The Brief

Few places in California are as unforgiving for driving an electric car as the remote and sparsely populated Imperial Valley.

Only four fast-charging public stations are spread across the valley’s vast 4,500 square miles just north of the US-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That means if you’re Greg Gelman — one of only about 1,200 Imperial County residents who own an electric car — traveling almost anywhere is a maddening logistical challenge.

“It’s been, I won’t say a nightmare, but it’s been very, very, very inconvenient,” Gelman said on a recent afternoon as he charged his all-electric Mercedes-Benz at a charging station in a Bank of America parking lot in El Centro. “Would I do it again? No.”

California’s electric charging “deserts” like the Imperial Valley pose one of the biggest obstacles to the state’s efforts to combat climate change and air pollution by electrifying cars and trucks.

Experts say the slow installation of chargers in California’s remote regions could jeopardize the state’s phaseout of new gas-powered cars. Under the state’s mandate, 35% of sales of 2026 models must be zero-emissions, ramping up to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.

Nestled in the desert in California’s far southeast corner, Imperial County ranks dead last in electric car ownership among California counties with populations of 100,000 or more, according to a CalMatters analysis of 2023 data. Only 7 out of every 1,000 cars are battery-powered there, compared with 51 out of every 1,000 statewide.

High poverty and unemployment are a major factor in the region’s slow transition to electric cars, but its lack of public chargers are a big drawback, too.

People living in rural, low-income regions like the Imperial Valley have the least access to electric car chargers, according to a state Energy Commission analysis. More than two-thirds of California’s low-income residents are a 10-minute drive or longer from a publicly available fast charger.

Luis Olmedo, executive director of El Comite Civico del Valle, a nonprofit advocating for environmental justice, has battled for years against the Imperial Valley’s unhealthy air. Now he is making a bid to become its go-to supplier of charging stations for zero-emissions cars.

Olmedo isn’t waiting for businesses or the state to make chargers a reality in Imperial County. Instead, his group has embarked on a $5-million, high-stakes crusade to build a network of 40 fast chargers at various locations. It’s an open question whether his somewhat quixotic endeavor will succeed.

Electric car chargers “are an opportunity for us to be able to breathe cleaner air,” Olmedo said. “It’s about equity. It’s about justice. It’s about making sure that everybody has chargers.”

Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico Del Valle, shown at a charging station in Calexico, is trying to build 40 fast chargers in the Imperial Valley.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Esther Conrad, a researcher at Stanford University who focuses on environmental sustainability, said getting chargers in places like Imperial County is critical to California’s effort to transition to electric vehicles in an equitable way. Apartment dwellers and others who don’t have charging at home need nearby and reliable places to charge.

“When you have a rural community that’s low-income and distant from other locations, it’s incredibly important to enable people to get places where they need to go,” Conrad said.

Hours from urban centers

A car is essential for traversing Imperial County, which is the most sparsely populated county in Southern California.

Its neighborhoods are vast distances from urban centers that provide the services that residents need: El Centro — its biggest town, home to about 44,000 people — is much closer to Mexicali, Mexico, than it is to San Diego, which is about a two-hour drive away, or Riverside, nearly three hours. Its highways and roads cross boundless fields of lettuce and other crops that give way to strip malls, apartments and suburban tracts — and then even more crops and open desert.

If you drive an electric car the 109 miles from El Centro to Palm Springs, your route takes you through farmland, desert and around California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, which is also one of its biggest environmental calamities.

The Salton Sea has been receding in recent years, causing toxic dust to blow into Imperial Valley towns. The region’s air quality is among the worst in the state, with dust storms and a brown haze emanating from agricultural burning and factories in the valley or from across the border in Mexicali, a city of a million people.

About 16% of Imperial County’s 179,000 residents have asthma, higher than the state average. The air violates national health standards for both fine particles, or soot, as well as ozone, the main ingredient of smog; both pollutants can trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.

More than 85% of Imperial County’s residents are Latino, and Spanish is widely spoken here. Agriculture is a major employer, and many businesses are dependent on cross-border trade and traffic from Mexico. The county’s median household income is $53,847, much lower than the statewide median, and 21% of people live in poverty.

El Centro, the biggest town in the Imperial Valley, is home to about 44,000 people.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Now the discovery of lithium, used to manufacture EV batteries, at the Salton Sea has the potential to transform the region’s economy. State officials say the deposit could produce 600,000 tons a year, valued at $7.2 billion, and assist the U.S. as it tries to foster a domestic electric car industry that rivals China’s.

