L.A.’s Westside is finally getting its first Ikea outpost.
The furniture company known for its Swedish meatballs and blocky “Kallax” shelving units has found a home inside the old Helms Bakery complex in Culver City.
The store, slated to open this spring, will be its 11th in California and is the company’s first “city-center” store in Los Angeles.
It will occupy a roughly 40,000-square-foot portion of a lot formerly used by L.A. luxury furniture retailer HD Buttercup, which went out of business last year, said Wally Marks III, owner of the Helms complex.
Ikea chose to open a location in Culver City because residents “spend a significant amount of time commuting and are increasingly impacted by affordability challenges,” spokesperson Briana Lehman said in a statement.
“We’re bringing the IKEA experience closer to where people live, work, socialize, and shop—just in a smaller footprint,” Lehman said.
The Helms building was chosen because it is a historic Los Angeles destination known for its restaurants and home furnishings businesses, Lehman said.
The complex has other furniture stores, including a Scandinavian Designs store, The Rug Warehouse and Room and Board.
The expansion is part of Ikea’s strategy of opening smaller stores targeting urban customers.
Unlike the larger suburban stores in Burbank and Carson, this Ikea won’t have signature vibrant blue exterior walls. The exterior of the beloved Art Deco building won’t change, Marks said.
There will, however, be showrooms with fully-furnished home kitchens and bathrooms tailored for a local L.A. audience.
Meanwhile, unlike the tiny 9,000-square-foot Ikea store that opened in Arcadia’s Santa Anita Mall in 2024, the Culver City location will feature a food court.
In 2023, Ikea opened an 85,000-square-foot location in downtown San Francisco.
In 2025, Ikea U.S. reported $5.3 billion in sales, including $1.9 billion in e-commerce sales, according to a company statement.
Ikea U.S. interim Chief Executive Rob Olson said in the statement that the company was able to grow in 2025 “despite a challenging external environment.”
In 2026, the company plans to “build on this momentum, focusing on continued investment in the U.S. to make IKEA more affordable, accessible and sustainable,” Olson said. The company has set a goal of opening 10 new stores during its 2026 fiscal year, which began in September.
The 11-acre Helms complex is the former home of the Helms bakery, famous for the butter yellow trucks that once zoomed across Southern California delivering fresh bread and for being an official supplier for the 1932 Olympics – a distinction still proudly displayed on a rooftop sign.
The bakery shut down in 1969 because the founder did not want his company to unionize, The Times once reported. The Marks family real estate firm bought the property in 1972 and turned it into a center for home furnishings and antiques.
A new version of Helm’s Bakery opened inside the Helms Design District in November 2024 but closed in December due to lagging sales. That 14,000-square-foot lot has found its next tenant, Marks said.
No extra parking is being built for Ikea, but patrons can use the existing Helms Bakery lots across Venice Boulevard, Marks said. The store is a short walk from the Culver City light rail station and bus lines, he said.
AT THIS HOUR, AUTHORITIES IN ARIZONA ARE ASKING FOR ANY KIND OF VIDEO THAT COULD LEAD THEM TO NANCY GUTHRIE. ONE QUESTION IN THIS INVESTIGATION IS, WAS SHE KIDNAPED FOR RANSOM? THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS OF RANSOM NOTES, BUT IT’S NOT CLEAR IF THE GUTHRIE FAMILY HAS PAID ANYTHING AT THIS POINT. WESH 2’S LINDSEY TALKED WITH A FORMER FBI AGENT ON HOW THAT COULD BE A CRITICAL PART OF THE INVESTIGATION. VERY VALUABLE TO US, AND WE WILL PAY THE MAJORITY OF US. WATCH THAT VIDEO POSTED BY SAVANNAH GUTHRIE AND HER SIBLINGS SATURDAY. AND ALL WE COULD THINK IS THAT POOR FAMILY. BUT LAW ENFORCEMENT AND TECH EXPERTS LIKE KYLE ARMSTRONG ALSO SEE AN OPPORTUNITY THERE TO BRING NANCY GUTHRIE HOME. THE PAYMENT IS MADE AND IT GOES THE BLOCKCHAIN WORLD. AT SOME POINT IT WILL BE CASHED OUT FOR FIAT CURRENCY. AND THAT’S THE OPPORTUNITY THAT LAW ENFORCEMENT WILL LOOK FOR. WHAT IS THE BLOCKCHAIN? ARMSTRONG, A FORMER FBI AGENT, NOW WORKS FOR TRM LABS, WHICH SPECIALIZES IN BLOCKCHAIN INTELLIGENCE. ANYTIME THERE’S A BITCOIN TRANSACTION, THAT TRANSACTION IS PUBLISHED ON THE OPEN INTERNET, AND THE BLOCKCHAIN IS ESSENTIALLY THE RECORDING OF THAT TRANSACTION. TRANSACTIONS ARE FROM ONE ADDRESS TO ANOTHER. AND ANONYMOUS, OFTEN 20 PLUS CHARACTERS ALPHANUMERIC THAT ARE HARD TO CRACK. THEY ARE COMPANY WORKS TO US TO FOLLOW THOSE TRANSACTIONS, TO MAKE IT EASY TO GRAPH THOSE TRANSACTIONS, AND SIMPLER TO EXPLAIN. BUT HOW QUICKLY CAN YOU TRACK IT? ONCE A TRANSACTION IS HAS BEEN MADE AND THERE IS A RECIPIENT ADDRESS, THEN YOU CAN BASICALLY FLAG THAT ADDRESS. AND THEN ANYTIME THE ASSETS MOVE, THAT FLAG WILL CARRY WITH THEM IN THE IN OUR INTERNAL SOFTWARE. AND SO EVEN IF IT MOVES TEN TIMES IN A CIRCUITOUS MANNER, WHEN THE FUNDS EVENTUALLY HIT ONE OF THESE EXCHANGES, THEY WILL KNOW. SO KYLE ARMSTRONG SAYS IF A SUSPECT DOES TRY TO WITHDRAW THAT MONEY, THE EXCHANGE WOULD THEN FREEZE IT AND IMMEDIATELY CONTACT POLICE. THAT IS REALLY INTERESTING. BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY DON’T TRY TO WITHDRAW IT AND THEY TRY TO DO SOMETHING ELSE, OR BUY SOMETHING ELSE? REALLY GOOD QUESTION. BUT THINK ABOUT THIS. YOU CAN’T REALLY GO OUT RIGHT NOW AND BUY A CAR OR A HOME WITH BITCOIN. MAYBE THAT COULD HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE. EVENTUALLY YOU HAVE TO CASH SOMETHING OUT. AND IN FACT, ARMSTRONG POINTED TO A 2016 NEW YORK CASE WHERE IT’S BELIEVED A COUPLE STOLE CRYPTO BUT COULD NOT ACTUALLY SPEND IT. SO THEY STARTED BUYING UP GIFT CARDS. THE MOMENT THEY DID THAT, THERE WAS A RECORD. AND HE SAYS, YOU WILL BE
Nancy Guthrie disappearance: Former FBI agent weighs in on tracking ransom money
A former FBI agent who worked 14 years investigating illicit finance cases said the ransom note could be the opportunity to find “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy.It’s unclear if the Guthrie family has agreed to pay anyone, but there were reports of two ransom notes demanding payment in Bitcoin. Kyle Armstrong, who worked for the FBI, now works for a blockchain intelligence company called TRM Labs. “If a ransom is paid, I’m certain that there will be several investigators,” Armstrong said. “When money goes in, there’s not a lot of retail use of cryptocurrency, especially a sizable amount. You really can’t buy cars. You can’t go to fancy vacations. You can’t do a lot of retail things with crypto. Ultimately, you have to exchange the cryptocurrency, primarily for fiat currency, for regular U.S. dollars, euros, whatever it is. That presents, usually, the opportunity for law enforcement to learn who is controlling this account.”When there’s a transaction, it’s from one address to another that is anonymous, but TRM Labs has a tool that can help law enforcement decipher that. “Anytime there’s a Bitcoin transaction, that transaction is published on the open Internet, and the blockchain is essentially the recording of that transaction. Our company works to follow those transactions, to make it easy to graph those transactions and simpler to explain. And then ultimately, we try to identify who’s controlling the addresses,” Armstrong said. He said there are cases where they can even flag the transaction so it can follow multiple movements. “Anytime the assets move, that flag will carry with them in the internal software. So even if it moves 10 times in a circuitous manner, when the funds eventually hit one of these exchanges, and they will know those funds have been identified by law enforcement as illicit,” Armstrong said.
A former FBI agent who worked 14 years investigating illicit finance cases said the ransom note could be the opportunity to find “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy.
It’s unclear if the Guthrie family has agreed to pay anyone, but there were reports of two ransom notes demanding payment in Bitcoin.
Kyle Armstrong, who worked for the FBI, now works for a blockchain intelligence company called TRM Labs.
“If a ransom is paid, I’m certain that there will be several investigators,” Armstrong said. “When money goes in, there’s not a lot of retail use of cryptocurrency, especially a sizable amount. You really can’t buy cars. You can’t go to fancy vacations. You can’t do a lot of retail things with crypto. Ultimately, you have to exchange the cryptocurrency, primarily for fiat currency, for regular U.S. dollars, euros, whatever it is. That presents, usually, the opportunity for law enforcement to learn who is controlling this account.”
When there’s a transaction, it’s from one address to another that is anonymous, but TRM Labs has a tool that can help law enforcement decipher that.
“Anytime there’s a Bitcoin transaction, that transaction is published on the open Internet, and the blockchain is essentially the recording of that transaction. Our company works to follow those transactions, to make it easy to graph those transactions and simpler to explain. And then ultimately, we try to identify who’s controlling the addresses,” Armstrong said.
He said there are cases where they can even flag the transaction so it can follow multiple movements.
“Anytime the assets move, that flag will carry with them in the internal software. So even if it moves 10 times in a circuitous manner, when the funds eventually hit one of these exchanges, and they will know those funds have been identified by law enforcement as illicit,” Armstrong said.
Shep Wainright sure would like to rent you a fancy new soundstage.
Last week, he opened a $230-million movie and television studio on the edge of the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles nestled alongside the dramatic new Sixth Street Bridge.
The state-of-the-art complex has five sound stages, offices and other proper movie studio features such as a mill, commissary and base camp.
“We just had all the major networks, all the major streaming platforms walk through this facility and they can’t believe how nice it is,” said Wainright, managing partner of East End Studios.
But so far, no one has signed up to make a project at East End Studios’ newest property, even as state and local leaders tout new tax incentives to boost the film industry.
“Everyone is doing their best to try to bring productions back to Los Angeles,” said Wainright, “but it’s pretty dire.”
The $230-million East End Studios – Mission Campus opened last week in Boyle Heights. It has five sound stages, offices and other production facilities.
(East End Studios)
The challenges facing owners of local sound stages came into sharp relief last week when one of the largest landlords in Hollywood — Hackman Capital Partners — said it was turning over the historic Radford Studio Center in Studio City to Goldman Sachs.
After years of aggressive sound stage development across Southern California — fueled by a surge in TV production and low interest rates — the writing was on the wall as filming activity dropped to historic lows.
The average annual sound stage occupancy rate dropped to 63% in 2024, the most recent year data are available, according to FilmLA, a nonprofit that tracks filming in the L.A. area.
The 2024 rate is down from 69% the prior year and is well below the average occupancy rate of 90% seen between 2016 and 2022, according to FilmLA data.
An upcoming report for 2025 is expected to reveal little change in occupancy levels, said spokesman Philip Sokoloski. The group recently reported a16% drop in film and TV shoot days last year compared with 2024.
Those busy days were heady, but they weren’t built to last, said real estate broker Carl Muhlstein, who helps arrange sales and leases of studios and other large entertainment facilities.
The dawn of the streaming era set off a scramble to grab market share among newcomers like Netflix and old-timers like Paramount and Disney, who created hundreds of original scripted televisions shows. By 2022, during the height of so-called peak TV, nearly 200 shows were in production industry-wide.
“It was all about speeding to market and capturing eyeballs by throwing billions of dollars” at creating new shows and movies, Muhlstein said. “They were all building platforms.”
Landlords raced to build or buy sound stages to accommodate all the production, and they may have overshot the mark.
In 2021, independent studio giant Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management paid $1.85 billion for Radford Studio Center, a popular lot dating to silent film days that gave Studio City its name.
For Culver City-based Hackman, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Shortly after it bought Radford Studio Center, the industry began to see theatrical slowdowns from the pandemic, the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes and the cutback in spending at the studios.
California also lost market share to rivals as producers continued to migrate to other states and countries offering lower costs — and bigger tax breaks.
“Los Angeles has the best infrastructure, the best crews, and the deepest creative talent in the world for film production, but California has failed to keep the industry competitive with tax credits offered by other states and countries,” Chief Executive Michael Hackman said in a statement. “We are now witnessing the cumulative impact of years of policy neglect compounded by the effects of COVID, strikes, and changes in industry trends.
‘We’re going to have fewer studios’
— Real estate broker Carl Muhlstein
“The flight of production from Los Angeles has caused extraordinary economic damage, job losses and declines in our tax base,” Hackman said. “If policymakers level the playing field, Los Angeles can recover and remain at the center of the entertainment industry where it belongs.”
The problem for Hackman was that it bought Radford during “peak demand,” said Kevin Klowden, a Milken Institute fellow, focused on entertainment and technology. “Expect that whoever buys it is clearly going to look at the economics of it differently.”
Other studios face similar challenges to Radford’s, Muhlstein said.
“Unfortunately, this could be the first of several foreclosures,” he said. “We’re going to have fewer studios.”
He didn’t identify other studios in distress, but said some have less filming business than Radford does and are facing more painful cost increases when refinancing short-term loans they took out to buy the properties.
“More content is being produced in more places at lower costs by increasingly widespread teams,” Muhlstein said. “You can go to London, you can go to Hungary, you can go to Vancouver. “
There is hope in the industry that local production — and with it, soundstage usage — will get a boost from California’s revamped film and TV tax credit program, which was overhauled last year.
