cold Creek Trail

Distance: 2.2 miles out and back (with option to extend)
Elevation gained: About 300 feet
Difficulty: Easier end of moderate
Dogs allowed: Yes
Nearest to: South of Calabasas
Accessible alternative: Nicholas Flat ADA Trail

The Cold Creek Valley Preserve, cared for by the TreePeople Land Trust, is a shady riparian habitat near Calabasas with a gently flowing creek that features multiple short cascades. The land was saved from development by several local residents and nonprofits, including Timothy B. Schmit, bass player for the Eagles.

The preserve features multiple public hiking routes, including the Cold Creek Trail.

“Located on an ancient trade route, the [I]ndigenous people of Southern California have used the area for hunting and settlement for generations, leaving a lasting influence visible on the land,” according to TreePeople. “The perennial Cold Creek is the keystone feature of the area, one of the cleanest free-flowing streams in the Santa Monica Mountains.”

The tree canopy along the Cold Creek Trail in the Cold Creek Valley Preserve provides a shady cool environment for hikers.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

To begin your hike, you’ll park in a bumpy dirt lot just off Stunt Road. Be mindful as you near the trailhead, as there will likely be construction crew members in the area. They’re working to install rumble strips and other infrastructure to slow down drivers and hopefully improve traffic safety.

At the start of the trail, you’ll find a portable toilet near the gate. You’ll walk southeast for a short bit before rounding the curve of the trail. You’ll officially be transported into this sylvan sanctuary (although I could admittedly still hear the construction workers communicating on their walkie-talkies).

The trail mostly runs parallel to Cold Creek, which you will hear flowing and have the opportunity to sit near at multiple points along the route, including on a few wooden benches. The trail crosses the creek about four times, but it isn’t overly technical to maneuver.

The Cold Creek Valley Preserve is open from sunrise to sunset.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

About half a mile in, the trail intersects with Lower Stunt High Trail. You can continue northwest along the creek. You will find another option, the Yucca Trail, just under a mile into your hike, a nice .68-mile loop through the preserve.

The park, open from sunrise to sunset, offers a sweet reprieve from the sun and is a great spot to take a deep breath and meditate in the woods.

The Gabrielino Trail is a multi-use trail frequented by hikers, bikers and horseback riders.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

3. The Gabrielino National Recreation Trail (multiple segments)

Distance: 28.8 miles
Elevation gained: About 6,000 feet
Difficulty: Challenging when done in its entirety
Dogs allowed: Yes
Nearest to: Arcadia and Pasadena, depending on the trailhead
Accessible alternative: Gabrielino Trail starting near North Windsor Avenue near Altadena

The Gabrielino National Recreation Trail is a 28.8-mile journey through the San Gabriel Mountains. Most thru-hikers start the trail at Chantry Flat and take the trail on a squiggly N-shaped journey all the way to its western trailhead near NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena.

However, it isn’t necessary to take the entire Gabrielino Trail to enjoy its beauty. The trail has several entry points, offering short day trips, including the following, which run parallel to at least one local creek or river:

Regardless of where you go, I hope you enjoy our last weekend of summer. That’s right: Summer ends Tuesday! Hopefully that means it soon feels like autumn in L.A.

3 things to do

Volunteers walk down the beach at a Heal the Bay coastal cleanup event in 2024 with Water for L.A.

(Heal the Bay)

1. Clean up public lands around L.A.
Heal the Bay will host L.A. County’s annual coastal cleanup day from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday in more than 60 sites. Participants should consider wearing closed-toe shoes and sun protection. Cleanup supplies will be available at sites but will run out at popular sites. Volunteers can pick a beach, river, park or trail near them by visiting support.healthebay.org.

2. Portray a bird of prey in San Dimas
The San Dimas Canyon Nature Center will host a guided sketch experience from 6 to 7 p.m. Friday at 1628 Sycamore Canyon Road in San Dimas. Participants will learn how to draw a red-tailed hawk. Learn more at the center’s Instagram page.

