Eagle

Nylah Moore has been a standout flag football and girls’ basketball player at Eagle Rock High. Now comes the arrival of her freshman sister, Cinzia, which means fans in the bleachers might want to start designing and creating signs to wave each time one or the other scores a touchdown or makes a basket. It will be great exercise for the arms considering how many times the two figure to come through this season.

Nylah, who is 5-foot-11, is Eagle Rock’s versatile quarterback and scoring guard. She helped Eagle Rock to a 20-2 record last season, passing for 51 touchdowns as a junior. The basketball team went 10-0 in the Northern League. She averaged 15 points.

With the Moore sisters, Eagle Rock deserves the favorite’s role to win the City Section Open Division flag football title and compete with Birmingham and Westchester for an Open Division girls’ basketball title. Cinzia, who is 5-9, also excels in both sports.

Their mother, Christine Moore, was principal of the year at Luther Burbank Middle School in 2023 for Region 16. Coaches remember her bringing a young Nylah to sporting events years ago. Her biggest challenge will be finding time to watch her two daughters perform in two sports in her new job serving as region director for the Eagle Rock/Highland Park Network.

Eagle Rock’s rise in flag football is no surprise. The school has been able to attract multisport athletes with speed and versatility. Basketball is where this season a surprise could happen. Coach Julie Wilkins has her biggest team ever after the arrival of 5-10 Marlborough transfer Amelie Cash. She also has a 6-1 player. Since Wilkins coaches both flag football and girls’ basketball, she’s always looking for “volunteers” to play both sports (wink, wink).

That’s how the successful teams in flag football have emerged — getting players from softball, soccer, track and field, and volleyball to join the sport. And it’s working.

Monroe had 20 players come out last season. This year, at least 36 have been practicing. Coach Jose Ruiz always asks Leo Hernandez, the track and field and cross country coach, for recommendations on his athletes as potential flag football players. Now that middle schools feeding Monroe have flag football programs, the numbers are expected to continue to rise.

The U.S. Air Force Reserve’s 442nd Fighter Wing is now set to transition to the F-15E Strike Eagle after retiring the last of its A-10 Warthog ground attack jets. This is an unexpected announcement and follows years of uncertainty about whether the 442nd would still have a tactical flying mission at all after its A-10s headed to the boneyard. The decision to give the wing F-15Es, rather than a newer type like the F-15EX Eagle II, is also notable, and there were hints this was coming. The jets will have to come from another unit, pointing to larger force structure changes on the horizon.

Representative Mark Alford, a Missouri Republican, announced the transition plan for the 442nd late yesterday. The Wing’s home station is Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, which is situated in Alford’s district. Whiteman is better known for being the home of the Air Force’s B-2 bomber fleet. The Missouri Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment, with its UH-60 Black Hawks, is also a tenant unit at the base.

The Department of the Air Force has approved “the enterprise definition, site survey criteria, and candidate location for the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) F-15E Strike Eagle basing action,” according to a press release from Alford’s office. “Based on the approved enterprise definition, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, has been identified as the sole candidate location for the F-15E Strike Eagle mission – a decision that marks a critical step toward securing the future of the 442d Fighter Wing and continuing its decades-long tradition of excellence.”

“The Department of the Air Force’s decision supports its broader goal of increasing fighter capacity, modernizing the fighter force, and replacing aging aircraft with a capable and sustainable platform,” the release adds. “The planned transition will bring 24 F-15E Strike Eagles to Whiteman Air Force Base, preserving a critical Air Force Reserve combat-coded fighter unit and the experience of the 442d Fighter Wing.”

The current plan is for the first F-15Es to begin arriving at Whiteman in Fiscal Year 2031, the release also notes. This is in line with the new retirement schedule for the A-10 fleet that the U.S. Air Force announced earlier this year. The service had previously been aiming to divest the last of its Warthogs in 2029, but is now set to continue flying the type through 2030. The 442nd at Whiteman, as well as an active component squadron at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, are now in line to be the last operational A-10 units. A second active duty unit at Moody will also keep flying the A-10 for an extra year, into 2029, under the new plan.

