They dubbed themselves online as the “rickandmortyshop” and shipped stuffed animals across the country, but federal investigators allege the suspects behind the darknet business were shipping toys filled with methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin.
Jerrell Eugene Anderson, 34, of Santa Clarita, the alleged leader of the ring, was sentenced Thursday to 96 months in federal prison for the scheme, the U.S. attorney’s office announced.
Anderson and his co-conspirators used darknet marketplaces to sell the drugs, prosecutors allege, shipping the stuffed animals from U.S. post offices. The darknet is a part of the internet that can be accessed only through special software.
On the darknet, the ring advertised its illicit business with monikers such as “Drugpharmacist” and “rickandmortyshop,” in reference to the popular adult cartoon, according to prosecutors.
The group used stash houses in the San Fernando Valley to deliver the drugs hidden in stuffed animals.
The scheme ran from at least July 2018 until March 2019.
In August 2018, prosecutors allege, one of those packages reached a customer in Knoxville, Tenn., who died after using the heroin.
Anderson pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, one count of possession of heroin with the intent to distribute, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
Other defendants in the investigation, including Christopher Canion Von Holton, 37; Kenneth Lashawn Hadley, 37; Adan Sepulveda; and Jackie Walter Burns, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
The Los Angeles Superior Court will be implementing a lottery system to manage the eager crowds vying to watch convicted murders Eric and Lyle Menendez return to the court to seek a downgrade to their charges, possibly leading to their release.
The brothers, who were convicted of murdering their parents almost 30 years ago, will attend a Monday morning hearing at the Van Nuys Courthouse West for a petition filed by their attorneys that seeks to downgrade their conviction from first-degree murder to a lesser charge, such as manslaughter.
Just 16 public seats are available for the much-anticipated hearing, which comes on the heels of a recent Netflix documentary and a dramatized show that helped fuel a resurgence of public interest in the brothers’ case.
Lottery tickets will be distributed outside the courthouse from 8 to 9 a.m. Monday and the drawing will be conducted between 9 and 9:30 a.m., the Los Angeles Superior Court announced Thursday.
Sixteen winners will be issued badges to watch the hearing, which must be worn at all times and are valid only for the date issued. Winning tickets are nontransferable, and anyone who attempts to pass on their ticket will be deemed ineligible for the lottery.
Two standby tickets will also be drawn and allocated to seats should space become available. Standby tickets do not guarantee access to the courtroom. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m., and any members of the public who are late risk losing their seats.
Such lottery systems are not unusual for high-profile cases. The court implemented a lottery system for those who wanted to get seats to the double-murder trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995.
A lottery system was also adopted for those who wanted to watch in person the 2013 trial in which the family of pop singer Michael Jackson accused concert promoter Anschutz Entertainment Group of being responsible for the singer’s death in 2009.
The brothers were sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without parole for the 1989 slaying of their parents, a crime they admitted to. Prosecutors argued that the killings were motivated by the boys’ desire to secure their $14-million inheritance. The defense team argued that the boys were acting in self-defense, following years of sexual abuse by their father, Jose Menendez.
Monday’s hearing will focus on a petition that could pave the way for the brothers’ release.
The habeas corpus petition filed last year by their attorneys argues that new evidence bolsters the defense’s allegations that the brothers were victims of sexual abuse.
This evidence includes a letter that attorneys say Erik Menendez wrote about the sexual abuse he endured as a teenager prior to committing the killings as well as new claims brought forward by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, who said he too was raped by Jose Menendez.
Separate from the habeas corpus petition, L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has requested that a judge resentence the Menendez brothers, a move that could end with the brothers being granted parole.
But, the recent unseating of Gascón by Nathan Hochman in the Nov. 5 election could throw a wrench in this second possible avenue of relief for the brothers, as the hearing to consider the resentencing is scheduled for Dec. 11, days after Hochman will assume power.
The newly elected district attorney has said the Gascón-backed resentencing of Erik and Lyle Menendez is among several high-profile cases he intends to review.
Gov. Gavin Newsom headed to the Central Valley on Thursday to tout his forthcoming jobs plan, saying California’s economic might was “cold comfort” to regions that feel like they don’t fully participate in the state’s muscular output.
The substance of the governor’s announcement was incremental. But the set piece — a liberal politician standing in front of heavy machinery, talking blue-collar jobs in a county that backed President-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 5 — appeared to be a response to the election, in which Democrats took a drubbing after critics said they were out of touch on economic issues.
“Some people talk about, ‘This economy is booming, inflation is cooling, lowest unemployment in our lifetimes. …’ All that may be true, but people don’t feel that way. They feel like the economy is not supportive,” Newsom said in an appearance at a Fresno community college, identifying that gap as a “point of emphasis” in the election.
Newsom characterized the work in places like the West Fresno campus’ apprenticeship program as an “antidote” to that economic disconnect.
During the last Trump administration, Newsom burnished his national profile by casting himself as a crusading foil to the then-president. He revisited those skirmishes in the days after the 2024 election, announcing a special session of the Legislature to prepare for potential Republican-led attacks on abortion rights, environmental protections and disaster funding.
The governor sounded some of those same notes while fielding questions Thursday, saying that Trump broke the law and “vandalized our progress” last time he was president.
But Newsom also walked a careful line, positing that he had worked more closely with Trump early in the COVID-19 pandemic than any other Democratic governor had, and saying that he didn’t care how his own constituents had voted.
“I care about Trump supporters. I care about RFK Jr. supporters. I care about Tucker Carlson supporters. I care about Charlie Kirk supporters. I care about Ben Shapiro supporters. I care about all people,” said Newsom, a Democrat who is widely seen as a potential contender in the 2028 presidential contest.
Hours before he spoke in Fresno, the governor’s political action committee, Campaign for Democracy, sent out an email to supporters, seeking feedback on “the steps Democrats need to take in order to claw back some of these losses in the next election and beyond.”
