Topline:
Firefighters continue to make progress in containing the massive Hughes Fire that broke out Wednesday near Castaic Lake, growing to more than 10,396 acres and forcing mass evacuations.
What we know so far: The Hughes Fire broke out Wednesday off Lake Hughes Road near Castaic Lake. It was 56% contained by Friday.
Keep reading... for more on evacuations and weather conditions.
This is a developing story and will be updated. For the most up-to-date information about the fire you can check:
Firefighters continue to make progress in containing the massive Hughes Fire that broke out Wednesday near Castaic Lake, growing to more than 10,000 acres and forcing mass evacuations.
Around 38,000 people remain under evacuation warnings even as containment has reached 56%.
The Federal Aviation Administration has also issued a Temporary Flight Restriction in the airspace above the fire, meaning people cannot fly drones in the area.
The fire started shortly before 11 a.m. on Lake Hughes Road near Castaic Lake and burned through hundreds of acres within minutes. In the first three hours of the fire, 5,000 acres burned.
3 hour time-lapse of the #HughesFire that has grown from 500 to over 5,000 acres.pic.twitter.com/C63X5ICYmD
— Hexdline (@HexdlineNews) January 22, 2025
— L.A. County Fire Department (@LACoFDPIO) January 22, 2025
The National Weather Service extended a red flag warning in the area until 10 a.m. Friday — with a high wind advisory in place until 2 p.m. Thursday.
The smoke from the fire prompted alerts about poor air quality in Ventura County for Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Oxnard, Piru, Santa Paula, Simi Valley and Ventura. Parts of L.A., Riverside and San Bernardino counties also are under smoke and windblown dust and ash advisories.
Evacuation warnings have been issued for several areas in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Caltrans reopened both sides of the 5 Freeway Wednesday evening after closing lanes between Grapevine Road and State Route 126.
Area school districts will reopen most schools Friday after closing Wednesday and Thursday.
“After conferring with the fire department battalion chief and reviewing the latest air quality reports… we are happy to report that it is safe for our students and staff to return to school tomorrow morning,” the Castaic Union School District wrote in a statement.
Superintendent Bob Brauneisen previously said in a statement to families and staff that poor air quality and the need to assess facility safety extended the closures, which affected about 2,000 students.
William S. Hart Union High School District said in a statement that it will reopen all campuses except for Academy of the Canyons, which is on the campus of College of the Canyons and currently serving as a command center. The closures earlier in the week affected about 5,000 students.
The Saugus Union School District told LAist in an email that all campuses will be open. The district previously closed its offices and three schools in mandatory evacuation and evacuation warning zones, affecting nearly 2,500 students.
Los Angeles Unified schools in the San Fernando Valley limited outdoor activities such as recess, sports and lunch Thursday. Schools “particularly impacted by air quality” may release students early, the district wrote in a statement.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's officials moved 476 people from the Pitchess Detention Center, located in the evacuation zone.
Einer Rivera, a spokesperson for the department, said those jailed were taken to North County Correctional Facility.
That facility is also within the evacuation zones. Sheriff Robert Luna said the department is prepared to pivot to Plan B if needed.
"The Plan B that they would be being transported to other facilities around the county and they would be transported by any means possible," he said. "We do have buses that are on the way up there."
Check out LAist's wildfire recovery guide
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Topline:
This summer's World Cup has been a bonanza for corporate sponsors. Some of them have provoked outrage in Los Angeles.
What happened: At a demonstration in downtown L.A. last week, advocates rallied against a number of high-profile sponsors of the tournament, including Home Depot and Hyundai-Kia over human rights concerns.
The context: Protesters pointed out that in the L.A. area, Home Depot parking lots have been the sites of high profile immigration raids. The group also railed against FIFA partners Hyundai and Kia, citing a 2022 report that suppliers of Hyundai and Kia had used child labor in its Alabama factories.
What FIFA and the companies are saying: LAist has reached out to FIFA, Home Depot and the Hyundai Motor Group, which also owns Kia, for comment.
Read on... for more on advocate concerns as L.A. looks ahead to the Super Bowl and Olympics.
This summer's World Cup has been a bonanza for corporate sponsors.
Hydration breaks are "powered by Powerade." Each game crowns a Michelob Ultra "superior player of the match." Even the signs announcing player substitutions have a label slapped on: Rexona deodorant, which is owned by Unilever. They're the "official personal care sponsor" of this World Cup.
This relentless branding is nothing new for major sporting events, but it has provoked outrage in Los Angeles, where protests during the tournament took aim at FIFA's corporate partners, saying they betrayed the city's values.
At a demonstration in downtown L.A. last week, advocates rallied against a number of high-profile sponsors of the tournament, including Home Depot, the official "home improvement retailer" for the 2026 World Cup.
