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| Sheriff Responds to Prop. 36 | News | triplicate.com | | Del Norte Sheriff Garrett Scott responded to the implementation of voter-passed Prop. 36, after The Triplicate deadline. Included are his comments.
“ The Del Norte Sheriff’s Dept is using Prop. 36 as a tool to make arrests for all. violations in the proposition. The Criminal Codes range from 211 PC (Robbery) to California Vehicle Code sections including 10851 (Vehicle Theft).”
The Sheriffl praised the amendments will be beneficial for prosecution. [Article] | | by , Del Norte Triplicate. 2025-03-31 | | | | BYO-fridge? New bill aims to ban LA’s refrigerator-less apartments | LAist | | The days of hunting for an apartment in Los Angeles and finding that many come without a refrigerator could soon come to an end.
A new bill in the California Legislature aims to require landlords to provide stoves and fridges in rental housing. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | Casting a Light on the Hidden Inequities in OC’s Middle Eastern Community | | Middle Eastern and North African community leaders in Orange County are once again taking their advocacy for greater visibility to the state level – fresh off the heels of getting OC’s largest city to recognize the state’s first Arab American cultural district after decades. [Article] | | by , Voice of OC. 2025-03-31 | | | | What green-card and visa holders should know before traveling abroad | LAist | | Traveling or returning to the U.S. from abroad has become increasingly risky for some — even for people with valid visas and green cards.
In recent weeks, international tourists, visa holders and lawful permanent residents — also known as green-card holders — have been facing tougher scrutiny at airports and border crossings. The change comes amid a broader crackdown by the Trump administration to reduce both legal and illegal immigration to the country. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | Inside California's legal fight to stop Trump - Los Angeles Times | | Michael Newman, head of the civil rights enforcement section in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, was exhausted.
Newman and his legal team had just worked all weekend, straight through that Monday and overnight into Tuesday on a growing pile of legal challenges to the Trump administration, and were overdue for some sleep.
But on his drive home, he was alerted that the administration “cut half the Department of Education’s workforce,” Newman said. “And it’s like, ‘OK, well ... That’s not happening.’”
The team went back to work, along with others in Bonta’s office, and by Thursday joined with other Democrat-led states to file a new lawsuit to block the firings.
“That’s kind of an idea of what life is like for the litigators,” Newman said. “Just when you think it’s safe to log off from your laptop, you get the text that [says], ‘Did you see this newest order that just came out?’”
For months now, President Trump’s pace of pronouncements, executive orders and dramatic policy shifts has been so swift, their reach so sweeping, that many Trump critics have felt overwhelmed and alarmed. They have also bemoaned the Democratic response as inept, haphazard and ineffective, particularly in Congress.
But since Trump’s January inauguration, attorneys in Bonta’s office — and in the offices of Democratic attorneys general nationwide — have been in an all-out sprint to keep up and push back. They’ve been carefully planning for even longer, including by reviewing litigation from Trump’s first term; listening to Trump’s promises on the campaign trail; assessing lawsuits against the Biden administration by conservative states; and culling through Project 2025, the controversial game plan for the president’s second term.
The result has been a rapid-fire slate of lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies, including his order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the American-born children of immigrants, his attempt to cut off trillions of dollars in federal funding already appropriated by Congress for programs in California and across the country, and his firing of federal probationary employees in veterans programs, national parks and other agencies.
They also have sued to block cuts to National Institutes of Health funding for universities and other research institutions, the termination of K-12 teacher training and preparation grants, billionaire Elon Musk’s informal but prominent role in federal government and access to sensitive data by his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government agency.
In addition to their own lawsuits, Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general have supported challenges to Trump administration attacks on transgender service members, refugees, immigrants, a National Labor Relations Board official, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and law firms that have angered Trump with their legal work.
Trump administration officials have defended all of the policies as fulfilling the president’s promises to voters. They have dismissed California’s legal objections as misguided attempts to interfere with Trump’s presidential authority, and denounced court rulings halting or limiting their policies as the work of liberal “activist” judges.
California sued the first Trump administration about 120 times over four years, often with success. In the first eight weeks of the current administration, Bonta’s office joined other states in filing eight legal actions, a pace that if maintained would lead to more than 100 lawsuits against the new administration in its first two years. And that’s not counting filings in support of other lawsuits, of which there have been at least a half-dozen.
