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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Courtesy 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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Jacob Margolis

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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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Courtesy UC Davis

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Coastal testing locations for trees.

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Courtesy UC Davis

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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.

A three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the new congressional maps created by California voters in the fall are legal and should remain in place, handing a win to state Democrats who hope the new districts will swing five congressional seats for their party next year.

The ruling denies a request by California Republicans and the Trump administration for the federal court in Los Angeles to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the maps created by Proposition 50.

In the 117-page ruling, the federal judges rejected GOP arguments that the new maps amounted to racial gerrymandering, which has been prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel ruled 2-1, with the two Democratic appointees ruling for California and Judge Kenneth K. Lee, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dissenting.

In the opinion, Judge Josephine Staton wrote that the panel’s conclusion “probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news” about Proposition 50 last year. She noted that during the campaign, no one ever described the new maps as racially motivated — including the Republican plaintiffs.

“No one on either side of that debate characterized the map as a racial gerrymander,” the opinion states, noting that the California Republican Party called it a “political power grab to help Democrats retake Congress and impeach Trump,” and Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi deemed it a “redistricting power grab” for political gain.”

The judges also rejected Republican arguments that the voters’ intent did not matter. The majority wrote that voters clearly were endorsing the argument that both sides were making: that this was a partisan power grab, aimed at giving Democrats a leg up in the midterm elections and counteracting what GOP-led states were doing with their own districts.

Democrats celebrated the ruling.

“Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed. California voters overwhelmingly supported Prop 50 — to respond to Trump’s rigging in Texas — and that is exactly what this court concluded,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom pushed lawmakers to put Proposition 50 on a special statewide ballot after Trump set off a mid-decade redistricting scramble by demanding Texas redraw its maps to benefit Republicans.

In his dissenting opinion, Lee wrote that race “likely played a predominant role in drawing at least one district because the smoking gun is in the hands of Paul Mitchell,” referring to a Democratic consultant who helped draw the new lines.

Lee argued that Mitchell publicly “boasted” about boosting Latino voting power in the 13th Congressional District in theCentral Valley, and that voter intent should not be the only basis for the court’s decision.

“To be sure, California’s main goal was to add more Democratic congressional seats. But that larger political gerrymandering plan does not allow California to smuggle in racially gerrymandered seats,” said Lee, who wrote that Democrats likely wanted to create a Latino majority district “as part of a racial spoils system to award a key constituency that may be drifting away from the Democratic party.”

The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Congressional candidates have until March 6 to file papers to run for office in the June primary.

Huntington Beach’s controversial former city attorney is running for state attorney general.

Michael Gates officially launched his campaign today and he will be going up against the current Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Gates has been an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his policies — and a continuous thorn in the side of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is one of the most prominent critics of the president.

Gates was first elected city attorney in 2014 and easily won re-election twice since then. Over the years, Gates earned plenty of fans and enemies as he filed a barrage of lawsuits against California over state housing mandates and the city’s plans to require voters to show ID to cast a ballot, among other issues.

Gates left the city last year to work in the Trump administration and left his D.C. post in November to return to the beach city. He told LAist he missed Huntington Beach and his family and was hired back at the city as a chief assistant city attorney. The circumstances of his return made headlines.

In a video announcing his campaign, Gates said too many lawmakers in Sacramento spend their time "scheming" for ways to raise tax rates while leaving streets unsafe.

“California has lost its way," he said. "When I am your attorney general, we are going to be toughest on crime. ... We are going to restore public safety, law and order, up and down the state of California."

He said he would also prioritize election integrity and giving local cities (and not Sacramento) final say over construction. You can watch his full statement here:

Rene Lynch also contributed to this story.

Progressive forces in Los Angeles are taking aim at companies with bloated executive pay through a ballot initiative.

On Wednesday, a coalition led by hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 launched a signature-gathering effort for a ballot proposition they called the "Overpaid CEO Tax." If the proposition makes the November ballot, it will ask voters to impose an additional city business tax on large companies with CEO pay that is exponentially higher than worker pay.

