The Brief

For nearly a century, California and other states forced Native American youth into boarding schools, aiming to erase their cultural practices while separating children from parents, placing them in a foster system that often left them without any ties to their communities.

It was only in the late 1970s that the federal government passed a law to protect families from separation, ensuring that child welfare agencies inquire about Native ancestry and work to keep tribes, relatives and communities together. Decades later, contested cases continue to appear regularly before California courts, where state protections are stronger than federal law.

The California Supreme Court on Monday reinforced those rules in a new decision, stressing that child welfare agencies must investigate whether children have Native American ancestry before placing them in foster care. It’s a decision that could strengthen tribes’ hand in disputes over separating families by compelling social workers to go a step further before removing a child.

Incidentally, the case turned on parents who do not claim to have any tribal affiliations or Native ancestry.

The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services in 2019 accused two children’s parents of substance abuse and domestic violence, eventually getting their custody terminated in court. Their mother, Angelica A., has not indicated in court documents that she is Native American, but she appealed the decision on the grounds that officials did not complete a proper inquiry into her children’s heritage. Her last name is not listed in the ruling.

By a 5-2 majority, the justices agreed with the mother, calling into question not just this family’s case, but nearly two dozen other cases involving child custody and California courts. They gave little weight to concerns over whether an additional review would make a difference in the actual placement of the children.

“The department’s inquiry extended no further than mother and father, both of whom have long standing issues with substance use disorder, even though their parents, siblings, and father’s cousin were readily available and had been interviewed by the department,” wrote Justice Kelli Evans in the majority opinion.

The justices reversed a juvenile court’s decision to terminate the parents rights’ on the condition that the agency conduct an “adequate inquiry, supported by record documentation.”

Shiara Davila-Morales, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services, said the department was unable to comment in time for publication.

Indian Child Welfare Act recently upheld

The issue of child custody and Native Americans has long been a point of painful history in the United States. In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which regulates the removal and out-of-home placement of Native children. A July 2024 report from the U.S. Department of the Interior found that over 900 children died nationwide in forced boarding schools from 1819 to 1969.

In California, over half of Native American youth in California’s foster care system end up in non-relative and non-Native households, a number that has remained relatively steady in the past decade, according to state data analyzed by researchers at UC Berkeley. Tribes have long argued they have a necessary stake in ensuring the wellbeing of Native youth, and that social workers must make good-faith attempts to inquire about ancestry.

“Ironically, such (an) inquiry could take only a few days to complete — which is significantly faster than the nearly two years that this appeal was litigated,” wrote Michelle Castagne, executive director of the California Tribal Families Coalition, in a statement. “The court’s decision recognizes the vital role that tribes have in the lives of tribal children and families.”

Dissent emphasizes childrens' 'instability'

The two dissenting justices blasted the majority for taking a “formulaic approach” that “needlessly condemns these children and others like them to more uncertainty, more instability and more trauma.” The two children were taken into the care of their paternal grandparents, according to the ruling, who are ready to formally adopt them.

They wrote that the children would have been better off by resolving the case quickly.

“Nonetheless, because the department failed to ask additional family members about the children’s ancestry, my colleagues invoke a rule of automatic conditional reversal that is wholly inconsistent with the way in which California courts have assessed state law error for almost seven decades,” wrote Justice Joshua Groban in the dissent.

John L. Dodd, an attorney representing the mother, said those concerns are overblown. For far too long, he said social workers have been making inadequate inquiries about Native ancestry. It’s an often unintentional omission, he says, because investigators are juggling delicate family dynamics involving substance abuse or mental health.

Though the family he represented did not indicate having any Native ancestry, he said the case matters because it sends a message to child welfare agencies that they can’t ignore state and federal regulations.

“All the social worker has to do is ask three or four questions when the social worker is doing a report,” he told CalMatters. “So the parade of horribles that the dissent is concerned about is not going to occur, because now everybody knows that you can’t just risk it.”

The children at the center of the case are now 8 and 6 years old, according to the decision, and for the four years it has lasted they have been in their grandparent’s custody. California is home to around 350,000 Native American youth under 18, according to the First 5 Center for Children’s policy.