In a New York Times interview, Newsom said that he would soon be visiting deep-red Kern and Colusa counties, which are also in the Central Valley, and that he understood the message being sent by voters worried about their economic future.
Democratic political strategist Andrew Acosta said Newsom should have taken a clue from the mixed results in his own reelection in 2022.
“To me, there was a message sent two years ago when he lost in a lot of these same places by pretty substantial margins to a Republican who didn’t really run much of a race,” Acosta said.
Acosta noted that Newsom’s record had been used by supporters of GOP Rep. John Duarte in advertisements against Democratic challenger Adam Gray in the Central Valley’s nail-biter battle for California’s 13th Congressional District, which remains too close to call.
The governor seemed keenly aware Thursday that Californians — regardless of whether they lean red and listen to “The Ben Shapiro Show” or keep the radio dial in their Prius tuned to the airwaves of NPR — share a common concern: the cost of living in an extraordinarily expensive state.
A survey conducted in mid-October by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California pinpointed the economy, including jobs and the cost of living, as the most pressing issue for state residents.
Those results held across geographic, party and demographic lines. But Central Valley residents had a particularly grim view of the state’s economic outlook, with more than two-thirds of respondents saying they foresaw bad times ahead in the next year. Central Valley residents were also the least likely to see hope on the more distant California horizon, with under 1 in 3 saying they thought the state was headed in the right direction, according to the Public Policy Institute’s survey.
Newsom said the seed of inspiration for his jobs plan was sown when he was lieutenant governor, and saw how the California dream had frayed in many places.
“I felt like coastal parts of the state were doing well, but at the end of the day, there was a different story that was being told all across the state,” he said.
The governor laid out the structure for his upcoming “California Jobs First Economic Blueprint,” which will be released in full early next year.
The San Francisco-bred politician has made a habit of sojourning to more conservative swaths of California after major elections.
In 2019, on his first full day in office, Newsom toured areas with a high fire risk in Placer County, a historically red section of Northern California‘s Gold Country. And he held a news conference with his wife in Fresno County shortly after winning reelection in 2022.
For years, many residents in the working-class, mostly Latino communities of Sun Valley and Pacoima thought they were going crazy as doctors were unable to figure out why they were plagued with frequent headaches, nausea and nosebleeds.
It turns out they were being gaslighted.
Staff at the L.A. Department of Water and Power hid their knowledge of a long-standing methane gas leak at the utility’s Valley Generating Station for at least a year. Lawyers allege they hid it for several years.
Now, seven years after elevated methane levels were first detected at the station, some 1,200 people who lived, worked or went to schools nearby will share in a $59.9-million settlement reached with the city, according to information provided by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
A lawsuit was filed against the city of Los Angeles and its Department of Water and Power on behalf of residents in December 2020. It alleged that the DWP failed to adequately inspect or repair equipment, or to notify residents of leakages during the 1,085-day period when community members were potentially exposed to methane and other toxic chemicals.
Although a full settlement agreement has yet to be reached, Jason Fowler, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Times that his law firm was notified that the DWP board and the L.A. City Council had signed off on the $59.9-million settlement figure as of Nov. 6.
“This is a community of hard-working families, and they were ignored for years,” he said. “People were complaining of headaches, nausea, none of them knew where it was coming from — nobody knew other than the LADWP.”
“For an underserved community, I think this [settlement figure] shows that no longer will they be undervalued,” he continued, “and it definitely brings at least the start of justice to this community.”
The DWP says repairs to the power plant that lies between Sun Valley and Pacoima were completed in 2020.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Fowler said the division of money was still being worked out under the settlement agreement, which he anticipates being finalized by the end of the year and approved in court around six to eight months later.
A DWP spokesperson said the utility had reached a settlement in principle but noted that the settlement was not final and that the utility generally does not comment on ongoing litigation.
The spokesperson also pointed out that the utility completed repairs on all affected equipment at its Valley Generating Station in 2020. DWP shares real-time monitoring of methane levels at the station in an online dashboard, which has shown no leaks since modified packing seals were installed in December 2020, the spokesperson said.
The Valley Generating Station is located on 150 acres in the San Fernando Valley between the communities of Sun Valley and Pacoima and generates electricity for Greater Los Angeles by burning natural gas.
According to the complaint, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory first detected gas being emitted by the station in September 2017 and notified the utility. DWP staff have previously said that JPL didn’t alert them right away but waited until later aerial surveys showed the leak had worsened.
DWP staff first notified the public, and its own Board of Commissioners, about the methane leak in an August 2020 meeting, despite having determined a full year earlier that there was leakage because of a worn seal. One utility staffer said in 2020 that the plant’s compressor units had been leaking gas “for the last couple years.”
Andres Ramirez, policy director of Pacoima Beautiful, stands before graffiti scrawled at the power plant in September 2020.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
General manager Marty Adams told the DWP board in August 2020 that the utility had a plan in place to fix the compressors later in the year but decided to go public because JPL had detected the leak as part of an aerial survey, and “their information is getting more publicized.”
The lawsuit complaint alleges that, after the leak became public knowledge in 2020, the utility deliberately delayed measuring methane levels to conceal the extent of the problem.
“Testing took place only after defendant initiated repairs at the station,” states the complaint. “To mask the true levels of gas emissions and create a misleading optic, defendant deliberately avoided testing during the periods of peak emission.”
In January 2021, the South Coast Air Quality Management District gave the utility a notice of violation over equipment identified as the source of the multiyear methane leak. The utility responded to the violation with a statement saying all necessary repairs had been completed and the leakage had stopped.
Methane gas can have serious health effects and is 86 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit reported suffering numerous health problems, including shortness of breath, headaches, confusion, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, seizures, decreased coordination, drowsiness, visual disturbances, depression, anxiety, inability to sleep, allergies, seizures and asthma, according to the complaint.
“This remarkable settlement will bring much needed relief and justice to these overlooked communities who were continuously poisoned for years,” said attorney R. Rex Parris in a statement. “We are proud of the results and for holding the city accountable for this catastrophe.”
