The Brief

The family of L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Arturo Atilano-Valdez, who has now been identified as the fourth LASD employee to die by suicide in a 24 hour period, are expected to file a $20 million wrongful death lawsuit against the department and L.A. County.

His wife, Michele Atilano, and their two young daughters filed a government claim on Thursday, which is required before suing a government agency. The family is accusing the LASD and the county of forcing mandatory overtime that they say contributed to Deputy Atilano-Valdez’s death.

Brad Gage, the attorney representing the Atilano family, is also representing Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer’s family in their similar wrongful death claim.

“This is literally a life and death situation,” Gage said at a news conference Friday. “Deputies are being forced to work overtime in an amount that is unsafe – unsafe to them and unsafe to others.”

According to Gage, Deputy Atilano-Valdez was working regular double shifts, which meant he was getting home around 11 p.m. each night and waking up for work at 4 a.m. the next morning.

That took a “terrible toll” on him, Gage said, and Deputy Atilano-Valdez looked for relief from the LASD.

He had asked for different assignments and hours, but those requests were denied. Deputy Atilano-Valdez became despondent and depressed and asked the LASD for medical accommodations, but those were also denied, Gage added.

Michele Atilano said her husband was a “walking zombie” and had complained about feeling like “just another number” to the LASD. She said Deputy Atilano-Valdez also talked about seeing his friends in the department die, including Deputy Clinkunbroomer.

On Nov. 7, Michele Atilano and their daughters found Deputy Atilano-Valdez injured from a self-infected gunshot wound in their home. He died later that day in a hospital in Pomona, just weeks before his 50th birthday, medical examiner records show.

“What has happened in my family is going to continue happening to many other deputies being forced to work,” she said.

According to Gage, Sheriff Robert Luna and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors have known about the problems with staffing levels and forced overtime for years, but haven’t taken any action.

Gage also told LAist the Atilano family is planning on filing a government claim with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which is the precursor to a discrimination lawsuit.

They believe Deputy Atilano-Valdez was passed over for promotion and his requests for assistance were denied because he was a 40+ year old Latino man with disabilities.

L.A. County and the LASD will have 45 days to respond to each claim. If they are denied or ignored, Gage said they will be filing a lawsuit.

That lawsuit will be seeking damages for Michele Atilano and their daughters, but Gage said they’re also looking for change.

“We are here hoping that the Sheriff's Department will make real reforms,” he said.

In a statement, the LASD said a loss of a department family member is extremely tragic, and their continued thoughts are with the family during this difficult time.

“The department has not received the official claim but is deeply committed to ensuring the well-being and safety of all its employees,” the LASD statement said. “The department values its personnel who are dedicated professionals who work tirelessly to keep our communities safe.”

Every Sunday, crispy waffles, breakfast “stanwiches” and a wagyu pastrami brisket on rye await you at Stanley's, a to-go window on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood.

Michelin-starred chef Michael Tang has worked in renowned kitchens like Leopardo in Los Angeles and Quince and Saison in the Bay Area. But now he’s bringing fine-dining technique to nostalgic diner fare at his new pop-up, creating food that's, as he puts it, "approachable instead of esoteric."

The self-funded operation, which is named after his father, is all about embracing constraints: a to-go format, less expensive equipment, and tighter margins. For Tang, those limitations became creative fuel.

"I'm figuring out my voice and developing a style," he said.

The food: technique meets nostalgia

Tang has been obsessed with creating the perfect waffle for two years, aiming for something "fully crispy outside, moist inside, not overly dense." The result is a hybrid that borrows from Belgian Liège-style waffles, studded with pearl sugar that caramelizes on the hot iron, while using an American-style batter rather than dough, resulting in a lighter texture.

When I tried it recently, it was sweet and eggy, with the caramelized sugar creating pockets of crunch along crispy edges. It costs $5, yet comes with French Bordier maple butter. "Why serve something that doesn't taste special?" he said.

Meanwhile, for his $13 pastrami sandwich, he makes the pastrami himself, taking on a challenge others avoid. "The fridge space is insane for pastrami production," he said — one reason most restaurants outsource to specialty purveyors.

Stanley's pastrami sandwich: eight-day Tajima Wagyu brisket on Bub and Grandma's sourdough.

(

Courtesy Stanley's

)

His eight-day process starts with Tajima Wagyu brisket, brined to season the meat evenly without over-curing. After brining, he applies a custom spice blend, then smokes it over California red oak and almond wood.

