The Brief

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-0 Wednesday to ban new oil wells and phase out all existing ones within 20 years, the final vote needed to pass the citywide ban.

For community residents and environmental advocates, this has been a long time coming — the push to enact this ordinance began over a decade ago.

“To every single one of us, this is what this means: That we hopefully will inherit a safer Los Angeles, a healthier city, not just for us, but for generations to come,” said Ashley Hernandez, a community organizer and Wilmington resident.

Hernandez was among dozens of demonstrators who gathered outside City Hall Wednesday morning for a rally ahead of the council vote, holding signs with slogans like “Clean air & health over big oil wealth” and “Together we can stop the climate emergency.”

Ashley Hernandez spoke about the ban on oil drilling creating a healthier city for future generations. She spoke at a rally before the L.A. City Council voted to ban new wells and phase out existing ones.

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Kevin Tidmarsh

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The backstory

The city of L.A. first moved to phase out oil drilling in 2022. That motion was later overturned after Warren Resources, an oil company, sued the city, arguing that only the state could enact such a policy. A state law passed last year explicitly granted cities the right to ban oil drilling, and the L.A. City Council again took up the cause. L.A. County is planning a similar ban.

The push to close the wells

Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky, Heather Hutt and Adrin Nazarian spoke in favor of the ban at the morning rally.

“Seven hundred fifty-nine of these active wells sit just steps from homes, churches, parks, hospitals and other places that our residents visit and congregate on a daily basis,” Nazarian said.

Richard Parks,  president of Redeemer Community Partnership in South Los Angeles, said his family and several of his neighbors who live near oil drilling sites where odor-neutralizing chemicals are sprayed into the air have faced health consequences, including miscarriages.

“We were left to wonder, did we lose these children because of the way these oil companies were operating in our community?” Parks said.

For South L.A. resident and high school senior Isabella Galbraith, the fight to close oil wells has lasted most of her life. She said she participated in her first protest, advocating for the closure of the Jefferson drill site, when she was just 5 years old. (That site has been closed and is now being developed into a park.)

“It's not normal to struggle to breathe. It's not normal for all of your family members to have asthma, to be getting cancer,” Galbraith said. “It's a daily reality for all of us, and it shows up in the little ways, and they have big, lasting consequences.”

What’s next

Oil companies have already said they plan to fight the ban, arguing that the ordinance constitutes a taking of private property without compensation and a violation of their rights.

Meanwhile, Parks said he hopes the city continues to take action on oil wells, including revoking conditional use permits for nuisance oil drill sites and using the authority of the L.A. Fire Department to plug idle oil wells.

Meanwhile, Yaroslavsky also advocated for the wells to be properly plugged and cleaned up.

“We need to make sure these wells are properly plugged and these sites are cleaned up, and we need to make sure the companies responsible for this pollution are held accountable,” she said.

Local residents are already looking to the future of what these sites could be once they’re shut down and cleaned up.

“I'm looking at … the future of these sites. Maybe these could be parks that our communities desperately need,” said Wilmington resident and rally organizer Wendy Miranda. “I'm just really excited for Wilmington, for South L.A., for other communities that have oil drilling near them to see that this will no longer be in our neighborhoods.”

At the height of the Los Angeles fires in 2025, millions of residents were exposed in a 24-hour period to toxic lead levels from smoke that were 80 times higher than the typical background level, according to a new study.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology compared the chemical composition of smoke from the Eaton Fire with that of a wildfire and found that the urban plume had more lead, arsenic and halogens (which include chlorine and bromine) linked to burning vehicles, building materials and electronics.

“The main, key finding is really that wildfire smoke is very different fundamentally from the urban smoke,” said Nga Lee “Sally” Ng, an author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. With the new technology they used to measure what was in the smoke, they were able to “actually see the very detailed component of these particles that we are breathing.”

Co-author Haroula Baliaka said understanding the different chemical compositions of smoke from an urban versus a wildland fire helps bridge a missing gap in research. Wildfires are growing larger, more intense, faster-moving and more frequent largely because of drier and warmer weather associated with human-caused climate change. As urban growth and climate change push more fires into cities, researchers said monitoring and emergency response will have to adapt.

