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Some California cities not acting on collapse-prone apartments

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November 23, 2024

Some California cities not acting on collapse-prone apartments

Southern California is seeing its most seismically active year in decades, but some cities near the epicenter of recent temblors have yet to require retrofits of many apartment buildings deemed most at risk of collapse, a Times investigation has found.

Several suburbs closest to the widely felt earthquakes that struck Los Angeles County this summer and fall — including Alhambra, Monterey Park and South Pasadena — have no active plans to require retrofits for seismically flimsy “soft-story” apartment buildings, according to interviews with local officials and a review of existing seismic policies.

In Malibu, which was hit by modest earthquakes in February and September, city officials recently completed an inventory of 37 potential soft-story buildings.

But elected officials there haven’t publicly indicated whether they will mandate that those structures be retrofitted.

Soft-story apartments are ubiquitous across California. The term applies to apartment buildings built decades ago where the bottom floor has room for a carport, garage or retail shop. In these buildings, the ground floor can be held up by flimsy, skinny poles that can collapse when shaken side-to-side in an earthquake.

“These are particularly dangerous, hazardous conditions for buildings,” said Garrett Mills, president of the Structural Engineers Assn. of Southern California.

But for residents in soft-story apartment buildings, lines on a municipal map could be all that determines whether or not their home is seismically strengthened.

Cars smashed by a building that collapsed during the Northridge earthquake.

There’s a clear pattern of many soft-story apartments being retrofitted after cities pass local ordinances requiring that work. In San Francisco, 94% of 4,941 apartment buildings affected by a soft-story retrofit law passed in 2013 have since been strengthened, said Brian Strong, the city’s chief resilience officer. That law covers wood-frame buildings that are at least three stories and have five or more residential units.

The city of Beverly Hills passed a mandatory retrofit program in 2018. As of June, only 42 out of 229 soft-story buildings — just 18% — had not yet been retrofitted.

Los Angeles, too, has made progress on soft-story retrofits since the city passed its law in 2015 — though exactly how much is unclear. In its last update issued in February, Los Angeles officials said more than 9,000 out of a little more than 12,000 soft-story buildings had been retrofitted.

However, that number is no longer seen as reliable after a Times’ report found errors in the city’s data, and work is underway to ascertain a more accurate figure.

California officials have known for generations about this structural flaw, and the danger it presents. During the predawn magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake of 1994, 16 people died when the ground floor of the Northridge Meadows apartment building collapsed, crushing sleeping residents in their beds. In all, the earthquake seriously damaged or destroyed about 200 soft-story buildings across the Los Angeles area.

During the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the ground floors of several apartment buildings in San Francisco’s Marina District crumbled.

Structural fixes can involve installing steel frames on the ground floor, as well as strengthening existing walls on the flimsy first story.

Some property owners have bristled at the idea of cities mandating retrofit work, however — particularly without additional government funding to help cover the cost. In a recent blog post published when the city of Burbank decided to move forward with such an ordinance, the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles called mandatory seismic retrofits “brutally expensive” and said they could force mom-and-pop owners to sell their properties.

A man stares out to the street from his wall-less home at the devastated Northridge Meadows apartments in 1994.

Officials have estimated that the typical retrofit of a soft-story building in L.A. costs from $80,000 to $160,000, although costs can vary depending on the size of the building.

Others contend that retrofits should be considered a cost of doing business, given how owners are on the hook for things like replacing leaky roofs or upgrading old electrical panels. Many longtime owners have likely gained significant equity in recent decades due to rising property values, and retrofits will also keep rent checks flowing to owners by helping limit damage after an earthquake hits.

Why apartments can collapse in an earthquake. Flimsy ground story walls for carports, garages or stores can crumble in an earthquake, and are called “soft-story” buildings, explains U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ken Hudnut.

Limiting liability is also a concern. Jurors have previously sided with the families of earthquake victims against property owners who were told of the risk by government agencies but didn’t do the retrofit before a damaging earthquake struck.

According to a Suffolk University/Los Angeles Times poll conducted in March 2023, Los Angeles residents strongly back the city’s earthquake retrofit law, despite conventional wisdom that it would be politically unpopular because of its cost. More than 8 in 10 L.A. residents supported the retrofit law, that poll found.

“This is something that not only kills people — as we saw in ’94 — but it also leaves people homeless. And we have enough of a homeless problem already,” seismologist Lucy Jones, a Caltech research associate, said at a news conference following an Aug. 12 magnitude 4.4 earthquake, centered in El Sereno, that rattled the Los Angeles area.

Third floor of apartment building collapsed on parked car

By Jones’ count, Southern California has experienced 15 independent seismic sequences so far this year in which there have been at least one magnitude 4 or higher earthquake. That’s the highest annual total in the last 65 years, surpassing the 13 seen in 1988.

In South Pasadena, with a population of 26,000, building official Dennis Tarango said the city has no plans to create an inventory of soft-story apartment buildings or consider mandatory retrofits.

That wasn’t always the case. Before he retired in 2018, David Watkins, the city’s longtime planning director, said he was looking to create a list of seismically vulnerable apartments.

As of late 2021, the city’s strategic plan still made a mention of compiling that inventory, according to then-community development director Angelica Frausto-Lupo. But South Pasadena eventually determined it couldn’t devote the necessary resources, so plans to do so were scrapped.

Officials in both Alhambra, with a population of around 82,000; and Monterey Park, where about 60,000 people live, also said their cities haven’t imposed mandatory retrofit ordinances for soft-story apartment buildings.

In similarly worded statements, Andrew Ho and Jessica Serrano, the respective directors of Alhambra’s and Monterey Park’s community development departments, said they’re closely monitoring neighboring cities and evaluating whether similar measures might be necessary.

A statement issued on behalf of Malibu said that the city’s building official, Yolanda Bundy, is “collaborating” with other cities that have adopted retrofit ordinances to understand “the successes, challenges and best practices of similar programs to inform Malibu’s approach.”

The wrecked remains of a car crushed by pieces of a brick building that partially collapsed in an earthquake.

The mayors of Alhambra, Monterey Park and Malibu either did not respond to or declined interview requests earlier this year.

More than a half dozen cities in Southern California require soft-story apartment buildings to be retrofitted — Los Angeles, Torrance, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. In Northern California, the list includes San José, San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont, Berkeley, Albany and Mill Valley.

But most other cities across California don’t require such upgrades.

Some cities are have made progress recently. The city council of San José, Northern California’s most populous city, unanimously passed a sweeping mandatory soft-story retrofit ordinance earlier this fall.

Talk about an apartment retrofit law for San José has been circulating for at least 10 years, and picked up steam after surprise flooding in 2017 exposed how vulnerable the city of 970,000 was to natural disasters. But it was only in 2021 that it obtained a government grant to help fund efforts to establish the retrofit law, according to Lisa Joiner, the city’s chief building official.

San José has an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 soft-story apartment buildings. The ordinance will take effect April 1, launching an 18-month screening phase where owners of suspected vulnerable buildings will be asked to fill out a form to help determine whether retrofits are needed. Owners will be given five to seven years to complete that work, with tighter deadlines set for larger and older apartment buildings.

