The Brief

Business owners told Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass they felt abandoned by the city as a fire tore through a cold storage facility in Boyle Heights last month, forcing storefronts to close, driving potential customers away and leaving many unsure of what was in the air they were breathing. 

“We closed for two days, our workers were asking what to do, and we didn’t know,” said Francisco Valderrama, co-owner of Picaresca Barra de Cafe. “The lack of communication was the most insulting.”

During a roundtable discussion with about two dozen Boyle Heights business owners and street vendors inside Picaresca Tío Pepe on July 2, Bass and District 14 Councilmember Ysabel Jurado acknowledged communication failures in the city’s response to the weeklong warehouse fire and pledged to improve communication while exploring ways to help businesses recover. Boyle Heights Beat was the only media outlet invited to attend the meeting.

“I think it took us too long to get out there, and that’s something that we want to rectify now,” Bass told attendees. “We should have gone out door-to-door on day one.”

Jurado also acknowledged the challenges of responding to an emergency of the fire’s scale. 

“I’m still freshman over there [at City Hall] and figuring out how to deal with an emergency of this caliber,” she said. 

Businesses say communication fell short

Business owners criticized the city’s response, saying it was too slow and relied too heavily on social media to reach the people most affected.

Business owners told Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass they felt abandoned by the city as a fire tore through a cold storage facility in Boyle Heights last month, forcing storefronts to close, driving potential customers away and leaving many unsure of what was in the air they were breathing.

“Maybe a post on Instagram worked for a younger crowd, but for this community it doesn’t,” Valderrama said. 

Bass agreed the city should have done more. 

“You’re right, we could have done better communication on the grassroots level, that took a while before we did that,” Bass said.

Business owners offer solutions

Several businesses suggested the city should work directly with neighborhood businesses during emergencies.

“Why not come to us?” asked Judy Diaz, owner of El 7 Mares, a Mexican seafood restaurant with locations in Boyle Heights and East L.A. Diaz said businesses could help disseminate information to their customers and the surrounding community during a crisis. 

Jeanette Flores, owner of Super Pollos Rostizados, agreed, adding, “There’s only so many people that work for you, but you know, we would willingly do it.” 

Flores suggested that the city create a hub for business owners to get live updates on issues that may affect their regular operations. 

Bass appreciated their offer and said she would consider relying on local businesses to reach more people. “It’s not that I didn’t come; I wouldn’t have known to come, honestly,” Bass said.

Ana Perez, a local business owner who helps operate Café Café Mobile Coffee and Macheen out of Milpa Grille, said businesses are still struggling with slow foot traffic, higher utility bills from running multiple air purifiers and limited parking due to construction along the Cesar Chavez Avenue corridor.

Business owners told Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass they felt abandoned by the city as a fire tore through a cold storage facility in Boyle Heights last month, forcing storefronts to close, driving potential customers away and leaving many unsure of what was in the air they were breathing.

(

Issac Ceja

/

for Boyle Heights Beat

)

She urged the city to provide a credit to cover the cost of businesses’ energy bills and suspend parking enforcement to help them recover. 

In response, Bass pledged to speak to the general manager of the Department of Water and Power (DWP) to discuss what can be done about utility bills and call the Department of Transportation to “suspend parking enforcement.” She said the boundaries would be determined at a later date. 

“We cannot leave this community with the damn DWP bills, which are high,” Bass said. “We have to figure out what we’re going to do around that. I don’t have an answer for you today, but I guarantee you I will get an answer.”

Jurado told Boyle Heights Beat that she will be working with the city’s Community Investment Department to explore waivers or subsidies to give affected businesses some financial relief.

The Beat has reached out to Bass’ office for more details on her commitments and will update this story when they become available. 

Business owners told Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass they felt abandoned by the city as a fire tore through a cold storage facility in Boyle Heights last month, forcing storefronts to close, driving potential customers away and leaving many unsure of what was in the air they were breathing.

(

Issac Ceja

/

for Boyle Heights Beat

)

Another setback for local businesses 

For many business owners, the fire is the latest in a series of economic setbacks.

“For you in particular, small businesses, we know that it’s kind of like y’all can’t catch a break,” said Jurado. “You barely recovered from COVID. I mean, since the time I was in office last summer, it was the [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids and this summer, in this neighborhood, it was the fire.” 

Jurado and Bass said the city will continue meeting with businesses as recovery efforts move forward and pledged to hold Lineage and the companies responsible for the impacts of the fire.