In addition to boosting the annual amount allocated to the production incentive program, state lawmakers expanded eligibility criteria to include new kinds of shows, including large-scale competition shows and 20-minute-per-episode shows.
With that boost, FilmLA expects to see an increase to the current soundstage usage, but below the 90% occupancy of the peak TV period.
“Our hope is that we can reach that sustainable place with a space for anyone who needs it as well as work opportunities for the crew here,” Sokoloski said.
But the dynamics of streaming series, with shorter episode orders, doesn’t create the same economies of scale and consistent occupancy rates that network shows once did, Klowden said.
“Under the new incentives and with the city actively trying to court productions back and make things easier, will things move back?” Klowden said. “That’s the real issue.”
A representative of L.A. Center Studios in downtown L.A., where “Mad Men,” “The Rookie,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and many other movies and TV shows were filmed, declined to comment.
The head of tiny but historic Occidental Studios is looking to bail out — for the right price. Craig Darian put the Los Angeles studio that was once used by silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on the market for $45 million last year.
“Business has slowed but what little debt the studio has is at a low rate and not coming due any time soon, he said. “We’re looking for the correct exit. We’re not eager to sell.”
Occidental is among the oldest continually operating studios in Hollywood, used by pioneering filmmakers Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith and Pickford, who worked there as an actor and filmmaker in its early years.
More recently the three-acre lot has been used for television production for shows including “Tales of the City,” “New Girl” and HBO’s thriller “Sharp Objects.”
“We mourn what everybody’s going through,” Darian said. “We’re in the land of ‘I don’t know.’ I think that’s a truism for everyone trying to figure things out.”
With independent studios facing challenges finding tenants to rent their sound stages and services, old-line studio titans such as Warner Bros., Fox and NBCUniversal may gain an edge, analysts said.
“The large corporate studios are going to gain market share because we’re going to go back to the old system,” Muhlstein said, “where they finance your film or television show and then distribute it.”
Despite the dramatic pullback in production, Fox Corp. continues to inch forward with its massive $1.5-billion expansion on the Fox lot, which is adjacent to Century City, according to people familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment. The long-term project was unveiled two months before the L.A. production economy collapsed when the Writers Guild of America went on strike.
Production on Rupert Murdoch’s lot has slowly been increasing after Walt Disney Co. relinquished its space to consolidate operations in Burbank.
The reboot of the iconic television show “Baywatch” will largely film on the lot as well as Venice Beach, to stay true to the original, Fox said. The lot is home to a major chunk of Fox Sports productions, including “Fox NFL Sunday,” and “Fox NFL Kickoff.”
The lot also hosts in-studio production across all of Fox Sports for linear and digital channels.
Some are optimistic the state’s expanded film tax credits will stimulate more local film activity.
Wainright says the incentives are starting to produce some “green shoots” for the industry.
“I would like to think that 2024 and 2025 are kind of the bottom and that we’re going to be pulling ourselves up.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
If winning gold medals were the only standard, almost all Olympic athletes would be considered failures.Video above: Amber Glenn opens up about mental health, coming out and her figure skating journeyA clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Emily Clark’s job when the Winter Games open in Italy on Feb. 6 is to help athletes interpret what it means to be successful. Should gold medals be the only measure?Part of a 15-member staff providing psychological services, Clark nurtures athletes accustomed to triumph but who invariably risk failure.The staff deals with matters termed “mental health and mental performance.” They include topics such as motivation, anger management, anxiety, eating disorders, family issues, trauma, depression, sleep, handling pressure, travel and so forth.Clark’s area includes stress management, the importance of sleep and getting high achievers to perform at their best and avoid the temptation of looking only at results.”A lot of athletes these days are aware of the mental health component of, not just sport, but of life,” Clark said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is an area where athletes can develop skills that can extend a career, or make it more enjoyable.” The United States is expected to take about 235 athletes to the Winter Olympics, and about 70 more to the Paralympics. But here’s the truth.”Most of the athletes who come through Team USA will not win a gold medal,” Clark said. “That’s the reality of elite sport.”Here are the numbers. The United States won gold medals in nine events in the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. According to Dr. Bill Mallon, an esteemed shoulder surgeon and Olympic historian, 70.8% of Winter and Summer Olympic athletes go to only one Olympics.Few are famous and successful like swimmer Michael Phelps, or skiers Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn.Clark said she often delivers the following message to Olympians and Paralympians: This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Focus on the process. Savor the moment.”Your job is not to win a gold medal, your job is to do the thing, and the gold medal is what happens when you do your job,” she said.”Some of this might be realigning what success looks like,” she added. “And some of this is developing resilience in the face of setbacks and failure.”Clark preaches staying on task under pressure and improving through defeat.”We get stronger by pushing ourselves to a limit where we’re at our maximum capacity — and then recovering,” she said. “When we get stressed, it impacts our attention. Staying on task or staying in line with what’s important is what we try to train for.” Kendall Gretsch has won four gold medals at the Summer and Winter Paralympics. She credits some of her success to the USOPC’s mental health services, and she described the value this way.”We have a sports psychologist who travels with us for most our season,” she said. “Just being able to touch base with them … and getting that reminder of why are you here? What is that experience you’re looking for?”American figure skater Alysa Liu is the 2025 world champion and was sixth in the 2022 Olympics. She’s a big believer in sports psychology and should be among the favorites in Italy.”I work with a sport psychologist,” she said without giving a name. “She’s incredible — like the MVP.”Of course, MVP stands — not for Most Valuable Person or Most Valuable Player — for “Most Valuable Psychologist.””I mean, she’s very helpful,” Liu added. American downhill skier Vonn will race in Italy in her sixth Olympics. At 41, she’s coming off nearly six years in retirement and will be racing on a knee made of titanium.Two-time Olympic champion Michaela Dorfmeister has suggested in jest that Vonn “should see a psychologist” for attempting such a thing in a very dangerous sport where downhill skiers reach speeds of 80 mph.Vonn shrugged off the comments and joked a few months ago that she didn’t grow up using a sport psychologist. She said her counseling came from taping messages on the tips of her skis that read: “stay forward or hands up.””I just did it myself,” she said. “I do a lot of self-talk in the starting gate.” “Sleep is an area where athletes tend to struggle for a number of reasons,” Clark said, listing issues such as travel schedules, late practices, injuries and life-related stress.”We have a lot of athletes who are parents, and lot of sleep is going to be disrupted in the early stages of parenting,” she said. “We approach sleep as a real part of performance. But it can be something that gets de-prioritized when days get busy.”Clark suggests the following for her athletes — and the rest of us: no caffeine after 3 p.m., mitigate stress before bedtime, schedule sleep at about the same time daily, sleep in a dark room and get 7-9 hours.Dani Aravich is a two-time Paralympian — she’s been in both the Summer and Winter Games — and will be skiing in the upcoming Paralympics. She said in a recent interview that she avails herself of many psychological services provided by the USOPC.”I’ve started tracking my sleep,” she said, naming Clark as a counselor. “Especially being an athlete who has multiple jobs, sleep is going to be your No. 1 savior at all times. It’s the thing that, you know, helps mental clarity.” Clark agreed.”Sleep is the cornerstone of healthy performance,” she added.
If winning gold medals were the only standard, almost all Olympic athletes would be considered failures.
Video above: Amber Glenn opens up about mental health, coming out and her figure skating journey
A clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Emily Clark’s job when the Winter Games open in Italy on Feb. 6 is to help athletes interpret what it means to be successful.
Should gold medals be the only measure?
Part of a 15-member staff providing psychological services, Clark nurtures athletes accustomed to triumph but who invariably risk failure.
The staff deals with matters termed “mental health and mental performance.” They include topics such as motivation, anger management, anxiety, eating disorders, family issues, trauma, depression, sleep, handling pressure, travel and so forth.
Clark’s area includes stress management, the importance of sleep and getting high achievers to perform at their best and avoid the temptation of looking only at results.
“A lot of athletes these days are aware of the mental health component of, not just sport, but of life,” Clark said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is an area where athletes can develop skills that can extend a career, or make it more enjoyable.”
The United States is expected to take about 235 athletes to the Winter Olympics, and about 70 more to the Paralympics. But here’s the truth.
“Most of the athletes who come through Team USA will not win a gold medal,” Clark said. “That’s the reality of elite sport.”
Here are the numbers. The United States won gold medals in nine events in the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. According to Dr. Bill Mallon, an esteemed shoulder surgeon and Olympic historian, 70.8% of Winter and Summer Olympic athletes go to only one Olympics.
Few are famous and successful like swimmer Michael Phelps, or skiers Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn.
Clark said she often delivers the following message to Olympians and Paralympians: This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Focus on the process. Savor the moment.
“Your job is not to win a gold medal, your job is to do the thing, and the gold medal is what happens when you do your job,” she said.
“Some of this might be realigning what success looks like,” she added. “And some of this is developing resilience in the face of setbacks and failure.”
Clark preaches staying on task under pressure and improving through defeat.
“We get stronger by pushing ourselves to a limit where we’re at our maximum capacity — and then recovering,” she said. “When we get stressed, it impacts our attention. Staying on task or staying in line with what’s important is what we try to train for.”
Kendall Gretsch has won four gold medals at the Summer and Winter Paralympics. She credits some of her success to the USOPC’s mental health services, and she described the value this way.
“We have a sports psychologist who travels with us for most our season,” she said. “Just being able to touch base with them … and getting that reminder of why are you here? What is that experience you’re looking for?”
American figure skater Alysa Liu is the 2025 world champion and was sixth in the 2022 Olympics. She’s a big believer in sports psychology and should be among the favorites in Italy.
“I work with a sport psychologist,” she said without giving a name. “She’s incredible — like the MVP.”
Of course, MVP stands — not for Most Valuable Person or Most Valuable Player — for “Most Valuable Psychologist.”
“I mean, she’s very helpful,” Liu added.
American downhill skier Vonn will race in Italy in her sixth Olympics. At 41, she’s coming off nearly six years in retirement and will be racing on a knee made of titanium.
Two-time Olympic champion Michaela Dorfmeister has suggested in jest that Vonn “should see a psychologist” for attempting such a thing in a very dangerous sport where downhill skiers reach speeds of 80 mph.
Vonn shrugged off the comments and joked a few months ago that she didn’t grow up using a sport psychologist. She said her counseling came from taping messages on the tips of her skis that read: “stay forward or hands up.”
“I just did it myself,” she said. “I do a lot of self-talk in the starting gate.”
“Sleep is an area where athletes tend to struggle for a number of reasons,” Clark said, listing issues such as travel schedules, late practices, injuries and life-related stress.
“We have a lot of athletes who are parents, and lot of sleep is going to be disrupted in the early stages of parenting,” she said. “We approach sleep as a real part of performance. But it can be something that gets de-prioritized when days get busy.”
Clark suggests the following for her athletes — and the rest of us: no caffeine after 3 p.m., mitigate stress before bedtime, schedule sleep at about the same time daily, sleep in a dark room and get 7-9 hours.
Dani Aravich is a two-time Paralympian — she’s been in both the Summer and Winter Games — and will be skiing in the upcoming Paralympics. She said in a recent interview that she avails herself of many psychological services provided by the USOPC.
“I’ve started tracking my sleep,” she said, naming Clark as a counselor. “Especially being an athlete who has multiple jobs, sleep is going to be your No. 1 savior at all times. It’s the thing that, you know, helps mental clarity.”
Clark agreed.
“Sleep is the cornerstone of healthy performance,” she added.
Veteran comedian, actor and Southern California native T.K. Carter has died. He was 69.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies arrived at the actor’s Duarte home Friday evening after receiving a call about an unresponsive male, the Associated Press reported. He was declared dead at the scene. No foul play is suspected, though officials have not yet released a cause of death.
Born Thomas Kent Carter in New York City, Carter was raised in the San Gabriel Valley, according to IMDb.
After several small roles in 1970s sitcoms, including “Good Times,” “The Waltons” and “The Jeffersons,” he found his breakthrough role in the 1982 horror movie “The Thing” as the chef Nauls.
He went on to play teacher Mike Fulton in “Punky Brewster” and Clarence Hull in “The Sinbad Show,” among a host of other film and television credits through the 1980s and ‘90s.
In later decades of his career, he took on consulting roles in addition to on-screen appearances.
He worked with Chris Tucker as a dialect coach on the 1998 film “Rush Hour,” and was brought on to the set of the 1996 movie “Space Jam” to help the film’s star, Michael Jordan, learn lines and feel more comfortable in front of the camera.
“T.K. was a terrific actor, and I wanted him to help Michael with his dialogue,” director Joe Pytka told The Times in 2020.
While Carter was best known for his comedic work, describing himself in his Instagram bio as a writer and performer “born to act and make you laugh,” he also took on more serious roles.
He starred in the 2000 HBO miniseries “The Corner,” a drama in which he played Gary McCullough, a west Baltimore father struggling with addiction.
“I just totally felt for Gary,” Carter told The Times. “I’ve had drug problems and cocaine addiction. I lost my father to a drug-related death. I’ve lost a lot of friends. I was fortunate to come out on the other side and get my life together. But I haven’t forgotten. I kept Gary with me all the time. I slept Gary. I breathed Gary.”
As news of the actor’s passing spread, friends and colleagues took to social media with tributes.
“As a young kid, I looked up to T. K. because seeing an African American actor starring in a major film meant a lot to me. I always felt he was headed for stardom,” entrepreneur Shavar Ross posted on X. “I want to send my heartfelt condolences to his family, his friends, and everyone who loved and admired his work. He will always be remembered and respected.”
American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate
By Eric Lichtblau Little Brown and Company: 352 pages, $30
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Have you heard of Orange County? It’s where the good Republicans go before they die.
It should come as no surprise that Orange County, a beloved county for the grandfather of modern American conservatism, Ronald Reagan, would be the fertile landscape for far-right ideology and white supremacy. Reaganomics aside, the O.C. has long since held a special if not slightly off-putting place, of oceanfront leisure, modern luxury and all-American family entertainment — famed by hit shows (“The Real Housewives of Orange County,” “The O.C.” and “Laguna Beach,” among others). Even crime in Orange County has been sensationalized and glamorized, with themes veneered by opulence, secrecy and illusions of suburban perfection. To Eric Lichtblau, the Pulitzer Prize winner and former Los Angeles Times reporter, the real story is far-right terrorism — and its unspoken grip on the county’s story.
