District

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Rebecca Ellis, with an assist from Julia Wick and Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

The ‘five little queens’ of L.A. County agree: accidentally wiping out a ballot measure is not a good look.

It’s a “bureaucratic disaster,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said this week of the revelation that voters had wiped out the promise of hundreds of millions toward services that keep people out of jail. That snafu happened when voters approved her completely unrelated ballot measure in November to change the county’s form of government.

It’s clear, the supervisors say, someone messed up badly. But who?

The bureaucratic whodunit has confounded county observers — even those who once were creatures of the county themselves.

“I just can’t figure it out,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former longtime county supervisor. “The charter amendment just disappeared. I just don’t know how that happened, mechanically.”

The mistake, it seems, began with the county’s executive office, which supports the five politicians with the less glamorous, administrative parts of the job — preparing meeting agendas and guiding the board through marathon Tuesday meetings.

One of the lesser-known job requirements: updating the county charter — think of it like the county’s constitution — when voters make changes at the ballot box. To do that, the executive office is supposed to submit the change to Municode, the online vendor hosting the county’s charter, when the measure passes.

That didn’t happen.

In 2020, voters approved Measure J, enshrining the promise of hundreds of millions toward services that keep people out of jail in the charter. Only the language was never actually added to the official charter document.

Executive Officer Edward Yen, who was sworn into the top job last year, told his bosses Tuesday that the office was cleaning up its act.

“This failure of this magnitude is the reason why we’re doing what we’re doing,” he said at the Tuesday board meeting, noting he’d found his office’s policies “limited and lacking” when he came on the job.

Celia Zavala, the former executive officer who retired in January 2024 after more than three decades with the county, couldn’t be reached for comment.

The executive office called its role “purely ministerial” when it came to charter amendments and said it was working closely with the lawyers to make sure future changes were “accurately and promptly reflected in the charter.”

It was sloppy governance, but — until recently — it didn’t really matter. Voters approved the measure, so it was, legally speaking, part of the county’s governing document, even if you couldn’t open up the charter and see it.

But when a majority of county supervisors decided they wanted to revamp the county government last year, the outdated document became a real problem.

County counsel had their marching orders: They were to create a ballot measure, known as Measure G, that would overhaul the county government, expanding the five-person board of elected supervisors to nine and bringing on a new elected executive, who would act almost as a mayor of the county.

That’s how it works, says Yaroslavsky. A supervisor has the vision. The lawyers create a ballot measure that makes it a reality.

“They put it into the secret language of legalese that none of us understand. And it wasn’t like we took a magnifying glass to it,” said Yaroslavsky, who sponsored a ballot measure in 2002 to raise money for the county’s trauma care network. “I don’t think I had any lawyers on my staff at the time — and certainly not legislative experts. So, I mean, you have to rely on your lawyers.”

To change the county government, county lawyers wrote a ballot measure that would repeal most of a section of the charter — called Article III — in 2028. That section details the powers of the board — and, most consequentially, includes the requirement from Measure J that the board funnel hundreds of millions toward anti-incarceration services.

County lawyers rewrote that chunk of the charter with the new changes the board wanted to make to the county’s form of government — but left out the anti-incarceration funding.

So when voters approved Measure G, they unwittingly repealed Measure J.

The county counsel, led by Dawyn Harrison, said in a statement last week that the fault lies with a “prior Executive Officer administration.” The charter wasn’t updated, so they were left in the dark about what they needed to include in the new version.

But some say the county lawyers — who drafted both ballot measures and therefore were presumably familiar with that part of charter— share some of the responsibility.

“It is an inexcusable administrative failing of the County’s Executive Office and Counsel,” Supervisor Holly Mitchell said last week.

“It’s just amazing that you wouldn’t recall that you had Measure J,” said John Fasana, the former Duarte City Council member who first spotted the mistake.

County counsel said in a statement that it was unrealistic. They were going off of what was posted on the online charter, which they said they’re expected to treat “as the governing law.”

“The idea that county attorneys should have ‘just known’ a provision was missing assumes we memorize every law ever passed,” county counsel said in a statement. “That’s not how the law works, and it couldn’t function if we did.”

Derek Hsieh, head of the sheriff‘s deputy union that opposed both ballot measures, says the buck stops at the top.

“The responsibility for this is with Los Angeles County supervisors. They are in charge, they take responsibility,” said Hsieh, underscoring one didn’t need to have had a law degree to figure this out.

“And by the way, John Fasana’s not a lawyer,” he said.

State of play

— MEASURE J(K): County supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to ask their lawyers to find a way to bring back Measure J. The county says it’s looking at multiple options to try to get the measure permanently back in the charter including a change in state law, a court judgment or a ballot measure for 2026.

— A HELPING HAND: County officials say a cash fund for families financially reeling from federal immigration raids will be stood up within a month. It’s not clear yet who will be eligible or how much a family could expect to collect.

— HOMELESSNESS HOPE: For the second straight year, the city and county saw declines in the number of homeless people. The number of people experiencing homelessness in the county dropped 4% in 2025, including a 10% decrease in people living on the street, according to the county’s annual point-in-time homeless count.

— TRUMP BASH: A day after the Pentagon ordered the withdrawal of half the National Guard troops deployed in L.A., Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference in Downey to criticize the president for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to appear “tough” by punishing immigrants.

— PALISADES PERSPECTIVE: Mayor Karen Bass’ political image was badly bruised in the wake of the fires, but she has compensated amid a string of historically good headlines in recent days. However, six months after the fires, she still faces some harsh critics in the Palisades, where the devastation is still palpable.

— TRAGEDY WHILE TRAINING: Three deputies were killed on Friday in an explosion at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Biscailuz Training Center in East L.A. The agency has a history of dangerous incidents at its training facilities, with at least four fires at its mobile shooting ranges in the last 12 years.

— ICE IN JAIL: The sheriff’s department has resumed transferring jail inmates to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the first time in years. Eight inmates were released to ICE in May and a dozen more in June. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said he has “no choice” in the matter. He said the department must follow federal judicial warrants seeking the transfer of inmates in its county jails.

— COSTLY CROSSWALK: A jury decided this week that the city must pay nearly $50 million to a man who has been in a coma since he was hit by a sanitation truck while crossing a street in Encino. The verdict comes as the city continues to struggle with escalating legal liability payouts.

— MOUNTING LIABILITY: The county’s no stranger to big payouts either. The supervisors approved a $14-million settlement this week to Alexander Torres, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a murder that he did not commit.

QUICK HITS

• On the docket for next week: The L.A. City Charter Reform Commission will be meeting today at 11 a.m. at Cal State Northridge.
• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s office conducted a citywide response effort this week, bringing more than 65 Angelenos inside from Echo Park, Hollywood, South L.A., Baldwin Hills, Canoga Park, Reseda, North Hills, Westlake and the Miracle Mile (Council Districts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13).

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

WASHINGTON — Debate over President Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package is over on Capitol Hill. Now the argument goes national.

From the Central Valley of California to Midwestern battlegrounds and suburban districts of the northeast, the new law already is shaping the 2026 midterm battle for control of the House of Representatives. The outcome will set the tone for Trump’s final two years in the Oval Office.

Democrats need a net gain of three House seats to break the GOP’s chokehold on Washington and reestablish a power center to counter Trump. There’s added pressure to flip the House because midterm Senate contests are concentrated in Republican-leaning states, making it harder for Democrats to reclaim that chamber.

As Republicans see it, they’ve now delivered broad tax cuts, an unprecedented investment in immigration enforcement and new restraints on social safety net programs. Democrats see a law that rolls back health insurance access and raises costs for middle-class Americans while cutting taxes mostly for the rich, curtailing green energy initiatives and restricting some workers’ organizing rights.

“It represents the broken promise they made to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who chairs the party’s House campaign arm. “We’re going to continue to hold Republicans accountable for this vote.”

Parties gear up for a fight

Whether voters see it that way will be determined on a district-by-district level, but the battle will be more intense in some places than others. Among the 435 House districts, only 69 contests were decided by less than 10 percentage points in the 2024 general election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 26 Democratic-held seats it must defend vigorously, along with 35 GOP-held seats it believes could be ripe to flip. Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has listed 18 GOP incumbents as priorities, plus two districts opened by retirements.

There are a historically low number of so-called crossover districts: Only 13 Democrats represent districts that Trump carried in 2024, while just three Republicans serve districts that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried.

Both committees are busy recruiting challengers and open-seat candidates, and more retirements could come, so the competitive map will evolve. Still, there are clusters of districts guaranteed to influence the national result.

California, despite its clear lean to Democrats statewide, has at least nine House districts expected to be up for grabs: three in the Central Valley and six in Southern California. Six are held by Democrats, three by the GOP.

Pennsylvania features four districts that have been among the closest U.S. House races for several consecutive cycles. They include a suburban Philadelphia seat represented by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of just two House Republicans to vote against Trump’s bill and one of the three GOP lawmakers from a district Harris won. Fitzpatrick cited the Medicaid cuts.

Vice President JD Vance plans on Wednesday to be in Republican Rep. Robert Bresnahan’s northwest Pennsylvania district to tout the GOP package. Bresnahan’s seat is a top Democratic target.

Iowa and Wisconsin, meanwhile, feature four contiguous GOP-held districts in farm-heavy regions where voters could be swayed by fallout from Trump’s tariffs.

Democrats fight to define the GOP

Beyond bumper-sticker labels — Trump’s preferred “Big Beautiful Bill” versus Democrats’ “Big Ugly Bill” retort — the 900-page law is, in fact, an array of policies with varying effects.

Democrats hammer Medicaid and food assistance cuts, some timed to take full effect only after the 2026 midterms, along with Republicans’ refusal to extend tax credits to some people who obtained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law; 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

“Folks will die here in Louisiana and in other parts of the country,” House Minority Leader Jeffries warned last week during a town hall in Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana.

Jeffries singled out vulnerable Republicans such as California Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, who represents a heavily agricultural Central Valley district where more than half of the population is eligible for the joint state-federal insurance program. California allows immigrants with legal status and those who are undocumented to qualify for Medicaid, so not all Medicaid recipients are voters. But the program helps finance the overall healthcare system, including nursing homes and hospitals.

Republicans highlight the law’s tightened work requirements for Medicaid enrollees. They argue that it’s a popular provision that will strengthen the program.

“I voted for this bill because it does preserve the Medicaid program for its intended recipients — children, pregnant women, the disabled, and elderly,” Valadao said. “I know how important the program is for my constituents.”

Republicans hope voters see lower taxes

The law includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. It makes permanent existing rates and brackets approved during Trump’s first term. Republicans and their allies have hammered vulnerable Democrats for “raising costs” on American households by opposing the bill.

GOP campaign aides point to the popularity of individual provisions: boosting the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 (some families at lower income levels would not get the full credit), new deductions on tip and overtime income and auto loans; and a new deduction for older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

“Everyone will have more take-home pay. They’ll have more jobs and opportunity,” Johnson said in a Fox News Sunday interview. “The economy will be doing better and we’ll be able to point to that as the obvious result of what we did.”

Democrats note that the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s tax code are wealthy Americans and corporations. Pairing that with safety net cuts, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz concluded, “The cruelty is the point.”

Immigration, meanwhile, was Trump’s strongest issue in 2024. NRCC aides say that will continue with the new law’s investments in immigration enforcement. Democrats believe that the Trump administration has overplayed its hand with its push for mass deportation.

Playing the Trump card

The president is a titanic variable.

Democrats point to 2018, when they notched a 40-seat net gain in House seats to take control away from the GOP. This year, Democrats have enjoyed a double-digit swing in special elections around the country when compared with 2024 presidential results. Similar trends emerged in 2017 after Trump’s 2016 victory. Democrats say that reflects voter discontent with Trump once he’s actually in charge.

Republicans answer that Trump’s job approval remains higher at this point than in 2017. But the GOP’s effort is further complicated by ongoing realignments: Since Trump’s emergence, Democrats have gained affluent white voters — like those in suburban swing districts — while Trump has drawn more working-class voters across racial and ethnic groups. But Republicans face a stiffer challenge of replicating Trump’s coalition in a midterm election without him on the ballot.

Democrats, meanwhile, must corral voters who are not a threat to vote for Republicans but could stay home.

Jeffries said he’s determined not to let that happen: “We’re going to do everything we can until we end this national nightmare.”

Barrow, Cooper and Brook write for the Associated Press. Cooper reported from Phoenix and Brook reported from New Orleans. AP reporters Michael Blood in Los Angeles and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Rick Cole has forgotten more about municipal government than most of us will ever know.

The 72-year-old former mayor (Pasadena), city manager (Ventura, Azusa, Santa Monica) and deputy mayor (Los Angeles) returned for a third stint at Los Angeles City Hall in 2022, bringing a depth of experience to political neophyte and then-newly elected City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office as Mejia’s chief deputy.

After two and a half years in City Hall East, Cole announced last month that he would be leaving his post to focus on the Pasadena City Council, which he joined again last year.

Cole knew that holding down “a more-than-full-time role in LA and a more-than-part-time role in Pasadena” would be difficult to juggle, he wrote in a LinkedIn post, and ultimately decided he couldn’t do both jobs justice.

In a goodbye presentation to the L.A. City Council, he sounded the alarm, saying he has never been more worried about the city.

We sat down with Cole to discuss that speech and his fears. Here’s some of our conversation, very lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell me about the speech you gave at council. What motivated it?

I’ve never been more alarmed about the future of Los Angeles. I delineated the existential challenges facing the city, which have been decades in the making. Politics needs to be looking out at the future and not just reacting to the crises of the day. And Los Angeles needs bold, systemic reform to meet the moment.

Why are you so alarmed about the future of Los Angeles?

It’s a converging set of crises. You have a homelessness emergency, an affordable housing crisis, a billion-dollar structural financial challenge that’s resulted in the loss of thousands of key city jobs. You had a firestorm that destroyed an entire neighborhood. And you have the federal government at war with the people in the government of Los Angeles.

And underneath that, you have an existential challenge to Hollywood, which is unfolding. And you have crumbling infrastructure.

And you have people feeling that government can’t really fix any of these things, that the money we spend gets wasted, fair or unfair. That’s a challenge.

Do you think the government is wasting taxpayer money?

Every institution has some level of waste. The problem with Los Angeles government and the public sector in California is an aversion to innovation.

We’ve fallen behind the private sector in adapting to the new world of advancing technology and changing demographics. That’s fixable, and that’s what I was advocating for.

What would it look like to fix these problems? Who’s responsible, and who is currently dropping the ball?