Times staff writer Sammy Roth contributed to this report.
Whooping cough — a highly contagious and potentially dangerous illness — has surged in California this year, staging a comeback to levels not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Across California, there were fewer than 300 reported cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, all of last year. This year, there were 1,744 reported cases statewide as of the end of September, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Those at highest risk from whooping cough are infants younger than 1 year old, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other people at higher risk of severe illness include those who are immunocompromised or who have moderate-to-severe asthma.
In Los Angeles County, there have been 347 confirmed and probable whooping cough cases so far this year, up from 126 reported in all of 2023 and more than quadruple the 2022 total.
Nationwide, the number of reported whooping cough cases in 2024 is higher than what was reported in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, many common respiratory illnesses saw large declines in transmission — in part because of the preventive measures put in place to combat the coronavirus.
So far in 2024, the number of whooping cough cases in Los Angeles County is 3.5 times higher than at the same point last year.
“We’re definitely noticing that more and more schools are reporting several of their students having infection,” said Dr. Nava Yeganeh, medical director for Vaccine Preventable Disease Control for the L.A. County Department of Public Health. “We’re keeping a close eye on that and trying to make sure we can do whatever we can to decrease the number of pertussis cases.”
Whooping cough typically surges every three to five years. “So, we’re overdue,” Yeganeh said. “Our last big spike was in 2019. … We aren’t quite to where we were in 2019, so we’re grateful for that, but really keeping an eye on the numbers.”
Los Angeles County reported 1,691 confirmed, probable and suspected whooping cough cases in 2019.
One of California’s worst whooping cough seasons in recent memory was in 2010, when more than 9,000 cases were reported — the most in 60 years, according to the California Department of Public Health. Ten infants died from the disease that year. Four years later, more than 11,000 cases of whooping cough were reported across the state, and two infants died.
The last infant to die from whooping cough in L.A. County was in 2014.
Whooping cough can be a pernicious disease that starts out like a cold, but then takes a severe turn with coughing that persists for weeks or months, according to the CDC. An infected person’s cough contains contagious bacteria, which can be breathed in by anyone nearby.
People are contagious as soon as they feel sick and remain so for at least two weeks after they begin coughing. Antibiotics can help shorten the infectious period and reduce the rate of disease transmission.
Whooping cough is named for the high-pitched whoop that can be heard as patients suck in air after coughing. Some people describe whooping cough as producing the worst coughing fits they’ve ever experienced.
“It’s really hard to watch, because it looks like they can’t catch their breath,” Yeganeh said.
Those who have these symptoms should get tested and treated, and stay home to prevent spreading the disease.
Whooping cough can be devastating for infants. It’s possible for babies to not cough and instead suffer from apnea — pauses in breathing that threaten their lives, according to the CDC. The babies can turn blue as they struggle to breathe.
Infants can also suffer from something called pulmonary hypertension — when blood isn’t getting through the arteries en route to the lungs to pick up oxygen. The pertussis toxin can trigger a reaction that produces a high white blood cell count, Yeganeh said — potentially causing sludging in the blood vessels leading to the lungs.
“It takes a long time to reverse,” Yeganeh said.
Schoolchildren can also get very sick, she said, with coughing so severe they can’t sleep. And adults can sometimes cough so hard that they fracture their ribs.
There are vaccines for whooping cough. As early as 2 months old, babies get a formulation called DTaP, which besides pertussis also protects against diphtheria and tetanus. The whooping cough vaccine in a different vaccine formulation, called Tdap, is given to adolescents at age 11 or 12 and to adults every 10 years.
Additionally, starting in 2012, women were recommended to get a whooping cough vaccination during every pregnancy. Pregnant, vaccinated moms then pass protective antibodies to their babies.
Also, everyone who is caring for infants should be vaccinated against whooping cough, Yeganeh said.
The vaccine doesn’t prevent 100% of infections, but those who are vaccinated and still get sick typically have milder illness, according to the CDC.
Those who have been exposed to someone with whooping cough — but are not yet sick themselves — can also get antibiotics to boost protection against illness. The CDC supports providing such post-exposure prophylaxis to all asymptomatic household contacts within 21 days of when a whooping cough patient starts coughing.
“About 80% … of people who are in the household [of a person with whooping cough] could get infected,” Yeganeh said.
A Times analysis of state data from the start of the year through the end of September shows that the greater San Francisco Bay Area has the highest per capita rate of whooping cough in the state, with 17 cases for every 100,000 residents. That’s higher than the statewide rate of 5 cases for every 100,000 residents.
The greater Southern California area has a whooping cough rate of about 4 cases for every 100,000 residents.
The Bay Area’s high rate is largely driven by high reported case rates in Marin County, where there have been 129 cases for every 100,000 residents. There were a number of cases related to transmission in schools earlier this year, but the number of cases has been declining since September.
The high reported case rate in Marin County could also be influenced by robust testing practices.
San Diego County has the second-highest case rate in the state, with 14 cases for every 100,000 residents, according to the analysis of state data.
According to local data, there have been 547 confirmed and probable whooping cough cases in San Diego County so far this year, up from 332 cases in all of 2023, officials said. Whooping cough patients have ranged in age from less than 1 month old to 85, with most cases between age 11 and 17.
“Pertussis activity continues to increase, and we are seeing an upswing in cases on track to returning to pre-pandemic numbers,” Dr. Ankita Kadakia, the interim San Diego County public health officer, said in a statement.
The rate in Los Angeles and Orange counties is about 2 whooping cough cases for every 100,000 residents, according to the analysis of state data.
Through October in Orange County, there had been 74 cases of whooping cough, the county Health Care Agency said in a statement. That’s up from the 11 cases in 2023, but still below the 185 cases seen in all of 2019.
The $254,000 that Chispa spent in this year’s most expensive U.S. House race barely registers as a drop in the proverbial bucket.
