Topline:
Joshua Tree National Park crews have started to survey damage to its namesake plant after the latest wildfire broke out on Friday.
Why now: The Eureka Fire started Friday at around noon in the Covington Flats area of the park.
The backstory: The area is known as a kind of last refuge for the tree.
Crews at Joshua Tree National Park have begun to survey damages to its namesake plant in the wake of the latest wildfire that has burned more about 200 acres in an area known as a "refuge" of sorts for the tree.
As of Saturday afternoon, the Eureka Fire is at 40% contained, according to fire authorities.
The fire broke out Friday at around noon in the Covington Flats area of the park.
"This area of Covington Flats is a place where we hope is a kind of last refuge for our Joshua trees because of higher elevation," said park spokesperson Meg Rockwell. "It's an area that Joshua trees seem to really prosper."
As temperatures climb from changing climates, Joshua trees have been retreating to higher elevation areas, Rockwell said, where there's more rainfall and cooler temperatures.
Those areas, like Covington Flats, are places where the park has worked to clear up fire fuels to try to protect Joshua trees, which do not recover well from fire damage.
"Joshua trees do not like fire. They do not need fire. They do not want fire," Rockwell said. "When the ground area and the Joshua tree itself burns, it will scar and die. And it takes a very long time for the ground to recover for Joshua trees to then bloom."
Friday's fire started near Eureka Peak, according to Rockwell, a spot sought out by visitors for views of sunsets and bigger Joshua trees that the area is known for.
Rockwell said there is damage to sections of the Joshua tree forest in the area. She said park crews are out today to begin to assess the extent.
The fire is under investigation.
Topline:
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is harnessing the web to shake things up. He has leapt into the usually more mundane world of municipal politics with brash and extreme rhetoric, taking to TikTok, with direct-to-camera videos condemning Bass' response to the devastating Pacific Palisades wildfires that claimed his family's home. But can he win the race?
An internet-driven campaign: Pratt's campaign borrows from the combative and mocking style of politics popular in fringe online forums and celebrated by allies of President Trump. He's amplified outlandish artificial intelligence videos, tapped an army of freelance "clippers" to edit short social media snippets of him bashing the city's leaders; and he talks about nonexistent "super meth" plaguing the city's streets and pushed false narratives about California lawmakers' response to the Palisades Fire.
Can Pratt win?: "Winning the internet is not the same thing as winning the election, but it can help," said former L.A. Councilmember Mike Bonin, who now directs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. Internet notoriety, though, cannot dislodge one fact about Los Angeles: Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, presenting Pratt with a serious challenge if he advances to the November runoff. While Pratt is a registered Republican, he has tried to separate himself from the MAGA movement and has repeatedly highlighted how the mayor's race in Los Angeles is nonpartisan.
To Spencer Pratt and his supporters, becoming mayor of Los Angeles first means winning the internet.
Pratt has amplified outlandish artificial intelligence videos, including one depicting lightsaber duels between him and the city's current mayor, Karen Bass, and another where he's portrayed as Batman descending on a burning Los Angeles to save the day; his campaign has tapped an army of freelance "clippers" to edit short social media snippets of him bashing the city's leaders; and he talks about nonexistent "super meth" plaguing the city's streets and pushed false narratives about California lawmakers' response to the Palisades Fire.
It's perhaps no surprise that the 42-year-old former villain of the reality television show "The Hills" knows how to work the attention economy, but he's doing so by borrowing the combative and mocking style of politics popular in fringe online forums and celebrated by allies of President Trump.
"He's probably the most Trumpian candidate we've ever seen in terms of house style," said Steve Bannon, Trump's former top adviser. "Trump's superpower was bringing in people into politics who hate politics, and that's what he's doing online right now."
Pratt's internet antics are up against long odds.
On June 2, Angelenos will go to the polls for the city's "jungle primary," a nonpartisan contest where Pratt, a Republican, will face off against Democratic incumbent Bass and progressive council member Nithya Raman.
If any candidate surpasses 50% of the vote, that person becomes mayor. If nobody does, the top two vote getters compete in a November runoff. Polls show Pratt and Raman neck and neck, with Bass commanding a comfortable lead.
