The Brief

In order to balance the state’s budget, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed $2 billion in cuts to broadband projects that would have expanded internet access across the state.

The move outraged digital equity advocates in Los Angeles who say it could jeopardize efforts to reach some of the most vulnerable groups in the area. About 200,000 L.A. County households don’t have internet.

“We are disappointed to see this rollback,” said Cristal Mojica of the Michelson Center for Public Policy. The group is a member of the California Digital Equity Alliance.

The details 

The revised budget plan, which was announced Friday, would cut the $1.5 billion that was greenlit for the state’s middle-mile project in January. That’s a new public broadband network the state is building in areas with little to no coverage.

It would also cut all but $50 million from the state’s credit program called the “Loan Loss Reserve Fund,” which allows groups to secure more favorable borrowing rates and terms. And it would delay funding for broadband infrastructure known as “last-mile” projects until the 2027-28 fiscal year.

The trim was the largest of the one time funding cuts announced by Newsom as the state faces a deficit estimated at $56 billion over the next two fiscal years.

Mojica said advocates are concerned about the state’s ability to build the entire 10,000-mile network meant to expand internet availability to those in rural areas and neighborhoods that struggle to afford access, which includes 500 miles in L.A. County.

“So with this rollback of funds, it's very possible that only 80% of the network will be completed,” she said, adding that it could shut out some of the “highest areas of need.” The state had originally identified 18 target locations, including South Gate, Lynwood, Paramount and Compton in the L.A. area.

What’s next

The state Legislature has until June 15 to pass a balanced budget. That gives them a little over a month to try and negotiate a final spending plan.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

After Inglewood systematically violated state law, a judge reminded the city it was required to release records on police misconduct and use of force — but rolled back an earlier ruling that would have required the records to be posted online.

Barring an appeal, the decision brings five years of legal wrangling between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California closer to a conclusion.

Inglewood won’t face serious consequences for the pattern of breaking California public records law, but the city must pay attorney fees for the ACLU and Trisha Shanklin, who joined the ACLU’s 2021 lawsuit. Inglewood police fatally shot Shanklin’s sister, Kisha Michael, and Marquintan Sandlin in 2016.

LA Superior Court Judge Amy Carter said the city will not have to proactively post the records online, which another judge had previously ordered the city to do for the next three years. Carter said during a Wednesday hearing that such a requirement would have to come from state legislators, not a judge.

Over the last decade, California lawmakers have expanded the public’s right to access police misconduct and use-of-force records, but Inglewood has thrown up a series of obstacles to that access.

The Inglewood City Council voted to destroy decades of internal affairs records in 2018 just weeks before one law went into effect, though Mayor James Butts denied the move was intended to thwart the law, according to LAist. The LA Times reported that the city nearly did it again in 2021 before being blocked by a judge.

This week’s court ruling found the city has routinely violated the law since then, missing deadlines, sharing incomplete records, and at times, failing to provide any documents at all.

Tiffany Bailey, an ACLU attorney, celebrated the decision and said it streamlines the civil rights group’s ability to get police records from the city in the future.

David Loy, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition, said the case was a great win for the ACLU.

“These kinds of (public records) delays are not uncommon throughout the state,” Loy said. “I hope and believe this is a signal to other cities to get their house in order.”

Attorneys for the city declined to comment on the ruling, and Mayor James Butts did not immediately reply to written questions from The LA Local.

CalMatters maintains a searchable database of police misconduct and use-of-force records called the Police Records Access Project that includes records from the Inglewood Police Department.

The universe is a strange place — filled with exploding stars, ancient galaxies, and unseen worlds. Now, astronomers are about to get a brand new tool to explore it.

The $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for launch Aug. 30. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, the observatory is expected to reveal new information about the expansion of the universe and discover multitudes of planets orbiting distant stars.