“One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” Lichtblau says. “These are people who are trying to take back America from the shores of Orange County because it’s gotten too brown in their view.”
His newest investigative book, “American Reich,” focuses on the 2018 murder of gay Jewish teenager Blaze Bernstein as a lens to examine Orange County and how the hate-driven murder at the hands of a former classmate connects to a national web of white supremacy and terrorism.
I grew up a few miles away from Bernstein, attending a performing arts school similar to his — and Sam Woodward’s. I remember the early discovery of the murder where Woodward became a suspect, followed by the news that the case was being investigated as a hate crime. The murder followed the news cycle for years to come, but in its coverage, there was a lack of continuity in seeing how this event fit into a broader pattern and history ingrained in Orange County. There was a bar down the street from me where an Iranian American man was stabbed just for not being white. The seaside park of Marblehead, where friends and I visited for homecoming photos during sunset, was reported as a morning meet-up spot for neo-Nazis in skeleton masks training for “white unity” combat. These were just some of the myriad events Lichtblau explores as symptoms of something more unsettling than one-offs.
Samuel Lincoln Woodward, of Newport Beach, speaks with his attorney during his 2018 arraignment on murder charges in the death of Blaze Bernstein.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Lichtblau began the book in 2020, in the midst of COVID. He wanted to find a place emblematic of the national epidemic that he, like many others, was witnessing — some of the highest record of anti-Asian attacks, assaults on Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ communities, and rising extremist rhetoric and actions.
“Orange County kind of fit a lot of those boxes,” Lichtblau says. “The horrible tragedy with Blaze Bernstein being killed by one of his high school classmates — who had been radicalized — reflected a growing brazenness of the white supremacy movement we’ve seen as a whole in America in recent years.”
Bernstein’s death had been only two years prior. The Ivy League student had agreed to meet former classmate Woodward one evening during winter break. The two had never been close; Woodward had been a lone wolf during his brief time at the Orange County School of the Arts, before transferring due to the school’s liberalness. On two separate occasions over the years, Woodward had reached out to Bernstein under the pretense of grappling with his own sexuality. Bernstein had no idea he was being baited, or that his former classmate was part of a sprawling underground network of far-right extremists — connected to mass shooters, longtime Charles Manson followers, neo-Nazi camps, and online chains where members bonded over a shared fantasy of harming minorities and starting a white revolution.
“But how is this happening in 2025?”
These networks didn’t appear out of nowhere. They had long been planted in Orange County’s soil, leading back to the early 1900s when the county was home to sprawling orange groves.
Mexican laborers, who formed the backbone of the orange-grove economy (second to oil and generating wealth that even rivaled the Gold Rush), were met with violence when the unionized laborers wanted to strike for better conditions. The Orange County sheriff, also an orange grower, issued an order. “SHOOT TO KILL, SAYS SHERIFF,” the banner headline in the Santa Ana Register read. Chinese immigrants also faced violence. They had played a large role in building the county’s state of governance, but were blamed for a case of leprosy, and at the suggestion of a councilman, had their community of Chinatown torched while the white residents watched.
Gideon Bernstein and Jeanne Pepper Bernstein, center, parents of Blaze Bernstein, speak during a news conference after a 2018 sentencing for Samuel Woodward at Orange County Superior Court.
(Jeff Gritchen/Pool / Orange County Register)
Leading up to the new millennium brought an onslaught of white power rock coming out of the county’s music scene. Members with shaved heads and Nazi memorabilia would dance to rage-fueled declarations of white supremacy, clashing, if not worse, with non-white members of the community while listening to lyrics like, “When the last white moves out of O.C., the American flag will leave with me… We’ll die for a land that’s yours and mine” (from the band Youngland).
“It’s come and gone,” says Lichtblau, who noticed these currents shifting in the early 2000s — and over the years, when Reagandland broke in certain parts to become purple. Even with sights of blue amid red, Trump on the landscape brought a new wave — one that Lichtblau explains was fueled by “claiming their country back” and “capturing the moment that Trump released.”
It can be hard to fathom the reality: that the Orange County of white supremacy exists alongside an Orange County shaped both economically and culturally by its immigrant communities, where since 2004, the majority of its residents are people of color. Then again, to anyone who has spent considerable time there, you’ll notice the strange cognitive dissonance among its cultural landscape.
It’s a peculiar sight to see a MAGA stand selling nativist slogans on a Spanish-named street, or Confederate flags in the back of pickup trucks pulling into the parking lots of neighborhood taquerias or Vietnamese pho shops for a meal. Or some of the families who have lived in the county for generations still employing Latino workers, yet inside their living rooms Fox News will be playing alarmist rhetoric about “Latinos,” alongside Reagan-era memorabilia proudly displayed alongside framed Bible verses. This split reality — a multicultural community and one of the far-right — oddly fills the framework of a county born from a split with its neighbor, L.A., only to develop an aggressive identity against said neighbor’s perceived liberalness.
It’s this cultural rejection that led to “the orange curtain” or the “Orange County bubble,” which suggest these racially-charged ideologies stay contained or, exhaustingly, echo within the county’s sphere. On the contrary, Lichtblau has seen how these white suburban views spill outward. Look no further than the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, also the book’s release date.
While popular belief might assume these insurrectionists came from deeply conservative areas, it was actually the contrary, as Lichtblau explains. “It was from places like Orange County,” he says, “where the voting patterns were seeing the most shift.” Some might argue — adamantly or reluctantly — that Jan. 6 was merely a stop-the-steal protest gone wrong, a momentary lapse or mob mentality. But Lichtblau sees something much larger. “This was white pride on display. There was a lot of neo-Nazi stuff, including a lot of Orange County people stuff.”
As a society, it’s been collectively decided to expect the profile of the lone wolf killer, the outcast, wearing an identity strung from the illusions of a white man’s oppression — the type to rail against unemployment benefits but still cash the check. Someone like Sam Woodward, cut from the vestiges of the once venerable conservative Americana family, the type of God-fearing Christians who, as “American Reich” studies in the Woodward household, teach and bond over ideological hate, and even while entrenched in a murder case, continuously reach out to the victim’s family to the point where the judge has to intervene. The existence of these suburban families is known, as is the slippery hope one will never cross paths with them in this ever-spinning round of American roulette. But neither these individuals nor their hate crimes are random, as Lichtblau discusses, and the lone wolves aren’t as alone as assumed. These underground channels have long been ingrained in the American groundscape like landmines, now reactivated by a far-right digital landscape that connects these members and multiplies their ideologies on a national level. Lichtblau’s new investigation goes beyond the paradigm of Orange County to show a deeper cultural epidemic that’s been taking shape.
Beavin Pappas is an arts and culture writer. Raised in Orange County, he now splits his time between New York and Cairo, where he is at work on his debut book.
A Baltimore County knitter’s unique scarf is not only vibrant: Each color signifies the daily weather.At her Maryland home, Rose Armentrout has an entire room dedicated to her knitting yarn and needles.”I try to organize it by type,” Armentrout told sister station WBAL-TV. “This bin is the cotton and this bin is the cashmere.”The room serves as Armentrout’s safe space, a sign of her dedication to knitting.”It helps you get through a lot of stuff. My husband and I both have had cancer. He is going through treatment now, so there’s a lot of hours spent sitting at the cancer center. So, I knit,” Armentrout said. “When I was going through treatments, I knitted scarves for all the nurses and doctors.”This year, Armentrout embarked on a project to knit a scarf that reflects the temperature for each day.”I made myself up a card, so I do single-digits is lilac, and 10 to 20 (degrees) is purple; 21 to 30, and so on by 10 digits, within that range,” Armentrout said. “I knit two rows, and whatever color I have decided for that temperature range, it’s like, ‘OK, I accomplished something today.’”Armentrout first saw the idea on Ravelry, a social networking site that connects knitters from all over the world.”My first thought was, ‘That’s weird.’ And then, it was intriguing as I looked into it,” Armentrout said. “The original idea behind it, though, was actually tracking temperature changes. It was about climate change, to see how much it has changed over the years, and how we are being affected by climate change.”As Armentrout completes her first temperature scarf with a few days left in 2025, she plans to wear it proudly.”I’m calling it my ‘Dr. Whoish temperature scarf’ because it’s very Dr. Whoish to me with all the colors, but it’s interesting, too, that you can see from the cold to the hot and back again,” Armentrout said.Armentrout is not finished with her knitting projects. She plans to knit another temperature scarf next year with the temperatures from her mother’s birth year, 1927, and compare them to this year’s temperatures.
A Baltimore County knitter’s unique scarf is not only vibrant: Each color signifies the daily weather.
At her Maryland home, Rose Armentrout has an entire room dedicated to her knitting yarn and needles.
“I try to organize it by type,” Armentrout told sister station WBAL-TV. “This bin is the cotton and this bin is the cashmere.”
The room serves as Armentrout’s safe space, a sign of her dedication to knitting.
“It helps you get through a lot of stuff. My husband and I both have had cancer. He is going through treatment now, so there’s a lot of hours spent sitting at the cancer center. So, I knit,” Armentrout said. “When I was going through treatments, I knitted scarves for all the nurses and doctors.”
This year, Armentrout embarked on a project to knit a scarf that reflects the temperature for each day.
“I made myself up a card, so I do single-digits is lilac, and 10 to 20 (degrees) is purple; 21 to 30, and so on by 10 digits, within that range,” Armentrout said. “I knit two rows, and whatever color I have decided for that temperature range, it’s like, ‘OK, I accomplished something today.’”
Armentrout first saw the idea on Ravelry, a social networking site that connects knitters from all over the world.
“My first thought was, ‘That’s weird.’ And then, it was intriguing as I looked into it,” Armentrout said. “The original idea behind it, though, was actually tracking temperature changes. It was about climate change, to see how much it has changed over the years, and how we are being affected by climate change.”
WBAL
Rose Armentrout embarked on a project to knit a scarf that reflects the temperature for each day.
As Armentrout completes her first temperature scarf with a few days left in 2025, she plans to wear it proudly.
“I’m calling it my ‘Dr. Whoish temperature scarf’ because it’s very Dr. Whoish to me with all the colors, but it’s interesting, too, that you can see from the cold to the hot and back again,” Armentrout said.
Armentrout is not finished with her knitting projects. She plans to knit another temperature scarf next year with the temperatures from her mother’s birth year, 1927, and compare them to this year’s temperatures.
It takes a lot for sweet-tempered 28-year-old Nick Darnell to transform himself into Christmas’ most sought-after sourpuss.
There’s colored contacts and facial prosthetics, a protruding belly and at least an hour of makeup. But for the devout Christian and preternaturally cheerful young actor, the real metamorphosis is psychological.
“People today love to connect with the villain,” said the viral Grinch impersonator. “The world is just a darker world now.”
Darnell called the chartreuse baddie he portrays “the modern-day Santa.”
Dr. Seuss’ holiday parable “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” has been a seasonal favorite since it was published in 1957, ranking among the most popular and profitable of the author’s iconic rhyming picture books.
The story’s sassy, brassy antihero has likewise adorned Christmas trees and school library shelves for generations. His hornlike fur forelocks and pathological refusal to assimilate have led some critics to call the Grinch ambiguouslyantisemitic, but those concerns have largely been glossed over by years of nostalgia.
Experts say 2025 heralds the Grinch’s ascent from Yuletide bit player to Christmas A-lister. He now crowds out Kris Kringle in store displays, social media feeds and holiday meet-and-greets.
Unlike Santa, who ho-ho-hos his way through the holiday season, Grinches twerk and pout and scream in kids’ faces. Compilations of their antics on YouTube and TikTok routinely rack up millions of views.
“I do the things that people think,” Darnell said of the role. “I’m not restrained.”
Despite the Grinch’s anti-consumerist zeal, the market for his visage has exploded in recent years.
Target touts its “Grinchmas,” while Walmart has “WhoKnewVille.” McDonald’s sells Grinch fries, Starbucks features a “secret menu” frappuccino. Hanna Andersson, a popular purveyor of holiday pajamas, boasts roughly a dozen different Grinch patterns, compared to three Hanukkah options and just one Santa design in two colorways.
“I’m not restrained,” Grinch impersonator Nick Darnell, 28, says of his role.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Ownership of the Grinch’s likeness is guarded as jealously as the villain protects his lair: Dr. Seuss Enterprises holds the rights to the children’s book, Warner Bros. Discovery the 1966 animated TV special, and Universal Studios the 2000 live-action Jim Carrey film, which ranks among the highest-grossing Christmas movies of all time.
But impersonators, academics and even working Santas agree: Americans’ embrace of the Grinch in 2025 goes far beyond consumerism.
“It’s definitely more popular,” said ‘Santa’ Ed Taylor, the famed Los Angeles Santa behind the Worldwide Santa Claus Network, a training camp for the art of Christmas cheer. “It’s a little yin and yang. Maybe we need a little bit of both.”
Costume companies across Los Angeles say they’ve seen a deluge of demand for the Grinch this year. At Etoile Costume & Party Center in Tarzana, nearly half of Christmas costume rentals are now furry green villains.
“It’s about equal to Santa,” one employee said. “Maybe 40% Grinch and the rest Santa.”
Ryan Ortiz, dressed in a Grinch costume, stands next to his 1969 Volkswagen Bus in San Diego on Dec. 21.
(K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
Fans of the hirsute sourpuss seek him out for his in-your-face edge — the opposite of Santa’s remote joviality. Santa enforces his regime of goodness through lists and surveillance. The Grinch will get in your face and yell at you to shut up.
“[Santa]’s supposed to be mysterious and unknown,” said Darnell’s fiancee JadaPaige. “He’s supposed to just come in the night and you’re never supposed to see him.”
“I grew up obsessed with Santa Claus — I did not grow up obsessed with the Grinch,” Darnell said. “I was the kid waiting up in the middle of the night, peeking, wondering if Santa’s down there. A lot of modern day kids aren’t having that journey.”