The lack of responsibility is built into the City Charter.

Tell me more about what you mean by that.

The people who originally wrote the charter a hundred years ago intentionally designed the system to diffuse authority, which therefore diffused accountability. So it’s really difficult to know who is in charge of any given thing.

A clear example is that the department heads have 16 bosses. They report to the mayor, but in each of the council districts, the council members think that the department heads report to them. That they … have to make the council member happy with what’s going on in their district, whether it’s trimming trees on a particular street or fixing a sidewalk in front of a constituent’s home, the general managers [of city departments] are subject to extreme and constant political pressure.

That distracts them from fixing the system so that we’re doing a better job, so that there are fewer resident complaints, so that a constituent wouldn’t have to go to their council member to get their street fixed. The street would get fixed every 10 years.

But if you are have 16 bosses and and a continually shifting set of priorities, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to put in place systemic solutions.

And in terms of who do you blame: Do you blame the general manager? Do you blame the mayor? Do you blame your council member? Do you blame the lack of resources that the city has to allocate?

The answer is yes.

What needs to change?

What I advocated is designing the city to work in the 21st century, which means a chief operating officer who works for the mayor to make sure the city runs effectively across 44 departments. We don’t have such a person now.

It means a chief financial officer. The responsibilities of a chief financial officer are [currently] divided between four different offices in the city, so it’s difficult, again, to point to one person who’s in charge of keeping the city fiscally sound.

The charter calls for a one-year budget, but we could do a two-year budget and simply update it once a year and be consistent with the City Charter. But then we would have a much broader view of the city’s financial future, and we wouldn’t waste so much time on a budget process that takes 11 of the 12 months and produces very little change.

State of play

— SAFER CITY: L.A. is on pace for its lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years as killings plummet, according to an LAPD tally. The falling murder rate mirrors a national trend in other big cities. As my colleague Libor Jany reports, it also paints a decidedly different picture than the Gotham City image offered by President Trump and other senior U.S. officials as justification for the deployment of military troops in L.A. in recent weeks.

—MORE RAIDS FALLOUT: Mayor Karen Bass announced a plan Friday to provide direct cash assistance to people who have been affected by the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration raids. The money will come from philanthropic partners, not city coffers, and the cash cards will be distributed by immigrant rights groups.

—MOTION TO INTERVENE: The city and county of Los Angeles are among the local governments seeking to join a lawsuit calling on the Trump administration to stop “unlawful detentions” during the ongoing immigration sweeps. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Public Counsel and immigrant rights groups last week.

—IN MEMORIAM: Longtime former executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs Jaime Regalado died last month at age 80. Born in Boyle Heights, Regalado served in the U.S. Navy and was the founding editor of California Politics & Policy and the California Policy Issues Annual. He led the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A. from 1991 to 2011.

—“SOMEONE GOOFED”: When L.A. County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn co-wrote Measure G, a sprawling overhaul of county government that voters passed last November, they didn’t realize they would also be repealing Measure J, a landmark criminal justice measure that voters had passed four years earlier. Thanks to an administrative screw-up for the ages, that’s exactly what happened. The relevant changes won’t go into effect until 2028, so county leaders have some time to undo their oops.

—DISASTER AVERTED: A potentially tragic situation was averted Wednesday night, after all 31 workers in a partially collapsed Los Angeles County sanitation tunnel were able to make their way to safety. Work on the tunnel has been halted, and the county sanitation district board is looking into what caused the collapse.

—POSTCARD FROM SANTA MONICA: In the long shadow of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller‘s hard-line anti-immigration policies, local and national observers alike are paying renewed attention to Miller’s upbringing in the famously liberal enclave once dubbed “the People’s Republic of Santa Monica.” Join me for a deep dive into Miller’s time at Santa Monica High School and learn why some of his former classmates think he’s getting his revenge on Southern California.

QUICK HITS

• On the docket for next week: The city’s charter reform commission will meet Wednesday afternoon. The City Council remains on recess.
• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s program to combat homelessness was in South Los Angeles this week, according to a tweet from Bass’ office.
• A political poem to pair with your morning coffee: “I Am Waiting” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg with an assist from David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

A few Los Angeles city councilmembers got in some final zingers before packing their bags for summer recess.

It was the final council session before the three-week pause, and members were working their way through a thick agenda Tuesday. After weeks in which the main focus has been President Trump’s immigration crackdown in the city, it didn’t appear there would be fireworks.

Then, Councilmember Traci Park rolled her eyes at Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez while he was speaking. And Councilmember Monica Rodriguez had some sharp words for both of them.

Let’s backtrack and figure out how we got there.

In May, the council passed an ordinance to raise the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour — higher than the city’s minimum wage — with Park, Rodriguez and Councilmember John Lee voting against it.

Soto-Martínez, a former organizer with the hotel and restaurant union Unite Here Local 11, which pushed for the minimum wage hike, led the charge at City Hall.

Park said she voted against the ordinance because she thought that it didn’t take into account economic realities and that it would result in hotel and airport workers losing their jobs. Park’s opponent in a bitterly contested general election for her Westside council seat in 2022 was a Unite Here-backed candidate, Erin Darling.

After the minimum wage hike passed, a business coalition called the L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress began a campaign to overturn it by gathering signatures to place it on the June 2026 ballot, which would at least delay its implementation.

Things quickly got ugly. Unite Here’s lawyer alleged in a letter to the L.A. County district attorney and the city attorney that petition circulators for the business coalition misrepresented their campaign to voters and even assaulted activists on multiple occasions.

Meanwhile, a petition circulator alleged that she was assaulted outside a Food 4 Less in Inglewood by an SEIU-USWW executive board member while gathering signatures. The woman filed a police report, and a judge granted her request for a temporary restraining order against the board member.

Enter Soto-Martínez and Park.

Soto-Martínez quickly drafted a motion asking for the LAPD to investigate the petition circulators for fraud and other misconduct alleged in the Unite Here letter.

When Soto-Martínez introduced his motion at the City Council’s Economic Development and Jobs Committee last month, Park spoke up, saying it was hypocritical for Unite Here to complain about misleading campaigns when it engaged in the same tactics “on a regular basis.”

Park quoted from a text message campaign that she said dozens of her constituents had brought to her attention.

“A new complaint alleges paid signature gatherers are using misdirection and misconduct to collect these signatures. Don’t sign the petition. Email Traci Park to tell her to stop this misleading effort to lower the minimum wage,” read a text message from Citizens in Support of the LA Olympic Wage, a campaign backed by Unite Here in favor of the hotel and airport minimum wage.

Park said the text made it sound as if she were involved in the campaign to repeal the ordinance.

“I have nothing to do with it. No one ever consulted me about it. No one ever asked my opinion about it,” she said at the committee meeting.

When the committee approved Soto-Martínez’s motion on June 17, she voted “no,” saying any investigation should scrutinize both sides of the wage campaign. The motion reached the full council on Tuesday.

Park quoted from the text campaign again and introduced an amendment asking for the LAPD to investigate both sides of the petition fight — those aligned with the L.A. Alliance for Tourism and those aligned with Unite Here.

“We know that engaging in misleading tactics are not unique to one group or one organization,” she said. “I know this because I have personally been targeted by misleading smear campaigns by the very group now complaining about this behavior.”

Soto-Martínez fired back at his colleague.

“There have been plenty of things said about me that have been misleading and I didn’t agree with, but I didn’t bring it into this chamber,” he said.

Soto-Martínez also said he wanted to draw a distinction between the text message campaign about Park and the alleged physical assaults against Unite Here campaigners.

Still, in the end, he said he supported Park’s amendment.

Park could be seen in a video recording of the council meeting rolling her eyes as Soto-Martínez finished his speech.

In a statement, Unite Here co-President Kurt Petersen called Park’s comments at the council meeting “unbelievably narcissistic.”

“Working people plea for her help after they were allegedly assaulted while they campaigned to raise wages. Instead of focusing on helping the victims, Councilmember Park complains about being criticized for her vote against the minimum wage, and equates criticism of her to the alleged political violence,” Petersen said. “This kind of greedy self involvement in the face of injustice is a hallmark of the billionaire allies of Councilmember Traci Park, and it’s why working people don’t trust her.”

Park responded in a statement, “Kurt Petersen is killing jobs and tanking our local economy. Iconic restaurants are closing, airport workers are being replaced by kiosks, hotels are pulling out, and working families are losing, not winning. His divisive and reckless tactics are speeding up automation and driving opportunity out of Los Angeles.”

Councilmember Rodriguez chastised both Park and Soto-Martínez.

“I think this idea that’s trying to assign blame to one side or another is kind of futile, given the demands of what we need LAPD to be focused on, but I think performative politics is the name of the game these days,” Rodriguez said. “Everyone needs to grow the hell up.”

State of play

— SANCTUARY SUIT: The Department of Justice filed suit against the city of Los Angeles on Monday over its sanctuary ordinance, calling the ordinance illegal and saying that it discriminates against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. L.A.’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities has resulted in “lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism,” according to the lawsuit. Mayor Karen Bass called the lawsuit part of an “all out assault on Los Angeles” by President Trump. Immigrant rights groups filed their own lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday, seeking to block the administration’s “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law” during immigration raids in the L.A. area.

— HOMELESSNESS DROP: Homelessness declined by 15% overall in three areas of Los Angeles in 2024, according to a new Rand study. The biggest drop came in Hollywood, where the report found that the number of homeless people decreased 49% from 2023. The number fell 22% in Venice and went up 9% in Skid Row, according to the report. The Rand study linked the Hollywood decrease to a series of Inside Safe operations in 2024.

— SEE YA, CEQA: As part of the state budget, the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131 Monday, which exempts most urban housing projects from the California Environmental Quality Act. The act, known as CEQA, has often mired construction projects in years of litigation. Gov. Gavin Newsom muscled the new rules through the Legislature despite concerns from progressive lawmakers and environmental interest groups.

— MANSION SPEND: The L.A. City Council approved a plan Tuesday to spend almost $425 million collected from the city’s “mansion” tax on property sales over $5 million. Backers of the controversial tax — which has been criticized by the real estate industry for limiting property sales and reducing property tax revenue — say the fund is producing crucial dollars for affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs.

— FROZEN FUNDS: The Trump administration moved to withhold $811 million from California that would have helped students who are learning English or are from migrant families. “The [Education] Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the administration said in a letter to states on Monday.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program returned to locations of past operations in Echo Park, Watts and South L.A. this week, according to the mayor’s office.
• On the docket for next week: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote to appoint Sarah Mahin as the first executive director for the county’s new Department of Homeless Services and Housing.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

The intensity of the Turkey wildfires has grown as the week continues, with more than 50,000 people having to flee their homes from across İzmir and surrounding provinces

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes as ferocious wildfires rage across Turkey.

For the past three days, forest fires whipped up by robust winds have wreaked havoc in İzmir, which sits in the west of the country in an area loved by British tourists. Those flying into the region have captured videos of the sky burning orange above the city of 2.9 million, with great plumes of smoke billowing up off the tinder-box dry countryside.

The intensity of the fires has grown as the week continues, with more than 50,000 people having to flee their homes from across İzmir and surrounding provinces.

Have you been impacted by the fires? Email [email protected]

READ MORE: European wildfire hell – all the holiday heat dome hotspots battling infernos

In Sakarya, 230 people have had to leave behind two neighborhoods, while seven villages have been deserted by 609 people in Bilecik. İzmir’s Seferihisar district is the worst-impacted. There, 42,300 have had to flee an area that is made up of 80% summer houses, CNN Türk reported.

Helicopter pilots and on-the-ground firefighters are working side-by-side with teams of citizens who are determined to save as much of their land and as many of their homes as possible. They used tractors with water trailers and helicopters carrying water to douse the charred hillsides.

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry İbrahim Yumaklı said that 342 forest fires have broken out since Friday.

Mr Yumaklı said on Monday that the blaze was fanned overnight by winds reaching 40-50 km/h in Kuyucak and Doğanbey areas of İzmir. The first fire broke out on Sunday between the districts of Seferihisar and Menderes in İzmir, spreading rapidly due to winds of up to 117 km/h, according to Governor Süleyman Elban.

Residents in the village of Ürkmez were forced to cut trees to create firebreaks and protect their homes.

READ MORE: Europe’s killer heatwave leaves one dead as Brits on holiday warned ‘stay inside’READ MORE: UK’s most divisive seaside town as Brits can’t decide if it’s beautiful or bleak

On Sunday, no flights could land at or take off from Adnan Menderes Airport, which serves the coastal city of İzmir, for several hours. The airport’s departure board showed all flights due to leave on Sunday evening were either suspended or canceled.

Since then, the airport has been running as normal, with the departures and arrivals boards today showing no delays or cancellations.

The area was also hit by wildfires last year, as were many of Turkey’s other coastal areas. It is likely that this will become a more and more regular occurrence in the country, as climate change increases the irregularity of weather patterns and raises temperatures.

Turkey is not the only European country impacted by blazes this week. Right now, a sweltering ‘heat dome’ is sitting across swathes of Europe including France, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, with forecasts from European meteorologists warning that more roasting days are on the horizon.

“Extreme heat is no longer a rare event — it has become the new normal,” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres via Twitter from Seville, Spain, where the mercury was projected to soar to a blistering 42 Celsius by Monday afternoon.

Echoing his oft-repeated plea for dramatic measures to curb climate change, Guterres proclaimed: “The planet is getting hotter & more dangerous — no country is immune.”

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Zohran Mamdani’s resounding victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has turned the heads of progressive elected officials in Los Angeles.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez called it the “biggest victory for a socialist candidate probably in America.”

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said Angelenos should take note.

“What it shows is that we can win. We can win in major cities,” she said.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado was bursting with excitement about the results from a city 3,000 miles away.

“Having a DSA-backed mayor is freaking amazing,” she said about the prospect of Mamdani, who was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, winning the general election in November.

While Mamdani’s primary upset over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo injected new excitement into the left flank of the Los Angeles political scene — one DSA member called it a “we’re so back moment” — it also highlighted vastly different political terrains in the two coastal cities, starting with executive leadership.

Mamdani is a 33-year-old democratic socialist who was elected to the New York state assembly in 2020. He ran in the Democratic mayoral primary on a far-left agenda, promising to freeze the rent in rent-stabilized apartments and to make city buses free.

New York’s current mayor, Eric Adams, ran as a Democrat in 2021 but will be an independent candidate in the general election, after Trump’s Department of Justice dropped bribery charges against him. In line with his offer to assist in enforcing federal immigration laws if the charges were dropped, Adams has since attempted to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into the city jails (a judge blocked that plan after the City Council sued).