Roman, as it is known to its friends, has an unusual history. About 15 years ago NASA was making plans to build a space telescope that could, among other things, search for exploding stars known as Type 1A supernovas. These supernovas were used as a kind of cosmological measuring stick to uncover a mysterious force called dark energy that was causing the universe to expand — a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize in 2011.

Cosmologist Daniel Scolnic at Duke University says finding more of them would be key to better understanding that expansion.

As NASA was developing plans for this new telescope, a call came in from the government office in charge of surveillance satellites.

"The National Reconnaissance Office reached out to NASA," Scolnic says, "saying, 'We have this amazing satellite sitting in a hangar that we're not using. And what what do you guys think about instead of pointing downwards, we point upwards, and you guys use it?'"

NASA said yes. It took some substantial modifications, but now that old satellite is set to become NASA's next major space observatory.

Scolnic says that the new observatory could fundamentally change the scientific model that astronomers use to understand our universe.

"In the last few years, there have been measurements saying that model might be wrong — and that's something that Roman will absolutely nail, whether the model's right or wrong," he says.

Another goal of the telescope is to spend a month surveying all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Julie McEnery is Roman's project scientist. She says even though Roman has broadly the same sensitivity and sharpness of vision as the currently orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, its design lets it do things much faster.

"That one month of observations to survey our Milky Way galaxy would take about a century with Hubble," says McEnery.

Instead of focusing on a single object, Roman is designed to make catalogs of large swaths of the sky, and McEnery says these catalogs will be available to everyone, not just academics.

"You can be a teacher in a high school in Kentucky and your students have the opportunity to see Roman data at the same time as a professor in Princeton," she says.

One professor eager to get his hands on Roman data is Scott Gaudi at The Ohio State University. Along with colleagues, Gaudi developed a technique for detecting planets around distant stars. It's called gravitational microlensing, and it measures the way those planets bend the starlight that passes them by.

Albert Einstein described the idea in 1936 but thought it would be impractical. New technology has proven him wrong — and Gaudi expects Roman will find tons of planets that way.

"We're looking for planets that are just completely undetectable by any other method," Gaudi says. That includes planets at the center of our galaxy, "that are very analogous to our own solar system planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune."

In addition to new planets, Roman should also reveal new galaxies, helping astronomers to get a better idea of the large-scale structure of the universe.

But predicting what will be Roman's greatest accomplishments over the course of its five-year mission is a tricky business.

"The history of astronomy really has shown that when you get a new capability, and especially a survey capability, you learn something new, something unexpected," says Wendy Freedman, an astronomer at the University of Chicago. "Often that turns out to be the most exciting part of a new facility. So I am completely open to what this telescope will find."

Copyright 2026 NPR

The sounds of Los Angeles are bringing together people from all walks of life to record and archive them, from the buzzing of a bees’ nest in Griffith Park to church bells echoing over goose honks in Echo Park.

And you can listen to these recordings tomorrow in Highland Park.

George Jensen founded the Los Angeles Field Recording Club a little over a year ago. He said it has attracted sound lovers with all levels of recording sophistication, from people using their phones to folks with professional recorders worth thousands of dollars.

A longtime radio guy with shows on dublab and KCHUNG radio, Jensen fell in love with preserving audio moments in the city and beyond after capturing the serene sounds of a cove in Big Sur.

“There’s a certain fluctuation of sound happening — a pulse you might say — in this city," Jensen told LAist. "Once people sit and be still for a moment, they hear it.”

About 20 club members meet up once a month at places like the purportedly haunted Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, a scrap yard in Sun Valley and a section of Griffith Park, where someone recorded a cacophony of bees buzzing around their nest.

Jensen, who works as a prop fabricator in the TV and film industry, said people are drawn to field recording for many reasons: Some love nerding out over the gear; others need the sound to embellish an art or music project.

The club's next endeavor, he said, is an interactive sound map where field recordists can archive their audio online for all to enjoy.

The club’s outings end up being a bit of an antisocial social club, Jensen joked.