3. Learn dangers from rangers in Newbury Park
Hikers can bring their four-legged besties to Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday for a B.A.R.K. Rangers event where rangers will educate dog owners on how to safely and responsibly enjoy public lands. Rangers will also conduct a special swearing-in ceremony, complete with a Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area B.A.R.K. Ranger badge, for pups who complete certain challenges. Learn more at eventbrite.com.

The must-read

A juvenile great white shark in Hermosa Beach in April, seen via drone.

(CSULB Shark Lab)

Yes, El Niño morphed our city’s usually pleasant Mediterranean climate into the largest hot yoga class in L.A. But did you know it has also resulted in our ocean water being warm enough to attract animals not usually seen along our coastline? Those fishing off the Malibu Pier were surprised in mid-August by a hammerhead shark swimming nearby. A giant whale shark was recently documented by a fish spotter between Malibu and one of the Channel Islands, a species that prefers warmer waters (and is the largest known fish on the planet). And in line with our predicted “sharky summer,” a juvenile great white shark was spotted a bit close to a swimmer off the coast of Santa Barbara. The best news is: Nothing bad has happened to any humans or animals during these visits, underscoring how well we can co-exist with these beings, despite our fears of them.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

More and more wildlife lovers are heading into public lands for “recreational herping,” the practice of looking for amphibians and reptiles. Conservation photographer Mario Ramos recently raised concerns via his Instagram page about how the increase is leading some folks to unintentionally harm the animals they seek to observe. “A harsh truth about field herping is that our interactions with wild herps are often stressful and potentially detrimental to the animals, no matter how you frame it,” Ramos wrote. Ramos then outlined how to ethically look for animals that slither and slide in the wild. Always respect the locals, folks!

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

A federal film and television tax credit could boost U.S. production spending by $125 billion and add more than 143,000 jobs by 2035, according to a new study commissioned by the Motion Picture Assn.

The analysis, released Tuesday morning, is expected to bolster Hollywood’s push for a federal production incentive, which the industry says is necessary to compete with the generous credits offered abroad. Sixty-five nations now offer them, the study said.

The effort has been quietly building for more than a year. It got a major boost last month when President Trump posted on Truth Social backing a proposed credit.

Details are still being worked out,, but the study assumed a transferable credit with a minimum rate of 20% on qualified spending for U.S. resident labor — broadly what industry groups have supported. It also assumed add-ons of 5% for independent production companies and 5% for labor costs in areas the Federal Emergency Management Agency has declared disasters.

If the incentive took effect Jan. 1, 2027, U.S. production spending would reach $277.5 billion through 2035, the study said, compared with $152.2 billion without it.

A coalition that includes the Motion Picture Assn., industry unions, producers’ groups and small production businesses, along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers, is expected to press the case at a virtual news conference Tuesday.

“A federal incentive would be a gamechanger for our industry,” Charles Rivkin, chairman and chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn., said in a statement. “This study tells us that we can bring more opportunities to life for people in all 50 states who bring great stories to life.”

MARFA, Texas — Landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region of Texas along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage are suing to stop the Trump administration’s plans to build a wall and other border infrastructure through the remote section of the state.

The lawsuit, filed by Conserve Big Bend and with the support of dozens of landowners, comes as the administration is ramping up a $46-billion effort to line the roughly 2,000-mile southern border with a collection of 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and technology intended to keep out smugglers and migrants.

In Texas, the effort has run up against numerous lawsuits and bipartisan opposition from sheriffs, elected officials, tour guides, environmental groups and landowners.

Officials backing the wall “were woefully unprepared for the hornet’s nest they stirred up because they had no idea how much we love this place,” said David Keller, an archaeologist and historian who specializes in the Big Bend and lives in the region.

“For us, the Big Bend is not an empty place on the map,” he said. “It is our home.”

As part of its wall-building efforts, the administration has waived numerous regulations and statutes designed to protect the environment, archaeology or wildlife, on the basis that there’s an urgent need to protect the border in what Homeland Security has called areas of “high illegal entry.”

