The Brief

On a recent triple digit summer day, I made my way out to a dusty field at UC Riverside, the research center of California’s citrus universe.

The UC Riverside Citrus Research Center is lined with row after row of citrus trees. It's also home to the Climate Ready Tree test plot.

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Jacob Margolis

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Row after row of tangerines, oranges and pomelos —11,000 in total — baked under a heat dome. Off in the distance, wildfire smoke passed in front of the San Bernardino Mountains, which had been covered in thick snow just a few months ago.

The dusty field is just one of the many plots that the university uses to trial new trees, grow budwood for distribution and come up with solutions for devastating problems like Huanglongbing, a bacteria driven greening disease that’s threatening trees world wide.

However, I was there to check out a block of 48 trees sitting along a fence that look nothing like the thousands of citrus around them. Inconsequential at first glance, you could easily imagine them along any road in Los Angeles, but that’s kind of the point. The trees are being tested to see if they can survive our hellishly hot and dry future driven by climate change.

Where, how and why these trees are being tested

There are 12 different types of trees and four of each at the UC Riverside test plot.

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It’s a collection of 12 different species — four of each — pulled from around the world and being run through the gauntlet by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Planted seven years ago, they were given supplemental water to help them get established, but since then they’ve had to survive on their own through record-setting heatwaves and drought years.

The Texas, or escarpment, live oak was struggling and nearly dead at the UC Riverside plot. It's reportedly doing better at a plot along the coast.

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The trees are being assessed for a number of factors including attractiveness, whether they provide good shade, how much work it takes to maintain them (less pruning means lower maintenance costs) and whether they can survive without much water.

The experiment is expected to run for at least 20 years, but visit the plot today and it's clear which trees are thriving. Surprisingly, just because a tree comes from a hot climate doesn’t mean it’s going to do well.

“What kind of choices are we going to be able to make in the future?,” said Natalie van Doorn, U.S. Forest Service scientist and co-creator of the experiment known as Climate Ready Trees. “Are we going to have enough water to make that decision that yes we want to keep watering our trees?”

If not, we’ve got to have viable candidates that we know will thrive and provide critical tree cover, which for residents, can be a matter of life or death.

Why L.A.'s hundreds of thousands of trees matter so much

Click for more details on the benefit of trees from TreeKeeper

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Trees are an absolutely critical part of our infrastructure. They have a marked impact on human and ecosystem health.

The red push pistache had one of the densest canopies at the test site.

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Trees can:

• Help drop temperatures in urban areas by as much as 45 degrees
• Reduce energy use
• Suppress noise
• Improve air quality
• Sequester water
• Help provide homes to all sorts of creatures, all according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Which is why any sort of major threat to the more than 700,000 street trees planted across the city of L.A. is of major concern, and that's what climate change is doing.

Much of our urban forest, as it’s known, was planted over the past 100 years as the region developed. As people migrated from other parts of the country they often wanted to plant the trees that they were familiar with, though that could mean species from wetter climates.

The sweetgum tree, whose spiky seed balls you’ve likely stepped on while walking through a park, is a decent example. It’s originally from the eastern area of the country and doesn’t love drought conditions, thriving in the moist soils of the Mississippi Delta. More than 25,000 of them are planted across the city, according to a tree inventory.

A red pistache

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The flowers of the desert willow are a beautiful pink.

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“I think in general, many of urban forests contain what I would call legacy plantings that occurred after World War II, when people were building homes and moving in and planting trees. And so those trees now, maybe 40, 50, 60 years old, they were planted when water was abundant. They've grown accustomed to having water and of course they're not necessarily as well adapted to hot dry conditions,“ said Greg McPherson, retired research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and one of the creators of the experiment.

We were long able to satisfy a broad range of moisture requirements because we imported and dumped all but unlimited gallons of water all over our landscapes, often in an effort to keep our lawns green.

That is until this past decade, when drought and water cuts became the norm.

What happens to water-stressed trees

The flowers of the maverick mesquite.

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The flowers of the desert museum palo verde.

