I count nearly a dozen serious candidates, with possibly more to come. Why so many?
Opportunity.
This is the most wide-open race for California governor in decades. By comparison, you’d have to go back to at least 1998, when Lt. Gov. Gray Davis surged past a pair of moneybag candidates, Al Checchi and Rep. Jane Harman, in the Democratic primary, then stomped Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren in November to win the general election.
Now, as then, there is no one who even remotely resembles a prohibitive front-runner.
After making a bundle as a hedge fund manager, the San Francisco billionaire and environmental activist has been panting after public office for years. Running for president didn’t work out in 2020, even after Steyer spent more than $345 million on his effort. (That’s close to what the Dodgers spent on their 2025 payroll.)
Longtime readers of this column — both of you! — will know I make no predictions.
But California voters have never looked favorably upon rich candidates trying to make the leap from political civilian to the governorship or U.S. Senate. In fact, over the last 50-plus years, a gilded gallery of the well-to-do have tried and spectacularly failed.
Perhaps Steyer will display the policy chops or the razzle and dazzle they all lacked. But his launch video certainly didn’t shatter any molds. Rather, it presented a stereotypical grab bag of redwood trees, potshots at Sacramento, multicultural images of hard-working-everyday-folk, a promise to fight, a pledge to build more housing and, of course, a dash of profanity because, gosh darn it, nothing says “unbridled authenticity” like a political candidate swearing!
Winning gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia — not by a little, but a lot — and prevailing in down-ballot contests in Pennsylvania and Georgia had a remarkably transformative effect. (Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in sky-blue New York City was no big surprise once the democratic socialist prevailed in the primary.)
Literally overnight, Democrats seized the momentum heading into the 2026 midterm election, while Republicans have begun scrambling to reposition their party and recraft its messaging.
All that being said, even before their buoyant off-year performance those widespread reports of Democrats’ demise were greatly … well, we’ll leave that Mark Twain chestnut alone. As analyst Charlie Cook points out, 2024 was a deeply disappointing year for the party. But it wasn’t a disaster.
Democrats gained two House seats. There was no net change in any of the 11 gubernatorial races and legislative contests across 44 states ended in something close to a wash. The party lost four Senate seats — and control of the chamber — but three of those losses came in the red states of Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.
“This is not to argue that Democrats had a great night in November 2024, but it certainly wasn’t a massacre or a party-wide repudiation,” Cook wrote in a recent posting. “If voters had intended to take it out on the party as a whole, the results would have looked quite different.”
If you’re asking whether Democrats will win control of the House or Senate…
Yes?!?
…I haven’t a clue.
Democrats need to gain three seats to take control of the House and both history and Trump’s sagging approval ratings — especially as pertains to the economy — augur well for their chances. The president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections and, according to Inside Elections, the fewest number of seats that flipped was four.
An appeals court last week tossed out a Republican gerrymander in Texas, putting Democrats in an even stronger position, though the legal wrangling is far from over. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the decision, pending review. And still to come is a high court ruling that could gut the Voting Rights Act and yield Republicans a dozen or more House seats nationwide.
So the fight for control is far from decided.
As for the Senate, Republicans stand a much better chance of keeping control, given how the seats contested in 2026 are located on largely favorable GOP terrain.
But until the votes are counted, nobody knows what will happen. That’s the thing about elections: they help keep wiseacres like me honest.
I was a bit skeptical when an emailer suggested touring Torrance as a way to appreciate this South Bay hidden gem. As a San Gabriel Valley product, I’ve enjoyed excursions to the iconic Rose Bowl or the historic San Gabriel Mission.
But Torrance? Really?
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I’m a fan of the divine paradise cakes baked at two King’s Hawaiian locations in Torrance and am aware that Compton-based hip hop group N.W.A recorded “F— tha Police” in a city music studio.
Yes, that’s all fine and notable, but is this city of 140,000 actually tour worthy?
Debbie Hays, a resident and Torrance Historical Society docent, was up to the challenge of proving it certainly was when we met for a tour this week.
History meets Hollywood
We started at the Torrance Historical Society. Inside, visitors receive a quick lesson about the city’s creation, from a Spanish land grant to its founding by financial broker Jared Sidney Torrance in 1912.
A good portion of the talk centers on one of the city’s heroes, Louis Zamperini, known as the “Torrance Tornado.”
The Olympic and USC star, who competed in the famed 1936 Games, was a larger-than-life pillar captured in book and film, the latter the 2014 movie “Unbroken.”
“Louis was a bit of a misfit in his early days and his story is one of redemption and finding his purpose,” Hays said. “It started with track and of course he’s most known about his role in the war.”
“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays says.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Zamperini was a U.S. Army Air Force bombardier in 1943 when his B-24 Liberator went down in the Pacific on May 27 with 10 additional crew members.
Zamperini floated on a life raft for 47 days, battling sharks and hunger before being picked up by a Japanese patrol boat.
He was tortured for two years before he was finally freed.
Hays showed off heirlooms, trophies and files donated by the Zamperini family, including more than 60 pounds of notes and awards, used in production of the movie.
“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays said.
The ‘Ramen Capital of Southern California’
One of the more surprising details about Hays’ tour was the number of excursions the city offers.
You can take one of several self-guided tours of the city’s dozen or so microbreweries and craft beer tasting sites that highlight a burgeoning craft industry.
The most delectable tour, however, may be shown on the city’s Ramen Trail map, which declares Torrance the “Ramen Capital of Southern California.”
As for locales, the film and television map tour denotes more than 200 locations where movies like “Scarface,” “Boogie Nights” and “Horrible Bosses” and television sitcoms like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Barry” were filmed.
“We aren’t Hollywood, but we have many spots worth visiting,” Hays said. “All they’re all relatively close together.”
The Buffy home
One of her most popular excursions is the Fall Tour of Old Torrance, held annually in October.
Hays offers architectural and historic showings of Tudor, Mission and Spanish Colonial revival homes often butting up against each other. Most homes are over 100 years old.
“It’s a very eclectic tour that you don’t see every day in every town,” Hays said. “We’re not a cookie-cutter neighborhood.”
Yet, it’s the No. 4 spot on that tour, a 1914 Craftsman-style home at 1313 Cota Ave., that draws a pilgrimage year round.
The 2,296-square-foot home is forever known as “the Buffy home,” where the popular television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was filmed.
The four bedroom, two bathroom home served as the home of main character Buffy Summers, played by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar.
“I’ve led private tours to the home, with sometimes as many as 80 people,” Hays said. “Fans come to the house, they cry, they take pictures, they hug the tree. They love it.”
Paradise cakes, ramen noodles, craft beer and Zamperini memorabilia. You don’t have to love Buffy to appreciate Torrance.
The week’s biggest stories
A pedestrian braves the rain in Venice Beach.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
SoCal’s stormy weather
Olympic updates
Crime in L.A. County
UCLA vs. the Rose Bowl
Homeless services in L.A.
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Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in the movie “Wicked: For Good.”
(Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures)
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“Forever chemicals” don’t die — they just regroup. Only instead of regrouping in hell, as that old Marines saying goes, it’s in the oceans, where such compounds were dumped for decades.
For years, Times environmental reporter and Pulitzer finalist Rosanna Xia has been covering the legacy of forever chemical DDT, a pesticide once applied to humans as innocuously as hairspray and yardhose water. In 2020 she broke the story that barrels of DDT’s toxic waste, last sent to the ocean floor decades ago by its biggest manufacturer, Montrose, were closer to Southern California’s shores than previously thought. Her ongoing investigative work is now the subject of a documentary, “Out of Plain Sight,” which Xia co-directed with Daniel Straub. (Full disclosure: It was produced by L.A. Times Studios, an affiliate company.)
The film is a fleet, urgent-sounding dispatch, centering on Xia herself as an intrepid factfinder roving the affected coastline, dropping in on scientists, oceanographers, biologists and wildlife experts as she tries to piece together the effects of half a million barrels of forgotten DDT, banned in 1972 but still having an impact on an already fragile ecosystem and the descendants of those exposed to it. Her inspiration, quoted up top and glimpsed in archival footage, is Rachel Carson, whose seminal 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” spurred enough public outcry against chemical pesticides to lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Carson’s galvanizing alarm was, paradoxically, an absence, seen in declining bird populations (hence the “silent” of her title). Xia’s clarion call, meanwhile, starts with robot-captured images of leaking barrels on the ocean floor. That’s the beginning of the sea-to-land food chain that starts with DDT-ridden marine life. Microplastics are the current bete noire and rightly so, but we’re still in the dark about the causal calamity of a past era’s chemical polluting. It’s one thing if a company like Montrose, now defunct, once believed no one would notice their massive DDT-waste-dumping operation. It’s another, the movie argues, if we choose not to wrestle with the environmental ramifications being felt today.
“Out of Plain Sight” strives to be more cinematically alive than the standard talking-head-laden documentary. A brief history of DDT, from the corporate excitement over its invention to protesting, is given a snazzy split-screen archival montage treatment, sourced from educational films, newsreels and interviews but scored to the Zombies’ “I Don’t Want to Know” as a cheeky touch. And all of Xia’s interviews are filmed in the field in a vérité style, a nod to journalism in action, from UC San Diego labs and mammal rescue operations treating cancer-riven sea lions to microbiologist David Valentine’s attempts to collect samples from those time-bomb-like barrels of sludge.