The Burbank City Council in September voted unanimously to introduce a mandatory soft-story retrofit law. There are about 675 soft-story residential buildings with three or more units in the city of about 105,000. A second vote, expected on Dec. 10, is needed for the ordinance to be formally adopted.

“We’re trying to save lives,” said Mario Osuna, Burbank’s building official and assistant community development director.

Burbank had a voluntary soft-story retrofit program that began in 1998, but progress has been limited, with only 35 retrofits completed since 2008, according to a recent staff report.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has ordered an inventory for soft-story apartment buildings owned or overseen by the county or its development authority, as well as in unincorporated areas, where more than 1 million people live. These are areas in the county not governed by a city council, such as East Los Angeles, Florence-Firestone, Hacienda Heights, South Whittier, Rowland Heights, Westmont, Altadena and Willowbrook. The inventory is expected to be complete in 2026, according to the county Department of Public Works.

If the county eventually does proceed with a mandatory soft-story apartment retrofit law for the unincorporated area, Alhambra building officials would review and consider whether to bring it to their city council to adopt, Ho said.

(Separately, county officials plan to consider a mandatory law to retrofit a different type of vulnerable structure — nonductile concrete buildings — for high-rise buildings in the unincorporated area, as well as those owned by the county. That is expected to be considered in early 2025.)

A 2015 law enacted in the city of Los Angeles requires retrofits of soft-story buildings that have two or more stories, a wood-frame construction and ground-floor parking or a similar open floor space on that first story. The law does not affect buildings with three or fewer residential units, as long as the building is only used for housing. The law requires that retrofits be done within seven years after an owner receives an order to comply. For some buildings, that means the deadline passed last year.

Long Beach has a preliminary inventory of soft-story apartment buildings and has launched outreach meetings to educate tenants and property owners on what could happen if nothing is done before the next big earthquake. The exact number is unclear, but there could be close to 3,000 soft-story apartment buildings in the city.

“We have also notified the property owners that we feel like their buildings are seismically prone and they may be considered soft story,” said David Khorram, Long Beach’s superintendent of building and safety.

The draft list was released to property owners in August, but not yet to the public, offering owners a chance to correct the city’s draft list, officials said. Pending approval by the city council, the list could be made public early next year. Officials said they hope the program will encourage owners to voluntarily strengthen their buildings.

Even smaller cities have passed mandatory retrofit ordinances. The city council of Albany, a community of 20,000 residents northwest of Berkeley, unanimously passed a retrofit law in 2023. The law is estimated to affect 150 apartment buildings, containing 800 units.

“At some point, we will have a major earthquake. It’s really a question of when,” said Michelle Plouse, a community development analyst for the city. “Earthquake risk is a really, really major concern for our city.”

The risk of soft-story apartment buildings is clear in Burlingame, where they line El Camino Real, the main road through the wealthy city just south of San Francisco International Airport. There are an estimated 140 soft-story apartment buildings there, said Rick Caro, chief building official for the city of 31,000 people.

A committee has been formed to figure out a way to “evaluate the costs and benefits of potential actions,” officials said.

Other cities have been thwarted in their retrofitting efforts. Mountain View, one of the most populous cities in Silicon Valley, stopped work on an earthquake retrofit program in 2021 “due to lack of funding and staffing resources,” according to Lenka Wright, a spokesperson for the city.

Palo Alto has been talking about soft-story apartments for years, and in 2016 identified 294 such buildings, said city spokesperson Meghan Horrigan-Taylor. The city council is expected to weigh in December whether to hire engineering consultants to update the city’s inventory and propose a combination of voluntary and mandatory measures “as appropriate based on structural need,” Horrigan-Taylor said. If the council green lights the proposal, staffers expect the update and recommendations will be completed in 15 months.

Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.

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Bahia Emerald may return to Brazil from L.A. after court ruling

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Bahia Emerald may return to Brazil from L.A. after court ruling

For more than 15 years, one of the world’s most famous gemstones — the 180,000-carat Bahia Emerald — has been held in Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department custody, its ultimate fate uncertain amid more than a decade of discord, disagreement and courtroom wrangling.

Now, a federal judge has ruled that the smuggled stone should return to its home country of Brazil.

According to Brazilian authorities, the Bahia Emerald is one of the largest emeralds, if not the largest, ever discovered. Court documents say it weighs approximately 836 pounds.

Estimates of its worth vary but are as high as $925 million.

The emerald, Brazilian authorities say, was discovered in a beryl mine in the country in 2001 and later smuggled to the U.S. There, it reportedly survived flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 while submerged in an underwater vault.

The gem eventually ended up in the hands of an investor, who reported it missing from a South El Monte vault a few years later, according to previous Times coverage. Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators subsequently tracked the emerald to a Las Vegas vault, but since they could not sort out who owned the gem, they confiscated it.

The stone’s long and sordid history gave rise to rumors that it could even be cursed.

For more than a decade, about 10 individuals and a handful of corporations have duked it out in California Superior Court trying to prove they are the rightful owners of the stone. Meanwhile, the Brazilian government has engaged in its own lengthy legal battle in federal court to try to repatriate the gemstone.

Thursday’s ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, supersedes claims of American ownership and paves the way for the emerald to return to Brazil.

“After this long, long battle, we’re thrilled with the federal court’s ruling in this matter, which we believe is the right result and is a major step toward repatriating the Bahia Emerald to its rightful owner: the country of Brazil,” Los Angeles-based attorney John Nadolenco, who represented Brazil in the federal case, told The Times on Friday.

Nadolenco recalls the day he received a letter from the Brazilian government asking for his help repatriating an 836-pound emerald. He threw it in the trash, assuming it was a scam.

However, the letter proved to be real — as did Brazil’s claim to ownership. Nadolenco spent the following 10 years on one of the wildest legal adventures of his career.

Brazil enlisted Nadolenco’s firm, Mayer Brown, to assist in retrieving the stone in 2014. In 2015, the firm convinced the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate a federal court action to seize the emerald following the resolution of criminal prosecutions in Brazil.

In 2017, the Brazilian government convicted two Brazilian residents of illegally smuggling the emerald into the United States. After the two men lost an appeal in 2021, Brazil issued a forfeiture order for the Bahia Emerald.

In 2022, the Justice Department filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under the mutual legal assistance treaty between the United States and Brazil, asking the court to order the emerald’s forfeiture. Walton approved this motion Thursday.

If no appeal is filed, the next step would be to schedule a formal repatriation ceremony for the U.S. government to turn the stone over to Brazil.

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Column: It’s the season for scams, so here’s a piece of advice: Never do business with strangers

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Column: It’s the season for scams, so here’s a piece of advice: Never do business with strangers

The text arrived midday, saying a delivery to me was on hold. To fix the problem, all I had to do was click on a web link and enter my ZIP Code.

“Have a great day from the USPS team!” the text said.

