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| New nonprofit hopes to invigorate aerospace and defense community partnerships | | The Santa Clarita-based nonprofit Southern Pacific Aero-Defense Alliance held its inaugural event Wednesday at College of the Canyons, with a panel discussion on California’s historical aero-defense industry and how to protect it. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | States sue to block Trump rollback of fair housing protections - Los Angeles Times | | California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Monday over its efforts to roll back fair housing rules that bar certain types of discrimination by landlords, including against LGBTQ+ people.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rule change threatening funding for states that offer housing protections for LGBTQ+ and other marginalized individuals who are not explicitly covered by federal law is illegal, undermines state efforts to combat discrimination and would push vulnerable people onto the streets.
“In effect, the Trump administration is attempting to roll back civil rights enforcement in housing at the federal level, and pressure states to weaken their own protections as well,” Bonta said during a news conference Monday. “That’s not just bad policy, it’s unlawful.”
In a Monday night post on X, HUD Secretary Scott Turner dismissed the lawsuit as a “stunt” that “will not succeed.”
“Leftist state attorneys general have run to a San Francisco courthouse in a desperate attempt to obstruct President Trump’s America First agenda through political lawfare,” Turner wrote. “As Secretary, I will continue enforcing the Fair Housing Act as written and intended. That is to ensure equal rights under the law, not extra rights for politically favored groups.”
The federal Fair Housing Act explicitly bans discrimination based on seven traits: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability. Under rules set forth during the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has for years interpreted the law as banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Many states, including California, also have adopted laws explicitly banning discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups not mentioned in the federal law, with California also banning discrimination based on marital status, ancestry, source of income and veteran or military status.
In September, HUD issued new guidance threatening to decertify state housing agencies — stripping their federal funding and ability to investigate discrimination claims — if they provide anti-discrimination protections other than those spelled out in the Fair Housing Act. The guidance also barred state agencies from using federal funds to “promote gender ideology,” “fund or promote elective abortions” or promote illegal immigration, according to the lawsuit.
The guidance followed an announcement last year by Turner, a former NFL player and Trump loyalist, that HUD would no longer adhere to a 2016 Obama-era rule protecting transgender people from housing discrimination, which Turner said “tied housing programs, shelters and other facilities funded by HUD to far-left gender ideology.” [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | Taking Action Together: Arts venues, museums announce commitment to climate action | Arts and Culture | ladowntownnews.com | | Several arts venues in and around Downtown have announced a joint commitment to climate action, establishing environmentally conscious approaches to their operations. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | Should child rapists be released just because they're old? Maybe - Los Angeles Times | | SACRAMENTO — Murder is considered the worst crime out there, but for my money, it’s child rapists who are the worst of the worst — especially the serial ones who destroy one life after another.
That’s wholly subjective on my part, but I doubt I’m alone. Which is why I was far from surprised at the outrage that accompanied two recent, successful parole hearings for convicted serial child predators in Sacramento.
Gregory Lee Vogelsang, 57, and David Funston, 64, both attacked children and were granted parole through California’s elderly parole program — though both remain behind bars for now.
But the fury over the possibility of their freedom has put the state’s controversial elderly parole program under scrutiny — again — and led to a flurry of legislation to add new restrictions. Should sex offenders be excluded? Especially heinous murderers? Everyone under the age of 75?
It’s easy to answer “yes” to all of the above.
“Part of the problem we have is we shouldn’t be making policy decisions based on speculation and on scary rhetoric that’s disconnected from the facts,” Keith Wattley told me. He’s the founder and director of UnCommon Law, a nonprofit that provides legal services and parole advocacy.
“That’s how politicians make people afraid, but it shouldn’t be how we make law,” he said.
And he’s right, as grotesque as these headline-grabbing cases are. In 2024, there were 3,580 elderly parole hearings and 606 people were granted that relief. Most have remained law-abiding. In the 2019-20 year, the most recent recidivism statistics available from CDCR, 221 people were granted elderly parole. Within three years, only four had been convicted of new crimes, and only one of those was a felony for a crime against a person. That tracks with lots of data that shows men generally age out of violent crimes. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | These Angelenos journeyed to Adelanto to protest conditions at immigrant detention centers | LAist | | Hundreds of people from across Greater L.A. journeyed to the Mojave Desert this weekend to protest living conditions at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center, where an estimated 2,000 people are being held. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | Shasta County voter ID measure challenged over signatures | | The woman trying to stop a Shasta County election measure that would require voter ID filed a supplemental petition in court that alleges supporters did not get enough signatures to certify it for the ballot.