The money, which the Santa Ana-based nonprofit used to campaign for Democrat Derek Tran against two-term Republican incumbent Michelle Steel in the 45th District, represents just 0.6% of the more than $46 million raised by the candidates and independent expenditure committees.
Yet Chispa’s quarter-million-and-change — which paid for mailers, digital ads, phone bankers and canvassers targeting Latino voters in a district that swings from Brea to southern Los Angeles County and ends in Little Saigon — might prove one of the most consequential sums dropped in Orange County politics in decades.
If Tran wins the incredibly tight race — he’s 480 votes ahead of Steel as of this columna’s publication — the first-time candidate will have clawed back a House seat for the Democrats, leaving the once redoubtably red county with one GOP congressmember.
Chispa, founded in 2017 to train young Latinos to push for progressive change, will have succeeded outside its base for the first time, showing that O.C. is entering a new political era — despite MAGA’s takeover of Washington.
In the 24 years I’ve written about my birthplace, I’ve seen local Latino activists fundamentally transform their attitude toward electoral politics. Those I came of age with largely eschewed politics, out of a sense of progressive purity. But they eventually followed the lead of a new generation that pushed elected officials to take up causes like immigrant rights and government transparency.
Now, I’m seeing the latest batch of do-gooders help on successful campaigns or even run for office themselves. Most of this evolution has happened in Santa Ana, which has shifted from a city run by centrist Democrat Latinos to a progressive beacon with a City Council that is as apt to call for a bilateral cease-fire in Palestine and Israel as to declare itself a sanctuary city.
O.C. Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento thought Chispa was an “unassembled group of young people” when he served on the Santa Ana City Council last decade. But he was impressed enough with their advocacy on matters like police reform and rent control to use their help on his successful 2020 mayoral campaign and supervisorial run two years later.
“They started with policy,” said Sarmiento, who donated $5,000 to Chispa’s eponymous PAC. “Then they realized they could help candidates. They realized they had trust in the community because they had delivered on big promises.”
Tran’s team declined to comment about Chispa’s efforts in the 45th, which wasn’t surprising: Political campaigns aren’t allowed to communicate with independent expenditure committees. But Chispa’s involvement in the race shows that santaneros can take their strategies outside their hometown — and win.
Democrat Derek Tran, who is hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in California’s 45th Congressional District, center, has lunch with supporters including Westminster city councilman Carlos Manzo, right, at Carrot and Daikon Banh Mi in Westminster in August
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
I caught up with four staffers — founder and executive director Hairo Cortes, operations director Jennifer Rojas, policy director Boomer Vicente and communications director Hector Bustos — earlier this week. They’re such kids that both Vicente and Bustos deadpanned “before my time” when I asked about Santa Ana council races from 20 years ago.
Their youth, however, belies resumes worthy of a political machine.
The 32-year-old Cortes cut his teeth organizing undocumented youth like himself soon after graduating from Santa Ana High. Vicente, 29, ran for an Assembly seat in 2022, while Bustos — the youngest at 25 — won his Santa Ana Unified school board seat that year. Rojas, also 32, was an ACLU organizer for seven years before joining them in 2023.
Chispa — which means “spark” in Spanish and is also the name of a popular dating app for Latinos — registered as a 501(c)(4), unlike other prominent O.C. progressive nonprofits. That allows the group to endorse candidates and organize independent expenditures. Cortes said he had political power in mind after the Santa Ana police union began to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle to put their favored candidates on the City Council.
“We realized that we couldn’t keep doing policy work only for one election to roll back everything we had worked on,” he said.
Progressives took over the Santa Ana City Council and school board in 2022, thanks in part to Chispa and other groups. Last year, that alliance helped Councilmember Jessie Lopez defeat a recall attempt where she was outspent 8-1. Chispa leaders were planning to focus on Santa Ana again — until the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
“We were texting on a group thread,” Cortes said with a bitter laugh. “’This is a disaster, this is bad, we’re f—.’”
He knew Orange County had several tight congressional races that could determine control of Congress. So he talked to allies about whether Chispa should wade into those face-offs. One person he hit up was Mehran Khodabandeh, development director for the Working Families Party’s California chapter and a longtime political strategist. Khodabandeh suggested that Chispa create a super PAC and focus on one race.
“I told Hairo, ‘Y’all have the bona fides and you have the trust of your community, so why don’t you do this?’” Khodabandeh said. “They didn’t need someone to say, ‘I can do the work for you — pay me.’ They needed someone to give them money to do it for themselves.”
Chispa focused on the 45th because it bordered Santa Ana, and Rep. Steel — who was born in South Korea — had long been a vocal critic of illegal immigration. They saw that Latinos were 30% of the district’s population yet ignored by both Steel and Democrats. Cortes and his colleagues had never been involved with a political action committee, so they leaned on people like Khodabandeh for advice.
I asked the four if creating a super PAC — long decried by good government types as befouling democracy — violated their values.
“We know it’s dirty,” Vicente said. “But we realized that in order to play this game, we need to do these [independent expenditures].”
“Without us engaging in that fundraising, we are not harnessing the same level of power that our opponents have been driving,” Rojas added.
“And it’s going to happen with or without us,” Bustos concluded.
Santa Ana Unified School District trustee and Chispa communications director Hector Bustos poses for a portrait in Santa Ana. He and other members of the nonprofit helped bring out the Latino vote for Democrat Derek Tran in his campaign for the 45th congressional district seat held by Republican Michelle Steel.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
They did most of the work from home — “We’re young. We don’t need to be in an office,” Cortes cracked — and coordinated with some of the other PACs that poured millions of dollars to support Tran against Steel. Connections with local activists allowed them to easily find volunteers. But Chispa quickly realized they had to adapt to their new terrain, Vicente said.
In previous Santa Ana campaigns, “we talked about all the good stuff we had done,” Vicente said. “For the 45th, we talked about what Derek could do. The issues were different, too. In Santa Ana, you talk police accountability. In the 45th, drug pricing was important.”
