The Brief

After three years of unprecedented closures that devastated California’s fishing industry, commercial salmon fishing is poised to reopen this spring.

The return comes with a catch: Regulators at the interstate Pacific Fishery Management Council will strictly constrain fishing dates and impose harvest limits for both commercial and recreational fishing to protect the threatened California Coastal Chinook. The council is set to finalize the details this weekend.

It’s not the season the fleet had hoped for after years of closures. But those who survived the shutdowns fear a graver threat: state and federal decisions could reshape California’s water systems and rivers.

“Water policy in California is about to change drastically and irreversibly, and nobody has the energy to pay attention to that,” said Sarah Bates, who fishes commercially from San Francisco. “I am concerned that salmon is going to be (commercially) extinct in our lifetimes.”

For the first time since 2022, Bates was preparing her century-old boat, the Bounty, docked at Fisherman’s Wharf. She ticked off the boat’s needs: an oil change, a hydraulics check, a run-through of the steering system, the anchor. Her fading fishing permit, now four years out of date, still clings to the outside of the cabin.

“Pay no attention to my paint job,” Bates said. “Try not to make my boat look bad.”

Looking at its cracking paint and tangled ropes, Bates — who wrestles waves and weather for a living and uses a fishing float dented by a massive shark bite — seemed a little daunted by the tasks ahead.

Without income from salmon, Bates allowed critical upkeep to lag. “There's been a lot of deferred maintenance,” she said. “I'm actually a little worried about everybody charging out into the ocean in May to go fishing.”

‘A tremendous, avoidable hit’

Salmon is king in California. It’s what keeps the markets and restaurants buying, the industrial-scale ice machines running, the tourists booking charter boats and visiting the coast.

“It’s iconic,” said retired charter boat captain John Atkinson. “We have people who will fish every week for salmon. And for the other species, they come out once.”

But dams, water diversions, low flows and poor ocean conditions have driven decades of decline.

California experienced its driest three year stretch in history from 2020 through 2022 — worsening that burden and causing populations to plummet. Interstate fisheries managers cancelled commercial salmon fishing for an unprecedented three years in a row, and barred recreational fishing for all but a handful of days last year.

The financial damage was severe. California estimated the closures cost nearly $100 million in lost coastal community and state personal income during the first two years alone.

The fishing industry says these numbers vastly underestimate the economic and human costs: Boats went to the crusher, tourists took their money to other states, suppliers went out of business and fishers fled California or the industry altogether.

“This was a tremendous, avoidable hit. We have survived droughts throughout recent history, but none had impacts this drastic,” Vance Staplin, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said in an email.

First: Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Last: Sunlight pours through a window of the Bounty, a commercial fishing vessel, on March 20, 2026. Photos by Jungho Kim for CalMatters Sarah Bates, a commercial salmon fisher, stands at the wheel of her boat, Bounty, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters California has requested disaster assistance from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. But federal aid has come slowly, and fallen short. The U.S. government has released only $20.6 million, and only for the 2023 closure.

“The entire framework for fishery disasters has to be totally redone,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “We need something that is much faster, that is less political, that doesn’t depend on all the vagaries of multiple federal agencies and congressional appropriations.”

Rain, but little respite

The rains returned in 2023 — bringing the flows and cool water young salmon need to survive and complete their ocean migration.

Now, the Pacific Fishery Management Council projects that roughly 392,000 Sacramento River fall-run Chinook salmon are swimming off the coast. These are the mainstay of California’s salmon fishery — and the forecasts are better than last year’s, though still a fraction of the millions that returned historically. But the limited fishing season is not the respite that the industry had counted on.

“We're happy to get some fishing this year,” Staplin, of the Golden State Salmon Association, said, “but if we want to preserve the businesses and families that define California's coastal and inland salmon economies, we need a little compromise and balance in prioritizing water during droughts.”

A plan or a patch?

Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a plan aimed at protecting salmon from climate change.

The plan received mixed reactions.

Some scientists and members of the fishing community credited state agencies and the Newsom administration with concrete efforts like hatchery upgrades and cutting-edge genetic fish tagging. One$58 million state and federal effort — the Big Notch Project — connected salmon and other fish to prime floodplain habitat in the Yolo Bypass through seasonal gates.

“Anything that can be done is a help right now,” Atkinson said.

But others say that the strategy papers over policies that rob salmon of the cold water they need. California is built around nature-defying engineering that funnels vast amounts of water away from rivers to supply cities and the state’s $60 billion agricultural economy.

“As soon as it stops raining or snowing, we’re going to be back in the same situation with the salmon season closing,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director at The San Francisco Baykeeper. “If we don’t protect river flows and cold water storage, then we’re not protecting salmon.”

