The Brief

People with low incomes who rely on California’s largest food program will likely be affected starting next month if the federal shutdown continues, officials are warning. It’s one of several safety net programs facing a funding cliff if the shutdown — which has shown no sign of ending — drags on.

Well over 1 million people in L.A. County get food benefits from CalFresh — the state’s implementation of the federally funded SNAP program. It provides monthly food benefits to low-income people through debit cards that can be used at grocery stores and farmer’s markets that accept them.

Those benefits are secured for October. But if Congress doesn’t reach a deal, funding for those benefits will be disrupted starting next month, according to the county. Federal authorities told states last week that there’s not enough money to pay full SNAP benefits for November if the shutdown continues, and to not load money onto recipients' cards for November until further notice.

“Should the shutdown continue, our beneficiaries will definitely be impacted starting November…that impacts over 1.6 million individuals that we have on CalFresh,” said  Michael Sylvester, who oversees administrative operations for the L.A. County department that administers the food program.

If Congress doesn’t strike a deal by the end of this week to extend funding, Sylvester said officials are preparing public messages to alert CalFresh recipients of the anticipated effects and “start to refer them to other resources, such as food banks.”

He was speaking during a public update last week to county supervisors about the effects of the shutdown.

“ That is cause for panic to me and devastating,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell, referring to CalFresh and other federally-funded programs expected to be affected.

The other major SoCal counties — San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange — each have more than 300,000 people on CalFresh, according to state data.

State officials who oversee the program echoed L.A. County’s concerns about what would happen if the shutdown continues past October.

“If a budget agreement is not reached soon…CalFresh benefits in the future could be at risk for the more than 5.5 million people served by the program,” according to a statement from the California Department of Social Services.

And it’s not the only effect on low-income SoCal residents that’s expected from the shutdown halting federal dollars.

Other expected impacts

If it continues, federal funding is expected to dry up in mid-November for about 30,000 households who get rental subsidies through an L.A. County agency, said county housing executive Emilio Salas. If the shutdown continues for a prolonged time, he said the county will be unable to make rent payments for those households.

L.A. County officials also said all of the county health department’s information-sharing calls with the CDC about measles and emerging diseases are canceled during the shutdown.

County officials said Social Security and veterans benefits will still be paid, but staff may not be available to answer questions from recipients.

Impacts in OC

Officials at Orange County’s public health agency say the shutdown has a range of impacts, including slowing down how long it takes for people to get enrolled in social security and Medicare.

“The federal workforce that administers these programs is being downsized during the shutdown, so new enrollments in Social Security and Medicare, for instance, may take longer than usual,” said O.C. Health Care Agency Director Veronica Kelley in response to LAist’s questions. “Health and human services programs may be particularly vulnerable in a prolonged shutdown. While Medicaid and SNAP are funded for several weeks, we could see increased demand for local safety-net services if families experience benefit delays or uncertainty about future support.”

Kelley added that the health agency is also grappling with cuts to federal funding since earlier this year, separate from the shutdown, including $13 million for infectious disease prevention and vaccination assistance and a $4.4 million cut to nutrition education.

“These reductions, paired with the state’s budgetary issues, local budgetary issues, and now the Federal shutdown, are concerning,” Kelley wrote.

[Click here to read Orange County’s full responses to LAist’s questions.]

Riverside County impacts

A spokesperson for Riverside County told LAist officials there are currently reviewing potential impacts to federally funded programs, including CalFresh and the Women, Infants & Children program (WIC).

Riverside County spokesperson Brooke Federico said federal funding was secure for the near future, but could run out for some programs if the shutdown continues beyond early November..

“Our focus is on identifying the potential impacts an extended shutdown could have on all of our residents, including the most vulnerable in our community who are dependent on health and human services funded by the federal government, and to work with our federal and state partners to ensure that the negative impacts are minimized,” Federico said in written responses to questions from LAist. “Hundreds of thousands of residents in Riverside County are relying on all levels of government to find a solution and find it fast.”

[Click here to read Riverside County’s full responses to LAist’s questions.]

A spokesperson for San Bernardino County reiterated that CalFresh benefits are secured for this month, but that continued federal funding will be needed to keep providing uninterrupted benefits past the start of next month.

WIC — short for Women, Infants & Children — is a federal program for low income families with children under age 5 that provides baby formula, debit card money to buy food and nutrition education.

More than half of all babies born in California each year are eligible for WIC, according to the state. In L.A. County, about 217,000 babies and young children were on WIC last year, according to the county.

LAist reached out to the state agency that oversees WIC to ask how and when people could be affected by the shutdown if it continues. No responses have been provided so far from the California Department of Social Services.

MyLA311, the system designed to help residents access city services for graffiti removal or streetlight outages, got a makeover last year, but since then some Angelenos and Los Angeles city staff have reported it has been plagued by problems.