But in the lawsuit announced Monday, the plaintiffs argue that when it comes to the Big Bend region, that’s not an accurate description. They’ve cited historical statistics issued by Customs and Border Protection showing how few people cross the border in Big Bend compared with other areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Big Bend has about 500 miles of border with Mexico — roughly one quarter of the length of the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. But the region only accounted for about 1% of arrests, according to the lawsuit’s stats.

The plaintiffs are arguing that the Department of Homeland Security is misusing powers from Congress that allow the secretary broad authority to waive regulations in order to build border walls or other infrastructure in areas where there are large numbers of people trying to cross into the country illegally.

“That determination is legally and factually unsound and unsupported,” the plaintiffs wrote.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest in efforts to slow or stop the administration’s plans in Texas and elsewhere.

The biggest outcry has come over Customs and Border Protection’s plans for the Big Bend National Park, which sits in a far southwestern corner of Texas where the Rio Grande separates the U.S. from Mexico.

The park’s remote and rugged location, its steep limestone canyon walls and crystal clear starry night views attract visitors from around the world. The government has said in court hearings that no final plans have been decided for what will be built in the park but plans made public so far have included building a new road, installing detection technology and barriers to stop vehicles from crossing the border.

When bulldozers were spotted clearing land in the park in August, people across the state were outraged. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott temporarily paused construction-related activity in the park but many activists and residents would like to see even more changes to the administration’s plans in the broader Big Bend region.

Native American groups have argued that the construction could inhibit their ability to practice their faith and is damaging important religious sites while environmentalists worry the wall will cause flooding or keep animals from migrating.

Landowners who’ve lived and worked along the Rio Grande for years have questioned how they’ll feed livestock or water their crops if they can’t access the river.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

California prison towns made a grim bargain decades ago.

They built their economies around an industry that relied on an ever-growing prison population, mostly from California’s major metropolitan areas. Then, about 15 years ago, legislators changed sentencing laws in ways that caused the prison population to drop, and the prisons started going away.

Gov. Jerry Brown oversaw massive reductions in California’s prison population in the 2010s. Gov. Gavin Newsom has closed five prisons since taking office in 2019. Now, some of those towns face difficult choices if they’re going to survive. One prison town is still fighting the closure, one is betting on businesses to make up its losses and a third — the town of Susanville — is remote, isolated and in deeper trouble than the rest.

Perched on one of the last major stops before Reno and the desert deep in the Lassen National Forest, Susanville has always been the kind of place California puts the things it doesn’t want to see, hear, smell or really even think about.

“Prisons in communities are not popular, so they tend to be located in areas that are desperate economically,” said Dan Newton, who worked for the city of Susanville for 20 years and was its city manager until recently. “That would describe this area.”

The city’s management was informed in 2021 that the prison was scheduled for closure. They went to court to challenge the closure, arguing the state’s environmental review process hadn’t taken into account the prison closure’s impact on the town. Newsom had a solution: A budget bill that exempted correctional facility closures from the environmental review process.

“There was initially a lot of panic,” said Susanville Mayor Mendy Schuster. “Houses went on the market. People left town. State jobs are good jobs with a good income, and they were going to leave.”

Since the closure announcement, the population of Susanville has fallen from a peak of about 16,000 in 2021, the year Newsom announced the prison would close, to 14,000 in 2024, the last year for which American Community Survey data were available.

Not all of the 1,100 former prison employees left town. Some transferred to a nearby prison, and some retired and stayed in the area. The elementary school lost 10% of its enrolled students between 2021 and the 2025-2026 school year.

The town’s remoteness is also one of its attractions. The surrounding area offers some of the most stunning vistas in far Northern California, sweeping views from highway lookout points over miles of desert rimmed by the mountains of the Cascade Range where it meets the Sierra Nevada.

The history of this area is one of the state or federal government telling its residents that it needs them — to mine for gold, to cut down trees for timber, to guard all the people they sent to prison — and then coming along later to tell residents that their services are no longer needed.

