The Brief

Legislators returned to the statehouse this week for the four-week dash to decide which bills should be sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. They’ll have until Aug. 29 to get an up or down vote in either the Senate or House appropriations committees, then until Sept. 12 to send legislation to Newsom’s desk.

Most bills that get this far stand a good chance of passage. But you may waste your dollars wagering on several contentious education bills still being negotiated. One would define antisemitism and set restrictions on its content in schools; two others, which may merge into one, would add oversight and tighten rules on preventing fraud in hybrid and online charter schools.

Here are summaries of a dozen K-12 and higher education bills worth watching.

SENATE BILL 98

Author: Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena

What it will do: The bill would require school districts, California State University, each California community college district and each Cal Grant-qualifying institution of higher education, as well as request the University of California, to issue a notification to all students, faculty, and other campus community members when the presence of federal immigration enforcement is confirmed on campus. These notifications must include the date, time, and location of enforcement on campus, as well as a link to additional resources for students and campus community members.

Why it's important: While most schools provide guidelines to students, faculty, and staff about how to engage with federal immigration enforcement officers if encountered on campus, there is no legal requirement to notify the community. With ongoing raids and continued fears of detention and deportation in immigrant communities, the bill aims to bolster a sense of security and maintain school campuses as “safe spaces” for students.

What’s next: The bill passed the Senate in June. The Senate Education Committee and the Assembly Higher Education Committee passed it in July, and it currently is under review by the Assembly Appropriations Committee with a hearing scheduled for Aug. 20.

Upshot: The bill is likely to pass the Assembly Appropriations Committee, as it is not expected to have major cost burdens. It also is likely to take immediate effect after Newsom signs it into law.

— Vani Sanganeria

SENATE BILL 323

Author: Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena

What it will do: The bill would revise the California Dream Act application, clarifying that the form is open to any student who is eligible for state aid, regardless of their eligibility for federal financial aid.

Why it's important: The bill aims to address concerns that U.S. citizens from mixed-status families — such as students with undocumented parents or spouses — may not apply for federal student aid due to technical barriers and worries about data privacy. Heightened immigration enforcement has raised fears that the data students submit to access federal aid could be used to target undocumented family members. Though the California Dream Act application is open to mixed-status families, the California Student Aid Commission says the lack of a defined and uniform state policy has created uncertainty for students trying to understand their financial aid options.

What’s next: The bill awaits an Aug. 20 Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing.

Upshot: The bill is sponsored by the California Student Aid Commission, which administers financial aid programs for students attending school in California. It’s backed by dozens of other groups and has no registered opposition.

— Amy DiPierro

ASSEMBLY BILL 477

Authors: Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay

What it will do: The bill would increase California teacher and classified school employee salaries by 50% over the next decade. It also would increase statewide school funding incrementally through the 2036-37 school year, allowing school districts to increase staff pay.

Why it's important: Teachers earn 23.5% less than other college graduates with comparable degrees, which keeps many graduates from entering the teaching profession, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.

What’s next: The bill passed the Assembly Education Committee unanimously April 10 but was referred to the suspense file and could be heard next year.

Upshot: Getting the bill through the Assembly Appropriations Committee could be difficult, as it requires the state to fully fund the raises, which are expected to cost tens of billions of dollars between now and the 2036-37 fiscal year.

— Diana Lambert

SENATE BILL 640

Author: Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-Napa

What it will do: The bill aims to make it easier for qualified California high school students to get admitted to a California State University. Eligible high school students — those who have taken the required courses and maintained an appropriate grade point average — will receive mailers directly admitting them to participating CSU campuses.

Why it's important: Cabaldon’s reasoning is that there are lots of students who are academically qualified to attend CSUs but who don’t enroll because they have trouble navigating the admissions process. The measure follows a fall 2024 direct-admission pilot program in Riverside County. Other provisions of the bill would build on an existing dual-admission transfer pathways program at CSUs.

What’s next: An appropriations hearing is scheduled for Aug. 20.

Upshot: The bill has no opponents on file and the backing of the Los Angeles Unified School District and other supporters.

— Amy DiPierro

SENATE BILL 790

Author: Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-Napa

What it will do: The bill clears the way for the governor to sign onto an existing interstate agreement that sets standards for online college courses and degrees but only under certain conditions. For example, the state would have to confirm that joining the agreement would not block California from enforcing its own consumer protection laws.

Why it's important: California is the only state that hasn’t joined the pact, which is called the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, or SARA. The bill’s author says joining SARA would make it easier for California colleges to enroll out-of-state students in online courses.

What’s next: The bill heads to an Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing Aug. 20.

Upshot: The bill has attracted a mixture of concerned opposition and hearty endorsement. Opponents, including the California Federation of Teachers, say California is right to remain a holdout to SARA because the agreement doesn’t do enough to protect students from fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, supporters, such as the University of California, say the bill would level the playing field for California institutions seeking to offer online courses to out-of-state students.