The awkwardly worded message (with bad punctuation and an international phone number) was clearly not from the Postal Service. And if I can hazard a wild guess, I don’t think the senders really wanted me to have a great day.

They wanted to rip me off and, so, a word to the wise this holiday season:

Watch your wallet.

GOLDEN STATE with a rising/setting sun in the middle

California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.

Fraud is a year-round, multibillion-dollar international enterprise. But for thieves, the season of joy is a wide-open window of opportunity, as AARP warned Nov. 18:

“With scammers looking to take advantage of consumers from all angles, new AARP survey research reveals that people need to be vigilant this holiday season as they buy gifts, book their travel arrangements, and donate to charities.”

Many of the scams are run by sophisticated international syndicates, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. Those crooks are working every channel, fishing for victims by email, phone calls, texts, fliers and regular mail.

Unwitting people are forking over money via gift cards, cryptocurrency, credit cards, cash and wire transfers. Losses often are virtually impossible to recover because the money is on foreign soil before the victims know they’ve been robbed.

Stokes said that in one common ripoff, thieves are going after people who own timeshares they’re trying to dump.

“There’s all this paperwork that makes it look legitimate, like you’re paying to get out of the timeshare,” Stokes said. But the crooks are pocketing thousands of dollars while the target is still stuck with the timeshare.

Last week, in a national conference on scams targeting older adults, Deborah Royster of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that consumers are being wiped out in a flash.

“Retirement savings and other resources that people have earned over a lifetime, and depend on,” Royster said, “can be gone in an instant.”

In that same conference, Virginia lawyer Julie M. Strandlie said her 85-year-old mother lost $80,000 between Thanksgiving and Christmas five years ago in a common scam that began with “flashing graphics and pounding voices” on her computer screen, warning of a virus.

“There’s a number to call for help, but it’s not the real Microsoft,” Strandlie said.

Her mother fell for the ruse, giving the criminals remote access to unlock her frozen computer. She was then duped into believing they had deposited money into her account, and she needed to pay it back in cash and gift cards from Best Buy and Target.

As LAPD Lead Officer Carlos Diaz looks on, Detective Albert Smith leaves a card with Marta Barillas, who was robbed recently

Steve McFarland, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau region that runs from Palo Alto to Long Beach, said his office is getting 1,100 consumer complaints of all types each and every day.

He wasn’t kidding and repeated the number.

McFarland and other sources say a greater percentage of millennials report fraud than do older adults, but the latter group suffers greater losses. And across the age spectrum, McFarland said, gift card scams are hot right now.

Bar codes on those cards can be tampered with or photographed by someone before they’re sold, McFarland said. The buyer of the card goes to a checkout stand and puts, let’s say, $100 on the card to be redeemed at Target, Burger King or any number of establishments.

But when the recipient goes to redeem it, the funds are gone. It happened last year to L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who bought a $100 VISA gift card for a nephew who found that it wasn’t worth a nickel. Hahn later warned of the scam, along with McFarland, on L.A.’s Eyewitness News.

“It’s called gift card draining and these scammers have found several slick ways to victimize unsuspecting shoppers,” Hahn said.

In addition to outright scams, this is a time of year when solicitations for charitable donations can fill your mailbox.

“A lot of charities are trying to close out strong, and criminals know that and are vying for the same dollars,” Stokes said.

If it’s not an established organization that’s known for its good work, Stokes advised going to the Better Business Bureau’s give.org website, where you can type in the name of the charity to find out whether it’s legit. You can also find out what percentage of donations go to the cause versus overhead costs.

Your best policy, unfortunately, is to be suspicious of everything. I recently got a letter with my mortgage lender’s name in the window and opened it to find a warning that this was my “FINAL NOTICE” to avoid a monthly payment increase.

It looked hinky, and on the back page, in fine print, I learned that the mail was from a lender unaffiliated with my mortgage company.

If you see “final notice,” “urgent” or “benefit disbursement enclosed,” don’t even bother opening the envelope.

A friend shared a tall stack of mail that keeps coming for his mother, who died months ago, and as I sifted through it I found one attempt after another to separate her from her money. “Copy of Final Check Enclosed,” said one, and in the cellophane window was what looked like a check for $437.18 that said “Pay to the order of …”

But it wasn’t a check, of course. It was a solicitation from a lobbying firm claiming it will fight to preserve Social Security funding (and by the way, she had a lot of mail from organizations claiming they were out to do the same).

The fake check was described as an example of what she stood to lose if she didn’t immediately support the cause by pulling out her credit card and making an “urgent donation” to keep Social Security solvent.

And then there were solicitations from organizations representing a Noah’s Ark of endangered animals. Look, I’m an animal lover, but how does one begin to sort through all the pleas?

Save the pigs. The horses. The bees. The lions. The donkeys.

“Sunday, a baby donkey was ripped from his mother and brutalized,” said one envelope.

Lots of appeals for dogs, too. One included the photo of a dog with amazing verbal skills, judging by the quote attributed to the canine: “I wish for no one else to be hurt the way humans have hurt me.”

I feel for the dog, but if he can actually speak, let’s get him an agent and send him out on tour so the pup can raise a fortune for his cause.

Of course, there are plenty of good charities out there that are worthy of your generosity, but be careful.

With solicitations. With email. With texts. With phone calls.

All of it.

Banks should be doing more to prevent repeated, questionable, out-of-the-ordinary withdrawals and wire transfers. The gift card industry ought to be able to rein in rampant fraud with smarter security measures.

And people of all ages need to be more discerning, refuse to provide personal information such as Social Security numbers, and get some advice from a trusted friend or loved one before signing any checks or doing business with strangers.

Last year I wrote about two retired L.A. residents, a former teacher and a former banker, who were swindled out of roughly $80,000 apiece in internet scams. Earlier this year I wrote about a Redwood City woman who was taken for $1.8 million, and an Alhambra woman, Alice Lin, who lost $720,000 in an “investment” scheme introduced to her by a man she met on a chat app.

I reached out to Lin, who had some good advice on all forms of communication from sources you don’t know or trust.

“Do not respond,” Lin said. “Don’t touch it.”

[email protected]

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L.A. politician Ridley-Thomas’ final campaign: to clear his name

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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L.A. politician Ridley-Thomas’ final campaign: to clear his name

For more than three decades, Mark Ridley-Thomas never lost an election, tapping a well-organized network of supporters to secure victory after victory.

Now, the former Los Angeles City Council member and county supervisor is in a different sort of campaign with far greater stakes: a fight to clear his name and avoid prison.

The 70-year-old was convicted last year of seven federal corruption charges stemming from a scheme to secure benefits for his son from a USC social work dean who sought his political support for L.A. County business. The jury acquitted him of 12 other charges.

U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer sentenced Ridley-Thomas in August 2023 to 42 months in prison. The veteran lawmaker has been free on bail while he presses to have the jury verdict overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Thursday, Ridley-Thomas’ quest for vindication reaches a critical moment, with oral arguments scheduled before a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals in Pasadena.

Ridley-Thomas and his supporters have approached his defense with the vigor and strategy of a political movement.