Susanville, the spot on the map, is an immutable intermingling of unique geologic formations. Susanville, the incorporated city, is running out of time.

“We’re heading toward insolvency,” Newton said before he resigned as city manager to take a position in Tehama County government.

The prison building boom

When the state’s three-strikes law still imposed mandatory life sentences on anyone with two or more prior convictions for violent felonies, California needed places like Susanville to put its skyrocketing prison population.

According to Brown University’s Prison Proliferation Project, states and the federal government operated 511 prisons in 1970. By the end of the prison building boom in 2000, that number had risen to 1,663.

The prison guards who lived in Susanville coached Little League and bought bread at the bakery downtown. They had steady jobs with top-tier health and retirement benefits; today experienced correctional officers earn $9,650 a month in base pay.

The town benefited from carceral policies that pulled prisoners hundreds of miles from their families, even as Lassen County counted those inmates as residents until 2022 and built around a prison boom that showed no signs of ending.

Until, of course, it did.

In 2006, overcrowding forced some of the state’s 170,000 prisoners to sleep in hallways and multipurpose rooms. But sentencing policies changed in the early 2010s to put more people in jail than prisons, and when people went to prison, they went for shorter sentences. Now, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is down to 90,000 prisoners, and has 8,000 more beds available than it has people in custody.

An emergent field of research in the last 15 years has focused on the era of the “prison bust,” when prison closures have outnumbered prison openings. Criminal justice policy researchers have found that the proposed economic benefits of prisons to small, rural communities were probably overstated to begin with.

“A large portion of prison jobs (were) filled by residents of neighboring towns,” wrote the authors of a 2024 article in the journal Punishment & Society. “Even those who moved to the area for prison jobs often settled in adjacent communities, providing little direct benefit to the local economy.”

Not only might prisons not be engines of economic growth, according to a seminal 2010 study from researchers at Washington State University, they might have stymied the development of other industries warded off by the presence of the prison.

Brown University associate sociology professor John Eason, whose book “Big House on the Prairie” focused on a prison in the rural South, found that the economic fate of prison towns is most closely correlated to when they were built, more than where they were built.

“Towns that adopted prisons earlier in the prison boom received a short-term boon compared to those that did not build, but the effects were not lasting,” Eason wrote.

Towns that built a prison early in the boom saw increased median home values and median income, Eason wrote, with reduced poverty and unemployment, but those effects did not last longer than a decade, which he called “a decay effect.”

But the residents and leadership of the city of Blythe, where the shuttered Chuckwalla Valley State Prison was built in 1987, are certain that their economic problems began and ended on the day in 2022 when the prison closed down.

Desert town tried to keep prison open

“We still haven’t got nothing from the state,” said Blythe Mayor Joseph DeConinck. “I hate to say it, but Blythe’s in the middle of nowhere, we’re the furthest from Sacramento, I just hate to say it again, we’re only a few votes out here.”

The mayor of the small desert city in Riverside County near the Arizona border watched the failed lawsuit over the Susanville prison closure and decided against filing their own litigation after Newsom ordered the Blythe prison closed just before Christmas 2022.

Instead, Blythe chose honey over vinegar and launched a lobbying effort to convince state legislators and the governor that the town needed some kind of economic rescue.

It has, so far, failed to produce results.

“We took these prisons when nobody else wanted them,” DeConinck said. “And we adapted to them because they became a strong economic generator for our area.”

Blythe’s population of 18,000 in 2022 had fallen to 17,400 by 2024, the last year for which census statistics are available. A drop of just 3% of the population might not sound drastic, but Blythe was in trouble long before the prison closed.

The population has been dropping since a peak of about 20,000 in 2010. A Riverside County civil investigation in June 2022 found that the city can’t pay its bills, its population is fleeing to Phoenix or the Coachella Valley, and neither the city nor its residents have bright prospects.

Six months after that investigation, Newsom announced the prison closure.

