The Brief

California has just a handful of truly competitive congressional races this year, as a nationwide redistricting battle and a new map approved under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50 have reshaped the electoral landscape. The tightest contests are in the Central Valley and San Diego County, but the fight also extends to Orange County, a onetime Republican stronghold where Democratic Rep. Derek Tran is defending his seat.

This year marks the first time two Vietnamese Americans are running to represent the district, which includes Little Saigon, the largest concentration of people of Vietnamese ancestry outside of Vietnam. Roughly 13% of the district’s population is Vietnamese, according to Census Bureau data.

Tran and his Republican challenger Chuong Vo are both children of Vietnamese refugees who fled after the Fall of Saigon in the 1970s. Both grew up in households that relied on public assistance, but they draw very different lessons from that experience, which is reflected in their approach to policy. Tran opposed Republican cuts to government assistance programs under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, while Vo touts the benefits of President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, which included trillions of dollars in tax cuts over the next decade.

“Thank God for the Big Beautiful Bill this year because I don’t know about you, but I got some money back for the first time ever,” Vo told supporters at a Gardena restaurant in April. In an interview with Capital & Main, Vo attributed his family’s success to hard work combined with government support when they needed a bit of help.

“When I was young, my whole family was on welfare. Of course, we were refugees. We came here with nothing,” Vo said. “But we made sure that we got off the system.”

The contest reflects a familiar ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans, but it is unfolding against an especially aggressive attack on the safety net. H.R. 1, or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, partially paid for tax breaks by slashing over $1 trillion from social programs, including Medicaid and food assistance.

As a result of those cuts, an estimated 44,008 people in the district could lose health insurance by 2034, according to an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee in Congress. Refugees — as both candidates’ parents once were — are no longer eligible for Medicaid or SNAP benefits funded with federal money (although California will continue to fund Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, for some immigrants). 

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To Tran, who voted against H.R. 1, the cuts serve as a reminder of his own former reliance on government support. “I grew up on those safety net programs that the Republicans are trying to cut, whether it’s WIC [the nutrition program for low-income women and children], whether it’s Section 8 housing, you know, food stamps. That was my childhood, because that was what was required for us to be able to survive in this country, right?” Tran told volunteers during a campaign event in Garden Grove on Sept. 26.

Over a third of District 45 residents rely on Medi-Cal, according to 2025 data from the California Health Care Foundation. More than one in 10 rely on SNAP, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In the Vietnamese community in particular, many have depended on social welfare programs, said Bich-Tram Le, an anchor and news commentator at Orange County’s largest Vietnamese-language news source, Nguoi Viet.

Almost 80% of Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S. are citizens, but among Vietnamese households led by a noncitizen, 47% rely on one or more welfare programs, the highest rate among Asian immigrant households, according to a 2026 report by the Center for Immigration Studies.

“People in our community will get hurt because of those cuts,” Le said.

Despite Vo’s public support for H.R. 1, his campaign website says that he will vote to “protect Social Security and Medicare for today’s seniors.” He told Capital & Main that he sees those programs as distinct from income-targeted public assistance programs because workers contribute to them.

“Social Security is an earned benefit,” Vo said. “It shouldn’t be given to those that didn’t earn it.”

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The 45th Congressional District was solidly Republican since its creation in 1983. That changed, however, in 2018, when voters elected a Democrat for the first time. Since then, voters have swung back and forth between red and blue when selecting their representative in the House.

Most of District 45 is in Orange County, but it also includes a small corner of southeast L.A. County. In the redrawn district, 38.6% of registered voters are Democrats and 30.4% are Republicans, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office. The remaining 31% of voters are either independents or have no party affiliation. Those are the voters Chuong and Vo are courting.

James Syto, 59, is an independent voter in Santa Ana. Syto said he works 16-hour days as a caregiver. He earns too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, but not enough to be able to comfortably afford his health care premiums and rent. He makes weekly visits to a food pantry in Santa Ana to supplement groceries for his family. When he votes in November, food prices and access to health care will be on his mind.

“Medi-Cal and groceries in the market: That’s the main problem,” Syto said.

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Vo, following a familiar Republican playbook, has painted his opponent as a socialist. Vo points to Tran’s vote against a House resolution that condemned “socialism in all forms” on Sept. 1. Tran defended his decision by saying that Republicans rejected his proposal to amend the bill to include language specifically denouncing the Communist government in Vietnam, according to a press release.