Do they think Chispa made a difference?
Vicente pulled up stats on his smartphone: 166,532 phone calls. 18,348 texts. 12,928 doors knocked. 5,745 voters who said they were going to pick Tran.
“Derek cannot win without the Latino vote,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Those are folks that we talked to.”
“All of the orgs on the ground played a big role in where we’re at,” Rojas acknowledged. “But considering how small the margins are, our work plays a role in that.”
“We lacked this knowledge for young people to run PACs,” Bustos said. “Well, we did it — and I hope more do their own here.”
After I talked to the chispitas, I drove to the offices of Unite Here Local 11 in Garden Grove, which also helped Tran. Inside a gazebo, Chispa field program director Joesé Hernández gave a pep talk to his team of canvassers, who were going to “cure” votes — visit people whose ballots were initially disqualified to let them know they could fix the error.
Hernández is a veteran of Santa Ana’s activist scene, working on local campaigns and as Orange County co-regional director for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential run. I first met him early last decade, when he was part of Occupy Santa Ana and a volunteer for the Santa Ana-based nonprofit El Centro Cultural de México.
“The idea to kick out money out of politics was naive,” the 40-year-old told me earlier that day. “That’s just not the reality that we exist in, and it’s not going away anytime soon. So we come into a gunfight with fists? No, we need to come in with enough money to fight.”
Hernández was less pugilistic in front of the canvassers.
“The 45th was going to come down to Latino engagement,” he told the five Latinas, some of whom had come from as far away as Perris. They snacked on chips and sipped on coffee to warm up in the evening chill. “A lot of people we spoke to had never been approached by any politician. There was extreme cynicism. But we reached out.”
The women nodded.
“That’s the cool thing about this team,” Hernández said, smiling. “We’re not new to the issues but new to this game. But those voters we reached out to see themselves in us, and we see ourselves in them.”
Homicide investigators arrested a 19-year-old suspect after four people were fatally shot and left inside a burning Lancaster home in the early hours of Saturday morning, authorities said.
Miguel Sandoval of Lancaster was arrested on suspicion of murdering Edwin Garcia, Christine Aca-ac, Matthew Montebello and Janvi Maquindang, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. His charges will be presented to the L.A. County district attorney’s office for filing consideration on Monday, investigators said.
L.A. County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters responded to a call for service in the 44500 block of Tabler Avenue in Lancaster at 1:27 a.m., authorities said. Upon arriving, they found a one-story home in flames.
What was found inside was grisly — three men and a woman, all described as in their 20s, bleeding from gunshot wounds, authorities said.
Three victims died at the scene, while a fourth was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, according to the Fire Department. Firefighters extinguished the blaze shortly after 2 a.m., at which time the cause was under investigation.
Investigators said a fifth person, a 16-year-old girl, was also home at the time of the incident but was not injured, according to ABC7. She called 911 and hid in her bedroom before being rescued by deputies.
Investigators believe it was an isolated incident and no further details are being released about the case at this time.
Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500 or report an anonymous tip at (800) 222-8477.
Jake, a tawny 2-year-old mutt in L.A.’s West Valley shelter, wasn’t doing well.
After six months at the shelter, he was running back and forth and jumping in his kennel.
So shelter workers put him on the euthanasia list in September.
“With the current staff we are unable to fulfill his enrichment needs and it is inhumane to continue housing in a shelter environment,” the workers’ notes said.
The number of dogs euthanized in animal shelters run by the city of L.A. has skyrocketed this year.
From January to September, 1,224 dogs were euthanized at the city’s six shelters — a 72% increase compared with the same period a year ago, according to a Times analysis.
The number of dogs entering the shelters has increased each year since 2022. But the number put to death this year has far outpaced the population gain. The euthanasia rate for dogs increased from 5.5% last year to more than 8% this year during the January-to-September period.
About 1,517 cats were euthanized through September— a 17% increase from a year ago.
In overcrowded shelters where dogs can go weeks without a walk and may live in feces-covered kennels, some animals start behaving poorly and suffer “mental and emotional breakdown,” according to a report by Best Friends Animal Society, a rescue group that has long worked with the city shelters.
That makes them less likely to be adopted — and more likely to be euthanized.
The city’s euthanasia list, available on its website, shows that Jake and some other dogs are being sentenced to death not because they are seriously ill or arrive with severe behavioral issues but because the chronically understaffed and underfunded shelters cannot meet their basic needs.
Agnes Sibal, a spokesperson for LA Animal Services, the city department that runs the shelters, pointed to an “overcrowding crisis” with “nowhere to house incoming dogs.”
“This means that dogs with behavioral challenges are more likely to become at risk of euthanasia,” Sibal said.
After Mayor Karen Bass took office in December 2022, she vowed to save animals’ lives and make L.A. “a national model for animal welfare.”
She boosted the Animal Services budget by 18% — much lower than the 56% increase sought by the department — then trimmed the budget slightly the following fiscal year. She also hired a new general manager, Staycee Dains, who had run Long Beach’s shelters.
In September, Best Friends announced it was withdrawing an offer of financial support to the city, stating that it would take several million dollars in funding to other shelters that “demonstrate a greater sense of urgency and commitment to save at-risk pets.”
“The current administration squandered the advantages it had inherited and did not invest in capacity building, foster programs, animal wellbeing, public and staff safety and customer service,” Best Friends said in a statement.
Gabby Maarse, a spokesperson for Bass, said in an email that “as a result of urgent work,” about 25,000 animals were adopted or rescued from the shelters — a 17% increase from the same period last year.
The city has made investments to “expand the roaming cat spay/neuter program, increase overall spay/neuter, hire critical staff members, make improvements and repairs at the six shelters, and deal with critical safety issues,” Maarse said.
Despite the higher euthanasia rates, most animals still leave the city shelters alive, whether they are adopted, taken in by rescue groups or claimed by their original owners. The “save rate” was 91% for dogs and 81% for cats this year through September.
