The Brief

L.A. Olympics chief Casey Wasserman will remain at the helm of the 2028 Games, despite public outrage over his appearance in the Epstein files, the board of directors said Wednesday.

Wasserman has faced growing scrutiny in recent weeks after a trove of Justice Department documents included a series of flirty emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, from 2003.

The emails prompted five Los Angeles City Council members, two county supervisors and the city controller to call for Wasserman to step aside. Then, celebrities started dropping Wasserman's talent agency, including Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach.

The board of directors for LA28 — the private nonprofit organizing the L.A. Olympics — issued its first public response Wednesday morning.

The statement from the board's executive committee said that it had brought in outside counsel to review Wasserman's past interactions with both Maxwell and Epstein, and that Wasserman had cooperated with the review.

"We found Mr. Wasserman's relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented," the statement reads in part.

"The Executive Committee of the Board has determined that based on these facts, as well as the strong leadership he has exhibited over the past ten years, Mr. Wasserman should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful Games,” the statement continued.

Wasserman's connections to Epstein and Maxwell date back to 2002, when he went on a humanitarian trip to Africa arranged by former president Bill Clinton. According to LA28, "this was his single interaction with Epstein."

The emails between Maxwell and Wasserman came after that trip, in 2003. They include an exchange in which Wasserman writes to Maxwell, "I think of you all the time…So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?"

Wasserman was married at the time.

In a statement provided to other media outlets after those documents were released, Wasserman said he was "terribly sorry" for his association with Epstein and Maxwell.

This story will be updated. Check back for details.

Hiring grew a little warmer last month after a chilly year in 2025.

A report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday showed U.S. employers added a better-than-expected 130,000 jobs in January — but an annual update shows hiring last year was much weaker than initially reported.

The news comes amid worries that the nation's jobs engine has been sputtering. Employment gains for November and December were revised down by a total of 17,000 jobs.

Once a year, the Labor Department updates its jobs tally with more accurate but less timely information drawn from unemployment tax records. Wednesday's revision shows there were nearly 900,000 fewer jobs in the economy last March than originally counted. On average, employers added only 15,000 jobs a month in 2025.
"This does not remotely look like a healthy labor market," Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller said in a statement anticipating the revision.
Waller urged his central bank colleagues to cut their benchmark interest rate last month in an effort to prop up the sagging job market. But most Fed policymakers voted to hold rates steady in January, after three rate cuts last year.

Healthcare and construction led way

Healthcare and construction were among the few industries that saw significant job gains in January. The warehouses and transportation industry lost jobs, and the federal government continued to shed workers. Manufacturing added 5,000 jobs while hospitality added just 1,000.

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% the month before. That's quite low by historical standards. The unemployment rate among African Americans also fell, but remains elevated at 7.2%.

Some of the weakness in job growth last year may reflect a drop in the number of available workers. The Trump administration has slammed the door on most people trying to enter the country, while aggressively deporting immigrants who have been living in the U.S. illegally. At the same time, many native born baby boomers are reaching retirement age and leaving the workforce.

But Waller says that explains only part of what's weighing on the job market.

"Employers are reluctant to fire workers, but also very reluctant to hire," Waller said in is statement. "This indicates to me that there is considerable doubt about future employment growth and suggests that a substantial deterioration in the labor market is a significant risk."

A few years ago, there were two job openings for every unemployed worker. By December, that had dropped to less than one. That slack in the job market means employers don't have to pay as much to attract and keep workers. Average wages in January were up 3.7%, compared to a 3.8% gain in December.

The monthly jobs tally is usually released on the first Friday of the following month, but the January count was delayed a few days because of last week's government shutdown.

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Traffic collisions in Los Angeles killed 290 people last year, and more than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to Los Angeles Police Department data.

That means L.A. is far from the goal it set more than a decade ago of reaching zero such deaths by 2025. Still, there was a 6% decrease in traffic fatalities compared to 2024. That tracks with trends that appear to suggest traffic fatalities are dropping nationwide.

“I was happy to see the decrease, but I believe we can do better,” Lonyá C. Childs, commanding officer of the South Traffic Division of the LAPD, told LAist.

Childs said prioritizing education about safe driving habits and enforcement of speeding and red light rules could further reduce traffic violence in L.A.

Traffic fatalities claimed more lives in the city last year than homicides, which, according to police data, are also on the decline. At a January rally demanding action on traffic violence, L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez pointed to this fact and said the city’s political institutions aren’t doing enough to bring traffic fatalities down.

“They don’t act with the level of urgency that they would [when] something is more sensationalist,” Soto-Martínez said. “But every single day, people are dying in our streets.”

How does L.A. compare nationally?

The early 2020s saw a sharp increase in traffic deaths nationwide, which researchers hypothesize is due to drivers adopting riskier behaviors on the road. The rate of traffic fatalities grew at a faster rate during that time period in L.A. compared to the U.S. as a whole, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Preliminary federal data show signs that traffic fatalities are decreasing nationwide.

“So changes that we're observing now are, in my mind, the transition out of the peak that happened [during] the COVID-19 pandemic,” Matthew Raifman, a transportation researcher at UC Berkeley, told LAist.

Data from the LAPD indicate that 2025 is the second consecutive year that traffic fatalities on city streets have decreased, but they remain higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Raifman said that, generally speaking, a sustained decrease over a three- to five-year window is a strong indicator of increased safety on roads.

What is the city doing about traffic violence?

In 2015, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti adopted a policy framework known as Vision Zero to zero out traffic deaths by last year.

The city has so far invested nearly $350 million as part of Vision Zero, according to data from the office of the city administrative officer.

Most of that money has supported making high-priority corridors in L.A. safer through various infrastructure projects, public outreach and speed surveys.

The city has also invested $13.5 million under the Vision Zero umbrella to fund overtime for LAPD officers to conduct speed safety enforcement along city streets that see the highest number of traffic-related injuries and collisions.

An audit released in April 2025 found that a lack of cohesion across departments, an unbalanced approach and insufficient political will ultimately hampered the city’s Vision Zero program. In response, the L.A. City Council late last year approved a suite of recommendations to revamp the program. 

In a statement, the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said it “fully supported the implementation of the City’s new recommendations to strengthen traffic safety and achieve the goals outlined in Vision Zero.”

L.A. is expected to launch speed safety cameras throughout the city later this year. The program, which five other California cities are also piloting, will cite speeding drivers on dangerous roads.

The city’s Department of Transportation released the proposed locations for those cameras on Feb. 10.