Ed Avol, professor emeritus in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California who has researched the health effects of air pollution for decades, said significant exposure to heavy metals is consistent with what he’d expect, “but certainly surprising because we haven’t been able to document this sort of thing.”

“One of the real advantages of this study is that it had the opportunity to make measurements sort of hour-by-hour across the sampling network. And typically we make measurements of airborne particulates and so forth a couple of times a week, at best,” said Avol, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Thousands of structures burned, releasing toxic chemicals

The two wind-whipped infernos in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades that ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, mostly homes, and everything in them — cars, paint, furniture, chemicals under sinks and more. Millions of people were exposed to smoke, which across the entire United States has been linked to tens of thousands of deaths annually. A recent study found that metal mixtures in the leftover smoke, ash and debris from the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires were harmful to the lung health of people living nearby long after the burning ended.

During the fires, researchers measured trace elements of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, every hour reported by instruments in the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork ( ASCENT ), a relatively new network of air quality monitors across the U.S. that measures the size and chemical composition of these particulates in real time. Ng said ASCENT is the U.S.'s first measurement network able to measure the chemical composition of airborne particles in real time.

Researchers were able to see what chemicals were in the smoke, track how its composition changed over the fire’s course, and distinguish emissions coming from burning structures. From there, they estimated how many people across Los Angeles were exposed to the heavy metals, particularly lead, during the fire’s first days.

They compared the typical value of lead before the fires and the chemical makeup of smoke from a 2024 fire in Riverside County that burned mostly vegetation with data from the Eaton Fire plume. Contrasted with the wildfire smoke, the plume from the LA fire contained 50 times more lead, three times more arsenic, and seven times more halogens. At the peak of burning, about 7 million people were exposed for 24 hours to lead levels more than 80 times what’s typical.

Lead is a neurotoxin that can stunt children’s development, lower IQ scores and increase blood pressure in adults. Scientists still don’t know how short-term, high exposure to lead impacts human health. Arsenic exposure is associated with various cancers.

Yaguang Wei, assistant professor in the department of environmental medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who researches the health impacts of air pollution, wildfire smoke and severe weather, said their findings reinforced some conclusions of a recent study he co-authored that found, in part, that PM2.5 from wildfire smoke was more toxic than particulates from other sources.

“I think their findings are not surprising,” said Wei, who was not involved in the study. When fires burn properties, they’re also burning “a lot of lead on your wall paint and the plastics and electronics and those are very toxic” when they burn, he said.

Monitoring, policies and emergency response need to adapt, experts say

Wei said the study has “important policy implications.” He thinks governments should take stronger actions to protect public health during these fires by investing in more wildfire monitoring and public alerts, and having more prescribed fires.

For Avol, the study is a reminder of our “strange and increasingly dangerous new world” where urban and wildland intersect — and increasingly catch fire.

“It reminds us to be cautious and be concerned and, you know, think about what we can do to minimize this. We’re not going to stop using all these materials containing metals and halogens and so forth in our homes,” he said. “How do we protect people from being exposed to that?”

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

A federal judge on Tuesday agreed to keep the Trump administration’s suspension of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority on hold, allowing the joint city-county agency, known as LAHSA, to keep running key homelessness systems while it hands its federal roles to L.A. County.

That means federal homelessness money will continue to flow to the L.A. region through LAHSA while the agency’s lawsuit over the suspension plays out.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter’s order came at the joint request of LAHSA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a regional planning group called the L.A. Continuum of Care. The decision came as Carter’s earlier order blocking the suspension was set to expire Tuesday.

LAHSA sued the federal housing department, HUD, in June. The L.A. Continuum of Care joined the lawsuit on LAHSA’s side.

Lawyers for both sides told the court they’re close to settling LAHSA’s entire lawsuit. “In terms of a settlement agreement, we are 90% there,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, adding that a signed settlement agreement could be ready in about two weeks.