Some of the fiercest fights are over the contentious Delta tunnel and Newsom’s controversial deal with major water users, backed by $1.5 billion in state funding, to overhaul how farms and cities take water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the rivers that feed it.

Carson Jeffres, a senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, takes a more moderate view — the effect on salmon will depend on how California agencies manage these projects, but the status quo isn’t an option.

“I just don't see a world where the salmon are prioritized over human water needs — and I think we should plan for it,” he said. “Then that might be a more sustainable place.”

On top of state policies is a Trump administration that called for “Putting People over Fish” and adopted a plan in December to send more Northern California water to Central Valley farms.

State wildlife officials said at the time that President Donald Trump’s actions “run counter” to California’s efforts to improve salmon populations, “harming the California communities that rely on salmon for their livelihood."

California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot acknowledged the state’s finite water supply can’t satisfy everyone’s priorities.

“There’s no shortage of finger pointing by some groups who argue that not enough water is remaining in our rivers for salmon and aquatic habitat, and other groups that suggest that not enough water is being diverted for California communities and agriculture,” Crowfoot said.

“Water management in California,” he said, “involves balancing water across these needs.”

Last year, the Newsom administration announced that nearly 70% of the salmon strategy’s action items were underway, and more than a quarter were already complete.

That’s “crazy math … What is your outcome measure?" said Bates. "For us, our outcome measure is enough fish to go fishing.”

Adapting to survive

In the absence of enough fish, the industry has been piloting new strategies to survive.

Back at Fisherman's Wharf, a few rows over from Bates, Captain Virginia Salvador was getting ready to take a group out to troll for halibut and striped bass. Her French bulldog, Anchovy, wandered the deck between the ropes.

Salvador started her charter boat business, Unforgettable Fishing Adventures, during the salmon shutdown — and had to quickly expand her offerings.

Now, she runs barbecue and barhopping cruises around San Francisco Bay and takes passengers to McCovey Cove during Giants games. She teams up with food influencer Rosalie Bradford Pareja to offer a chef experience. And she still holds down a second job working in a hospital pathology laboratory.

“When you rely on a natural entity for your income, you have to learn how to deviate, pivot, expand,” Salvador said.

Captain Virginia Salvador on her boat, Unforgettable, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters Where the front row of charter boats line the street like storefronts, Bates’ row at Fisherman’s Wharf has the feeling of a neighborhood. One fisherman clambered down the ladder to Bates’ boat, where they swapped great white shark stories. Bates hollered to another neighbor every time a tourist wandered down the dock, bucket in hand, looking to buy fresh crab.

This neighbor, a tattooed and lanky and exhausted fisherman named Shawn Chen Flading, had been out all night. His 12 hour mission to retrieve crab pots turned into a 26 hour ordeal when his throttle cable broke.

At the time Flading bought his boat, before the shutdowns, it looked like a pretty good living.

“A lot of people — the older generation — put their kids through college, bought their homes. And it just disappeared,” Flading said. “I lost basically half my revenue for the past three years straight.”

He tries to fill the gap by advertising on social media and selling Dungeness crab directly off his boat. But the crab season, too, he said, has been disappointing.

Now, salmon fishing is once again on the horizon.

“Whatever limited opportunity we have for salmon, at least we're getting the ball rolling,” Flading said to Bates across the water between their boats, over the San Francisco mix of cars, construction and seagulls. “Without that, we're just stuck.”

Bates, leaning on the railing of her own boat, agreed. “I really understand why people are upset,” she said. “But also, I'm so excited to catch some fish. Even though it's not enough. It’s not even close to enough.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Los Angeles Unified is blocking student access to artificial intelligence tools on district-issued devices.

The district’s decision, announced at the kickoff meeting of a new AI committee, bars an estimated 378,000 students from using generative AI tools on LAUSD laptops and tablets. This is a departure from the current policy which allows students 13 and older to use AI tools under school supervision and after they complete a lesson about “digital citizenship.”  

The announcement came as a surprise to board members and parents.

“Just based on the facial expressions of folks in this room, many parents, some of whom work at the district, some of whom don't," said LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin, after district staff explained the new AI restrictions. "I don't think it's well-publicized and I would encourage us to do more."

How it works

District leaders said the web-filtering software Lightspeed allows LAUSD to categorically block student access to any website categorized as an AI tool.

The district does not stop students using AI on personal devices, though the software will continue to block access if a student signs in to their district profile on that personal device.

Who sets AI rules?

The LAUSD board voted in June to enact what was then the most-widespread student screentime restrictions in the country, but did not specify limitations to student AI use. The resolution instead created an ad hoc generative AI committee with the goal of developing policy recommendations for board approval by next year.