TWZ has also reached out to the U.S. Air Force for more information in light of Alford’s announcement.

Most immediately, the decision to transition the 442nd to the F-15E is a major win for the unit and for Whiteman, preserving a tactical flying mission at the base for the future. The impending retirement of the A-10 has caused significant uncertainty for units flying Warthogs, especially in the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard. Members of Congress, as well as state politicians, on both sides of the political aisle have been pushing for years for new flying missions for existing A-10 units. A similar surprise announcement came in April 2025, when President Donald Trump announced that the Michigan Air National Guard’s 127th Wing would be trading its Warthogs for F-15EXs.

“I want to sincerely thank the leaders throughout the Department of the Air Force, Air Force Reserve Command, Governor [Mike] Kehoe for bringing this matter to President Trump’s attention, Missouri’s State Senators for their efforts, and the many Whiteman Air Force Base Airmen who took the time to give their concerns and help make this mission possible,” Rep. Alford said in a statement yesterday. “This outcome reflects what can happen when a community comes together, when our military leaders listen, and when we work toward a shared goal.”

“This is incredible news for Whiteman Air Force Base, the 442d Fighter Wing, and our entire state. The F-15E Strike Eagle mission secures the future for the 442d, saving jobs and bringing continued opportunity to Missouri,” Gov. Kehoe wrote in a post on X yesterday. “This historic announcement would not have been possible without @RepMarkAlford’s [Rep. Alford’s] dedication to securing this mission alongside Whiteman leadership, @SenEricSchmitt [Senator Eric Schmitt], and @SenHawleyPress [Senator Josh Hawley].”

“This is the first in several steps,” Alford also acknowledged during a press conference yesterday, as seen in the video below. “There’s a lot of planning that has to go into this, a lot of regulatory steps. But this is a first step that I’ve been waiting on for three and a half years: for the Air Force to give us a call and to email us with a detailed plan of how this is going to work out.”

LIVE: ALFORD ANNOUNCES MAJOR VICTORY FOR WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE

As mentioned, the more specific plan now to convert the 442nd into an F-15E squadron is interesting. The original Strike Eagle is long out of production, and the Air Force currently has some 212 of these jets in inventory.

So, to make the plan work, the F-15Es heading to Whiteman in Fiscal Year 2031 will have to come from somewhere else within the Air Force. Right now, there are six active-duty Strike Eagle squadrons spread across Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, and RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. There are a smaller number of Strike Eagles assigned to test and evaluation units, as well.

It’s also important to note here that there are roughly two halves to the F-15E fleet: older jets with Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220 turbofan engines and ones with more powerful F100-PW-229 variants. The Strike Eagles with -229 engines are newer, with the final batch of 10 aircraft being delivered in the early 2000s.

The F-15Es are still some of the most heavily in-demand aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory today, offering a very flexible multi-mission tactical platform with impressive range and payload capacity. At the same time, the Strike Eagle fleet has been heavily strained by persistent operational demands for decades now. This has been recently compounded by the loss of four jets in the course of operations against Iran this year.

The Air Force has moved in recent years to retire its older F-100-PW-220-powered Strike Eagles, ostensibly to free up resources for new and improved capabilities as part of larger modernization efforts. Congress has pushed back against those plans, something we will come back to later on. More recently, the service also announced plans to roughly double the size of its fleet of F-15EX fleet, from 129 to 267 jets, explicitly to help “begin to recapitalize the aging F-15E fleet.”

TWZ has been highlighting the logic of replacing the F-15Es, or at least a substantial portion of that fleet, with new EXs, for years now. As we have previously noted, the current acquisition plan is large enough that it could also help fill gaps left by the retirement of the A-10 fleet and older F-16 Viper fighters.