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Water-stressed trees are more susceptible to pathogens and insect attacks, and are, predictably, more likely to die than healthy happy trees. One only need look to the Sierra Nevada to understand how bad things can get. More than 100 million trees have died over the past decade in part due to drought stress.

There are no clear mortality estimates for LA’s urban forest over the past decade, so we can’t say whether extreme conditions have led to more tree deaths in our area. And unless we had a widespread, granular tree tracking program, it’s going to be tough to determine why an individual tree is lost.

There are hundreds of thousands of street trees across the city, and urban trees face all sorts of challenges trees in our forests don’t. Yard tools can damage them and lead to the introduction of disease, poor pruning practices can lessen tree resilience and sometimes people just cut them down because they want to redo their yards.

That said, conditions are becoming more challenging for our urban forest and we could be on the path to greater die off as a result. Longer, more sustained droughts are becoming more common, meaning less water for irrigated landscapes, and more extreme heat days mean trees require more water to survive.

While this palo blanco, originally from northern Mexico, was looking OK, another one was struggling substantially.

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Odds are we haven’t seen the worst of it. Even though we’ve had a handful of water cuts over the past decade, lawns are still green and trees still often getting supplemental irrigation.

Given how bad cuts got before this wet year, it’s easy to imagine a point where outdoor watering is limited to the point that lawns start to finally die off and the trees that rely on that same supplemental water start to die too.

“The roots of those trees are near the surface because turf is irrigated in frequent, but not heavy doses. So the water stays in the upper surface of the soil and that’s where the roots are,” McPherson said.

Depending on the variety, trees can take decades to become established and provide meaningful shade. If we’re planting something today with the expectation that it’ll survive in the lawn-less future we’re charging towards, it’s important to find species that can thrive on minimal supplemental inputs.

Our need for more resilient trees

McPherson’s efforts to find what the experiment is calling ‘climate-ready trees’ began about two decades ago, when he recognized what the existential threat of warming trends could mean for our urban forests.

The Desert Museum Palo Verde doesn't provide as much shade as the other trees, but it's nice to look at and likes hot weather.

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“I began in 1999 when I got a 18 wheeler full of desert trees from Arizona shipped up and planted them all around Sacramento and Davis, and really started evaluating their performance,” said McPherson.

Some, like the Palo Verde, even though it can thrive in hot climates, struggled.

“It just grew so fast that the top would outgrow the roots and it would blow over in our wind,” he said. “Some of them worked, some didn’t. But that led to the idea that we need to evaluate more species”

The rosewood tree had a sizable canopy that provided good shade.

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In 2015 he and van Doorn got a grant to begin trialing trees at a test site at UC Davis, and eventually along the coast in Irvine, and in the scorching hot environment of Riverside.

So which trees have been thriving?

Though the experiment still has a number of years to go, I made the trip to the Riverside plot because out of the two Southern California plots, I wanted to see which trees were doing the best in the most extreme conditions.

Many were thriving, but three stood out because they looked healthy, cast wonderful shade and were quite attractive. They’d be wonderful along any street.

The Red Push Pistache was the first to catch my eye in part because it had one of the thickest canopies and beautiful leaves. It’s originally from Arizona.

The red push pistache seemed to be thriving.

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The canopy of the rosewood, originally from India, rivaled the pistache and the Desert Willow, native to the southwest, put out gorgeous pink flowers.

A rosewood tree.

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The desert willow was thriving at the test plot.

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The Honey Mesquite, also native to the southwest, was covered in bright yellow flowers and teaming with so many bees that the whole tree appeared to vibrate.

The honey mesquite can be invasive in some environments.

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The ghost gum, a type of eucalyptus from Australia was also well established. However, because of their oil content eucalyptus tend to burn violently in wildfires. Maybe not the best choice for fire prone locations. And the tecate cypress is native to the region and looks like it could be trimmed into a hedge. It's struggled a bit at the plot.

The ghost gum is a type of eucalyptus from Australia.

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The Tecate Cypress is native to Southern California and could work well in a hedge.