Jennifer Katske’s latest legal challenge, a supplemental memorandum, was filed on Thursday, March 12. It claims that the petition brought to county Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis was not consistent with the requirements of state law to get Measure B on the June 2 ballot.
“I am really not here to assign blame, and I’m not ever going to accuse anybody of a crime — that’s not my job,” Katske told the Record Searchlight on Friday, March 13. “I submitted the evidence to the appropriate authorities who will make the decision. The evidence is now public, and people can choose to make their own (conclusion).”
She added that she sent the evidence to the California Secretary of State and Attorney General’s offices.
The March 12 filing came about two weeks before the lawsuit’s fate is expected to be decided at a March 25 court hearing. [Article] | | by , Redding Record Searchlight. 2026-03-16 | | | | Is the ACA driving up healthcare costs? The evidence is mixed | | In January, when President Trump unveiled his one-page outline to address healthcare spending, dubbed the “Great Healthcare Plan,” he specifically mentioned the Affordable Care Act’s role in driving up costs.
“I call it the unaffordable care act,” he said. He reprised the line in his 2026 State of the Union address, blaming “the crushing cost of healthcare” on Obamacare.
Trump’s words also play off a congressional debate that began late last year with the expiration of the enhanced tax subsidies that had lowered the cost of ACA insurance for millions of Americans — and thrust the issue of ACA-related costs back to center stage.
Without those enhanced subsidies, the amount people pay toward monthly Obamacare premiums doubled, on average. So far, the number of people enrolled in ACA coverage for this year has dropped by more than a million, and experts say more people could abandon coverage once premiums come due. Democrats are using this development to crank up the heat on Republicans ahead of the November elections and steer the conversation on the affordability issue.
Republicans fault the law itself for driving up these costs. For instance, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) has said that premiums “skyrocketed across the country since it took effect.”
Critics routinely point to several provisions within the ACA as the culprits — among them, essential health benefits, or EHBs. Under the law, Obamacare plans must cover certain essential services, including emergency care, hospitalization, maternity and prescription drugs, without annual or lifetime dollar limits. But connecting EHBs to the premium increases felt by consumers is not straightforward.
Here’s a primer on key issues involved:
Checking the numbers
It’s clear that Obamacare premiums have increased.
An analysis by the right-leaning Paragon Health Institute shows that the average premium for a 50-year-old with Obamacare grew by 129% since 2014. The average premium for employer-based plans grew 68% during that same time.
Paragon’s president, Brian Blase, told KFF Health News that this shows the ACA has made healthcare on the individual market more expensive.
Still, the comparison overlooks a couple of points. Pre-ACA, employer plans generally offered more generous coverage than individual market plans, so work-based coverage cost more. And individual plans were cheaper in part because they could bar applicants with health problems. Beginning in 2014, the ACA forced individual policies to look more like employer plans, covering a broader range of benefits and accepting both healthy and unhealthy applicants. As a result, premiums rose that first year. In the years that followed, ACA plans often experienced faster growth in premiums than job-based plans. Some policy analysts say this isn’t surprising because ACA plans started at a lower dollar base and had more room to rise. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | A County Report Ranked Altadena’s Well-Being Among L.A.’s Best. Then the Eaton Fire Destroyed It. – Pasadena Now | | Before the Eaton Fire, Altadena was one of the most livable communities in Los Angeles County — a racially diverse, well-educated foothill neighborhood where residents earned above-average incomes, lived longer than most Angelenos, and had made some of the largest educational gains of any county community in the region over the past eight years. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | One San Diego family’s story of coping with ICE detention | KPBS Public Media | | The sound of an ICE agent shattering a car window sounds like a gunshot.