Shelters across the country are dealing with an influx of animals, as high rents and the rising cost of veterinary care lead people to give up their pets.
From January to September of this year, 33,028 dogs, cats and kittens entered L.A. city shelters — an 11% rise over the same period last year. Dogs made up nearly half that number.
Still, the L.A. shelters were even more crowded pre-pandemic. During the first nine months of 2019, more dogs and cats entered city shelters than in the same period in 2024, the Times analysis showed. Yet euthanasia rates were lower for both dogs and cats in 2019 than this year.
Sibal, the Animal Services spokesperson, said that more large dogs are coming into the shelters than in previous years and they are staying for longer periods. Larger dogs can take up to twice as long to get adopted, exacerbating overcrowding and leading to more euthanasias, she said.
Visitors walk past dog kennels at the Chesterfield Square animal shelter in August.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Because of the lack of space, some dogs have been living in crates in hallways and staff rooms, Sibal said.
Earlier this year at the city’s West L.A. shelter, two puppies were housed in the room where animals are put to death. Sibal called the situation unusual and said the intent was to protect the puppies from contracting diseases.
In June, shelter volunteers emailed Bass’ office to question the city’s euthanasia policies.
Dogs that had been labeled adoptable to the public were now being marked for euthanasia, the email said. And some dogs that had been described as friendly were re-categorized as available to rescue groups, but not the general public, because they were now deemed to have behavioral issues.
“The result is a conveyor belt pace of killing happy, healthy dogs falsely labeled as unadoptable,” the email said.
Asked if the city’s euthanasia policies had changed, Sibal wrote that the agency is seeking to ensure “public safety and humane animal care.”
“We must also do this while balancing overcrowding and fulfilling community needs,” Sibal said. “Our commitment to lifesaving has not wavered.”
Jill Dyché, executive director of the rescue group Outta the Cage, regularly visits the city’s shelters. Some dogs that have fought with other dogs are isolated and then listed for euthanasia, while others are not, she said.
“The euthanasia policies are still very fuzzy,” she said. “It seems to be a moving target.”
In a 16-page report documenting conditions in the East Valley and Chesterfield Square shelters this summer, Best Friends criticized Dains, the Animal Services general manager, as the “biggest barrier” to improving conditions at the shelters.
The shelters lacked written protocols, and the staff reported that the euthanasia policy “changed five times in the last year” without communication about the changes.
The report also detailed ways to reduce the number of dogs in city shelters. The solutions ranged from helping owners keep their pets to better customer service for potential adopters to letting adopters take dogs home before returning for spay or neuter operations.
The report described lengthy stays for dogs at the Chesterfield Square shelter, with little human interaction and possibly “two weeks or more before they get any extended time outside of their kennels.”
From January to September of this year, 33,028 dogs, cats and kittens entered L.A. city shelters — an 11% rise over the same period last year.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
One dog named Olive Oil left her kennel only 14 times during a 240-day stay and was on the euthanasia list before being rescued, the report said.
The report also noted that “solid organic matter” is sometimes not removed from kennels and that some kennels were not cleaned beyond spraying them with water, with the dogs still inside.
At the East Valley facility, a worker “continuously” sprayed a brown female dog in the face while cleaning her kennel.
“Attempting to run to the back of the kennel, the dog fell repeatedly,” the report said.
City officials declined to comment on the Best Friends report, and Dains declined to talk to The Times. Dains, who earns about $272,730 annually, went on paid leave earlier this year and hasn’t returned.
City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who volunteers at the shelters, has used social media to highlight the higher euthanasia numbers and criticize city budget decisions.
A large portion of the city’s $5.9-billion operating budget goes to the Police Department, which received $1.9 billion this fiscal year. Animal Services received about $30 million.
Mejia told The Times that “everyone at City Hall” knows about the understaffing and crowding issues at the animal shelters, yet Bass and most of the City Council backed budget cuts for the department this year.
“The city needs to do more to protect the animals, department staff and the public — not just let the animals suffer deteriorating health in our shelters and end up getting euthanized,” Mejia said.
Animal welfare consultant Kristen Hassen, whose firm was recently hired to assess the shelters, said at a commission hearing this week that L.A.’s Animal Services is among the lowest-funded large shelter systems in the country. She said she witnessed two staff members at the Chesterfield Square shelter being responsible for feeding dogs in 275 kennels as well as cleaning the kennels.
Without enough staff, there is “inconsistent cleaning and feeding” and “ongoing illness” at the facility, Hassen said.
Hassen told the Animal Services commissioners that it’s not clear to her why more cats are being killed by the city. She described the higher euthanasia rates among dogs as an “over-correction” by the department to deal with behavioral problems and serious biting incidents.
Hassen, along with other animal welfare and academic groups, will partner with the city to improve shelter conditions, Bass’ office announced last month.
Jake, the 2-year-old dog that was slated for euthanasia after shelter staffers acknowledged they could not meet his needs, is no longer listed on the Animal Services website.
Roger, a 6-year-old tan and white Kangal shepherd mix, was put on the euthanasia list this fall. He was showing signs of fear, anxiety and stress and “is cautious and fearful around new people,” his staff notes stated.
The dog was taken out for “enrichment” — either walked or taken to the playground — 10 times in his five months at the South L.A. shelter.
“We are unable to supply Roger with the resources he needs and keeping him in the concrete kennel is inhumane for a 6-year-old senior dog,” the notes said.
When James Sears came back to work in the Los Angeles Mall in the fall of 2022, he hoped he wouldn’t be alone. He had been away from his shoe repair shop for a year and a half.
The mall, across the street from City Hall in the Civic Center, was a wasteland, its walkways empty, the food court and most restaurants locked or boarded up. Except for some palms and other trees, the landscaping had been reduced to dirt. The fountains were dry.
Sears, 81, tried to be patient. He dusted the counters and chairs. He cleaned up where there had been a water leak, and he waited. But no one came. One day, he posted a handwritten note and slid shut the steel gate.