The post Bass admits communication failures after Lineage fire, promises help for businesses appeared first on LA Local.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury caused by the ride.

The Southern California theme park said Tuesday that it is permanently shuttering the ride after nearly 20 years. Six Flags recently settled a wrongful-death lawsuit from the family of a 22-year-old man who died after riding the coaster in 2022, and three more lawsuits alleging traumatic brain injuries were filed last week.

“While X2 consistently passed a multitude of safety tests, we have decided to close the ride because we believe it’s the right thing to do,” park President Brian Oerding said in an online announcement. “Ride safety is a cornerstone of our business, and when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.”

The ride has been closed since the evening of July 12, after two women who rode the coaster less than a week apart both needed to be rushed to the hospital after they exited.

One of them, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson, collapsed shortly after the ride ended and was found to have massive brain bleeding inside the skull that required emergency brain surgery. She remains in a vegetative state in the hospital, unable to speak or move and dependent on a ventilator. Her family filed a lawsuit against Six Flags on her behalf.

Her attorneys said more than 100 people claimed they suffered brain injuries from the roller coaster in the past two years, and more lawsuits would be filed in the coming weeks.

According to the Six Flags Magic Mountain website, the X2 roller coaster reaches a top speed of 76 mph (122 kph) and has a total length of 3,610 feet (1,100 meters). The seats rotate 360 degrees “so your body will be flipping around the entire time,” and the ride features two “raven turns” — half loops that turn into sheer drops midway.

It debuted at the park in 2002 under the name X as the world’s first “fourth-dimension” roller coaster and reopened in 2008 as X2 with new trains and special effects. The uniqueness of the ride drew thrill-seekers from around the world and garnered a fervent fanbase.

The park settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old who died the day after he rode X2. He was taken to the hospital after the ride with severe brain bleeding. The medical examiner’s office said his death was from blunt head trauma. The case was settled at the end of August, a few days before the trial was scheduled to start.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the administration to resume, for now, deportations of migrants to countries that are not identified in their removal orders, handing President Donald Trump another victory in his aggressive immigration agenda.

The court also said it would take up the case for full oral argument in December.

The court's brief order granting the petition did not outline a reason for staying a lower-court order that blocked the third-country deportations. It noted the court's three liberal justices objected to staying the order.

Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices the third-country deportation policy amounted to "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens" in court papers earlier this month. The administration said it has used the policy to deport tens of thousands of noncitizens to Mexico and countries in Africa and Latin America after the migrants' home countries refused to accept them.

"While certain aliens may benefit from stalling their removal, the Nation does not," Sauer wrote in an emergency application Sept. 24.

The action by the high court marks the third time the justices have rejected efforts by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston to pause the deportations, which the judge said violate due process rights and fail to give detainees meaningful notice to raise arguments that they have credible fears of torture or abuse in the countries where they could be sent.

The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is representing migrants facing deportation, said in court papers that their clients are facing significant harms.

"The record shows that class members removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present country-specific protection claims have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection," wrote lawyer Trina Realmuto. "These harms cannot be undone."

The Department of Homeland Security said Murphy's rulings have created a logistical nightmare, including canceled flights, potential diplomatic clashes, and a lag in removing people convicted of assault and drug crimes.

The administration argued that if a country has assured Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it will not engage in persecution or torture, that should be enough to deport a noncitizen to a country that's not their own.

The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority has recognized the president has substantial authority over the border. Last summer, in a 6-to-3 decision, the court ruled President Trump has sweeping power to end the temporary protected status program for people who can't return to their home countries because of wars and natural disasters.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The bell had already rung on a recent morning at Newport Beach’s Ensign Intermediate School. But two of the school’s students hadn’t made it to class. Instead, they were sitting on a sidewalk across from campus, detained by a police officer for parking their e-bikes on the street.

The situation at Ensign has gotten messy since the school district, Newport-Mesa Unified, voted to ban e-bikes from middle and elementary school campuses, citing safety concerns. Many students kept riding their e-bikes to school anyway, parking them in swarms in the surrounding neighborhood.

The neighbors did not like this. Shouting matches ensued between students and homeowners. At least one student returned from class to find her tires deflated.

The city responded to the tension by putting up “No e-bike parking” signs on several streets.

The city of Newport Beach prohibited e-bikes on some streets around Ensign Intermediate School after neighbors complained.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

“I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood either, like, I get it,” said Corey Gulbranson, who got a $100 parking ticket on behalf of his daughter, one of the Ensign students detained for allegedly illegally parking her e-bike. “But at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our kids to school on a legal mode of transportation.”