The effort shows. Served on Bub and Grandma's sourdough, Tang offers fatty or lean slices — I asked for both. I'm picky about pastrami in Los Angeles (it's hard to nail unless you're Langer's), but Stanley's version delivers: meaty, flavorful, with a proper fat ratio that doesn't turn greasy.

Tang also offers a vegan pastrami made from celery root, which takes four days instead of eight because vegetables are more porous. The choice wasn't random: celery root, apple, and horseradish, topped with a miso mustard that adds brightness, pairing well with the pastrami spices. I sampled it alongside the Wagyu version — it was delicious and substantial enough to satisfy anyone, vegan or not.

The sleeper hit

But the revelation came from an item Tang recommended I try: the Shumai Slam, also $13. The shrimp-and-pork croquette on a Martin's potato roll didn't initially catch my eye — until I noticed the steamed egg.

The Shumai Slam didn't initially catch my eye until Tang insisted I try it.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

As the name suggests, the shrimp-and-pork filling is an ode to Cantonese dim sum, with familiar notes of Shaoxing rice wine, soy sauce and sesame oil. That alone would be impressive, but the steamed egg elevates it entirely.

Tang steams eggs in a hotel pan until they look almost like cheese slices, then lays them across the sandwich. The result is velvety smooth and intensely eggy, elevating the entire sandwich beyond its humble components. I haven't stopped thinking about it and now I want steamed eggs on all my breakfast sandwiches.

Sourcing with purpose

Stanley's breakfast beverages.

(

Courtesy Stanley's

)

The housemade sodas, sourced through farmers' markets, use "seconds" — bruised peaches and imperfect fruit still good for juicing. The coffee soda, made from a local roaster, tastes more like an espresso tonic: robust, cool, refreshing. I'd order it again, despite not being a regular cold brew drinker.

On good days, Tang and business partner Ivana Ruslie pay themselves minimum wage if they hit about 55 customers per pop-up. The rest of the week, they hustle through consulting work, private dinners, and R&D projects.

It's the new chef playbook: multiple income streams instead of single paychecks, community over prestige, sustainability over stars. Tang's redefining success on his own terms — though he admits he wouldn't say no to an angel investor with brick-and-mortar dreams.

California is among several dozen states that have thus far resisted the Trump administration’s demands for access to sensitive information, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers, about tens of millions of voters. Earlier this month, a federal judge in L.A. dismissed the administration’s lawsuit against California, saying the federal government doesn’t have a right to the personal information of the state’s 23 million voters.

But that’s unlikely to be the end of the battle: the Trump administration has nearly identical lawsuits pending against 22 other states and the District of Columbia.

In the most recent episode of the LAist podcast Imperfect Paradise, we examined what’s behind the Trump administration's quest to collect voter data. What could be done with that information? And why are election officials in California and around the country resisting the federal government's demands?

Here are some highlights of that conversation, edited and expanded for clarity, between Imperfect Paradise host Nereida Moreno and LAist correspondent Jill Replogle.

Before we dive in, what’s the topline here? 

The U.S. Department of Justice says it needs states’ complete voter files to make sure states are preventing voter fraud. But critics worry the government has other motives, including trying to amass a national voter file that could be used to attack political opponents, and cancel the registrations of legitimate voters.

Jill, you've reported on local politics in Southern California for years. How and when did this battle between California and the federal government over sensitive voter data begin? 

I'm based in Orange County and I've covered quite a few elections there. Orange County's election system and the Registrar of Voters is really top-notch and super well-respected around the state.

But recently a couple of very big things happened in Orange County that election integrity skeptics would say confirmed their suspicions that our election systems are not as secure as officials make them out to be.

Let's talk about those. What happened?

Well, the most scandalous one was the voting dog. A woman in Costa Mesa named Laura Yourex registered her dog Maya to vote and then actually voted for the dog in the 2021 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the 2022 presidential primary.

Just to be clear, did the dog walk into a polling place or, like, how did they vote?

No, but fair question. Yourex just registered the dog to vote and then she turned in the ballots that were sent out in the dog’s name.

Yourex essentially turned herself in last year. She was ultimately charged with five felonies and she could face six years in state prison. She said she did it to expose flaws in the election system.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer talks about election security at the county registrar's office on Feb. 26, 2024.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

And what was the second thing that happened that fueled these concerns about voter fraud? 

We have to back up a little for this one. Michael Gates, the former city attorney of Huntington Beach, was contacted by a resident in October 2024 who said that their father-in-law, who was not a U.S. citizen, had received a ballot.