— Amy DiPierro

ASSEMBLY BILL 1264

Author: Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, D-Encino

What it will do: The bill would require the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to adopt regulations for ultra-processed foods (UPFs). It would require schools to begin phasing out harmful UPFs by Jan. 1, 2028. Beginning July 1, 2035, the bill would prohibit a school district, county superintendent of schools, or charter school from offering a “nutritionally adequate” breakfast or lunch that includes harmful ultra-processed foods or from selling food or beverages with UPFs, except as part of a school fundraiser.

Why it's important: Nutrition experts point to the harmful effects of ultra-processed food, particularly among children. These effects include a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, which disproportionately impact students from low-income communities.

What’s next: The bill has passed the Assembly and Senate policy committees, and in a fiscal hearing, all seven members voted to place the bill on the Senate Appropriations Committee suspense file due to fiscal impact.

Upshot: The bill is likely to pass if it clears the Senate Appropriations Committee, given its strong bipartisan support.

— Vani Sanganeria

ASSEMBLY BILL 1348

Author: Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Bakersfield

What it will do: School districts, county offices of education, and charter schools currently can request average daily attendance (ADA) credit to make up for decreases in attendance reaching 10% of the student population that occur due to a specified list of reasons. This bill would add immigration enforcement actions to that list — which currently includes fires, floods, epidemics, earthquakes, and more — until June 30, 2029. When such a request for ADA credit is made, students also must be offered independent study.

Why it's important: Following this year’s sharp rise in immigration enforcement actions, plus President Donald Trump's administration ending a decades-long policy to avoid immigration enforcement in or near schools, there are heightened concerns that children are missing school to avoid encounters with immigration agents.

What’s next? The bill was most recently read by the Senate Appropriations Committee and referred to the suspense file.

— Betty Márquez Rosales

ASSEMBLY BILL 1400

Author: Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, D-Merced

What it will do: The bill is the latest legislative attempt to allow California community colleges to offer bachelor’s degree programs in nursing. The bill would create a pilot program allowing 15 community colleges across the state to offer those programs.

Why it's important: California faces a nursing shortage. Supporters of the bill, which would give priority to colleges in areas underserved by nurses, say it would help address that shortage.

What’s next: The bill awaits a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Upshot: If recent history is any indication, the bill will not become law. A similar bill, Senate Bill 895, was approved last year by lawmakers and would have allowed 10 colleges to offer nursing bachelor’s degrees, but Newsom vetoed it. That legislation was fiercely opposed by the state’s four-year universities, which again are opposing the newer bill.

— Michael Burke

ASSEMBLY BILL 1454

Authors: Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, and Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park

What it will do: It would provide missing links to California’s comprehensive early literacy reforms, which are effective in other states. The bill would provide teachers with evidence-based resources and training in reading instruction, including phonics in kindergarten and first grade. The State Board of Education would select a new list of instructional materials tied to what’s commonly called the science of reading. Districts must select from the list or justify their choices. The state would update reading instruction in administrators’ credentialing programs.

Why it's important: The ability to read at grade level is a critical marker for success in school. Yet just 2 in 5 California third-graders do so. The proficiency gap in reading between Black and Hispanic students compared with white and Asian students is among the nation’s widest.

Upshot: A similar bill last year died. This year, Rivas forged a deal, and Newsom followed with $200 million in a tight state budget to teach school trainers in the science of reading. Newsom will celebrate passage with a grand signing next month.

— John Fensterwald

The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency will miss a Tuesday deadline for submitting its federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.

LAHSA executives blamed the delay on a “perfect storm” of leadership changes and competing priorities within LAHSA’s finance department, including an L.A. County review of LAHSA’s delayed payments to contractors.

“Our staff made a good-faith effort to meet the deadline,” interim CEO Gita O’Neill said at a LAHSA Commission meeting Tuesday. “However, over the past year, we've experienced several transitions. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”

Each year, LAHSA, like all non-federal agencies and organizations that get substantial federal dollars, is required to hire an outside auditor to determine whether it’s properly tracking and reporting the taxpayer funds it manages.

LAHSA’s single audit report for last fiscal year was due March 31, nine months after fiscal year 2024-2025 ended. Earlier this month, LAHSA officials said they were on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

Justin Measley, lead auditor for the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, had warned that LAHSA was months behind schedule turning over records.

At a meeting Tuesday, Measley explained that because of LAHSA’s earlier delays, the firm would need at least an additional week to complete a quality-control review process.

“We’re moving at the fastest pace we possibly can,” Measley said.

On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit will be filed “at the earliest possible opportunity,” within the next few weeks.

Federal funds at risk

LAHSA manages hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year, through grants from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

O’Neill said the agency has been communicating with HUD officials regularly about the missed audit deadline and is “hoping for understanding.”

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said she’s also been talking with HUD.

“They seem amenable to our situation and to our stated timelines,” Lim said. “So, we are hopeful that this will be a good outcome, despite having missed the deadline.”

HUD did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment Tuesday.

What went wrong 

Measley said LAHSA’s financial statements should have been turned over around last December, but LAHSA only submitted them this month, after blowing through multiple extended deadlines.

Measley said he contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents March 3.