In February, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation authorizing an additional $25 million to finance the state’s court battles with the Trump administration, plus another $25 million to support legal services for immigrants. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | Newsom Signs Executive Order to Accelerate Underground Utility Placement – Pasadena Now | | Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order late last week that will speed up the recovery of communities devastated by the January fires in Los Angeles County, including Altadena, Malibu, and Pacific Palisades. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | Elderly, disabled were left stranded during L.A. fires as evacuation plans broke down - Los Angeles Times | | When flames erupted above Pacific Palisades on the morning of Jan. 7, Ben Kahn instructed staff to begin calling disabled Angelenos, even before official evacuation orders came.
“Go ask your neighbor for a ride,” was the advice the Disability Community Resource Center gave to people on their registry. They knew people with mobility challenges would need more time to flee.
What followed was a frantic DIY rescue effort. City and county officials had no such registry, so DCRC and other groups improvised, calling Ubers and Lyfts, even autonomous vehicles, to pick them up. They flagged high-risk cases — a woman bedridden with serious medical issues — to the city’s Emergency Operations Center, just to make sure they were not overlooked.
“We’re kind of doing it on our own,” said Kahn, the DCRC’s disaster coordinator. “You didn’t have time to be stressed. It was kind of nonstop.”
By the time a new fire erupted 35 miles away in Eaton Canyon, they had already called hundreds of people. Chaos ensued in Altadena as neighbors scrambled to find cars that could accommodate disabled people and nurses wheeled elderly residents from nursing facilities as embers rained down. Some relatives were unable to get past evacuation checkpoints to save loved ones.
The death of 17 people in Altadena has shone a spotlight on L.A. County’s struggle to plan for the evacuation of elderly and disabled in a major disaster. The median age of those killed was 77, and at least a third of them suffered impairments that could affect their mobility.
After reporting from The Times revealed that west Altadena did not get official evacuation alerts until nearly nine hours after the Eaton fire started, L.A. County delays in alerting and evacuating vulnerable residents are now the subject of multiple investigations. They have also raised questions of whether officials could have done more to help those in need. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | ‘The Job of All’: Monitoring Psych Meds for CA Foster Youth | | In California, foster youth prescribed psychiatric drugs are asked a series of questions: Do you know your diagnosis? Do you know the reason for the prescription? Are you aware of side effects? Do you have a trusted adult you can talk about medical issues with?
Under state law, the professionals managing their lives must pay attention to, and consider the answers.
“It is the job of all who are involved with the youth to engage and prepare the youth,” states a court form all parties must sign. “That includes medical professionals, caregivers, social workers, probation officers, attorneys, CASAs, and more. Achieving this goal is the responsibility of literally ‘the whole village’ affiliated with the youth.” [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | LA Implements Transit First Policy: Committee to explore prioritizing trains at traffic signals | News | ladowntownnews.com | | The Los Angeles City Council’s Transportation Committee approved a series of report-backs on March 26 that will explore the feasibility of prioritizing above-ground Metro trains at traffic lights. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | Public defender Scott Sanders, who upended OC’s legal landscape, retires after 32 years – Daily News | | The scandal that scrambled Orange County’s justice system, upending dozens of murder cases, began late on a Friday night in a legal office that formerly was a morgue.
It was April 2012, long past quitting time, when Orange County Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders found a notation in a police report that would ultimately turn county law enforcement on its ear. A notation that many, if not most, defense lawyers would have overlooked. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-03-31 | | | | Post-L.A. fire ocean tests find contaminants high enough to sicken sea life - Los Angeles Times | | Levels of lead and other heavy metals spiked in the coastal waters off Los Angeles after January’s fires, raising serious concerns for the long-term health of fish, marine mammals and the marine food chain, according to test results released Thursday by the nonprofit environmental group Heal the Bay.
For human surfers and swimmers, the results were somewhat encouraging. Contaminant levels from sampled water weren’t high enough to pose likely health risks to recreational beachgoers.
But tests of seawater collected before and after the heavy rains that came in late January, after the fires abated, identified five heavy metals — beryllium, copper, chromium, nickel and lead — at levels significantly above established safety thresholds for marine life.
Even at relatively low concentrations, these metals can damage cells and disrupt reproduction and other biological processes in sea animals.
The metals also accumulate in the tissues of animals exposed to them, and then make their way up the food chain as those organisms are eaten by larger ones.