Crucial teen commuting tools? Or dangerous devices?

E-bikes and significantly more powerful e-motorcycles have become very popular in many Orange County suburbs, where the streets are wide, public transit is spotty, and distances are longer than some are willing to pedal on a regular bike. For teens and tweens, e-bikes provide a taste of independence. They also relieve parents of some of their driving duties. Plus, e-bikes can replace polluting cars.

But their popularity has brought an alarming increase in serious injuries, especially among young riders.

At Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, e-bike crashes are now sending more kids to the ER than any other cause, according to Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the hospital’s trauma medical director. More than 70% of those patients had some level of head injury, from minor concussions to devastating brain damage, he said, often because they were not wearing a helmet.

But even Takeuchi recognizes the nearly irresistible draw of e-bikes.

“If you ride one, you realize how easy it is to go everywhere with it,” he said.  “I am not by any means surprised at how popular this is, especially amongst kids.”

‘Bicycle-shaped devices’

Not all e-bikes are equally fast, or equally dangerous. California uses a three-tier system, developed by the bike industry, to classify e-bikes depending on:

• engine power
• max speed
• whether the bike has pedals 
• whether a cyclist has to use those pedals before the engine kicks in 

California law prohibits children under age 16 from riding Class 3 e-bikes with engines capable of reaching 28 miles per hour. In reality, though, many kids are riding e-vehicles that go faster — in some cases, much faster.

“There are lots of what I will call 'bicycle-shaped devices' being ridden,” said Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. “Some of them are legal e-bikes. Some of them are not.”

Agrawal recently co-authored a 210-page report on e-bike safety. It includes data collected from middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties, which showed that only 12% of students’ e-bikes fit into the legal classification system. The other 88% were more powerful than legally allowed under California law.

A Newport Beach Police officer tickets a middle schooler for parking her e-bike on the street across from Ensign Middle School on Sept. 4, 2026.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

Any bicycle-shaped device that goes faster than 30 miles per hour is technically an e-motorcycle, which requires a special driver’s license and, if ridden on public roads, insurance and registration.

Agrawal said it’s hard for parents, and even police officers, to figure out what’s legal and what’s not.

“Nobody understands this,” she said. “It’s very hard to enforce.”

The crackdown

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has taken some unusual approaches to addressing the e-bike dilemma. To date, he has pressed criminal charges — including for child endangerment — against four parents after their children were involved in collisions, all of them on e-motorcycles, not e-bikes.

One of those parents, a woman from Aliso Viejo, was charged with three felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, after her 14-year-old son allegedly struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest on an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 miles per hour.

People with e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos move through the long line at the Orange County District Attorney's buyback event at Angel Stadium, Sept. 13, 2026.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

The DA’s office said it has also sent letters to retailers reminding them of a ban on selling products used to modify e-bikes to go faster than legally allowed.

Spitzer recently tried another novel approach: buybacks. On a recent Sunday, hundreds of people brought their e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos to an event at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, hoping to turn them in for up to a thousand dollars in gift cards. The county event was paid for with $100,000 in asset forfeiture funds.

One man near the front of the line said he had arrived at 1 a.m. By the time the event started at 10 a.m., sheriff’s deputies were turning people away.

“Holy smokes,” Spitzer said from behind a podium mounted in the parking lot. “Look at the participation. … And you can see why, because we have a serious problem here in Orange County and across the nation with individuals who have e-bikes and e-motorcycles.”

Spitzer spoke about the dangers, but also the attractiveness of a high-powered personal vehicle, especially for teen boys.

 “We're not gonna change our internal DNA about who we are as young people and the fact we wanna go places, and we wanna experiment, and quite frankly, we like fast things,” he said. “ But the fact of the matter is when you have a machine, and you don't understand its capabilities, you can find yourself in harm's way very quickly before you can control that mechanism.”

Orange County District Attorney is testing out a range of strategies to crack down on illegal e-bikes and e-motos, including a buyback event at Angel Stadium on Sept. 13, 2026.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

Are unsafe riders ‘ruining it for other people’?

Paul Dumont drove to the buyback event all the way from Chatsworth in hopes of exchanging five e-bikes he had bought for his kids and grandkids.

“They got injured on them when we first got them, so they've been sitting in storage,” he said of the bikes.

Dumont said he wished he had bought less powerful e-bikes. “But I bought them the best ones,” he said. “I thought they'd be better.”