Though we need movies that demystify journalism (and Xia is an appealing on-camera correspondent), that aspect is less interesting than the propulsive portrait of a dedicated, multi-pronged effort to expose, understand and hopefully clean up a still-viable threat. “Out of Plain Sight” doesn’t need to be earthshaking filmmaking to relay a valuable ongoing story about a hidden nightmare for all of us. It brings to mind another famous saying, just as applicable to DDT’s longevity as the one about the Marines, from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead — it’s not even past.”
San Francisco Bay Area Democrat Eric Swalwell, a nettlesome foil and frequent target of President Trump and Republicans, on Thursday announced his bid for California governor.
The congressman declared his bid during an appearance on the ABC late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, adding a little Hollywood flourish to a crowded, somewhat sleepy race filled with candidates looking for ways to catch fire in the 2026 election.
Voter interest in the race remains relatively moribund, especially after two of California’s most prominent Democrats — former Vice President Kamala Harris and current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla — opted to skip the race after months of speculation. About 44% of registered voters said in late October that they had not picked a preferred candidate to lead California, which is the most populous state in the union and has the fourth-largest economy in the world.
The lack of a blockbuster candidate in the race, however, continues to entice others to jump in. Earlier this week, billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer announced his bid, and other well-known Democrats are exploring a possible run.
Swalwell, a 45-year-old former Republican and former prosecutor who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020, said his decision was driven by the serious problems facing California and the threats posed to the state and nation with Trump in the White House.
“People are scared and prices are high, and I see the next governor of California having two jobs — one to keep the worst president ever out of our homes, streets and lives,” Swalwell said in an interview with The Times. “The second job is to bring what I call a new California, and that’s especially and most poignantly on housing and affordability in a state where we have the highest unemployment rate in the country, and the average age for a first-time homebuyer is 40 years old, and so we need to bring that down.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom cannot run for reelection because of term limits, and he is currently weighing a 2028 presidential bid.
None of the candidates in the race, including Swalwell, possess the statewide notoriety, success or fundraising prowess of California’s most recent governors: Newsom, California political icon Jerry Brown and movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“If you look at the past three governors, they’ve all had personalities,” said Jim DeBoo, Newsom’s former chief of staff, at a political conference at USC on Tuesday. “When you’re looking at the field right now, most people don’t know” much about the candidates in the crowded race despite their political bona fides.
Nearly a dozen prominent Democrats and Republicans are running for governor next year, including: former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond; former Controller Betty Yee and conservative commentator Steve Hilton. And speculation continues to swirl about billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta possibly entering the race.
On Thursday, Thurmond proposed a tax on the wealthy to fund education, healthcare, firefighting and construction. The proposal was seen in part as a subtle dig at Steyer and Caruso, both of whom have used their wealth to fund previous runs for office.
“The naysayers say California’s ultra wealthy already pay enough, and that taxing billionaires will stifle innovation and force companies to leave our state,” he said in an online video. “I don’t buy it.”
Steyer painted his decision to leave the hedge fund he created in California as an example of his desire to give back to the state’s residents in an ad that will begin airing on Friday.
“It’s really goddamn simple. Tackle the cost-of-living crises or get the hell out of the way. Californians are the hardest-working people in the country. But the question is who’s getting the benefit of this,” he says in the ad, arguing that he took on corporations that refused to pay state taxes as well as oil and tobacco companies. “Let’s get down to brass tacks: It’s too expensive to live here.”
Porter also went after Steyer, another sign that the intensity of the race is heating up as the June primary fast approaches.
“A new billionaire in our race claims he’ll fight the very industries he got rich helping grow — fossil fuel companies, tobacco and private immigration detention facilities — at great cost to Californians,” she wrote on X on Wednesday.
The former congresswoman was the subject of recent attacks from Democratic rivals in the governor’s race after videos emerged of her scolding a reporter and swearing at an aide. Yee said she should drop out of the race and Villaraigosa blistered her in ads.
Villaraigosa also attacked Becerra for his connection to the scandal that rocked Sacramento last week, involving money from one of his campaign accounts being funneled to his former chief of staff while Becerra served in the Biden administration.
“We don’t have a strong or robust opposition party in California, so you end up like seeing a lot of this action on the dance floor in the primary, obviously, between Democrats, which is going to be interesting,” said Elizabeth Ashford, who worked for Schwarzenegger, Brown and Harris and currently advises Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. “There’s obviously a lot of longtime relationships and longtime loyalties and interactions between these folks. And so what’s going to happen? Big question mark.”
The ability to protect California from Trump’s policies and political vindictiveness and deal with the state’s affordability, housing and homelessness crisis will be pivotal to Swalwell’s potential path to the governor’s mansion. His choice to announce his decision on Kimmel’s show was telling — the host’s show was briefly suspended by Walt Disney-owned ABC under pressure from Trump after Kimmel made comments about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel thanked Swalwell for his support during that period, which included the congressman handing out pro-Kimmel merchandise to his colleagues in Washington, D.C., before the two discussed the future of the state.
“I love California, it’s the greatest country in the world. Country,” Swalwell said. “But that’s why it pisses me off to see Californians running through the fields where they work from ICE agents or troops in our streets. It’s horrifying. Cancer research being canceled. It’s awful to look at. And our state, this great state, needs a fighter and a protector, someone who will bring prices down, lift wages up.”
There is a history of Californians announcing campaigns on late-night television. Schwarzenegger launched his 2003 gubernatorial bid on “The Tonight Show,” hosted by Jay Leno; Swalwell announced his unsuccessful presidential bid on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Swalwell said, he traveled to nearly 40 countries, and he would try to leverage the relationships he formed by creating an ambassador program to find global research money for California given the cuts the Trump administration has made to cancer research and other programs.
The congressman is perhaps best known for criticizing Trump on cable news programs. But he’s faced ample attacks as well.
In 2020, Swalwell came under scrutiny because of his association with Chinese spy Fang Fang, who raised money for his congressional campaign. He cut off ties with her in 2015 after intelligence officials briefed him and other members of Congress about Chinese efforts to infiltrate the legislative body. He was not accused of impropriety.
He is also being investigated by the Department of Justice over mortgage fraud allegations, which he dismissed as retribution for him being a full-throated critic of Trump.
Swalwell served on the City Council of the East Bay city of Dublin before being elected to Congress in 2012 by defeating Rep. Pete Stark, a fellow Democrat.
An Iowa native, Swalwell grew up in Dublin, which he said was “a town of low-income expectations” that was smeared as “Scrublin” at the time. He said that after graduating from law school, he served on the local planning commission that helped transform Dublin. The town increased housing, attracted Fortune 500 employers, exponentially improved the number of students going to college and leveraged developers to improve schools, resources for senior citizens, and police and fire services.
“We have a Whole Foods, which no one can afford to shop at,” he said.
The Trump administration filed a federal suit Thursday against California and its public university systems, alleging its practice of offering in-state college tuition rates to undocumented immigrants who graduate from California high schools is illegal.
The suit, which named Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the UC Board of Regents, the Cal State University Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors for the California Community Colleges, also seeks to end some provisions in the California Dream Act, which in part allows students who lack documentation to apply for state-funded financial aid.
“California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week — we will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”
Higher education and state officials were not immediately available to comment.
The tuition suit targets Assembly Bill 540, which passed with bipartisan support in 2001 and offers in-state tuition rates to undocumented students who completed high school in California. The law also offers in-state tuition to U.S. citizens who graduated from California schools but moved out of the state before enrolling in college.
Between 2,000 and 4,000 students attending the University of California — with its total enrollment of nearly 296,000 — are estimated to be undocumented. Across California State University campuses, there are about 9,500 immigrants without documentation enrolled out of 461,000 students. The state’s biggest undocumented group, estimated to be 70,000, are community college students.
The Trump administration’s challenge to California’s tuition statute focuses on a 1996 federal law that says people in the U.S. without legal permission should “not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state … for any post-secondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit … without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”
Scholars have debated whether that law affects California’s tuition practices since AB 540 applies to citizens and noncitizens alike.
Thursday’s complaint was filed in Eastern District of California, and it follows similar actions the Trump administration has taken against Texas, Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota.
A state judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva that alleged the county defamed him, violated his rights and unfairly flagged his personnel file with a “do not rehire” tag.
In a 26-page order, Superior Court Judge Gary D. Roberts on Wednesday granted a request by the county to reject the lawsuit under California’s Anti-SLAPP law, writing that Villanueva’s claims lack “minimal merit.”
The case’s dismissal is “a major victory,” according to Jason Tokoro, an attorney for the county.
“We are pleased that the Court agreed with the County that former Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s claims are barred by California’s anti-SLAPP statute and had no merit,” he wrote in an emailed statement Thursday. “The County can now close this chapter.”
The decision marks the third time a court has dismissed Villanueva’s assertions that the county had treated him unfairly and caused him to suffer “humiliation, severe emotional distress, mental and physical pain and anguish, and compensatory damages.”
The complaint in Villanueva’s lawsuit filed in June said it was an “attempt to clear his name, vindicate his reputation, and be made whole for the emotional distress defendants’ actions have caused him.”
Villanueva previously tried to sue in federal court. In September 2024, a judge in the Central District of California rejected the former sheriff’s $25-million federal lawsuit over the allegations, then did so again in May after Villanueva refiled the case.
Villanueva did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. The Sheriff’s Department declined to comment.
The dispute began after Inspector General Max Hunstman claimed in 2022 that Villanueva engaged in a “racially based attack” by insisting on calling Huntsman by the name he was given at birth, Max-Gustaf. Villanueva also described Huntsman as a Holocaust denier, an allegation for which he did not provide any evidence and which the inspector general has denied.