Southern California, on the other hand, has emerged as the epicenter of the president’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, and Mayor Karen Bass has been an outspoken critic of the president’s immigration agenda.

Trump’s ramping up of immigration enforcement and subsequent deployment of the California National Guard and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles has prompted the city’s progressive and moderate Democratic politicians to band together and set aside their differences.

Councilmembers on the left flank cited the different political realities in the two cities when speaking about the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election, with the field of candidates still taking shape.

“We don’t have a candidate on the left … as a progressive. We have Mayor Karen Bass, who is running again,” Hernandez said. “She’s moving how she needs to move and has been doing a good job at least in handling this crisis that we’re in right now.”

Hernandez said she is focused on winning her own reelection bid in a crowded field.

Soto-Martínez said the city is “under siege” by the federal government.

“We are trying to show unity against the federal takeover of our city, and so that’s how I feel about it right now, and that might change a year from now, but that’s how I feel,” he said. “I support the mayor and her reelect, and I think her roots from community organizing is something we need right now.”

No progressive candidate has emerged to run against Bass. Before the immigration raids, Bass’ performance in the wake of January’s devastating wildfires led to speculation that she would be challenged from the right again by businessman Rick Caruso, whom she beat handily in 2022. Caruso is also weighing a bid for governor.

Lefty Angelenos shouldn’t hold their breath for a DSA candidate. While the process is member-driven, DSA-LA does not plan at the moment to run anyone for mayor, said Marc Krause, a co-chair of DSA-LA.

Krause said the group’s focus is legislative change, starting with representation on the City Council.

“I think for DSA-LA, our big goal and recent strategy is to try to win a majority on the L.A. City Council,” he said.

DSA-LA’s Mamdani moment came when Hernandez and Soto-Martínez won in 2022, joining Nithya Raman, who had DSA support in her 2020 election.

“It proved to us that what we were aiming to do had some viability to it,” Krause said.

Jurado, also backed by DSA-LA, joined the bloc in 2024.

Those four have helped push the council further to the left in recent years, from passing a $30 minimum wage for tourism industry workers to voting for a budget that sought to slow down police hiring — though those hires may return.

Krause cited a stronger rent stabilization ordinance, higher pay for workers in the city and improved transit infrastructure as some of DSA-LA’s top legislative goals.

To secure those wins, Krause hopes to elect eight DSA-backed city councilmembers or to build a coalition with other elected officials who agree with the policies DSA-LA champions.

And Krause said the movement is growing. The night Mamdani won the primary, DSA-LA gained 50 new members — without even trying.

“We’ll likely be doing more intentional recruitment,” Krause said.

State of play

— INNOCENT IMMIGRANTS: Most of the undocumented immigrants arrested between June 1 and June 10 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Los Angeles region had no criminal convictions, according to a Times analysis. The review of data from the Deportation Data Project, a repository of enforcement data at UC Berkeley Law, found that 69% of those arrested had no criminal convictions and 58% had never been charged with a crime.

— RECEIVERSHIP HAS SAILED: A federal judge decided not to put L.A.’s homelessness programs into receivership Tuesday, though he found that the city failed to adhere to the terms of a legal settlement focused on handling the humanitarian crisis on the streets.

— TRUMP SUIT: The city took steps to sue the Trump administration to stop immigration agents from making unconstitutional stops or arrests. The seven councilmembers who signed the letter asking City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to prioritize “immediate legal action” against the administration argued that the litigation is necessary to prevent racial profiling and unlawful detention of Angelenos.

—UNION DOOZY: L.A. County’s agreement with its biggest labor union will cost more than $2 billion over three years, according to the county chief executive office. The deal with SEIU 721, which represents 55,000 county workers, includes a $5,000 bonus in the first year. Union members still need to ratify the agreement.

—CALIFORNIA VS. TRUMP: The Trump administration may soon be forced to turn over documents related to the activities of the military in Southern California, a federal judge said Tuesday. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had previously allowed Trump to maintain control over the California National Guard.

—SCHOOLS BUDGET: The Los Angeles Board of Education approved an $18.8-billion budget that allows the district to avoid layoffs this year, in part by reducing proposed contributions to a trust fund for retiree health benefits.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program went to Marmion Way and North Avenue 57 in Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s district, according to the mayor’s office.
• On the docket for next week: The City Council goes on summer recess beginning Wednesday and will be OOO until July 29.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall.

The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a brief dissent from Friday’s order that he would have decided the case now and imposed limits on “race-based redistricting.”

The order keeps alive a fight over political power stemming from the 2020 census halfway to the next one. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court intervened twice. Last year, the justices ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 elections, while the legal case proceeded.

The call for new arguments probably means that the district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields probably will remain intact for the 2026 elections because the high court has separately been reluctant to upend districts as elections draw near.

The state has changed its election process to replace its so-called jungle primary with partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees.

The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state in which Black people make up a third of the population.

Civil rights advocates won a lower-court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.

The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.

The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.

The state complied and drew a new map, with two Black majority districts.

But white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts that race was the predominant factor driving the new map. A three-judge court agreed.

Louisiana appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Randolph Bracy and LaVon Bracy Davis are taking sibling rivalry to a new level as the brother and sister run against each other in a race for a Florida state Senate seat on Tuesday.

Not only that, one of their opponents for the Democratic nomination in the district representing parts of metro Orlando is Alan Grayson, a combative former Democratic U.S. congressman who drew national attention in 2009 when he said in a House floor speech that the Republican health care plan was to “die quickly.”

The headline-grabbing candidates are running in the special primary election for the seat that had been held by Geraldine Thompson, a trailblazing veteran lawmaker who died earlier this year following complications from knee-replacement surgery. A fourth candidate also is running in the Democratic primary — personal injury attorney Coretta Anthony-Smith.

The winner will face Republican Willie Montague in September for the general election in the Democratic-dominant district. Black voters make up more than half registered Democrats in the district.

Florida Sen. Randolph Bracy, rear, makes a point during a Senate Committee on Reapportionment hearing in a legislative session, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, in Tallahassee, Fla.

(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)

Both siblings have experience in the state legislature. Bracy Davis was a state representative, and Bracy was a former state senator. Adding to the family dynamics was the fact that the siblings’ mother, civil rights activist Lavon Wright Bracy, was the maid of honor at Thompson’s wedding and was one of her oldest friends. She has endorsed her daughter over her son.

The siblings’ family has been active in Orlando’s civic life for decades. Their father, Randolph Bracy Jr., was a local NAACP president, a founder of a Baptist church in Orlando and director of the religion department at Bethune-Cookman University.

It wasn’t the first time the family has been caught up in competing endorsements. When Bracy and Thompson ran against each other for the Democratic primary in a state senate race last year, Bracy Davis endorsed Thompson over her brother. Campaign fliers sent out recently by a Republican political operative start with “Bracy Yourself!”

Bracy, 48, who one time played professional basketball in Turkey, told the Orlando Sentinel that it was “disappointing and hurtful” for his sister to run after he had announced his bid. But Bracy Davis, 45, an attorney by training, said she was running for the people in state senate District 15, not against any of the other candidates. She said that she intended to continue Thompson’s legacy of pushing for voters’ rights and increasing pay for public schoolteachers. Thompson’s family has endorsed Bracy Davis.

Grayson was elected to Congress in 2008 and voted out in 2010. Voters sent him back to Congress in 2012, but he gave up his seat for an unsuccessful 2016 Senate run.

Claudia Aragon was headed home after dropping her puppy off at obedience school when the first text came in early on Friday, June 6.

“Ice showed up at the Home Depot in cypress park. Want to make sure we can help people,” an immigrant service provider texted her. “this is awful claudia.”

Aragon, who has directed Mayor Karen Bass’ Office of Immigrant Affairs since March 2023, had been sick and was planning to stay home that day.

But she lives only a few miles from the Cypress Park site and decided to drive over.

She arrived outside the Home Depot in the aftermath of the raid — an environment she described as akin to “calm after the storm” in the wake of a natural disaster.

“Everyone’s kind of trying to find their bearings and looking around like, ‘What happened?’ Some of the food vendors that were there were sort of putting things back,” Aragon said.

There would be little calm for Aragon over the next days and weeks.

Within an hour or so of getting home that Friday morning, Aragon’s phone rang again, with someone telling her that federal authorities were at a sprawling fast-fashion warehouse in the Garment District.

Far from being isolated incidents, the Cypress Park Home Depot raid and the arrests at Ambiance Apparel were initial blasts in what would be much broader upheaval, as the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement teams descended on Los Angeles and a military deployment soon followed.

Through it all, Aragon’s phone kept buzzing, as she connected with activists and a host of immigrant service providers.

The next few hours were a surreal and overwhelming frenzy, as Aragon, immigrant advocacy groups and the city all tried to piece together what was happening with little communication from the federal government.

Aragon, who worked in Bass’ congressional office before joining the mayor’s office, has known and collaborated with many of her community counterparts for years.

Those relationships were battle-tested early in Aragon’s city tenure, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses of migrants to Los Angeles in 2023. Aragon was responsible for coordinating the response, as the city, faith and nonprofit partners helped situate the new arrivals.

A day or two after Donald Trump was elected to a second term in the White House, Aragon also sat down with the mayor’s senior staff to strategize on how the city could prepare for potential immigrant raids, since Trump had made no secret of his intentions during the campaign.

The city’s immigrant affairs office is currently a lean two-person team, with Aragon and a language access coordinator. The department was first created under Mayor James Hahn and then resurrected by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Aragon herself is “a very proud immigrant,” having come to the United States from El Salvador when she was 7.

“To be here with Mayor Bass, having the opportunity to elevate the immigrant community through policy, through funding to provide support for providers who champion the community — my community, for families that are like mine — is amazing and an honor,” Aragon said.

It can also be painful at this particular moment in history, when the promise of the immigrant American dream that made her life possible now seems in existential jeopardy and so many are living in fear.

“People can’t even go down the street without being detained … I can’t even look at them and tell them they’ll be okay,” Aragon said.

State of play

— THE CHAOS CONTINUES: Federal immigration raids continued across L.A. County this week, reaching into Hollywood, Pico Rivera and other locations. In San Fernando, L.A. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and San Fernando Vice Mayor Mary Solorio went on Instagram Thursday to spread the word about residents being swept up from the areas around a Home Depot in San Fernando and a Costco in Pacoima, in hopes of alerting their families.

“We only have first names of some of the individuals,” Solorio said. “Those individuals are Omar, Elmer, Antonio, Saul and Ramiro.” Rodriguez read out contact information for immigrant defense groups, saying: “We need to protect one another in these very scary times.”

In Hollywood, L.A. Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez voiced his fury over a raid in his district at the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard.

“Despicable doesn’t even begin to describe what this is,” he told The Times. “You hear about this happening in military dictatorships and totalitarian governments. To happen here in the second-largest city in America is — I don’t have words, just outrage.”

— ‘PROFOUND HARM’: Several people were also detained at a bus stop near a Winchell’s Donut House in Pasadena, evoking angry responses from County Supervisor Janice Hahn and U.S. Rep. Judy Chu. Hahn, who chairs Metro’s transit board, worried that residents will be too afraid to go to work, attend church and, now, hop on public transit. “The fear they are spreading is doing profound harm in our communities,” she said. Metro officials underscored those concerns, saying the transit system has seen a 10% to 15% drop in bus and rail ridership since immigration enforcement activities began.

— BEHIND THE MASK: County Supervisor Kathryn Barger voiced fears this week that some of the masked men pulling over Angelenos may not be immigration agents but rather “bad players” impersonating federal law enforcement. “I tell you this story because we don’t know if they were ICE agents or not,” she said at Tuesday’s board meeting. Hahn wasn’t convinced, replying: “Make no mistake about it: It isn’t people impersonating ICE. It is ICE.”

— DODGER MANIA: Yet another part of the city caught in the uproar was Dodger Stadium. Raul Claros, a community organizer now running for an Eastside seat on the City Council, held a press conference Wednesday to demand that the team do more to help families devastated by the raids. “The largest economic engine in this area is silent!” he told ABC7 and other news outlets. “Wake up! Do better!”

The Dodgers later signaled the organization was willing to help. Before the team made its announcement, federal law enforcement agents were spotted outside the stadium, generating new protests. “People are out here because they don’t want to see their families torn apart,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in an interview with NBC. The team, in a statement on X, said it had denied entry to those agents. (Dodgers referred to them as ICE, federal officials said they were from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.)

— DOWNTOWN SETTLES DOWN: Confrontations between law enforcement agencies and anti-ICE protesters tapered off this week, prompting Mayor Karen Bass to scale back, and then repeal, her curfew order for downtown, Chinatown and the Arts District. But those showdowns have caused legal and financial shock wages.

— RISING PRICE TAG: For example: City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo reported Friday that the costs of the protests to the city had jumped to more than $32 million, including $29.5 million in costs to the LAPD. The City Council voted 12-3 on Wednesday to loan the LAPD $5 million from the city’s reserve fund to cover the associated police overtime. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown, voted no, as did two of her colleagues: Hernandez and Soto-Martínez.

— A NEW GIG: Former Mayor Eric Garcetti (who, until recently, was serving as U.S. ambassador to India) has been named Ambassador for Global Climate Diplomacy on behalf of C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

— HEADING TO COURT: Free speech advocates have begun filing lawsuits to stop what they call the “continuing abuse” of journalists covering protests in L.A. One federal lawsuit, which targets the city, described instances where journalists have been tear-gassed, detained without cause and shot with less-lethal police rounds.

— THROUGH THE ROOF: The overall cost of legal payouts reached a new peak for City Hall this year, driven in large part by lawsuits over policing and “dangerous conditions,” such as cracked or damaged streets and sidewalks.

— TOURISM TURMOIL: The battle between tourism workers and a coalition of airline and hotel groups intensified this week, with the hotel employees’ union launching a pair of new ballot measures. Unite Here Local 11, which recently won approval of a $30 minimum wage hike for its members, proposed an ordinance to require voter approval for any hotel project that adds 80 or more rooms. Union co-president Kurt Petersen portrayed the measure as a response to an ongoing effort by the L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, a business group, to repeal the $30 wage.

— THAT’S NOT ALL: Unite Here also unveiled a ballot proposal to hike the minimum wage for employees in non-tourism industries. Under city law, hotel employees currently receive a minimum wage of $20.32 per hour, compared to $17.28 for most non-tourism workers. The union’s new proposal would bring every worker in L.A. up to their level, jumping first to $22.50 and eventually reaching $30 in 2028.