Its signature orange branding has been splashed across tournament activations this summer, but in the L.A. area its parking lots have been the sites of high profile immigration raids. Last summer in Monrovia, a man was killed fleeing ICE activity in a Home Depot parking lot after he ran onto a freeway and was hit by a car. In another incident, federal agents jumped out of a Penske moving van at the Westlake Home Depot and detained 16 people.
" Their parking lots have been turned into hunting grounds," said Miriam Arghandiwal, an organizer with the Boycott Home Depot Coalition.
" FIFA has been intentional in allowing the people's game to become the billionaire's game, and there's no better example of this than its choice in sponsors," she said at the protest.
The group also railed against FIFA partners Hyundai and Kia, citing a 2022 report that suppliers of Hyundai and Kia had used child labor in its Alabama factories. LAist has reached out to Home Depot and the Hyundai Motor Group, which also owns Kia, for comment.
Demonstrators said they wanted FIFA to make corporate accountability a metric of accepting a sponsor.
" We know mega-events like the World Cup can only happen with the support of host communities, local infrastructure and resources, with the workers throughout various supply chains that make these events possible," said Valerie Lizárraga with the nonprofit Jobs to Move America.
The group was also gathered to demand action from the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, which runs the L.A. World Cup Host Committee. Demonstrators said they were dissatisfied with the committee's guidance on human rights for the World Cup.
A spokesperson for that commission deferred to FIFA for comment on corporate sponsorships. FIFA did not respond to LAist's request.
Last week, a small group of climate activists also demonstrated outside SoFi Stadium against Saudi energy company Aramco, another major FIFA partner. They were calling on FIFA to drop the fossil fuel giant as a sponsor.
The World Cup is wrapped up in Los Angeles after Friday's quarterfinal match between Spain and Belgium. But advocates rallying in L.A. say they are looking toward the future.
" Things like the World Cup [and] the Olympics are events that are fueled by people," said Father Thomas Carey, a member of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. "The question is, do we hold them to account to take care of and protect the people who work for them and the people who attend their games?"
Next year, Los Angeles will host the 2027 Super Bowl. And the year after that will be the Olympics.
Topline:
The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.
The proposed rule: The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
What's next: Normally, HHS would propose a rule, accept public comment for 60 days, and then finalize the rule so that it could take effect. In this case, after proposing the rule in December and receiving more than 30,000 comments, the administration is abandoning the rule. At least in the next year, it will not be finalized and will not take effect.
The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.
The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told NPR in a statement: "CMS does not comment on future rulemaking or speculate on potential actions. The Trump Administration rejects ideologically driven surgical interventions on vulnerable children."
(Surgery is very rare among transgender people under age 18, and the rule applied to all gender-affirming care, which is mainly therapy and medications for children.)
The fact that the Trump administration is backing off from this action is "a victory for people who are defending the rights and interests of trans people," says Sam Bagenstos, a professor at Michigan Law who served as general counsel at HHS under the Biden administration. "But I don't think it indicates a more general retreat from the aggressive posture of the Trump administration."
Bagenstos notes that this type of leverage — a "conditions of participation" rule for the Medicare and Medicaid program — has historically been used by HHS to compel states and hospitals to meet basic health and safety standards. Things like "making sure that you have stockpiles of certain kinds of equipment, making sure that you have certain kinds of emergency protocols, making sure that you have certain staffing ratios," he explains.
The proposed rule was unprecedented, Bagenstos says, because it instead would have prohibited certain kinds of treatments for a certain population. He says it seemed unlawful in a variety of ways. For one, "it violates the Medicare Act, which says that Medicare and Medicaid can't be used to control the practice of medicine within the state — states get to regulate the practice of medicine," Bagenstos says.
Normally, HHS would propose a rule, accept public comment for 60 days, and then finalize the rule so that it could take effect. In this case, after proposing the rule in December and receiving more than 30,000 comments, the administration is abandoning the rule. At least in the next year, it will not be finalized and will not take effect.
The American Medical Association and the Children's Hospital Association both submitted comments urging the agency to rescind or withdraw the proposed rule. Major U.S. medical groups say that puberty blockers and sex hormones are safe and can be effective for transgender young people.
Even so, gender-affirming care for youth is banned in 27 states after a flurry of laws passed over the last several years. In the remaining 23 states, many hospital clinics that offer gender-affirming care have continued to operate, while others have shuttered in the past year citing pressure from the Trump administration.
That pressure has come in the form of this proposed rule, another rule that would bar federal Medicaid reimbursement for transgender pediatric patients, and a declaration from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that aimed to redefine the standard of care. (Interestingly, the press release issued when those actions were unveiled in December is now missing from the HHS website, as is the Kennedy declaration document.)