Instead, many Gen Alpha youths look to the Grinch for his views on “corruption or poverty or the oversaturation of commercialism,” Darnell said.
“Santa is looked at more like a godly figure, while the Grinch is a more everyday man,” the actor explained. “The world is so sinister and negative. [The Grinch] tells you how it is, rather than telling you everything is going to be fine.”
TikTok turbocharged that trend, with the infamous green meanie matching or beating his red rival in holiday clout.
Grinch impersonator Nick Darnell said the character he plays has become popular because, “He has aura.”
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s professional Santas are often retirees with a bit of a belly and some time on their hands. Grinches, by contrast, are more likely to be working actors like Darnell, who look reverently to Carrey’s performance as a blueprint for the character’s slapstick antics and snarky reads.
Still, experts say the Grinch’s 2025 glow-up likely owes as much to holiday exhaustion and broad consumer pessimism as it does vertical video virility.
“The Grinch is the opposite side of Christmas,” said Oscar Tellez, who owns Magic Dream Costumes and Party Rentals in East Los Angeles and says he’s seen a spike in Grinch requests even as overall holiday rentals have sagged.
“Especially with the Latino community, I don’t think they feel the enthusiasm to celebrate,” Tellez said. “They are more worried about what’s gonna happen next.”
Pop culture experts agreed.
“The economy is in big trouble, our political situation is chaotic, there’s a lot of hate — it’s no wonder that we would seek to express that through the embodiment of a monster like the Grinch,” said Michael M. Chemers, director of the Center for Monster Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
“You’ve seen these nativity displays popping up all over the country that have the Jesus figures removed and it says ‘ICE was here,’ ” he added. “I think there’s just a lot of Grinchy feeling right now in the world.”
Chemers and other scholars say the emergence of the Grinch as a foil to Santa is less a departure than a return to form: the Grinch is a “PG version” of the mythical Krampus, a shaggy, fork-tongued Germanic goat man who beats and even abducts naughty children, working as an enforcer for Father Christmas.
An “organillero,” or traditional street musician, dressed as the anti-Christmas character known as the Grinch plays on a central street in Mexico City on Dec. 9.
(Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)
“He’s been called the Christmas devil,” said Jeff Belanger, author of “The Fright Before Christmas,” a compendium of so-called “Yuletide monsters.”
“[Krampus] represented the consequence of bad behavior, while St. Nick rewards good behavior,” he said.
Krampus likely evolved from older, pre-Christian deities, just as Christmas absorbed solstice and midwinter customs, the author explained. The Christmas most Americans grew up with only emerged as a national holiday in the wake of the Civil War, he said, about a decade after the formal introduction of Thanksgiving in 1863. It was around this time that Christmas trees became popular in the United States.
“In 1867, Charles Dickens came over to Boston and that’s when he read his ‘Christmas Carol’ for the first time in America,” spurring President Ulysses S. Grant to declare Christmas a federal holiday, Belanger said. “It was truly on the back of that story.”
The holiday’s corpulent, white-bearded dandy arrived even later, his schmaltzy persona skimmed from bony St. Nicholas between Reconstruction and 1931, when Coca-Cola debuted its iconic, brandy-flushed Santa Claus.
“That’s when Christmas turned purely commercial, and there was no room for consequences anymore,” Belanger said.
Seuss’ Grinch sits somewhere in the middle — cuddlier than Krampus and pricklier than Santa — making him the perfect avatar for a moody, uncertain age.
Workers check Grinch inflatables ready for export at a factory in Suixi County in central China’s Anhui Province on March 19.
(Wan SC/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Grinch boosters point out that the villain repents and reforms at the end of the story, shedding his pathological hatred of Christmas.
“I always tell people, ‘Don’t you just love how his heart grew three sizes?’ ” Taylor, the famous Santa, said of his increasingly popular crossover events.
Others note that it’s never the repentant Grinch who marauds through schools and holiday parades or blows up on social media.
“Once he’s rehabilitated, he’s no fun anymore,” Chemers said.
That makes it hard for the holiday villain to visit sick kids in the hospital, as legions of Santas do every year, or comfort children who confide in him about bullying.
“The message is one of encouragement and positivity and acknowledgment of accomplishments and encouragement to strive harder,” Taylor said. “It’s these beautiful personal development messages that Santa gets to be the conduit for.”
The Grinch, by contrast, can affirm where you are, without ever asking you to be better.
“He can hear you and know what you’re thinking, because he has the same thoughts,” Darnell said of his beloved version of the character. “People want to know his heart and his mind, and that’s something they wouldn’t be able to ask Santa.”
The Florida Turnpike is undergoing a large expansion in Lake County that officials hope will ease congestion as the area around Hancock Road in Minneola continues to boom, and the expansion marked a major milestone with the opening of two new lanes of traffic southbound.From the Hancock Road interchange to the State Road 50 interchange, the $162.3 million project has seen the expansion of the Turnpike from two lanes to four.The project is set to wrap up next year, but will continue northbound from Hancock Road to O’Brien Road.”Any time we can ease traffic, I think that’s going to work in favor to everybody,” said driver Jim Ashbaugh. “It’s just too much traffic. Any time you have expansion is great. We do like it now, the more work that’s being done.”As the expansion continues, the area around Hancock Road is booming, with the opening of a new Advent Health hospital this month and thousands of homes recently built and still under construction.”It’s been a lot of work, I know that. There’s been a lot of holdups, the way the traffic has been and everything. But I think it’s for a good thing,” said driver Russell Iglesias.Officials hope all the work will accommodate the thousands of new Lake County residents flocking to the area.”You’ve got a lot more people coming here, moving, so they’re going to look to build houses,” Ashbaugh said. “More and more people coming is going to make that much more traffic, but more jobs, right, more opportunity for people to come and make a little bit more money.”The work to expand from two lanes to four in both directions northbound from Hancock to O’Brien will conclude in 2028.
MINNEOLA, Fla. —
The Florida Turnpike is undergoing a large expansion in Lake County that officials hope will ease congestion as the area around Hancock Road in Minneola continues to boom, and the expansion marked a major milestone with the opening of two new lanes of traffic southbound.
From the Hancock Road interchange to the State Road 50 interchange, the $162.3 million project has seen the expansion of the Turnpike from two lanes to four.
The project is set to wrap up next year, but will continue northbound from Hancock Road to O’Brien Road.
“Any time we can ease traffic, I think that’s going to work in favor to everybody,” said driver Jim Ashbaugh. “It’s just too much traffic. Any time you have expansion is great. We do like it now, the more work that’s being done.”
As the expansion continues, the area around Hancock Road is booming, with the opening of a new Advent Health hospital this month and thousands of homes recently built and still under construction.
“It’s been a lot of work, I know that. There’s been a lot of holdups, the way the traffic has been and everything. But I think it’s for a good thing,” said driver Russell Iglesias.
Officials hope all the work will accommodate the thousands of new Lake County residents flocking to the area.
“You’ve got a lot more people coming here, moving, so they’re going to look to build houses,” Ashbaugh said. “More and more people coming is going to make that much more traffic, but more jobs, right, more opportunity for people to come and make a little bit more money.”
The work to expand from two lanes to four in both directions northbound from Hancock to O’Brien will conclude in 2028.
TONIGHT, A STORY ABOUT RUNNING OUTRUNNING RATHER LIMITS WHILE DEFYING THE ODDS FOR ONE ALABAMA TEENAGER. THIS ALL BEGAN THOUSANDS OF MILES FROM HERE. ONLY ON 13 TONIGHT, BRITTANY DECKER INTRODUCES YOU TO AN OAK MOUNTAIN STUDENT ON THE FAST TRACK. AFTER A JOURNEY THAT SPANS THE GLOBE. I’M GOING TO FOLLOW YOU. DON’T GO TOO FAST. OKAY? BEFORE CHASE EVEN RAN A RACE, BEFORE HE SPOKE A WORD OF ENGLISH. BEFORE HE HAD A FAMILY CHEERING IN THE STANDS. HE HAD THIS. A BRACELET, LEATHER WITH A SINGLE THREAD GIVEN TO A LITTLE BOY IN A CHINESE ORPHANAGE BY THE MAN WHO FIRST TAUGHT HIM HOW TO WALK. NO ONE KNOWS HIS TITLE. THERAPIST. CARE WORKER. ALL THEY KNOW IS HE SAW POTENTIAL IN A CHILD. THE SYSTEM HAD ALREADY GIVEN UP ON. THEY KIND OF DEEM A PERSON WITH ANY TYPE OF DISABILITY AS JUST NOT AT THE HIGH ENOUGH LEVEL FOR SOCIETY. NOW IT’S IN HIS HAND, A REMINDER OF THE MILES BEHIND HIM AND EVERYTHING HE’S STILL CHASING. AFTER ALL, THAT NAME WASN’T AN ACCIDENT. I WANTED TO INCORPORATE HIS CHINESE NAME, WHICH IS TAOTAO, AND SO WE KEPT TAO’S MIDDLE NAME. BUT I TOLD HIM I WAS LIKE, I THINK WE NEED TO KEEP CHASE BECAUSE I THINK GOD WANTS US TO CHASE AFTER HIM. WE KNEW, LIKE, YOU KNOW, GOD HAD CALLED US TO ADOPT A BOY OLDER THAN THEY EXPECTED. 11 AT THE TIME, NOT THE 5 TO 7 YEARS OLD THEY PLANNED FOR A BOY WHOSE FIRST ADOPTION HAD FALLEN THROUGH. A BOY WHO IN CHINA WAS MONTHS AWAY FROM AGING OUT FOREVER. BUT THIS FAMILY REFUSED TO GIVE UP. WE REALLY HAD TO ADVOCATE AND SAY WE WANT HIM APPROVED. IN LATE 2019. HOME. IN JANUARY 2020, JUST DAYS BEFORE FLIGHTS SHUT DOWN, WE WERE ACTUALLY THE LAST FAMILY WITH LIFELINE TO COME BACK FROM CHINA. HE JUMPED ON IN OUR FAMILY AND HADN’T SKIPPED A BEAT. YOU KNOW, WE JUST IMMERSED HIM JUST INTO OUR FAMILY IMMEDIATELY AND HE ADAPTED WELL. HE WAS READY TO GO TO SCHOOL, READY TO MEET NEW PEOPLE. CHASE IN THE ORPHANAGE. CHASE SAYS EDUCATION WASN’T AN OPTION. WITHOUT EDUCATION. YOU CANNOT YOU CANNOT REALLY DO MUCH. BUT IN THE CLASSROOM AT OAK MOUNTAIN HIGH SCHOOL, HE THRIVES. I MET CHASE ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO. OKAY, HERE YOU GO, CHASE. ONE DAY I WAS IN MY ROOM. YOU READY? YES. THERE YOU GO. AND I WAS GOING TO ERASE SOME MATH PROBLEMS OFF THE BOARD. AND CHASE WALKED IN AND HE STARTED ASKING ABOUT THEM. AND A LOT OF THE PROBLEMS I HAD UP THERE WERE AP PRE-CALCULUS AND AP CALCULUS. I CAN DO ARE 12 ANIMALS. PRETTY GOOD? THAT’S GREAT. GOOD JOB. HE’S HARD WORKING AND HE’S VERY DETERMINED AT SCHOOL ON THE TRACK. IN LIFE, NOTHING KEEPS CHASE DOWN, POP BACK UP, BLOODY AND ALL RAN AND FINISHED THAT RACE. AND THEN THEY GAVE HIM THE CHASE LEVEL AWARD. HE DOES HAVE SOME LIMITATIONS, BUT TO BE HONEST WITH YOU, YOU DON’T SEE HIM ON THE TRACK AT ALL. AND IT’S NICE BECAUSE I THINK HE’S A LOT OF TEAMS RECOGNIZE WHO HE IS. AND SO WHEN HE GOES TO MEETS, IT’S A LOT OF CHASE, CHASE, CHASE. HE JUST THE DESIRE THAT HE HAS TO MAKE IT ONCE WITH NO FAMILY, HE NOW WAVES TO HIS OWN IN THE BLEACHERS, A BRACELET IN HIS HAND, A FINISH LINE AHEAD AND A LIFE HE STILL QUITE LITERALLY CHASING. HIS JOURNEY WAS RECOGNIZED STATEWIDE RECENTLY, WHEN THE GOVERNOR HONORED CHASE AT THE ALABAMA GOVERNOR’S COMMITT
A young man’s journey from Chinese orphanage to high school track star
Before Chase Lovell ever ran a race, spoke a word of English or had a cheering family in the stands, he had a bracelet.Leather, worn, with a single thread. It was given to him in a Chinese orphanage by the man who first taught him how to walk. No one knew the man’s official title, therapist or caretaker, but he saw potential in a child the system had already given up on.“They kind of deem a person with any kind of disability as just not at the high enough level for society,” said Adam Lovell, Chase’s adoptive father.The bracelet stayed with Chase, a reminder of the miles behind him and everything he’s still chasing. His name, “Chase,” wasn’t chosen by accident.“We kept his Chinese name, Tao Tao, as his middle name, but ‘Chase’? I told him I think God wants us to chase after him,” said Miranda Lovell, his mother.Chase’s adoption was not simple. His family initially planned to adopt a 5 to 7-year-old, but Chase was 11. A previous adoption had fallen through, and he was months away from aging out of the system. But the Lovells refused to give up. “We really had to advocate and say we want him. I wrote more words to China than I ever have, telling them I’m a speech pathologist, we have resources, therapies — we can give him everything he needs,” Miranda Lovell said.Approved in late 2019, Chase arrived home in January 2020, just days before flights shut down worldwide.“He jumped on in our family and hadn’t skipped a beat,” Miranda said.In China, Chase had little access to education.“Without education, you cannot really do much,” he said.But at Oak Mountain High School, he thrives in math, in the classroom, and on the track.One teacher recalls, “I met Chase about two years ago. One day, I was erasing math problems off the board, and Chase walked over asking about them — a lot of the problems were AP pre-calculus and AP calculus.” Chase said, “I can do 12th-grade math pretty good.”On the track, nothing keeps him down. When he fell during a race, the crowd held its breath — but he popped back up and finished strong. His determination earned him the Chase Lovell Award. “He does have some limitations, but you don’t see them on the track. A lot of teams recognize who he is and so when he goes to meets, it’s a lot of, ‘Chase! Chase! Chase!’” said his coach.Once told that “family isn’t for you,” Chase now waves to one in the bleachers. With a bracelet in hand, a finish line ahead, and a life he’s still quite literally chasing, his story is far from over.