— ALL ABOARD: Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to lease 2,700 buses to get people around the city for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The agency needs $2 billion to make that happen — and is hoping to secure the funding from the federal government.

— COLE FOR THE SUMMER: Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole is stepping down on July 11 from his job with City Controller Kenneth Mejia. In his announcement on LinkedIn, Cole called Mejia an “inspiring young leader” who “blazed a new path for transparency and accountability.” He also acknowleged the demands he’s faced since winning a seat on the Pasadena City Council, which he called a “more-than-part-time role.” “Kenneth has been incredibly flexible and supportive but I recognize that I couldn’t do justice to both jobs indefinitely,” he wrote.

MAKING THE ROUNDS

In the wake of the protests and weeklong curfew, L.A.’s mayor has been offering support to businesses in Little Tokyo, the Civic Center and other areas hard hit in downtown by vandalism, graffiti and theft. Bass spent about half an hour on Wednesday visiting restaurants on 1st Street, whose windows were covered in plywood.

Bass dropped into Far Bar, Kaminari Gyoza Bar and other spots, chatting up the proprietors and posing for photos with customers. Afterward, she made an appeal to Trump to withdraw the U.S. Marines, saying things were safe and stable.

“In light of the fact that L.A. is peaceful, there are no protests, there isn’t any sign of vandalism or violence, I would call on the administration to please remove the troops,” she said.

Bass was quickly interrupted from Clemente Franco, an Echo Park resident who said he was frustrated with the state of the city — dirty streets, broken sidewalks, streetlights that are out because of copper wire theft.

“A year and a half with no lights,” he told deputy mayor Vahid Khorsand, who attempted to form a buffer between Franco and Bass. “A year and a half the lights have been off. They took the wires. The whole street is black.”

Khorsand asked Franco to provide him a list of problem locations.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to tackle homelessness did not launch any new outreach operations this week, according to her team.
• On the docket for next week: The council’s transportation committee is set to meet Wednesday to take up a proposal to regulate public space around L.A.’s “ghost kitchens,” which have generated complaints about unsafe traffic behavior and other neighborhood woes.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Five California women sued a Fresno County school system Wednesday, alleging officials brushed aside claims they were being sexually assaulted by a second-grade teacher who was later convicted of similar abuse.

The case against the Clovis Unified School District comes amid a tidal wave of sexual abuse litigation that has left lawmakers scrambling to stop misconduct — and schools struggling to pay settlements owed to victims suing over crimes that stretch back decades.

The latest case dates back to the late 1990s and early 2000s. Plaintiff Samantha Muñoz, now a 28-year-old mother of two, is among those alleging she was abused by then-Fancher Creek Elementary School teacher Neng Yang.

Muñoz claims in the lawsuit that Yang began molesting her in 2004, when she was his 7-year-old student. By that time, the lawsuit says, girls had been complaining to Clovis Unified School District officials about Yang for years. The teacher was eventually arrested for producing child pornography in 2012, and has spent the past decade in federal prison in San Pedro, where he is serving a 38-year term for sexual exploitation of a minor.

“Clovis Unified was protecting this predator,” said Muñoz. “They continued to have him teaching at that school knowing he was [assaulting students].”

The Times does not typically identify victims of sexual assault, but Muñoz and two of her four co-plaintiffs said they wanted to speak out publicly about what happened.

Kelly Avants, a spokeswoman for Clovis Unified, said the district had not yet received notice of the lawsuit.

“We have not been served with the suit yet, but will review it when we are served and respond accordingly,” Avants said.

The public defender’s office that represented Yang in his criminal case referred questions to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of California. A spokesperson for that office said they could offer no comment.

“When a teacher saw him showing me child pornography on his phone, school officials interrogated me and then encouraged me to say nothing,” Muñoz said. “I was left in his classroom and he kept abusing me.”

The Fresno case follows a landmark $4-billion settlement this spring over sexual abuse in L.A. County’s juvenile facilities, group and foster homes — believed to be the largest in U.S. history.

On Tuesday, the state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, announced it would sell up to $500 million in bonds to help cover its anticipated sexual abuse liability.

“There’s tremendous cost pressures on school districts,” said Michael Fine, head of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, which published a report in January estimating state education agencies could be liable for $2 billion to $3 billion for past sexual misconduct. “No matter what, the money’s coming out of their current resources.”

The payouts stem from a series of recent changes to California’s statute of limitations for child sexual assault. Beginning with Assembly Bill 218 in 2019, the state opened a brief window for allegations going back as far as 1940. The law permanently extended the deadline for victims to file child sex abuse claims until age 40, or within five years of realizing a new illness or “psychological injury” as a result of abuse.

“There are definitely school districts out there that feel the state changed the law so the state should pay,” Fine said.

Some in the debate argue only abusers — not cash-strapped schools — should be liable for misconduct.

For most California school districts, the money is likely to come from a public entity risk pool, a collective pot that multiple agencies pay into to cover liabilities such as health insurance and workers’ compensation.

Many pools are assessing their members “retroactive premiums” in an attempt to cover sex abuse suits touched off by the change in the law, Fine said. That means even schools that haven’t been sued face higher operating costs.

“There’s impacts to the classroom whether there’s a claim or not, because they’ve got to pay the retroactive premiums somehow,” he said. “If they were in the pool, they’re on the hook.”

In its report, the agency recommended alternative ways the state and school districts might cover liabilities stemming from the law — including a modified form of receivership for agencies that can’t pay, and a new state victim’s compensation fund — as well as concrete steps to stem abuse.

The latter have been enthusiastically adopted by California lawmakers, including state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra). But other suggestions have been ignored, Fine said.

“There isn’t a bill out there that carries the rest of our recommendations,” he said.

After months spent trying to understand the scale and the magnitude of the liability California institutions are facing, stories like those in the Clovis Unified suit haunt him, Fine said.

“It’s emotionally overwhelming,” he said.

Plaintiffs in the Clovis case described nearly identical abuse stretching back to 1998, when Yang was still a student teacher.

According to Wednesday’s complaint, then-second-grader Tiffany Thrailkill told the Francher Creek principal, vice principal and school counselor that Yang had groped her and forced her to perform oral sex.

“In response, [officials] took the position that Tiffany was lying and referred her to psychological treatment,” the suit alleged.

Despite laws dating back to the 1980s that require abuse to be reported, school officials kept the allegations quiet and never investigated Yang, the suit said.

“Instead of reporting Yang and protecting their students, it appears school officials blamed the girls, looked the other way, and enabled Yang to abuse their students for over a decade,” said Jason Amala, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

Ultimately, Yang was caught by the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a partnership between the Clovis Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations.

For Muñoz, the teacher’s conviction was cold comfort. While she believes speaking out about her experience will inspire other victims to come forward, she now faces the agonizing decision of whether to send her nonverbal 4-year-old for early intervention services at the same elementary school where her suit alleges her nightmare began.

“Why would I want to go drop off my son at a place that’s nothing but bad memories?” the mother said. “It’s like signing my life away to the devil again.”

“I just need them to be accountable for who they protected,” Muñoz said.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government.

L.A.’s Little Tokyo neighborhood was a mess on Monday. Windows were shattered in multiple locations. Graffiti seemed like it was everywhere. State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles) had had enough.

Gonzalez, who took office in December, had already voiced outrage over the immigration raids being conducted in his downtown district. But this time, he took aim at the people he called “anti-ICE rioters,” portraying them as narcissists and urging them to stay far away from the demonstrations happening downtown.

“Causing chaos, damaging neighborhoods, and live-streaming for likes helps no one,” he said in a lengthy press release. “Our elders, small businesses, and public spaces deserve better.”

Gonzalez did not stop there. He chided demonstrators for spray-painting historic landmarks and pointing fireworks at police, telling them that “terrorizing residents is not protest.”

“If you’re out here chasing clout while our neighbors are scared and storefronts are boarded up — you’re not helping, you’re harming,” said Gonzalez, a former chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. “You’re playing right into Trump’s hands and undermining the very movement you claim to support.”

Politicians in L.A. have been reacting all week to the reports of violence, theft and vandalism that accompanied a week of anti-ICE protests. But each has had a somewhat different way of naming the perpetrators — and summing up their actions.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, whose district also includes much of downtown, was more muted in her description of the people who created mayhem this week, referring to them as “agitators” and “opportunists.”

“Look, for the most part, this has been a peaceful protest,” she said in an interview. “But there are definitely some other folks that join that are not here to support immigrants and peacefulness, but are taking this as an opportunity to do something else. And I definitely condemn that.”

Jurado has spent the last few days highlighting her efforts to secure small business loans for struggling downtown businesses, especially those that were vandalized or had merchandise stolen. She is also pushing for city leaders to find another $1 million to pay for the legal defense of immigrants who have been detained or face deportation.

At the same time, the events of the past week have put Jurado in an awkward spot. Luz Aguilar, her economic development staffer, was arrested last weekend on suspicion of assaulting a police officer at an anti-ICE protest.

Normally, an aide like Aguilar might have been tasked with helping some of the downtown businesses whose windows were smashed or wares were stolen. Instead, Jurado faced questions about Aguilar while appearing with Mayor Karen Bass at the city’s Emergency Operations Center.

The LAPD has repeatedly declined to provide specifics on the allegations against Aguilar, whose father is Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, said in an email to its members that Aguilar has been accused of throwing a frozen water bottle at officers.

Neither Cole nor Jurado’s staff would confirm or refute that assertion. Jurado, in an interview, also declined to say whether she sees her staffer as one of the agitators.

“She is on unpaid leave, and we’ll see what happens,” she said.

The search for the right words has not been limited to downtown politicians.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson offered a lengthy soliloquy, saying police in recent days had encountered “looters coming out of stores with merchandise in their hands” who are using the ongoing protests as cover.

“Someone at midnight running around looting, even though there was a protest earlier, that person’s not a protester,” Harris-Dawson told his colleagues Tuesday. “That person’s a looter. That person’s a criminal.”

The same terms apply after Dodgers victories, Harris-Dawson said, when someone in a street celebration decides to set things on fire. “We don’t say Dodger fans burned a building. We say criminals burned a building,” he said.

Bass declared a local state of emergency in the wake of the downtown chaos, citing the violence against police, the vandalism and the “looting of businesses.” The declaration, issued Tuesday, simply refers to the perpetrators as criminals.

The mayor sounded genuinely frustrated, telling The Times on Thursday that she was “horrified” by the graffiti that covered the Japanese American National Museum, which highlights the struggle of immigrants, and other buildings in Little Tokyo.

“Anybody that is committing vandalism or violence does not give a crap about immigrants,” she told another news outlet.

Gonzalez, for his part, said he produced his anti-rioter screed after hearing from senior citizens in Little Tokyo who were terrified to leave their homes and walk into the melee on the street.

“They were literally throwing fireworks at cops’ faces at San Pedro and 3rd,” he said.

Other downtown residents sounded unfazed, telling The Times that the disruptions were “kind of the usual.” In recent years, major sports victories have been just as likely to end with illegal fireworks, graffiti and burning or vandalized vehicles downtown — even when the games aren’t played there.

Jurado said she is searching for “creative solutions” to prevent such crimes in the future, such as promoting the fact that downtown businesses are in “full support of the protests.”

“There were Little Tokyo businesses that weren’t graffitied on because they had a sign on the window that was pro-actively ‘Know your Rights,’ or against ICE,” she said. “So they didn’t get graffitied on. At least that’s from my anecdotal evidence.”

“So I think if we put that at the forefront, we can help educate our community members to keep our neighborhoods safe and beautiful,” she said.

State of play

— CITY IN CRISIS: The crisis sparked by the immigration sweeps reverberated throughout the week, with Bass urging President Trump to end the raids, ordering a curfew for downtown and Chinatown and speaking out against the tackling of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla by federal agents. By the time the week ended, City Hall and surrounding government buildings were being guarded by scores of law enforcement officers from around the state — Hermosa Beach Police, San Fernando Police, Riverside County Sheriff, Santa Barbara County Sheriff, just to name a few. Amid the heavy police presence, Friday’s city council meeting was canceled.

— TAKING OFF THE GLOVES: For most of her time at City Hall, Bass has avoided public confrontations with other elected officials, including President Trump. But with ICE fanning out across L.A. and her city engulfed in protest, those days are over. As she navigates the crisis, Bass has also gained the opportunity for a crucial reset after the Palisades fire.

— CHAFED AT THE CHIEF: Earlier in the week, members of the City Council grilled LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell over his agency’s handling of anti-ICE protests. Harris-Dawson bristled at the idea that the LAPD would refer to federal immigration authorities as “law enforcement partners.” “If we know somebody is coming here to do warrant-less abductions of the residents of this city, those are not our partners,” he said. “I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners.”

— PADILLA PUSHBACK: City Councilmember Imelda Padilla, in a separate line of questioning, asked if the LAPD could warn city officials when it hears from federal law enforcement that immigration raids are coming. McDonnell said such actions would amount to obstruction of justice. “That would be completely inappropriate and illegal,” he said.

— A ‘MIX OF EMOTIONS’: McDonnell has been offering support to LAPD officers who may have mixed feelings about the ongoing federal crackdown. In one message, he acknowledged that some in the majority-Latino department have been “wrestling with the personal impact” of the immigration sweeps. “You may be wearing the uniform and fulfilling your duty, but inside, you’re asked to hold a complex mix of emotions,” the chief wrote.

— WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS: Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee broke his silence on the pivotal 2017 Las Vegas trip that later resulted in the criminal conviction of his onetime boss, Councilmember Mitchell Englander. Lee took the virtual witness stand last week in his own Ethics Commission case, repeatedly denying allegations that he accepted gifts in Vegas — food, drink, travel — in violation of city laws. At one point in his Zoom testimony, Lee said he stuffed $300 into the pocket of businessmen Andy Wang, a key witness in the proceedings, in an attempt to cover his share of the expenses at a pricey nightclub.

— RAPID RESPONDERS: Faced with an onslaught of ICE raids locally and threats from politicians nationally, L.A.’s immigrant rights groups are in the fight of their lives. Those groups have been participating in the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, a coalition of 300 volunteers and 23 organizations formed last year to respond to ICE enforcement.

— COUNTING THE BEDS: We told you last week that City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo was the city’s star witness in its court battle with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, which is seeking to place the city’s homelessness programs in receivership. On Wednesday, Szabo filed a declaration in federal court that pushes back on assertions that the city may have massively double counted the homeless beds it included under a pair of legal settlements. Szabo said city officials identified 12 instances of double counting in an agreement requiring 12,915 beds, and would appropriately correct the record.