“Most of these metals are easy to transfer through the food web and impact humans directly or indirectly, via food or drinking water,” said Dimitri Deheyn, a marine biologist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
All are found in dust and rocks, and aren’t harmful in the context of those minute, naturally-occurring exposures. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | Editorial: To understand homelessness, listen to homeless people. Here's what I learned - Los Angeles Times | | When I began covering homelessness for the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, a service provider told me something that has guided me to this day: “If you meet one homeless person, you’ve met one homeless person.”
So in addition to writing about homelessness policy and fights over housing, I wanted to hear the stories of people I encountered in my neighborhood and around the city.
I wrote about the well-kept man who lived in an RV outside my condo building with his fluffy white dog. I urged my concerned neighbors to help him get services, not get him towed. (One neighbor, a lawyer, was kind enough to do free legal work for him.) Eventually he drove off the street and never returned.
I met a woman sitting on a sidewalk outside a wine store on an industrial stretch of Cotner Avenue one early evening before the Fourth of July in 2019. Her name was Michelle, she was in her 50s, and she told me she just wanted a shelter bed for the night. Just released from a hospital, she was still wearing her hospital ID bracelet. She had no cellphone because an abusive ex-fiance had smashed it, she said. I called the nonprofit help hotline, 211, but the only thing the operators could find for her was a bed in the Antelope Valley — far from where we were on the Westside. After a while, Michelle slumped down and said she wanted to go back to the hospital.
The owner of the wine store and a staffer walked outside to see what was going on. I expected them to complain. Instead, they asked how they could help. I called an Uber to take her to the hospital. When the car arrived, the owner of the store pressed cash into the driver’s hand, asking him to take care of her. When I got back to work after the holiday, Michelle had called my office phone and left a message thanking me and saying she was OK. I never heard from her again.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority now has a computerized system that tracks many shelter beds across the county in real time. It was rolled out to service providers this month and will be made available to the 211 hotline system in July.
Another time, I befriended a neatly dressed man who sat on a bench and politely panhandled outside a Whole Foods store in Santa Monica. James, in his mid-50s, had lost a job at a big retailer, and when his unemployment benefits ran out, he became homeless. James told me all he wanted was to rent a room in a house somewhere. He watched as luxury cars whizzed by and said surely someone had an empty room to offer him. Eventually a service provider found him a room in a six-bedroom apartment just west of USC. I visited once and brought him groceries. He shared the kitchen and dining area with the rest of the residents. At one point we heard a woman yelling at someone. “People here are crazy,” he told me with some chagrin. This was not the room of his dreams. I lost touch with him after that visit. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | As developers swoop in post LA fires, one nonprofit offers an alternative to Altadena sellers | LAist | | Many who lost homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires have been asking themselves whether they should rebuild or if it’s time to pull up stakes.
For some, rebuilding may be too costly, too time-consuming, too heartbreaking. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | Monitoring methane: DIY effort hunts pollution at oil wells in L.A. neighborhoods | LAist | | Next door to a Boys and Girls Club in Wilmington, an oil pumpjack slowly bobs up and down. Across the street, oil holding tanks and a couple more pumpjacks pepper a park landscape. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | First layers of soil to be laid on Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in L.A. | | The wildlife crossing designed to help mountain lions, deer, bobcats and other creatures safely travel over the 101 Freeway between the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains will reach a major milestone on Monday, as workers lay the first layers of soil on the overpass.
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing spans the 10-lane freeway in Agoura Hills and will become the largest such crossing in the world. It is designed to help animals avoid being killed while roaming in urban habitats. Although it is too late to help Los Angeles’ beloved mountain lion P-22 expand his territory, the passage will allow mountain lions and other wildlife to range farther for food and mates.
Small puma populations have been isolated by the freeway, and their offspring were showing signs of birth defects.
“I imagine a future for all the wildlife in our area where it’s possible to survive and thrive and the placement of this first soil on the bridge means another step closer to reality,” Annenberg, a philanthropist, said in a statement.
“This extraordinary structure will serve not only animals,” she said, “but it will reconnect an entire ecosystem and protect this global biodiversity hotspot — this moment marks another wonderful milestone toward that goal.” [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | Inside California's legal fight to stop Trump - Los Angeles Times | | Michael Newman, head of the civil rights enforcement section in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, was exhausted.