A few months later, Gates gets a job in the Trump administration's Department of Justice, and one of the first things he does is request records from the Orange County Registrar of people removed from the list of registered voters because they weren’t citizens.

Page, the Registrar, gives him 17 records of people removed since 2020 because they didn't meet the citizenship requirement. But he redacts sensitive information, including their driver’s license and Social Security numbers, per state law on elections and privacy.

And then the DOJ sues the Registrar to get access to that redacted, sensitive information. Soon after, the DOJ sues California for its entire, unredacted database of registered voters, about 23 million people. To date, the federal government has sued 24 states and the District of Columbia for their voter data. The Brennan Center for Justice is tracking the issue.

In California, federal Judge David O. Carter recently ruled that the federal government is not entitled to that data. A judge in Oregon made a similar, tentative ruling. But all the other cases are still pending.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page outside of the main office in Santa Ana.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

Why are states pushing so hard against this request for their voter data?

I think, in part, it speaks to the increasing partisan divide in everything, including how we run our elections. There are some states that have handed all of this data over willingly to the federal government. They're all red states.

Most, but definitely not all, of the states that have resisted handing over the data are blue states.

The states that are resisting have several main reasons. For one thing, the Constitution grants states the responsibility to determine how they run elections, not the federal government. Elections are very clearly a state power.

Another thing is that California law and similar laws in many other states prohibit those states from sharing private information about their voters.

Also, these states say federal election law, and the federal Privacy Act, prohibit the federal government from collecting this kind of data without providing a very specific reason. Under the Privacy Act, the government also has to give public notice before they collect data, they have to say how they're going to use it, and they have to provide an opportunity for public comment.

Elections experts and voting rights advocates have also weighed in on the debate. What have they told you about the federal government’s push to collect this data?

One of their major questions is, what does the federal government plan to do with the data? The Trump administration hasn't clearly answered that question. According to critics, a big suspicion is that they want to use it for immigration enforcement.

Bob Page, the Orange County Registrar of Voters, explains election operations to a group of reporters on Feb. 26, 2024.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

Officials have gone back and forth when asked if they plan to share this data with the Department of Homeland Security. But here's how that could work. There's a database run by the Department of Homeland Security called SAVE that's essentially a citizenship check. They could run all this voter data through that system to try to crosscheck whether there are non-citizens voting.

But there are questions about the accuracy of SAVE. In fact, one of our NPR colleagues recently reported on naturalized citizens who have been improperly flagged in this system as not being eligible to vote and have had their registrations canceled.

So there's a concern about voter suppression, and about people who actually are eligible to vote being removed from voter rolls improperly.

It’s important to note that state election officials and county election officials are constantly removing people from registration rolls who died or moved out of state. They're adding people who are registering to vote. They're changing people's addresses. It's a super dynamic system. And some experts, including Eileen O’Connor with the Brennan Center, expressed doubt that the federal government could do that better than individual states:

O’Connor and others also told me they worry that the federal government could use the data to promote false claims about election fraud, and to target political opponents.

A glimpse at part of the ballot counting process at the Orange County Registrar of Voters

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

There’s also a big concern about amassing that much data, right?

Yes, from states and from privacy experts. If the federal government is, indeed, trying to compile a national voter file, that's something like 75% of Americans (of voting age). Just imagine what a gold mine that would be for a hacker.

And there have been some questions about how seriously the Trump administration takes data security. The Washington Post recently reported that a DOGE employee improperly shared Americans’ private social security data with an outside political group, with the aim of overturning election results in some states. The Justice Department admitted to this in a court filing in a whistleblower case.

Earlier this month, Judge Carter agreed with California in his ruling dismissing the government's demand for voter data. What did he say in his ruling? 

Judge Carter essentially scolded the Justice Department for trying to use legislation intended to prevent voter suppression during the civil rights era to try to “amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data.” He largely agreed with many of the concerns laid out by California and other states, and voting rights advocates. And he said further:

Carter also echoed some of the deeper concerns expressed by critics of this effort by the Trump administration, including that the government could use the data to spy on everyday Americans. The Privacy Act was actually put in place in response to Watergate and counterintelligence programs, where the government was spying on folks like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the Black Panthers, on anti-war protestors, on Black Americans, in general.

Carter said the Trump administration’s demand for California voters' data violates the Privacy Act.

What is likely to come next in this battle? How does this get resolved?

Judge Carter said from the beginning that he wanted to make a ruling quickly under the assumption that the case would be appealed and could eventually make it to the Supreme Court. If that happens, the Supreme Court could have the final decision on whether the federal government gets access to voter data from California and all the other states it has sued.