Representatives of some of Los Angeles' most powerful unions, including the Los Angeles teachers union UTLA, gathered in Hollywood to announce the launch. They spoke on the sidewalk outside of the Tesla Diner — a recently opened charging station and restaurant owned by world's richest man Elon Musk.

"A growing and dangerous divide is tearing Los Angeles apart. On the one side, corporate CEOs live in their own world," said Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen. "On the other side, workers … juggle two and three jobs, they make impossible choices between medicine and rent."

The initiative takes aim at big corporations. If passed by voters, the executive pay ordinance would impose an additional business tax on companies with at least 1,000 employees whose top executive makes more than 50 times the median worker pay in Los Angeles. Those funds would go toward low-income housing projects, sidewalk repairs and other projects.

The additional tax would be one to 10 times the typical city business tax. According to the city clerk's office, the current city business tax is between 0.1% and 0.425% of gross receipts.

The campaign is part of a bigger political fight over the coming Olympic Games and who will benefit from them.

The executive pay initiative is one of a series of competing ballot propositions launched by union and business interests after the Los Angeles City Council voted last year to raise the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 an hour by 2028.

That vote set off a cascade of responses from the companies it affected. A business group backed by Delta and United Airlines launched a referendum to repeal the wage increase. That effort eventually failed.

The fight around the so-called "Olympic wage" is still playing out. A coalition of business interests has introduced its own ballot initiative to eliminate the city business tax entirely. In December, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson introduced a motion to delay the $30 minimum wage by two years.

Campaigners for the executive pay tax will be on the ground as hype around the Olympics ramps up. Ticket registration opened for fans on Wednesday morning, the same day union leaders gathered in Hollywood.

To land the ballot initiative on the November ballot, campaigners have 120 days to gather around 140,000 signatures from registered voters in the city of Los Angeles.

Facing a loss of state and federal funding and increased costs, Los Angeles County officials are considering cutting homeless services and programs by more than 25% in the next budget year.

If approved next month, the spending plan presented to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday would trim $219 million from homeless services and programs, slashing county street outreach efforts in half and closing most of the sites for the Pathway Home encampment clearing program.

Several supervisors pushed back on aspects of the spending plan and urged county staff to find ways to avoid some of the proposed cuts.

“ I'm not particularly happy with everything that I'm seeing,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “I've heard from my providers that their people are disappointed.”

L.A. County’s new Department of Homeless Services and Housing drafted the spending plan. In a presentation to supervisors, officials said the deep cuts were necessary because of the rising costs of operating existing shelter beds and the loss of tens of millions in temporary state and federal funding.

The proposal comes after county voters approved Measure A in 2024 to increase the sales tax rate and double county dollars dedicated to addressing the homelessness crisis.

“This is really challenging, and we’re making recommendations that nobody wants to be making,” department Director Sarah Mahin told supervisors.

After the department published a draft of the plan in November, authorities changed the proposal to avoid more than $80 million in additional program cuts. They did that by securing $39 million one-time state grants and implementing about $45 million in other cost-saving measures, officials said.

Dozens of homeless service providers on Tuesday thanked county officials for shrinking the initial $303 million shortfall and urged them to avoid further cuts to services.

“We truly appreciate the progress you've made, but now the remaining shortfall is devastating for Los Angeles and for organizations like ours that are already stretched to the limit,” said Georgia Hawley of Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter in Skid Row.

Garrett Lee, of Department of Mental Health's HOME Team, collaborates with LAHSA’s Homeless Engagement Team during outreach in the targeted COVID-19 testing efforts in the homeless community in 2020.

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What’s driving the deficit?

Several factors are driving the budget deficit projected for the fiscal year that begins in July, according to L.A. County’s homelessness department.

• Shelter bed cost increases: The rates L.A. County pays shelter bed operators went up last year. It will now pay 46% more — an increase of $86 million — to maintain the same 6,000 shelter beds, officials said.
  
• Funds expiring: Several temporary funding sources — totaling about $185 million — have ended or will end in the next fiscal year, officials said. That includes $38 million in federal COVID relief and more than $80 million in state funding.
  
• Consumer spending: Sales tax revenue from Measure A is projected to decrease by $14.5 million in the next fiscal year because consumer spending is down.
  