The city has received “numerous complaints” about the updated website and app, including issues with GPS and logging work, according to officials.

MyLA311 is set up so residents can report non-emergency issues and track requests for tree inspections, homeless encampment services and illegal dumping, to name a few. There are 86 options in neighborhoods, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, which helped launch the new system.

Staffers within the city’s Department of Public Works have said they’ve been frustrated by the rollout, according to city officials. They say it now takes longer to add their responses to service requests, and the city can’t record completed work that doesn’t have a service request connected to it.

City Council members Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez led a motion aimed at addressing the issues, saying they’ve caused concerns about the system’s overall functionality and accountability.

“Reports and individuals are telling us that because of this broken 311 app, folks are once again going back to using Excel sheets, phone calls, paper and pen in order to engage in service delivery, and I think that that's a problem,” Padilla said during Wednesday’s council meeting.

The motion instructs Public Works to make a formal report of any problems with the system, including how they may be affecting service timelines and completion rates, and asks the city’s IT agency to come up with potential solutions.

It was approved in a 12-0 vote Wednesday. Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, Eunisses Hernandez and Adrin Nazarian were absent.

How we got here

Bass announced the launch of the new MyLA311 last year, saying the previous website and app were outdated and had lasted years past their lifecycle.

In a 2023 directive, she’d called for the system to be modernized with the goal of providing better customer service and communication about the status of residents’ requests.

“This new and improved way to request and receive city services is another example of how we are breaking away from the old way of doing things to make our neighborhoods cleaner and safer,” Bass said in a March 2025 statement.

But some people say the new system is falling short.

According to the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council, the new app has “actually made it harder for Angelenos to request services.”

The Sylmar Neighborhood Council agreed the system needs improvements, writing in a community impact statement that MyLA311 fails to serve L.A. taxpayers effectively if it’s difficult to use or inaccurate.

In public comments, some residents cited “major issues” with the system, including GPS and location accuracy, invalid addresses and missing or incomplete service categories. One commenter wrote that addresses were being routed to other areas, some of them outside the city.

“As a result, they frequently lead to confusion in the field, delays in response and, in some cases, requests going unaddressed due to the difficulty in locating the reported issue or misdirection caused by inaccurate data,” the commenter said.

What’s ahead

The City Council approved several instructions aimed at improving MyLA311, including the following:

• Public Works is expected to report back on its issues with the system.
• The city’s Information Technology Agency is expected to report on system performance, including operational issues, and provide solutions as needed.
• Public Works and IT are expected to provide quarterly reports on service request data, including backlogs, average response times and requests received and closed.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to potentially proceed with mass deportations of more than a million foreign nationals, including those from Haiti and Syria, who live and work legally in the United States.

Until now these individuals have been accorded temporary legal status because their safety is imperiled by war or natural disasters in their home countries.

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990, and every president since then — Republican and Democrat — has embraced TPS. President Donald Trump, however, is trying to end it.

On Wednesday his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, told the justices that the statute clearly bars any court review of the administration's decisions. And he dismissed the idea that a separate law established to provide procedural fairness does not allow the courts to review the Homeland Security agency's decision-making either. Pressed by the court's three liberal justices, Sauer insisted that the courts cannot review anything.

"None of those procedural steps required by the statue are reviewable. That's your position?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

"Correct," responded Sauer.

"What you're basically saying is that Congress wrote a statute for no purpose," Sotomayor said.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that under the statute the secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to consult with the U.S. State Department about what the conditions are in those countries that people have been forced to flee. What if she didn't do that at all, Kagan asked. Or what if she asked, but the response from the State Department came back: "Wasn't that baseball game last night great!"

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what would happen if the secretary used a Ouija board to make decisions?

To all these hypotheticals, Solicitor General Sauer stood firm. That prompted this from Sotomayor: "Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a 'filthy, dirty, and disgusting s--thole country.' I'm quoting him. He declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision."

Sauer pushed back, noting that Kristi Noem, the then-DHS secretary, had not mentioned race at all. That prompted this response from Justice Jackson, the only Black woman on the court, "So the position of the United States is that we have an actual racial epithet that we aren't allowed to look at all the context."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of two adopted Haitian children, interjected at that point to clarify the administration's position. Are you conceding that individuals with TPS status could bring a challenge based on race discrimination? she asked.

Sauer appeared to concede the point.

Representing the Haitians, lawyer Geoffrey Pipoly described the administration's review as "a sham."

"The true reason for the termination [of TPS status] is the president's racial animus toward non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular," Pipoly said. "The secretary herself described people from Haiti" and from other non-white countries as "killers, leeches, saying, 'We don't want them, not one,'" while "simultaneously enacting another humanitarian form of relief for white and only white South Africans."

That was too much for Justice Samuel Alito who asked Pipoly, "Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a line-up, do you think you could say those people are … non-white?"

An uncomfortable Pipoly resisted categorizing each group until Alito got to his own roots.