Newman and his legal team had just worked all weekend, straight through that Monday and overnight into Tuesday on a growing pile of legal challenges to the Trump administration, and were overdue for some sleep.
But on his drive home, he was alerted that the administration “cut half the Department of Education’s workforce,” Newman said. “And it’s like, ‘OK, well ... That’s not happening.’”
The team went back to work, along with others in Bonta’s office, and by Thursday joined with other Democrat-led states to file a new lawsuit to block the firings.
“That’s kind of an idea of what life is like for the litigators,” Newman said. “Just when you think it’s safe to log off from your laptop, you get the text that [says], ‘Did you see this newest order that just came out?’”
For months now, President Trump’s pace of pronouncements, executive orders and dramatic policy shifts has been so swift, their reach so sweeping, that many Trump critics have felt overwhelmed and alarmed. They have also bemoaned the Democratic response as inept, haphazard and ineffective, particularly in Congress.
But since Trump’s January inauguration, attorneys in Bonta’s office — and in the offices of Democratic attorneys general nationwide — have been in an all-out sprint to keep up and push back. They’ve been carefully planning for even longer, including by reviewing litigation from Trump’s first term; listening to Trump’s promises on the campaign trail; assessing lawsuits against the Biden administration by conservative states; and culling through Project 2025, the controversial game plan for the president’s second term.
The result has been a rapid-fire slate of lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies, including his order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the American-born children of immigrants, his attempt to cut off trillions of dollars in federal funding already appropriated by Congress for programs in California and across the country, and his firing of federal probationary employees in veterans programs, national parks and other agencies.
They also have sued to block cuts to National Institutes of Health funding for universities and other research institutions, the termination of K-12 teacher training and preparation grants, billionaire Elon Musk’s informal but prominent role in federal government and access to sensitive data by his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government agency.
In addition to their own lawsuits, Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general have supported challenges to Trump administration attacks on transgender service members, refugees, immigrants, a National Labor Relations Board official, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and law firms that have angered Trump with their legal work.
Trump administration officials have defended all of the policies as fulfilling the president’s promises to voters. They have dismissed California’s legal objections as misguided attempts to interfere with Trump’s presidential authority, and denounced court rulings halting or limiting their policies as the work of liberal “activist” judges.
California sued the first Trump administration about 120 times over four years, often with success. In the first eight weeks of the current administration, Bonta’s office joined other states in filing eight legal actions, a pace that if maintained would lead to more than 100 lawsuits against the new administration in its first two years. And that’s not counting filings in support of other lawsuits, of which there have been at least a half-dozen.
In February, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation authorizing an additional $25 million to finance the state’s court battles with the Trump administration, plus another $25 million to support legal services for immigrants. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | LA's fire hazard has grown. What does that mean for insurance? | LAist | | If Los Angeles's growing concerns about wildfires weren't clear enough already, maps released by the state earlier this week confirmed the obvious: The county's fire hazard has grown in the past decade.
The updated Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps — published by the Office of the State Fire Marshal — show that land considered to have "very high" hazard in L.A. County has expanded by more than 30% since a 2011 assessment. [Article] | | by , . 2025-03-31 | | | | 'Doomed': Many kids pulled into immigration court fend for themselves - Los Angeles Times | | The children sat on wooden benches bouncing their legs, clasping their hands and anxiously looking around the brightly lit courtroom.
“We are on the record,” Immigration Judge Audra R. Behne said softly into the microphone on Tuesday. Their eyes peered up.
A teenage girl in a sparkly shirt smiled at her boyfriend. A 14-year-old boy in a denim jacket sat next to his aunt, whose teenage daughter was texting beside her. Another teenage girl with a heart emblazoned on her sweatshirt leaned against her mom as they sat in the gallery.
They are among the dozens of children whose deportation cases come before Behne at the West Los Angeles Immigration Court every month. Many are facing a new reality as the Trump administration stripped away legal funding for those who crossed the border without a parent or legal custodian.
As they confront a complex legal system and a government that seeks to deport them, the children will find fewer pro bono lawyers available and face a growing probability of deportation.
“These kids often have no idea what’s going on, and without a lawyer, they’re doomed,” said Holly S. Cooper, who was part of the first federal pilot program to represent children in immigration court more than two decades ago.
