| You have the right to film ICE detentions. Here’s how to do it effectively | LA Local |
| With federal agents conducting more immigration-related arrests throughout Southern California, residents have been active, too, capturing on camera those detentions in their communities — by real agents and potential impersonators. [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| L.A. County pauses some payouts amid sex abuse settlement investigations - Los Angeles Times |
| Los Angeles County will halt some payments from its $4-billion sex abuse settlement, leaving many plaintiffs on edge as prosecutors ramp up an investigation into allegations of fraud.
L.A. County agreed last spring to the record payout to settle a flood of lawsuits from people who said they’d been sexually abused by staff in government-run foster homes and juvenile camps. Many attorneys had told their clients they could expect the first tranche of money to start flowing this month.
But the county’s acting chief executive officer, Joseph M. Nicchitta, said Thursday that the county would “pause all payments” for unvetted claims after a request by Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman. These are claims that have been flagged as requiring a “higher level of scrutiny,” according to a joint report submitted Thursday by attorneys in the settlement.
The district attorney announced he would investigate the historic settlement after reporting by The Times that found some plaintiffs who said they were paid to sue. Investigators have found “a significant number of cases where we believe there is potential fraud,” according to a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office. The State Bar is spearheading a separate inquiry into fraud allegations.
On Jan. 9, Hochman formally requested the county pause the distribution of funds for at least six months, which he said would give his office “a reasonable opportunity to complete critical investigative steps.”
“Premature disbursement of settlement funds poses a substantial risk of interfering with the investigation by complicating witness cooperation, obscuring financial trails, and impairing my office’s ability to identify and prosecute fraudulent activity,” Hochman wrote in a letter to Andy Baum, the county’s main outside attorney working on the settlement.
Plaintiff lawyers argued the county was required to turn over money by the end of the month. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-01-29 |
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| Foreign-born population falls by 1.5 million amid Trump policies. California economy under threat - Los Angeles Times |
| California’s population stalled in 2024-25 and growth across the country slowed amid widespread immigration raids in the first year of the new Trump administration, U.S. Census Bureau data show.
After years of slow growth in the post pandemic era, California’s population stayed essentially flat from July 2024 to July 2025, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. At the same time, the data show that the United States’ population grew by only half a percent, or roughly 1.8 million people, a much lower rate than the previous year when it increased by 3.2 million people.
Experts attribute the stagnation largely to lower levels of migration to the United States from other countries as the Trump administration has sought to curtail immigration and embarked on deportation efforts in Los Angeles and other major cities. The foreign-born population in the U.S. dropped by 1.5 million people, or 2.6%, from January to July last year, data show.
In California, changing immigration policies, along with people leaving the Golden State for other places, an aging population and declining birth rates all contribute to the population slump. Continued drops in immigration could have long-term implications for California, said Dowell Myers, a professor of policy planning and demography at USC. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-01-29 |
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| LA County considers plans to remove unhoused people and clear encampments around Olympic venues | LAist |
| L.A. County is considering plans to remove potentially thousands of unhoused people from areas around sports venues ahead of the Olympic Games in 2028. [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| PCEO Exclusive: Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors considers healthcare sales tax measure - PublicCEO |
| The Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” saw funding cuts in the billions that would affect the Los Angeles County health care system. With over 3.3 million residents who rely on Medi-Cal, projected losses totaling $2.4 billion over the next three years and the threat of inaccessible health care to many county residents, the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors is considering a move to implement a countywide general retail transactions and use (sales) tax measure in the June 2 Statewide Direct Primary Election. [Article] |
| by , Public CEO. 2026-01-29 |
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| Yuba College to the Sutter Buttes: a plan for safer biking |
| Sutter County Board of Supervisors Tuesday added its approval to a regional plan to improve bicycle safety from Yuba College in Linda to the Sutter Buttes.
Supervisors adopted a resolution recognizing the Yuba-Sutter Bicycle Implementation Plan as a a regional guide for active transportation funding and implementation.
The Yuba-Sutter Bicycle Implementation Plan was developed in March 2023 through collaboration between Alta Planning + Design and the Blue Zones Project with extensive input from local agencies, advocates, and community stakeholders, Development Services Director Neal Hay told the Board of Supervisors.