FIFA said on Tuesday it plans to sell $60 tickets for each of the 104 games of the 2026 World Cup — an announcement that comes after an outcry over prices for the tournament that will be held next summer across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

"Fans of the national teams that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will benefit from a dedicated ticket pricing tier, which has been designed to make following their teams on football's greatest stage more affordable," FIFA said in a statement.

But these tickets — called "supporter entry tier tickets" by FIFA — will be available only to supporters of qualified teams and are limited in quantity.

Only 10% of the total number of tickets provided to each qualified team would be available at $60 per game, including the final. Given that each team gets 8% of the available tickets per game, the effective number of tickets available at that price would be only 0.8% of the stadium capacity for that game, or 1.6% for both teams combined.

But the actual number of $60 tickets could vary. Each country would determine which of its fans qualify for the cheaper tickets. In the statement, FIFA requested that countries "ensure that these tickets are specifically allocated to loyal fans who are closely connected to their national teams."

Some fans had called prices 'a betrayal'

FIFA's announcement comes after many fans reacted with outrage at the prices for the World Cup next year, which range from $140 for a handful of initial-round games to as much as $2,735 for the U.S. opening match against Paraguay that will be held in Los Angeles next year.

Prices for knockout rounds surge even more, with FIFA charging charging $4,185 for the cheapest ticket for the final that will be held in July next year in New Jersey — and $8,680 for the most expensive seats.

That's much higher than previous World Cups. For example, the most expensive ticket for the 2022 final at the last tournament held in Qatar was about $1,600.

Unlike previous World Cups, FIFA has yet to publish a list of prices, instead adjusting them across different sales windows without an announcement. Fans found out about the price changes after FIFA opened its latest lottery window last week, which allows fans to apply for tickets until Jan. 13.

And many fans were upset. The Football Supporters Europe, a group that represent fans across the region, called ticket prices "a betrayal to the most dedicated fans." On Tuesday, the group said on X it welcomes FIFA's latest announcement, but added it was not enough.

"Based on the allocations publicly available, this would mean that at best a few hundred fans per match and team would be lucky enough to take advantage of the 60 USD prices, while the vast majority would still have to pay extortionate prices, way higher than at any tournament before," Football Supporters Europe said.

Demand appears high, however

FIFA has defended its pricing policy, saying it's adapting to prices in the North American market. It has also consistently responded by saying it's a non-profit organization that steers the majority of its revenues from the World Cup "to fuel the growth of men's, women's and youth football throughout the 211 FIFA Member Associations."

Despite the outrage over its prices, FIFA is seeing strong demand for next year's World Cup. On Tuesday, FIFA added it had already received 20 million ticket requests during this current sales window, with weeks still to go before the lottery window closes.

But for supporters, following a team throughout the tournament could be prohibitively expensive in 2026 — and not only because of high ticket prices.

The cost of travel across the three countries has also surged, including hotel prices, making it likely that next year's tournament will be among the most expensive World Cups ever staged for fans.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Huntington Beach appears to be running out of options in its effort to stave off state housing mandates after a recent California Supreme Court decision.

California requires cities to plan and zone for housing to meet the needs of the population at all income levels. In the most recent planning cycle, Huntington Beach was told it had to plan for 13,368 new homes.

The city balked, and the state sued Huntington Beach in 2023 for failing to comply.

The city’s argument, in a nutshell

The city has argued it doesn’t have to comply because it’s a charter city, which gives it more autonomy in some areas of governance than non-charter cities.

Huntington Beach also has said that planning for such a large number of units would force it to violate state environmental laws. A state appeals court in a September ruling didn’t buy either argument.

What’s next?

A San Diego court now must determine penalties against Huntington Beach, even as the city has vowed to keep fighting the housing mandate. An appeals court has ordered the lower court to give the city 120 days to approve a housing plan.

Other remedies the court will consider include:

• Suspending the city’s ability to approve building permits — essentially bringing all development in the city to a halt; or, on the opposite end of the spectrum,

• Forcing Huntington Beach to approve any and all applications to build homes — in other words, completely removing the city’s discretion to plan for development. 