Denise Mills and her 17-year-old son Nathanael came from Torrance to turn in three e-motorcycles that he had been riding to and from his high school last year. He stopped after the school told him it was illegal. A new state law defining e-motorcycles took effect in January.

A student at Ensign Middle School runs to campus after parking his e-bike at a nearby park, Sept. 4, 2026.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

“That was very unfortunate because it's his primary source of transportation,” Mills said. “Now it's his dad and I.”

Nathanael said he had logged several thousand miles without an accident.

“ Partially it's, like, people ruining it for other people,” he said of efforts to tighten the rules for young riders.

Local leaders grapple with the flood of e-bikes

Cities and school districts are testing a variety of approaches to decrease e-bike crashes and injuries, from prohibiting riding on sidewalks to outright bans for young riders. The Brea City Council has even discussed using police drones to follow unsafe youth riders home in order to inform their parents.

In a more typical approach, the Huntington Beach City School District requires all student e-bike commuters to pass a safety course in order to get a permit to park their bike on campus. Newport-Mesa has a similar program for high schoolers.

Marin County limits youth under age 16 to riding Class 1 “pedal-assist” e-bikes, which have motors that kick in only while pedaling, and shut off once the bike reaches 20 miles per hour. The ban on more powerful e-bikes for young riders is part of a pilot program approved by the state legislature that sunsets in 2029.

At the federal level, O.C. Congressman Dave Min, D-Irvine, co-authored a bill earlier this year, the Safe SPEEDS Act, that would develop nationwide safety standards for e-bikes, including minimum age recommendations.

A dilemma for parents

Parents of student e-bike commuters have said they do not oppose regulating the vehicles, and they want authorities to crack down on dangerous and illegal riding. But an outright ban goes too far, they’ve said.

“ I know there are kids that are a little wild,” said Kellie Newcombe, whose 13-year-old daughter is still riding her pedal-assist bike from their home in Costa Mesa to Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach.

“That is not my child. That is not her friends. They are so ridiculously safe and by the book,” she said. “It's just super frustrating that they would say every kid cannot ride an e-bike.”

A spokesperson for Newport-Mesa Unified told LAist in an email that the school district’s new e-bike restrictions have gone smoothly and are helping to reinforce safety. But that is not how Gulbranson and Newcombe see it.

“We've had my daughter intimidated by multiple neighbors now,” Gulbranson said. “This whole guise of doing it under safety is totally misguided.”

Newcombe said she worries about her daughter’s safety more now that an increasing number of parents are driving their kids to school.

“They're in a rush because the traffic is insane,” she said. Plus, her daughter now has to cross a busy street to get to campus.

Newcombe said she wishes the school district would work with local leaders and police to enforce e-bike rules and to create safer paths to school for responsible riders.

Vicky Chon started canvassing on a recent Saturday morning in the Glenmoor neighborhood of Fremont, where the 1950s to ‘70s ranch homes line streets evoking names from that era: Mildred, Gertrude, Bonnie, Helen.

“I’m a teacher in Fremont Unified, and I’m here to talk about Prop 3, which is gonna help protect funding for our students in Fremont,” she said. More often than not, she gave her pitch to a Ring video doorbell.

Chon, the president of the Fremont Unified District Teachers Association and a sixth-grade teacher, grew up in Fremont, a city of 230,000 and home of the massive Tesla manufacturing plant in the East Bay. Wearing a bright red T-shirt with the teachers union’s apple logo, she carried her 8-month-old daughter in a snuggie encircling her neck, and a pile of door-hanger flyers in a free hand.

One side read, “Yes on 3. PROPOSITION 3 WILL STOP DEVASTATING CUTS TO SCHOOLS.” Prop. 3, on the November state ballot, would make permanent an existing higher income tax rate on the top 2% of California earners. In effect since 2012, it has brought in billions for schools and community colleges. Without Prop. 3’s passage, the surcharge will expire in 2031.

On the flip side of the leaflet, with a big check mark, is a photo of Richard Barrera, candidate for state superintendent of schools. It reads “RICHARD BARRERA IS THE REAL DEAL”. Barrera, an ally of organized labor, is the president of the San Diego Unified school board and is running for state superintendent of public instruction.

To those at home who opened the door, Chen would continue, “If we don’t pass Prop. 3, we could lose $20 million for our Fremont students.”

“So my baby can, you know, have the funding she needs for school,” she added.