Yet Pratt is harnessing the web to shake things up.
He has leapt into the usually more mundane world of municipal politics with brash and extreme rhetoric, taking to TikTok, with direct-to-camera videos condemning Bass' response to the devastating Pacific Palisades wildfires that claimed his family's home. He describes Bass as "the mayor who let the town burn down."
Pratt has also blamed city leaders with enabling the deterioration of city residents' quality of life, or, as he puts it on TikTok, "a city battered by fires, homelessness and crime," a framing that would sound familiar to anyone watching right-wing influencers and streamers.
Pratt says, without evidence, that "socialists in LA city government are stealing your money." He denigrates the city's homeless as fentanyl-addled "zombies." And he has promised to clear out encampments by mass-arresting people living on the streets.
He's accused Bass and Raman of "running a grift with the Homeless Industrial Complex," a vague and unsubstantiated claim aimed at whipping up his fans online, according to Dan Cassino, a professor of government at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies masculinity and politics.
"These are the sorts of things that play very well in red-pilled forums where there's this idea that everyone is in control of their lives and 'we need to embrace hard truths out there that they won't teach you in school,'" he said.
Pratt's endorsement from podcaster Joe Rogan, Cassino said, is proof of Pratt's credibility in the manosphere, the bro-friendly world of male influencers who wage war against polite society.
"Focusing on this audience is a way to target young men," Cassino said. "Just as Trump did in 2024, and now we see Spencer Pratt doing the same thing."
Former Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin has been watching Pratt's campaign morph from unserious long-shot to top three contender.
Pratt had a megaphone of millions of social media followers before he ran for public office. That has helped supercharge the spread of the AI slop videos his fans have made. So has Elon Musk's repeated re-sharing and replies to Pratt's content on X, the platform the tech mogul owns, to his 240 million followers.
When Pratt wants his incendiary campaign messages and AI content to spread even farther, conservative influencers like Laura Loomer, Ben Shapiro and Benny Johnson are at the ready, commenting and reposting to juice Pratt's reach.
"Winning the internet is not the same thing as winning the election, but it can help," said Bonin, who now directs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.
He points to how the kinetic digital campaign of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani inundated Instagram Reels and TikTok with videos showing how natural and conversant he was with the format.
More close to home, Los Angeles Controller Kenneth Mejia won his 2022 election using his two corgis on billboards and in social media videos as a way of appealing to those terminally online.
The difference with Pratt, Bonin said, is that he's using the leverage of the well-oiled right-wing online media machine.
"Unlike left-leaning candidates, right-leaning candidates come into an internet ecosystem that is well-practiced in promoting itself through its various networks," he said.
Also giving a signal boost, Bonin said, was the launch of California Post, a West Coast edition of conservative New York Post owned by Rupert Murdoch, around the same time Pratt launched his campaign. The outlet has "been reinforcing the supposed dystopian crisis Los Angeles has been living through, and that is a big part of Pratt's narrative," Bonin said.
Pratt and his campaign did not return requests for an interview. Bass did not offer any comment.
Raman, through a spokesman, dismissed Pratt's online tactics, saying the AI slop videos show how out of touch he is with something that's an existential concern to the city's entertainment industry.
"Hollywood jobs are being devastated by AI, meanwhile Spencer Pratt is using his platform to promote AI-generated content amplifying the very technology replacing the workers he claims to care about," Raman said in a statement. "Our videos are made by working film and television professionals who believe Los Angeles can be better."
There are two ways to respond to this: Try to meet Pratt on his level, or don't participate at all.
Cassino, the government professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said Raman and Bass are taking "the Rose Garden strategy" by not trying to match the intensity and absurdity of Pratt's online campaign, which he said is probably politically wise.
"He's more chronically online than they are. He has fans who generate this stuff for him in a way that they don't, so any attempt for them to do this will make them look inauthentic," he said.
It is difficult to gauge how much of Pratt's content and rage-baiting is coming across the social media feeds of Los Angeles voters, but, at least on X, he's been praised as the candidate who is the most "anti-woke" and "based," internet slang for being unapologetically one's self and unafraid of offending others.