Before Chase Lovell ever ran a race, spoke a word of English or had a cheering family in the stands, he had a bracelet.
Leather, worn, with a single thread. It was given to him in a Chinese orphanage by the man who first taught him how to walk. No one knew the man’s official title, therapist or caretaker, but he saw potential in a child the system had already given up on.
“They kind of deem a person with any kind of disability as just not at the high enough level for society,” said Adam Lovell, Chase’s adoptive father.
The bracelet stayed with Chase, a reminder of the miles behind him and everything he’s still chasing. His name, “Chase,” wasn’t chosen by accident.
“We kept his Chinese name, Tao Tao, as his middle name, but ‘Chase’? I told him I think God wants us to chase after him,” said Miranda Lovell, his mother.
Chase’s adoption was not simple. His family initially planned to adopt a 5 to 7-year-old, but Chase was 11. A previous adoption had fallen through, and he was months away from aging out of the system. But the Lovells refused to give up.
“We really had to advocate and say we want him. I wrote more words to China than I ever have, telling them I’m a speech pathologist, we have resources, therapies — we can give him everything he needs,” Miranda Lovell said.
Approved in late 2019, Chase arrived home in January 2020, just days before flights shut down worldwide.
“He jumped on in our family and hadn’t skipped a beat,” Miranda said.
In China, Chase had little access to education.
“Without education, you cannot really do much,” he said.
But at Oak Mountain High School, he thrives in math, in the classroom, and on the track.
One teacher recalls, “I met Chase about two years ago. One day, I was erasing math problems off the board, and Chase walked over asking about them — a lot of the problems were AP pre-calculus and AP calculus.”
Chase said, “I can do 12th-grade math pretty good.”
On the track, nothing keeps him down. When he fell during a race, the crowd held its breath — but he popped back up and finished strong. His determination earned him the Chase Lovell Award.
“He does have some limitations, but you don’t see them on the track. A lot of teams recognize who he is and so when he goes to meets, it’s a lot of, ‘Chase! Chase! Chase!’” said his coach.
Once told that “family isn’t for you,” Chase now waves to one in the bleachers. With a bracelet in hand, a finish line ahead, and a life he’s still quite literally chasing, his story is far from over.
High school principals across California and nationwide say raids by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement have provoked a “climate of distress” among immigrant students who have been bullied on campus and whose attendance has dropped, according to a study released Tuesday.
Seventy percent of public high school principals surveyed said students from immigrant families expressed fears for themselves or their families because of ICE crackdowns or political rhetoric related to immigrants, according to the report by researchers at UCLA and UC Riverside.
The findings echo the narrative of what schools and districts have reported across Southern California since President Trump took office in January and began aggressive immigration raids.
One California principal told researchers she has seen staff members “breaking down in tears about a student.”
“It just doesn’t feel very American,” she added.
John Rogers, a UCLA education professor who co-authored the report, said it was “striking” that principals “across every region in the country spoke of fear and concern in their school communities related to immigration enforcement.”
The researchers surveyed 606 public high school principals from May to August to understand how schools have been affected by Trump’s immigration enforcement. More than 1 in 3 principals, about 36%, said students from immigrant families have been bullied, and 64% said their attendance has dropped.
A drop in attendance has been verified by other researchers who collected data from California’s Central Valley and the Northeastern states. There’s also been a decline in K-12 enrollment that appears to number in at least the tens of thousands, affecting cities including Los Angeles, San Diego and Miami, based on figures provided by school district officials.
Principals, including in Minnesota, Nebraska and Michigan, noticed an uptick in students using hostile and derogatory language toward classmates from immigrant families. Some said a political climate that has normalized attacks on immigrants was to blame.
The vast majority of principals surveyed, nearly 78%, said their campuses created plans to respond to visits from federal agents and nearly half have a contingency plan for when a student’s parents are deported.
In this effort, schools in Los Angeles County have been leaders, taking quick and unprecedented steps to protect and reassure families. L.A. Unified, for example, has provided direct home-to-school transportation for some students.
Their fears are not without cause. In April, Los Angeles principals turned away immigration agents who tried to enter two elementary schools, claiming to be conducting a wellness check with family permission. School district officials said no such permission had been granted.
At a public meeting in November, L.A. school board member Karla Griego reported that a parent was taken into custody on his way to a school meeting about an updated education plan to manage his child’s disabilities.
Charter schools have taken measures to reassure families as well. In the days following a major ICE raid in L.A., attendance rates at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East L.A. slipped from the typical high-90% range to the low 90s, principal Rosa Menendez said.
“A lot of our families have been really impacted and terrified,” Menendez said. “A lot of our kids are afraid to come to school.”
As ICE raids escalated last summer, the charter school ramped up supervision, posting staff members around bus and train stations to watch students arrive and leave. The school will stay open during winter break, offering sports, video games and arts and crafts so students have a safe place to go.
Immigration enforcement is personal for Menendez, who is a child of Salvadorean immigrants and has undocumented family members.
“Coming off the heels of COVID, we were trying to keep our kids safe and healthy, and now it’s a whole other layer of safety,” Menendez said. “But we’re also worrying about our own families … It does add a very intense layer of stress.”
Earlier this year the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying ICE does not “raid or target schools.” However, the Trump administration in January rescinded long-standing protections for “sensitive” locations that since 2011 had prevented ICE from arresting people in schools and churches.
A double duty to protect and teach
In addition to the survey, the researchers conducted 49 follow-up Zoom interviews with principals chosen to reflect a diverse mix of schools. Names were withheld over concern that their schools could become targets for immigration enforcement.
One California principal, whose school is located in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood, told researchers her school’s sense of safety evaporated in the spring when news of nearby ICE raids broke during an assembly.
This account was an echo of the unease that spread through a spring graduation ceremony at Huntington Park High School when an ICE raid began at the adjacent Home Depot.
The principals noted that parents have felt torn between keeping themselves and family members safe and supporting their children’s education. In L.A. high schools, many parents elected not to attend graduation last spring.
Immigration enforcement isn’t just affecting students. Many school staff members feel a “double sense of duty” to protect as well as teach, the California principal said.
This administrator also said teachers have joined local immigrant rights networks, walking the blocks in the neighborhood before school each day to ensure there is a safe pathway to campus. One teacher, whose father is undocumented, frequently worries about suspicious cars in the school’s parking lot, the principal said.
“[W]e always want to make sure we’re not caught off guard,” she said. On top of longstanding fears of a potential active shooter situation, she now worries daily that ICE agents will show up. “It’s a lot,” she added.
Maria Nichols, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles and a former LAUSD principal, praised the district for taking quick action to provide school leaders with protocols to follow in case of a raid. But she said the job of a principal has become even more taxing because LAUSD staffing cuts reduced the number of assistant principals.
“The leader, of course, is responsible for the logistics, protocols and procedural matters, but … also has to uplift their school and their community,” Nichols said. “They’re dealing with a crisis right now and it is a very, very difficult and heavy toll at a time where we have less human capital at schools.”
School leaders across the country echoed the sentiments of the California principal.
One Idaho principal told the researchers she worries each day that ICE agents would show up with a judicial warrant to detain students. “As the building leader,” she said, “I feel like I’m responsible for their safety. I hate that, because I don’t feel I’m able to protect them.”
Kai Trump, a high school senior playing in an LPGA Tour event for reasons beyond her ability to hit a golf ball, went from “definitely really nervous” in the first round to “very calm and peaceful” Friday in the second.
All in all, an impressive improvement.
Still, Trump, 18, didn’t make the cut, not after finishing last among 108 players with a two-round total of 18-over, 27 shots behind leader Grace Kim and 17 away from the projected cut line. The granddaughter of President Trump improved eight strokes to a 75 in the second round of the tournament hosted by Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Fla.
How dramatic was the improvement? Trump had nine bogeys, two doubles and one birdie Thursday. A day later she was briefly under par when she birdied the par-3 third hole, but she bogeyed the fourth and triple-bogeyed the par-4 fifth hole.
Trump rebounded to birdie three of her next six holes. How relaxed was she? She literally laughed off her triple bogey.
“Things are going to happen,” she said. “Once it happens, you can’t go back in time and fix it. The best thing I could do is move on. Like, I told my caddie, Allan [Kournikova], kind of just started laughing, ‘it is what it is.’
“We got that out of the way, so let’s just move on. It was pretty easy to move on after that.”
Especially on the three-par No. 12 where she nearly made the first hole-in-one of her life.
“I hit like a tight little draw into it,” Trump said. “Tried not to get too high because of the wind. Yeah, it was a great shot.”
What would she tell her grandfather about the round? “That I hit a great shot on 18 two days in a row.”
“I did everything I could possibly have done for this tournament, so I think if you prepare right, the nerves can … they’re always going to be there, right?,” she said. “They can be a little softened. So I would just say that.”
Critics among and beyond her nearly 9 million social media followers were relentless in noting her obvious privilege for securing a sponsor invitation. Dan Doyle Jr., owner of Pelican Golf Club, cheerfully acknowledged that Trump’s inclusion had little to do with ability and a lot to do with public relations.
“The idea of the exemption, when you go into the history of exemptions, is to bring attention to an event,” Doyle told reporters this week. “You got to see her live, she’s lovely to speak to.
“And she’s brought a lot of viewers through Instagram, and things like that, who normally don’t watch women’s golf. That was the hope. And we’re seeing that now.”
Trump attends the Benjamin School in Palm Beach and will attend the University of Miami next year. She is ranked No. 461 by the American Junior Golf Assn.
Stepping up to the LPGA, complete with a deep gallery of onlookers and a phalanx of Secret Service agents surrounding her, could have been daunting. Trump, though, said the experience was “pretty cool.”
It was an eventful week for Trump. She played nine holes of a pro-am round Monday with tournament host Sorenstam, who empathized with the difficulty of handling an intense swirl of criticism and support.
“I just don’t know how she does it, honestly,” Sorenstam said. “To be 18 years old and hear all the comments, she must be super tough on the inside. I’m sure we can all relate what it’s like to get criticism here and there, but she gets it a thousand times.”
Sorenstam recalled her own exemption for the Bank of America Colonial in 2003 when she became the first woman to play in a men’s PGA Tour event in 58 years. She made a 14-foot putt at the 18th green to give her a 36-hole total of five-over 145. She hurled her golf ball into the grandstand, wiped away tears and was hugged by her husband, David Esch.
“That was, at the time, maybe a little bit of a controversial invite,” Sorenstam said. “In the end, I certainly appreciated it. It just brings attention to the tournament, to the sport and to women’s sports, which I think is what we want.”
Northern California forecast: Wet and windy Thursday
Showers have arrived and will turn into moderate to heavy rain for your Thursday morning commute.