At least it did to Veronica Olivo on the morning of Feb. 2, when ICE agents arrested her husband, Alejandro, and their oldest son, Bryan. Alejandro called Veronica right before the window shattered. [Article] | | by , KPBS - San Diego. 2026-03-16 | | | | Preventing Displacement: $1M grant to Little Tokyo Service Center supports renter stability | News | ladowntownnews.com | | The Little Tokyo Service Center was awarded a $1 million grant as part of the first round of funding from the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency’s Renter Protection and Homelessness Prevention Program. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | Thousands of people disabled by long COVID seek answers | | In the three years since Los Angeles County declared an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency, mask sales have dwindled, unopened tests have expired in their boxes and people have returned to in-person school, work and socializing.
But for thousands of L.A. County residents living with the complex, chronic condition known as long COVID, the emergency has never ended. And as the virus continues to circulate, more people are being forced to reckon with a life-altering yet often invisible disability whose relative newness offers few answers for the future and few avenues for support.
“You’re not just becoming disabled,” said Elle Seibert, 31, who has dealt with debilitating fatigue and cardiac symptoms since 2020. “You’re realizing how easily society at large and people in your life will abandon you when you cannot offer them things.”
Long COVID is an infection-associated chronic condition, a class of illness triggered or worsened by viral, bacterial or parasitic infections. Symptoms typically affect multiple organs or body systems, and cluster around fatigue, cardiovascular problems, cognitive issues and pain.
“What causes long COVID is an abnormal immune system response [plus] dysregulation of the nervous system,” said Dr. Caitlin McAuley, director of the Keck Medicine of USC’s COVID Recovery Clinic, one of two dedicated clinics in the county (the other is at UCLA).
Researchers have also found that long COVID patients are more than twice as likely as people without the condition to have particles of the SARS-CoV-2 virus lingering in their blood — remnants of original infection that could be causing ongoing inflammation.
Though the condition strikes across age, gender, race, vaccination status and patients’ previous levels of health or activity, a few demographic patterns have emerged. Women, people of Hispanic origin, people with severe initial infections and people who have not been vaccinated against the virus appear more likely than other groups to develop long COVID.
Severity of the initial disease can’t perfectly predict the aftermath: debilitating symptoms have set in for people with mild initial infections. Patients arrive at a diagnosis once symptoms have persisted for at least three months and all other explanations have been ruled out. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | Reckoning With State and Federal Cuts, Los Angeles Safety-Net Clinics Push for a New Tax - KFF Health News | | LOS ANGELES — Mia Angulo, who is pregnant and due in May, is living in a tent with her boyfriend in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | California national parks set attendance record, despite controversy | | Despite morale-sapping staff layoffs, bizarre executive orders and a 43-day federal government shutdown last fall, the grandeur and serenity of national parks in California remain irresistible to outdoors lovers looking to unwind.
The nine national parks in the Golden State — including Yosemite, Death Valley and Joshua Tree — attracted nearly 12 million recreational visits in 2025, according to statistics from the National Park Service.
That’s up more than 800,000 visits from 2024 and up more than 300,000 from the previous record set in 2019, according to the data, which stretches back to 1979.
Nationally, visits were high, at 323 million, but down a couple of percentage points from the record set in 2024, according to a park service press release.
“America’s national parks continue to be places where people come to experience our country’s history, landscapes and shared heritage,” said Jessica Bowron, acting director of the NPS.
“We are committed to keeping parks open, accessible and well-managed so visitors can safely enjoy these extraordinary places today and for generations to come,” Bowron added.
President Trump’s critics beg to differ.
Since Trump resumed office in January 2025, his administration has slashed the NPS workforce by nearly a quarter, buying out or laying off hundreds of rangers, maintenance workers, scientists and administrative staff across the country.
And last year, as part of his war on “woke,” Trump instructed the park service to scrub all signs and presentations of language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology.”
He also ordered administrators to remove any content that “inappropriately disparages Americans” living or dead, and replace it with language that celebrates the nation’s greatness.