DeConinck said city leadership flew to Sacramento and tried, in vain, to get any traction. He recalled one meeting between the Blythe city manager and representatives of the governor in which he said the city itself was promised direct financial assistance.

The era of sweet-talking the state is over now, DeConinck said.

“They wouldn’t even have a conversation with us,” said Vice Mayor Johnny Rodriguez. “They’re not doing anything to assist us because they have this political mantra that all prisons are bad.”

Rodriguez said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of General Services sent representatives to a meeting on the future of the shuttered prison site. It didn’t go well.

“We had just one meeting with a potential developer who had some interest in it, and all the state provided was, what you can’t do, what they won’t do,” Rodriguez said. “They won’t give a timeline when they would start talking about it, so what’s that going to do?”

Newsom’s office referred questions to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Will Matthews, a corrections spokesperson, said in a statement after this article first published that the state sent $995,000 to the Riverside County Workforce Development Division in August 2024.

“State representatives met with local leaders in July 2024 to discuss these resources and other available assistance,” Matthews said. “There was no commitment to providing direct financial assistance to the City of Blythe.”

Matthews said until the Blythe prison site’s infrastructure is separated from neighboring Ironwood State Prison and its bond obligations are resolved, the property can’t move through the state’s process for dispensing with surplus property.

In a March hearing before a Senate budget subcommittee, Corrections Secretary Jeff Macomber said he’s eager to end his agency’s control over closed prison sites.

“I don’t want to hold on to closed facilities,” Macomber said. “Believe it or not, I have to provide a little bit of staffing. It’s unpopular, there’s security risks. We have people break in because who doesn’t want to run in, to break into a closed prison?”

Newsom began closing prisons with the deactivation of the Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy, followed by the prison in Susanville, and then a prison in Blythe near the Arizona border. The state also ended its contract with a private prison in Kern County, a site now being operated as an immigrant detention center. A prison in Norco, also in Riverside County, is scheduled to close in October.

More prisons probably will close. The Legislature this year passed a budget that called for the state to shut at least one more. Its passage reflected Democratic lawmakers’ desire to save money — about $150 million a year per prison — by eliminating underused correctional facilities.

And some state prisons have astronomical deferred maintenance bills. The state auditor recently released a report estimating that five of them need repairs that would cost $2.4 billion.

Rodriguez is still fighting for a prison on the shuttered site. He has plans to pitch the federal government on opening a women’s prison there to account for the closure of the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, which closed after 10 guards were charged with sexually abusing the prisoners.

“Closing Chuckawalla was a mistake,” said Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez, a Coachella Republican. “For our rural communities, these facilities are critical employers that support local families and local economies.”

Ready for change on edge of Bay Area

If any town was prepared for a prison closure, it was Tracy.

Optimism abounds, even on the city website, which promotes it as “one of the fastest growing suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area.” The city has for decades been a bedroom community for commuters to the East Bay Area and San José.

The offers are pouring in to fill the abandoned prison site, said San Joaquin County Supervisor Robert Rickman, who was mayor of Tracy from 2016-2020.

“We’ve been in contact with folks in the agricultural industry, the education industry and even some of them who are interested in opening a casino,” Rickman said. “I would say [the prison closure] was neutral. The property isn’t sitting forgotten. South county is a very prosperous portion of our county.”

Prison guards and support staff mainly transferred to the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, Rickman said.

“I guess you’re never really prepared for a closure,” Rickman said, “but the good thing is that nobody lost their jobs.”

Tracy has the advantages that Susanville does not: It’s next to Interstate 5 along a busy commercial corridor in a populated and growing section of the state. Tracy also doesn’t have the drawbacks of Blythe and the Inland Empire desert — the weather never gets too hot, and there is reliable access to water.

Instead of challenging the state government like Blythe, Rickman gets to play host and pitch man to businesses.

Back in Susanville, it’s been a struggle to get any business to return calls.

Hard choices in Susanville

“For the last two years, we’ve adopted deficit budgets,” said Newton, the erstwhile city manager. “We’re deficit spending in order to fill public safety vacancies, and expenditure increases are outpacing our revenue increases.