The labels of socialist or Communist have particular emotional weight for some older Vietnamese immigrants, who fled North Vietnamese Communist forces decades ago.

“We remember that because that’s our pain. That’s our historic pain,” said Brandon Bui, 54, a Garden Grove resident who, on a recent Saturday, came to a neighborhood park where Vo was hosting a campaign event.

Bui said that he associates the Democratic Party with socialism, especially as candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America appear on the November ballot.

“They’ve got socialists running. They could do something to stop that. Why wouldn’t they?” Bui said, referring to the Democratic Party.

Of course, Tran also has his supporters in the Vietnamese community. Cai Le, 70, joined a volunteer canvass just a couple of miles away from Vo’s campaign event in Garden Grove. She was part of a small group of Vietnamese-speaking volunteers specifically targeting members of her community.

“I want the government to take care of poor people,” Le said.

Tran has not only received criticism from the right. Among some younger, progressive voters, Tran’s record on immigration has been disappointing, said Tracy La, the executive director of VietRISE, a nonprofit advocating for Vietnamese and other immigrant communities in Orange County.

Last year, Tran voted for the Laken-Riley Act, which mandated detentions for certain immigrants arrested or charged with certain crimes. Opponents of the measure argue that it violates migrants’ due process rights, since they could be detained, even if they are never convicted of a crime.

“It’s especially frustrating because both these candidates are campaigning on the immigrant story yet again,” La said. “But they’re not using it to connect with the realities of what their constituents are facing.”

The majority-minority district’s population is 39% Asian and 35% Latino. During the summer of 2025, arrests by ICE increased sevenfold in the agency’s “area of responsibility” in Southern California, which includes Orange County, according to data provided by ICE in response to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Capital & Main.

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Tran is approaching Election Day with several advantages over his opponent. Prop. 50 redrew his district, making it about five percentage points more Democratic.

What’s more, a majority of U.S. adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of tariffs, the war in Iran and the cost of living, according to a late September poll from the Associated Press-NORC. Trump’s approval rating stands at 37%, per an average of national polls.

Despite the political tailwinds for Tran, the seat is still not a safe one for the incumbent, according to the Cook Political Report. This race is a bellwether for Democratic candidates’ prospects nationwide, said Steve Barkan, a Democratic political consultant.

“If the Democrats don’t win this, then I don’t think there’s much of a chance that they would take back the House,” Barkan said.

Reia Li is a California Local News Fellow.

Copyright 2026 Capital & Main.

The man: Turn on your TV and flip through a few channels, and you're bound to land on one of his shows: The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Young Sheldon. TV showrunner and writer Chuck Lorre has been the creative force behind these genre-defining shows and many, many more.

The book: Lorre is out with a new memoir cataloging his life and career. He recently joined LAist 89.3’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle to discuss his memoir and share career insights.

Some of the takeaways:

• Comedy works best when it's rooted in reality.
• Streaming has changed the show-selling landscape, for better and worse.
• Lorre’s goal, ultimately, has been to make the audience laugh, and he curates writing rooms around that goal.

Listen to the full conversation above: To find out how much cash Lorre was paid to write the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. Spoiler alert: not much!

Al Pacino has been named the next recipient of the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.

The 86-year-old star of “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Scent of a Woman” and a trilogy of “Godfather” films is the 62nd actor to receive the highest honor handed out by the Screen Actors Guild -American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home with a script and my fellow actors. It’s the work and the actors along the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life,” Pacino said in a statement Thursday. “It’s an honor to be recognized by SAG-AFTRA in celebrating the journey.”

He’ll pick up the prize on Feb. 28 at the 33rd annual Actor Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The show will stream live on Netflix.

The award also honors humanitarian work, and the guild cited Pacino’s charitable efforts for disaster relief, fighting hunger and poverty and his support for local theater companies, including the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles.

The native New Yorker was a young actor best known for his stage work when director Francis Ford Coppola tapped him to play Michael Corleone in 1972’s “The Godfather” against the wishes of a studio that wanted an established star in the coveted part.