He has continued making public appearances, posing for photos alongside supporters and allies including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. Mass emails keep supporters abreast of legal developments, with invitations to “RSVP” for hearings. “Our presence is our voice,” said one note calling for readers to pack the courtroom for Ridley-Thomas’ sentencing.

Ridley-Thomas has also turned to backers for financial help, writing in an April email, “We’ve got to be ready to turn this injustice around.” He asked for donations of $250 “or whatever you feel comfortable contributing.”

More than $100,000 flowed to his legal defense fund in the first half of 2024, according to a public filing.

Among his donors are familiar names in L.A. civic life: $1,000 each from lobbyist Arnie Berghoff, public affairs consultant Kerman Maddox, radio host Tavis Smiley and prominent lawyer Patricia Glaser. Fabian Nunez, the former state Assembly speaker, chipped in $2,500, according to the filing. A slew of former Ridley-Thomas aides also donated, including former Times journalist and now Capital & Main Editor in Chief Peter Hong with $200. Evitarus, a public opinion research firm, gave $5,000, according to the filing.

“I donated to the defense fund solely as an individual who once worked for Mr. Ridley-Thomas,” Hong said. “In our legal system we are entitled to mount a defense. Also in our system, we are expected to pay for that defense. That can be very expensive.”

Supporters have held prayer services, and in January, longtime aide Vincent Harris kicked off a “teach-in” where he and several lawyers walked through, in their view, deficiencies in the prosecution’s case.

At the teach-in, Areva Martin, an attorney and commentator, introduced the team of lawyers handling Ridley-Thomas’ appeal, singling out UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Paul Watford, a former 9th Circuit judge now in private practice. Ridley-Thomas’ appellate case marks Watford’s first time appearing as a litigant before his former colleagues since he left the bench in 2023.

“Don’t think that he’s not been asked by lots of criminal defendants to take on their appeals,” Martin said at the teach-in. “The fact that he decided to take this case speaks volumes about what he thought about how this case was concluded at the trial level.”

“This case is unlike any other,” said Alyssa Bell, a former public defender who is leading the appeal team. “Our job is to retake the narrative, to retell the story from Dr. Ridley-Thomas’ vantage point and to make the world see the many ways in which the government took laws that never should have applied to these facts and contorted them to come up with a theory of prosecution that is the first of its kind.”

For much of the last year, prosecutors and defense have traded arguments in court filings that they will present Thursday to the three-judge panel. The defense has claimed that prosecutors constructed a “novel” theory of honest services fraud built around the idea that what Ridley-Thomas secured from his dealings with the USC dean was protecting his “public image” and “family brand.” The dean, Marilyn Flynn, was sentenced to 18 months of home confinement after pleading guilty to one count of bribery.

Honest services fraud doesn’t extend to quid pro quo exchanges where the “quid” is a perceived reputational benefit, defense attorneys argued in filings. They floated the idea that such a prosecution, if allowed to stand, would criminalize routine dealings between elected officials and constituents.

But prosecutors said they identified to jurors specific items of value in the bribery scheme that Ridley-Thomas allegedly sought to secure from USC: admission for his son Sebastian, a scholarship to cover Sebastian’s graduate studies, a teaching post for Sebastian and a $100,000 donation from USC to a nonprofit run by Sebastian, prosecutors wrote.

“Reputational benefit was merely one of defendant’s motives in soliciting and demanding benefits for his son,” prosecutors wrote, calling it “classic” corruption.

Both the prosecutors and defense attorneys had filed their briefs before the 9th Circuit in June when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a potentially disruptive ruling. By a 6-3 vote, the conservative majority overturned the conviction of a former Indiana mayor who took a $13,000 payment from a truck dealership that had received $1.1 million in city contracts.

In the ruling penned by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the court found that officials could be prosecuted for bribery but not for accepting gratuities for past favors if there was no evidence of an illicit deal.

Ridley-Thomas’ lawyers had already accused prosecutors of conflating bribery and gratuities. The Supreme Court decision “makes clear” that the government’s theory of the case “was legally invalid as to all counts,” they argued.

Prosecutors fired back in a September filing, arguing that their case was consistent with the newer Supreme Court ruling because the evidence showed a clear quid pro quo agreement between Ridley-Thomas and the USC dean, including a confidential letter memorializing the agreement that the dean had hand-delivered to the politician’s downtown L.A. office.

Further, prosecutors accused Ridley-Thomas and his defense of cherry-picking from evidence to suit a convenient, if inaccurate, point of view.

“Much like he did in his opening and reply briefs, defendant advances a factual narrative divorced from the trial record,” prosecutors wrote.

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Jan. 6 defendants from California eagerly await Trump pardons

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Jan. 6 defendants from California eagerly await Trump pardons

Out of the more than 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, David Dempsey is among the most notorious.

The Van Nuys man was accused by federal prosecutors of being “one of the most violent rioters” that day. He was sentenced in August to 20 years in prison — one of the stiffest penalties to date — after pleading guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer with a dangerous weapon and breaching the seat of Congress.

Now Dempsey is among a large number of Jan. 6 defendants who are anxiously awaiting news from President-elect Donald Trump on whether and how he will make good on a sometimes muddled campaign promise to pardon them.

An image with a red arrow pointing to a man stepping on a crowd of helmeted officers in a tunnel

“We’re all on our heels and preparing for anything — whether that is nothing happening, or more individualized relief, or a blanket pardon,” said Amy Collins, a Washington-based attorney who represents several Jan. 6 defendants, including Dempsey.

“We really just don’t know how to expect this process to go, because of how unconventional Trump is. He’s full of surprises,” Collins said. “We have to be ready for anything, and for any guidance that may come in a formal or informal way.”

Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after his rally on the National Mall, in an effort to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Federal authorities have said 140 police officers were assaulted — many were seriously injured, and several died — and millions of dollars in damage was incurred.

Trump, who was federally indicted for his actions that day, has called Jan. 6 defendants “hostages” and “patriots” who had “love in their heart” when they stormed Congress.

At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said he was “inclined to pardon many of them,” but couldn’t “say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control.”

In an April interview with Time magazine, Trump said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning all Jan. 6 defendants. At a July gathering of Black journalists, he suggested those defendants were the victims of a “very tough system” that treated them more severely than racial justice demonstrators who had caused damage in other cities.

Since Trump’s election, his team has said he intends to follow through with his promises to help Jan. 6 defendants. Mark Paoletta, an attorney on the transition team, wrote on X this month that Trump was elected back into office to carry out an agenda that included “granting pardons or commutations to January 6th defendants and other defendants who have been subjected to politically-driven lawfare prosecutions and sentences.”

A woman with a blond bob haircut, in a blue coat and colorful yellow scarf, walks behind a man in a suit and striped tie

However, Paoletta did not offer details. Trump’s team did not respond to requests for comment.

Experts said the path forward is largely up to Trump.

In terms of pardons and commutations for federal crimes, “he has pretty much unlimited authority to do whatever he wants once he takes office,” said Kim Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore Law School and the author of “Pardon Power: How The Pardon System Works.”