"How about southern Italians?" Alito inquired, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Responded Pipoly: "Certainly 120 years ago when we had our last wave of European immigration, southern Italians were not considered white. … Our concept of these things evolves over time."

At the end of Wednesday's court session, one thing was clear: President Trump may be furious at some of the conservative justices he appointed for invalidating his tariffs, but for the most part, he is getting his way. Especially in light of the court's 6-to-3 decision, announced Wednesday, which effectively guts what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act, once celebrated as a signature achievement of American Democracy.

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The last dog from the Eaton Fire taken in by Pasadena Humane has now been adopted.

Artemis the German shepherd was originally taken to the Pasadena animal shelter for emergency boarding. His family, which lost its home in the January fire, ultimately decided to put him up for adoption.

"The silver lining to all of that is — with all this tragedy — this incredible story of hope where we were able to help foster these animals we’re returning home," said Sarie Hooker,  communications manager at Pasadena Humane.

During his stay at Pasadena Humane, the cream-color pup won over many hearts.

"He's just such a striking boy. He's got this really fun, loving personality. He's very regal," Hooker said.

Hooker said Artemis was adopted by a family through the shelter's foster-to-adopt program.

"He just did amazingly. And the next thing we knew, he was adopted," Hooker said. "So it's a happy story."

Artemis says hello to a new family.

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Courtesy Pasadena Humane

)

The Eaton Fire destroyed nearly 9,500 structures, including about 6,000 homes. Two days after the fire broke out, Pasadena Humane reported receiving more than 350 pets from displaced residents.

By the second week of the fire, the shelter had taken in some 600 pets, Hooker said.

" In totality, we were able to help with thousands of animals specifically for emergency boarding," Hooker said, including every kind of pet you can think of, as well as wild animals.

" We were seeing skunks, squirrels, hawks, owls, peacocks, raccoons, possums," she said.

Artemis isn't just the last dog to find a home — or return home — from the Eaton Fire.

He is the last animal.

" Artemis was our final, final animal — like dog, cat, critter. Anything else under the sun.  He was the last boy. So we're very happy," she said.

National and local organizers are calling on communities to abstain from work, school and shopping Friday in recognition of May Day.

The “economic blackout” is modeled after January protests in Minnesota following the surge of immigration enforcement and shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens.

“Our vision includes an economy that works for everyone with a living wage, strong labor protections and programs that keep families housed, fed, educated and healthy,” said Francisco Moreno, executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations in North America, in a Tuesday press conference.

The organization is one of more than 100 involved in planning a Los Angeles May Day rally with the theme, “solo el pueblo shuts it down:  no school, no work, no shopping.”

This year’s largest planned gathering starts at MacArthur Park, a longtime hub for day laborers and street vendors. Last July, immigration agents in armored vehicles descended on the park. The ongoing immigration raids and city policies have contributed to the challenges street vendors face.

“Starting there really sends a message that we're here,” said Kristal Romero, press secretary for the  Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “We're standing with this community, and if you take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

May Day’s history in LA

May Day, sometimes called International Workers' Day, started after an 1886 strike tied to the fight for an eight-hour work day. The protest turned violent after police attacked workers. In the 1990s, L.A. organizers started to connect the labor movement with advocacy for immigrant rights.

This year’s event also marks the 20th anniversary of 2006’s massive rallies in support of immigration reform.

Romero said the Federation has offered training on de-escalation, conflict resolution and non-violent protests and that hundreds of people will act as “peacekeepers” during Friday’s rally and march.

“ A lot of times, folks can get caught in echo chambers and it may really feel hopeless,” Romero said. “The big point of these events is to inspire hope to show people we're all here, we're all fighting for the same thing.”

Los Angeles County

MacArthur Park

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March begins at the corner of South Park View Street and Wilshire Boulevard and heads toward downtown L.A.
Organizers: Los Angeles May Day Coalition

L.A. City Hall

Time: Noon
Location: City Hall, 200 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Organizers: Union del Barrio and the Community Self-Defense Coalition

Boyle Heights

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Mariachi Plaza, 1831 First St.
Organizers: Centro CSO

Long Beach

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March starts at The Marketplace, 6501 Pacific Coast Highway, and ends at Mother’s Beach.
Organizers: Long Beach Indivisible, more details here.

San Fernando Valley

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: Northeast corner of Topanga Canyon and Victory Boulevard, Woodland Hills
Organizers: Indivisible Woodland Hills, SF Valley Brigade, others

Santa Clarita

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: 24292 Valencia Blvd.
Organizers: Indivisible CA27

Orange County 

Orange

Time: 3 p.m. rally
Location: City Hall, 300 E. Chapman Ave.

Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Orange Plaza Circle, Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street
Organizers: OC Indivisible Coalition

Santa Ana

Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Sasscer Park, 600 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana
Organizers: OC May Day Coalition