Can we go back to those 17 people in Orange County who were removed from the voter rolls. That incident kinda kicked off this whole battle for voter data, at least in California. How did those people get registered to vote in the first place if they weren’t citizens? 

Most people in California register to vote through the DMV. In fact, you are automatically registered to vote when you get a license or change your address unless you opt out, or indicate that you are not eligible to vote.

Basically, you have to check a box saying that you are a citizen. You attest, under penalty of perjury, to being a citizen. That’s required under federal election law. But you don’t have to prove it.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon has vowed to root out voter fraud and "make our elections great again."

(

Andrew Harnik

/

Getty Images

)

These 17 people removed from the rolls, all but one self-reported that they were ineligible to vote. So it’s possible they made a mistake at the DMV. (The one who didn’t self-report, a Canadian citizen, was charged with four felonies for casting ballots in the primary and general election in 2016.)

Still, some people argue that checking a box attesting to citizenship is not a serious enough safeguard against people who are not eligible to vote actually registering to vote, and perhaps voting. And President Trump has put some of the most vocal critics in positions of power.

Well, how big of a problem are incidents like the 17 non-citizens registered in O.C. and the voting dog? 

On the one hand, 17 people out of about two million registered voters in the county is not a lot. On the other, some elections are won by very slim margins.

Still, many well-respected experts on elections, including Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor, say there’s no indication of widespread election fraud. Yes, we could put in more requirements to guard against fraud, but it would likely come at the expense of shutting out, and at the least, making it more difficult for eligible people to register and vote. Levitt has this analogy he likes to make to put it in perspective:

If we do decide we want more safeguards, Congress could pass a law. In fact, there’s a bill in Congress right now that would amend the National Voter Registration Act to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in a federal election.

But there's still a really big debate about how expansive, how easy versus how hard we want to make it for people to vote. There's a history in this country of making it very difficult for certain people to vote, especially Black Americans.

After the civil rights era, federal rules were put into place to try to encourage participation, to make it easier to vote. And so there's a big question of whether we want to go backwards.

California voters might get a chance to weigh in on this debate in the fall, when we're likely to have a voter ID measure on the ballot. That measure is asking people whether we want to require people to show a photo ID when they vote, or to include the last four digits of a government issued ID on their mail-in ballot.

It also would require the state to try to verify people's citizenship. So that'll be a real test of how Californians feel about this issue.

After the horror epic Sinners made Oscar history Thursday by garnering 16 nominations — including Best Director for Ryan Coogler and Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan — Angelique Jackson, senior entertainment writer at Variety, told LAist's AirTalk the director was "completely blown away."

Jackson said she spoke with Coogler and his co-producers after the news of the nominations broke.

“They were just completely blown away by the number of nominations, especially getting a few first-timers in there for some of their stars, like Michael B. Jordan,” she said.

Jackson added that Jordan, who has been working since he was a child and has delivered a “blockbuster movie star performance,” had been left out of the Oscars race until now.

Sinners, a mashup of vampires and blues music set in 1930s Mississippi, surpassed Titanic and La La Land for nominations, followed by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which received 13 nominations.

Sinners was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score.

Other standout nominations

Thirty-year-old Timothée Chalamet, nominated for best actor for his role in Marty Supreme, also made history as the youngest man with three nominations to his name.

KPop Demon Hunters was nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, “Golden,” which spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The film is up against Disney’s box office hit, Zootopia 2 for the Best Animated Feature category.

“The phenomenon that KPop Demon Hunters has been, this just makes us all the more excited for what we’re going to see on that Oscars stage come March,” Jackson said.

Elle Fanning, who has been acting since she was a child, also received her first Oscar nomination at age 27 for her role in Joachim Trier's film, Sentimental Value.

Topline:

The project: The Australian-based developer HMC Capital Strat Cap wants to build a nearly 250,000-square-foot data center in the Saturn business park.

The opposition: Residents voiced anger and fear about a data center bringing noise and air pollution to the city, and consuming vast amounts of energy. Also, they blasted city officials for not publicizing the project more and questioned the motives behind the developer wanting to site a data center in a majority Asian and Latino city with many immigrants.

What’s next: City officials will draft a potential outright ban on data centers during the 45-day moratorium. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for HMC Capital Strat Cap who was at Wednesday’s meeting said the developer has been hearing residents’ concerns and would move forward with plans to hold a town meeting with them in the next couple weeks.