THE SOGGINESS OVER THE AREA. I ENCOUNTERED A LITTLE RAIN ON THE WAY IN, AND HERE’S METEOROLOGIST TAMARA BERG TO TIME IT ALL OUT FOR US. YEAH, THERE’S DEFINITELY SOME SHEEN ON SOME OF OUR LOCAL ROADWAYS OUT THERE. AND ALSO BRIAN, CHECK OUT THIS CAMERA. IT IS JUST ROCKING AROUND. THIS IS ACTUALLY THE SUTTER BUTTE SKY CAMERA. A LOT OF CLOUDS ON OCCASION. THERE WE GO. THERE’S A RAINDROP THAT’S KIND OF GETTING DRAGGED ACROSS THE LENS THIS MORNING. BUT YEAH, THE BIG VISUAL THERE FOR THE NORTHERN SACRAMENTO VALLEY IS THAT BREEZE RIGHT NOW IN SACRAMENTO VALLEY. WE’RE IN THE LOWER 60S ALONG WITH THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY AND THE FOOTHILLS. A LOT OF CLOUD COVER, OVERCAST SKIES, OCCASIONAL SHOWERS, SOUTHEASTERLY WINDS RIGHT NOW SUSTAINED AT 16 IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY, UP TO 14 IN THE FOOTHILLS. AND WINDS PUSHING SUSTAINED THERE OVER 20MPH IN THE SIERRA. WATCHING THE RAIN AGAIN WORK ITS WAY ACROSS THE VALLEY. WE’RE NOT EVEN INTO THE BEST OF IT JUST YET. RIGHT NOW, MOST OF THE ACTIVITY HAS BEEN WIDELY SCATTERED SHOWERS. I’VE ALSO BEEN TRACKING A COUPLE OF ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE JOINING US IN TUOLUMNE COUNTY OR ON THE EASTERN HALF OF STANISLAUS COUNTY. MOST OF THE SCREEN HERE WE’RE SEEING, ESPECIALLY ALONG INTERSTATE 80 OR HIGHWAY 50, IT HAS ALL BEEN, AGAIN, VERY LIGHT, KIND OF MANAGEABLE RAIN TO DRIVE THROUGH. BUT OF COURSE, IT GENERATES A WET TRACK OUT THERE ON THE ROADS ALONG I-5 AND 99. YOU’VE ALSO BEEN SEEING SOME LIGHT RAIN. AND THEN HERE WE GET RIGHT INTO PARTS OF CALAVERAS AND TUOLUMNE COUNTIES. AND THIS IS WHERE THUNDERSTORM JUST MOVED THROUGH THE SONORA. SO IF YOU’RE A LIGHT SLEEPER, YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE CLAPS OF THUNDER OR SEEN THE FLICKER OF LIGHTNING. ANGELS CAMP, MURPHY’S AND ARNOLD HERE ALONG HIGHWAY FOUR. ALSO HIGHWAY 108. YOU’VE BEEN GETTING A PRETTY GOOD SOAKING RAINFALL FROM THOSE STORMS FIRING UP THIS MORNING. THE BIG PICTURE VIEW. WE’VE GOT A FRONT THAT’S GOING TO DRAG THROUGH THE AREA AS IT DOES. SO I ANTICIPATE THAT THE HOURS OF 7 A.M., 8 A.M. AND 9 A.M., WE’RE GOING TO BE SEEING SOME PRETTY GOOD RETURNS ON THE RAINFALL. AND OF COURSE, THAT COULD LEAD TO SOME ISSUES WITH THE MORNING COMMUTE IN THE VALLEY. TODAY, I EXPECT BETWEEN 1 TO 2IN OF RAINFALL THAT WILL HAVE A BIT OF A HEAVIER IMPACT. OUR HIGHER IMPACT, ESPECIALLY IN THE FOOTHILLS. WE’LL SEE TWO INCHES PLUS WINDS, A MODERATE IMPACT, 35 TO 40 MILE PER HOUR GUSTS EXPECTED IN THE VALLEY. SNOWFALL FOR TODAY IS PRIMARILY GOING TO STAY REALLY EVEN ABOVE 7000, CLOSER TO 8000FT AND FLOODING, IF WE GET ANY, WILL BE A MODERATE IMPACT. AND IT’S GOING TO BE HIGHLY LOCALIZED BY WAY OF STANDING WATER OR PONDING AND POOLING ON SOME OF THOSE ROADWAYS. THIS IS 7:00 ON FUTURECAST, AND HERE WE GET INTO SOME MORE MODERATE RAIN THERE FROM THE COAST AND THEN SWEEPING INTO THE VALLEY. AND LOOK AT THIS. EVEN BY LUNCHTIME IT’S STILL RAINING UP AND DOWN THE VALLEY AND WE’RE SEEING SOME HEAVIER RAINFALL, ESPECIALLY LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, THAT WE GO ALONG THE FOOTHILLS AND RIGHT DOWN HERE DRAPED ALONG THE WEST SLOPE. AND THEN HERE COMES SOME SNOW IN THE OVERNIGHT HOURS. BUT IT’S NOT GOING TO AMOUNT A WHOLE LOT. SO IF YOU HAVE ANY TRAVEL PLANS IN THE MOUNTAINS TODAY, IT’S JUST GOING TO BE WET AND WINDY WITH PERIODS OF GOOD, STEADY RAINFALL IN AREAS LIKE TRUCKEE AND TAHOE. BY 4:00 FRIDAY AFTERNOON MAY SEE A COUPLE OF SHOWERS, SWEEP IN AND SNEAK THROUGH THE AREA. I’M JUST NOT EXPECTING A LOT OF ACCUMULATION. AND THEN ONCE WE GET INTO SATURDAY MORNING, HERE WE GO WITH A COUPLE OF BANDS OF SHOWERS, ESPECIALLY ALONG THE BAY. I THINK A LOT OF THE VALLEY IS GOING TO HAVE A LOT OF DRY TIME DURING THE DAY ON SATURDAY, AND THEN LOOKING AHEAD TO SUNDAY, ANOTHER SHOT AT MORE SHOWERS AND WE COULD SEE PERIODS OF SHOWERS, BRIAN, EVEN EXTENDING INTO THE START OF THE NEXT WORKWEEK INTO MONDAY. OTHER TAKEAWAY BRIAN YESTERDAY’S HIGH WAS 69 DEGREES, SO WE GOT CLOSE TO 70. LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK. WE’RE GOING TO JUST BE SEEING 60S FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK. SO MAYBE A GOOD WEEKEND TO GET OUT THE WINTER WARDROBE. AND OF COURSE JUST MAKE SURE THINGS ARE OPERATIONAL, LIKE YOUR WINDSHIELD WIPERS. WE JUST REPLACED MY HUSBAND’S. THEY WERE IN BAD SHAPE, YOU KNOW, AND JUST GET READY FOR THE TRAVEL. ON THE WAY IN. SO WHEN THEY STUTTER LIK
Northern California forecast: Wet and windy Thursday
Showers have arrived and will turn into moderate to heavy rain for your Thursday morning commute.
Showers have arrived and will turn into moderate to heavy rain for your Thursday morning commute.Winds will pick up out of the southwest at 10 to 20 mph, with gusts up to 30 mph. A Wind Advisory is in effect for the valley until early afternoon, when winds are forecast to subside.The heaviest rain will move through this morning, with 1 to 2 inches expected. Showers will continue through the evening, and the foothills could total 2 to 3 inches by Friday morning. The Sierra will also see rain changing to slushy snow in the passes as snow levels drop to 7,000 feet by Friday morning.Highs in the valley will top out in the mid-60s, with foothill highs in the low 60s and Sierra highs in the mid-50s.Though Friday will be drier, unsettled weather lingers through the day and into the weekend as the system slowly moves east. Valley highs will remain in the low 60s through the weekend, with scattered showers possible. Another system arrives early next week, with more showers forecast for Monday.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Showers have arrived and will turn into moderate to heavy rain for your Thursday morning commute.
Winds will pick up out of the southwest at 10 to 20 mph, with gusts up to 30 mph. A Wind Advisory is in effect for the valley until early afternoon, when winds are forecast to subside.
The heaviest rain will move through this morning, with 1 to 2 inches expected. Showers will continue through the evening, and the foothills could total 2 to 3 inches by Friday morning. The Sierra will also see rain changing to slushy snow in the passes as snow levels drop to 7,000 feet by Friday morning.
Highs in the valley will top out in the mid-60s, with foothill highs in the low 60s and Sierra highs in the mid-50s.
Though Friday will be drier, unsettled weather lingers through the day and into the weekend as the system slowly moves east. Valley highs will remain in the low 60s through the weekend, with scattered showers possible. Another system arrives early next week, with more showers forecast for Monday.
President Trump said Sunday that most Americans would receive a $2,000 dividend payment as a result of his administration’s tariffs levied against foreign countries.
Trump announced the potential payments on his Truth Social platform, calling opponents of his tariffs “FOOLS” in a post.
“We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion,” the president wrote. “Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Congressional approval would likely be necessary to provide the payments. There is no specific plan at this point for the dividends, which could cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars.
The post by Trump comes after a difficult week for the president.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that questions whether Trump exceeded his authority in levying tariffs against foreign nations without congressional support. Most of the justices on the bench, including conservative justices such as Chief Justice John G. Roberts, appeared skeptical of the president’s authority under the Constitution.
Most of the justices seemed to take the view that the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise taxes, duties and tariffs, not the president.
Since taking office, Trump has implemented steep tariffs on specific goods as well as particularly high tariffs on goods from specific countries such as India and Brazil.
Trump said in remarks on Thursday at the White House that revocation of the tariffs would be “devastating” for the U.S.
Two men were arrested in connection with an explosion on Harvard University’s Longwood Medical Campus, federal officials said Tuesday. The explosion happened Saturday just before 3 a.m. on the fourth floor of Harvard’s Goldenson Building, which is on the university’s medical campus.Special agents and officers with the FBI Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task force and Harvard University Police Department arrested the Massachusetts men, who were not identified. A news conference is planned for 1 p.m.There was no structural damage to the building in the aftermath, and all labs and equipment remained fully operational. “It’s a shame that people do things like that,” said Boston police commissioner Michael Cox. “I’m pretty confident we will hold people accountable for that.”University police released photos of two suspects in the explosion, saying that the two were seen running from the building when police arrived at the scene.Cleaning crews were at the site of the explosion on Sunday, ensuring everything was cleared and fully operational. A sweep of the building was done, and no additional devices were found.”I haven’t heard anything like that going on here, so to hear that is wild,” said student Therese Lipscombe. “Big-name people are going to listen. So whatever their motive was, I’m sure they thought people were going to hear about it.””I do feel like this is a safe area. There’s a hospital nearby and a school, and just a lot of people in general,” said Lindsey Birmingham, who works nearby. “So I usually feel safe. I think I do still feel safe, but it definitely raises a lot of questions and alarms.”A person who lives nearby says they heard two explosions about five minutes apart.No one was injured in the incident.There will be an increased police presence at Harvard’s Longwood campus as officials continue to investigate. There is no threat to the public.
BOSTON —
Two men were arrested in connection with an explosion on Harvard University’s Longwood Medical Campus, federal officials said Tuesday.
The explosion happened Saturday just before 3 a.m. on the fourth floor of Harvard’s Goldenson Building, which is on the university’s medical campus.
Special agents and officers with the FBI Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task force and Harvard University Police Department arrested the Massachusetts men, who were not identified.
A news conference is planned for 1 p.m.
There was no structural damage to the building in the aftermath, and all labs and equipment remained fully operational.
“It’s a shame that people do things like that,” said Boston police commissioner Michael Cox. “I’m pretty confident we will hold people accountable for that.”
University police released photos of two suspects in the explosion, saying that the two were seen running from the building when police arrived at the scene.
Hearst OwnedHarvard University
Cleaning crews were at the site of the explosion on Sunday, ensuring everything was cleared and fully operational. A sweep of the building was done, and no additional devices were found.
“I haven’t heard anything like that going on here, so to hear that is wild,” said student Therese Lipscombe. “Big-name people are going to listen. So whatever their motive was, I’m sure they thought people were going to hear about it.”
“I do feel like this is a safe area. There’s a hospital nearby and a school, and just a lot of people in general,” said Lindsey Birmingham, who works nearby. “So I usually feel safe. I think I do still feel safe, but it definitely raises a lot of questions and alarms.”
A person who lives nearby says they heard two explosions about five minutes apart.
No one was injured in the incident.
There will be an increased police presence at Harvard’s Longwood campus as officials continue to investigate. There is no threat to the public.
Researchers at the University of South Florida are conducting clinical trials to explore the potential of psilocybin, a compound found in magic mushrooms, as a treatment for postpartum depression and other mental health disorders.Tracey Tee, founder and CEO of Moms on Mushrooms, said, “We’ve greatly misjudged and mis-prioritized the mental health of mothers in general and we’ve gotten a lot of it wrong.”Her group educates women about magic mushrooms and psilocybin, focusing on how they can help mothers dealing with trauma or depression. Tee emphasized the potential of microdosing and magic mushrooms as an emerging solution, although she acknowledged it may not be suitable for everyone. “Studying it for postpartum in particular is like a no-brainer for me,” she said.Health researchers at the University of South Florida are investigating whether psilocybin can help treat major depressive disorders, postpartum depression, and other conditions.Dr. Ryan Wagoner, who was involved with the research, said, “What we are eventually trying to move towards are these medications that can be Food and Drug Administration-approved just like any medication you might take.” Wagoner said if psilocybin’s medical properties are proven to outweigh its risks, it could be reclassified and approved as a medication. “If you can show that the substance does have a medical property that’s valuable to it and outweighs any sorts of risks, suddenly we can move what schedule it’s on and get it approved to be a medication just like anything else,” Wagoner said.Researchers say psilocybin works by targeting serotonin receptors in the brain, enhancing sensory input and potentially disrupting neural networks involved in depression. They are exploring the use of smaller doses to activate serotonin receptors without causing unwanted side effects. “What if we use a smaller dose. What if we use a dose that activates the serotonin receptor but doesn’t cause as much of those side effects that we’re not looking for,” Wagoner said.Tee believes the stigma around magic mushrooms should be replaced with a view of them as a medical treatment. “The idea is that you’re not high and that it’s mimicking and still working in the brain and body in the same way that a large dose journey does, that’s like transformative effects, but we are doing it in smaller amounts over time incrementally so that you are able to go about your day,” she said. She added that psilocybin should be paired with other treatments. “It really needs to be paired with something because it’s not a passive magic pill in the same way an antidepressant is; you really want to work with the medicine,” Tee said.The National Institutes of Health reports that approximately 30% of patients with major depressive disorder have treatment-resistant depression. A Johns Hopkins study found that two doses of psilocybin produced rapid and large reductions in depressive symptoms. “You actually have to put into practice, and so that is why we do clinical trials to first detect if there are side effects we weren’t expecting,” Wagoner said. They are investigating whether psilocybin offers benefits beyond existing medications.”Is this something real that’s going on in the brain that’s different or better than some of the medications we already have on the market,” Wagoner said.Tee expressed optimism about the role of psychedelics in mental health treatment, saying, “I think there’s a really beautiful place for psychedelics to slide in and support a lot of people without a lot of damage we’re seeing being caused by other modalities.”Magic mushrooms remain illegal in Florida, classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance at both the state and federal levels. Possession of psilocybin mushrooms is a felony, with significant fines, probation, and potential prison time. Florida has also banned mushroom spores, despite them not containing psilocybin. Wagoner said clinical trials will continue, with more data and research being collected to potentially achieve FDA approval in the future.
Researchers at the University of South Florida are conducting clinical trials to explore the potential of psilocybin, a compound found in magic mushrooms, as a treatment for postpartum depression and other mental health disorders.
Tracey Tee, founder and CEO of Moms on Mushrooms, said, “We’ve greatly misjudged and mis-prioritized the mental health of mothers in general and we’ve gotten a lot of it wrong.”
Her group educates women about magic mushrooms and psilocybin, focusing on how they can help mothers dealing with trauma or depression. Tee emphasized the potential of microdosing and magic mushrooms as an emerging solution, although she acknowledged it may not be suitable for everyone.
“Studying it for postpartum in particular is like a no-brainer for me,” she said.
Health researchers at the University of South Florida are investigating whether psilocybin can help treat major depressive disorders, postpartum depression, and other conditions.
Dr. Ryan Wagoner, who was involved with the research, said, “What we are eventually trying to move towards are these medications that can be Food and Drug Administration-approved just like any medication you might take.”
Wagoner said if psilocybin’s medical properties are proven to outweigh its risks, it could be reclassified and approved as a medication.
“If you can show that the substance does have a medical property that’s valuable to it and outweighs any sorts of risks, suddenly we can move what schedule it’s on and get it approved to be a medication just like anything else,” Wagoner said.
Researchers say psilocybin works by targeting serotonin receptors in the brain, enhancing sensory input and potentially disrupting neural networks involved in depression.
They are exploring the use of smaller doses to activate serotonin receptors without causing unwanted side effects.