That gets tricky at places such as Manzanar National Historic Site in the high desert of eastern California — one of 10 camps where the U.S. government imprisoned more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians during World War II. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | Industrial chemicals have reached the middle of the oceans, new study shows - Los Angeles Times | | New research shows the chemicals we use to kill pests, heal our bodies and package our foods are spread throughout the ocean, intermingling with the microorganisms that feed marine life. They’ve reached even the most distant and remote places on the planet.
In a new study, Daniel Petras, a biochemist at UC Riverside — together with 29 researchers from around the world — looked at 2,315 seawater samples collected from estuaries, coastal regions, coral reefs and the open ocean. The samples came from the North Pacific, the Baltic Sea and the coast of South Africa, among other places. For each sample, the researchers used a relatively new technique that allowed them to see every chemical present — not just ones they were looking for or suspected.
What they found was disconcerting: Human-made chemicals were everywhere, even in water hundreds of miles from land.
The study was published Monday in Nature Geoscience.
“This presents a pretty sobering view of just how widespread these chemical pollutants have become in the ocean,” said Douglas McCauley, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara. McCauley was not involved in the research.
At the mouths of rivers and along the coasts, the research team found large concentrations of pharmaceuticals such as beta blockers, antidepressants and antibiotics. They also discovered cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as insecticides and pesticides, such as DEET and Atrazine. In some cases, including samples taken near Puerto Rico, signatures for these pollutants constituted nearly 20% of the dissolved organic matter.
As the distance from coasts increased, the number and concentration of industrial chemicals decreased but did not disappear. The researchers found that even hundreds of miles from North America’s Pacific coastline, or floating through the California current, significant levels of other industrial chemicals — namely ones from petroleum-based plastics — were present in the organic material at levels between 0.5% and 4%.
“This finding provides further evidence that plastic-derived carbon, including micro- and nano-plastics, contributes a substantial portion to the marine carbon pool,” wrote the authors, who took care to account for any plastic materials inadvertently introduced in the laboratory or during collection.
“As an ecologist, what is a bit scary here is trying to wrap my head around what this means for ocean health,” McCauley said. “I think there is going to be a lot we need to learn now about how these chemicals, in the concentrations they are being detected ... are affecting ocean species — from plankton to whales.” [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | Was discrimination behind the botched Eaton fire response? A civil rights attorney considers a lawsuit - Los Angeles Times | | A prominent civil rights attorney who represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin announced he’s gathering evidence for a possible federal discrimination lawsuit against Los Angeles County over its response to the Eaton fire.
Attorney Ben Crump has joined the growing ranks of officials and community leaders concerned that the county’s response in Altadena’s historically Black neighborhoods during the Eaton fire was lacking compared with that for the whiter communities threatened by the blaze.
The announcement comes weeks after the California attorney general opened a civil rights probe into the county’s fire preparations and response, focusing on potential disparities in historically Black west Altadena. That section of town received evacuation alerts hours after flames threatened the area, and much later than wealthier, whiter areas of the unincorporated town.
Crump said he suspected the investigation would find racism at the root of the botched response to the fire, which decimated west Altadena. He did not specify when he planned to sue.
“We are fighting to not have Altadena become California’s Katrina, where you have all those Black citizens and their generational wealth that they were passing on to their children just lost and never regained,” Crump said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | California and other states sue Trump administration over housing discrimination rules | LAist | | California has joined 15 other states in a housing rights lawsuit filed Monday that accuses the Trump administration of threatening to cut funding to state agencies that offer additional protections against tenant discrimination. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | Oil prices are skyrocketing, but this is why companies won't rush to drill in California - Los Angeles Times | | If you are an oil producer with wells in California and global oil prices have risen to over $100 a barrel in the last week, are you going to drill new wells?
It’s a question that touches the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians who either live near oil wells or receive royalty checks as mineral rights owners.
Experts said probably not, given this state’s aging fields and the unpredictability of global prices.
It’s too early for data that will show if companies have ordered more drilling rigs on their fields — known as the rig count — since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran and sent oil prices soaring. But analysts and producers say only if prices stay above $80 for at least a year do they expect an increase in drilling.
“Nobody expects today’s high prices to last and we could very likely get back to the low $60 [per barrel] environment we faced just a few weeks ago,” said Rock Zierman, chief executive of the California Independent Petroleum Assn. trade group.