Children in deportation proceedings — some still infants — do not have the right to a court-appointed attorney, though the U.S. recognizes the right to a lawyer. Securing one can mean the difference between staying and removal to a country where they were persecuted, abused or abandoned by their parents. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | L.A. programs that help drug users await fate during Trump era | | Samson Tafolo’s final count read 119.
For 45 minutes, he had tugged a wagon packed with mini water bottles, hemp cigarettes and miscellaneous hygiene products around Skid Row, handing out the supplies and keeping a tally of everyone he served on his usual route.
Tafolo and other leaders at the Sidewalk Project, a harm reduction nonprofit headquartered a few blocks down, make their rounds several times a week. The counting, he said, has become a high-stakes part of the job, since the numbers are reported in grant applications.
With the shifting political climate, their funding is suddenly in jeopardy.
The Sidewalk Project is one of several groups that provide resources to homeless people, including some supplies specifically geared toward drug users, such as sterile syringes. While credited by advocates with saving lives during the opioid epidemic, the programs remain controversial, with critics arguing they fuel addiction.
Leaders of similar organizations across the state are worried that recent pledges by the Trump administration to trim federal spending and reduce redundancy in government agencies will have far-reaching ramifications for their work.
“It’s just a scare,” Tafolo said of the uncertain future under Trump. “It keeps us on our toes.”
Federal health officials said Friday that cuts to HIV prevention efforts, a key component of many harm reduction programs, are already in motion.
“It’s definitely a different level of threat than normal,” said Elly Jalayer, director of harm reduction at Bienestar Human Services, which offers HIV testing and treatment as well as syringe exchange.
Jalayer said the L.A. County Department of Health has been vocal about its continued support for harm reduction programs, but federal funding streams are more precarious.
In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie has pledged to restructure the city’s homelessness services and take a critical look at the efficacy of city-funded nonprofits, including ones that offer supplies to drug users.
“The days of just handing things out, and no accountability — those are over,” Lurie said at a news conference. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | | | California-Mexico border, once overwhelmed, now nearly empty - Los Angeles Times | | SAN YSIDRO, California — When the humanitarian aid workers decided to dismantle their elaborate tented setup — erected right up against the border wall — they hadn’t seen migrants for a month.
A year earlier, when historic numbers of migrants were arriving at the border, the American Friends Service Committee, a national Quaker-founded human rights organization, came to their aid. Eventually the group received enough donations to erect three canopies, where it stored food, clothing and medical supplies.
But migrant crossings have slowed to a near halt, bringing a striking change to the landscape along the southernmost stretch of California.
Shelters that once received migrants have closed, makeshift camps where migrants waited for processing are barren, and nonprofits have begun shifting their services to established immigrants in the U.S. who are facing deportation, or migrants stuck in southern Mexico.
Meanwhile, the Border Patrol, with the assistance of 750 U.S. military troops, has reinforced six miles of the border wall with concertina wire.
On a recent day at the aid station erected by the Service Committee a few miles west of the San Ysidro border crossing, just one mostly empty canopy remained. Three aid workers wearing blue surgical gloves were packing up boxes labeled “kids/hydration,” “tea and hot coco”and “small sweater.” There was no need for them now.
Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector are now making about 30 to 40 arrests per day, according to the agency. That’s down from more than 1,200 per day during the height of migrant arrivals to the region in April.
Adriana Jasso, who coordinates the U.S.-Mexico program for the Service Committee, recalled that hectic time and the group’s aid effort. “This was the first time we took on this level of providing humanitarian aid,” Jasso said.
But these days, she said, “it’s the closing of an experience — for now. Because life can be unpredictable.”
In May 2023, the Biden administration ended a pandemic-era policy under which migrants were denied the right to seek asylum and were rapidly returned to Mexico. In the leadup to the policy change, migrants descended on the border by the thousands.
Two parallel fences make up much of the border barrier near San Diego. Asylum seekers began scaling the fence closest to Mexico and handing themselves over to Border Patrol agents, who would tell them to wait there between both fences for processing.
Days often passed before agents returned to the area, known as Whiskey 8. In the meantime, Jasso and her colleagues doled out hot instant soup, fresh fruit and backpacks through the slots in the fence.
The last time Jasso saw any migrants there was Feb. 15 — a 20-person group made up mostly of men from India and China. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-31 | | |
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