According to a Times review of federal court filings, Jan. 6 defendants with pending cases or appeals have sought delays as they await word from Trump; some delays have been granted, and others denied. Attorneys for Jan. 6 offenders already in prison said they are gathering documentation so they can quickly apply for pardons once the process becomes clear.

“There’s an expectation that Trump is going to do it. He himself said so. But I’m not sure how this is going to play out, or when this is going to take place,” said Nicolai Cocis, an attorney for Derek Kinnison, a Lake Elsinore man who was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison in April after being convicted with a group of other California men of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and other related charges.

The men were all accused of being part of the Three Percenters militia group, and of coordinating travel from California to D.C. to block Biden’s win. Among the group — known as the “DC Brigade” — was Alan Hostetter, a former La Habra police chief.

A bearded man in a hat with a flag bandanna around it speaks while holding a microphone

Cocis argued that Kinnison would be a good candidate for a pardon because he didn’t have a criminal record before Jan. 6, was not accused of committing any serious violence and did not enter the Capitol.

Another member of the DC Brigade was Russell Taylor of Ladera Ranch, who was sentenced to six months of home detention after pleading guilty.

Taylor, who prosecutors said wore body armor and carried a knife and a hatchet as he helped others overrun police lines, initially faced a much stiffer sentence but received leniency after agreeing to testify against Hostetter.

Dyke Huish, an attorney for Taylor, said they were “looking forward” to Trump making his plan for pardons clear.

Huish noted that pardon applications traditionally are reviewed by the Office of the Pardon Attorney, though Trump may wish to sidestep that process given its eligibility restrictions. He said he has studied President Carter’s use of an executive order shortly after taking office in 1977 to pardon thousands of men who evaded Vietnam War drafts.

Either way, Huish said, he expects Trump’s transition team to issue guidance soon for the attorneys working Jan. 6 cases, because even if Trump’s intention is to grant “mass pardons,” many attorneys expect there to be some nuances or exceptions.

A crowd, some holding blue flags, facing people in dark uniform and face shields as a blast of gas is deployed

“Not every Jan. 6 case is the same,” Huish said. “There’s a handful where they are going to have to take a close look, because there was violence and people were hurt.”

Collins, Dempsey’s attorney, declined to discuss his client’s case in detail, citing his pending appeal. However, she did address the potential for a pardon in a recent request for an extension in his case.

She gave various reasons for seeking the extension, including her own busy schedule, but she also cited Trump’s election just days prior and his repeated promises to pardon Jan. 6 defendants.

Collins wrote that given “the high-profile nature” of Dempsey’s case and the severity of his sentence, which she said was the second-longest of all Jan. 6 defendants, her client “might be viewed as one of the more appropriate candidates for such relief.”

Dempsey was accused of being front and center in the insurrection. Federal prosecutors alleged that he had used other insurrectionists as “human scaffolding” to climb to the front of the crowd, had fashioned a flagpole and pieces of furniture into weapons, and had “viciously assaulted and injured police officers” for over an hour during the siege. They said he pepper-sprayed one police officer and bashed another so violently with a metal crutch that it cracked the officer’s gas mask and caused him to fall backward.

An image of officers in dark uniform in a tunnel, facing a man wielding a pole and a massive crowd behind him

The extension was granted, pushing the deadline for arguments on an appeal Dempsey has filed in the case to March, two months after Trump takes office.

Joe Allen, an attorney who has represented several Jan. 6 defendants, said that many of the people who were at the Capitol were enamored of Trump and convinced they were carrying out justice on his behalf, and that Trump “took advantage” of them.

Many still hang on Trump’s every word, Allen said, and “have some pretty high expectations of what Donald Trump should be doing for them now, [thinking], ‘We were in your army. Now we’re prisoners of war. So what are you going to do to save us?’”

He suggested Trump appoint a bipartisan committee to review all Jan. 6 cases and look for those where a pardon may be justified, because some of the people there “just kind of got caught up in the crowd.”

The Justice Department estimates it has charged 1,561 Jan. 6 defendants. Of those, 590 were charged with assaulting, resisting, impeding or obstructing law enforcement officers, and 645 have been sentenced to some period of incarceration, the department said. Nearly 980 defendants had pleaded guilty, and 210 others have been found guilty at trial. The department is still pursuing other cases.

Wehle, the Baltimore law professor, said Trump could issue a stark order declaring pardons for a list of named individuals, a cohort of defendants or everyone charged that day.

Regardless, individual defendants and their attorneys will have work to do, Wehle said, including filing motions for dismissal of their cases or for release that cite Trump’s pardon declaration as the legal grounds.

Jeffrey Crouch, a law professor at American University and an expert on the pardon process, said that while presidents have often relied on the Office of the Pardon Attorney, Trump is clearly willing to take a different approach — having relied on that office for only 25 of his 238 clemency grants while in office.

“He opted to have requests evaluated by his own people most of the time,” Crouch said, and granted clemency “to his political allies, celebrities, military figures and others.”

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These tenants want to own their buildings. L.A. is collecting millions to help

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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These tenants want to own their buildings. L.A. is collecting millions to help

Several years ago, investors bought the Koreatown fourplex where Mary Carmen Martinez had lived for nearly two decades and tried to push the tenants out.

Martinez, a restaurant worker, and her neighbors decided that they would fight to stay, hanging signs on the windows that said “No cash for keys” and going to court together to successfully challenge one neighbor’s eviction.

She knew how critical rent-controlled apartments were for working people, how her modest-sized unit helped her make a life in Los Angeles. When her children were babies, they could crawl around safely and not be cramped like they had been before. And her mother was able to come live with her, helping care for her kids while she made ends meet.

The apartment, she says, “is a whole life. A life of struggle, of scarcity, of living, of working.”

Through persistence and a bit of good timing, she and her neighbors emerged successful after working with a nonprofit group that bought the building. Now, they’re on the cusp of owning the property themselves — with a promise to keep it affordable and never make a significant profit from it.

If it works, Martinez, 56, said, “I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished my goals just by having a secure home. A place where, if my kids need somewhere to stay, they can feel safe, they can come here. For me, that’s more important than making money.”

A woman stands in a doorway between a kitchen and dining room.

For so many Angelenos, it’s a dream to own a single-family home and build wealth through equity. But having watched for years as housing costs put ownership increasingly out of reach while the cost of rent keeps tenants struggling, advocates say it’s time to take a different approach to home ownership.

They want working-class tenants to own their buildings, so that they have stability and are the ones making decisions about how they are run, what repairs are made, how much to pay in monthly costs, and anything else that comes up. But they also want to keep them permanently affordable, which means letting go of the possibility of making a massive profit in a sale.

Up until now, efforts to get these ideas off the ground have been limited by money — buying one small building in L.A. can cost millions. But the city’s “mansion tax” is expected to change that, bringing in hundreds of millions per year, about a third of which could be allocated to support “social housing.” Such projects require that tenants play a meaningful role in running their properties, encourage tenant ownership and include covenants that keep buildings permanently affordable.