Their joint request, filed Monday, came the same day the L.A. Continuum of Care voted to make L.A. County the lead agency for the region’s homelessness database (in a 253-43 vote) and its system for matching unhoused people with housing (in a 219-38 vote).

With those votes, the county’s new homelessness department has now been formally selected to take over all four federal roles currently held by LAHSA — in a process ordered by Carter. The group picked the county earlier this month to run the annual homeless count and manage the region’s applications for federal homelessness funding.

In court Tuesday, Carter said the city and county have “bickered” for years, and that LAHSA was created “to solve that problem but was just a punching bag on many occasions.”

Sarah Mahin (center) speaks earlier this year about the launch of the new county homelessness department she will direct. Standing behind her are L.A. County Supervisors Kathryn Barger (left) and Lindsey Horvath.

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What does all of this mean for how L.A. homelessness will be addressed?

In the short term, not much will change for people seeking shelter and services. LAHSA will keep running the system used to match people with housing and the database where outreach workers log the people their organizations help.

But the handoff to L.A. County will happen in stages. Shayla Myers, an attorney for the Continuum of Care, told the court the settlement would include “staggered transition times.”

HUD’s lawyers said the database and housing matching system would move last, no later than the end of next year.

Once the transition is complete, one government will be in charge of the region’s core homelessness systems. That’s a big shift.

For years, these roles have been held by LAHSA, a joint agency overseen by both the city and county, which made it hard to hold anyone accountable when the system fell short.

The shift in overseeing the homeless count will be one major change for the region. The timing hasn’t been announced and is being worked out in settlement talks. For now, LAHSA plans to run the next count in January, according to the agency’s leadership.

LAHSA has run the count for about two decades, and its accuracy has faced repeated scrutiny. In August, the L.A. City Council unanimously called for a review of this year’s count, citing possible errors.

How did we get here? 

HUD suspended LAHSA from federal programs in June, citing alleged financial mismanagement. The federal housing department announced proposed penalties against the L.A. Continuum of Care, saying it wanted to have local service providers apply directly to HUD for funding.

LAHSA sued later that month, calling the suspension “a baseless attempt to eliminate” both the agency and the L.A. Continuum of Care. LAHSA argued HUD’s stated reasons were a cover for the Trump administration's goal of dismantling the regional system. The L.A. Continuum of Care joined the lawsuit on LAHSA’s side, arguing that “HUD’s actions threaten to dismantle the very role Congress assigned to local Continuums of Care.”

In August, Carter, the federal judge, blocked the suspension through Oct. 27 to avoid disrupting funding for homeless services amid a transition away from LAHSA.

He also ordered the L.A. Continuum of Care to start looking for replacements for LAHSA in four key federal roles. As of this week, that selection process is complete, and the parties in the case agree LAHSA needs to keep running key homelessness systems until those roles move to L.A. County.

The court’s order Tuesday keeps the suspension on hold until the end of the lawsuit. It also blocks HUD’s proposed penalties against the Continuum of Care for now, so local providers won’t be forced to apply to HUD directly.

HUD and local officials are now ironing out a transition plan. HUD’s lawyers said the responsibilities would fully move away from LAHSA no later than the end of 2027.

Carter Hewgley is chief strategy officer for the county’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing, which will take over the responsibilities from LAHSA. Hewgley said at Monday’s meeting the department “is committed to a transition plan that preserves vital subject matter expertise and continuity of services.”

LAHSA budgeted about $24 million to run all four of these roles in the current budget year, according to a report from the county’s chief executive officer.

LAHSA spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for the number of employees who support those functions.

Bill Essayli, First Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California, speaks on the phone outside the United States District Court in Los Angeles in December 2025.

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What will happen next with the lawsuit?

HUD, LAHSA and the L.A. Continuum of Care will continue negotiating a settlement.

Essayli said Tuesday the parties have agreed to more than two dozen provisions, with four or five still left to work out.