“What if we use a smaller dose. What if we use a dose that activates the serotonin receptor but doesn’t cause as much of those side effects that we’re not looking for,” Wagoner said.
Tee believes the stigma around magic mushrooms should be replaced with a view of them as a medical treatment.
“The idea is that you’re not high and that it’s mimicking and still working in the brain and body in the same way that a large dose journey does, that’s like transformative effects, but we are doing it in smaller amounts over time incrementally so that you are able to go about your day,” she said.
She added that psilocybin should be paired with other treatments.
“It really needs to be paired with something because it’s not a passive magic pill in the same way an antidepressant is; you really want to work with the medicine,” Tee said.
The National Institutes of Health reports that approximately 30% of patients with major depressive disorder have treatment-resistant depression.
A Johns Hopkins study found that two doses of psilocybin produced rapid and large reductions in depressive symptoms.
“You actually have to put into practice, and so that is why we do clinical trials to first detect if there are side effects we weren’t expecting,” Wagoner said.
They are investigating whether psilocybin offers benefits beyond existing medications.
“Is this something real that’s going on in the brain that’s different or better than some of the medications we already have on the market,” Wagoner said.
Tee expressed optimism about the role of psychedelics in mental health treatment, saying, “I think there’s a really beautiful place for psychedelics to slide in and support a lot of people without a lot of damage we’re seeing being caused by other modalities.”
Magic mushrooms remain illegal in Florida, classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance at both the state and federal levels.
Possession of psilocybin mushrooms is a felony, with significant fines, probation, and potential prison time.
Florida has also banned mushroom spores, despite them not containing psilocybin.
Wagoner said clinical trials will continue, with more data and research being collected to potentially achieve FDA approval in the future.
Wood frames are rising from the ashes of burned-out lots in Pacific Palisades, signaling the start of a new era for the fire-torn community. But down the road in Malibu, the scene is bleak.
Cars wind through a gauntlet of traffic cones and caution tape. Sweeping ocean views are sullied by hollow shells of graffiti-tagged homes and miles of chain-link fencing.
Nearly a year after the Palisades fire, one of Southern California’s most iconic communities is frozen in place.
In Altadena and Pacific Palisades, the two communities hit hardest by the January fires, there are rebuilding permits aplenty. The city of L.A., which is handling most permits in the Palisades, has issued 801 — around 43% of the total applications received, according to data from the state’s rebuilding dashboard. L.A. County, which is handling most permits in Altadena, has issued 577 — around 26% of the total applications received.
So far, Malibu has issued four — about 2% of the total applications received.
“It’s depressing,” said Abe Roy, Malibu resident and professional builder.
In May, Roy was appointed as the city’s first Rebuild Ambassador, a volunteer role created to find solutions to administrative obstacles and speed up the rebuild. He publicly resigned last month, citing frustrations with the slow permitting process.
“If this current pace continues, rebuilding will take way longer than a decade,” he said.
A view of cleared lots and sparse construction after the Palisades fire in the Sunset Mesa neighborhood of eastern Malibu.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
A buyer’s market
In contrast to other California communities, where sprawl and expansion led to skyrocketing populations over the last few decades, Malibu has long embraced “slow growth.” Fewer live there now than when the city was incorporated 34 years ago.
But after roughly 720 Malibu homes burned in the Palisades fire, burned-out lots are sitting empty. Locals are worried that the city may never get fully back on its feet, and property values will suffer. And in a place like Malibu — one of the most expensive markets in the country, where a 10% price drop can mean millions of dollars lost — property values are king.
Of the 160 lots listed this year that are still on the market, 47 have received a price cut.
In the Big Rock neighborhood, a burned lot listed for $1.65 million in September, but that price has already been lowered twice. On Las Flores Beach, an oceanfront parcel hit the market for $3 million in April, but with no takers, relisted for $1.95 million in October.
Roughly 75 lots have sold in Malibu since the fire. But as more homeowners decide to sell instead of rebuild, sales are slowing down — and a buyer’s market is emerging.
“Supply is exceeding demand, and lots are selling anywhere from a 20 to 60% discount,” Roy said. “That’s a premonition for a freefall.”
Roy said the overwhelming majority of residents want to stay and simply replace the home they have. But as applications get kicked back for corrections, and the rebuilding timeline turns from months to years, many are getting discouraged and choosing to sell.
“Remodeling a kitchen or bathroom is onerous for most people. But building a house from the ground up is almost impossible,” Roy said. “After a while, you raise your hand and say, ‘I don’t know how long I can be on this treadmill.’”
Real estate agent Daniel Milstein is currently listing a 3.25-acre lot on a promontory in Carbon Canyon that once held a Mediterranean mansion formerly owned by record producer David Foster. Before the fire, it was listed for $35 million.
After it burned, the lot returned to market at $16 million. But with the slowing market, Milstein is planning to trim the price down to $12 million.
“The property is worth a lot more, but the nuances of building here and the limited permits issued have led to a setback in the market,” he said. “The value will be higher down the road, but there’s a discount for buyers right now.”
Milstein added that the buyer pool is limited to people who can afford to park their money for a while — three years, six years, maybe more. For those hoping to build a house right away, Malibu isn’t an option.
But Milstein said that’s by design.
“Malibu is stringent on permits. But that’s where the value is,” Milstein said. “It’s exclusive. And those that understand that value will be very happy with their property values down the road.”
In the meantime, locals who lost homes are stuck in limbo.
Permit trouble
The choice of whether to sell or stay has been well-documented over the last year, with homeowners in Altadena and Pacific Palisades speaking out about their decision-making process.
But Malibu locals — permit-less and facing rebuild timelines significantly longer than their fellow rebuilding communities — are a bit more circumspect. The Times reached out to over a dozen homeowners with lots on the market, but none wanted to publicly participate in the story.
One homeowner, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution from neighbors or the city, called the past few months “a nightmare.”
“I have friends a few miles east in Pacific Palisades who are starting to build already. I submitted my applications in the spring, the same time as them, but it still hasn’t gotten approved,” said the homeowner, whose Malibu home burned down in January.
The homeowner planned to rebuild the same house that was there before, but their application was sent back because the plans didn’t comply with FEMA’s updated flood elevation standards, which require many rebuilt oceanfront homes to sit higher above the sand.
It’s a snag that several have run into over the past year. One local, whose house survived but sustained smoke damage, told Fox 11 that he may be forced to demolish the property in order to comply with the heightened elevation standards.
Comedian and podcaster Adam Carolla has emerged as a face of the frustration building in Malibu, vlogging about the bleak state of the city. He claims that Malibu is emphasizing the wrong things in its requirements for rebuilding.
Carolla visited a construction site on the beach that was installing 30 caissons six stories deep into the ground. Between the caissons, the seawall and retaining wall, the crew estimated it would cost $2 million to $3 million to install the foundation.
“It’s totally unnecessary. The former structure that was there lasted 75 years, and the tide didn’t get it, the fire did,” Carolla said. “If telephone poles sunk into the soil worked for 75 years, why do we need to build Hitler’s bunker under the sand?”
Carolla said it’s a symptom of the larger trend across L.A. that he regularly complains about: regulations and over-engineering bogging development down to the point where no one can afford to build.
Real estate agent Jason Ventress said the strict rules are limiting the buyer pool for his latest listing, a $12.5-million burned lot spanning half an acre on the ocean.
“The city is bogged down by confusion and interpretations of newly implemented laws that are being contested,” Ventress said.
In addition to the FEMA height requirements, he pointed to Malibu’s new septic standards, which requires rebuilders to replace existing septic systems with onsite wastewater treatment systems, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install.
Ventress, a fire victim himself dealing with a daunting rebuild, credited the Malibu Rebuild Center as a helpful resource to locals who lost their homes. Opened in March, it serves as a one-stop shop for both homeowners and contractors to ask questions and get help submitting applications.
Yolanda Bundy, who runs the center under her role as Community Development Director, said of the 720 families impacted by the fire, 585 have visited.
Bundy said it’s a necessary resource, since building in Malibu — a land of eroding cliffs and rising sea levels — is trickier than building in the flat lots found in Altadena and parts of the Palisades. She said 50% of burned homes were on the water, and 30% were on steep slopes.
“These homes require septic systems, sea walls, retaining walls and complex foundations. Those come with restrictions,” Bundy said.
Acknowledging the slow pace of permits, Bundy’s team has launched a handful of strategies aimed at streamlining the approval process, highlighting the changes at an Oct. 15 City Council meeting.
According to Bundy, one of the biggest reasons for applications getting bogged down is architectural plans missing necessary notes and numbers. So the city created templates that architects can use to avoid corrections.
The city also trimmed the 12-step application intake procedure down to six steps and beefed up its staff, hiring a case manager to serve as a bridge between staff and homeowners.
Despite only four building permits being issued, Bundy said the collective rebuild is further along than the number suggests. Applications have to pass through two phases: the planning and entitlement phase, and the building and safety review phase. Bundy said half of the roughly 160 applications have passed through planning, but are still waiting to get through the building phase.
“It’s an oversimplification to say that we’re not making any progress compared to L.A.,” Bundy said. “Families are frustrated, but I want every family to know we’re doing our best to get them home.”
Lost identity
As rebuilds get costlier, locals are getting concerned that by the time Malibu eventually gets back on its feet, it won’t feel the same. Lifelong residences will be replaced by Airbnbs, development groups and deep-pocketed foreign buyers with enough time and money to navigate the laborious permit process.
Two brothers from New Zealand bought up $65 million worth of burned-out lots on the beach this year. Ventress said he’s fielding interest from a Canadian development group and a Miami hedge fund for his oceanfront listing.
Milstein said he’s noticed a surge in interest from Europe, Canada and Asia, and roughly a third of his inquiries this year have come from international networks such as private banks and wealth managers.
“There’s fear that Malibu’s identity will change, and that might fuel folks to move as well,” Roy said. “It might not be the Malibu we loved for years, where the bartender knows your drink and you see your neighbors at the local restaurants.”
But Roy said the city should welcome all buyers, international or not. He spoke with the New Zealand duo and said he supports their vision of adding housing.
“People selling lots are in dire straits. They don’t care whether offers come from international buyers or not,” he said. “As long as those people are believing in the future of Malibu and willing to invest.”
Voices across Malibu say the only solution is issuing permits quicker so fire victims want to come back.
“Malibu is a way of life. Most of us are doing our darndest to maintain that way of life,” Ventress said. Seconds later, while driving down Pacific Coast Highway, he passed a naked man walking down the beach.
“He’s got a metal detector or something…no wait, it’s a golf club!” he exclaimed over the phone. “Right now, it’s the wild, wild west out here.”
MEXICO CITY — Tens of thousands of Mexicans are set to gather downtown Sunday in a choreographed tribute to President Claudia Sheinbaum, who closed out her initial year in office with approval ratings north of 70%.
Apart from her personal popularity as Mexico’s first woman president, polls show strong support among poor and working-class Mexicans for her continuation of social-aid programs launched by her predecessor and mentor, ex-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum screams during the annual shout of Independence (Grito de Independencia) as part of Mexico’s Independence Day celebration on Sept. 15 in Mexico City.
(Hector Vivas / Getty Images)
Sheinbaum, who took office last Oct. 1, has embraced and expanded López Obrador’s leftist social agenda, often repeating his mantra: “For the good of all, the poor first.”
But, amid the plaudits, there is also a disconnect: Polls and interviews show deep concerns about crime, the economy and, increasingly, the defining issue of corruption — the elimination of which is a central plank of the president’s Morena movement, founded by ex-president López Obrador.
Almost three-quarters of respondents (73%) gave Sheinbaum’s government a negative rating for its handling of corruption, the poorest mark to date for its anti-corruption efforts, according to a poll last month from the newspaper El Financiero.
We are seeing the same corruption as in past governments, it’s very disappointing
— Lorena Santibañez, medical student
While crime remains Mexicans’ most pressing concern, many cite corruption as a core issue that could eventually erode trust in the administration of Sheinbaum, whose term lasts five more years.
“We are seeing the same corruption as in past governments. It’s very disappointing,” said Lorena Santibañez, 25, a medical student. “I want to give la presidenta the benefit of the doubt — it’s her first year. But I don’t have much hope.”
Almost daily headlines here highlight instances of alleged graft, nepotism and other questionable behavior within Sheinbaum’s ruling circles. Some reports have focused on relatives or close associates of the retired López Obrador, whom Sheinbaum regularly extols as a visionary and exemplar of moral integrity.
The corruption revelations tend to range from the somewhat venal — party bigwigs living on limited government salaries enjoying lavish lifestyles — to more insidious allegations of Morena officials in league with organized crime.
Making a social media splash this summer were news reports on the ritzy vacations of various Morena heavyweights, notably Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, the son of the ex-president, who serves as Morena’s party secretary.
His stay at a $400-a-night Tokyo hotel and reported $2,600 restaurant bill sparked outrage in a nation where many earn $10 a day or less. Amid the escalating reports of Morena officials enjoying the high life abroad, Sheinbaum signaled her disapproval.
“Power must be exercised with humility — that is my position and always will be,” she told reporters. “We have a responsibility with the movement we represent, and the principles that we represent.”
No allegations have touched Sheinbaum, a scientist and longtime academic known for her austere lifestyle and serious demeanor.
“We haven’t heard of any scandal about her, of corrupt relatives, or family members in public office doing business,” said José Farías, 54, a bus driver. “That has helped her remain popular, along with the fact that people view her as well-prepared, intelligent and honorable.”
Sheinbaum, who was recruited into public service by López Obrador while she was an obscure academic and he the mayor of Mexico City, is now the standard-bearer for Morena. It is a movement that, in little more than a decade, has become a juggernaut.
Morena dominates government, the judiciary and other facets of Mexican life in a way that has drawn inevitable comparisons to a previous Mexican political colossus — the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which ruled Mexico in authoritarian fashion for much of the 20th century.
The PRI is now greatly diminished, and Morena’s model differs from the PRI playbook of rigged elections, institutionalized graft, repression and an all-powerful president. But many of Morena’s old guard, including López Obrador, earned their stripes as PRI operatives.