“Often the hardest part of making it a reality is finding the funds to make it happen. We have the vision, we have the programs and, now, we have the funding to make social housing a reality,” said Joe Donlin, director of the United to House LA coalition, which brought Measure ULA to the ballot.

The initiative — drafted by renters’ rights groups, homeless service providers, affordable housing nonprofits and labor unions — was designed to bolster social housing across the city, allocating 22.5% of its funding to “alternative housing models” in which “residents shall have the right to participate directly and meaningfully in decision-making concerning the operation and management of the project.”

“Where feasible and desirable,” the law says, “the project shall include resident ownership.”

Another source of funding for such projects would be part of the law that supports tenant ownership for projects that buy and rehabilitate older buildings for affordable housing, like in Martinez’ case. The law allocates an additional 10% of funds to such efforts.

Yet another funding pot would allocate millions to create training, education and other support to get projects off the ground.

Since it was implemented last year, the tax has raised nearly $440 million, according to city data. The amount is less than backers expected, and the law still faces challenges in court, but it has created a significant new funding pool for projects across the city that housing advocates hope to start tapping soon.

Because the projects take a novel approach, experts say they can also have a difficult time securing the types of federal and state funding that traditionally provide the bulk of support for affordable housing development.

“If you’re trying to develop a model, and all of the federal and state resources are aligned to support a different model, that can be very challenging,” said Sarah Karlinsky, research director at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.

In L.A., she said, the city will probably have to invest a significant amount of money per unit to make projects work.

“That can be just very challenging in an era of limited resources,” she said.

Advocates say the social housing models they’re trying to bring to the city aren’t anything new — they point to similar programs in places such as New York City, Singapore and Vienna — they’ve just never had much support in L.A.

But efforts have been gaining in popularity across the country. Earlier this year, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced a federal bill to promote social housing, arguing that “we can’t wait for the private market alone to solve the housing crisis.” A state law approved last year commissioned a study to analyze opportunities for and obstacles to increasing social housing in California.

As of yet, there is no single, agreed-upon definition of social housing nor is there a single model for how it would work. In Los Angeles, however, advocates say social housing should be permanently affordable and tenants should have a meaningful say in governance or the chance to own their properties. They also want to see new projects built on public land.

Backers have been looking to community land trusts to help guide the way.

Community land trusts, or CLTs as they’re sometimes known, are nonprofit groups that buy properties with the intent of keeping them affordable. The trust maintains ownership of the land while selling or leasing the property itself to low-income tenants.

Tenants might own their apartment or a share of the building. Often equity is capped so that if a person leaves, the building remains affordable for the next resident.

Across California, land trusts remain a small part of the affordable housing landscape though they have grown in number since 2000. In 2022, the state had 29 community land trusts with about 1,600 units, according to the California Community Land Trust Network. In L.A. there have only been a few such projects. But they received a boost in 2020, when Los Angeles County approved a $14-million pilot program for land trusts to buy and rehabilitate properties across the county.

That program led to the preservation of eight properties across the county with a total of 43 residential units, according to a report commissioned by the progressive nonprofit Liberty Hill Foundation.

One of those buildings was a small Craftsman-style home, not far from USC, where Noe Herrera and his siblings have lived since July 2018, paying about $500 a month in rent.

A few years ago, Herrera approached the owner about possibly buying the property, knowing the cost would probably be out of reach. He was surprised to learn that the owner was interested in selling the home to Herrera and the other tenants of the building. But he wanted to do so in a way that would ensure that it remained affordable.

In 2021, the community land trust organization TRUST South LA worked out a deal to buy it for the below-market price of $475,000 using funds from the county’s pilot project. They plan to eventually transfer ownership of the property to Herrera and the others through an ownership model that the residents will decide on, such as the limited equity housing co-op.

“These cases are rare,” said Oscar Monge, the group’s interim executive director. “But it’s important for us to highlight that there are property owners that are trying to create affordability for their tenants.”

Herrera, who works as a bartender, said he would have liked to have been able to own the home outright and eventually profit from it. That’s the dream, he said.

But he also knows he could not afford to pay market rate. An injury a few years ago made it so that he is only able to work part time. Having a low rent allows him to keep a roof over his head. So, he said, he understands the urgent need to keep homes affordable.

A woman sits on the edge of a couch in her living room.

In Koreatown, Martinez and her neighbors were skeptical at first when they were approached by the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust. They had grown close as they organized together to oppose their landlord’s efforts to get them to leave with cash-for-keys offers. And they were unsure about an organization that said it wanted to help them by buying the building and then returning ownership to them. But over weeks of meetings, they grew to trust in their work.

In 2021, the organization bought the property with $1.6 million in county funds. Since then, the group has worked to remodel the aging building while Martinez and her neighbors worked to create a nonprofit co-op that will allow them to take ownership of the property. They named it Señoras for Housing — almost every tenant in the building is a single mom.

They’ve written bylaws for themselves, including rules for how to decide things such as how much residents would contribute to a repair fund for the property, which repairs to prioritize, and how to deal with disagreements. By next year, Martinez said, they could have the title to the building. The land trust will continue to own the land.

Martinez says she feels now like she has a place to live for the rest of her life.

“In my old age, I know I won’t end up on the street,” she said.

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Do California teachers have the right to slam Trump? Yes. And no

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Do California teachers have the right to slam Trump? Yes. And no

Several Southern California teachers are facing disciplinary action after fervid anti-Trump outbursts made in the wake of the November election that rattled school communities and generated fierce debate over teachers’ rights to share their political views.

A Moreno Valley teacher was placed on leave this month after a racially charged, expletive-laden rant attacking Trump and his supporters.

Meanwhile, two high school teachers, one in Chino and one in Cerritos, are under investigation for angry outbursts in response to students wearing MAGA gear in class. And a Beverly Hills High School substitute teacher said she was disciplined for her online posts criticizing President-elect Donald Trump and condemning the behavior of students at a MAGA rally on campus.

Each instance has its nuances, but they collectively raise the question: What are teachers’ rights to express their political views? We went to 1st Amendment experts to find out.

Generally speaking, K-12 teachers do not have a 1st Amendment right to share partisan speech in the classroom but are offered broad protections to do so online, said Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the ACLU of Southern California.

If you add curse words and racially charged language on top of partisan classroom speech, teachers are even more likely to face discipline, he added.

In the Moreno Valley incident, the high school teacher used the F-word, called Trump a “rapist draft-dodging coward,” blamed Black and brown men for Trump’s victory and told students that a lot of Latino men — including their fathers, uncles and grandfathers — want to be white.

“Clearly the teacher was acting inappropriately with respect to the students,” said attorney Michael Overing, who teaches 1st Amendment rights at USC. “The language was inappropriate. The racist comments were inappropriate.”

At Chino High School, a teacher was recorded telling a student wearing a Trump hat that he was “voting for a freaking rapist” and calling Trump supporters “a bunch of losers” and “fake Christians.” A spokesperson for the Chino Valley Unified School District said the matter was immediately investigated, but the district is unable to comment on potential discipline.