The Medicaid rule is currently in the final stage of review and appears to be on track to take effect in the coming weeks. A coalition of Democratic-led states sued over the so-called Kennedy declaration and succeeded in blocking it in federal court in Oregon. The Trump administration has not appealed that decision so far.
At the same time, the Department of Justice has issued administrative and criminal subpoenas to hospitals seeking full personal medical files for transgender youth and employment files for their medical providers, although many of those attempts have been blocked in court so far. The Trump administration has also reached settlements with hospitals in Texas and Ohio that involved establishing "detransition" clinics.
And last month, when the Supreme Court allowed states to bar young transgender girls from sports, the White House issued a press release saying that the decision "Bolsters President Trump's Push to Eliminate Transgender Insanity." The release listed actions targeting transgender people across the federal government, from passport markers to military service to research funding.
While the Trump administration does not appear to be backing down from anti-transgender actions broadly, its decision not to finalize its most aggressive healthcare rule is significant, says Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University who also worked in the Biden administration. Those other efforts are not nearly as durable as a finalized rule that takes effect, she notes.
The decision of the Trump administration not to finalize this rule "should give hospitals more confidence to either resume or continue offering the care," she says. Because the rule was never in effect, "I would argue that they should have been doing this all along anyway."
Kellan Baker agrees. He's a senior adviser for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project think tank, which focuses on LGBTQ issues. "This administration may have checked itself in one of the most extreme expressions of its agenda and I think people should take solace in that," he says. "But at the same time, this administration is continuing to show that its ultimate goal is eliminating healthcare for trans people and that it is apparently prepared to use almost any means necessary to do so."
The Medicare and Medicaid rule could theoretically be revived at some point, since it has not been formally withdrawn. An entry in the Trump administration's recent unified agenda sets a final action date for the proposed rule as December 2028, just before President Trump leaves office.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Air quality officials have cited Lineage LLC for “rotten, sour, garbage-type odors” emanating from its Boyle Heights warehouse after getting more than 40 complaints Sunday.
About the complaints: In a statement, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said inspectors confirmed the smells with local community members and traced the source to cleanup activities at the warehouse. Officials estimate that 85 million pounds of food in the warehouse have spoiled after a fire last month at Lineage’s warehouse.
The notice of violation: South Coast AQMD cited Lineage for violating California state code that prohibits “emissions that cause injury, nuisance, or annoyance to a significant number of people or the public.”
About the smell: I smelled the odor for myself from hundreds of feet away while driving on the 5 Freeway near Boyle Heights at about 11 p.m. Sunday. Though I had my car windows up, it quickly registered to me as the smell of decomposing animal matter. The strong odor persisted for about a minute until I left the Boyle Heights area.
What happens next: If a settlement with Lineage isn’t reached, the company could face civil penalties and even a lawsuit, according to South Coast AQMD’s statement.
What residents have been saying: At a contentious town hall meeting last Thursday, Boyle Heights and East L.A. residents slammed Los Angeles city officials and Lineage for their handling of the fire and the cleanup. Locals challenged L.A. Mayor Karen Bass to spend the night near the warehouse to experience the odor. She committed to spending more time in Boyle Heights, including at night.
Lineage’s response: An email to the only media contact listed on Lineage’s website was flagged as “undeliverable.” LAist has reached out directly to a Lineage press representative for comment.
Topline:
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that expands the state's mobile ID program to more than half of licensed drivers, according to his office.
What's new: The pilot program has been around for a few years, but it was limited to only a fraction of Californians. Now, 60% of drivers and state ID-holders can access a mobile version of their cards.
How it works: You store your ID on your phone through the California DMV Wallet app, and it can be added to certain phone wallets.
Keep reading... for how to join and where you can use it.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that expands the state's mobile ID program to 60% of licensed drivers, his office announced Monday.
For the last few years, participating residents have been able to use the state-issued mobile app and store their IDs in certain phone wallets as part of a pilot program.
The program works for driver's licenses and state IDs.
The mobile version is mainly valid at airport security, but use is expected to expand in the future.
TSA accepts the California DMV Wallet App, as well as Apple, Google or Samsung wallets. A small number of stores accept them for age-restricted purchases.
One big caveat: Mobile IDs are not accepted by law enforcement or most state government agencies.
That means you should still keep your physical ID or license with you, especially if you're driving. You can find a full list of accepted places on the DMV's website.
Access to the program was previously capped to 4.2 million drivers — now that's quadrupled to over 16 million.
You can join the pilot by downloading the CA DMV Wallet app from your phone's app store and logging into your MyDMV account.
You'll need to provide your driver's license or ID card information. The app will prompt you to scan your card, and you'll have to refresh the mobile ID every 30 days.
More than 3.5 million Californians have joined so far.