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Then there were the ones that appeared to need more maintenance, like the Palo Verde, which I see planted in drought tolerant landscapes across the area. It can thrive in hot conditions, and with a bit of pruning it might’ve looked better. Problem is it didn’t provide much shade.

And, to me, the Texas Live Oak looked to be an outright failure, as they were close to dead. It's reportedly done better in cooler conditions at the team's other test site in Irvine.

A desert museum Palo Verde

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A live oak

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Go see the trees yourself

Each tree in the private research plot has a counterpart located in parks across the region, in an effort to help determine how they do when they’re not babied.

“If you were looking at reference versus park sites, the reference sites are doing better as far as survivorship and growth. In the park sites there just is a lot of variability,” said van Doorn.

If you’re curious about how they’re doing, you can actually go visit them in person.

Locations of tree testing in inland Southern California

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Coastal testing locations for trees.

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For instance, here’s a map of tree locations if you live near Woodley Park in the San Fernando Valley.

Or if you’re over on the west side, the trees might be performing completely differently at a spot like Vista Del Mar Park.

If you want a more granular look at all of the trees, the researchers issued an update three years ago here.

If you have any favorite drought tolerant trees, shoot me a note below.

In what could be a major change in oversight of L.A. homelessness spending, the City Council’s homelessness committee is recommending the city start shifting some programs away from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) over the course of the upcoming fiscal year. Which programs and who would oversee them remains to be seen.

The move comes a year after L.A. County decided to pull its funding from the joint city-county agency in response to multiple audits that found LAHSA failed to properly track and manage billions of homelessness dollars. Officials are also warning homelessness services may have to be cut due to ongoing, years’ long delays on LAHSA’s part in reimbursing service providers for their work. The committee’s chair, Councilmember Nithya Raman, describes LAHSA as “plagued with scandal” in her mayoral platform.

On Wednesday, the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee voted to recommend multiple changes to city homelessness spending, including a recommendation by Raman to shift management of some city programs away from LAHSA during the next fiscal year that starts July 1.

Another recommendation advanced by the committee, which was proposed by Councilmember Tim McOsker, is to pursue negotiations to give the city “a clear majority” in the governance and decision-making control at LAHSA — including over federal funding meant for 84 other cities in L.A. County. Currently, LAHSA’s governing commission is split 50-50 between city and county appointees. Starting next year, the city will be by far the largest funder of LAHSA.

[Click here to read the recommendations a majority of the committee voted to make.]

The recommendations call for city officials to send the council a report by July 1 analyzing which city programs make sense to shift away from LAHSA and instead be managed by the county, the city or another entity. If approved by the council, $450,000 would be budgeted to hire consultants to advise the city about the funding shift, and city officials would be directed to update the council every 30 days about the transition.

The recommendations now go to the full City Council for a decision.

Mayor Karen Bass has expressed concern that moving too quickly to shift funds from LAHSA could harm services for unhoused people. That concern was echoed at Wednesday’s committee meeting by Gita O’Neill, who is serving as LAHSA CEO during a year-long leave from being an attorney at the city attorney’s office.

“ I would just ask this committee to take their time to look at the issues. Sometimes when things are rushed and hurried, unfortunately our unhoused folks fall through the cracks,” O’Neill said. “Seeing it go really quickly, sometimes things can get lost, sometimes contracts can get lost.”

Councilmember Heather Hutt, who is on the council’s homelessness committee, said Wednesday she does not support shifting spending yet to the county or in-house.

“It's too premature, too early and too rushed,” Hutt said. “Given the actions of the county and the federal government, we need to make sure our system is stabilized over the next two years before we think about what a longer transition looks like.”

She voted against Raman’s recommendations to start shifting funding over the next fiscal year, and voted for McOsker’s recommendations to try to beef up city control of LAHSA.

The full City Council is expected to decide on the recommendations at a future meeting. Regardless of what the city does, all of the county’s funding of services through LAHSA will be pulled as of July 1 and moved to full county control.

East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress on Tuesday, days after sexual assault and misconduct allegations against the Democratic front-runner upended California’s wide-open governor’s race.