Overing explained that there is a narrow set of circumstances in which teachers can express political opinions.

For example, they are allowed to make an educational point by playing devil’s advocate in a class debate on contemporary American politics. But, he said, if the political speech is not directly relevant to the subject at hand, or isn’t expressed in a respectful, age-appropriate manner, schools probably have a right to restrict it.

Talking politics is welcomed at Cerritos High School within certain parameters, according to a spokesperson for ABC Unified.

Recently, a teacher at the school reportedly stormed out of a classroom because a student was wearing a Trump hat. The spokesperson said in a statement that the incident was under investigation but noted that teachers are encouraged to “use real-life issues, like the recent elections, to have meaningful and age-appropriate classroom discussions with students.”

The rules around political speech differ significantly when it comes to online posts.

Eliasberg said public school teachers have strong 1st Amendment protections to share their political views online — expletives and all. Private schools may have stricter requirements for teachers’ off-campus conduct, but they are still subject to the California Labor Code, which states that it is illegal to fire an employee for their political behavior, he said.

Problems, however, could arise if the online political posts call into question a teacher’s ability to do their job, he said.

“If they make certain statements that could have a very deleterious effect or be very disruptive in the class, then the district may have some ability to engage in discipline,” Eliasberg said. “Part of a teacher’s job is to be non-discriminatory on a variety of different bases: race, religion, sexual orientation and so on.”

In the case of Beverly Hills High School, the substitute teacher, who reported being disciplined and said she no longer works at the school, shared a wide variety of posts generally criticizing Trump. However, she also criticized students who participated in a MAGA rally and said they were harassing and intimidating minority students.

In a statement, Beverly Hills Unified Supt. Michael Bregy said the district could not comment on this specific incident but added that no employee was dismissed in the last month. He also said the district is committed to cultivating a culture of respect where differences are embraced, every perspective heard and all voices valued.

About a dozen Black students expressed their concerns about the Beverly Hills High School MAGA rally, saying they were subjected to harassment and racial slurs at a recent school district Board of Trustees meeting.

“If it’s a general statement about something that happened at the school and the students’ reaction, I think the district’s on very shaky ground to have disciplined a teacher for doing that,” Eliasberg said, referring to the Beverly Hills substitute’s posts.

Overing, on the other hand, said that because the Beverly Hills substitute teacher’s online posts about the rally ignored the proper channels for disciplining students, she could have fallen afoul of district policy.

“Schools have disciplinary boards to be consistent in punishment and to make sure the facts are investigated and that the true culprits are brought to answer,” he said. “A teacher making comments ‘out of school’ is not following protocol.”

One area that’s more clear-cut is the right to wear T-shirts or badges expressing political views in the classroom.

Courts have upheld that schools have a right to ban teachers from engaging in such behavior, but they cannot extend this ban to students, according to the ACLU.

In Cerritos, the teacher who stormed out of the classroom criticized the school for allowing students, and not teachers, to wear political clothing in an email sent to students, Los Cerritos News reported.

“It is not a neutral stance when one group is allowed to express their political views … and the other side is silenced under threat of losing their job and/or being seriously reprimanded,” she wrote.

The teacher who had an angry outburst at Chino High School also shared frustrations about the differing rules for teacher versus student clothing.

“If I can’t wear a Harris [hat] you can’t wear it,” he said, referencing a student’s Trump hat, according to a recording of the outburst.

In the 1969 Supreme Court case Tinker vs. Des Moines, the court ruled in favor of students’ 1st Amendment rights after students who planned to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War were threatened with suspension. This ruling established the precedent that public school officials can’t censor student speech unless it substantially disrupts the educational process.

Teachers remain under stricter standards, and courts have held that a school may discipline educators for wearing T-shirts or buttons with political messages or slogans, and for putting up political classroom decorations.

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Wildfire smoke is polluting California, New York and beyond. Protect yourself

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Wildfire smoke is polluting California, New York and beyond. Protect yourself

The Santa Ana winds caused a massive wildfire this month in Ventura County, with stunning visuals of orange skies in Oxnard reminiscent of 2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although the Mountain fire is now just about contained (as is the Sandy fire in Monterey County), it was the most destructive fire to hit Southern California in six years, polluting air past Ventura toward Santa Barbara and beyond. With the Santa Ana winds and an ever-lengthening fire season, smoke could spread again through November and into December in Southern and Northern California, as happened in 2017 and 2018.

And it’s not just a West Coast problem: The Northeast is facing its worst fire season in more than a decade, prompting evacuations in New York over the weekend.

In affected areas, residents urgently need to protect themselves from inhaling wildfire smoke, which is comparable in composition to secondhand smoke without the nicotine. Hazardous smoke particles can cause or exacerbate heart and lung diseases miles away.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District recommends staying indoors and running air conditioners or air purifiers. This generic advice is helpful but does not go nearly far enough. There are five specific steps that can safely limit your exposure to the extreme levels of toxic particles during these large fires.

First, be informed. Local air quality monitors, the PurpleAir community scientist network and other online services can give a clear picture of particle pollution in your area. Handheld and desktop personal particle monitors are also available for purchase. You can’t rely on the sky’s color, which can be deceiving: In 2020, wildfires turned San Francisco’s sky dark orange, but air quality was actually worse after the sun returned and the skies looked more normal, because by then smoke particles were dropping closer to the ground, into the air people breathe.

Second, stay indoors and keep your windows and doors closed, which can reduce exposure to outdoor pollution by as much as half.

However, particles still seep through cracks, and closing windows and doors also traps exhaled breath, increasing the risk of spreading respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 or the flu. That leads to the third important step: Clean up the outdoor pollution that enters indoors, as well as potentially hazardous breath particles.

Central ventilation, even if it’s filtered, typically needs to be supplemented with appropriately-sized room air purifiers. In 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended at least five air changes per hour for occupied spaces indoors, and this month the California Department of Public Health reiterated this recommendation specifically for classrooms.

The number of air purifiers needed to meet this target varies based on the dimensions of the room, the model of air purifier and the speed and noise-level that occupants find acceptable for the purifier. High-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, purifiers running at five to 10 air changes per hour cost $1 to $5 per square foot for typical ceiling heights, and indoor particle exposure can be reduced by 10 to 50 times relative to the outdoors, depending on the rate of particles still seeping into the room once doors and windows are closed.

If getting purifiers for your entire home is daunting, you can focus on making at least one room safe, such as your bedroom. Low-cost (around $20) infrared motion switches hooked up to purifiers can conserve power and prolong filter life by switching air purifiers on when people enter the room and off with a time delay after they leave.

HEPA purifiers often sell out during peak wildfire season. A do-it-yourself purifier can be made in 10 minutes with more consistently available components, a box fan and a MERV 13+ furnace filter sold online, at a cost typically five to 10 times cheaper than HEPA options. Alternatively, even if lower-grade filters are the only ones in stock in stores or online, some filtration is much better than nothing.

Fourth, in addition to indoor safety, if you need to drive during smoky conditions, you can switch your car’s air system to recirculate. As a longer-term fix, in many cars you can also upgrade your cabin air filter to a HEPA model.