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 16.

More animals are being run over on Los Angeles streets than ever before, and the lingering effects of the pandemic may be partly to blame.  

Through November of this year, the city’s MyLA311 service has fielded 31,093 requests for “dead animal removal,” an increase of more than a thousand from the same time last year. It marks a 37% increase from five years prior, and is the fifth straight year of increases.  

Fraser Shilling of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, studies the impact of transportation on animal populations. While one of the drivers of the increase is the continual loss of habitat from urban development, Shilling says the after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are also playing a role. The protracted lockdown sparked a boom in pet adoptions, which he says has now transformed into an increase in animals being let go by their owners.  

“Basically, pandemic pets are being abandoned,” Shilling said. “Before they get picked up by animal control, they’re out on the street getting hit.” 

Cats made up nearly a third of animals picked up last year, according to the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation. Dogs accounted for 17%. Raccoons and opossums were the third- and fourth-most common. The vast majority of pickup requests are for animals that have been struck by vehicles. Others include requests to collect pets that have died at their owner’s home.

Want to know the number of requests in your neighborhood? Sign up for the Crosstown Neighborhood Newsletter and get stats about crime, traffic, housing and more for where you live.

Overstuffed animal shelters

Los Angeles has a massive feral cat population, estimated to be close to one million.

In 2020, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Citywide Cat Program aimed at trapping and spaying or neutering stray cats to prevent unwanted litters. But the program’s progress is facing constraints due to local funding challenges, as well as a nationwide veterinarian shortage. 

In August, the City Council unanimously approved a motion increasing the dollar amount pet owners are reimbursed by the city for spaying and neutering their pets, for an estimated cost of $9 million. A proposal from the city administrative officer recommended giving the higher reimbursement rates to shelter-based programs like the Citywide Cat Program, which would have cost an estimated $21 million over three years. That plan was not adopted.  

At the same time, the city’s shelters are overflowing with intakes. Through October of this year, Los Angeles Animal Service shelters took in 36,330 cats and dogs, per the department’s Woof Stat reports, a 6% increase from the same time last year and a 46% increase from the entire year of 2020. Its dog shelter program currently is operating at 123% capacity.  

San Pedro, Los Angeles’ southernmost neighborhood, had the highest number of dead animal removal requests in the city this year, with 922 as of Nov. 30, a 15% increase over the same period in 2024. 

As of Dec. 9, the animal shelter in San Pedro also had the highest dog occupancy rate of any of the six shelters in the city at 159% capacity. 

“Like many shelters across the country, LA Animal Services continues to experience overcrowding and operates at overcapacity, despite the department’s ongoing efforts to promote spaying and neutering, encourage pet adoptions and fostering, and working with rescues to help place animals,” Animal Services said in a statement. 

Where the city meets the wild 

The highest rates of wild animal collisions occur in dense urban areas surrounded by natural vegetation. Van Nuys and Northridge — ringed by the Santa Susana, Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains — were the neighborhoods with the second- and third-most dead animal reports. While cats were still the most common animals being picked up in Northridge zip codes, according to data from the Department of Sanitation, the region had numbers of opossums, squirrels, coyotes and deer that were higher than the citywide average 

Requests for removals in 2024, the most recent year for which the animal breakdown is available, included 366 coyotes, 191 chickens, 27 turtles and four turkeys. 

The number of dead deer last year was 63, around half of what it was in 2020. While that sounds like an improvement, it actually indicates a dire trend.  

“The population of deer in California is going down by 10% a year, and the population killed by traffic is about 8% or 9% per year, suggesting that the decline in deer in California is directly tied to roadkill,” said Shilling of the Road Ecology Center.  

Habitat loss from urban development is typically accompanied by an increase in traffic, according to the Road Ecology Center’s annual roadkill report. The city has been fast-tracking new development under Mayor Karen Bass’s directive focused on affordable housing, and over 5,600 units have been approved in the San Fernando Valley since 2023, according to the city planning website.  

The best solution to curb wildlife roadkill, Shilling said, is for people to drive more slowly. The second best is fencing along major roads and highways that have become hotspots. He said wildlife crossings — like the slated Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills — are ineffective at stopping roadkill unless accompanied by deliberate fencing.  