“It’s going to start eating at our cash reserves.”

The town is hoping some industry — any industry — can come in and save it. City leaders have little hope for state assistance. But the city also has its own limitations.

First, Newton said, it’s hard to make a businesses on the border of California and Nevada choose California, with its higher taxes and stern regulatory environment. That choice in finance terms is known as regulatory arbitrage.

Second, industry needs power, and Susanville doesn’t have a lot of power on the grid, nor the infrastructure to support it. A bad thunderstorm can knock out the lights to half the city. The city’s transmission lines can’t handle the wattage demanded by heavy industry.

Third, the city and county’s limited population is working against it. Prisons force people to work and live in an area, and the state supplies the workforce. But there is no big workforce base on which to draw for any industry. When the prisons close, the guards transfer to new locations or retire and leave the rural, geographically isolated area.

The pandemic didn’t help. Downtown businesses were already struggling when people started buying more retail goods online, a trend that didn’t abate when lockdowns ended, Schuster said.

Now, some of the largest tax generators in town are on sales from online shopping and fuel taxes — people stop in town to get gas because Susanville has the only gas stations for 20 miles in any direction.

A baseball grandstand burned down last year, and in March, a lumber mill that employed about 30 people caught fire. No one was injured, but the mill burned to the ground.

Now the 8,000 people in this remote corner of California have to ask themselves what more they can wring from the land, what more they can take and what more it can yield. One idea includes a new truck stop.

Whatever salvation comes for the town, if any salvation comes at all, won’t be at the hands of the state government that built a prison and then took it away, Newton said.

“No one is coming to save us.”

This article was updated to include information that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shared after publication.

Duara writes for CalMatters.

It’s an exciting time for Southern California coaster fans. Universal Studios Hollywood is on the verge of officially opening Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, and Knott’s Berry Farm this summer unveiled the refurbished Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress. Now Six Flags’ Magic Mountain is getting in on the coaster action.

Coming in 2027 to the Valencia park will be Thrill Glider, a first of its kind thrill ride designed by coaster manufacturer Vekoma exclusively for Magic Mountain.

Magic Mountain in a release describes Thrill Glider as introducing a new coaster category, one that combines a motorbike-like seating arrangement with suspended coaster technologies. Riders will board what the park is referring to “hoverbikes,” essentially bike vehicles designed to simulate a flying sensation by being suspended from the track. Riders will be seated in a prone, face-forward position that will hang from the track above.

Concept art for Thrill Glider, which will boast bike-like vehicles and a sci-fi backstory.

(Six Flags Magic Mountain)

The ride will feature 20 different coaster elements and is slated to last 80 seconds. Speeds will reach 50 mph, and the coaster will boast five inversions that will take guests upside down. The various inversions will include a barrel roll, a zero-g roll and an overbanked stall turn, hinting at a heavily twisted track that will create drifts and swinging. There will be at least 12 moments, Six Flags promises, in which riders will experience airtime lifts.

“It is the latest milestone in Six Flags Magic Mountain’s renaissance and a reflection of the park’s enduring role as an industry innovator,” said Brian Oerding, park president of Six Flags Magic Mountain in a release.

The ride will come with a heavy sci-fi-inspired narrative. The story: The ride is a new technology from a fictional inventor, Rebecca Silva, who will introduce guests in the waiting area to what is described as a “Futurist Pavilion.” Throughout the queue, riders will encounter “holographic presentations and scientific exhibits,” culminating in the discovery of a new energy source, detailed by illuminated blue energy lines, that will power the ride.

The goal, says Six Flags, is to provide an optimistic view of the future, albeit with many sudden dives and weightless moments. The ride will feature multiple launches, reach a height of 107 feet and traverse 3,380 feet of track, which is more than a half mile.

Concept art of Magic Mountain’s new Thrill Glider, which will reach a top height of 104 feet.

(Six Flags Magic Mountain)

A specific opening window has not been detailed, but the ride is currently under construction. It will be located on the former site of the Golden Bear Theatre and will overlook the recently refurbished kiddie area, Looney Tunes Land.