Swalwell dropped out of the race Sunday and resigned from Congress on Tuesday. His exit comes as a new accuser came forward Tuesday, alleging that Swalwell drugged and raped her in 2018. Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly set Aug. 18 as the date for a special election to fill Swalwell’s seat.

Here’s what happened and what it means for the June 2 statewide primary and the future of Swalwell’s congressional seat.

Why did Swalwell resign from Congress and drop out of the governor’s race?

Swalwell, 45, is accused of sexually assaulting two women and harassing others.

On Friday, he was accused of raping a former staff member twice, when she was too intoxicated to consent, and of harassing three other women, including by sending nude photos and making unwanted physical advances.

Those allegations were detailed in a San Francisco Chronicle investigation and a subsequent report by CNN. The latest allegation was made by another woman, Lonna Drewes, who told reporters at a press conference Tuesday that Swalwell drugged and raped her in 2018 in a West Hollywood hotel.

Attorney Lisa Bloom (right) comforts Lonna Drewes during a press conference in which Drewes accused U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of sexual assault Tuesday in Beverly Hills.

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Swalwell has denied the allegations since they broke April 10, and his lawyers sent the women accusing him cease-and-desist letters demanding they retract their claims. In a video message Swalwell posted late Friday, he seemed to acknowledge he’d been unfaithful to his wife.

On Tuesday, after the second allegation of rape, Swalwell issued a statement through an attorney, which the lawyer posted on social media. It said that Swalwell “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault” and calls them a “calculated and transparent political hit job." His lawyer, Sara Azari, also went on News Nation on Tuesday night and said that “regret is not rape.”

The most serious allegations involve a woman who worked for Swalwell’s presidential campaign and in his congressional office, a job she began at age 21. She told the Chronicle that Swalwell, who is 17 years older than she, began pursuing her within weeks of joining his office in 2019, sending her explicit pictures on Snapchat and asking for nude photos in return.

She alleged that in September 2019, she went out drinking with a group, including Swalwell, in Pleasanton and woke up the next day naked in his hotel room, feeling the effects of vaginal intercourse.

The woman also described a similar alleged assault in 2024 in New York City after a night of drinking, recalling portions of the night, including being in Swalwell’s hotel room, pushing him off of her and telling him no. She said she woke up alone in his hotel room with vaginal bleeding and bruising.

Swalwell is also facing possible criminal investigations in both New York and California. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Saturday that it is looking into the alleged 2024 assault, and the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said over the weekend that prosecutors there are “evaluating whether any alleged criminal conduct occurred within Alameda County.” And on Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it is investigating Drewe’s allegations.

What happens to Eric Swalwell’s seat now?

Swalwell represented California’s 14th Congressional District, which includes the East Bay cities of Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore and Hayward. He submitted his resignation Tuesday. The seat is now vacant.

Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly called a special election this summer to replace him. Whoever wins will fill the seat for the remaining months of Swalwell’s term, which ends in January. In the meantime, the district has no voting representation in Congress, only the staff who have remained to assist constituents.

Meanwhile, the election cycle for the next term, beginning in January, continues on its regular schedule, with the June 2 primary and a potential runoff in the November general election.

Swalwell is not on the ballot for his congressional seat because he was running for governor. However, his name will still appear on the June ballot for governor, since it’s legally too late to remove it.

When is the special election for Swalwell’s seat and who might run?

Newsom has scheduled a special election to fill the remainder of Swalwell’s term. First, a special primary election will be held June 16. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, they would win outright and immediately take his seat in Congress.

A frontrunner for California governor, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign Sunday after a series of women accused him of sexual assault and harassment.

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If no candidate clears that threshold, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff election Aug. 18. Whoever wins will serve only the remainder of Swalwell’s term until January.

That means that if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in both the statewide primary and the special primary, voters in Swalwell’s East Bay district could potentially cast four separate ballots for their congressional representative this year.

Nine candidates already were running to succeed Swalwell in the 14th District in the June 2 primary for the full term set to begin in January. State Sen. Aisha Wahab is the only one with statewide elected experience. Former Dublin Mayor Melissa Hernandez, who serves as president of the BART Board of Directors, also is running.

