The Brief

Account minimums, overdraft fees, and showing ID are all common requirements for opening a bank account. But they're hurdles many Californians can't jump over.

That's why the state is considering establishing its own public banking option. CalAccount would be a no-cost banking platform without fees and penalties, managed by the state and run privately by another financial entity. It would also make it easier for unhoused people and those without state or federal ID to enroll.

What the program would address

One recent report conducted by HR&A Advisors and commissioned by labor union SEIU found that 1 in 5 households in California lacks at least some access to financial services. Many of those people are Black, Latino, non-citizens and members of single parent, women-led households.

California Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) authored the law requiring the state to look into public banking. He said one reason so many people can't maintain a bank account is because it costs money to keep them open.

"[If you] get a fine for not having a minimum amount of dollars in the bank, or you get an overdraft fee … that really starts to add up more than most people think," Santiago said. "If $20 could make the difference between you putting groceries on the table or not, it's worth taking a look at CalAccount."

It's not just fines and fees — many in California don't use a bank because there's no nearby branch to go to. One count finds that 70% of census tracts in the state have no physical banking locations.

A recent state commission report found that the most successful state public banking option would be online and available in physical locations that already house government services, like post offices.

What could the savings look like?

The study from HR&A Advisors said CalAccount could save California households without banking access an average of $1,300 a year. It could also keep some people from using costly cash checkers and payday lenders, which typically charge high interest.

Deysi Gomez works at a McDonald's in San Jose where she makes $20 an hour. She recently got a bank account with Bank of America, but said that she spent years without a bank because she only had an ID from her home country Guatemala. She also said that she was never given information about accessing a bank account.

For these reasons, Gomez said she used to cash her checks at a fragrance store.

"I would walk up to four hours just to get to that location to change my check," she said through a translator.

Gomez added that she eventually started going to another location closer to home to cash her checks, but it charged her 6% for every $100 .

What would it take to come online?

The proposal to create a public banking platform recently crossed a significant landmark when a California commission issued a report on the program's feasibility.

That report said creating a public banking option hinges on the participation of at least one federally insured bank.

"However, offering no-fee accounts, at scale, may not be profitable (or even cover the basic costs of account maintenance) and may not, on its own, provide ample incentive to banks to participate in CalAccount," the report states.

The plan could also face pushback once it goes back to the legislature.

In 2021, when Santiago's proposal to look into public banking was being debated, a group representing businesses, banks, credit unions and the California Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter opposing it. They said a public banking option misdiagnosed the problem, and that people without adequate banking services needed more money, not a new bank.

"Individuals who utilize payday lenders and other high-cost loan products do so because they have inadequate cash flow, not because they lack access to banking services," the letter states.

In a recent brief, Nari Rhee, who directs the Retirement Security Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, wrote that CalAccount could build on other state-managed financial services like CalSavers, a retirement savings program, to fill a gap for low income Californians.

"For families on the edge, when you're just really living on a tight margin and then you get hit with a surprise fee, things can wind up cascading really, really quickly," she said. "Putting a stop to that with access to these accounts I think can make a real difference."

A criminal justice watchdog is calling into question whether Latinos in the L.A. County Superior Court get a fair shot at bail.

The new report from the nonprofit La Defensa, which advocates for reform in the legal system, analyzes a sample of pretrial decisions from 2025 which had been documented by community court-watching volunteers.

One of the key findings was that defendants who were perceived to be Latino had an average bail amount of $157,700 — more than 15 times higher than white defendants and nearly three times higher than Black defendants.

Studies show that inability to pay bail can affect defendants’ livelihoods and their ability to defend themselves, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

“ Most families — no matter what they did, no matter what they sold — cannot actually purchase that person’s freedom to give them the fighting chance to go against the state,” Titilayọ Rasaki, La Defensa’s state policy and legal affairs director.

The L.A. County Superior Court says it’s following the law on bail requirements and that the findings are missing context because observation is limited.

How court-watching works

La Defensa’s Court Watch LA program is a community-led effort to document and hold the courts accountable. They train volunteers to go in and observe cases.

The volunteers take notes on the charges, the judge’s conduct and the person’s criminal history, if it comes up. That then gets analyzed against publicly available case information and state law. Programs like this exist in several other cities around the country.

For the latest report, La Defensa volunteers observed 140 felony and misdemeanor criminal cases, chosen at random, between January to November 2025.

Judicial accountability lead Bryanna Siguenza explained how she decided where to send the volunteers.

“ I choose a department, specifically ones that are pretty busy, have high case loads, and are arraignment and pretrial,” she said.

What watchers saw

Racial disparities in pretrial settings have been researched at local, state and national levels, but La Defensa’s findings are based entirely on human observation, Siguenza said.

The volunteers are trained to listen for important details that come up in proceedings, but they may not always get the full story behind the charges, like a defendant’s criminal history.

L.A. County Superior Court spokesperson Rob Oftring said the report needs more context.

“Many of the report’s findings, for example, do not appear to account for charge severity or criminal history, both of which are legally significant factors in any release decision…” he wrote in a statement.

La Defensa did not include in its report what charges had been filed in the cases observed. However, according to the report, comparable charges still had disproportionate bail outcomes that “couldn’t be explained by charge severity alone.”

The severity of charges legally informs bail decisions. The Superior Court is required to have standard bail amounts based on the crime, which judges have discretion to adjust.