How we did it: We examined more than eight years of reports from the city’s MyLA311 service data. In addition, we broke down the requests by neighborhood. We also analyzed data from the Department of Sanitation and the city’s Animal Services Department. Have questions about our data or want to ask a question? Write to us as askus@xtown.la.

Some regional foods stay regional because they never get the chance to break out.

But now, pork roll, the sweet-and-salty breakfast meat that's been a New Jersey deli staple for over a century, is being given a smash burger makeover by a West Coast chef.

This Thursday, Proudly Serving, a burger joint with locations in Hermosa and Redondo Beach, will serve a Jersey Burger at the Hermosa restaurant from 5 p.m. until close. It's part of its monthly Kegs and Eggs event, featuring a tap takeover from Trademark Brewing in Long Beach.

(It marks the third time owner Matt McIvor has featured the burger. The first collaboration, in 2023, with Jersey-born chef Eric Greenspan, drew lines before the doors even opened.)

While it’s true that Bristol Farms quietly has been stocking pork roll for years, and there's even been a Jersey Mike's in LAX's Delta terminal spotted serving pork roll breakfast sandwiches — the delicacy is not often seen on the West Coast.

(For the sake of this article, we’re calling it pork roll, rather than Taylor ham, because it’s what McIvor calls it. But the debate over its name — see below — splits New Jersey roughly along geographic lines: North Jersey insists on calling it Taylor ham, while Central and South Jersey stick with pork roll.)

McIvor, who grew up in Sayreville in Central Jersey — "Home of Jon Bon Jovi, that's our whole claim to fame" — has fond memories of eating pork roll with his family as a child. His earliest memory is peeling back the cloth casing on one of those mysterious meat logs in his kitchen around age 8 or 9, slicing off a piece and carefully cutting three slits into it so it would lay flat in the pan instead of curling up like a pepperoni cup.

What is pork roll?

Pork roll's origins date back to 1856, when Trenton butcher John Taylor created his secret recipe for what he initially called "Taylor's Prepared Ham" — a cured, smoked-pork product made from lean cuts mixed with sugar and spices.

Its flavor is tricky to describe — McIvor calls it a "sweet pork sausage with a nice saltiness,” making it ideal for breakfast. Think of it as a slightly sweeter version of Spam, which pork roll actually predates by almost 75 years.

John Taylor's Pork Roll comes wrapped in its cloth casing that gets peeled back before slicing.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 forced Taylor to rebrand since it didn't meet the legal definition of ham, which required whole pieces of pork, rather than ground meat. When Taylor tried to trademark "pork roll," a 1910 court ruling declared the term couldn't be trademarked, opening the floodgates for competitors. The naming controversy has persisted ever since.

The Jersey burger 

The Proudly Serving Jersey Burger is built on a Martin's potato bun — "also an East Coast thing, so it all plays well together," McIvor says — topped with a double-smash burger, American cheese and two slices of pork roll, cut with those three slits to make "a little flower" that keeps them flat on the griddle.

A fried egg cooked sunny side up but only halfway through — what McIvor calls "a half fry" — keeps the yolk runny enough to mingle with the meat.

The whole thing gets finished with ketchup, salt and pepper, the standard toppings that come automatically on every pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwich back in Jersey.

"This is generally a fairly sweet and salty burger," he explains, noting how the sugar in the pork roll plays against the salt in the meat and cheese to create that distinctive breakfast-for-dinner balance.

Can I find it anywhere else in L.A.?

For decades, pork roll was mainly confined to the mid-Atlantic region, rarely making its way beyond certain parts of New Jersey. In recent years, though, West Coast availability has quietly grown.

If you can't make it to Proudly Serving on Thursday, a few other L.A. spots carry pork roll year-round. Marconda's Meats at the Original Farmers Market stocks 1- and 3-pound logs, and New York Bagel & Deli in Santa Monica offers it inside their bagel sandwiches.

Though it's not quite the same as visiting your hometown deli at 7 a.m., where they know your order by heart, it's a close substitute until the next trip East.