Those candidates also may run in the special primary election.

Who is running for governor of California now?

The top-polling candidates in the crowded field include two Republicans: businessman Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Two Democrats other than Swalwell also have been enjoying double-digit support in most polls: former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer.

Other Democratic candidates include Xavier Becerra, who previously served as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and California attorney general; San José Mayor Matt Mahan; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; California Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Thurmond; and former state Controller Betty Yee.

Swalwell’s departure stands to further shake up what has long been an unsettled race — and California’s first wide-open campaign for governor in two decades.

How does Swalwell dropping out affect the California governor’s race?

Prior to Swalwell dropping out, he, Porter and Steyer were the top-polling Democrats. It seems likely that Porter and Steyer could now attract some of his supporters.

California has a “top-two” primary system, meaning the two candidates who receive the most votes in June, regardless of party, will move on to a November runoff. That means two Republicans or two Democrats could face each other in a runoff election.

There’s been concern among Democrats that because no Democratic candidate has consolidated support, Hilton and Bianco could make it into the runoff, shutting out Democrats and resulting in a Republican governor. That seems less likely now, especially since Hilton recently received President Donald Trump’s endorsement, which is likely to play well among Republican voters. The state GOP failed to endorse either candidate at their convention this weekend, though Bianco did get more votes than Hilton from party insiders.

If Hilton surges ahead of Bianco, the race could come down to a contest between Porter and Steyer for a second spot in the runoff.

When is the primary for California governor, and for whom will I be able to vote?

Election Day is June 2. The last day to register to vote is May 18.

Counties will begin sending out mail-in ballots May 4, and in-person early voting starts May 23.

To register to vote, contact your county elections office. The official state information guide is available here.

After about two decades of planning, six years of construction and a cost of $720 million, L.A. County Museum of Art officials gave a preview of the new David Geffen museum galleries on Wednesday.

“This museum is very experimental,” said Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO. “It's very new, it's very fresh. It's a new way to think about our history and being more accessible at the same time that I think it's more meditative."

Gone is LACMA’s 1965 iconic, boxy gallery building, replaced by an exposed concrete and glass structure distinguished by a soft, curved profile.

“You can stand in the building and know where you are, not in a box… you are here in the city, you can look around the perimeter and know exactly where you are,” said Diana Magaloni, LACMA’s senior deputy director overseeing conservation, curatorial and exhibitions.

LACMA's new David Geffen galleries have floor to ceiling windows and are more open than traditional museum art galleries.

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The feeling of knowing where you are is due largely to the acres of open space and plazas next to the building and ground level, as well as the floor to ceiling windows in the galleries’ second level that allow you to see L.A.’s mountains and urban skylines.

LACMA officials say the design by renowned minimalist Swiss architect Peter Zumthor will better serve the public’s interaction with its massive art collection that spans 6,000 years and cultures from around the globe. The collection includes Southeast Asian sculptures, paintings by Diego Rivera, as well as contemporary art by Southern California artists.

LACMA CEO Michael Govan, left, with Peter Zumthor, the architect who designed LACMA's new David Geffen galleries.

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“One of the nice things about this building is there are many new works of art and then there are old friends,” said Stephanie Barron, head of modern art at LACMA, as she stood next to a 12-foot-tall by 18-foot-wide piece by Henri Matisse.

The 2,000-pound work features multicolored leaves made of ceramic. It’s well known to LACMA’s visitors because it hung for years near the old gallery’s entrance. Now, the work faces northwest toward the Hollywood Hills and the Pacific Ocean.

LACMA opens its new David Geffen galleries to members on April 19 and to the general public on May 4.

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Success, Govan said, will be measured by visitors’ reactions to seeing art in this new setting, as well as what the setting does to people visiting by themselves or with groups of people.

“The way this building works, the way you can wander through galleries, the way the light works, the way it brings collections and thinking together, the way we’re collaborating” centers human interactions, Govan said. “It’s a launch pad, not an end point.”

LACMA’s David Geffen galleries are open to members from Sunday April 19 to Sunday May 3, then to the general public after that.