The plan provides a comprehensive framework for expanding safe, equitable, and connected bicycle infrastructure across the Yuba-Sutter region, Hay reported. [Article] |
| by , Marysville Appeal-Democrat. 2026-01-29 |
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| Los Feliz Boulevard cycletrack proposal | Los Feliz News | theeastsiderla.com |
| Los Feliz—With its grand Spanish-style buildings, wide greenbelts along the sidewalks, and rows of majestic evergreen cedars, Los Feliz Boulevard should be a pleasant bicycle ride. But it is not, and those landmark trees pose a challenge to it ever realizing its two-wheeled potential. [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| LAPD won’t enforce ban on federal law enforcement officers wearing masks, chief says – Daily News |
| Los Angeles police do not plan to enforce recently enacted state and local bans that prohibit federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks during enforcement operations, the police chief said Thursday. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-29 |
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| Trump rails against low-income housing in Pacific Palisades. But officials say no projects are planned - Los Angeles Times |
| President Trump’s foray this week into the fire rebuilding process in Pacific Palisades has been met with confusion and rolled eyes from local officials who say he’s now railing against projects that have never even been proposed.
Trump said Thursday he planned to stop a low-income housing project from being developed in Pacific Palisades. His promise, made during a Cabinet meeting, marked the second time this week he has weighed in on local housing issues in the fire-scarred Palisades.
“They want to build a low-income housing project right in the middle of everything in the Palisades, and I’m not going to allow it to happen,” Trump said. “I’m not going to let these people destroy the value of their houses.”
The comments left politicians around Los Angeles and California scratching their heads: what low-income housing project was the president referring to?
Both Councilmember Traci Park and Mayor Karen Bass said they did not know of a major, low-income housing project coming to the Palisades.
“There are no plans to bring low-income housing to the Palisades,” Bass said in a phone interview with The Times on Thursday from Washington, D.C. “It’s not true. There couldn’t possibly be a project that neither the councilmember nor the mayor would have any knowledge of.”
Trump also took aim at Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday as he announced an executive order to “preempt” the city’s permitting process to make it easier for fire victims to rebuild. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-01-29 |
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| Immigration raids pick up in L.A. as federal tactics shift. Arrests happen in 'as fast as 30 seconds' - Los Angeles Times |
| At a recent training session for 300 immigration activists in Los Angeles, the main topic was Minnesota and the changes to federal immigration tactics.
For the last few months, federal law enforcement officers have intensified their efforts to locate and deport immigrants suspected of living in the country illegally. They have used children as bait, gone door-to-door and at times forcibly stormed into people’s homes without judicial warrants.
But it was the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens protesting immigration raids in Minnesota, that sparked a growing backlash of the federal government’s aggressive actions and caused activists to reconsider their own approach when monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“One quick note about de-escalation,” Joseline Garcia, the community defense director for City Council District 1, told a crowd at St. Paul’s Commons in Echo Park. “What we would do when it came to de-escalation is we’d tell people their rights, try to get their information and try to reason with the ICE agents and pressure them to leave.”
“Things have changed a ton in the past two months, so that’s not something we’re willing to put you all at risk to do,” she added. “There is risk here and we are always encouraging people to stay safe and please constantly be assessing the risks.”
The immigration crackdown began in Los Angeles last summer but has continued in the region even after the national focus shifted to Chicago and now Minneapolis. The last month has seen a new series of arrests and actions that have left local communities on edge. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-01-29 |
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| A Line train extension to Claremont gets another push forward, with contracts for design, engineering, construction – Daily News |
| The A Line light-rail just keeps on rolling.
On Thursday, Jan. 29, the longest all-electric, light-rail line in the nation was approved for yet another extension, a short, 2.3-mile addition from Pomona to Claremont that will take it to the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-29 |
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| Fire chiefs fault local leadership as US Senate probes Palisade fire – Daily News |
| Emergency response leaders told U.S. senators this week that failures by local leadership, not firefighters on the ground, set the stage for the devastating Palisades fire, as Republicans used a Senate hearing to renew criticism of California officials a day after President Trump signed an executive order seeking to override state and local authority in the rebuilding process. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-29 |
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| Dr. Oz accused L.A. Armenians of fraud. Newsom files civil rights complaint - Los Angeles Times |
| Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday filed a civil rights complaint against Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, after Oz posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread healthcare fraud in Los Angeles.