The board’s AI committee is scheduled to meet through April to develop recommendations for how students access AI. "This is an emerging technology,” said Pia Sadaqatmal, chief academic officer. “We will continue to be adaptive as needed, but we do know that the heart of it is really making sure that we keep teaching and learning at the center of our decision.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Teachers in Inglewood are not happy with a new bond measure that will allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to improve school campuses, if approved. 

In November, Inglewood voters will decide if they want to approve Measure MM, a $396 million bond to modernize and upgrade campus facilities throughout the district. 

The bonds would be paid for by a property tax on Inglewood property owners of $60 for every $100,000 of assessed property value. The measure would require 55% of votes to pass. 

“They have to show accountability before asking the voters for another bond,” said John Hughes, president of the Inglewood Teachers Association. “It’s just responsible stewardship.”

In an Aug. 12 email to James Morris, Inglewood county administrator, Hughes wrote that he did not support “requesting another $396 million without first providing a full accounting of prior bond expenditures, addressing steep enrollment decline, and resolving ongoing accountability concerns.”

Hughes pointed out that the district already received $330 million from two bond measures —  $90 million in 2012 and another $240 million in 2020. 

The new bond measure comes as the Inglewood Unified School District moves closer to exiting receivership after being under state control for 14 years. Inglewood officials have expressed their desire to rebuild the district’s foundation on academic excellence, financial sustainability and upgraded facilities. 

“We know firsthand that students and teachers perform better in safe, modern school facilities,” Morris told The LA Local. “The fact is we need to maintain and modernize all schools across the district.”   

Morris added that the new Inglewood High School campus currently under construction is an example of what students will need for future success. 

The LA Local reached out to all six Inglewood Board of Education candidates vying for seats in Trustee Areas 1, 2 and 3. Only Brandon Myers, who is the incumbent running for the Area 3 Trustee seat, responded.  

 “Unfortunately, due to the lack of accountability and expert construction experience, Inglewood taxpayers have had to foot the bill for delayed projects,” Myers said in reference to the previously approved bond measures. 

“As a result of the school board’s continuous status of being in county receivership, I cannot support an additional tax burden on our Inglewood residents,” he said. 

Hughes also noted that bond funds cannot be used for teacher salaries or operating expenses.

He said the district has not maintained a strategy for increasing teachers’ pay, he said, adding that Inglewood teachers are currently the lowest paid in the region.

“We cannot rely on long-term debt for facilities while leaving teacher pay structurally underfunded,” Hughes said. “A credible reform strategy must address both infrastructure and the workforce that delivers instruction.”  

With the bond measure on the ballot, Morris believes it’ll be in the best interest of Inglewood, if approved. 

“IUSD teachers and students deserve nothing less than safe, modernized schools that support high quality teaching and learning,” Morris said. “Measure MM is on the ballot this November to deliver on that promise.” 

My grandfather, Charles Echternacht, came of age during the Great Depression, and it never left him. I don't think I ever saw him eat at a restaurant. But there was one exception: a boxed pint of Thrifty Ice Cream, orange sherbet or Rocky Road, that my grandmother, Betty, would bring home during her weekly shopping trips. He'd share it with us when we visited their house in Belmont a few times a year.

For many Angelenos, Thrifty Ice Cream stirs a kind of multigenerational nostalgia that's increasingly rare, with memories of summer, family trips, or weekday treats. In summer 2025, when Rite Aid announced it would close all of its locations, there was a howl of despair — how could the ice cream of our youth disappear? People made their case for favorite flavors — Black Cherry, Mint Chip, Medieval Madness — and reminisced about the cool, weird scooper shape and how much they appreciated the truly thrifty prices.

But Thrifty Ice Cream did not melt away. Instead, an investment group tied to Monster Beverage Corporation executives stepped in with a $19 million purchase, and now sells the iconic containers in supermarkets and a few scattered scoop shops. For many, the brand's continued existence since its start back in 1940 feels like nothing short of a miracle.

So when I got an email recently inviting me to tour the factory — SoCal's version of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory — it was as if I'd received my own golden ticket. (The brand is expanding onto Shakey's Pizza Parlor menu.)

75,000 gallons a day

When I saw the address, I was surprised to realize that I’d driven past it more times than I could count. It is located in El Monte, only a few neighborhoods over from my hometown of Whittier, off Rosemead Boulevard. The plant has been there since the 1970’s, having moved from its original location in Hollywood. Off a little stretch of winding industrial road, it’s not really visible to passersby until you pull up in front and see their modest signage.

Tim Briggs, a longtime quality assurance manager at Thrifty Ice Cream, leads a tour of the plant's production floor.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

Leading the tour was Tim Briggs, the quality assurance manager, who's worked there since the '80s. He had a long white beard (enclosed in a hairnet that matched the one on his head), and a warm smile, like Santa Claus if Santa had grown up surfing and listening to rock 'n' roll. He wore a custom white coat, embroidered with the Thrifty logo and his name, and walked about with a quiet pride.