The county investigated Huntsman’s allegation and slapped the former sheriff with the “do not rehire” label. Each year, a county panel recommends dozens of government employees be disciplined for a wide range of unethical behavior ranging from theft to privacy violations by adding “do not hire” or other restrictions to their personnel files.
In his state lawsuit, Villanueva argued it was unfair for him to be subject to a “do not hire” designation while multiple public officials who had engaged in illegal conduct avoided the tag. Villanueva has maintained that he never discriminated against or harassed anyone.
“The unprecedented decision by the Board to place Villanueva on a ‘Do Not Hire’ was the result of a defamatory charge of discrimination and harassment,” the former sheriff wrote in the June complaint.
Around the same time Huntsman made his allegation, Esther Lim, then-justice deputy for county Supervisor Hilda Solis, made a complaint alleging that Villanueva had a pattern of harassing women of color during livestreams on social media. The allegation also prompted an investigation and a “do not hire” tag, which Villanueva has disputed.
Last Tuesday, I asked my friend Mish if they’d like to skip our gym trip and instead drive into Angeles National Forest for a chance to view the northern lights.
We decided, for our health, to go to the gym. We arrived around 7:15 p.m., only to realize our gym was closing early because of Veterans Day. Divine intervention or dumb luck? Either way, we left, got our cameras and snacks and headed up Angeles Crest Highway.
We stepped out of the car about 8:45 p.m., and I started shouting a flurry of joyful expletives. The pink glow of the northern lights was visible to the naked eye, shining near Mt. Gleason.
The northern lights as seen from near Angeles Forest Highway on Veterans Day.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
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This was my second time viewing the northern lights from the San Gabriel Mountains. Last May, my buddies and I were out celebrating a friend’s sobriety anniversary when my pal Machiko texted me that — somehow! — the northern lights were visible in dark places around L.A. We quickly left Chinatown and headed onto Angeles Crest Highway.
At first, around 10:50 p.m., we could only see a faint pink glow and only by using our phone cameras. By 11:30 p.m., we’d found a darker place in the forest to park, and our cameras picked up quite the light show.
From there, I quickly became enamored, similar to eclipse chasers, with how I could see the northern lights whenever possible from Southern California.
Below you’ll find my tips on how to do just that. I want you, dear Wilder, to witness the sheer awe that comes with realizing there is so much about our universe we remain blissfully unaware of — until suddenly it’s a brilliant burning pink right before us.
If you’re reading this and getting major FOMO, have no fear! We will likely have another opportunity to see the aurora near L.A. soon enough.
The northern lights illuminate the sky of the North Bay as seen from China Camp Beach in San Rafael last May.
(Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images)
The sun plays a major role in why we have auroras, and it turns out we’re in a season when the sun might be sending more our way.
I spoke to Delores Knipp, research professor in the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, who explained to me that the sun has an 11-year “solar cycle.”
The sun reached its solar maximum period last year, and as NASA noted last year, “The solar cycle is a natural cycle the Sun goes through as it transitions between low and high magnetic activity. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of the solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip — on Earth, that’d be like the North and South poles swapping places every decade — and the Sun transitions from being calm to an active and stormy state.”
Knipp said the sun now goes through a kind of relaxing period, during which the interactions of certain solar particles can create the most geomagnetic storms over a three- to four-year period. Good news? “We are about one year in,” Knipp said.
Why is that relevant to us? Because the aurora is “one manifestation of geomagnetic activity or geomagnetic storms,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And as I will explain below, the stronger the storm, the more likely it is that those of us in Southern California can see the aurora!
If you want to understand more about why auroras happen, consider checking out this presentation by Knipp, where she talks more about the science behind them — including historic auroras that really freaked out the public.
OK, let’s dive in. Here’s how I became an amateur aurora chaser, and you can too!
Mish, a friend of The Wild, sets up their camera near Angeles Forest Highway to capture the aurora visible from near L.A. on Veterans Day.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. Sign up for alerts
You can sign up for free updates from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center to view its forecasts for upcoming geomagnetic storms and how intense they’re expected to be. (A simpler option is to view the predicted aurora viewline.)
2. Learn the data points
The first time a space weather alert lands in your inbox, you might have flashbacks to a high school science class where you sat puzzled, wondering if you could still graduate if you failed this class because science had always been your weakest subject. (Maybe that was just me.)
Regardless, in the NOAA Geomagnetic Forecast, you’ll notice a data table with the “Kp index forecast,” which is the planetary K-index and is used to measure the magnitude of geomagnetic storms. Generally to be visible near L.A., the K-index needs to be at 8 or 9.
As Knipp explained to me, “When Kp goes up to 6, 7 and beyond, what that means is the auroral zone tends to extend from its quiet regions around the northern part of Norway and northern part of Canada. It can extend all the way to mid-latitudes … and in our case, the edge of it [on Nov. 11] might have been in the northern tier of the United States. Those of us who are kind of standing off to the equator-ward side can look up into the sky and still see the disturbances that are moving along the [Earth’s magnetic] field lines. And those disturbances are created by particles that are crashing into our atmosphere as they move along the field lines.”
You might also notice in NOAA’s alert a G-scale, ranging from G1 to G5. This is the rating used to gauge a geomagnetic storm’s potential effects on satellites, spacecraft and the power grid, among other things. Meanwhile, the K-index is more of an intensity rating scale.
I start to pay attention when I see forecasts mentioning a possible G3 storm. I keep an eye out as the forecast grows more detailed about whether the storm is expected to intensify and become a G4 storm. And I watch the K-index to see whether an 8 is expected.
Last week, at around 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., the Space Weather Prediction Center emailed alerts noting that the agency expected a three-hour window from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST where the K-index could reach 8. Lucky for my friend Mish and me, that’s when we arrived in the forest and found a place beyond the clouds to view the aurora.
3. Find a dark place with a northern view
You must drive beyond L.A.’s light-polluted skies to view the aurora.
There are many different websites dedicated to mapping light pollution. Last week, I found a north-facing turnout off Angeles Forest Highway that, per Dark Sky Map, was close to the “bright suburban sky” range on the Bortle scale, which stargazers and astrophotographers sometimes use to discern where to view celestial bodies.
Photographer Patrick Coyne posted to Instagram a video from Mormon Rock(s), about 12 miles east of Wrightwood in the San Bernardino National Forest, capturing a stunning pink aurora. Photographer Jason Anderson, whom I randomly met in the middle of the woods a few months ago, was among the luckiest, filming a deep red scene in Joshua Tree National Park.
Above the clouds and facing north, the lights from the aurora borealis were visible last May along Highway 2 in Angeles National Forest.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
4. Bring a camera, tripod and patience
I have a mobile phone (iPhone 15 Plus) that allows me, when in night mode, to adjust the shutter speed to 10 seconds. This essentially means the camera will take in as much light as possible within that 10-second time frame. The main image for this edition of The Wild was taken with my personal iPhone.
Mish brought their camera and tripod — while I used my iPhone and Canon DSLR — to photograph the aurora. We spent about an hour observing the aurora, and it seemed to pulse in intensity. Twice, it appeared brighter to the naked eye before becoming visible only on our cameras. By 10 p.m., the aurora had disappeared.
We headed back to L.A. hyper and eager for the next time the aurora was visible, with a goal to set up shop in the desert or some other dark corner of Southern California. Staring at the night sky has a way of inspiring you to dream bigger.
3 things to do
A young cyclist works on a bicycle at the CicLAvia Melrose event last year.
(Kirk Tsonos)
1. Watch for “Stranger Things” on a ride through L.A. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Netflix and CicLAvia will host “Stranger Things 5 One Last Ride,” a special 4-mile open streets event where fans can bike, skate or walk down a car-free stretch of Melrose Avenue in celebration of the show’s final season. The free event will feature Melrose reimagined as Hawkins, the fictional town where the show is based, with photo ops, animations, live entertainment and more. Learn more at ciclavia.org.
2. Witness the warblers of Wilmington Latino Outdoors Los Angeles and Communities for a Better Environment will host a community bird walk from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday in Wilmington. Guests will tour local resilience centers and walk through Banning Park. Register and sign a waiver at eventbrite.com.
3. Hike and help others near Pasadena Nobody Hikes in L.A. and Walking Pasadena with host their 10th Will Hike for Food hike at 8:30 a.m. Friday along the Gabrielino trail near Pasadena. Hikers are encouraged to bring nonperishable food items to donate to Friends in Deed’s food pantry in Pasadena. Money will also be accepted for the organization, which provides food, hosts a winter shelter and builds relationships with unhoused people to ease them into housing and other services. Learn more at walkingpasadena.com.
The must-read
A family poses in early October near the west entrance sign of Joshua Tree National Park during the 43-day government shutdown. The park remained open to visitors despite the shutdown.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
If you visited Yosemite or Death Valley national parks during the 43-day government shutdown, you may have experienced more order than you expected. Trash cans were cleared. Bathrooms were cleaned. That’s because, as Times staff writers Lila Seidman and Alex Wigglesworth report, employees who greet visitors and those who work in maintenance and sanitation, law enforcement and emergency functions were kept on during the shutdown, a marked difference from the 2018-19 shutdown. A Death Valley ranger, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said resource damage was rampant then at numerous parks because the guidance “was, like, shutter your doors, skeleton crew, leave the park open.” Continuing to fund visitor services kept up a facade that all was well, but the government’s choice there speaks to a long-simmering fight over our national parks: whether to prioritize the guest experience or conservation more. During the longest shutdown in U.S. history, almost 9,300 of the park service’s total 14,500-member staff, or roughly 64%, were furloughed, many of whom work on their park’s conservation, research and education teams. For example, a firefighter at Joshua Tree National Park said there were once 30 people on the team that protects endangered desert tortoises and Joshua trees, monitors air quality and restores areas after a fire. During the shutdown, none were working regularly. There was one bright spot though: Officials deemed the feeding and monitoring of the area’s pupfish, a chubby little guppy (and one of the world’s rarest fish), essential during the shutdown, a ranger said, because they’re “this star animal of the park.”