“At the beginning, everybody meets each other... and then you go be by yourself and be quiet,” he said.

He added there's a meditative quality to field recording that hooks people.

“I think once people do it, they realize that you kind of stop and listen," Jensen said. "You become in the present. You’re forced to.

"I think there’s, like, a certain therapeutic thing that comes with it,” he said.

Over the Linda Lindas’ career, talk about the band has often centered around how young they are.

They broke through as tweens and teens when a 2021 performance at the library in Cypress Park went viral after it was posted online, in part because they sounded so commanding for their age. The drummer, Mila de la Garza, was 10 at the time.

Five years and several albums later — Gotta Get Out, their third album and major label debut, just dropped yesterday — the Linda Lindas are outgrowing their old image.

“I do think people still hear 'kid band' when they think of the Linda Lindas,” said Lucia de la Garza, Mila’s older sister and one of the guitarists. “It's like we're not actually really that young anymore.”

Eloise Wong and Bela Salazar of The Linda Lindas perform during Riot Fest at Douglass Park last year in Chicago.

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It’s been eight years since the sisters joined cousin Eloise Wong and family friend Bela Salazar to play a local music fest. What was a one-off gig turned into a real band that always seemed to have homework to do.

“We'll play a show and then go backstage and finish an essay,” Lucia said.

“Almost like we're Hannah Montana,” Mila said.

“Without the secret identity,” laughed Lucia.

Then came the library video, a record deal with punk label Epitaph and their 2022 debut album Growing Up. 

They started touring the world opening for their heroes like Green Day and Paramore. (Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams is featured on the single “Closer.”)

And as of this summer, more big leaps: They signed with Warner’s Reprise imprint, and all but Mila have graduated high school.

As they’ve grown, so has their songwriting.

Where they used to write individually, for their new album, they holed up in L.A., Long Beach and Palm Springs to write in the same room from the beginning. No phones allowed. Just riffing.

“We believe in each other and each other's ideas so much that we were kind of just pushing each other to go for it,” Lucia said. “What if we added synth here? What if the drums dropped out?”

By the end of the sessions, they had amassed about 30 songs and the 12 tracks on the album were split evenly between the three writing locations, produced by the sisters’ dad, Carlos de la Garza, who’s worked with Paramore, Bad Religion and Best Coast. (He actually started working with Best Coast after meeting them when the duo came to a Linda Lindas rehearsal in the family's backyard, according to Lucia.)

The album moves beyond straight-ahead punk, dipping into new wave, power pop and hardcore.

That range tracks with the members’ own eclectic listening habits. Lucia has been listening to indie artists Blondshell, Francis of Delirium and Indigo De Souza. Mila cited Julien Baker’s Little Oblivions, while Eloise, who plays bass, has been digging into local hardcore punk like Special Forces from San Luis Obispo, not to mention the Heated Rivalry soundtrack. Guitarist Bela has been listening to pop from Hollis and Mexico's Belanova.

Meanwhile, their lyrics tackle the issues staring down their generation, from climate change to fascism and economic injustice.

On “Blood on Our Hands," Eloise belts out an indictment of not just the government but the complicity of bystanders.

Eloise said the song isn’t just about calling people out about the state of the world, but “making everyone think about all of the little things that we can do to try and make it better, you know, and make it more sustainable, and make sure that people can live.”

Mila de la Garza of The Linda Lindas performs during the Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival in Seattle last year.

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Elsewhere on the album, like on the single “Burning Out,” the band reflects on that strange space between youth and adulthood and seeing friends move into new stages of life while wondering if they’re being left behind.

Whatever uncertainty they may be feeling, the Linda Lindas say one thing is for sure: It’s all about their music now.

Next month, they head out on their biggest tour yet as headliners with dates across the U.S. and Canada.

For a band whose early years involved squeezing in homework between soundchecks, life has simplified in at least one respect.

“It's pretty much all about the band,” Eloise said.