He would be nominated for an Oscar for the role and become regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation. He got annual Academy Award nominations for the next three years, for “Serpico,” “The Godfather Part II” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” He would not win until he took best actor for “Scent of a Woman” in 1993, a year when he was also nominated for supporting actor for “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He’s been nominated nine times overall, most recently in 2020 for “The Irishman.”

Pacino has also won two competitive Actor Awards from SAG-AFTRA, two Emmys, four Golden Globes and the Globes’ lifetime achievement honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

“I have spent my life in awe and appreciation of the force of nature that is Al Pacino,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said in a statement. “When you watch him perform, you are witnessing a student and a master. Al Pacino is an artist of extraordinary courage, intensity and heart whose work has always set an exceptional standard of skill and talent. All of that and he’s just plain fun to watch.”

The SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award dates to 1962. Previous winners include Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Pearl Bailey, Frank Sinatra, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, James Earl Jones, Jane Fonda and Harrison Ford.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

An affordable housing charity that controls hundreds of apartments in Long Beach is facing a torrent of accusations that it cheated the government out of tens of millions of dollars, defrauded homeless assistance programs and swindled low-income tenants out of money.

The nonprofit Helpful Housing and its for-profit subsidiary Ocean Structure are run by Rodney Rosenstein, who is in federal custody after being indicted in connection with a series of alleged fraud schemes in Arizona. 

In Long Beach, a flood of similar accusations at 15 residential complexes has gone virtually unnoticed until now. They are spread across dozens of lawsuits reviewed by the Long Beach Post, as well as through obtained property records, financial documents, a whistleblower account from a former employee and interviews with tenants. Separately, they are little more than small-time court cases, rental disputes and loan defaults. Taken together, they allege Rosenstein is at the center of a cascading scam that took advantage of multimillion-dollar homeless services programs and federal affordable housing incentives with little oversight.

One attorney in particular managed to build the most comprehensive view of the alleged scheme while she pursued a maintenance worker’s wage-theft case. Kimberly Lind says Rosenstein’s organization falsified paperwork under the city’s nose for years, all to hide a system of overcharging agencies that placed formerly unhoused people in the apartments.

The full extent of the potential fraud in Long Beach — which also included low-income tenants alleging they were charged exorbitant fees without cause — remains unknown. 

Lawyers for Rosenstein declined to comment or did not respond to detailed questions from the Post. The city of Long Beach has said the Arizona indictment “raises new concerns” about its dealings with Rosenstein’s organizations, and it’s already suing him over missing payments on federal loans that it administers.

Still, Helpful Housing is continuing to serve as a landlord and collect money meant to help people avoid homelessness: The Long Beach Housing Authority alone is using federal housing vouchers to pay rent for 14 tenants at Helpful Housing and Ocean Structure properties, amounting to $157,811 so far this year.

Since 2010, Helpful Housing says it’s housed 10,000 people in “beautifully designed” Long Beach apartments. Its website touts its housing-first approach, its experience developing and remodeling apartments and its goals of expanding across L.A. County. 

Rosenstein’s business boomed in Long Beach after he received $6.5 million in zero-interest federal loans via the city between 2010 and 2016 to renovate apartment buildings. The loans came with the condition that he rent to low-income tenants at discounted rates and prove it every year with pay stubs and other documents showing their incomes fell below federal limits. 

As renovations were completed, revenue started rolling in. Records obtained by Lind and the Post show much of it was paid by government programs and homeless services agencies, which placed people in the apartments and paid millions in rent, repairs and security deposits. 

Before the loans, the nonprofit was reporting around $129,000 in revenue a year. By their 2024 filing, the nonprofit and business raked in more than $5 million in annual revenue and had accrued more than $51 million in total assets. 

It was around this time that Lind began looking into Helpful Housing. 

According to the attorney, the case brought to her in late 2023 by former maintenance worker Javier Zaldivar seemed at first a straightforward wage-theft suit against the nonprofit: Zaldivar claimed he worked at least 64 hours a week without rest breaks or sick pay for $15 an hour until he was fired in May 2023. He said he was owed $288,491 in back pay and civil penalties.

“And then as I got deeper and deeper into the case, I realized what they were doing,” Lind said. 