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
The Wild is dark next week for Thanksgiving and will return Dec. 4. If you’d like to take a hike, I’d recommend my Wild article from last Thanksgiving outlining treks that make me feel grateful to live here. Or especially if you’re estranged from your family and not going to attend a Thanksgiving meal, consider soothing your soul with a waterfallhike (as long as weather allows). It’ll likely be less crowded at trailheads considering those out celebrating the holiday. Regardless of what you do, may you experience something outside that fills you with goodness and wonder!
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.
More than a dozen TV shows were awarded production incentives for filming in California, including several that are relocating from other states, such as action series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and a reboot of “Baywatch.”
Together, the 17 series are expected to generate $1.2 billion in economic activity for the state. The shows are estimated to employ a collective 5,165 cast and crew members, as well as more than 35,000 background actors.
In total, the shows were awarded about $313 million in tax credits, with season 3 of the post-apocalyptic series “Fallout” receiving the largest credit ($166 million). “Baywatch,” which relocated from Hawaii, was awarded a credit of $21 million, while “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” returning from New York and Italy, was allocated nearly $80 million. The Netflix show “Forever” got nearly $63 million.
These shows are the second round of TV projects to receive incentive awards under the state’s revamped film and television tax credit program. Approved by state legislators and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year, the new program now has a cap of $750 million, up from $330 million.
Eligibility criteria was also expanded to allow more types of shows to apply.
The changes to the program came after intense lobbying from Hollywood unions, studios and other insiders amid an exodus of filming to other states and countries with more generous production incentives.
“California’s creative economy isn’t just part of who we are — it helps power this state forward,” Newsom said in a statement. “And when we make smart investments like our film tax credit, we’re keeping talent here at home, supporting good-paying union jobs, and strengthening an industry that defines the California brand.”
“Baywatch” executive producer and showrunner Matt Nix noted that the wildfires in January encouraged him to want to film in the Golden State. He said in a statement that the fires nearly destroyed his home, but that the “heroism of the first responders who fought to save our community” inspired him.
“Baywatch was born in Los Angeles,” Nix said. “I’m so glad we can bring it home again.”
Hundreds of thousands of times each year in California, farmers and their contractors spray pesticides on fields and orchards in the state’s agricultural heartlands.
Farmworkers young and old can be exposed to dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals if they are not properly trained, left uninformed about when they can safely enter sprayed fields or exposed to pesticide applications — because of factors such as wind drift or operator error.
Yet California’s system of protecting farmworkers from pesticide dangers is anything but a tight safety net. Through interviews, public records and data analyses, an investigation by Capital & Main has found that:
Enforcement of pesticide safety rules is splintered among dozens of county agriculture commissioners, resulting in piecemeal citations. Companies that operate in multiple counties were not fined for hundreds of violations — many of them pertaining to worker safety.
County inspections to enforce pesticide safety are minimal in the state’s farm belt. In 2023, there was one inspection for every 146 times that pesticides were applied in eight of California’s top 11 producing counties, according to data provided by those counties.
In interviews, more than two dozen underage farmworkers and parents described feeling sick and dizzy or suffering from skin irritations after being exposed to pesticides. Although state law requires illnesses resulting from pesticide exposure to be reported to the state, experts and labor advocates say the number of cases is surely undercounted, in part because laborers fear retaliation from employers if they report unsafe working conditions.
Asked about these findings, state officials said the data does not reflect some of the broader actions they have taken to protect farmworkers. County regulators contend that their enforcement has improved safety conditions for laborers and noted that use of toxic pesticides has decreased significantly over the last decade. Yet groups that have researched pesticide enforcement say the state of California is not using its powers to fine repeat offenders for safety violations — and hold them accountable.
“It’s especially troubling because it means workers aren’t being protected,” said Anne Katten, director of the Pesticide and Work Health and Safety Project for theCalifornia Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Exposure to pesticides and laboring in extreme heat are problematic for all farmworkers, but the long-term effects on the neurological system and vital organs can be more pronounced for younger laborers, according to medical experts.
“Children are still developing, and so we don’t want to mess with that development,” saidDr. Jose Suarez, a physician and associate professor of public health at UC San Diego, who has researched the effects of pesticides on adolescents.
Araceli, who started working the fields of the Santa Maria Valley four years ago when she was just 13, said that some of her most disturbing experiences involved planting vegetables in fields that reeked of chemicals.
“Sometimes, it would be really, really pungent,” she recalled, adding that she’d get headaches and feel like throwing up.
At times, Araceli said, skin peeled off her fingers and they turned white.
Her mother, in a separate interview, said in Spanish that her “head began to hurt” after she entered a lettuce field where a tractor had sprayed liquid that smelled like chemicals.
A 17-year-old strawberry picker at one of the many berry fields in the Salinas Valley.
(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)
Unlike in other states, California’s system to protect farmworkers is split between local and state agencies.
Enforcement at the local level is the responsibility of55 county agricultural commissioners, who are appointed by their boards of supervisors and have a dual role of promoting agriculture and enforcing state pesticide safety laws. The stateDepartment of Pesticide Regulation enforces pesticide safety across California and provides guidance and training to agricultural commissioners.
In interviews, agricultural commissioners said the dual regulation system works because crops and growing seasons vary in each county and they can focus on the specific needs in their jurisdictions.
Yet when agricultural commissioners take enforcement action against a company for pesticide violations, they are not required by the department to check whether the firm has committed violations in other regions of California. In a statement, the department said that it “monitors compliance for repeat offenders as well as trends that may occur throughout the state.”
Capital & Main analyzed 40,150 records detailing pesticide enforcement actions across California from January 2018 through the first quarter of 2024.
According to the records, more than 240 businesses were cited for at least 1,268 violations of state pesticide laws in three or more counties. But for at least 609 of these violations — or 48% — the businesses paid no fines and received only notices or warnings.
Pesticide safety violations
Over six years, California cited more than 240 businesses across the state for at least 1,268 violations of pesticide safety laws in three or more counties.
But for nearly half of those violations the companies paid no fines and only received warnings or notices to correct the problems.
Analysis is from more than 40,000 state enforcement records from 2018 through early 2024.
Lorena Iñiguez Elebee LOS ANGELES TIMES
Craig Cassidy, a spokesperson for the Department of Pesticide Regulation, said in a written response that the number of violations with no fines “does not account for broader actions [that state and county regulators] may have taken to address the violations or to support compliance,” including warning letters or required training.
“Issuing fines is one tool in an effective enforcement program, which may be used in conjunction with other strategies to support compliance with statewide pesticide use laws and regulations,” he said.
Still, according to the data, there were repeated cases in which businesses were cited for multiple violations in separate counties but were never fined.
Agricultural contractor Nextcrop Inc., for example, was cited for 10 violations in four counties within a span of three years, but it was never ordered to pay a fine and received only warnings and notices to correct the problems, the records show.
All the violations pertained to requirements such as failing to provide pesticide safety training for workers, not posting information to inform employees about which pesticides were used on crops and failing to post information about when it was safe for workers to enter pesticide-sprayed fields.
The chief executive of Nextcrop and another company official did not respond to requests for comment.
Nutrien Ag Solutions, which is operated by a leading global supplier of agricultural services and products, is a company known to state regulators. In 2018, the firmagreed to pay $331,353 to U.S. officials in connection with 52 federal pesticide safety violations, some of them at seven facilities in the San Joaquin and Santa Maria valleys. The Department of Pesticide Regulation was involved in the investigation, according to federal regulators.
And from 2018 to 2022, agricultural commissioners cited the company for 35 separate violations of state law in 12 counties, the records show. They included failing to provide decontamination facilities and protective gear for workers, not following label instructions for pesticide use and failing to post emergency medical information in fields.
The firm paid fines for only 10 of the violations for a total of $14,700, according to the records.
In a statement, Nutrien Ag Solutions said that the violations “were resolved years ago, with prompt action taken at the time to address and correct them.”
“Nutrien upholds high standards in our operations,” the company said, “and remains dedicated to supporting farmers globally with the tools and expertise they need to produce safe and healthy crops.”
On two separate occasions, in 2018 and 2021, the Fresno County agricultural commissioner referred Nutrien Ag Solutions to the Department of Pesticide Regulation for enforcement action, the records show. Yet even after the second referral, the business continued to operate and was cited for 16 additional state violations in more than a half-dozen counties, the majority for which it was not fined.
The department said the case was referred to a regional office in Fresno County, but that it was never forwarded to headquarters in Sacramento for review.
“This was an error,” Cassidy said, “and we are looking into this matter.”
He added that the department is planning to propose regulations that would require agricultural commissioners to check a company’s statewide compliance history when taking enforcement actions, as well as justify the amount of their fines.
California agriculture has long depended on chemical-based pesticides to reduce crop damage and boost yields. Although organic farming has grown over the years, it accounts for less than 10% of all cropland statewide, far from the 20% goal by 2045 that California has adopted.
Commissioners in eight of California’s top 11 agricultural-producing counties agreed to provide estimates for the total number of times pesticides were sprayed in their jurisdictions — a figure they are not required by the state to track.