He said he also previewed his firm’s findings, noting one “significant deficiency” in its draft report, related to LAHSA’s timeliness in detecting accounting errors.

LAHSA could contest those findings, officials said. That would add additional back-and-forth between the homelessness agency and accounting firm before the audit report is ready to file.

Justin Szlasa, a LAHSA commissioner who chairs the audit subcommittee, told LAHSA’s CEO he’s concerned that there was no time provided for LAHSA’s governing body to review the audit report.

“Next year, we will absolutely do that,” O’Neill responded. “I think this year, we were under the gun, and so we felt it was the most important thing was to get it uploaded on time.”

O’Neill said the agency hired accounting firm KPMG to help modernize LAHSA’s financial systems, with a focus on its contractor payments.

“We have an outside, trusted voice to help us create a system that works going forward because the system we have is not working at all, in finance,” O’Neill said.

Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:44 PM ET

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he believes the order is legally "foolproof." But election experts said the order was unconstitutional, and voting rights advocates and Democratic state officials quickly pledged to sue to block the order from going into effect.

A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy.

The Constitution says the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections are determined by individual states, with Congress able to enact changes.

"This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration," Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday. "We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court," he added.

Arizona is among more than two dozen states Trump's Department of Justice has sued over access to sensitive voter data.

The Trump administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. Federal judges in three states have dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuits in those states.

In another case, a DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens.

NPR has reported that some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE.

How the executive order seeks to change voting

Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and fraud associated with mail ballots.

The new executive order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — takes aim at both.

It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to "compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State."

The order then "requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots," according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump's executive order claims that "additional measures are necessary" to secure voting by mail, a form of voting he has used himself — including last week — but also falsely maligned for years. In the 2024 general election, nearly a third of all voters cast mail ballots.

The Postal Service should also review the design of mail ballot envelopes to protect "the integrity of Federal elections," the order says.

Collectively, the provisions would be a significant change to how mail ballot programs are currently administered in American elections, which are largely carried out by state and local officials.

"Our government's citizenship lists are incomplete and inaccurate. The United States Postal Service is overburdened and inadequate. This combines a car crash with a train wreck," the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access and sued to block Trump's 2025 election executive order, said in a statement.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional. And regardless, he added, "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections. … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."

The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements.

That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.

The Supreme Court is also expected to rule this year on whether Mississippi should be allowed to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by election officials after Election Day.

The legal challenge, which could have sweeping implications for mail voting nationwide, was filed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.

The data project, an initiative between UCLA and UC Berkeley, publishes federal data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges, and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.

In a December news release, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 10,000 people in the L.A. area since immigration raids began in June of last year, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but did not publish details of the number of people who had criminal records.

The data from the Deportation Data Project shows that arrests in L.A. spiked in June, and about two-thirds of people arrested that month had no criminal convictions.

More than 313,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide in 2025, according to an LAist analysis.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency has not “verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results” and said “this only reveals how data is manipulated to peddle the false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst.” The spokesperson said 61% of people ICE arrested across the country either had criminal convictions or pending charges.

The agency has regularly published press releases identifying people they have arrested and who they have called “the worst of the worst,” including from the raids in L.A. in June. But an LAist investigation and reporting from other outlets has found that some of the people on those lists already has been in custody and were serving lengthy sentences.

Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.

The program is for businesses in Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park.

Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open. 

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.

Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.

Who is eligible?

The program is open to independently owned businesses and street vendors located within District 1.

To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Businesses that changed owners can also apply if they’re essentially running the same operation.

How can the money be used?

Grants can be used for daily operational expenses, including rent, payroll, utilities, overhead and other business costs. Roochnik said the funding could also help businesses cover missed rent payments.

Who is running the program?

The grants will be distributed in partnership with the PACE Business Development Center and New Economics for Women. The two organizations provide support to small and immigrant-owned businesses across Los Angeles.

How will recipients be selected?

Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out, Roochnik said. 

What’s the goal?

Hernandez said the program is meant to help stabilize neighborhoods that have been affected by immigration enforcement and economic hardships.

“These small businesses are the backbone of our neighborhoods,” she said, adding the funding is meant to help them “stay open, keep workers employed, and continue serving our communities.”

Naomi Villagomez Roochnik, CD1 communications director, said the announcement was made during a press conference at Delicias Bakery and Some, a longtime Latina-owned business in Highland Park. The neighborhood has experienced significant rising rents due to gentrification and the location was meant to highlight the kinds of businesses the program is meant to support.

How to apply:

To apply, small businesses and vendors can complete the application at bit.ly/cd1smallbizsupport.

Is this a one-time program or part of a larger effort?

The grant is part of a pilot program, with the possibility of it expanding depending on demand and outcomes. The council office has launched similar aid efforts in the past, Roochnik said, such as food distribution and rental assistance. 

Businesses that may not qualify for this specific grant can be connected to other resources, according to Roochnik, including the city’s legacy business program, which is for businesses operating for at least 20 years. 

The post Small businesses, vendors struggling against ICE raids, economic uncertainty eligible for up to $10,000 in grants appeared first on LA Local.