“It’s very hard to explain Morena’s hegemony without acknowledging that it cannibalized a lot of what was left of the PRI,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst. “And a lot of what was left of the PRI was criminal governance and complicity with criminal organizations.”
Such complicity has become more problematic as the Trump administration has essentially declared war on drug cartels, designating a half-dozen Mexican crime syndicates as terrorist groups. Several recent scandals have suggested Morena politicians were in cahoots with organized crime.
Morena’s top member of the Senate, Adán Augusto López Hernández — a former interior minister, ex-governor of Tabasco state and lifelong associate of López Obrador— has publicly denied links to a mob known as La Barredora (The Sweeper). The alleged leader of La Barredora, a former security chief in Tabasco, is now imprisoned in Mexico after being arrested as a fugitive in Paraguay.
It was López Hernández who, while governor of Tabasco, appointed the alleged mob chieftain to the security post. The senator says he knew nothing.
Even the Mexican navy, ranked among the nation’s most-trusted institutions, has been implicated in a far-reaching fuel-theft scheme, with 14 suspects arrested so far. One is a nephew of the admiral who served as secretary of the navy under López Obrador. In response, Sheinbaum defended the admiral and said he helped denounce the thievery.
Repeatedly, Sheinbaum has been put in the position of declaring that no one is above the law. “We won’t cover up for anyone,” has become a presidential mantra.
Some reformers have credited Sheinbaum with confronting corruption, while others say she has been too cautious, too hesitant, to take on a problem deeply entrenched in Mexican politics.
“A lot of people inside Morena are saying, ‘Let’s push out the bad apples,’ “ noted Bravo Regidor. “But what’s rotten is the barrel, not the apples.”
Earlier this year, the president publicly pressured Morena to institute a strict anti-nepotism policy. But her plan ran into strong headwinds in a party where patronage is rampant.
Luisa María Alcalde Luján, a lawyer who presides as president of Morena, has been mocked for declaring that the party is nepotism-free. Both of her parents were prominent in the government of López Obrador, and her sister is the attorney general for Mexico City.
“It’s so false when politicians from Morena say there is no corruption,” said Miguel Angel García, 32, a salesman. “Yes, Sheinbaum is more honest. But she has a lot of work to do.”
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
The doors and windows are done. The appliances are on the way. The hardwood floors are stacked and ready to lay down.
In January, Ted Koerner’s Altadena house was incinerated in the Eaton fire along with thousands of others.
But today, he and his 13-year-old dog, Daisy, are just weeks from returning to their property after spending most of the year in temporary quarters, and they might be the first Altadenans to move into a completely rebuilt house.
“We’re starting to practice being home,” Koerner said in his front yard, with Daisy at his feet and a work crew applying finishing touches in the living room.
Daisy, a dark-eyed golden retriever with a coat that looks like a luxurious white bathrobe, is the star of this story and the reason Koerner is determined to have the house completed as soon as possible.
“I just want to go home,” said Ted Koerner to neighbors about his home that is being rebuilt.
Daisy, or Daisy Mae, as Koerner sometimes calls her, is well beyond average life expectancy for a golden retriever, and he wanted her to live out her life on the property that was their sanctuary. He feeds her salmon and bottled water; no impurities for his girl, who has Russian and Danish lineage and is as smart as she is sweet, according to the proudest of dog owners.
“That dog has saved my life more times than I can count,” said Koerner, 66, who is single, suffers from bouts of depression, and bonded with Daisy the day he rescued her as a puppy. “She is my service dog.”
They lost everything but each other, and for Daisy’s sake, as much as his own, he has pushed and prodded, eager to get home.
“They framed the whole house, and the garage, in three days. Thirty journeymen framers. Because of her,” said Koerner, his voice breaking as he recalled the house-raising that began in mid-July. “They all understood, if she dies before I get home, don’t finish building it, because I’ll be dead the same day.”
Work continues on Koerner’s home, where he expects to be moving in soon in Altadena.
Koerner believes he’ll be the first person to move into a brand new house in the Altadena fire zone. An L.A. County rebuilding coordinator backed that up, although Victoria Knapp, who chairs the Altadena Town Council, said one other project is speeding toward completion.
Given that two-thirds of the 6,000-plus burned properties haven’t even hit the permitting phase yet, and that it could be a few years before a rebuilt Altadena takes shape, the questions here are obvious:
What magic did Koerner perform to approach the finish line in short order, and are there lessons for others?
Koerner runs an investigations and fraud-prevention company that has had decades of dealings with government agencies and assorted businesses, including insurance companies. So although he was just one David against an army of Goliaths, he was not new to the practice of reloading a slingshot.
Before the smoke of the Eaton fire had cleared, while staying with Daisy at a Pasadena hotel, Koerner met an Army Corps of Engineers official who advised him that once his lot was cleared, he should pour the cement of a new foundation as soon as possible. Whatever it took to make it happen, do it. That would put him at the front of the line in a crowd of thousands rebuilding from scratch.
Koerner took the advice to heart and decided not to wait on an insurance payment, which could be indefinitely disputed and delayed. Instead, he liquidated retirement funds and plowed ahead on his own nickel with the hope of getting reimbursed later.
Koerner and Daisy spend a warm moment together.
Any major construction project is a herding expedition in a blinding fog, and it can be a test of patience and sanity. The plumber is here but the faucets aren’t. The drywall crew shows up but can’t do anything until the electrician runs the wiring. The sprinkling system is done but the inspector just left on a Hawaiian vacation. And the roof tiles were last seen on a pickup truck that might or might not have left a warehouse in Arizona, or possibly New Mexico.
This is why people often crack that you should take the promised cost and timeline of a project, double both, and line up a good marriage counselor. In the aftermath of an epic disaster, you also have to wrangle with the complications of destroyed infrastructure, permitting bottlenecks, insurance disputes and scary levels of contamination.
I know of one company, Genesis Builders, that says it’s managing and speeding the entire process with pre-designed homes that can be completed in 15 months, but I haven’t checked out the details yet.
For those interested in following Koerner’s lead, how best to proceed?
Koerner Lesson No. 1: “Email is not communication.”
And what’s he mean by that?
“If you send an email and wait for a callback, you’re not going to get one,” he said. “No city, no county, no governmental agency is ever ready for a disaster of this magnitude. It’s always going to be chaos.”
He called people, instead, and kept a file of direct lines, or he met with people face to face. He was the proverbial squeaky wheel, never taking no for an answer, and he was able to invest a ton of his own time, even if it meant being on hold long enough to repeatedly read “Old Yeller” and watch the movie.
Koerner heaped praise on Anish Saraiya, director of the Altadena recovery for L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, for helping him navigate the maze. When I used the word “persistent” to describe Koerner, Saraiya corrected me.
“He’s tenacious,” he said.
Saraiya said Koerner has helped identify roadblocks to progress — such as the typical lead time in lining up utility services — and the county is working to streamline the entire rebuilding process for everyone.
Koerner Lesson No. 2: “Make a decision to go home.”
By that, he means get moving, and keep the blueprints simple.
“This is not the time to build a mansion to your legacy,” Koerner said. “Do you want to go home, or do you want to mess with every three inches of where the sink goes, the closet goes, every door, every window? Make a decision and stick with it. … This is not some grand demonstration of your design capabilities. This is about going home, or you go to the back of the line and wait.”
Koerner Lesson No. 3: “Hire a builder who understands the meaning of the word ‘finish.’”
Before the fire, Koerner was having his bathrooms remodeled by Innova Creative Solution, a Van Nuys-based general contracting company. He trusted project manager Jossef Abraham, so he hired him to build his new house. And Abraham, according to Koerner, has kept things moving as promised.
“I think it helps a lot for people who are victims of fire to see progress,” Abraham told me, saying he’s managed the bureaucratic hurdles and made sure his material suppliers are lined up.
The house will be better shielded against fire, Abraham said, with concrete roof tiles, tempered windows, sprinklers and enclosed eaves. He said he’s well aware of Koerner’s bond with Daisy, and although he doesn’t know if he can get man and his best friend home by Halloween, he thinks six weeks is doable.
“Daisy is his entire world and she’s just amazing. What a dog,” Abraham said. ”
Koerner and Daisy sit in the backyard of their Altadena home.
Koerner’s house sits just west of Lake Avenue, where mountain and metropolis meet, with sweeping views across the valley and down to the sea. On clear days, Koerner said, he can see to Dana Point and to Ventura.
He avoided visiting his property before framing began, too depressed by the empty space where home had been since 2006. When Daisy was a pup, Koerner began planting dozens of native plants near the Aleppo pines and fig trees, creating what he called their campground arboretum. Most of which was destroyed.
On a recent visit with Daisy, Koerner took a seat in the front yard, under a heritage oak tree that survived the fire, and looked down the hill toward dozens of vacant lots where houses once stood and disaster seemed remote. Daisy seemed surprised, maybe even confused, by the altered terrain. But she soon fell into a familiar rhythm.
“She immediately walked over to me and wiggled around like goldens do,” Koerner said. “She looked at me, licked my hands, lay down next to my feet and went sound asleep. And the neighbor and I cried a lot because that’s all that matters to dogs, is that they’re with us.”
Since the 1970s, the Tri-Valley region of the Bay Area has seen significant growth. In places like Dublin and San Ramon, the population has tripled. Meanwhile, other cities in the region have seen their populations double. The Tri-Valley is nestled into the Diablo Mountain Range and is made up of the cities of Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon and Danville and the surrounding communities. “We saw a growth that changed the community,” said Alameda County District 1 Supervisor David Haubert. “We literally saw Dublin change.”Haubert and his family moved to Dublin 25 years ago. They raised their daughters there and were active in the community, including joining the school board. Haubert went on to become the mayor of Dublin before becoming a county supervisor. “When I left as mayor in the city of Dublin, I said, ‘We’ve seen a lot of great things to happen. But, I want you to know our best days are yet to come.’ Dublin has continued to progress, I say we have even greater days yet to come,” Haubert said. Some of the reasons people are choosing to move to the Tri-Valley include the open spaces, great school districts, and cheaper housing costs. Nearly 10,000 single-family homes have been built in the Tri-Valley in the last 15 years. Developer Trumark Homes currently has approvals for more than 1,500 homes in the Tri-Valley, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. One of Trumark’s biggest developments is Francis Ranch in Dublin. That development has 573 homes under construction. And as the population has grown, communities have seen their demographics shift as well. “Twenty years back, there were not that many people from the South Asian community,” said Prasad Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan moved with his family from Fremont to San Ramon two decades ago. He still commutes to Silicon Valley for work, but was drawn to the open spaces and parks in the Tri-Valley.Ramakrishnan is on the board of the Indian Community Center and says the diversity of San Ramon is one of the reasons he’s grown to love the city so much. According to census data, 23% of residents in San Ramon identify as Indian, including Ramakrishnan.”It doesn’t matter where you’re from. All of us are humans, let’s all get together. San Ramon creates that kind of an environment where you have people from different ethnic backgrounds kind of coming together,” Ramakrishnan said. “We celebrate Diwali, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the Muslim functions.”But of course, growth doesn’t come without growing pains. Many of those pains can be found along the highways. “680 is the only real highway from here to South Bay. These are called bedroom communities, and then they work in the South Bay. Giving them an easy way by which to get there would be a nice thing,” Ramakrishnan said. However, Haubert is betting on a future without so many people having to commute outside of the Tri-Valley for work. “I truly believe businesses will locate here,” Haubert said. “I understand that’s often the decision of the CEO. So a lot of CEOs live in Silicon Valley, but a lot of future CEOs live in the Tri-Valley. That’s my belief.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
DUBLIN, Calif. —
Since the 1970s, the Tri-Valley region of the Bay Area has seen significant growth. In places like Dublin and San Ramon, the population has tripled. Meanwhile, other cities in the region have seen their populations double.
The Tri-Valley is nestled into the Diablo Mountain Range and is made up of the cities of Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon and Danville and the surrounding communities.
“We saw a growth that changed the community,” said Alameda County District 1 Supervisor David Haubert. “We literally saw Dublin change.”
Haubert and his family moved to Dublin 25 years ago. They raised their daughters there and were active in the community, including joining the school board. Haubert went on to become the mayor of Dublin before becoming a county supervisor.
“When I left as mayor in the city of Dublin, I said, ‘We’ve seen a lot of great things to happen. But, I want you to know our best days are yet to come.’ Dublin has continued to progress, I say we have even greater days yet to come,” Haubert said.
Some of the reasons people are choosing to move to the Tri-Valley include the open spaces, great school districts, and cheaper housing costs. Nearly 10,000 single-family homes have been built in the Tri-Valley in the last 15 years.
Developer Trumark Homes currently has approvals for more than 1,500 homes in the Tri-Valley, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
One of Trumark’s biggest developments is Francis Ranch in Dublin. That development has 573 homes under construction. And as the population has grown, communities have seen their demographics shift as well.
“Twenty years back, there were not that many people from the South Asian community,” said Prasad Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan moved with his family from Fremont to San Ramon two decades ago. He still commutes to Silicon Valley for work, but was drawn to the open spaces and parks in the Tri-Valley.
Ramakrishnan is on the board of the Indian Community Center and says the diversity of San Ramon is one of the reasons he’s grown to love the city so much. According to census data, 23% of residents in San Ramon identify as Indian, including Ramakrishnan.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from. All of us are humans, let’s all get together. San Ramon creates that kind of an environment where you have people from different ethnic backgrounds kind of coming together,” Ramakrishnan said. “We celebrate Diwali, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the Muslim functions.”
But of course, growth doesn’t come without growing pains. Many of those pains can be found along the highways.
“680 is the only real highway from here to South Bay. These are called bedroom communities, and then they work in the South Bay. Giving them an easy way by which to get there would be a nice thing,” Ramakrishnan said.
However, Haubert is betting on a future without so many people having to commute outside of the Tri-Valley for work.
“I truly believe businesses will locate here,” Haubert said. “I understand that’s often the decision of the CEO. So a lot of CEOs live in Silicon Valley, but a lot of future CEOs live in the Tri-Valley. That’s my belief.”