— DEAL FOR MORE COPS? It seems like a lifetime ago, but last weekend Bass announced that she had struck a deal with Harris-Dawson, the council president, to find the money to restore her plan for hiring 480 police officers next year. Bass said Harris-Dawson has committed to identify the funding for those hires within three months. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who sits on the budget committee, said he is open to finding the money but was not part of any promise to do so within 90 days.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature initiative to combat homelessness did not launch operations in any new locations this week. However, the council did go behind closed doors to confer with its lawyers on the legal battle with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.
• On the docket for next week: The City Council is set to take up the mayor’s latest declaration of a local emergency, this one in response to “violence against first responders, vandalism of public and private property, looting of businesses, and failure to follow” LAPD dispersal orders.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg and Laura Nelson, giving you the latest on city and county government.

If Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass manages to hold on to her power to oversee the city’s homelessness programs, she may well have one person to thank: City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.

Szabo, a fixture in the administrations of the past three mayors, was effectively the city’s star witness in its legal battle against the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, the nonprofit group that sued the city in 2020 over its handling of the homelessness crisis.

During a seven-day hearing that concluded Wednesday, the alliance pressed U.S. Dist. Judge David O. Carter to take authority over homeless services away from Bass and the City Council and give it to a to-be-determined third party overseen by the court.

On four of those seven days, Szabo sat in the witness chair, defending the city’s decisions and occasionally offering cutting remarks about the city’s critics. Above all, he insisted the city would meet its obligation to provide 12,915 additional homeless beds by June 2027, as required under a settlement agreement with the alliance.

Szabo, who reports to both Bass and the council, is well known within City Hall for his work preparing the city budget, negotiating with city unions and providing policy recommendations on homelessness and other issues. During his time in Carter’s courtroom, he was also a human shield, taking the brunt of the hostile questions and helping to ensure that Bass and others would not be called to testify.

Throughout the proceedings, the city’s lawyers lodged hundreds of objections to the alliance’s questions, sometimes before they had been fully asked. Carter cautioned them that the rapid-fire interruptions could make things difficult for inexperienced witnesses.

He also made clear that the group did not include Szabo.

“Mr. Szabo,” the judge said, “certainly is used to the stress.”

The alliance had placed not just Bass but also Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and Traci Park on its witness list, saying all three had made public statements criticizing the response system. Bass herself called the system “broken” during her State of the City address in April, a fact highlighted by Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for the alliance.

Those statements, Umhofer said, only reinforce the alliance’s argument that the city’s homelessness programs are beyond repair and must be placed into receivership.

“The city is not fixing that broken system,” he said during closing arguments. “It’s simply doubling down on that broken system.”

Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl, asked to explain the mayor’s use of the word “broken,” said she was referring to a number of obstacles, including “an urge from many to return to the old way of doing things that allowed homelessness to explode.”

“But change is happening,” he said. “Under the Mayor’s leadership, we are moving forward.”

The city’s newly hired legal team from Gibson Dunn, the law firm that persuaded the Supreme Court to uphold laws barring homeless encampments on public property, sought to amplify that message. They also claimed the mayor and council members were shielded by the “apex doctrine,” which bars high-level, or apex, government officials from testifying except in extraordinary circumstances.

The city’s lawyers offered up just two witnesses of their own: Szabo and Etsemaye Agonafer, Bass’ deputy mayor for homelessness programs, saying they were the most familiar with the issues. The alliance initially sought 15.

Agonafer testified for about four hours, highlighting progress made by the mayor’s Inside Safe program, which moves people out of encampments and into hotels and motels.

Umhofer ultimately withdrew his subpoenas targeting Bass and the others, saying he didn’t want to incur additional delays. But he called Bass cowardly for failing to show up. By then, he said, his team had enough evidence to show that the city’s elected officials should no longer control homeless programs.

“We have quite literally put the homelessness response system in Los Angeles on trial,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, another alliance attorney, on the final day of proceedings.

The alliance used much of the questioning to highlight problems at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, also known as LAHSA. That agency, overseen by a board of appointees from the city and county, has been criticized repeatedly in audits dating back to 2001 — documents highlighted by the alliance during the proceedings.

Szabo acknowledged that LAHSA has faced issues with data collection. But he insisted that the city is closely tracking the beds required under its settlement with the alliance. “We have taken steps to ensure that the data we are reporting is accurate,” he told the court.

Carter, who has yet to rule in the case, did not sound as confident in the city’s attention to detail. On Wednesday, he demanded that the city turn over records regarding its compliance with another agreement in the case — this one known as the “roadmap.” The roadmap agreement, which expires June 30, required the city to produce 6,700 beds.

In his order, Carter raised questions about whether city officials had double counted “time-limited subsidies” — money used to help homeless people move into apartments and pay their rent — by applying them both to the roadmap requirements and to the obligations within the alliance settlement agreement.

Szabo said city officials are collecting the records for the judge.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose district includes Hollywood, voiced confidence in Szabo. He also praised Bass for taking on the issue of homelessness, pointing out that LAHSA reported that the city had made progress last year.

“We’re doing things that are showing results,” said Soto-Martínez, whose office has participated in 23 Inside Safe encampment operations. “Is it perfect? No. But we’re working through it.”

State of play

— ICE RAID OUTRAGE: L.A.’s elected officials voiced their anger on Friday over a series of federal immigration sweeps in Westlake, Cypress Park and other parts of the city. L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said the individuals detained were “hardworking Angelenos who contribute to our local economy and labor force every day.”

Bass issued her own statement, saying: “We will not stand for this.”

“As Mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” she said. “These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”

— WELCOME, AECOM: Nearly five months after a firestorm laid waste to a wide swath of Pacific Palisades, Bass announced that the city has hired the global infrastructure firm AECOM to develop a plan for rebuilding the area and reconstructing utilities and other infrastructure. The firm will work alongside both the city and Hagerty Consulting, which Bass tapped as a recovery contractor in February, according to the mayor’s office.

— SWITCHING HORSES? Businessman and gubernatorial candidate Stephen J. Cloobeck offered praise for L.A.’s mayor last year, commending her for her work addressing homelessness. He even said he had donated $1 million to LA4LA, an initiative promoted by Bass during her 2024 State of the City address, an event he attended. But last weekend, while making the rounds at the California Democratic Convention, he told The Times he wasn’t so keen on Bass’ leadership. “I would support Rick Caruso in a heartbeat over Mayor Karen Bass, and that’s a quote,” he said.

— MISSED MESSAGES: Bass has come under heavy scrutiny for deleting text messages she sent during the January firestorms. But she wasn’t the only one. L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the area devastated by the Eaton fire, has an iPhone that “auto deletes” messages every 30 days, her spokesperson said.

— ENGINE TROUBLE: Earlier this year, then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley cited disabled engines, and a lack of mechanics, as one reason why fire officials did not dispatch more personnel to Pacific Palisades before the Jan. 7 fire. But a Times analysis found that many of the broken engines highlighted by department officials had been out of service for many months or even years — and not necessarily for a lack of mechanics. What’s more, the LAFD had dozens of other engines that could have been staffed and deployed in advance of the fire.

— SAYONARA, CEQA: State lawmakers are on the verge of overhauling the California Environmental Quality Act, which has been used for decades to fight real estate development and public works projects in L.A. and elsewhere. One proposal would wipe away the law for most urban housing developments.

— PADRINOS PAYOUT: L.A. County has agreed to pay nearly $2.7 million to a teenager whose violent beating at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall launched a sprawling criminal investigation into so-called “gladiator fights” inside the troubled facility. Video of the December 2023 beating, captured on CCTV, showed Jose Rivas Barillas, then 16, being pummeled by six juveniles as probation officers stood idly by.

— EVADING EVICTION: A 70-year-old homeless man who illegally moved into a state-owned house in the path of the now-canceled 710 Freeway extension is fighting his eviction. Benito Flores, who seized a vacant residence in El Sereno several years ago, recently holed up in a tree house he built in the backyard — and so far has warded off attempts by sheriff’s deputies to lock him out.

— AIRPORT AHEAD: The long-awaited LAX/Metro transit center at Aviation Boulevard and 96th Street finally opened on Friday, bringing commuters tantalizingly close to Los Angeles International Airport. For now, free shuttle buses will run every 10 minutes along the 2.5-mile route between the transit center and LAX.

— BREAKING BARRIERS: The first transgender captain in the Los Angeles Fire Department died last month at age 80. Michele Kaemmerer joined the LAFD in 1969, retiring in 2003. She transitioned in 1991 and later led Engine 63 in Marina del Rey. In a 1999 interview with PBS, Kaemmerer said that some firefighters who knew her before she transitioned refused to work with her. Despite those hardships, she “always had a good attitude,” said her widow, Janis Walworth.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness did not launch any operations at new locations this week.
• On the docket for next week: The city’s newly formed Charter Reform Commission holds its first meeting on Tuesday, discussing the process that will be used to select its remaining members.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa’s new mayor on Sunday proposed a $100 million private trust as part of a reparations plan to give descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre scholarships and housing help in a city-backed bid to make amends for one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.

The plan by Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Oklahoma’s second-largest city, would not provide direct cash payments to descendants or the last two centenarian survivors of the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people. He made the announcement at the Greenwood Cultural Center, located in the once-thriving district of North Tulsa that was destroyed by a white mob.

Nichols said he does not use the term reparations, which he calls politically charged, characterizing his sweeping plan instead as a “road to repair.”

“For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city’s history,” Nichols said Sunday after receiving a standing ovation from several hundred people. “The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.

“Now it’s time to take the next big steps to restore.”

Nichols said the proposal wouldn’t require city council approval, although the council would need to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust, something he said was highly likely.

The private charitable trust would be created with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, with most of the funding either secured or committed by June 1, 2026. Although details would be developed over the next year by an executive director and a board of managers, the plan calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city’s north side.

“The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,” Nichols said in a telephone interview. “So what was lost was not just something from North Tulsa or the Black community. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world.”

Nichols’ proposal follows an executive order he signed earlier this year recognizing June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an official city holiday. Events Sunday in the Greenwood District included a picnic for families, worship services and an evening candlelight vigil.

Nichols also realizes the current national political climate, particularly President Trump’s sweeping assault on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, poses challenging political crosswinds.

“The fact that this lines up with a broader national conversation is a tough environment,” Nichols admitted, “but it doesn’t change the work we have to do.”

Jacqueline Weary, is a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a hotel and cab company in Greenwood that were destroyed. She acknowledged the political difficulty of giving cash payments to descendants. But at the same time, she wondered how much of her family’s wealth was lost in the violence.

“If Greenwood was still there, my grandfather would still have his hotel,” said Weary, 65. “It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally taken away.”

Tulsa is not the first U.S. city to explore reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, was the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The funding for the program came from taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana.

Other communities and organizations that have considered providing reparations range from the state of California to cities including Amherst, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Asheville, North Carolina; and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington.

In Tulsa, there are only two living survivors of the Race Massacre, both of whom are 110 years old: Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher. The women, both of whom were in attendance on Sunday, received direct financial compensation from both a Tulsa-based nonprofit and a New York-based philanthropic organization, but have not received any recompense from the city or state.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the survivors and the founder of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, said earlier this year that any reparations plan should include direct payments to Randle and Fletcher and a victims’ compensation fund for outstanding claims.

A lawsuit filed by Solomon-Simmons on behalf of the survivors was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates’ hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

Murphy writes for the Associated Press.

To look inside Julie Celestial’s kindergarten classroom in Long Beach is to peer into the future of reading in California.

During a recent lesson, 25 kindergartners gazed at the whiteboard, trying to sound out the word “bee.” They’re learning the long “e” sound, blending words such as “Pete” and “cheek” — words that they’ll soon be able to read in this lesson’s accompanying book.

Celestial was teaching something new for Long Beach Unified: phonics.

“It’s pretty cool to watch,” she said. “I’m really anticipating that there’s going to be a lot less reluctant readers and struggling readers now that the district has made this shift.”

Engage with our community-funded journalism as we delve into child care, transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth through age 5.

These phonics-based lessons are on the fast track to become law in California under a sweeping bill moving through the Legislature that will mandate how schools teach reading, a rare action in a state that generally emphasizes local school district control over dictating instruction.

Julie Celestial teaches her kindergarten class a literacy lesson at Mark Twain Elementary School in Long Beach.

The bill is the capstone to decades of debate and controversy in California on how best to teach reading amid stubbornly low test scores. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged his support, setting aside $200 million to fund teacher training on the new approach in the May revise of his 2025-26 budget proposal.

“It’s a big deal for kids, and it’s a big step forward — a very big one,” said Marshall Tuck, chief executive of EdVoice, an education advocacy nonprofit that has championed the change.

California has long struggled with reading scores below the national average. In 2024, only 29% of California’s fourth-graders scored “proficient” or better in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

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Literacy instruction has been controversial in California for decades, but state legislators may have finally decided on a compromise.

The proposed law, which would take effect in phases beginning in 2026, would require districts to adopt instructional materials based on the “science of reading,” a systemic approach to literacy instruction supported by decades of research about the way young children learn to read, from about transitional kindergarten through third grade.

The science of reading consists of five pillars: phonemic awareness (the sounds that letters make), phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

“It’s finite. There’s only 26 letters and 44 sounds,” said Leslie Zoroya, who leads an initiative at the Los Angeles County Office of Education that helps districts transition to a science-of-reading approach. “Phonics isn’t forever.”

After a failed effort last year, the bill gained the support this year of the influential California teachers unions and at least one advocacy group for English-language learners. In a compromise, school districts would have more flexibility to select which instructional materials are best for their students and the option to decline teacher training paid for by the state.

Kindergarten student Annika Esser works on a literacy lesson at Mark Twain Elementary School in Long Beach.

For decades, most school districts in California have been devoted to a different approach called “whole language” or “balanced literacy,” built on the belief that children naturally learn to read without being taught how to sound out words. Teachers focus on surrounding children with books intended to foster a love of reading and encourage them to look for clues that help them guess unknown words — such as predicting the next word based on the context of the story, or looking at the pictures — rather than sounding them out.

“The majority of students require a more intentional, explicit and systematic approach,” Zoroya said. “Thousands of kids across California in 10th grade are struggling in content-area classes because they missed phonics.”

Kindergarten student Tyler Madrid raises his hand to answer a question during a literacy lesson at Mark Twain Elementary School in Long Beach.