CLOSED
Will reopen when people start to wear shoes.
Sears’ decision reflects a truth about downtown Los Angeles that is forcing small businesses, landlords and property managers to think hard about the future. With buildings standing empty and shops still boarded up, the traditional use of space is no longer viable.
James Sears inside his shoe repair shop on Flower Street in the Financial District. Sears had another shoe repair store in the Los Angeles Mall across from City Hall, but it is closed now.
Sears repairs a heel in his shop.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles Mall is unique in both design and ownership. It is located below street level — two sunken courtyards connected by a broad tunnel under Temple Street — and is owned and managed by the city of Los Angeles, which once counted on the income from tenants like Sears.
Sears has stopped paying rent, and while the city has forgiven what he owes, its Department of Water and Power has not. His past-due for utilities is about $4,000, he said.
Absent any activity, his shop stands frozen in time: a commendation from the city and a photograph of his father on the wall, racks of shoe polish, laces and an empty gumball machine.
The city is “welcome to do what they want with it,” he said. “But what are they going to do?”
The city is wrestling with that question, which is relevant not just for Sears’ shop but also for the mall and the Civic Center, roughly 12 blocks around City Hall with courts, police and sheriff’s headquarters and city transportation, records and licensing agencies.
“The pandemic has changed many things related to work in the city of Los Angeles,” said Blair Miller, a principal project coordinator with the Los Angeles Department of Economic and Workforce Development. “It may continue to alter how we work going forward, compared to before the pandemic.”
‘Nothing has changed but its obsolescence. It’s still functional, just not popular.’
— John Sheppard, retired senior real estate officer for the city of Los Angeles, on the Los Angeles Mall
A man eats lunch in the deserted Los Angeles Mall.
Miller also leads her department’s real estate group, whose responsibilities include evaluating surplus and underutilized properties — at the request of the City Council — that have potential for redevelopment.
Once bustling with city employees — and residents needing city services — these few blocks lying in the shadow of City Hall have been made desolate by telecommuting options and online access to municipal departments. The customers who supported the mall have largely disappeared, and few believe they will ever come back.
“Used to be that you couldn’t walk out there without bumping into somebody,” said Sears. “It was that crowded.”
Sears’ father, David, opened the shop in 1987 for his son to run. It was the family’s second shoe repair shop. The city charged about $800 in rent, and during a good year, Sears earned up to $90,000 before expenses.
Sears Shoe Repair remains closed in the Los Angeles Mall.
Sears remembers when mayors — Tom Bradley, and later Richard Riordan — passed by and when then-LAPD Chief William Bratton needed a repair. Business first started to drop off when longtime customers retired and no one took their place, he said.
Now, since the COVID-19 pandemic — with a decreased need for office space and an increased need for housing — the city may want to start to think about “repurposing the Los Angeles Mall and surrounding properties … whether they could be reused in a way that revitalizes the whole area,” Miller said.
Proposals for the redevelopment of the Civic Center go back almost 30 years, but the 2013 closing of Parker Center, the former LAPD headquarters, led to an ambitious plan that called for new offices, apartments and retail space linked by a series of paseos east into Little Tokyo.
The plan, unveiled in 2017, was shelved just before the pandemic, a fortuitous turn that is now allowing planners to adapt to a radically different city.
The Los Angeles Mall downtown is nearly dead.
A new report and analysis is expected to be presented to the City Council early next year, said Miller.
Opened in 1975, the mall was the Civic Center’s crown jewel.
Almost two blocks long, between First Street and the 101 Freeway, the mall took $70 million and 17 years to complete, part of an ambitious overhaul that included the construction of the 18-story City Hall East.
Critics argued at the time that a municipally owned and operated shopping mall would never work, but the Los Angeles Mall opened with a nearly 80% occupancy rate.
Its success was attributed not only to the number of people working in the Civic Center (36,000, second only to that in Washington, D.C.) but also in details meant to entice shoppers. Artists were commissioned to design sculptures and water features. The subtropical landscaping cost more than $6 million.
John Sheppard, retired senior real estate officer for the city of Los Angeles, stands in the street-level courtyard above the Los Angeles Mall.
John Sheppard, a retired senior real estate manager for the city, was fascinated by the mall after moving to Los Angeles from Washington, D.C., almost 40 years ago.
The fountains were flowing. A street musician played to lunchtime crowds, and during the holidays, lights festooned the parapets.
“Nothing has changed but its obsolescence,” he said. “It’s still functional, just not popular.”
The mall is an elegy for what mid-20th-century politicians and progressives imagined downtown Los Angeles could be: a city with a vibrant core, accessible by freeways, anchored by a City Hall with encomiums inscribed above entrances exalting the public good.
Time is frozen on the face of the antique clocks positioned in the courtyards. The towering Triforium, the art piece that brought music and lighting to the public space, is quiet. Drought has withered the palms, and the escalators are still.
Some customers still make their way down the stairs. At lunch, Rafiq Karim does brisk business at the Lotto convenience store, its windows covered with announcements of “big winners.” For anyone buying scratchers, he will happily wave his hand over the cards for good luck.
Karim has worked here for 15 years, cutting back his hours when foot traffic fell off. By midafternoon, he’s often ready to close.
A Mediterranean restaurant is one of the few remaining businesses in the Los Angeles Mall.
Bob’s Big Boy is now California Pita, whose grand opening in 2007 occasioned a commendation from then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The manager, Manuel Arvea, 38, has worked here for six years. He wishes that parking were less expensive and that the city would open up the restrooms for those living on the streets, who often sleep on the benches.
Repurposing has been the city’s approach to the vacancies. The Children’s Museum is now an interim homeless shelter. The CVS is now a storage facility. The Hallmark store houses the city’s Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department.
Other city departments — mail services, moving services, the city employee benefits association — work out of former stores and provide a glimpse of what the future might be.