Finally, whether you’re outside or indoors without air purifiers, wear an N95, N99 or reusable elastomeric mask such as a P100, all of which are designed to reduce particle exposure from wildfire smoke by at least 20 times as long as they are fresh and fit well. If these are difficult to wear, especially when it is hot, ventilated industrial helmets with battery-powered fans and filters can be used more comfortably (although they tend to be pricey, starting at around $450).

As climate change intensifies, wildfires are likely to become more frequent and severe. Taking these precautions for wildfire smoke also protects against airborne threats such as respiratory diseases and pollution in general. Don’t wait until the sky turns orange to take action.

Devabhaktuni Srikrishna is an electrical engineer, founder of the air quality website www.patientknowhow.com and vice chair of control and mitigation for the American Assn. of Aerosol Research annual conference.

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Freddie Freeman’s grand slam ball could bring seven figures at auction

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Freddie Freeman’s grand slam ball could bring seven figures at auction

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind for Zachary Ruderman.

He’s the 10-year-old Dodgers fan who ended up with one of the most significant baseballs in team history — the one his favorite player, first baseman Freddie Freeman, hit for a walk-off grand slam during the 10th inning in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series against the New York Yankees.

Since then, Zachary has seemingly become one of the most famous people living in Venice.

“It’s a lot more attention than my son has ever had,” his father, Nico Ruderman, said. “He’s spoken to so many media outlets, so many interviews. People recognize him. I mean, literally everywhere we go people stop him and want to take pictures with him. He’s really actually been loving it. It’s been a fun experience for him.”

That experience is entering a new phase. On Wednesday, SCP Auctions announced the ball will be up for bid from Dec. 4-14. Coming just weeks after the Dodgers won their eighth World Series championship — with Freeman hitting four home runs and winning MVP honors, all on a badly sprained ankle — SCP founder and president David Kohler said his company thinks “the sky’s the limit” for what the auction could bring.

“We think this is gonna bring seven figures,” Kohler said. “We think it’s one of the most historic baseballs ever, with the moment of this World Series, the first walk-off grand slam, the whole story of Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers, Game 1, extra innings. Just everything about it. I mean, it’s one of the most historic moments in sports and we feel that people are going to appreciate that.”

Last month, Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home run ball was sold by Goldin Auctions for a record $4.4 million. Could the Freeman ball be worth even more than that?

Zachary Ruderman holds up Freddie Freeman’s grand slam ball with his parents, Nico and Anne, at his side.

“It could be. You never know,” Kohler said. “We’re gonna find out. Certainly the Ohtani ball was very, very significant and Ohtani is beloved, but this is more of the history of the game of baseball and just the moment — seeing that happen was just incredible.”

Zachary, along with his father and mother Anne, were part of that moment. After Freeman blasted his game-winning shot into the right-field pavilion, the ball rolled next to Zachary’s feet. The fifth-grader batted it over to his father, who pounced on it, stood up and handed it back to his son.

“They’re just amazing memories,” Zachary said Thursday, looking back on that night. “Like after we got it, no one was mad. No one was trying to take it from us. Everyone was just super happy.”

His father added: “We just feel so lucky and honored to be a small part of such a huge moment in Dodger history.”

The experience was so special that at first the family had no intention of parting with the ball.

“That night when we caught it we were like, ‘We’re gonna keep this forever,’” Ruderman said. “The problem is, if we keep it, we’re not gonna keep it in our house. I don’t want to pay for the insurance for it, so it would just be locked up in some safety deposit box. Nobody would ever see it.

Zachary Ruderman holds his Freddie Freeman grand slam ball while posing with L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park at City Hall

“Maybe [the auction] brings life-changing money and pays for education for our son, and also allows somebody with the resources to actually display it and show it to the world. We’re really hoping that whoever buys it agrees to display it at Dodger Stadium for some time so everybody can see it. That’s really our wish.”

Even with all the incredible experiences he’s had because of the ball — including his favorite, speaking in front of Los Angeles City Council at City Hall and receiving a certificate of congratulations from Councilmember Traci Park earlier this month — Zachary said he’s “really excited” about the auction.

“It’s probably going to be a pretty fun experience,” Zachary said.

“We’ve had our fun with the ball,” his father added. “At this point he cares more about the memories, the pictures. He loves reading all the articles and watching all the news stories about it. That’s what’s fun for him, not the item itself.”

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California bomb cyclone storm: When will rains hit L.A. area and how bad will it be?

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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California bomb cyclone storm: When will rains hit L.A. area and how bad will it be?

Northern California is being drenched by the first major atmospheric river storm of the season, with rain totals reaching well over 7 inches in many areas, and continued rain on Thursday stretching the threat for flooding and mudslides.

The slow-moving storm was strengthened by a so-called bomb cyclone, which describes how rapidly the system intensified in the Pacific before it moved ashore. By Friday, the rain will begin moving southward, and while forecasters are saying some rain is likely to hit Southern California by the weekend, it will be dramatically less than than what’s been seen north of the Bay Area this week.

Here is what we know:

Forecast

In Southern California, the chances for rain have been steadily increasing as the system advances, with forecasters now confident that the region could see measurable amounts beginning this weekend and into early next week.

Friday evening: Rain begins across the Central Coast.

Saturday: Light rains hit Los Angeles and Ventura counties in the morning and likely linger through the evening.

Next week: A second system is expected to bring the chance for rain again on Sunday, possibly through Wednesday, but the exact forecast remains in flux.

Conditions

On Saturday, Los Angeles and Ventura counties could see anywhere from a tenth to a third of an inch of rain. San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties could see up to an inch in some areas.

A second round of rain expected to begin Sunday could be “a little stronger than the first but still likely in the ‘beneficial rain’ category,” the National Weather Service said in its latest L.A. forecast. There are low chances of any significant issues like flooding in Southern California, forecasters said, though roads could be slick and snarl traffic.

Fire risk

The storm comes just two weeks after the Mountain fire destroyed or damaged more than 350 homes in Ventura County. That fire was fueled by dry conditions and intense Santa Ana winds.

“We’re thinking it’s going to be more of a beneficial rain,” said Bryan Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard. He noted this weekend’s rain could help ease some fire concerns, but likely will not eliminate those worries entirely.

Longer-term trends

Through at least the end of the month, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center is forecasting an increased chance for above-average rainfall across much of California, but predictions stretching into mid-December become less clear.

The latest three-month outlook through February, issued Thursday, still shows an equal chance for precipitation either above or below average across much of California — making it uncertain if the state could see a third consecutive exceptionally wet winter.

Matt Rosencrans, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center, said this first major atmospheric river doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about what to expect the rest of the rainy season.

It simply signals that “we have entered the rainy season for much of the western [U.S.], but a single event does not have much relation to the pattern in the next three to four months,” Rosencrans said.

“Atmospheric rivers and the storms that bring them are typical for the Pacific Northwest and California during the winter, and, as such, we expect some of them this winter,” he said. “However, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding how many and how intense these storms may be.”

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