HUD’s attorneys said the department needs assurances that federal money will be spent properly during the transition, but flagged that the agency doesn’t have the funds to pay for a court-appointed monitor.

As settlement negotiations continue, one sticking point is “harm reduction,” which refers to programs that aim to make drug use less dangerous. Harm reduction strategies can include using public money to distribute clean pipes or syringes.

Essayli said that going forward, “federal dollars can no longer be used for harm reduction.”

Myers, the L.A. Continuum of Care’s attorney, argued that harm reduction is already covered by HUD’s current funding rules and doesn’t need to be part of the settlement.

Carter's order Tuesday requires HUD to process the region’s pending funding application — for about $240 million — as usual.

HUD's current rules bar federal grant money from going to organizations that knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia or knowingly allow illicit drug use on their property.

HUD’s broader funding guidelines are being challenged in federal court in Rhode Island. In the meantime, a federal appeals court has allowed HUD to move forward with them.

HUD's June notice suspending LAHSA did not mention harm reduction. It cited LAHSA's alleged failures in financial management, internal controls and safeguards against conflicts of interest. It also described what HUD called “repeated false statements” to the federal agency.

On Tuesday in a downtown L.A. courtroom, the federal judge pressed the parties to quickly settle their remaining differences.

“Ultimately, you hold the cards in terms of approval,” Carter told HUD’s lawyers. “You have to be happy with this.”

The attorneys said they expect to finish working out the details by the end of this week.

Carter also weighed in on a separate deal between the city and county of L.A. over how the city will use the systems once the county takes over.

In court Tuesday, he displayed the agreement’s terms and warned that deals like it “cannot supplant my rulings.”

“It’s essential to this court that we have a centralized authority, one place of accountability,” he said. “We don’t want a decentralized LAHSA situation again…We’re done with that.”

Groups that provide legal services to immigrants filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop the Trump administration’s new policy of hiding the locations of tens of thousands of detainees with final deportation orders.

The policy, adopted suddenly last month to expedite deportations, interferes with immigration lawyers’ rights by making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to locate their clients, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston. It asks a judge to issue an order blocking the “unlawful and inhumane” change.

“No one should be denied a meaningful opportunity to defend their rights because the government has made it impossible for their lawyer to find them,” said Jacquelynne Bowman, executive director of Greater Boston Legal Services, one of the four groups listed as plaintiffs. “This arbitrary new administrative change leaves hundreds of thousands of people at risk of potentially life-altering consequences without essential legal help.”

The lawsuit challenges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s decision, first reported by The Associated Press, to remove the locations of people facing final removal orders from its Online Detainee Locator System and to instruct staff not to reveal their whereabouts. As of last month, the move affected more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 detainees who were in ICE custody.

ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The agencies have not publicly confirmed the change, but have said they are prioritizing people with final removal orders for deportation. They have also said they are facing a “historic number of injunctions” from courts blocking their efforts. The agencies have denied that they are disappearing detainees, saying they remain free to make phone calls.

Since 2010, lawyers and family members have used the online system to track detainees as they get moved from facility to facility through ICE’s sprawling detention network.

Approximately 1.4 million people living in the U.S. are subject to final orders of removal, which means an immigration judge has ruled they should be deported and the decision has been upheld on appeal or not appealed.

Those individuals still have several options to challenge the conditions of their detention and looming deportations, including asking to reopen proceedings, seeking relief from removal to third countries and challenging violations of their rights. Federal judges have ruled thousands of times that detainees should be released or granted bond hearings.

Since the change went into effect, lawyers have been unable to find clients and potential clients and have spent “significantly more time” tracking down others, the lawsuit says. Calls to ICE, including to its Detention and Removal Information Line, “lead to long wait times on hold, sudden hang-ups, a general lack of information or no answer at all,” it says.

As a workaround, some lawyers have tried to find their clients through an ICE program that schedules legal calls, but only a small percentage of detention centers use it, the lawsuit says. The result has been delayed or missed legal filings and fewer cases taken, according to the organizations.