But Olmedo worries that when the mineral is removed from the valley, it won’t meaningfully change people’s livelihoods or their health. He points to examples in the developing world where local people have been left behind as extractive industries take what they need.

“We’re about to extract, perhaps, the world’s supply of lithium here, yet we don’t even have the simplest, the lowest of offerings, which is: Let’s build you chargers,” Olmedo said.

Chicken and egg: Too few EVs and too few chargers

Last year, electric cars were only 5% of all new cars sold in Imperial County, compared with 25% statewide. Getting chargers into low-income and rural places will become more and more important as California struggles to meet its ambitious climate targets.

The Energy Commission estimates that California will need 1.01 million chargers outside of private homes by 2030 and 2.11 million by 2035, when more than 15 million electric cars are expected on the roads. So far the state has only about 105,000 nonprivate chargers.

Edgar Ruiz, air control technician, and José Flores, research and advocacy specialist with Comite Civico Del Valle, demonstrate how electric vehicle charging stations will work when installed in the Imperial Valley.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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First: New electric vehicle chargers in Calexico. Last: Components of an electric vehicle charging station.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, which researches the electric car market, said charging companies won’t locate chargers in regions with few electric vehicles.

“You need revenue, and if the EVs aren’t there, then your customers aren’t necessarily there, so you do have a legitimate chicken and egg problem,” Nigro said. “We have to look to public policy to help that market failure.”

The Biden administration will invest $384 million in California’s electric car infrastructure over five years. And state officials are investing almost $2 billion in grants for funding zero-emission vehicle chargers over the next four years, including some special grants in rural, inland areas for up to $80,000 per charger. Olmedo says the funding has been insufficient so he’s had to turn to donations and other sources of funding.

Patty Monahan, one of five members of the California Energy Commission, said “it’s particularly important that we see chargers” in the Imperial Valley and other low-income counties with poor air quality.

Imperial Valley has only four fast-charging stations open for public use, where chargers are capable of juicing batteries up to 80% in under an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Three are in El Centro, with one exclusively for Teslas; another is in the border town of Calexico and was recently installed by El Comite. Six other stations offer only slower chargers.

Olmedo envisions a network of 40 publicly accessible chargers throughout the valley. El Comite is expecting funding from the California Energy Commission, and has received donations from Waverley Streets Foundation, the United Auto Workers and General Motors. The group is seeking more state funding.

Olmedo acknowledged that he is facing a slew of challenges with his project, including some local opposition and the high cost of installation and maintenance.

At a warehouse in the city of Imperial where El Comite stores the chargers, Jose Flores, project manager for the group’s charging initiative, said he and three colleagues spent four days in Santa Ana, about 200 miles north, at a facility managed by BTC, the company that makes the chargers that El Comite is installing.

They received training on installation and maintenance techniques, and discussed how not all chargers can be used by all electric vehicles. He learned about payment and cooling systems, and that the chargers might need more frequent maintenance because of Imperial Valley’s harsh desert conditions.

“We’re like a testing ground because we have poor air quality here due to the Salton Sea and being in a desert,” he said.

Chris Aldaz, of Calexico, charges his car at an Electrify America charging station in El Centro.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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El Comite installed its first charger at its Brawley headquarters in 2022. Last December, El Civico pressed ahead with a more ambitious project: Four of their fast chargers are now operating in a park in the border town of Calexico.

Chris Aldaz, 35, a U.S. Postal Service worker who lives in Calexico, charges at home, but at times uses chargers at the group’s Brawley headquarters that people can use for free. It is a Level 2, which can take several hours to charge.

“The reason why I wanted to get an EV was that it was cheaper,” Aldaz told CalMatters. “I don’t want to be spending all this money on gas, and on maintenance, and it was better for the environment.”

Nevertheless, Olmedo’s electric car chargers have become a local political issue.

Maritza Hurtado, Calexico’s ex-mayor, and coordinator of a City Council recall campaign, said it was inappropriate for El Comite to have built four electric car chargers in a downtown park. The chargers were a distraction “from our police needs and our actual community infrastructure needs,” Hurtado said at a public hearing at the county’s utility, the Imperial Irrigation District, in January. She declined to speak to CalMatters.