According to the estimates, pesticides were sprayed more than 687,000 times in the eight counties in 2023. That same year, 4,720 total inspections were performed in those counties — or less than 1% of the time that fields and orchards in those jurisdictions were sprayed with pesticides, according to enforcement records filed with the state.
Pesticide inspections
Agricultural commissioners provided estimates for the number of pesticide applications for 2023 in eight of the top 11 counties for agricultural production in California. The data and state enforcement records showed that these counties performed a small number of inspections compared with overall pesticide applications.
= 1,000 pesticide applications
Safety inspections were performed less than 1% of the time
Agricultural commissioners in Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Merced, Monterey, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara and Tulare counties and state pesticide enforcement records.
Lorena Iñiguez Elebee LOS ANGELES TIMES
In interviews, six agricultural commissioners said the pesticide regulatory system is too complex to be measured by a single metric, such as the number of inspections.
“I don’t think it’s a realistic way to gauge effectiveness,” said Melissa Cregan, the commissioner in Fresno County.
She and other commissioners pointed to illnesses from pesticide exposure as a key indicator of their success. Of the 859 cases reported in California in 2021, the most recent figures available, 210 — or 24% — were agricultural workers.
But experts and worker advocates say that such figures are probably undercounted, noting that more than half of the state’s farmworkers lack documentation.
“There are many, many cases that are not reported because the workers are afraid of being deported or retaliation from the employer,” United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said.
Commissioners also said that farmers are using less dangerous chemicals, citing a 56% increase in use of biopesticides over the last decade.
In the last 10 years, they said, use of carcinogenic substances has dropped by 20% statewide, groundwater contaminants have been reduced by 77% and the use of reproductive toxins has dropped by 45%.
Commissioners said that most of their field enforcement is focused on so-called restricted use pesticides, which represent a relatively small percentage of all pesticides used but have a higher potential to harm people, wildlife and the environment and include chemicals that can cause cancer.
Yet even by that measure, relatively few inspections are conducted.
The hands of this 17-year-old strawberry picker are a testament to the physical nature of the work.
(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)
In Monterey County, where 14-year-old Jose and his family labor in Salinas Valley strawberry fields, the number of all agricultural pesticide safety inspections in 2023 equaled just 3% of the total number of times that restricted-use pesticides were used, according to state records. That equates to just one inspection for every 35 times that the toxic chemicals were applied on farmlands.
From 2021 to 2023, the Monterey County agricultural commissioner approved more than 53,800 “notices of intent,” which businesses are required to file prior to applying restricted-use pesticides. That was the highest number of approvals among the top agricultural counties in California — and more than three times the number in the next-closest county, according to enforcement records.
Monterey County’s agricultural commissioner, Juan Hidalgo, said that, unlike other counties in the state, his jurisdiction has multiple growing seasons. He added that “we do review every single one of those notices of intent.”
The Salinas Valley stretches for about 90 miles across the county and is lined with rows of berries, lettuce, spinach, artichokes and cauliflower.
The valley is where, in 1970, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers launched their Salad Bowl strike, the largest farmworker labor action in U.S. history.
Today, the Salinas Valley’s biggest cash crop is strawberries, accounting for more than 20% of Monterey County’s$4.9-billion annual production value from agriculture.
A dozen minors interviewed in Monterey County described picking berries in fields that smelled of chemicals or working in fields where tractors had sprayed liquids with a strong chemical odor. Under state law, the amount of time that pickers are supposed to stay away from treated fields generally ranges from four hours to several weeks, depending on the pesticide.
Jose and his sister Raquel, 19, described entering a field in 2022 after a tractor had sprayed in rows next to where they were working.
“It smelled like chemicals, really strong … It made me dizzy,” said Raquel, who graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average and now attends college. She wants to become a nurse and work in the region, where she can use her Spanish and Mixteco language skills to help her community.
The California Strawberry Commission, which represents hundreds of growers, said that the state has the nation’s most stringent workplace safety laws and that protecting berry pickers is a top priority.
“The health and safety of farm workers is paramount in all aspects of production and prioritized by farmers and federal, state and local regulatory agencies,” Chris Christian, a vice president with the commission, said in a written response. “Farmers are also working in the fields, and their families live, work, and go to school in the communities where they farm.”
Hidalgo, the county agricultural commissioner, said worker safety is also his top priority.
He acknowledged that his 20 inspectors can’t cover all of the 314,000 acres in the county used to grow fruits and vegetables, but he said they know the growing cycles for different crops and when pesticides are most likely to be used.
“We just show up,” Hidalgo said, “and start doing an inspection.”
The inspections include a check of company records to confirm that workers receive required pesticide safety training. Yet underage workers don’t necessarily understand the documents they are told to sign, according to youths and their parents.
When she was 16, Raquel recalled, she was handed a stack of documents that had something to do with pesticides. “They just told us to sign it and to just get ready to work,” she said.
“I didn’t really know what it was because I was young,” she added, “but I signed it.”
Lopez is an independent journalist and fellow at the McGraw Center for Business Journalism. Data journalist Cherry Salazar analyzed state pesticide records for this report.
Vin Diesel will not face further litigation in Los Angeles in the sexual battery lawsuit a former assistant filed against the “Fast & Furious” star two years ago.
An L.A. County Superior Court judge on Wednesday dismissed the complaint from Diesel’s accuser, Asta Jonasson, citing a technicality.
Jonasson said in her lawsuit, filed in December 2023, that she served as Diesel’s assistant in 2010 during the filming of “Fast Five” in Atlanta and alleged the actor sexually assaulted her in a hotel room.
Her lawsuit raised 10 claims, including sexual battery, retaliation and multiple violations of California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. The complaint also sought action against Diesel’s One Race Films production company and its president, Samantha Vincent, Diesel’s sister.
Judge Daniel M. Crowley called Jonasson’s argument “untenable” and in conflict with the intention of the state’s legal code in his dismissal document. Also, since the sexual assault is alleged to have happened in Georgia, the judge said California was not the right jurisdiction in which to file the complaint.
Crowley said that California law could not be “applied to any of Plaintiff’s claims.”
The case was set to go to trial in February prior to Wednesday’s decision. Jonasson’s attorney Matthew T. Hale said in a statement Wednesday that “the Court did not decide anything about the truth of Ms. Jonasson’s allegations.”
“The ruling was based on a legal technicality,” Hale said. “We disagree with the ruling, and we are assessing next steps.”
A legal representative for Diesel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
In her complaint, Jonasson alleged Diesel groped her, pinned her to a wall and put her hand on his genitals without her consent during the hotel room encounter. The 58-year-old actor, through attorney Bryan Freedman, denied the allegations shortly after Jonasson filed her complaint.
“This is the first he has ever heard about this more than 13-year-old claim made by a purportedly nine-day employee,” Freedman said. “There is clear evidence which completely refutes these outlandish allegations.”
SACRAMENTO — California’s budgetary woes are worse than expected, forcing state lawmakers to grapple with a nearly $18 billion shortfall next year, according to a new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
This figure is $5 billion more than previous estimates in June.
Despite improvements in state revenue, the report said mandatory spending requirements under Proposition 98, which sets minimum annual funding for public schools, and Proposition 2, which specifies reserve deposits and debt payments, almost entirely offset any gains, according to the legislative analysis.
It estimated state costs for Medi-Cal and CalFresh, which provide healthcare and food assistance to Californians in need, were also $1.3 billion more than anticipated due to federal cuts from the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed in July, the report stated.
While enthusiasm for artificial intelligence companies has pushed the stock market to record highs, increasing state tax revenue, the report warned the boost likely won’t last.
“With so much exuberance surrounding AI, it now appears time to take seriously the notion that the stock market has become overheated,” the report states. “History suggests that the stock market is prone to overreact to major technological advances, even if the technology itself turns out to be revolutionary.”
The LAO advised lawmakers to increase revenue and reduce spending.
“While important components of the state economy are sluggish, revenues are not falling, nor are conditions as bad as they would be in an outright recession,” the report states. “This makes solving the budget problem with ongoing solutions all the more important. Continuing to use temporary tools — like budgetary borrowing— would only defer the problem and, ultimately, leave the state ill‑equipped to respond to a recession or downturn in the stock market.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom will unveil his annual budget proposal in January, which will serve as a starting point for legislators as they craft the state spending plan.
Assembly Budget Committee Chair Jesse Gabriel said the report underscored the challenging decisions ahead.
“While the Trump Administration continues to pursue destructive policies that will harm California families,” Gabriel said in statement released Wednesday, “the Assembly Budget Committee remains committed to crafting a responsible budget that prioritizes essential services.”
H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, said the LAO report highlighted the challenges lawmakers will face due to “federal uncertainty, market volatility, and continued growth in both cost and caseload for major state programs.”
“In the coming weeks, the Governor will be finalizing his decisions on how he’ll propose to meet the challenges in the coming year,” Palmer said in a statement.
SACRAMENTO — Current and former members of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration were among the dozens of Sacramento insiders who received FBI letters in recent days notifying them that their phone calls, texts or other electronic communications had been intercepted as part of the federal corruption case tied to Dana Williamson and two other longtime Democratic operatives.
The notifications are routine in wiretap investigations once surveillance ends, but the letters set off a wave of panic across California’s political power structure. The letters are signed by Sacramento Field Office Special Agent in Charge Siddhartha Patel and began arriving in mailboxes from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., last week, according to copies of the communications shared with The Times.
The legal notifications, under the terms of the 1968 Federal Wiretap Act, are sent out routinely to people whose private communications have been captured on federal wiretaps.
A Newsom spokesperson said the governor’s office is aware that a limited number of the letters were sent to current and former members of the administration. The spokesperson said that the letters were expected given federal law requires parties to be notified. Newsom’s office said the governor did not receive a letter.