Proceeding to court in March 2024, Lind dug heavily into Rosenstein’s nonprofit and businesses, interviewed whistleblowers, and obtained a combination of emails, pay stubs and loan agreements. She even deposed Rosenstein himself before the lawsuit settled under undisclosed terms. Rosenstein continued to deny wrongdoing, and Lind alleges the full depth of the fraud has yet to come to light.

“It was just one thing after another,” Lind said. “It’s a rabbit hole that you go down, and I had to find out more.”

The front entrance to one of Rodney Rosenstein’s apartment buildings at 1133 Pine Ave. in Long Beach on Oct., 5, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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She said she found countless examples of forgeries, including W-2s, 1099s and pay stubs that were submitted to the city to prove they rented to low-income tenants, a requirement of the zero-interest loan agreement. Some people, she said, didn’t even exist. 

“They were pretty sloppy in some of them,” Lind said. “Some of it was kind of ridiculous. I look at pay stubs all the time. I know what’s supposed to be on them and what looks fishy.”

In the course of her investigation, Lind attempted to connect with a number of former employees. Many were afraid to come forward, she said, but eventually she met a former administrator who joined Helpful Housing in August 2022 and was tasked with balancing ledgers, handling evictions and reviewing vacancies.

In a sworn statement Lind shared with the Post, the worker — who asked to be identified publicly only as UMI for fear of retaliation — said they first noticed potentially fraudulent activity within the first four months on the job, watching co-workers routinely submit fabricated documents to the city.  

In some cases, the employee alleges, the organization maximized its profits by double-charging different agencies for the same tenant. In other cases, workers like Zaldivar were allegedly asked to build partitions in rooms to make space for multiple tenants: A building at 720 Chestnut Ave., for example, was permitted for 14 units but housed 18 by building partitions in some rooms “the size of a closet to maximize profits illegally,” UMI’s statement said.

After a number of confrontations with co-workers and Rosenstein, UMI quit, according to the sworn statement. 

“‘Everyday is a new element of chaos,’” they recalled telling Rosenstein. “‘You are all going to get caught committing fraud and the properties will end in receivership. You keep putting people in your buildings, and in the community — they are going to call their councilperson and it’s going to all blow up.’”

The practices alleged by UMI and Lind follow a strikingly similar pattern — relying on falsified tax and payroll records — to one federal prosecutors say Rosenstein allegedly orchestrated in Tucson, Ariz., also under his principal nonprofit, Helpful Housing. 

In an indictment filed in August, prosecutors say Rosenstein and Helpful Housing stole $2.9 million in COVID-relief money and $35 million in bank loans by lying about payroll expenses, creating W-2s for people who didn’t exist or never worked for him, and falsifying how full his Arizona buildings were, including one instance where his conspirators allegedly “staged” a condemned building to appear full of residents during various bank inspections.  He faces up to 30 years in prison on the charges and has pleaded not guilty.

When reached by phone, a federal prosecutor on the Arizona case declined to say whether they were looking into Rosenstein’s Long Beach business. 

An apartment building at 327 W. Pacific Coast Highway is one run by Rodney Rosenstein’s companies in Long Beach on Oct. 5, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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The indictment “raises new concerns” about Rosenstein’s dealings in Long Beach, said Deputy City Attorney Nick Masero. He said he could not comment on the accusations raised by Lind, “but in all such cases the city will accept available information, use the tools available to obtain additional information, coordinate with partner agencies that have different jurisdictions and take all appropriate actions to assert its rights and obtain just outcomes.”

Separately, the city has so far filed 15 lawsuits against Rosenstein for allegedly failing to make all the payments on the federally backed zero-interest loans he used to renovate his Long Beach properties. If they win, they plan to seize the 15 apartment buildings and auction them off, hoping to recoup a combined $9.6 million in principal and interest. 

As part of the loans, Rosenstein’s companies agreed to annual audits and inspections from the city. It’s unclear what they found or if they were completed. The city declined interview requests and refused to release audit and inspection documents while it’s in litigation with Helpful Housing.

In addition to the Long Beach Housing Authority, much of Rosenstein’s organization was fueled by money it took from Southern California anti-homelessness agencies — about 80%, according to UMI’s statement. During the course of her investigation, Lind obtained records showing millions in payments from nonprofit organizations like Mental Health America of Los Angeles (MHALA) and Interval House. 