The lawsuit argues the change violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it was adopted without explanation and the First Amendment, which protects lawyers’ ability to advise people of their legal rights and seek prospective client

Local leaders mourned the death of civil rights icon Dolores Huerta on Wednesday and honored her legacy as a dedicated advocate for workers’ and women’s rights. 

Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union to improve working conditions in the nation’s fruit and vegetable fields and coined the phrase “Sí, se puede!,” died Wednesday at home, her family said in a statement. She was 96. 

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said they considered Huerta a friend and credited her as a source of inspiration in their work. 

“Dolores inspired so many of us to activism. I admired her from a very young age, and it was an incredible honor and privilege not only to meet and know her, but to call her a friend,” Bass said in a statement. “She inspired me through tough times and taught me to never give up. She supported me in every campaign and challenge I faced.”

“Dolores carried the fight into every arena where people were denied a voice. She championed women’s rights, reproductive freedom, and gender equality, and she organized communities, here in Los Angeles and across the nation, so that all people had a stronger voice in the decisions that shape their lives. Her legacy is one of dignity and equality for all, and proof of what ordinary people can accomplish when they organize,” her statement continued. 

“Dolores reminded us that no matter the odds, no matter the obstacle, we can build a greater life for ourselves, our community, our city, and our country. She never, never stopped working. She was fighting for civil rights every day, into her nineties,” Bass added. “Rest in power, Dolores. Thank you for everything.”

Solis described Huerta as “a source of strength, a trusted friend and a partner in some of the most important fights of my career.”

“Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, I rarely saw Latinas in positions of leadership. Dolores was one of the few women who showed me what was possible. I remember seeing the iconic photograph of her holding the ‘Huelga’ sign and drawing strength from her example. She helped me understand that women like us had a place in public life and a responsibility to speak up for those too often ignored. That lesson stayed with me throughout my career,” Solis added.

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers, looks at an iconic photograph of herself as she tours her exhibition, “Viva la Causa! Dolores Huerta and the Struggle for Justice,” at La Plaza de la Cultura y Artes museum downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, April 10, 2014.

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Solis described how she and Huerta stood side by side at rallies and demonstrations in Sacramento and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, advocating for workers’ rights and women’s rights.

“Dolores understood the importance of showing up, bearing witness and refusing to let the suffering of women go ignored. I will always remember standing beside her in that fight,” her statement continued. 

In 2024, Solis authored a motion to proclaim Dolores Huerta Day in L.A. County every year on Huerta’s birthday, recognizing her lifelong commitment to workers’ rights, justice and equality.

Solis also acknowledged Huerta’s revelation earlier this year that she was sexually abused in the 1960s by César Chávez, co-founder of the farmworkers movement.

“Her decision to speak publicly about what she endured deserves to be met with compassion and respect. I stand with Dolores and all survivors who deserve to be heard and treated with dignity. … Dolores helped build that movement, and her contributions must be recognized without being overshadowed by the actions of others,” her statement continued.

“She spent her life reminding us that progress takes persistence and that lasting change comes when people stand together. I have lost a dear friend whose example will stay with me for the rest of my life,” Solis added.

Civil rights legend Dolores Huerta, 95, speaks at a rally in Los Angeles, Monday, June 9, 2025, calling for the release of labor union leader David Huerta, who was arrested during a protest on June 6

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District 14 Councilmember Ysabel Jurado also shared personal memories of the late labor leader. 

“When I took office, it was Dolores who swore me in. I didn’t take that moment lightly, and I never will. I raised my hand knowing I wasn’t just making a promise to CD14. I was accepting a responsibility she passed on: to fight for workers, for immigrant families, for women, for the people too often left out of the room,” Jurado said in a statement. “Her legacy lives on in me, in our office, and in every organizer she trained. Descansa en poder, Dolores. We’ll keep going.” 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in her honor, sharing in a statement, “Dolores represented the best of us. California — and the United States — would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten.”

Solis also ordered all L.A. County flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of Huerta until her services, she said in a statement Wednesday. 

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