• Carry-over funds: There are fewer one-time funds available from previous budget years that can be rolled into the coming budget year, officials say.  That number is down by $18 million.
  

Measure A looms large

Last year, L.A. County started collecting revenue through Measure A. The additional 0.5% sales tax approved by voters to address homelessness is expected to generate about $1 billion for L.A. County next budget year. That’s double the revenue generated under the county’s previous homelessness sales tax ordinance.

On Tuesday, service providers said the county cuts don’t make sense to voters who approved Measure A.

“This is not what voters intended when they doubled the tax on themselves to address the homelessness crisis,” said Katie Hill, CEO of Union Station Homeless Services, a Pasadena homelessness nonprofit.

Dozens of homeless services employees lined up to echo that message and demanding officials restore the full budget.

" My request is that you please not approve this plan without filling the gap first,” said Erin Thompson of Inner City Law Center, a nonprofit law firm. “Please find the funds.

Deandra Davis, from the homeless service provider HOPICS, said cutting programs doesn't end up saving the county money in the long run. The costs get pushed elsewhere.

“We shift these costs to jails and hospitals," she said.

Under Measure A, about 60% of revenue has to go toward homeless services. That’s about $625 million for next budget year.

Nearly 36%, or $372 million, must go to the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency to support housing development. County homelessness officials said that agency is expected to take on some of the homelessness prevention functions cut from the county’s homeless services budget.

“Measure A has given the overall system more tools to address the homelessness crisis, but fewer of them are held directly by the county,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said Tuesday.

Proposed reductions

L.A. County’s latest homelessness budget proposal includes a $92 million reduction for the county’s Pathway Home program, which moves unhoused Angelenos out of tent encampments by offering them hotel room beds. Pathway Home would be reduced from more than 1,200 beds at 20 project sites to 460 beds at seven sites, officials said.

Fewer beds for the program will mean more tent encampments in areas it serves, officials said.

Solis and fellow Supervisor Holly Mitchell said the program has been crucial for their constituents.

“This continuing attack on Pathway Home is problematic,” Mitchell said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We are clearly heading in a direction where our ability to ultimately resolve homelessness and address encampments and continue to make the progress we've seen in the last couple of years will be severely constrained."

Holly J. Mitchell, an LA County Supervisor who represents the second district.

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The budget plan also includes $127 million in reductions to other programs, including at least 100 frontline worker jobs. Outreach and prevention-related programs would be hit hardest, officials said.

Street outreach-related programs would be reduced by 60% and staffing in those programs would be cut by about half.

Mahin said parts of the county outside the city of Los Angeles will be disproportionately affected by reductions to outreach programs. Her department recommended reductions to certain outreach teams working outside city limits, but not in L.A.

That’s because of legal obligations under a settlement of a major homelessness lawsuit brought against the city and county by The L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.

“There is a requirement due to the L.A. Alliance for the county to maintain a certain level of outreach services in the city of L.A. through next fiscal year,” Mahin told LAist.

Critics of the spending plan urged supervisors to look at other parts of the budget to help save programs still on the chopping block.

Lily Clark of HOPICS told county officials the cuts would hurt her unhoused clients.

"What we can't do is eliminate the programs that prevent homelessness and expect the crisis to improve,” Clark said. “ Every subsidy cut, every outreach program lost, every navigation team dismantled, each one represents a person who will fall through the cracks.”

Next steps

Solis said on Tuesday that she hopes to see changes to outreach spending and other recommendations before approving the plan next month.

“ I know we're gonna have opportunity to try to make some adjustments,” she said.

Mahin told LAist her department has been “turning over couch cushions” looking for other sources of funding to help address the planned cuts and reductions.

“Unless people are bringing other funding solutions to the table,” Mahin said, “My question is: we can make changes, but what would you like to cut instead?”

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said local programs are getting cut because state and federal dollars dried up and costs rose, not because L.A. County cut spending.

“ We cannot invent dollars we no longer receive,” Horvath said. “We're the only level of government that has actually increased our investment. Every other level of government has decreased, and we cannot backfill these gaps.”

The board is expected to vote on the proposed budget Feb. 3.