“We had no idea they were going to take our parkland,” Hurtado said at the hearing. “It is very upsetting and disrespectful to our community for Comite Civico to come to Calexico and take our land.”

Olmedo hopes that the chargers ultimately will be something the county’s Latino community takes pride in.

“Put this in perspective: It’s a farmworker-founded organization, an environmental justice organization, that is building the infrastructure. It’s not the lithium industry. It’s us, building it for ourselves.”

Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

MacArthur Park will host two more Fall Friday Nights this month, with a Glow Party on Friday and a free outdoor movie night next week as the city continues its community programming at the park.

The free events are open to the public from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and include free food, games, entertainment, activities and community resources.

Friday’s Glow Party will include a DJ, glow sticks, dancing and interactive games.

The Sept. 25 movie night will feature a screening of “The Super Mario Galaxy” on a large outdoor screen.

The two events are the final Fall Friday Nights scheduled at MacArthur Park this year. The series has been held at the park since 2024 and brings together city departments, neighborhood organizations and service providers.

Fall Friday Nights was created in 2015 as an extension of the city’s Summer Night Lights program.

Families and residents gather at MacArthur Park during Fall Friday Nights on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Eduardo Rodriguez, executive director of Central City Neighborhood Partners, said Fall Friday Nights grew from a partnership between the city, Mayor Karen Bass, CCNP and other community groups to create “more consistent, positive, family-centered activity at MacArthur Park.”

CCNP began activating the park this summer through its “Meet Me at MacArthur Park” initiative, which Rodriguez said showed that families wanted more welcoming events and accessible resources.

“The strong community response demonstrated that families want welcoming events, accessible resources, and reasons to return to the park,” Rodriguez said.

About a thousand people attended each of the first two Fall Friday Nights this year, Rodriguez said, for an estimated 2,000 people combined.

The Friday events are also part of a longer-term plan for the park.

Rodriguez said CCNP, through its “Meet Me at MacArthur Park” initiative, plans to establish a recurring presence at the park two days a week. CCNP will provide FamilySource services, youth and family programs, workforce and education resources, financial empowerment, wellness services, food assistance and other community support.

“Our goal is to turn individual events into long-term relationships with families and create consistent, visible, and positive activity at MacArthur Park,” he said.

For Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, the Friday events are part of a broader effort in MacArthur Park that includes clean teams, street medicine teams, overdose response and infrastructure improvements. 

Hernandez said residents are beginning to notice changes at the park, but argued that they came after years of work.

“This has been years of investment, of time, of money that me and my team have put into MacArthur Park and into Westlake from the moment I got into office,” she said on social media. 

Hernandez has also described that work as part of a broader approach to public safety that extends beyond law enforcement.

“The public safety ecosystem is not just law enforcement,” she said, pointing to street medicine teams and mobile overdose response teams working in the park.

The Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents have spent much of the summer carrying out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around MacArthur Park, while the city says it remains on track to install a perimeter fence this fall.

Fall Friday Nights “targets communities that may need a little extra care once the school year starts,” according to Bass’ office. 

Free clothing will also be distributed. CCNP will provide free transportation from its Westlake office, Tenth Street Elementary School and Virgil Middle School. Residents can call CCNP at (213) 482-8618 for transportation information.

Last year, Fall Friday Nights brought more than 3,000 people to MacArthur Park over four Friday nights, according to the city. The programming included arts and crafts, futsal, meals and other activities, while unhoused residents could also access medical care and other services.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is directing state agencies to develop artificial intelligence safety recommendations, some of which were part of a bill he vetoed two years ago.

His change of tune on those measures, including requiring AI developers to include a “kill switch” to shut off certain programs in emergencies, comes in response to growing public alarm over the fast-developing technology’s potential “catastrophic” harms such as AI creating a bioweapon or bringing down the power grid.

Newsom is seeking recommendations from the Government Operations Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services by Nov. 16, meaning they could form the basis of a special legislative session on the issue. He floated the possibility of calling one in Politico on Thursday.

Newsom has sought in recent weeks to respond to several incidents in which AI agents from leading developers OpenAI and Anthropic broke away from testing environments, gained access to the open internet and carried out cyberattacks on other websites and companies. Earlier this month, a researcher set off a panic when he resigned from Anthropic while warning the technology could “kill all humans;” the researcher’s former colleagues were quick to agree.

The hackings have captivated the public and seem to confirm AI researchers’ fears that the fast-developing technology is improving its own capabilities beyond human control. Several industry leaders last week endorsed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown in development.