“We’re exploring whether it’s financially feasible to convert some of the other space into hoteling space for city employees,” said Yolanda Chavez, an assistant city administrative officer.
Hoteling — when employees have a common work space rather than dedicated desks — would better accommodate “the new world we work in,” she said.
The city is about to issue a telecommuting policy. Once departments work out their schedules, Chavez said, her team will reallocate office space in the mall.
The city is looking to revitalize the Los Angeles Mall.
Some city employees have been working in leased buildings throughout downtown. The mall provides an opportunity to eliminate that expense.
“We’re trying to make the best use of our city space so that we’re not paying for private leases,” said Chavez.
By realigning the workforce, the city is forcing a greater question about the Civic Center. While the first impulse — given the housing crisis in Los Angeles — may be to build more housing, followed by commercial and retail development, there are other factors to consider, Miller said.
If city employees return to the Civic Center, businesses like Sears Shoe Repair might see more customers. But a civic center isn’t just a commercial destination. It is an expression of how civic leaders and citizens frame a city’s identity.
Creating that identity today, said Miller, is “a balancing act.”
“We need to take a look at what makes effective city government — in terms of the public accessing services, in terms of interaction of city employees, building relationships and knowledge across departments,” she said. “Once you’re looking at that, then you need to ask: How does your space work with that?”
Meanwhile, Sears, who scoffs at the idea of retirement, goes to work each day at the store his father opened in 1973 on Flower Street in the Financial District. Business is better there, he said.
Whatever the city’s plan, he hopes to keep a store in the Civic Center and would like to be relocated on street level, where more customers will find him — once they “start to wear shoes” again.
SACRAMENTO — Even in a state known for crafting first-in-the-nation progressive laws and leading on reproductive rights, men have long outnumbered women in the California Legislature.
The Capitol’s male-dominated culture was evident when hundreds of women spoke out about sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement. Then came the shocking image of a masked lawmaker carrying her newborn into the Assembly chambers during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic because she was denied a request to work remotely after giving birth.
It wasn’t until 1989 that a woman wore pants on the Senate floor, after a fed-up lawmaker defied the Capitol dress code on a cold day in Sacramento.
But now gender equality in California’s Capitol is nearer than ever, after voters elected a record number of women to the Legislature. When lawmakers are sworn in on Dec. 2, women will hold 59 of the Legislature’s 120 seats.
“They have an opportunity to exert power in a way that hasn’t been done before,” said Susannah Delano, executive director of Close the Gap California, which works to elect progressive women. “There’s a difference between lip service and good policy that is really vetted by the people who are going to be impacted, and women have a track record of powerful listening and inclusive, responsive solutions.”
The new record, with women holding 49% of legislative seats, marks a vast increase over the last decade. Women’s representation in the California Capitol is up from nearly 31% in 2020 and 25% in 2016, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. In 1980, just 9% of California state lawmakers were women.
For years, California has lagged behind other states — including Nevada, Arizona and Colorado — when it comes to legislative gender equity.
The change in Sacramento was fueled in part by major turnover in the Legislature this year, creating new opportunities for candidates to run without challenging an incumbent. More than a dozen of the newly elected women won seats held by men, many of who were forced out of office by term limits.
It comes after a majority of Californians voted for Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Trump and some are still reeling from the loss of what could have been America’s first female president.
Newcomer Sade Elhawray, a Democrat from South Los Angeles who is replacing termed-out Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, is among the record number of women who will meet for a special legislative session in Sacramento next month to devise new ways to shield the state from Trump’s federal agenda.
She pointed to Trump’s history of sexual misconduct allegations that include a jury finding him liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, which Trump has described as a “made-up, fabricated story.”
“Women in the Legislature are really going to be on the front lines as we look to both hold Trump accountable and protect Californians from all the things that might happen. I think we have to suit up,” Elhawray said. “We still suffer from the evils of sexism in such a real way.”
While Democrats are praising the gender gains as a way to further secure liberal priorities such as abortion rights, Republicans are also celebrating.
Suzette Valladares, a former assembly member who is replacing termed out Sen. Scott Wilk (R-Saugus) for the Santa Clarita Valley Senate seat, said working moms like her are well positioned to address Californians’ escalating concerns over the cost of living because they are attuned to family budgets and child care fees.
“When I served in the Assembly, we had a women’s caucus that truly was bipartisan. We made a conscious effort to support each other’s bills,” she said. “I think it’s going to produce some amazing pieces of policy.”
It’s hard to say if the shakeup in the Legislature will produce tangible reforms. California has already passed equal pay laws that do more to close salary gaps between men and women than most states and is home to the most stringent sexual consent requirements.
But some priorities of the Legislative Women’s Caucus have stalled as California faced a multibillion dollar budget deficit, including a bill that would have expanded Medi-Cal coverage of diapers vetoed last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cited cost concerns.
Marva Diaz, a political strategist who mostly represents female candidates, said identity politics remain important to California campaigns despite the drubbing Democrats took nationally in this election, in part due to Trump’s strategy of appealing to young men.
“You recognize that you are different and that you are missing at certain tables. We need more women CEOs. We need more women in the business sector,” Diaz said. “I think that it’s going to take women in the Legislature in order to make that progress.”
The California Legislative Women’s Caucus was formed in 1985 and its founding members include Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, a trailblazing and powerful member of Congress, and Rose Ann Vuich, the first woman elected to the state Senate who was known to ring a bell each time her colleagues in the Capitol addressed members as “gentlemen.”
State Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) made history in 2018 when she became the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to serve as the leader of California Senate. She was the first woman to lead both houses of the state Legislature, having also served as speaker of the Assembly.
Now, she’s one of three women who have declared a run for governor in 2026.
Only men have ever served as California governor. Atkins said it is overdue for voters to put a woman in the state’s highest office, and not just for representation purposes.
“I think it matters that there are women in this race. I actually think women govern differently,” Atkins said. “I think we think about the bigger picture.”