Chon and the 68 other Fremont Unified teachers knocked on 2,533 doors as part of the California Teachers Association’s Sept. 19 day of action for Prop. 3; 1,150 teachers from 69 districts elsewhere in the state knocked on 36,509 doors. Combined, they set a one-day canvassing record, CTA said.

In the Sept. 24 filing to the California Secretary of State, the Yes on 3 campaign had raised $46.8 million, not counting donations under $1,000. The No on 3 campaign has raised $5,500 in total. The Family Business Association of California PAC gave $5,000 of the total.

The Yes campaign has raised $8,509 for every $1 of opposition dollars.

CTA, which led the signature drive to put Prop. 3 on the ballot, contributed $33.3 million – 71% of the total – while the CTA’s parent union, the National Education Association, donated $10 million. The California Federation of Teachers, the smaller of two California teachers unions, gave $1.75 million to go with the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) $1.5 million.

CTA’s elected 700-delegate State Council allocated the money in June, “not taking anything for granted,” said CTA President David Goldberg. CTA was less worried about the opposition than with the sheer number of 14 initiatives on the ballot. It’s been more important to raise awareness of Prop. 3 “above the noise,” he said.

Now, with five weeks to go before the election, he said, “I would assume there is enough for every scenario to win this,” including TV ads. ”It’s definitely an option.”

Two choices: a wealth tax and/or an income tax?

Prop. 3 is one of two tax-raising initiatives on the November ballot. The other, far more contentious one, is Prop. 40, which would create the nation’s first tax on the net worth of the state’s 200-plus billionaires.

The independent, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the one-time, 5% tax on most of the billionaires’ assets would yield tens of billions of dollars. But it also cautioned it could result in a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue if the richest of the rich follow the lead of Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and move out of state to cheaper tax states like Florida and Texas.

That’s one reason CTA opposes Prop. 40; the other is that TK-12 and community colleges would receive only 10% of the take from Prop. 40, a smaller ratio than the 40% that they already get annually as their share of the state’s general fund revenue under a constitutional amendment passed in 1988.

Prop. 3 would continue that ratio. The LAO projects that, depending on volatile income and capital tax revenue, Prop. 3 would continue to bring in $5 billion to $15 billion to the general fund with 40% — $2 billion to $6 billion — going to schools and community colleges annually.

A Prop. 3 surcharge of 1% starts with taxable income of $371,000 for single filers and $742,000 for joint filers. It would jump to an additional 3 percentage points for those single filers making more than $743,000 or $1.5 million for joint filers.

More than 50% support in a new voter survey

Conventional thinking of pollsters and veteran political observers is that multiple tax measures on the same ballot, especially complex initiatives like the wealth tax, could hurt the chances of all tax initiatives: Frustrated voters would throw up their hands and vote “no” across their ballots.

But, based on the Sept. 25 voter survey by the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, that doesn’t seem to be happening; voters appear to be heading in opposite directions in support for Prop. 3 and Prop. 40.

Compared with a prior survey in August, support for Prop. 3 rose to 54% in favor, 34% opposed, and 13% undecided.

Support for Prop. 40 had fallen from above 50% in August to 45% in favor, 42% against, and 13% undecided, amid an onslaught of anti-Prop. 40 TV ads.

Although Fremont offers a small sample size — Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one in the Alameda County city — canvassing teachers said they heard widespread support for Prop. 3.

Nicole Black, a veteran kindergarten teacher, said someone came to the door in about half of the 50 houses she visited, with 20 of those indicating support, some asking for more information, and no one outright saying no. William Jung, a high school teacher, reported fewer conversations but proportionally higher support.

Vicky Chon encountered only one no — a shirtless man working in his garage who dismissed her with a flip of the hand, saying, “No more taxes.” But a woman who had said through her Ring doorbell video camera that she was driving her father to an appointment later was working in her garden and said she was all in. And an elderly lady with patchy English said, yes, she would vote for it, too.

No one wanted more details of Prop. 3 or asked about the wealth tax, so Chon and colleagues didn’t have to bring it up. They could stay on message: Prop. 3 will continue an existing tax. Voting yes will keep the status quo and prevent future layoffs of teachers.

In the coming weeks, voters can expect to be inundated with tens of millions of dollars worth of ads for, but mainly against, Prop. 40. Opponents have already spent $87 million — 85% of the $219 million total — compared with $32 million by the proponents.

Meanwhile, teachers will be going door to door every weekend, Goldberg said. “We always knew a lot would rest on our shoulders,” he said. “No other organization can match our capacity in every community.”