Newsom’s Friday executive order directs the state agencies to recommend changes in state law to implement an external evaluation requirement, as well as requirements that AI companies’ safety frameworks required under the newest law be independently verified. He’s also seeking recommendations on how to require a kill switch, and how to expand the safety incidents companies must report to include “a range of loss-of-control incidents” such as the recent reported hackings.

Regulation is unlikely from the federal government; President Donald Trump remains all-in on speeding up AI development in the face of competition from China and said the calls for a slowdown are a “conspiracy.”

Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, said Friday in a press release that should “alarm every American.”

“We’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it's too late,” he said.

California under Newsom has enacted several first-in-the-nation laws to curb the potentially existential risks of AI. In 2025 he signed Senate Bill 53, which requires large AI model developers to publish frameworks on how they manage safety incidents and assess catastrophic risk — defined as incidents involving 50 or more deaths, chemical or biological weapons or more than $1 billion of theft or damage. They also must report critical safety incidents to the state. Illinois and New York have similar laws.

But the measure was a compromise — a requirement for transparency rather than regulatory control — after Newsom in 2024 vetoed Senate Bill 1047.

Both bills were authored by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, whose San Francisco district is home to the most prominent AI companies.

The vetoed measure would have required the largest AI developers to receive safety auditing from third-party, external monitors, develop a kill switch and be subject to clearer legal liability if their technology causes harm. The measure divided Silicon Valley and received fierce opposition from several, but not all, of the largest AI developers.

Newsom wrote then in a veto letter that while he agreed with the need to require safety protocols, the bill could restrict AI development at large companies “at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

“I agree with the author — we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public,” he added.

Since then, more in the industry have embraced third-party evaluations. This year, Newsom signed two laws to verify and set standards for those external monitors. But the new laws did not require companies to use them.

In a recent call for a slowdown in AI development that was endorsed by several other industry leaders, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also called for third-party monitoring; both that company and OpenAI say they will commit to the practice.

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

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a series of measures that halt the rebuilding of the burned Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights and that steer funding toward fire recovery efforts.

In a unanimous vote, the City Council barred the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) from issuing any rebuild permits until after the Los Angeles Fire Department completes its investigation.

The council also directed the Department of City Planning, the city attorney and the LADBS to present an interim control ordinance prohibiting permits or certificates of occupancy for large cold-storage warehousing and distribution near residential neighborhoods and sensitive areas like parks, schools, day care centers and libraries in Boyle Heights. 

The ordinance, if approved, would be in effect for 45 days, with an option to extend by 10 months and 15 days. It could be extended by an additional year, or until the “appropriate land use regulatory controls have been prepared,” according to a city staff report. 

“This Lineage fire exposed the cost of systems that have concentrated industrial risk in working-class communities of color for generations,” said Councilmember Ysabel Jurado during the council meeting. 

“A facility should not be able to request a like-for-like rebuild while the fire investigation remains active and the surrounding community is still living with the consequences,” she added. 

Jurado pushed forward the measures, noting that “recovery doesn’t finish when the site is cleaned up.”

“Our responsibility is also to demand accountability and strengthen protections so residents do not experience a disaster like this again,” she said. 

Jurado said the measures will ensure Boyle Heights residents “aren’t left to navigate recovery alone or bear the financial burden of an emergency they did not create.”

The council also directed city staff to explore the feasibility of establishing a fund of up to $10 million to support the affected Lineage community. 

It also called for the reallocation of up to $940,000 in Los Angeles County Fire Assistance Grant Funds to the Boyle Heights WorkSource Center for Lineage Fire Recovery to support impacted workers and businesses. 

Additionally, council members instructed the LADBS and the city attorney to provide recommendations for increasing penalties for notices of violations “on projects that impose a significant impact to the community,” as seen in the Lineage fire. Recommendations should include a fee and fine structure that ranges from $25,000 to $1 million per fine, according to a city staff report.

Years after generative artificial intelligence software became widely accessible, the University of California system still does not have a consistent approach to how AI is used in classrooms, according to its faculty and students.

“The situation is contradictory and also extraordinarily fluid,” professor Rita Raley told the university system’s Board of Regents on Wednesday. “In one class, students are permitted to use AI, in another, they're cautioned against it, and in a third, they're told it's prohibited.”