Thrill Glider is arriving at a moment when Six Flags has been garnering national attention. Magic Mountain’s X2 remains shut down while state safety officials continue an investigation involving the attraction.

The ride, first opened in 2002 as X, has been the subject of controversy and at least one high-profile lawsuit stemming from a 22-year-old man’s death. Six Flags bills the ride as “a right of passage for the ultimate daredevil” that goes up to 76 mph. A CNN report recently took a look at other, more recent injuries allegedly stemming from the attraction.

Reporting from Brisbane, Calif. — Just beyond San Francisco’s city limits lies 640 acres of land that could help solve some of California’s biggest problems.

A developer wants to build 4,400 new homes there — one of the largest projects recently proposed in one of the country’s most unaffordable regions. The development would overlook a railway that drops riders into the heart of San Francisco in 15 minutes, reducing the need for cars and cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that come from them.

State and regional leaders have endorsed the project. But its fate rests with Brisbane, a city of 4,700 people that annexed the property 55 years ago. And no one, not even the developer, thinks Brisbane’s residents will approve all 4,400 homes.

“Unfortunately, we believe that their ceiling is going to be below that,” said Jonathan Scharfman, the general manager for the developer, Universal Paragon Corp.

The project, Brisbane Baylands, reveals how few incentives local governments have to accept large developments — even as the state is pushing to lower housing costs and funnel growth toward existing cities and nearby mass transit to combat climate change. Brisbane residents are wary of a project that could triple the city’s population. Under California’s tax system, Brisbane also earns more money if it rejects the current plan in favor of potential alternatives with more hotel rooms and space for businesses — but no homes.

The Bay Area’s dire need for housing makes the debate over the Baylands project “particularly painful,” said Ben Metcalf, director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

“It is frustrating that as a state and as a constellation of local jurisdictions we are constantly making decisions that aren’t the best for alleviating poverty, housing affordability, furthering our state’s economy or meeting our climate change goals,” Metcalf said.

For their part, some Brisbane residents feel besieged by pressure from housing activists, business groups, state lawmakers, San Francisco politicians, newspaper editorials and others beyond the city’s boundaries. An old rail yard and garbage dump contaminated the land, and opponents contend they want to protect anyone who might decide to live there even after regulators approve a cleanup. More than that, Brisbane residents say, outsiders don’t understand how much the Baylands project would upend their community.

“We’re a small town,” City Councilman W. Clarke Conway said at a meeting on the project last fall, “and we’re a small town by choice.”

Bill Dettmer, left, speaks with a group of men who regularly meet and discuss local politics and civic issues at Madhouse Coffee in Brisbane, Calif. Dettmer thinks a developer should be allowed to build housing on an old rail yard in the city.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Brisbane’s main drag is Visitacion Avenue. It slopes upward for five blocks, starting at a city park and continuing through mom-and-pop shops, cafes and restaurants. The rest of Brisbane comprises office parks, a strip mall and mostly single-family homes built throughout the town’s hills.

“This is the land that time forgot,” said Greg Lee, 55, an electrical engineer who has lived in the city for more than two decades.

San Bruno Mountain, which rises a quarter-mile into the sky, is Brisbane’s landmark, and residents have fought to preserve it. In the 1960s, they blocked a developer from leveling the mountaintop and building enough new homes for 70,000 people. In 1980, after years of battling another massive project on the mountain, residents received a last-minute reprieve from the federal government, which declared San Bruno a critical habitat for the endangered callippe silverspot butterfly.

Anti-development fervor has continued. About a decade ago, a city councilman suggested sidestepping a state housing law that requires cities to plan for growth by zoning for homes where nothing would ever get built — the bottom of Brisbane’s lagoon.

Residents’ efforts to protect Brisbane’s small-town feel make large changes hard to accept, said Paul Bouscal, 58, a San Francisco water department employee who has lived in the area since 1982.

The Baylands, he said, plays on fears of Brisbane getting big.