The video shows Oz being driven around a section of Van Nuys where he says that about $3.5 billion worth of medicare fraud has been perpetrated by hospice and home care businesses, claiming that “it’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”
At one point in the video, which was posted Tuesday on the agency’s official social media accounts, Oz stands in front of a sign for an Armenian bakery and says, “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”
In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, Newsom called on the agency to investigate “Dr. Oz’s baseless and racist allegations against Armenian Americans in California.”
“Such racially charged and false public statements by anyone involved in administering these critical federal healthcare programs seriously risks chilling participation in those programs by individuals targeted by the statements,” Newsom‘s office wrote in the complaint. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-01-29 |
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| Shirley Raines, founder of LA nonprofit Beauty 2 the Streetz, has died | LAist |
| Shirley Raines, who focused her work on building up the dignity of unhoused people in Los Angeles, has died. She was 58.
About Raines: Known as Ms. Shirley to friends and followers on social media, Raines won a CNN Hero of the Year award in 2021 and an NAACP Image Award in 2025 for her work providing food, makeovers and hygiene products to unhoused people through Beauty 2 the Streetz. [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| Who Decides When a Home Is Safe? A California Bill Says Science, Not Insurers. - The New York Times |
| A California lawmaker is moving to set a statewide, science-based standard for how to determine whether a home is safe to inhabit following a wildfire. If passed, it would effectively take post-fire safety decisions out of the hands of insurance companies.
Assembly Bill 1642 — introduced on Tuesday by Assemblymember John Harabedian, whose district includes Altadena, Calif., where thousands of homes were damaged by wildfires last year — calls for new health-based guidelines for testing and cleaning homes contaminated by toxic smoke, and for establishing when a home is safe to reoccupy.
Currently, California has no agreed-upon standards for how to test, or clean, homes infected by toxic smoke, which has allowed insurance companies to dictate what substances to test for and how to address any contamination.
“A lot of families are in this unfortunate and uncertain position of not knowing whether it’s safe to move back,” Mr. Harabedian said in an interview. “And that’s because there isn’t a statewide standard that is based on science.” [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| New California law requires deed notifications to combat property fraud – Daily News |
| Why would someone want to steal your property title?
The answer is simple: financial gain.
Someone with a stolen title might attempt to take a loan out against your property or even sell the home and collect the cash. Or the thief might pose as a landlord, attempting to get unsuspecting renters to cough up rent and a month of security deposit. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-29 |
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| Lawsuits detail battle over millions of dollars, People Mover builder’s alleged 'improper' conduct | LAist |
| In August 2024, the city of Los Angeles approved an agreement to pay more than a half-billion dollars to resolve a substantial number of schedule and compensation related disputes with the main contractor it hired to design, build and operate the LAX Automated People Mover. [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| Homicides fall to lowest level since 1966 in city of LA | LAist |
| The number of homicides in the city of Los Angeles fell by 19% last year, the lowest level in decades, according to a police department report that cited several factors for the decline, including violence reduction strategies and partnerships with community organizations. [Article] |
| by , . 2026-01-29 |
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| California back as world’s 4th largest economy – Daily News |
| California has regained its bragging-rights ranking as the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Using gross domestic product as the scorecard, my trusty spreadsheet compared fresh state-level data for the third quarter of 2025 from the Bureau of Economic Analysis with 2025 business output estimates for countries compiled by the International Monetary Fund, released in October. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-29 |
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| Los Angeles saw fewer homicides in 2025 than any year since 1966, new crime stats show – Daily News |
| Homicides in Los Angeles were down 19% in 2025, dropping to the lowest number the city has seen in 60 years, in line with national downward crime trends, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
“The data in this year’s report shows that homicides in Los Angeles are down, both in total number and as a percentage compared to last year. In 2025, there were 230 homicides, a reduction of 19% from the year before, when the city experienced 284 homicides. This is the lowest number of homicides since 1966,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-29 |
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