Raley, a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, heads the breakout group that will define what AI literacy means for UC, and will make recommendations on how to cultivate AI in classrooms across the UCs. The big question the working group is grappling with, Raley said: What every student needs to know about artificial intelligence.

“If we are indeed moving toward automated education, then we have to ask what a UC degree will mean. It will have to mean more than skills because these too can be automated,” she said. “... [W]e must now give students the critical judgment to ask what this technology is, who needs to be accountable for it, how to use it, when to refuse it, and what it could be instead.”

Jayha Buhs-Jackson, UCLA’s undergraduate student body president, says she does not like AI, so she does not use it.

She agreed that the university does not have a “succinct” AI policy. Some of her professors, Buhs-Jackson said, strictly do not allow AI in the classroom; others allow it for research and coding.

She said UCLA has its own internal AI committee, which she was just appointed to.

“ I'm curious to see … how I could use my voice as president to discuss and uplift the undergraduate student voice related to AI at UCLA,” she said.

UC vs CSU approach

The UC system currently does not have a single systemwide AI product or mandatory AI protocols in place.

Instead, “eligible employees have access to frontier AI tools from a variety of vendors including OpenAI, Microsoft and Google. Access is intended to support activities such as analysis, research, learning, and operational efficiency,” a University of California spokesperson said.

The university system also has a Master Service Agreement in place with OpenAI, but it does not include a minimum spend commitment or prepurchased licenses. Schools under the UC umbrella can purchase OpenAI products through the agreement.

UC’s approach stands in contrast to the one California State University took.

In 2025, the nation’s largest public university system signed a nearly $17 million contract with OpenAI and made a suite of ChatGPT tools available to all its faculty and students.

At the time, CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith told LAist, the goal was for all students to have “the same access to the tools and learning opportunities that will prepare them for the future,” regardless of which campus they attend.

Still, the rollout was heavily criticized as students and faculty were left on their own to figure out how to use AI. And in a 2025 survey of CSU students, over 60% said AI has negatively affected their learning experience.

What's the best approach for schools?

The different approaches taken by California’s public university systems demonstrate that higher education is still grappling with how to confront — or embrace — this technology.

Universities across the nation have to find ways to work with AI, said Justin Reich, a professor of digital media and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT.

But we also do not have a framework for what to do or how to implement AI in higher education, he added.

 ”The right strategy is to come up with a systematic series of experiments, where you're testing hypotheses, in particular, by looking at student learning experiences and student learning outcomes,” Reich said.

The University of California’s AI steering committee overall is tasked with “developing a coordinated approach that allows UC to use its systemwide scale while recognizing the distinct needs of its campuses, medical centers, laboratories, faculty, researchers, staff, and students,” according to a University of California spokesperson.

Reich said it is great that the University of California has multiple voices involved in the steering committee.

“I  would encourage any university system to have students play a central role in directing their AI response pretty much at all levels,” he said. “Especially in a system as complex as UC, where you have so many students that have so many different kinds of expertise.”

The UC AI steering committee has one student voice on it. Stephanie Valadez, an ethnomusicology graduate student at UCLA and president of the UC graduate and professional student council, says she would like to see more. She’s concerned about the environmental impact of AI and the negative impact on “underrepresented communities that are living near these data centers,” she said.

In the classroom, she hasn’t had to use AI.

“ All of my professors say, ‘Don't use AI. Just don't use ChatGPT, don't use Claude, don't use any of that stuff,’ for multiple reasons,” she said. “Being in the music department, as an artist, we also are very conscious of having our work stolen, having what we produce then go on to train AI.”

The training a Ph.D. student is seeking, Valadez said, you would not get from AI.

“ We don't want our brains to atrophy while we're trying to get better at what we're doing,” she said.

What comes next for UC

UC San Diego and UC Irvine, Valadez said, have rolled out TritonGPT and ZotGPT, but she’s heard from other board members that students aren’t using  the AI tools as much as the university would like them to, adding that there has been “a lot of pushback from students.”

James Milliken, the University of California president, said the committee’s guiding principle is AI “for humans and for humanity” and how it “ can advance human potential, not diminish it.”

The committee had its first meeting in June, where five working groups were created to explore how to use AI in clinical research, curriculum development and “public benefit” among other things.

Come October 2027, the committee will come to Milliken with a proposal for a UC sovereign AI cloud. This means UC could have its own hardware and processing power to build, run and train AI models.