An extended reading war in California

California embraced the whole language approach to literacy, which took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, said Susan Neuman, a New York University professor who served as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under former President George W. Bush. The state became a national leader in what was considered a progressive and holistic approach to teaching literacy, with a focus on discovering the joy of reading, rather than learning specific skills, she said.

Bush then incorporated a phonics-heavy approach in an initiative that was part of his 2002 launch of No Child Left Behind, which increased the federal role in holding schools accountable for academic progress and required standardized testing. States, including California, received grants to teach a science-of-reading approach in high-poverty schools.

But many teachers in the state disliked the more regimented approach, and when the funding ended, districts largely transitioned back to the whole language approach. In the years since, science of reading continues to draw opposition from teachers unions and advocates for dual-language learners.

Many California teachers are passionate about the methods they already use and have chafed at a state-mandated approach to literacy education. Some don’t like what they describe as “drill and kill” phonics lessons that teach letter sounds and decoding.

Advocates for multiple-language learners, meanwhile, vociferously opposed adopting the most structured approach, worried that children who were still learning to speak English would not receive adequate support in language development and comprehension.

A 2022 study of 300 school districts in California found that less than 2% of districts were using curricula viewed as following the science of reading.

But the research has become clear: Looking at the pictures or context of a story to guess a word — as is encouraged in whole language or balanced literacy instruction, leads to struggles with reading. Children best learn to read by starting with foundational skills such as sounding out and decoding words.

“Anything that takes your eyes off the text when a kid is trying to figure out a word activates the wrong side of the brain,” Zoroya said.

Los Angeles County renews focus on phonics

In the last few years, several larger districts in California have started to embrace more structured phonics learning, including Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified and Oakland Unified.

Recently, these districts have started to see improvement in their reading test scores.

Julie Celestial teaches her kindergarten class a literacy lesson at Mark Twain Elementary School in Long Beach.

At Long Beach Unified, for example, the district’s in-house assessment shows significant gains among kindergarten students. In 2023-24, 78% of them met reading standards, up 13 percentage points from the previous school year. Proficiency rates across first and second grade were above 70%, and transitional kindergarten was at 48%. The district’s goal is to hit 85% proficiency across grades by the end of each school year.

In 2019, LAUSD introduced a pilot science-of-reading based curriculum, and adopted it across all schools for the 2023-24 academic year. After the first year, LAUSD reading scores improved in every grade level and across every demographic, chief academic officer Frances Baez said.

From the 2022-23 to the 2023-24 school years, LAUSD’s English Language Arts scores improved by 1.9 percentage points — five times more than the state as a whole, which improved by 0.3, she said.

‘Science of Reading’ makes waves in Lancaster

Teresa Cole, a kindergarten instructor in the Lancaster School District, has been teaching for 25 years. So when Lancaster asked her to try out a new way of teaching her students to read three years ago, she wasn’t thrilled.

“I was hesitant and apprehensive to try it,” she said, but decided to throw herself into a new method that promised results.

Artwork and literacy lessons hang from the ceiling inside Julie Celestial’s kindergarten class at Mark Twain Elementary School in Long Beach.

Teaching kindergarten is a challenge, she said, because children come in at vastly different stages. Many are just learning to hold a pencil; others can already read. She was seeing many children under “balanced literacy” lessons slip through the cracks — especially those with limited vocabularies. When she asked them to read words they didn’t know, “it almost felt like they were guessing.”

But as she began to teach a phonics lesson each morning and have them read decodable books — which have children practice the new sound they’ve learned — she noticed that her students were putting together the information much faster and starting to sound out words. “The results were immediate,” she said. “We were blown away.”

She was so impressed with the new curriculum that she started training other teachers in the district to use it as well.

Looking back at her old method of teaching reading, “I feel bad. I feel like maybe I wasn’t the best teacher back then,” Cole said. Part of the change, she said, was learning about the science behind how children learn to read. “I would never say to guess [a word] anymore,” she said.

This kind of buy-in and enthusiasm from teachers has been key to making the new curriculum work, said Krista Thomsen, Lancaster’s director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Department. In schools where the teachers are implementing the program well, scores have started to rise. “But it’s a steep learning curve,” she said, especially for teachers who have long taught a balanced literacy approach.

“We are stumbling through this process trying to get it right and making sure that every one of our kids has equitable access to learning how to read,”Thomsen said. “But we have every faith and every intention, and the plan is in place to get it where it should be going.”

A compromise may bring more phonics to the classroom

Kindergarten student Lauren Van De Kreeke answers a question from teacher Julie Celestial as they work on a literacy lesson at Mark Twain Elementary School in Long Beach.

A bill introduced by Assemblymember Blanca E. Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) last year requiring a science-of-reading approach in California public schools did not even get a first hearing. This year, Rubio introduced another version — Assembly Bill 1121 — that would have required teachers to be trained in a science-of-reading approach.

Opponents included the California Teachers Assn. and English-language learner advocates, who said in a joint letter that the bill would put a “disproportionate emphasis on phonics,” and would not focus on the skills needed by students learning English as a second language.

The groups also voiced concern that the bill would cut teachers out of the curriculum-selection process and that mandated training “undermines educators’ professional expertise and autonomy to respond to the specific learning needs of their students.”

Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, said the group opposed both bills because they were too narrow in their focus on skills such as phonics. “They’re essential. But English learners need more, right?” she said. “They don’t understand the language that they’re learning to read.”

Rubio said she was shocked by the pushback. “I was thinking it was a no-brainer. It’s about kids. This is evidence-based.” Rubio, a longtime teacher, was born in Mexico, and was herself an English-language learner in California public schools.

In 2024, just 19% of Latino students and 7% of Black students scored at or above “proficient” on the fourth-grade NAEP reading test.

But with the support of Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), the groups reached a compromise that not all teachers would be required to participate in the teacher training.

Hernandez said she was pleased that the compromise included more of an emphasis on oral language development and comprehension, which is vital for multi-language learners to succeed.

AB1454 requires the State Board of Education to come up with a new list of recommended materials that all follow science of reading principles. If a district chooses materials not on the list, they have to vouch that it also complies. The state will provide funds for professional development, though districts can choose whether to accept it.

This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.

Soon, the most powerful Los Angeles County politician won’t be the mayor of L.A. It won’t be a county supervisor.

It will be the elected chief executive.

“It’s probably going to be the second most powerful position in the state next to the governor,” said former West Covina Mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabai, one of 13 people now tasked with deciding just how much power should come with the post.

This week, the final five members were named to the county’s “governance reform task force.” The former politicians, union leaders, advocates and business owners will make recommendations on how to move forward with Measure G, the sprawling ballot measure approved by voters in November to overhaul L.A. County government.

Measure G was massive in scope but scant on details. That means members of the task force — five of whom were picked directly by supervisors — must figure out the contours of a new county ethics commission by 2026. They’ll also help expand the five-person board to nine by 2032.

Perhaps most consequentially, they will have to hammer out the powers of the new chief executive, an elected official who will represent 10 million county residents — a position that some task force members don’t even think should exist.

“I’m extremely concerned about the elected CEO,” said former Duarte Mayor John Fasana, a task force member. “At this point, we have to try and find a way to make it work.”

Rewind to last November’s election. The elected chief executive position was, by far, the most controversial part of the overhaul, and a bitter pill to swallow for some who were otherwise eager to see the Board of Supervisors expanded and ethics rules strengthened.

Currently, the chief executive, a role filled by Fesia Davenport, is appointed by the supervisors and works under them. She takes the first stab at the county budget and wrangles department heads, putting out whatever fires are erupting.

It’s not a glamorous job — many people don’t know it exists — but the chief executive, more than any other county leader, is responsible for keeping the place running smoothly.

With the passage of Measure G, the position will become a political one, beholden only to voters. Some have dubbed it the “mayor of L.A. County.”

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who spearheaded the overhaul, said that one of the most influential positions in local government will now come out of the shadows and be directly accountable to voters.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger has been deeply skeptical, warning that it will diminish the supervisors’ power and politicize a position that functions best behind the scenes. Supervisor Holly Mitchell had similar hesitations, as did some county employee unions.

Now, they’ve got to make it work.

Derek Hsieh, who heads the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs as well as chairs the Coalition of County Unions, said both labor groups opposed Measure G and the creation of the elected chief executive. But now, as a member of the task force, he vowed to “bring success to that decision.”

In interviews, some task force members — both supporters of Measure G and opponents — said they plan to tread carefully.

“I’ve heard murmuring, like what if we get someone like an [Alex] Villanueva running amok and burning bridges unnecessarily,” said Marcel Rodarte, who heads the California Contract Cities Assn., referring to the bombastic former sheriff. “It’s a possibility it could happen. I want to make sure that those nine supervisors have the ability to rein in the CEO.”

Rodarte and his colleagues will take the first stab at creating checks and balances. Should the chief executive be able to hire and fire department heads? What are the veto powers? How much control will the executive have over the county’s purse strings? Currently, the position has no term limits — should that change?

Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College and a task force member, said she’s already hearing concerns about the lack of term limits, which would put the chief executive on an uneven footing with supervisors, who must leave after three four-year terms. She said the task force may consider a change in state law that would permit term limits.

“Looking at the federal government, there need to be very real constraints on executive power,” she said. “There has to be a healthy friction.”

Sadhwani said she’s expecting some pushback to parts of the proposal from county supervisors, who may be less than pleased to see their power siphoned away.

“We can imagine there are board members who do not want to see those powers move to an executive branch,” she said.

Rob Quan, a transparency advocate, said he’ll be watching closely.

“What I would like to see is this task force have the freedom and independence and insulation to come up with good, thoughtful recommendations,” he said. “What I don’t want to see is these supervisors using their commissioners as gladiators.”

State of play

— THREE-RING CIRCUS: L.A. city and county officials spent the past week in U.S. Dist. Judge David O. Carter’s courtroom — either monitoring or participating in a multi-day evidentiary hearing on the city’s settlement agreement with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights. The stakes are high: the Alliance wants to place the city’s homelessness programs into receivership, effectively removing control from Mayor Karen Bass, on the grounds that the city is not meeting its legal obligations for providing such services. The city says it has made its best efforts to comply with the agreement.

So who was in the room? City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto monitored the hearing at various points. City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo was grilled on the stand over multiple days. Dr. Estemaye Agonafer, deputy mayor for homelessness, was sometimes prickly during three-plus hours of questioning.

— WHEN DOES IT END? The testimony in the Alliance case is expected to spill into next week, although it’s not clear how many more days are needed. Carter, who has remained unusually muted during this week’s proceedings, declared at one point: “Time’s not a concern.”

— READY TO MOVE ON: Speaking of homelessness, Councilmember Tim McOsker is looking to bring an end to Bass’ emergency declaration on homelessness, rescinding the mayor’s power to award no-bid contracts and lease buildings without council approval. The move comes two and a half years after Bass declared an emergency. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, an outspoken critic of the city’s homeless programs, also has been a longtime supporter of terminating the emergency.

— WAGE WARRIORS: A coalition of airlines, hotels and concession companies at Los Angeles International Airport filed paperwork Thursday to force a citywide vote on a new ordinance hiking the minimum wage of hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour by 2028.

— FEELING POWERLESS: Former Animal Services General Manager Staycee Dains said in a series of interviews with The Times that she felt powerless to solve entrenched problems at her agency, including severe understaffing and mistreatment of shelter animals. Dains said she was repeatedly told by the city’s personnel department that she couldn’t fire problem employees. And she clashed with a union that represents shelter employees.

— MONEY IN THE MAIL: Many residents who lost their homes in the January wildfires should have received a tax refund after their damaged or destroyed properties were reassessed. But about 330 checks are in limbo after postal workers tried unsuccessfully to deliver them to vacant or destroyed homes.

— NO CHARGES: A former L.A. County probation official who was accused by more than two dozen women of sexually abusing them when they were minors will not be criminally prosecuted because the alleged incidents happened too long ago. Thomas Jackson, 58, has been named in dozens of lawsuits that were part of a historic $4-billion settlement.

— WHAT DISASTER? L.A. leaders declined to dramatically increase the budget of the city’s Emergency Management Department, despite the many natural disasters that could hit the region in years to come. Facing a nearly $1-billion shortfall, the City Council passed a budget that rejected the funding bump asked for by department leaders.

— I SUED THE SHERIFF: Former Times reporter Maya Lau is suing Los Angeles County and Villanueva, the former sheriff, arguing that her 1st Amendment rights were violated. Lau’s attorneys said she was the target of a sheriff’s investigation that was “designed to intimidate and punish” her for reporting about a leaked list of deputies with a history of misconduct.

QUICK HITS

• WHERE IS INSIDE SAFE? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 103rd Street and Wilmington Avenue in Watts, according to the mayor’s team. That area is represented by Councilmember Tim McOsker.
• On the docket for next week: The supervisors meet Tuesday to consider a plan for holding regular meetings with city officials about the formation of the county’s new homelessness department. According to the motion, put forward by Horvath, the meetings would ensure “open communication” with the city after the supervisors voted to pull more than $300 million out of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

On a recent morning inside San Quentin prison, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman and more than a dozen other prosecutors crowded into a high-ceilinged meeting hall surrounded by killers, rapists and other serious offenders.

Name the crime, one of these guys has probably done it.

“It’s not every day that you’re in a room of 100 people, most of whom have committed murder, extremely violent crimes, and been convicted of it,” Hochman later said.

Many of these men, in their casual blue uniforms, were serving long sentences with little chance of getting out, like Marlon Arturo Melendez, an L.A. native who is now in for murder.

Melendez sat in a “sharing circle,” close enough to Hochman that their knees could touch, no bars between them. They chatted about the decrease in gang violence in the decades since Melendez was first incarcerated more than 20 years ago, and Melendez said he found Hochman “interesting.”

Inside San Quentin, this kind of interaction between inmates and guests isn’t unusual. For decades, the prison by the Bay has been doing incarceration differently, cobbling together a system that focuses on accountability and rehabilitation.

Like the other men in the room, Melendez takes responsibility for the harm he caused, and every day works to be a better man. When he introduces himself, he names his victims — an acknowledgment that what he did can’t be undone but also an acknowledgment that he doesn’t have to remain the same man who pulled the trigger.

Whether or not Melendez or any of these men ever walk free, what was once California’s most notorious lockup is now a place that offers them the chance to change and provides the most elusive of emotions for prisoners — hope.

Creating that culture is a theory and practice of imprisonment that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make the standard across the state.