Newsom’s office said the governor is not involved in the case against Williamson. None of the charging documents released in the cases against the three aides mention Newsom.
Copies of the letters, which were provided to The Times by individuals who asked to remain anonymous, indicate the period of time the communications were intercepted ranged from May 2024 to the end of July of 2024.
“This letter does not necessarily mean you were the target of the investigation or that any criminal action will be taken against you,” Patel wrote in the letter. “Rather, the purpose of this letter is to notify you that some of your communications may have been intercepted during the course of the investigation.”
Williamson, known as one of California’s toughest political insiders who previously worked as chief of staff to Newsom, was arrested last week on federal charges that allege she siphoned $225,000 out of 2026 gubernatorial hopeful Xavier Becerra’s dormant state campaign account. She also was accused of spending $1 million on luxury handbags and high-flying travel and illegally declaring them as business expenses on her tax returns.
According to the 23-count indictment, Williamson conspired with Becerra’s former chief deputy in the California attorney general’s office and ex-chief of staff Sean McCluskie, along with lobbyist Greg Campbell to bill Becerra’s dormant campaign account for bogus consulting services.
Williamson has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The highly publicized indictment against Williamson was sprinkled with references to her phone calls and text messages, indicating that federal investigators were likely relying on wiretapping. But the letters informing a wide swath of political insiders, from lobbyists to other operatives, is causing widespread anxiety across the Capitol.
The exact number of letters sent by the FBI is unknown, but political insiders say they’ve heard dozens of people have received one.
“It sends a chill up your spine, and everybody is worried,” said Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio, who said he did not receive a letter. “They can’t remember what they said to whom, about what. It could be anything. I think most people think this could be the tip of the iceberg. They are very concerned about where all these roads might lead.”
Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer announced Wednesday that he is running for governor of California, arguing that he is not beholden to special interests and can take on corporations that are making life unaffordable in the state.
“The richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves. Bulls—, man. That’s so ridiculous,” Steyer said in an online video announcing his campaign. “We have a broken government. It’s been bought by corporations and my question is: Who do you think is going to change that? Sacramento politicians are afraid to change up this system. I’m not. They’re going to hate this. Bring it on.”
Protesters hold placards and banners during a rally against Whitehaven Coal in Sydney in 2014. Dozens of protesters and activists gathered downtown to protest against the controversial massive Maules Creek coal mine project in northern New South Wales.
(Saeed Khan / AFP/Getty Images)
Steyer, 68, founded Farallon Capital Management, one of the nation’s largest hedge funds, and left it in 2012 after 26 years. Since his departure, he has become a global environmental activist and a major donor to Democratic candidates and causes.
But the hedge firm’s investments — notably a giant coal mine in Australia that cleared 3,700 acres of koala habitat and a company that runs migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — will make him susceptible to political attack by his gubernatorial rivals.
Steyer has expressed regret for his involvement in such projects, saying it was why he left Farallon and started focusing his energy on fighting climate change.
Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer addresses a crowd during a presidential primary election-night party in Columbia, S.C.
(Sean Rayford / Getty Images)
Steyer previously flirted with running for governor and the U.S. Senate but decided against it, instead opting to run for president in 2020. He dropped out after spending nearly $342 million on his campaign, which gained little traction before he ended his run after the South Carolina primary.
Next year’s gubernatorial race is in flux, after former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla decided not to run and Proposition 50, the successful Democratic effort to redraw congressional districts, consumed all of the political oxygen during an off-year election.
In recent years, Steyer has been a longtime benefactor of progressive causes, most recently spending $12 million to support the redistricting ballot measure. But when he was the focus of one of the ads, rumors spiraled that he was considering a run for governor.
In prior California ballot initiatives, Steyer successfully supported efforts to close a corporate tax loophole and to raise tobacco taxes, and fought oil-industry-backed efforts to roll back environmental law.
His campaign platform is to build 1 million homes in four years, lower energy costs by ending monopolies, make preschool and community college free and ban corporate contributions to political action committees in California elections.
Steyer’s brother Jim, the leader of Common Sense Media, and former Biden administration U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy are aiming to put an initiative on next year’s ballot to protect children from social media, specifically the chatbots that have been accused of prompting young people to kill themselves. Newsom recently vetoed a bill aimed at addressing this artificial intelligence issue.
Nov. 18 (UPI) — Two more defendants have been sentenced for their roles in a $16 million California hospice scam that billed Medicare for medical services that never were provided.
The U.S. District Court for Central California on Monday sentenced Juan Carlos Esparza, 33, of Valley Village, to 57 months in prison and ordered him to pay $1.83 million in restitution, according to the Justice Department.
The court on Monday also sentenced Susanna Harutyunyan, 39, of Winnetka, to 15 months in prison and to pay $2.82 million in restitution
Their sentences are in addition to that of Karpis Srapyan, 35, of Winnetka, who was sentenced to 57 months in prison and to pay $3.2 million in restitution in October.
Mihran Panosyan, 47, of Winnetka, in September also was sentenced to 57 months and was ordered to pay $4.7 million in restitution.
The court in May also sentenced Petro Fichidzhyan, 44, of Granada Hills, to 12 years in prison and ordered him to pay $17.13 million in restitution.
Their scheme ran from July 2019 until January 2023 as the five defendants “operated four sham hospices” that billed Medicare for unnecessary medical procedures that never were provided, according to the DOJ.
Esparza owned the House of Angels Hospice and, with the help of Fichidzhyan and Srapyan, “concealed the scheme by using foreign nationals’ names and personally identifiable information to act as straw owners for the hospices and to open bank accounts, submit information to Medicare and to sign property leases,” the DOJ said Tuesday in a news release.
The defendants also obtained cell phones in the names of foreign nationals and controlled them to further the scheme that netted $16 in payments from Medicare.
The DOJ said they conspired with Harutyunyan, Panosyan and others to launder the proceeds by maintaining fraudulent identification documents, bank documents, checkbooks, credit cards, debit cards and other records associated with the sham hospices in the names of the “purported foreign workers.”
After defrauding Medicare, the defendants transferred the money among different accounts and assets, including bank accounts in the names of shell companies, to launder the proceeds and conceal the scheme, according to the DOJ.
Esparza in July pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering.
That same month, Harutyunyan also pleaded guilty to transactional money laundering, and Srapyan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering.
Panosyan in June pleaded guilty to concealment money laundering, and Fichidzhyan in February pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud, aggravated identity theft and concealment money laundering.
The federal court in May also ordered forfeiture of two homes the defendants bought with the fraudulent proceeds, and the federal government seized $2.92 million from associated bank accounts.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Adam Gray was one of only six House Democrats — and the only one from California — who voted with Republicans in favor of a deal to end the government shutdown, and there was a calculated reason behind that decision.
Gray, a first-term Democrat from the Central Valley, is running for reelection in a majority Latino district that national Republicans are expected to heavily target as they defend their narrow House majority in next fall’s midterm elections. Last year, Gray won his seat by 187 votes, and although redistricting has since made the 13th District more favorable to Democrats, it remains highly competitive.
The Merced Democrat’s vote reflects the political reality of representing one of the nation’s few battleground districts. Gray is positioning himself as an independent-minded Democrat willing to buck leadership on politically divisive issues. The shutdown deal gave him a rare opportunity to put that in practice, even at the risk of frustrating members of his own party.
“I know it is not comfortable, and I know there’s people that are going to be mad at me,” Gray told The Times. “But I am not here to win an argument. I am here to actually help fix problems with people in my community, and I know I did the right thing.”
Democratic representatives and senators for weeks were steadfast in opposing a shutdown deal that did not include language to extend Obamacare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year, and as a result, leave millions of Americans with higher healthcare costs.
In Gray’s district, more than half of residents rely on Medi-Cal or have coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, making them vulnerable to rising healthcare costs — a pocketbook issue that is likely to factor into an already competitive congressional race.
Beyond healthcare, nearly 48,000 families in his largely rural district rely on food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, according to the latest data provided by the Department of Agriculture. Those benefits were put at risk during the shutdown as funding for the federal program commonly called food stamps was caught up in legal disputes.
As the shutdown dragged on without meaningful negotiations on healthcare, Gray said, he grew concerned that Republicans were too comfortable “using vulnerable Americans as political leverage.”
Ultimately, Gray was among just 13 Democrats — six in the House, seven in the Senate — who went against their party to end the shutdown that had dragged on an historic 43 days.
“The government is reopening because Democrats were willing to compromise,” Gray said.
The deal, which was signed by President Trump last week, will fund the government through January 2026 and reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. It will also fund SNAP through September 2026, a provision that Gray says he wanted to secure because he worries that partisanship could lead to another shutdown in January.
Republicans attack his position
Although Gray voted with Republicans over the shutdown, national Republican operatives still see his seat as a main target ahead of next year’s election — and there is good reason for that.
The seat has a history of party flipping.
In 2024, Gray won his seat by 187 votes, the slimmest margin of any race in the country. His opponent, Republican John Duarte, who cast himself a centrist in the race, had only held the seat for one term before being beat. (And he defeated Gray two years earlier by just 564 votes.)
President Trump carried the 13th last year by five points, underscoring the competitiveness of the Central Valley district which backed Joe Biden in the first Biden-Trump matchup of 2020.
The passage of Proposition 50 has made the district safer for Democrats as the new congressional map shifts parts of Stockton, Modesto and northern Stanislaus County into the district, while removing more conservative, rural territory west of Fresno. Still, it remains a highly competitive district.