State law also requires judges to weigh issues like public safety in bail decisions, as well as the defendant’s ability to post bail. According to the volunteers’ observations, the judges considered the latter in just a quarter of cases when setting bail.

Oftring said the court has taken steps to reduce money bail’s usage as allowed by law.

“Bail at arraignment is set only after both the defense and prosecution have been heard and the judge has weighed the specific facts of the case,” his statement read.

The limits of the findings

Oftring said the court values the role organizations like Court Watch LA play in keeping the justice system accountable, but that the sample size of the researchers used in their report is too small to draw any definitive conclusions.

Roughly 272,000 criminal cases took place during that time period, according to Oftring.

Representatives from La Defensa said they know the report is only a snapshot of the system, and that human observation has its limits.

That’s why in November, they requested 10 years of de-identified data to analyze whether bail outcomes differ across judges, courthouses and demographic groups. Rasaki said they haven’t received it.

“  We would say release the data … by all means, we want to partner. We want to analyze,” she said.

Oftring told LAist they are working on several projects that “provide data-informed scrutiny of how the court operates.”

Southern Californians are in for yet another scorching weekend.

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for much of the region through Monday, with temperatures expected to hit their peak on Sunday.

Highs in the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas of L.A. County are expected to range from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties will get up to the lower 90s. Beaches will also be hot — in the lower 80s.

Moving farther east, things get really toasty. Forecasters have issued a more severe extreme heat warning for parts of the Inland Empire, where temperatures could get up to 108 degrees, and for the Coachella Valley, where they could hit 120.

Humidity will likely also continue to add to the discomfort, but will be concentrated in areas closer to the coast, where it will keep nighttime temperatures relatively warm and make it more difficult to cool down. Inland areas will feel drier.

Those who are most at-risk from the heat are people who work or spend time outside, people without access to air conditioning and those who are either over 65 or young children.

Forecasters are also warning of dangerous rip currents and swells along the coast this weekend.

If you’re headed to the beach to beat the heat, as many Southern Californians likely are, they recommend staying out of the water or, if you do go swimming, stay in front of lifeguards. It’s also a good idea to avoid jetties and tidal rocks.

Wildfire risk

This weekend will also come with a high risk of wildfires.

Forecasters warn that fire danger will be elevated through at least Monday, driven by heat, dry vegetation and low humidity levels away from the coast.

Despite some extra moisture in the air over the last several weeks, there hasn’t been enough to actually produce rain. Without precipitation, and under consistently high temperatures, plants will continue to dry out and become fuel.

“We have humidity, but it's not reaching the saturation point. Therefore, we won't have a cloud. We won't have precipitation,” said Rong Fu, an atmospheric scientist at UCLA who specializes in weather patterns and wildfires.

Fu said a system of high atmospheric pressure sitting over the Western U.S. is pushing warm, dry air across the Sierra Nevada from inland deserts and into Southern California.

That can generate what’s known as downslope wind. Those winds plus the already dry conditions align to create some especially dangerous fire weather.

One spark can easily turn into a large blaze, and humans are the most common cause of wildfires in Southern California, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

People can accidentally start wildfires in a range of ways, including throwing a lit cigarette into dry brush or dragging a chain behind a vehicle, creating sparks. One of the most common human causes is improperly extinguished camp fires.

Lightning can also start wildfires but is unlikely under current weather conditions. Southern California has seen minimal thunderstorms this summer.

The new normal?

Heatwaves in the summer and fall are obviously not new for Southern California, but they are getting worse.

Much of the heat currently blanketing the region is being driven by the high-pressure system, which traps warm air and compresses it against the ground, heating it even further. Forecasters say it’s likely to stay that way through the end of July.

But high-pressure systems like this one usually don’t stick around this long.

“For this pattern to linger almost two weeks — yeah, I would say, from a climatological point of view — that's pretty unusual,” Fu said.

One major driver of the change, Fu said, is climate change: As the climate warms, this kind of “anomalous” high pressure system will become stronger and more frequent.

And one consequence of hotter and longer heatwaves, is extended elevated periods of risky fire weather.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles will be under a heat wave advisory until Monday evening as temperatures show no signs of letting up over the weekend.

Temperatures will linger in the high 80s and low 90s in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, including Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake.

The National Weather Service projects temperatures will peak on Sunday afternoon. Meteorologist Bryan Lewis with the National Weather Service said residents can expect more humidity than usual. 

While dense, urban centers have more concrete and see more vehicle traffic, downtown and the surrounding areas will not be the hottest locations during this heatwave in the Southland, as the Antelope Valley will be under an extreme heat advisory over the weekend.

During hot weather, the beach is an immediate go-to for folks that want to stay cool, but Lewis warns against this as the surf will be extra choppy.

The Pacific Coast will see large swells “coming up from tropical systems off the coast of Mexico,” Lewis said. “We are issuing a beach hazard statement that’ll be in effect through at least the weekend [which] may be extended.” 

While the weather is expected to cool down on Monday, forecasts show that another heatwave could develop by the end of next week.

Pools nearby

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Echo Park Pool

Eleanor Green Roberts Aquatic Center

Cooling centers

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Pico Union Branch Library

Felipe de Neve Branch Library (Westlake)

Pio Pico – Koreatown Branch Library

Councilmember Heather Hutt’s office recommends residents to rest in shade or a building with air conditioning and to stay hydrated with plenty of water.

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