“For our town to grow like that, it would be too much, too fast,” Bouscal said.

It might be easier for residents and elected officials to welcome growth if the city received more tax dollars for doing so. But the opposite is true.

Because of tax limits established in 1978 by Proposition 13, local governments generally receive more revenue from sales and hotel room taxes than property taxes. Proposition 13 limited property tax rates to 1% of a home’s taxable value and restricted how quickly that taxable value could increase after a purchase.

Last year, Brisbane hired a consultant who found that the city would net $1 million a year in tax revenue by approving the Baylands. But if the city instead approved a project with lots more commercial space, a larger hotel and no housing, Brisbane would gain $9 million annually — an amount equivalent to more than half the city’s current day-to-day operating budget.

Developers are always going to face opposition because of residents’ concerns about their communities changing, said Mark Stivers, a longtime state housing policy staffer. But the tax system is another big reason the state has a housing shortage, he said.

“I’d like to think if just the fiscal incentives were reversed, if a city could make as much money off housing as they could retail, we’d be having a very different conversation in California,” Stivers said.

Jonathan Scharfman, general manager of Universal Paragon Corp., describes the area where his company hopes to build a 4,400-unit housing development.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Debate over the Baylands has divided the town and dominated Brisbane politics for at least a decade. More than half of Brisbane residents said in a 2015 city-sponsored poll that they were OK with some housing on the Baylands site. But just 3% backed a project of more than 4,000 homes such as the developer is proposing.

Bill Dettmer, 63, spent a recent morning at Madhouse Coffee, one of the city’s main gathering spots, trying to convince skeptical neighbors that the city should support the housing. Dettmer moved to Brisbane 50 years ago and does maintenance work in the city.

“I see a lot of stuff,” Dettmer said. “I see beds in garages. You have to increase the [housing] supply. If you really want to help out people, let them live in dignity. It just seems like a no-brainer.”

Many local opponents cite the land’s history — not hostility to growth — for why they’re against the project. San Francisco used to dump its garbage on the site, and a railroad company repaired its trains there. Longtime residents remember watching tires burn.

Scharfman, the developer’s general manager, said Universal Paragon Corp. will clean up the land and won’t begin building until all environmental agencies responsible say it’s safe. He likened the process to how an old rail yard at San Francisco’s Mission Bay was cleaned up and now has thousands of homes.

Still, some Brisbane residents say they don’t trust regulators will get it right, because what’s known about the toxicity of chemicals can change over time. Even though they won’t live in the Baylands, opponents believe they have a responsibility to shield those who might.

“Why do we have a seat belt law? Why do we have a helmet law? They’re anti-stupidity laws to protect the general population,” said Michele Salmon, 63, who was born and raised in Brisbane.

Salmon said she understood housing problems were real and lamented the lack of space to accommodate a growing population.

“I do feel sorry that the younger generation is not going to get to live the life that we did,” she said. “But it’s a different time.”

State and regional officials have few tools to push Brisbane. Every eight years, the state tells every city and county to plan for the construction of a certain number of new homes to accommodate planned population growth. Between 2007 and 2014, Brisbane’s goal was 401 houses. Developers built a little more than a third of that target, but the city faces no consequences for the lack of home building.

Similarly, regional agencies such as the Assn. of Bay Area Governments have to plan for urban growth as part of the the state’s climate change efforts. California won’t meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, regulators have said, without a significant reduction in driving fueled by more people walking, biking and using mass transit. The Baylands project and its 4,400 homes next to a Caltrain station are written into the region’s climate change proposal, but that means nothing for the project’s actual approval.

“This is a plan, an expectation of how we could grow,” said Leah Zippert, an Assn. of Bay Area Governments spokeswoman. “It is not a mandate to build. It’s not a mandate to do anything.”

The Brisbane City Council plans to make a key decision on the Baylands this summer, including whether it supports any housing on the site. But the council expects to put that proposal on the ballot next year. Brisbane’s residents will be the ones with the last word.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam

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