Experts say the unique geology of California’s fields, and the nature of its heavy crude, make new projects, and efforts to pump more oil out of existing ones, costlier and more energy-intensive than drilling in other parts of the country.
In the Permian basin of New Mexico and west Texas, for example, producers can more quickly and economically ramp up extraction of light crude oil trapped in shale rock.
But even there, “operators are wary of adjusting plans to spend more drilling capital if prices come back down after the conflict ends, which is currently suggested by the oil price curve,” said Matthew Bernstein, vice president of North America oil and gas at the consulting firm Rystad Energy.
“Instead, companies will enjoy the added cash flow buffer of higher prices and boost cash on their balance sheets and pay out shareholders,” he said.
California oil production has been on the decline since the 1980s, largely because existing oil fields are becoming depleted and there are more economical places to produce.
At a certain point, that can begin to hurt the whole local business ecosystem of oil wells, pipelines and the refineries that turn crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
Last April, Valero announced its intentions to take its Benicia refinery offline next month, citing a difficult regulatory environment. Phillips 66 in Wilmington shuttered in December, blaming market dynamics.
That same month, the San Pablo pipeline, the sole line connecting Central Valley oil fields to refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area, also shut down, citing low oil volumes and a loss of refinery customers. Drillers started sending their product north in trucks.
In September, in an effort to boost pipeline throughput, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to streamline permitting for up to 2,000 new oil wells in Kern County, where new permits had been held up in litigation since 2020. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | He was an undocumented immigrant. Now he runs LA's community colleges | LAist | | When Alberto Román was a boy growing up in the Mexican state of Durango, his father was often far from home. Most times, he’d be gone for months.
Román’s father, Javier, had a third-grade education. And when work was scarce in Mexico, he’d venture north to the United Sates and take whatever job he could find.
Javier washed cars. He worked in factories. He picked crops. He built houses. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | | | Downtown L.A. wants San Francisco’s pop-up secret to get shoppers back | | As much of downtown L.A. continues to feel dark and deserted, local businesses want the city to steal San Francisco’s secret for firing up foot traffic.
The tech mecca has slowly begun to emerge from one of the country’s deepest declines in downtown retail, in part through a program that peppered the city with subsidized pop-up shops.
The Vacant to Vibrant program turned abandoned spaces into bakeries, bookstores, cafes, chocolateries, galleries and other things.
Local entrepreneurs were given grants and support from the city and charities, as well as months of free rent to set up shop. The idea is to leverage empty storefronts to build buzz and entice more shoppers to city sidewalks.
While San Francisco is still far from its pre-pandemic peaks, backers say the program has brightened struggling retail areas.
“We’re creating a window on what downtown could look like,” said Simon Bertrang, executive director of SF New Deal, the nonprofit behind Vacant to Vibrant. The hollowing-out created by COVID-19 could be an opportunity to turn downtown San Francisco into a “mixed-use neighborhood with a lot of small businesses and maybe more residential,” he said.
Both L.A. and S.F. have grappled with keeping stores and restaurants in their business districts since the pandemic emptied office buildings. While most employees are working from the office again, a significant number are still working from home, and many aren’t coming in every weekday. The diminished presence of workers continues to make it hard on the lunch spots, bars and shops that rely on them to survive.
Though it is difficult to compare how businesses are doing in each downtown, there are some indicators that San Francisco has been growing more in the last year.
Reservation platform OpenTable said online reservations in the Northern Californian city shot up more than 20% compared with most months last year. Reservation growth in L.A. was capped below 10% for most of the same period.
Downtowns across the country need to find solutions, experts warn, as dark storefronts can lead to a downward spiral, with companies hesitant to lease office space in vacant areas. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-03-16 | | | | Citing Iran crisis, Trump orders Santa Barbara oil pipeline restart. California will fight it | LAist | | The Trump administration invoked emergency powers under the Defense Production Act Friday, ordering the restart of the Santa Ynez offshore oil platform and pipeline along the Santa Barbara County coast that was shuttered after a spill released thousands of barrels of crude into the Pacific 11 years ago. [Article] | | by , . 2026-03-16 | | |
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