We have also talked in the past about the potential value then of sending the resulting ‘surplus’ F-15Es to other Air Force units, especially in the reserve component and the Air National Guard. It would arguably make more sense in many cases to give active-duty squadrons newer F-15EXs while pushing older Strike Eagles to the Reserve and Guard. The more heavily air-to-ground-focused, two-seat F-15Es would be especially well positioned to carry on close air support, forward air control, and other missions currently performed by units transitioning from the A-10. The loss of this knowledge and specialization is among the biggest concerns with retiring the A-10.

“For every one of these A-10 units that are going away, I’m looking at if there’s a means by which we can get an F-15 unit behind it, whether it’s a Strike Eagle or an EX,” Air Force Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, Chief of Air Force Reserve, said just this past February at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Warfare Symposium in February.

“I am optimistic that we’ve at least got people listening to the value that we provide, the combat capability we provide, the experience that we provide,” Healy also said at that time when asked directly by TWZ about the likelihood of F-15Es heading to Air Force Reserve units. “We’ve proven it over and over again. We’re efficient, we’re experienced, we’re 100 percent accessible as a reserve force, and we’re lethal in all these mission sets. I think our message is sounding in a positive way with senior leadership within the Air Force. I’m not going to cash the check yet, but I’m optimistic about our future in terms of recapitalizing some of our units.”

To reiterate, sending F-15Es to any Air Force Reserve and/or Air National Guard squadron will require a redistribution of the existing Strike Eagle fleet. The comment in the press release from Rep. Alford’s office that Whiteman has been “identified as the sole candidate location for the F-15E Strike Eagle mission” raises further questions about exactly what the entire Strike Eagle force, and its disposition, will look like by the end of the decade. Seymour-Johnson is where the F-15E schoolhouse currently resides, and the base is also now the hub for F-15EX training.

The new plans for a larger fleet of F-15EXs will factor in the equation, as well. The Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing is currently the only operational unit flying Eagle IIs. The Air Force has announced that Air National Guard squadrons in California and Louisiana, as well as the aforementioned one in Michigan, will be receiving F-15EXs, too. Two active duty Eagle II squadrons are also set to be established at Kadena Air Base in Japan. There are currently expected to be nearly 120 aircraft assigned to these squadrons, as well as test and evaluation units, collectively. With the EX fleet now set to comprise 267 aircraft, there is then the question of where nearly 150 additional jets will be assigned. Recapitalizing frontline F-15E units with EXs would go a long way toward providing an answer, while also freeing up Strike Eagles for reassignment elsewhere.

The 442nd’s transition to the F-15E is still not expected to come for several more years. There is the possibility then that the plan, as well as other expected force structure changes, could evolve further due to a variety of factors. For one, Congress has already stepped in to block the Air Force from retiring any Strike Eagles through at least September 2027, and could do the same again next year. At the same time, this would not preclude the Air Force from reassigning those jets to new units as other aircraft enter service.

There is also the potential for A-10s to continue serving beyond 2030. Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of Congressmen introduced a bill that, if passed and signed into law, would require the Air Force to continue flying Warthogs through Fiscal Year 2033. This proposed legislation is named the BRRRRT Act (standing for Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt), a reference to the sound the A-10’s iconic 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon makes when fired. This is on top of additional lifelines for the Warthog community contained in drafts of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2027 that are now making their way through Congress.

The employment of A-10s in strikes against targets in and around Iran this year directly contributed to the Air Force’s aforementioned decision to extend the service life of the fleet. This has also bolstered general support for the aircraft, which has long had a vocal following among the general public.

Though clearly an important development for the 442nd Fighter Wing, the transition plan that has been outlined now looks to be just the start of major changes for the Air Force’s F-15E fleet, especially as the new F-15EX continues to take center stage.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

On a Tuesday evening in Eagle Rock, used-bookstore owners Jeremy and Debbie Kaplan were closing up for the day when a stranger rushed through the entrance. He tossed an envelope onto the counter, said something like: “Building’s been sold,” and slipped out.