Like Duarte, Gray has positioned himself as a centrist, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from portraying him as being from the party’s far-left flank.
Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, is now focusing on Gray’s voting history on the shutdown as a reason to criticize the incumbent. Specifically, how Gray in September abstained from voting on a bill that would have prevented the shutdown.
“Instead of delivering results for Californians, out-of-touch Democrat Adam Gray is too busy appeasing his radical socialist base, and now he’s fully responsible for holding Americans hostage with the longest government shutdown in history,” Martinez said.
Martinez added that “hardworking Californians paid the price for his refusal to vote to keep the government open, and next November, they’ll send him packing.”
Gray is now facing a Republican challenge from former Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln. When Lincoln announced his bid on Nov. 6, before the shutdown deal vote, he criticized Gray for not doing enough to prevent the shutdown in the first place.
“Washington politicians like Adam Gray have fallen in line with a failed liberal agenda that’s made life less affordable and less safe,” Lincoln said in a statement.
Moving forward, Gray sees the vote as an opportunity to reset negotiations and find a bipartisan solution before funding runs out again on Jan. 30, 2026.
“I think we’re moving in the right direction,” Gray said. “I hope my colleagues have the courage to do the right thing over the next days.”
Back in his district, Democrats have had a mixed reaction to his vote. As for his congressional colleagues, they have not offered up much criticism, choosing to let Gray explain his vote to the ever-changeable 13th District.
SACRAMENTO — The U.S. Department of Justice sued California on Monday to block newly passed laws that prohibit law enforcement officials, including federal immigration agents, from wearing masks and that require them to identify themselves.
Atty. Gen. Pamela Bondi said the laws were unconsitutional and endanger federal officers.
“California’s anti-law enforcement policies discriminate against the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents,” Bondi said in a statement. “These laws cannot stand.”
The governor recently signed Senate Bill 627, which bans federal officers from wearing masks during enforcement duties, and Senate Bill 805, which requires federal officers without a uniform to visibly display their name or badge number during operations. Both measures were introduced as a response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that are often conducted by masked agents in plainclothes and unmarked cars.
The lawsuit, which names the state of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta as defendants, asserts the laws are unconstitutional as only the federal government has the authority to control its agents and any requirements about their uniforms. It further argued that federal agents need to conceal their identities at times due to the nature of their work.
“Given the personal threats and violence that agents face, federal law enforcement agencies allow their officers to choose whether to wear masks to protect their identities and provide an extra layer of security,” the lawsuit states. “Denying federal agencies and officers that choice would chill federal law enforcement and deter applicants for law enforcement positions.”
Federal agents will not comply with either law, the lawsuit states.
“The Federal Government would be harmed if forced to comply with either Act, and also faces harm from the real threat of criminal liability for noncompliance,” the lawsuit states. “Accordingly, the challenged laws are invalid under the Supremacy Clause and their application to the Federal Government should be preliminarily and permanently enjoined.”
Newsom previously said it was unacceptable for “secret police” to grab people off the streets, and that the new laws were needed to help the public differentiate between imposters and legitimate federal law officers.
The governor, however, acknowledged the legislation could use more clarifications about safety gear and other exemptions. He directed lawmakers to work on a follow-up bill next year.
In a Monday statement, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who introduced SB 627, said the FBI recently warned that “secret police tactics” are undermining public safety.
“Despite what these would-be authoritarians claim, no one is above the law,” said Wiener. “We’ll see you in court.”
California is once again fighting in federal court for a Jewish family’s right to have a precious Impressionist painting returned to them by a Spanish museum nearly 90 years after it was looted by the Nazis.
The state is also defending its own authority to legally require art and other stolen treasures to be returned to other victims with ties to the state, even in disputes that stretch far beyond its borders.
The state has repeatedly weighed in on the case since the Cassirer family first filed it while living in San Diego in 2005. Last year, it passed a new law designed to bolster the legal rights of the Cassirers and other families in California to recover valuable property stolen from them in acts of genocide or political persecution.
On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office filed a motion to intervene in the Cassirer case directly in order to defend that law. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation — which is owned by Spain and holds the Camille Pissarro masterpiece — has claimed that the law is unconstitutional and should therefore be ignored.
Bonta, in a statement to The Times, said the law is “about fairness, moral — and legal — responsibility, and doing what’s right,” and the state will defend it in court.
“There is nothing that can undo the horrors and loss experienced by individuals during the Holocaust. But there is something we can do — that California has done — to return what was stolen back to survivors and their families and bring them some measure of justice and healing,” Bonta said. “As Attorney General, my job is to defend the laws of California, and I intend to do so here.”
Bonta said his office “has supported the Cassirers’ quest for justice for two decades,” and “will continue to fight with them for the rightful return of this invaluable family heirloom.”
Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, did not did not answer questions from The Times. Bonta’s office said Stauber did not oppose its intervening in the case.
Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers’ longtime attorney, thanked Bonta’s office for “intervening in this case again to defend California’s interests in protecting the integrity of the art market and the rights of stolen property victims.”
“California law has always provided strong protections for the victims of stolen property and stolen art in particular, which the Legislature has consistently reinforced,” Dubbin said.
Bonta’s latest move ratchets up the intrigue surrounding the 20-year-old case, which is being watched around the globe for its potential implications in the high-stakes world of looted art litigation.
The painting in question — Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” — is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Both sides acknowledge it was stolen from Lilly Cassirer Neubauer by the Nazis in 1939, after she agreed in desperation to surrender it to a Nazi appraiser in exchange for a visa to flee Germany at the dawn of World War II.
The attention surrounding the case, and its potential to set new precedent in international law, likely makes the painting even more valuable.
After World War II, Lilly received compensation for the painting from the German government, but the family never relinquished its right to the masterpiece — which at the time was considered lost. What she was paid was a fraction of the current estimated worth.
In the decades that followed, Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer — who had also survived the Holocaust — moved with his family to San Diego.
In 2000, Claude made the shocking discovery that the painting was not lost to time after all, but part of a vast art collection that Spain had acquired from the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, the scion of a German industrialist family with ties to Hitler’s regime. Spain restored an early 19th-century palace near the Prado Museum in Madrid in order to house the collection as the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Claude asked the museum to return the painting to his family. It refused. He sued in U.S. federal court in 2005. The case has been moving through the courts ever since.
California passed its new law in response to the 9th Circuit ruling last year, which held that state law at the time required it to apply an archaic Spanish law. That measure dictates that the title to stolen goods passes legitimately to a new owner over time, if that owner wasn’t aware the goods were stolen when they acquired them — which the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has argued makes its ownership of the painting legally sound.
In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new law during a small gathering with the families of Holocaust survivors at the Holocaust Museum LA. Lilly’s great-grandson and Claude’s son David Cassirer, who now lives in Colorado, was there, praising the state’s lawmakers for “taking a definitive stand in favor of the true owners of stolen art.”
In March, the Supreme Court in a brief order ruled that the 9th Circuit must reconsider its ruling in light of California’s new law.
In September, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Collection filed a motion asking the appellate court to rule in its favor once more. It put forward multiple arguments, but among them was that California’s new law was “constitutionally indefensible” and deprived the museum of its due process rights.
“Under binding Supreme Court precedent, a State may not, by legislative fiat, reopen time-barred claims and transfer property whose ownership is already vested,” the museum argued.
It said the U.S., under federal law, “does not seek to impose its property laws or the property laws of its own states on other foreign sovereigns, but rather expressly acknowledges that different legal traditions and systems must be taken into account to facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Nazi-looted art cases.”
It said California’s law takes an “aggressive approach” that “disrupts the federal government’s efforts to maintain uniformity and amicable relations with foreign nations,” and “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of federal policy.”
David Cassirer, the lead plaintiff in the case since Claude’s death in 2010, argued the opposite in his own filing to the court.
Cassirer argued that California’s new law requires an outcome in his favor — which he said would also happen to be in line with “moral commitments made by the United States and governments worldwide, including Spain, to Nazi victims and their families.”
“It is undisputed that California substantive law mandates the award of title here to the Cassirer family, as Lilly’s heirs, of which Plaintiff David Cassirer is the last surviving member,” Cassirer’s attorneys wrote.
They wrote that California law holds that “a thief cannot convey good title to stolen works of art,” and therefore requires the return of the painting to Cassirer.
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who sponsored the bill in the legislature, praised Bonta for stepping in to defend the law — which he called “part of a decades long quest for justice and is rooted in the belief that California must stand on the right side of history.”
Belém, Brazil — Two stark-white cruise ships loomed over a muddy Amazonian estuary, an odd sight from a beach where two children waded in the water.
The diesel-powered vessels towered over the impoverished riverfront neighborhood where trash littered the ground and a rainbow sheen from household and street runoff glistened on top of rain puddles.
The cruise liners — with their advertised swimming pools, seafront promenades and an array of restaurants and bars — were brought in to house thousands of delegates attending the 12-day United Nations COP30 climate summit in Belém, which ends Friday. The ships helped address a housing crunch created by an influx of roughly 50,000 people into the capital of Pará in northern Brazil.
Along with being a global economic powerhouse, Brazil is also one of the planet’s most important climate actors. The South American nation is home to tropical rainforests that absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide but are increasingly threatened by deforestation and a drying Amazon.
A navy soldier patrols the Port of Outeiro, where cruise ships are docked to host delegations attending the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil, on Nov. 8. Two cruise ships tower imposingly over a sleepy port in the Brazilian Amazon where some 50,000 people are gathering for a U.N. climate conference. With capacity for 6,000 people, the behemoths came from Europe to the riverine city of Belem on Brazil’s north coast to serve as floating hotels.