I was fitted with a synthetic hairnet, just like the one Briggs wore, and led onto the production floor — the most visceral part of the whole tour. I couldn't believe I was standing on what felt like hallowed ground. If the tasting room was Wonka's chocolate room, this was the factory floor — conveyor belts running in every direction, workers pouring dried milk into massive steel vats, machinery loud enough to feel in your chest.

It's staggering, watching it happen. The plant employs nearly 100 people, though only a handful were on the floor the day I visited — this small crew cycling through Thrifty's current lineup of 64 flavors, based on the month's demand. At full capacity, the plant can turn out up to 75,000 gallons of ice cream a day — something like 2 million scoops, if you're counting. Rocky Road is always saved for last. It's the only flavor in the lineup that isn't kosher, Briggs explained — the marshmallows contain gelatin from animal by-products — which means every line has to be fully cleaned before production can start again.

That day, they were mixing Chocolate Malted Krunch. I'd never been much of a fan before, but once I caught the smell of fresh malt going into the mix — and watched the little white balls that give it its crunch get shot through metal piping before being folded into the rest of the ice cream — I understood the appeal. It's officially my next purchase.

Small malt balls await mixing into a fresh batch of Chocolate Malted Krunch on the production line.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

Watching it all come together, I thought of the old Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episode where he tours a crayon factory — big vats of raw material, slowly turning into something wonderful.

Tasting memories 

Eventually, we were led to a small tasting area, where a cooler of tubs sat ready to be scooped. Behind it were two rolling coolers decked out in Thrifty ephemera, and on top sat a row of boxed pints. As I looked closer, I realized they were vintage containers, just like the ones my grandfather used to share with my brother and me. And there it was: Rocky Road. I found myself studying the font, the imagery, getting lost in my own little palace of nostalgia.

A vintage Thrifty Rocky Road box, priced at 79 cents for a half gallon — the same flavor Gab Chabran's grandfather used to bring home.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

It was around that point that Briggs pulled out a small photo album of glossy photographs from when the factory was first built, in the same sepia-toned style as the photos that hung on the walls around grandparents' house.

While I didn't sample any Rocky Road this time around, I did get to try some Chocolate Malted Krunch fresh off the line — some of the softest, creamiest ice cream I've ever had. I also sampled their Red, White and Blue sherbet, along with their new Circus Animal Cookie flavor, another one that pulled at the heartstrings for anyone who grew up eating the actual cookies from Mother’s back in the day.

An employee holds open a photo album of archival images from the plant's early years in El Monte.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

After completing my visit, I'm still in awe of what I witnessed that day, off that stretch of Rosemead Boulevard I've driven past countless times. Except now I know exactly what's there — a piece of SoCal history that has touched so many, and continues to, generation after generation, one scoop of Rocky Road and Chocolate Malted Krunch at a time.

Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer was suspended for one year by the NBA, and the team was ordered to forfeit five first-round draft picks and pay a $30 million fine Wednesday for violating salary cap circumvention rules in a case involving Kawhi Leonard.

Also, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank has been banned for six months and team president of business operations Gillian Zucker was suspended for one year. Leonard was hit with a $700,000 penalty.

The league came down hard on the organization after a nearly year-long investigation led by an outside law firm.

The Clippers had said multiple times that they had done nothing wrong and expected to be exonerated.

The team maintained that stance after the league’s announcement.

“We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence,” the team said in a statement. “What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner (Adam) Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure it’s fairness and accuracy.”

The Clippers said they will “now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence. We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process.”

The NBA opened the investigation in September 2025 into whether a $28 million endorsement contract between Leonard and Aspiration Fund Adviser LLC — a company that filed for bankruptcy last year — broke league rules, following a report by podcast journalist Pablo Torre. Earlier this year, Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sanberg was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to defrauding investors and lenders of at least $248 million.

“I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family,” Leonard said in a statement issued through his new agent, Harrison Gaines.

The NBA said Leonard, through his former business manager and uncle Dennis Robertson, “violated the circumvention rules by pressuring the Clippers to assist him in obtaining off-court income opportunities, successfully obtaining those opportunities, and failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses.”

“I entered into my contract with the Clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone’s part to circumvent the salary cap,” Leonard said in his statement.

The league said Ballmer was suspended for “knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities,” among other issues.

Leonard’s trade to the Toronto Raptors has been on hold pending the outcome of the investigation. The Raptors had said they still want Leonard, and he apparently is just as eager to return to the team where he won an NBA title in 2019, when he was Finals MVP.

“As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate,” Leonard said in his statement.