Inside the envelope, the Kaplans found a 30-day notice: The shop’s $1,200 monthly rent would be increasing to $2,805 on April 1, they were required to decide whether they would accept the more than 133% price hike a month in advance, and they’d need to agree to a three- to five-year lease if so. The letter arrived Feb. 17, which meant the Kaplans had 11 days to accept the new landlord’s terms or leave.

“We couldn’t even consider it,” Jeremy Kaplan said. “It would be suicide.” The couple looked around the 680-square-foot shop. From the floor to ceiling, more than 20,000 books were crammed every which way into shelves they’d built and stained themselves nearly 20 years before. “My first reaction was panic,” he said. “How are we going to move out of this place?”

Their children had grown up at Read Books (pronounced like the color, as in: “These aren’t new books, they’re previously read books.”) The realization began to set in, Jeremy said, that they were being pushed out with intimidation tactics. “We started getting angry. So the next day, we started looking into our legal rights.”

After searching the internet, the Kaplans found California’s Senate Bill 1103, the Commercial Tenant Protection Act that passed last year. The law offers protections for “qualified commercial tenants” and requires landlords to give a 90-day notice for rent increases surpassing 10%.

When the Kaplans tried to contact the new property management company, Jeremy said, Systems Real Estate was evasive.

“It’s the one bill that protects commercial tenants, and it’s a fairly toothless bill because they don’t have to acknowledge it, unless you make them acknowledge it,” he said. The Kaplans, along with Sharon Kroner, whose neighboring vintage boutique Owl Talk is facing the same fate, wrote to Systems Real Estate, citing SB 1103. They had the letter certified and attached their rent checks for the next month.

In response, the 30-day notice was amended to 90 days. Systems Real Estate did not respond to a request from The Times for comment.

The Kaplans had more time to search for a new location, but Jeremy quickly saw a trend in Northeast Los Angeles. “Vacant spaces all over the place,” he said. “When we inquired, they were ludicrously expensive, most over $5 per square foot. The second thing we started noticing was small stores like ours going out of business or being priced out in the exact same way we were.”

Jeremy Kaplan stands inside his bookstore on the last day Read Books is open for business.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Building a coalition

When Jeremy started posting about Read Books’ plight, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Many customers who reached out said they wanted to help — the bookstore had been in Eagle Rock for as long as they had.

“Not mere condolences but calls to action from people I barely knew,” he said. “Lawyers, journalists, activists, parents, children.”

Two days after the rent-increase notice was delivered, the Kaplans and their supporters were devising a plan to fight back — if not to save Read Books, then to save other small businesses.

Save North East Los Angeles Shops was born.

Chris Newman, an immigrant rights lawyer whose son learned to read with books bought at the Eagle Rock shop, told The Times he showed up to the group’s first official meeting with the intention of trying to save the bookstore.

“I was surprised to see so many people talking not just about the situation that Jeremy’s in, but an epidemic that small businesses are facing,” Newman said.

At one coalition meeting in April, Jeremy rushed in late.

He’d just come from an event where he’d been able to talk with Mayor Karen Bass about the plight small businesses are facing and asked about the possibility of imposing a commercial vacancy tax on property owners who leave storefronts vacant for extended periods.

Although sympathetic, the mayor shot him down pretty swiftly, Jeremy said, saying nobody in L.A. wants more taxes.

A representative for Bass told The Times that under her leadership, “the City is focused on cutting red tape, expanding support for local businesses, and advancing solutions that address the broader affordability crisis.”

Signs against rent increases are posted outside Read Books.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The precedent

In March 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down, small businesses in San Francisco had been grappling with rising rents that increasingly led to empty storefronts. Then North Beach’s beloved corner gem, Caffe Sapore, got its notice. Like Eagle Rockers, San Franciscans were done merely lamenting the community’s loss. They started organizing.

Aaron Peskin, who at the time served on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, said that while there are a variety of factors contributing to the vacancy issue, impractical property owners were the most common thread.

“Commercial landlords had unbelievably unrealistic expectations of rent, and a small business can only sell a T-shirt or a hamburger or a service for what the market will bear, and none of them could swing the rent,” Peskin said.