He’s dubbed it the California Model, but as I’ve written about before, it’s common practice in other countries (and even in a few places in the United States). It’s based on a simple truth about incarceration: Most people who go into prison come out again. Public safety demands that they behave differently when they do.

“We are either paying to keep them here or we are paying if they come back out and harm somebody,” said Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney of San Francisco, who has visited San Quentin regularly for years.

Jenkins was the organizer of this unusual day that brought district attorneys from around the state inside of San Quentin to gain a better understanding of how the California Model works, and why even tough-on-crime district attorneys should support transforming our prisons.

As California does an about-face away from a decade of progressive criminal justice advances with new crackdowns such as those promised by the recently passed Proposition 36 (which is expected to increase the state inmate population), it is also continuing to move ahead with the controversial plan to remake prison culture, both for inmates and guards, by centering on rehabilitation over punishment.

Despite a tough economic year that is requiring the state to slash spending, Newsom has kept intact more than $200 million from the prior budget to revamp San Quentin so that its outdated facilities can support more than just locking up folks in cells.

Some of that construction, already happening on the grounds, is expected to be completed next year. It will make San Quentin the most visible example of the California Model. But changes in how inmates and guards interact and what rehabilitation opportunities are available are already underway at prisons across the state.

It is an overdue and profound transformation that has the potential to not only improve public safety and save money in the long run, but to fundamentally reshape what incarceration means across the country.

Jenkins’ push to help more prosecutors understand and value this metamorphosis might be crucial to helping the public support it as well — especially for those D.A.s whose constituents are just fine with a system that locks up men to suffer for their (often atrocious) crimes. Or even those Californians, such as many in San Francisco and Los Angeles, who are just fed up with the perception that California is soft on criminals.

“It’s not about moderate or progressive, but I think all of us that are moderates have to admit that there are reforms that still need to happen,” Jenkins told me as we walked through the prison yard. She took office after the successful recall of her progressive predecessor, Chesa Boudin, and a rightward shift in San Francisco on crime policy.

Still, she is vocal about the need for second chances. For her, prison reform is about more than the California Model, but a broader lens that includes the perspectives of incarcerated people, and their insights on what they need to make rehabilitation work.

“It really grounds you in your obligation to make sure that the culture in the [district attorney’s] office is fair,” she said.

For Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer who resoundingly ousted progressive George Gascón last year, rehabilitation makes sense. He likes to paraphrase a Fyodor Dostoevsky quote, “The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.”

“In my perfect world, the education system, the family system, the community, would have done all this work on the front end such that these people wouldn’t have been in position to commit crimes in the first place,” he said. But when that fails, it’s up to the criminal justice system to help people fix themselves.

Despite being perceived as a tough-on-crime D.A. (he prefers “fair on crime”) he’s so committed to that goal of rehabilitation that he is determined to push for a new Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles County — an expensive (billions) and unpopular idea that he says is long overdue but critical to public safety.

“Los Angeles County is absolutely failing because our prisons and jails are woefully inadequate,” he said.

He’s quick to add that rehabilitation isn’t for everyone. Some just aren’t ready for it. Some don’t care. The inmates of San Quentin agree with him. They are often fiercely vocal about who gets transferred to the prison, knowing that its success relies on having incarcerated people who want to change — one rogue inmate at San Quentin could ruin it for all of them.

“It has to be a choice. You have to understand that for yourself,” Oscar Acosta told me. Now 32, he’s a “CDC baby,” as he puts it — referring to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — and has been behind bars since he was 18. He credits San Quentin with helping him accept responsibility for his crimes and see a path forward.

When the California Model works, as the district attorneys saw, it’s obvious what its value is. Men who once were nothing but dangerous have the option to live different lives, with different values. Even if they remain incarcerated.

“After having been considered the worst of the worst, today I am a new man,” Melendez told me. “I hope (the district attorneys) were able to see real change in those who sat with them and be persuaded that rehabilitation over punishment is more fruitful and that justice seasoned with restoration is better for all.”

Melendez and the other incarcerated men at San Quentin aspire for us to see them as more than their worst actions. And they take heart that even prosecutors like Jenkins and Hochman, who put them behind bars, sometimes with triple-digit sentences, do see that the past does not always determine the future, and that investing in their change is an investment in safer communities.

When tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado ran for Los Angeles City Council last year, she positioned herself as a potential fourth vote against Mayor Karen Bass’ plan to hire more police officers.

While she was waging her campaign, the council’s three-member super progressive bloc — Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto–Martínez — voted against the mayor’s budget, decrying the amount of money allocated for the Los Angeles Police Department. Jurado, who went on to unseat Councilmember Kevin de León, said she would have joined them, turning the 12-3 budget vote into an 11-4.

Turns out it none of that was necessary.

On Thursday, the council approved a $14-billion annual budget that would cut police hiring in half, while sparing hundreds of other city workers from layoffs. Jurado, now on the council, praised the spending plan, then voted for it.

And this time around, the council members on the losing end of a 12-3 vote were those who occupy the body’s more moderate wing: Monica Rodriguez, Traci Park and John Lee.

The shift in budget votes from last year to now offers perhaps the strongest evidence of the political pendulum swing under way at City Hall. When other recent votes are added to the equation, the council chamber might even be undergoing a permanent realignment.

The council also voted 12-3 last week to hike the city’s minimum wage for hotel employees and private-sector tourism workers, boosting it to $30 per hour by 2028. Park, Rodriguez and Lee were in the minority on that issue as well, arguing that hotel and airport wages were rising too much and too quickly, jeopardizing the financial health of L.A.’s tourism industry.

The three ultra moderates also voiced alarm at their colleagues’ decision to scale back the mayor’s plan for increasing hiring at the fire department. Rodriguez, who gave a long and passionate speech against the budget, said in an interview she thinks “there’s clearly a shift in the politics of the council.”

“We have different ideology with respect to how we need to be making sure that the city is safe,” she said.

Soto-Martínez, who represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, wouldn’t pin the political shift on any one vote, arguing instead that “the realignment has been happening for quite some years now.” The move to the left at City Hall, he said, has been driven by the election of candidates — including himself — who have sworn off contributions from corporations and real estate interests.

Because this year’s financial situation was so dire, and the list of proposed cuts so large, the council had no sacred cows when preparing the 2025-26 spending plan, he said. That paved the way for the council to scale back the recruitment of new police officers, he said.

“For many years, including the first two years that I was here, that issue was untouchable. No one would touch it or go near it,” said Soto-Martínez, who was elected in 2022. “And this year, we were realistic about police hiring.”

The realignment is in part of the product of years of campaigning and grassroots advocacy from the hotel workers’ union, LA Forward, Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles and many other organizations. But it also reflects the choices of Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is still in his first year in his leadership role.

Harris-Dawson reshuffled the council’s committee assignments last year, offering plum spots to the newest arrivals. Hernandez, who promised during her 2022 campaign not to hire any additional police officers, landed a coveted spot on the budget committee. She then forged a strong working relationship with Councilmember Heather Hutt, another new appointee to the budget committee, who broke into tears on Thursday as she described Hernandez’ contributions to their deliberations.

Over the course of the budget committee’s nine meetings, Hernandez worked with her colleagues to restore funding for programs that help day laborers, an LGBTQ+ liaison in the city’s civil rights department and $1 million for the legal defense of immigrants facing deportation. She also fought for core services, such as street light repairs, graffiti removal and crews that address illegal dumping.

By contrast, Rodriguez, Park and Lee made clear they felt excluded from key decisions, particularly the budget committee’s vote to shift management over certain homelessness initiatives out of the office of City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo and into the Los Angeles Housing Department.

After a lengthy debate, the three moderates picked up two votes in their effort to delay those changes, not enough to win the day. Instead, their biggest victory — one that took multiple tries — was securing the votes to restore $376,961 at the fire department, which will allow the city to send 45 firefighters to paramedic training.

Park, whose district includes the fire-scarred Pacific Palisades, sounded furious by the time the entire budget came up for a vote.

“I don’t think we should agree to spend another penny on homelessness until we as a full council — not just the few of you who get invited into the conversation — have the chance to chime in,” she said, adding: “But instead of fixing that mess, what did we decide to go after? The increase [Bass requested for] our fire department, after all we literally just witnessed in January.”

One day after the budget vote, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield acknowledged that the pendulum had swung left at City Hall, pointing to the results of several recent elections. Still, he cautioned against reading too much into a single budget, saying a pendulum can swing in opposing directions.

Blumenfield, who represents part of the west San Fernando Valley, said he voted to slow down police hiring as part of a compromise to protect civilian jobs at the LAPD and elsewhere. “I hate seeing the lower number of police recruitment,” he said.

Blumenfield, who occupies the terrain between super progressive and ultra moderate, said he’s still hoping the council will find additional funds later in the budget year to allow the LAPD to hire more officers beyond the 240 that received funding from the council.

“I don’t like to look at the council as a spectrum. I don’t see myself on that spectrum,” he said. “On different issues, I feel like I’m on different parts of it.”

State of play

— SEEKING A VETO: Business groups pressed Mayor Karen Bass to veto the measure hiking the minimum wage of tourism workers, saying hotels and other businesses cannot afford to wage hikes of 50% between now and 2028. Bass, appearing Tuesday at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, sounded sympathetic to their complaints but stopped short of stating her opposition.

“I’m concerned about the hit to tourism and just the hit in general, especially with downtown, but citywide, because downtown was already suffering,” she told the audience. She also raised doubts that she would intervene, calling the initial wage vote “veto proof.”

— BAD CALL: Former deputy Mayor Brian Williams struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors, admitting he called in a fake bomb threat to City Hall late last year that was blamed on anti-Israel sentiment. Williams, who handled public safety issues for Bass, falsely stated that he had just received a call on his city-issued cellphone from an unknown male caller who made a bomb threat against City Hall, according to his plea agreement.

— HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: L.A.’s mayor promised to reduce barriers to filming in Los Angeles this week, signing an executive directive aimed at streamlining city permit processes and increasing access to legendary L.A. locations, such as Griffith Observatory and the Central Library. “We’ve taken the industry for granted,” Bass said. “We know that the industry is a part of our DNA here. And sometimes, if you think it’s a part of your DNA, you can think it’s always going to be here.”

— ZOO STORY: The elephants Billy and Tina were whisked out of the Los Angeles Zoo this week, relocated to a zoo in Tulsa over the fierce objections of animal advocates. The late night relocation drew complaints from Blumenfield and an array of activists, who argued that the pachyderms needed a much larger expanse of land for their health and well being.

— PUBLIC PAYOUTS: Two fired employees who received a combined $800,000 in legal settlements from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority had accused the agency’s chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, of hiring cronies for top jobs, attempting to destroy records and being “extremely inebriated” at an out-of-state conference, according to two settlement demand letters released this week. LAHSA “strenuously” denied the allegations, saying the agency “made a business decision” to pay the fired workers and resolve the employee dispute.

— PUSHBACK OVER PCH: Officials from city and state government tussled this week over plans for reopening an 11-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway. Nancy Ward, who leads the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, complained that her office had been kept “in the dark” about the city’s security plan for the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades area. A Bass spokesperson pushed back on that claim, saying the city would deploy 112 officers to staff 16 checkpoints 24 hours a day in the Palisades. Either way, traffic was flowing Friday afternoon.

— COUNTY CRIME: A veteran emergency management official with Los Angeles County has been arrested on charges of murdering his mother. Robert Barreras, 42, was suspended without pay, and had been on leave when the crime took place, a county official said.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness carried out operations in two locations: the area around Lankershim Boulevard and Strathern Street in Councilmember Imelda Padilla’s San Fernando Valley district and the area around Vermont Avenue and 73rd Street in Harris-Dawson’s South L.A. district. Outreach workers also returned to other parts of South L.A. and Hollywood, according to the mayor’s team.
• On the docket for next week: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up appointees to its new governance reform task force, which will help oversee the implementation of Measure G, last year’s voter-approved measure to overhaul county government.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Only a few months ago, former Irvine Vice Mayor Tammy Kim had aspirations of returning to the City Council she previously served on for four years.

Now her immediate goal is to fight off charges that could put her in prison for several years.

The Orange County district attorney’s office announced Thursday afternoon that Kim was charged with 10 felonies tied to allegedly lying about her residency during her City Council tenure and while campaigning for mayor last fall.

Kim was formally charged with three felony counts of perjury by declaration, three felony counts of filing a false document, and one felony count each of a public official aiding the illegal casting of votes, of filing false nominations papers, of knowing of the registration of someone not entitled to vote and of voter registration fraud. She was also charged with a misdemeanor of making a false statement.

She could spend up to 11 years and two months in state prison and county jail if convicted on all counts.

She is scheduled to be arraigned Friday morning.

Kim briefly responded to a call from The Times, saying she was advised not to share too much per her attorney, Caroline Hahn.

“We’re entering a not guilty plea,” Kim said.

Hahn added that she and her client “planned to launch a vigorous defense” but did not answer further questions.

Kim is accused of using two fraudulent addresses while running for mayor in the November 2024 election and then in a City Council special election in early 2025, according to the criminal complaint. She owned a condo in the city’s 3rd District, where she had lived since 2015, according to a separate lawsuit filed against Kim to get her thrown off the City Council ballot.

Kim won election to the Irvine City Council in November 2020, receiving nearly 44,000 votes a 14-person, top-three-candidate race.

At that time, city elections in Irvine used an at-large voting system, meaning candidates could live anywhere in the city.

The city moved to district elections in the fall 2024, requiring council members to live in the districts they represent. Only voters from those districts could vote for those candidates.

Kim served until November 2024 when she ran for and ultimately lost a mayoral campaign to Councilmember Larry Agran by a margin of nearly 5,000 votes.

The district attorney’s office believes Kim improperly used an address to run for mayor, no longer claiming to live in the 3rd District condo she had owned for a decade.

To run for mayor, Kim changed her California driver’s license and her voter registration to a home in the 5th District, where she never lived, according to the criminal complaint.

The home belonged to a family Kim met through a Korean teaching class, the complaint alleges. Kim did not inform the family that she was using their address, according to the complaint.

She has been charged with certifying that address as her own under the penalty of perjury.

Kim eventually finished her campaign and voted in November’s mayoral race based out of the 5th Diistrict home.

Shortly after her defeat, Kim declared her candidacy in December to fill the now- vacant 5th District seat, which Agran left after winning the mayoral election.

Kim eventually found a room in another 5th District home on Jan. 10 and changed her California driver’s registration that same day, according to the complaint. She then filed new nomination paperwork with the new 5th District address, according to the complaint.