(Pablo Porciuncula / AFP via Getty Images)
The contrast — a climate conference relying on emissions-heavy cruise ships — has become the defining image of this year’s COP30, where wealth and scarcity sit side by side.
Belém residents said they felt a mix of curiosity and excitement watching the influx of foreigners, eager to show a culture that is often overshadowed by the country’s larger southern cities.
Many described COP30 as the first time the world had paused long enough to take notice of the people living at the mouth of the Amazon River, where locally grown açaí is sold on nearly every block. The region supplies the vast majority of Brazil’s açaí crop and much of what’s exported worldwide.
As humidity hung thick in the hot air, locals across the city of 1.3 million people pointed to expanded docks meant to attract future tourism, freshly painted walkways, restored colonial buildings with late-19th-century European touches and new cultural centers rushed to completion. But the sudden infusion of money layered atop long-standing inequality sharpened questions from residents about what will remain after the summit’s global spotlight fades.
Much of the summit footprint, they said, sits in areas where new structures were built fast, unevenly or only partly completed. Brazil’s government highlighted upgrades to Belém’s airports, ports, drainage systems, sanitation networks, parks and tourist areas, saying the work would leave a lasting legacy beyond COP30.
The BBC reported that a new four-lane highway built for COP30 resulted in tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest being leveled, including trees locals relied on to harvest açaí berries to sell. One roadway to ease traffic to the climate summit remains unfinished and blocked by plastic orange netting.
“They cut all this forest to make that road and didn’t even finish it,” said Lucas Lina, 19, who works as an administrator at a Belém fire station, as he pointed to the unfinished road. “I don’t think they ever will. They will delay and delay.”
Lina said climate change is something locals feel acutely. The region has seen unpredictable rainfall, and in some years, receives little at all in an area used to its showers.
“The climate is going crazy,” Ana Paula, a government food safety inspector, said in Portuguese as Lina translated. “We can’t predict anything anymore.”
Even environmentalists acknowledge the optics are fraught, particularly as attendees flew more than 1,800 miles from events in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo for satellite gatherings. That included members of California’s delegation and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“It’s not well conceived because there’s not enough housing,” said Terry Tamminen, former California environmental secretary. “If we really cared about the climate, we’d have these events every year and they’d be 100% virtual.”
Such contradictions have often fueled demonstrations at climate summits, including on Friday when roughly 100 Indigenous protesters blocked the conference’s main entrance for more than 90 minutes. They formed a human chain as they denounced development plans they say would accelerate deforestation.
Indigenous activists participate in a climate protest during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit on Saturday in Belém, Brazil.
(Andre Penner / Associated Press)
“Our forest is not for sale,” they wrote in a statement.
It was the second protest during the first week of COP30 after a brief clash inside the massive newly constructed facility resulted in two security guards suffering minor injuries.
“There are a lot of promises that the government made that are yet to be delivered,” said Lina, who taught himself English by watching YouTube and through online gaming. “We don’t know if these promises will actually be kept up after COP30.”
That tension — between symbolism and the city’s strained reality — defines this climate conference in a way that delegates say feels impossible to ignore.
Brazil remains one of the world’s top oil producers and recently approved new drilling near the rainforest. Many delegates argued that no setting better captures the stakes of the climate crisis than the Amazon, where Indigenous stewardship, extraordinary biodiversity and the consequences of deforestation are felt globally.
“I don’t know there’s a more important location than the rainforest,” Newsom told The Times. “The one area that consistently gets overlooked in the climate discussion is biodiversity.”
This aerial view shows a deforested area of the Amazon rainforest in the municipality of Moju, Brazil, on Wednesday during the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference.
(Mauro Pimentel / AFP via Getty Images)
With the summit came new investments that residents say they welcomed, including new bus routes, expansions at ports meant to increase future tourism and increased police presence to make streets safer.
“It’s very good for us,” said Maria Fátima in Portuguese while standing under an awning of a shuttered bar overlooking the cruise ships. She smiled and gave a thumbs up after saying she had never seen an American in Belém before.
“Everyone is very happy,” she said of the possibility that the newly expanded port will bring future tourism.
That port, which experienced an oil spill in April, is now being marketed as the Amazon’s next cruise-tourism hub. Its expansion cost $44 million and relied on nonstop work from construction crews in rotating shifts. The rush project doubled the pier’s capacity.
Room prices aboard the cruise ships soared to more than $1,400 a night for a balcony cabin, according to Times inquiries. On land, Belém’s modest supply of hotels and even seedy love motels that typically rent by the hour surged in price, pushing residents to rent their apartments and homes at rates many said they had never imagined.
People on a beach along the Guama River watch cruise ships docked at the Port of Outeiro, which will host delegations attending the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, on Nov. 6.
(Carlos Fabal/AFP via Getty Images)
One attendee said her hotel room typically goes for $85 a night. Her room cost $1,000 instead.
Newsom even joked about the costs. When a Brazilian journalist asked whether California would make climate investments in the country, Newsom said the price of his room at the Holiday Inn in Belém already felt like an “economic contribution.”
But those prices didn’t benefit everyone. Local media reported that some renters were evicted ahead of the conference in order to open up rooms to foreigners.
Inside the summit, Newsom operated as a proxy for the United States while attending COP30 for two days after President Trump, an outspoken climate skeptic, declined to send any high-level federal officials.
Long Beach resident Dominic Bednar, attending his fifth climate summit, said the contradictions of this year’s summit don’t diminish the importance of being there.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Bednar, an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at UC Irvine. “On one hand, it brings understanding to the city and is driving a lot of economic investment. But I’m also curious: What is the carbon footprint of everybody coming into COP and the construction of this place? We are using energy, and we’re contributing to climate pollution.”
People riding in boats participate in a People’s Summit event on Guajara Bay during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit on Wednesday in Belém, Brazil.
(Andre Penner / Associated Press)
Graduate students from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography echoed that discomfort, but said not attending would only cede more ground to powerful energy interests that already dominate climate talks.
“We can empathize with not having our voices heard,” said graduate student Danielle McHaskell as she waited to take a photo with Newsom. “And that’s an important part of the climate movement — empathy for other people.”
Newsom, too, said he was aware of the contradiction of using fossil fuels to reach a climate summit.
Still, he defended the decision to hold COP30 in the Amazon. He said it offered a chance to “see what I’ve only seen on TV or could see disappear in my lifetime.” He added that he was particularly excited about venturing into the Amazon rainforest with a small delegation to learn in person about conservation efforts and connect with something beyond policy and negotiations.
“I think that spiritual element really matters in a world that can use a little bit more of that,” he said before returning to California on Sunday. “That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the Amazon.”
Republicans in California have diverging opinions on President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, according to a study published by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute on Monday.
The Trump administration has deployed a sweeping crackdown on immigration, launching ICE raids across the country and removing legal barriers in order to make deportations faster. The study found that while Democrats were largely consistent in their opposition to these immigration policies, Republican sentiment varied more, especially by age, gender and ethnicity.
“At least some subset of Republicans are seeing that these immigration strategies are a step too far,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor and co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which administered the poll. The polling data were collected from nearly 5,000 registered voters in mid-August. Just over 1,000 of those surveyed were registered Republicans.
Latino Republicans, with whom Trump made historic gains during the 2024 elections, showed the highest levels of disagreement with the party’s aggressive stance on immigration. Young people from 18 to 29 and moderate women in the Republican Party also more significantly diverged from Trump’s policies.
The majority of Republican respondents expressed approval of Trump’s immigration strategy overall. However, the study found respondents diverged more from Trump’s policies that ignore established legal processes, including due process, birthright citizenship and identification of federal agents.
“On these legalistic issues, this is where you see some of the bigger breaks,” Mora said.
Of those surveyed, 28% disapproved of the end of birthright citizenship, which Trump is pushing for, and 45% agreed that ICE agents should show clear identification. Four in 10 Republican respondents also support due process for detained immigrants.
Young people, who make up about 15% of the party in California, were on average also more likely to break from Trump’s policies than older Republicans.
The analysis also found that education level and region had almost no impact on respondents’ beliefs on immigration.
Latinos and women were more likely to disagree with Trump on humanitarian issues than their demographic counterparts.
Nearly 60% of moderate Republican women disagree with deporting longtime undocumented immigrants, compared with 47% of moderate men. 45% of women believe ICE raids unfairly target Latino communities.
The political party was most split across racial lines when it came to immigration enforcement being expanded into hospitals and schools. Forty-four percent of Latinos disagreed with the practice, compared with 26% of white respondents, while 46% of Latino respondents disagreed with deporting immigrants who have resided in the country for a long time, compared with just 30% of their white counterparts.
Trump had gained a significant Latino vote that helped him win reelection last year. Democratic candidates, however, made gains with Latino voters in elections earlier this month, indicating a possible shift away from the GOP.
The data could indicate Latino Republicans “are somewhat disillusioned” by the Trump administration’s handling of immigration, Mora said. “Latinos aren’t just disagreeing on the issues that we think are about process and American legal fairness. They’re also disagreeing on just the idea that this is cruel.”
Mora said the deluge of tense and sometimes violent encounters posted online could have an impact on Republican opinion surrounding immigration. A plainclothes agent pointed his gun at a female driver in Santa Ana last week, and two shootings involving ICE agents took place in Southern California late last month.
“You now have several months of Latinos being able to log on to their social media and see every kind of video of Latinos being targeted with or without papers,” Mora said. “I have to believe that that is doing something to everybody, not just Latino Republicans or Latino Democrats.”