That year he authored Proposition D, a commercial vacancy tax ordinance that applies to street-facing, ground-floor properties that sit vacant for more than 182 days a year. It passed with nearly 70% of the vote.

“I served on that Board of Supervisors for 17 years, and it’s one of my proudest pieces of public policy,” Peskin said. “In the years since it passed, it has been working and has really helped in the post-pandemic recovery in our neighborhood commercial corridors. It’s been a rare instant success story.”

Demonstrators march toward Eagle Rock City Hall carrying protest signs against rent hikes for small businesses.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The landlords

The question as to why someone would purchase a commercial property, raise the rent so current tenants are displaced and prospective tenants look elsewhere, only to have a onetime community hub collecting cobwebs, has inspired myriad theories.

Peskin pointed to an impractical landlord mentality; an L.A. council member suspected landlords were after tax breaks; a professor of economics said that his sense is that there’s more going on and tax benefits are likely not the driving factor; and a commercial real estate expert said landlords are likely pricing tenants out so they can tear the buildings down.

The Times reached out to Dr. Ari Ucar, the new owner of the Eagle Rock Boulevard building, who did not respond.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, a former tenant rights attorney, told The Times that landlords can benefit by claiming the vacancy as a loss on their taxes. “For landlords who own multiple commercial properties in a wide portfolio, a vacancy can be marked as a loss. In essence, when you file taxes and mark this as a loss, it reduces the total income generated. That’s the perverse incentive of having a vacancy.”

But a tax attorney in Los Angeles, Andrew Gradman, wasn’t convinced the tax incentive was enough to curb a landlord’s appetite for the passive income of steady rent payments. “You have to consider the most reasonable premise, which is that these landlords think they can get a better tenant, or they think that the lease would stand in the way of their getting some other better deal, in the form of, say, selling the whole building.”

A commercial real estate broker, Nick Quackenbos, said the likely motive for such a price hike is plans to scrape the building and build apartments in its place. He pointed to a recent landmark bill, State Senate Bill 79, which overrides local zoning laws to allow for taller, denser buildings near major transit stops. The bill will take effect statewide July 1, but L.A. plans to delay citywide upzoning until 2030 by carving out bespoke plans that target 55 single-family and low-density areas, allowing for 4-16 unit buildings up to four stories tall.

The 55 areas are mostly in Central L.A., West L.A., the Eastside and the San Fernando Valley. While Eagle Rock isn’t what L.A. city planners are designating an “opportunity hub” right now, Read Books is located a stone’s throw from the upcoming Colorado/Eagle Rock station, a stop on the North Hollywood to Pasadena BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) line slated to launch ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics.

“The bill is allowing things to take place which could disfigure a city like Eagle Rock,” said Quackenbos. “I bet that’s what you’re going to find down the road: These places will become vacant, and suddenly there’s groundbreaking for a new apartment building going up.”

Jeremy Kaplan speaks to community members outside his store, Read Books, about the issues small business owners face.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The rally

Read Books was set to close last weekend, and the Kaplans wanted to go out with a bang. In the shop’s front window was a single book: “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto” by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, surrounded by signs that read “Forced Out!,” “Shame on Greedy Landlords,” and “Our Family Loves Read Books.”

As Debbie sat at the register inside, helping a steady flow of the shop’s final patrons, protesters gathered behind the building, clutching homemade posters and waiting for Jeremy to speak. Choking up, he addressed the crowd.

Debbie Kaplan, who co-owns Read Books, hands a customer books.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“Three months ago, when this all began, my initial action was to fight back, because fighting is my default setting. But I also felt … fear of insignificance, of disappearing, as if everything we built in the last 19 years, often working seven days a week, might soon be dismantled and forgotten. The support you’ve gifted us with these last few months has been a constant reminder that we’re all in this together.

“The real estate lobby is rich and powerful. They have more lobbyists than our representatives have staff, but we are building a coalition to fight them.

“What’s at stake? The soul of Los Angeles.”