Later that month, former mayoral candidate Ron Scolesdang sued Kim, claiming that she was fraudulently using an incorrect address. Scolesdang had hired a private investigator to monitor Kim, according to that lawsuit.

Kim eventually dropped out of the race on Feb. 7, the same day a Superior Court judge removed her name from the ballot.

Betty Franco Martinez won the special election.

Grange-over-Sands is perched on the edge of Morecambe Bay and offers a delightful step back in time for day-trippers. The Victorian and Edwardian influences are still evident

Grange-over-Sands, a quaint town perched on the edge of Morecambe Bay, offers a delightful journey back in time for day-trippers. Despite not having its own beach, the town exudes a unique coastal charm with a stretch of sand separated by marshland and the unmistakable salty sea air.

The 19th-century arrival of the rail line transformed Grange-over-Sands into a fashionable destination. Today, the Victorian and Edwardian influences are still evident, with a lengthy seafront promenade, a charming train station, a neat row of cafes and shops, and ornamental gardens. Away from the bustling tourist crowds of the nearby Lake District, Grange-over-Sands has a relaxed atmosphere.

READ MORE: Beauty buffs find ‘genius’ way to make fake tan last longer – it sells every 20 seconds

Just a 12-minute drive away is the Lake District, a national park that attracts around 18.1 million people every year. Visitors can leisurely explore hidden gardens or stroll along the promenade, which offers views across the bay to Far Arnside and Silverdale.

The town’s sloping topography creates layered areas above the coastline, each offering a different place to discover. This means you can walk along a path directly alongside the town’s railway line, while looking down at the sunken Ornamental Gardens on one side and the marshland on the other, reports Manchester Evening News.

Nestled in the heart of the town is Hazelmere Cafe and Bakery, a delightful tea room that marries vintage charm with contemporary decor. During my weekend jaunt, it was brimming with customers relishing everything from traditional cream teas to light midday meals, writes Liv Clarke.

Proudly offering an extensive tea menu with every conceivable blend (upstairs you’ll find Dorothy’s Teas, a shop devoted entirely to tea), I chose the China Rose, a revitalising brew with a delicate rose undertone.

Given the cafe’s location, one dish not to be missed is the Potted Morecambe Bay Shrimps served atop toast. Despite never having sampled potted shrimps before (their look always put me off), they were surprisingly enjoyable.

We concluded our meal with a shared vanilla slice, boasting crisp flaky pastry, silky custard filling, and sweet icing – the perfect partner to the tea.

The cafe also features an onsite bakery, open from Monday to Saturday. Although it was shut during our visit, it typically presents a broad selection of freshly baked breads and over thirty different cakes each day, ranging from Caramel Shortbread to Yorkshire Curd Tart.

It’s the perfect place to grab some goodies to savour at home after your visit or to nibble on as you wander around Grange-over-Sands.

What you need to know

A trip from Greater Manchester to Grange-over-Sands can be done in roughly 90 minutes, whether you opt to drive or hop on a direct train.

There’s ample parking available at various spots, including the Main Street car park near the promenade, with fees starting at £1.90 for an hour. The postcode is LA11 6DY.

Hazelmere Tea House and Restaurant opens its doors every day from 10am to 4pm (no need to book), while the bakery shop is open from 7.30am to 3pm, Monday to Saturday.

Visitors are strongly discouraged from venturing onto the saltmarsh at Grange-over-Sands due to the presence of perilous quicksand.

Instead, they can savour the views from the safety of the promenade.

For anybody confused about whether Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to come to Los Angeles’ rescue Wednesday when he announced his May revision to the state budget, a clue could be found on the front page of his spending plan.

In an AI-generated image, the budget cover page featured the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline, along with office workers who appear to be chatting it up in a forest glade next to an electric vehicle charging station. Not a hint of Los Angeles was anywhere to be seen.

Deeper in the budget proposal, no salvation was found for L.A. And at a news conference Wednesday, Newsom said flatly that he did not plan to provide cash to help dig the city out of its budget hole. The city is facing a $1-billion shortfall due to inflated personnel costs, higher than ever liability lawsuit payouts and below-expected revenues.

“The state’s not in a position to write a check,” Newsom said. “When you’re requesting things that have nothing to do with disaster recovery, that’s a nonstarter … I don’t need to highlight examples of requests from the city and county that were not related to disaster recovery and this state is not in a position, never have been, even in other times, to address those requests, particularly at this time.”

The governor’s rejection of Mayor Karen Bass’ pleas for state aid came as he discussed the state’s own economic woes. The state is confronting a $12-billion budget deficit in part due to a “Trump Slump,” Newsom said. The governor had to make cuts to his own signature program offering healthcare to immigrants without proper documentation.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivers her State of the City address at L.A. City Hall on April 21.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The governor made sure to remind reporters Wednesday that the state had been more than willing to help with fire recovery efforts, but said that was the limit of its generosity. Newsom said that of the $2.5 billion offered to Los Angeles after the fires, more than $1 billion remained unused. That funding helped with emergency response and initial recovery from the January wildfires.

Despite Newsom’s edict, Bass didn’t appear ready to throw in the towel. She said she and the governor were “in sync” and in regular contact about the situation. State money to help with the budget crisis would be fire-recovery-related, Bass insisted.

“We had to spend a great deal of money of our general fund related to the wildfires. If we are able to get that reimbursed that relieves some of the pressure from the general fund,” Bass said in an interview with The Times. “We submitted a document to him where we are asking him if the state would be willing to give us the money up front that FEMA will reimburse — so we are requesting 100% fire-related.”

Bass visited Sacramento in March and April. She and L.A. legislators first requested $1.893 billion in state aid to help with the budget crisis and disaster recovery. The mayor has since pared down the request, but the amount she is now requesting is not public.

In the initial request, they asked for $638 million for “protecting city services under budgetary strain.” That request is likely dead. But the $301-million request for “a loan to support disaster recovery expenses pending FEMA reimbursement” still stands.

Bass said she most recently met with the governor two weeks ago, and he informed the mayor that the state’s financial situation was not looking good.

The revision is just a starting point for final budgetary negotiations between the governor and the Legislature, and the state budget won’t be completed until at least mid-June, weeks after the deadline for the City Council to approve its own budget.

“We have 36 members of the L.A. delegation fighting for the city and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in June,” said Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, who chairs the Los Angeles County Legislative Delegation.

McKinnor said she is confident that the state budget will have money not just for fire recovery, but also to help the city manage its broader financial woes.

“We will not fail L.A.,” McKinnor said.

With the state lifeline in serious doubt, the cuts the city will have to make to balance its budget took another step toward reality.

While Bass is still hopeful for state aid, the council seemed less hopeful.

“We expected and planned for this outcome, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. The governor’s decision to withhold support from California’s largest city after we experienced the most devastating natural disaster in the state’s history is a serious mistake, with consequences for both our long-term recovery and the strength of the state’s economy,” said Katy Yaroslavsky, who chairs the council’s budget committee.

“This will not be a ‘no-layoff’ budget,” Yaroslavsky said on May 8 at a budget hearing.

Bass stressed that she is still trying to avoid any layoffs. The city plans to avert further layoffs by transferring employees to the proprietary departments, like the harbor, the airport and perhaps the Department of Water & Power.

“We’re all working very, very hard with the same goal in mind and that is having a balanced, responsible budget that avoids laying off city workers,” she said Thursday.

State of play

— MOURNING ONE OF CITY HALL’S OWN: Former chief of staff to Councilmember Kevin de León and longtime L.A. politico Jennifer Barraza Mendoza died Tuesday at 37 following a long battle with cancer. Barraza Mendoza began her career organizing with SEIU Local 99, helped lead De León’s Senate campaign and also served as a principal at Hilltop Public Solutions, among other roles. “In a political world of shapeshifters, she stood out as fiercely loyal and guided by principle,” De León said in a statement. “She never sought the spotlight — but when tested, she rose with unmatched strength to protect her team, her community, and what she knew was right.”

— MINIMUM WAGE WAR: The City Council voted Wednesday for a sweeping package of minimum wage increases for hotel workers and employees of companies at Los Angeles International Airport. One hotel executive said the proposal, which would take the wage to $30 in July 2028, would kill his company’s plan for a new 395-room hotel tower in Universal City. Other hotel companies predicted they would scale back or shutter their restaurant operations. The hotel workers’ union countered by saying business groups have made similar warnings in the past, only to be proved wrong.

— SECOND TIME’S A CHARM: Surprise! On Friday, the City Council had to schedule a do-over vote on its tourism wage proposal. That vote, called as part of a special noon meeting, came two days after City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office warned that Wednesday’s vote had the potential to violate the city’s public meeting law.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez in December in Los Angeles.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

— READY TO RELAUNCH: Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez plans to host her campaign kickoff event for her reelection bid Saturday in Highland Park, where she was born and raised. She already has a few competitors in the race, including Raul Claros, who used to serve on the Affordable Housing Commission, and Sylvia Robledo, a former council aide.

The left-wing councilmember has already won the endorsements of Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and from colleagues Heather Hutt, Ysabel Jurado, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Nithya Raman. Controller Kenneth Mejia also endorsed her.

— PHOTO BOMB: Recently pictured with Eunisses Hernandez: Political consultant Rick Jacobs — the former senior aide to then-Mayor Eric Garcetti who was accused of sexual harassment. Jacobs now works as a consultant for the politically powerful Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Per a post on Jacobs’ LinkedIn, Hernandez posed for a photo this week with Jacobs and several union members while presenting the group with a city certificate of recognition.

Jacobs has denied the harassment allegations, but the scandal bedeviled Garcetti in his final years in office and nearly derailed his ambassadorship to India. Jacobs has remained in the political mix — some may remember his controversial appearance at Bass’ exclusive 2022 post-inauguration Getty House afterparty. Also worth noting: The Carpenters are major players in local elections, and their PAC spent nearly $150,000 supporting Hernandez’s then-opponent Gil Cedillo in the 2022 election.

“Councilmember Hernandez was proud to stand with the carpenters who built the little library at North East New Beginnings, the first-of-its-kind interim housing site she opened in 2024. She was there to honor their craftsmanship and community contribution — nothing more. She did not choose who else appeared in the photo,” said Naomi Villagomez Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez.

— PARK GETS AN OPPONENT: Public Counsel attorney Faizah Malik is challenging Councilmember Traci Park from the left, the tenants rights lawyer announced Thursday. Malik is styling her campaign in the mold of prior progressive incumbent ousters, she said, though she has yet to garner any of their endorsements. But she did get an Instagram signal boost from former CD 11 Councilmember Mike Bonin, who characterized her as “A Westside leader who will fight for YOU and your family.” Meanwhile, centrist group Thrive LA had a fundraiser for Park this week, and declared her its first endorsement of the 2026 cycle.

— FIREFIGHT: Active and retired firefighters blasted the council’s recommendation to nix 42 “Emergency Incident Technicians,” who help develop firefighting strategy and account for firefighters during blazes. In a letter to the council, the firefighters said the 1998 death of firefighter Joseph Dupee was linked to removal of EITs during a previous budget crisis.

“Please do not repeat the same mistake that was made in 1998 when EITs were removed and said removal was found to be a contributing factor in the death of LAFD Captain Joseph Dupee,” the firefighters wrote.

— EMPLOYMENT LAW AND ORDER: Some LAPD officers are hitting the jackpot on what are known as “LAPD lottery” cases. The city has paid out nearly $70 million over the last three years to officers who have sued the department after alleging they were the victims of sexual harassment, racial discrimination or retaliation against whistleblowers.

The massive payouts are not helping the city’s coffers. One of the leading causes of the current fiscal crisis is the ballooning liability payments that the city makes in settlements and jury verdicts.

— WATER OLYMPICS: L.A. County’s plan to run a water taxi between Long Beach and San Pedro during the Olympics paddled forward this week. Supervisor Janice Hahn introduced a motion, with co-author Mayor Bass, to launch a feasibility study assessing ridership demand, cost and possible routes.

“[The water taxi] would give residents, workers and tourists an affordable alternative to driving and parking at these Games venues,” Hahn said.

— ROBO-PERMIT: City and county residents submitting plans to rebuild their burned down properties could have their first interaction with an AI bot who would inspect their plans before a human. Wildfire recovery foundations purchased the AI permitting software, developed by Australian tech firm Archistar, and donated it to the city and county. The tech was largely paid for by Steadfast L.A., Rick Caruso’s nonprofit.

— TRUMP’S VETS MOVE: President Trump signed an executive order calling on the Department of Veterans Affairs to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans on its West Los Angeles campus, but even promoters of the idea are skeptical of the commander in chief’s follow-through.

“If this had come from any other president, I’d pop the Champagne,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), whose district includes the West Los Angeles campus. Trump, he said, follows up on “like one out of 10 things that he announces. You just never know which one. You never know to what extent.”

— ADDRESSING THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM: A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied a motion for a temporary restraining order Thursday that sought to stop the L.A. Zoo from transferring elephants Tina and Billy to the Tulsa Zoo. The judge said the decision was out of the court’s purview. The zoo said Thursday that the “difficult decision” to relocate the pachyderms was made with the “care and well being” of the animals at top of mind.

“Activist agendas and protests are rightfully not a consideration in decisions that impact animal care,” the statement said.

— CHARTER SQUABBLE: Bass made her four appointments to the Charter Reform Commission this week. She selected Raymond Meza, Melinda Murray, Christina Sanchez and Robert Lewis to serve as commissioners. She also named Justin Ramirez as the executive director of the commission. Bass’s appointments came on the heels of reform advocate Rob Quan sending out mailers about the mayor’s delay in making appointments, which left the commission unable to get to work.

“Karen Bass wasted eight months. That was when her appointments were due. Eight months ago,” Quan said in an interview.

— WORKDAY TROUBLE: The Department of Water and Power is slated to adopt a new human resources software, Workday, in mid-June. But Gus Corona, business manager of IBEW Local 18, warned of “serious concerns” and the potential for “widespread problems and administrative chaos.” In a letter this week to DWP CEO Janisse Quiñones, which The Times obtained, Corona said there was a “consistent lack of clarity” about the new system, especially around union dues and benefit deductions, retroactive pay and cost of living adjustments. “The level of uncertainty so close to a planned launch date is deeply troubling,” Corona wrote.

Quick Hits

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program went to Councilmember Curren Price’s district: 37th Street and Flower Street, according to the mayor’s office.
• On the docket for next week: The full City Council is scheduled to take up the proposed city budget for 2025-26 — and the mayor’s proposal for city employee layoffs — on Thursday.

Stay in touch

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