MHALA, for example, paid Rosenstein’s entities a combined $3.1 million between 2014 and 2024 for rent, security deposits, repairs and “late housing support,” according to records Lind provided to the Post. (MHALA declined to comment.) Interval House confirmed the records were accurate and acknowledged they paid rent for some tenants through 2019 using government-funded programs like Long Beach Community Action Partnership Home Energy Assistance Program, and First 5, a state program targeting housing for homeless families. 

People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) confirmed it also worked with Rosenstein’s companies for about five years but did not disclose how much it had paid them.

At least some of the money allegedly never went to services supporting low-income residents. 

When tenants moved out, UMI alleged, staff would send agencies bogus work orders for repairs they say were never completed. In one example from November 2021, UMI said, Favela’s Construction & Renovation charged $19,400 for alleged repairs.

Attorney Kimberly Lind and a former Helpful Housing employee alleged this invoice was fraudulent, corresponding to a business address that didn’t exist.

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Long Beach Post

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When MHALA tried to deliver a check, an employee discovered the company’s listed address was actually a senior-living apartment building and confronted Helpful Housing, accusing them of fraud, UMI said.

The scheme also allegedly targeted the residents themselves. 

Julie Curren, who was placed at a Helpful Housing complex on 17th Street in October 2022, told the Post that PATH paid a $5,000 deposit meant for her to keep upon finishing their supportive housing program. “That deposit should have come back to me,” Curren said. 

But when she moved out in October 2024, she was charged $2,200 in damages. When she sued in small claims in December 2024, she said, attorney Bruce Gridley, representing Helpful Housing, first offered a $1,000 settlement. She refused. Then Gridley presented photographs of a messy apartment. 

“None of those pictures were mine,” she said. “The only thing that needed to be done was a quick paint job, and somebody told me somebody moved in like two days after I left, so you can’t tell me that apartment was in disarray.” 

A work order provided to Curren showed the contractor hired to take care of the repairs: Structural Integrity, a Chatsworth-based company owned by Rosenstein. (Gridley, who is also listed as a board member of Helpful Housing, declined to comment for this story.)

Curren said she spent months trying to recover her security deposit, money that she saw as a second chance at life. 

In emails she shared with the Post involving the city housing authority and Helpful Housing, the nonprofit claims it sent the money to the city, though officials claim they never received it. She says she’s weighing a civil suit. But she can’t afford a lawyer. 

“I think I’ve exhausted every effort,” Curren said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Long Beach Post reporter Jacob Sisneros contributed to this report.

Jackie, Big Bear’s late famous bald eagle, was suffering from several severe illnesses that ultimately led to her death in August, wildlife officials announced Wednesday evening.

Jackie had Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, otherwise known as HPAI, that caused a severe ulcer in her stomach, leading to internal bleeding, anemia and sepsis.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the Ojai Raptor Center released the results of Jackies’s necropsy and additional testing. Veterinary pathologists with the wildlife alliance performed the necropsy, and the raptor center led Jackie’s intensive care for weeks.

“The necropsy results have helped connect many of the findings we were seeing throughout the eagle’s hospitalization,” Chris Eksteen, executive director of the Ojai Raptor Center, said in a statement. Eksteen added that caring for her was an “extraordinary privilege” for their entire team.

Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit behind the popular nest livestream overlooking Big Bear Lake, said on social media that they’re taking some time to process the news.

“Please take care and be kind,” the group told its roughly 1.3 million Facebook followers.

What do we know?

HPAI is an infectious disease that’s been circulating in wild bird populations throughout the country, according to wildlife officials. Jackie may have been exposed by coming into contact with affected birds, such as waterfowl, or by eating infected prey.

HPAI was the main cause of her decline, according to the necropsy details. She had signs of chronic disease in a part of her stomach commonly called the gizzard, which contributed to the severe anemia she was suffering from. She had a serious bacterial infection, as well as severe inflammation and blood clots in her heart and major blood vessels.

Toxicology screenings also showed rodenticide in her liver and “persistent environmental contaminants.” But the rodenticide — brodifacoum — was not named as the primary cause of her illness and death.

The multiple, severe and interconnected illnesses “had been developing over time,” wildlife officials said. The organizations said they have “no evidence that Shadow or the eaglets were sick.”

Jackie’s remains have since been cremated by the National Eagle Repository, which is run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.