His favorite pejorative for Bass is "Karen Basura," which is Spanish for trash. And he calls the mayor's supporters "Bassholes" — cruel, bully-like language that Cassino said is catering to young men online.
"If people are voting for Spencer Pratt because they think it's funny versus because they seriously want him to be mayor, the vote still counts," Cassino said.
However it is resonating or not with voters, Pratt is not slowing his inflammatory language and pugnacious tone.
It's a posture being lapped up by the online MAGA sphere. It also represents the new template for right-wing political candidates, both national and local, Bannon added.
"Pratt knows it's not politics, it's drama," said Bannon, who was a Hollywood financier before he got into politics. "He's got a warrior mentality."
If Bannon found any criticism of Pratt's campaign, it would be Pratt's shameless promotion of AI slop.
A fierce critic of Silicon Valley, Bannon said the videos are entertaining, but they risk turning off voters who can see them as trivializing the race, not to mention how the internet is already glutted with AI junk and fakes.
"On the AI slop, he's one inch away from jumping the shark," Bannon said. "It can be effective, but it's starting to get tiresome, and it could backfire if you promote it too much."
Internet notoriety, though, cannot dislodge one fact about Los Angeles: Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, presenting Pratt with a serious challenge if he advances to the November runoff.
Trump on Wednesday signaled support for Pratt. The mayoral hopeful did not immediately blast this out to his social media followers.
And that's because, while Pratt is a registered Republican, he has tried to separate himself from the MAGA movement and has repeatedly highlighted how the mayor's race in Los Angeles is nonpartisan.
It's a tightrope walk that Bannon, one of the chief architects of the MAGA movement, is keenly attuned to as he offers conditional praise for Pratt.
"Tell him I would endorse him," Bannon said. "But I don't want to hurt his chances of winning in LA."
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Trump administration, arguing that the newly-announced $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" is both illegal and dangerous. At the same time, former Jan. 6 defendants are already preparing their applications to the fund and anticipating major payouts.
The backstory: The Justice Department has indicated that the fund will be used to compensate an unspecified group of people "who suffered weaponization and lawfare" under previous presidential administrations. It is widely expected that at least some of the money will go to Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, and later received presidential pardons.
Why it matters: Facing questions from members of Congress and reporters, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Vice President JD Vance did not rule out payments to Jan. 6 rioters convicted of violent crimes against police officers.
Read on... for more on the lawsuit and how rioters expect to apply for compensation.
Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Trump administration, arguing that the newly-announced $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" is both illegal and dangerous. At the same time, former Jan. 6 defendants are already preparing their applications to the fund and anticipating major payouts.
The Justice Department has indicated that the fund will be used to compensate an unspecified group of people "who suffered weaponization and lawfare" under previous presidential administrations. It is widely expected that at least some of the money will go to Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, and later received presidential pardons.
Facing questions from members of Congress and reporters, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Vice President JD Vance did not rule out payments to Jan. 6 rioters convicted of violent crimes against police officers.
"We're not making commitments to give anybody money," Vance said Tuesday at the White House. "We're just making commitments to look at things case by case."
Daniel Hodges, a Washington, D.C., police officer who was repeatedly assaulted and crushed in a door frame by Jan. 6 rioters, is one of the plaintiffs seeking to block the fund.
"Why would you pay people who attacked the police at the Capitol of the United States who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power?" Hodges told NPR. "Why would you pay people who wanted to assassinate the vice president? You know, the list goes on and on. It doesn't make any sense."
Hodges said he and other officers who defended the Capitol continue to receive death threats, and that giving money to the people convicted of assaulting police could feed further harassment and violence.
"If they get this payout, then they'll have significant financial resources," Hodges said, "and they have no ethical qualms about it, so what would stop them from carrying out any more violence?"
Hodges continues to serve on Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department and spoke to NPR in his personal capacity.
Former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn joined the lawsuit, which names acting Attorney General Blanche, as well as President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as defendants.
Dunn and Hodges are represented by Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor who worked on Jan. 6 cases and now leads the anti-corruption group Public Integrity Project.
"The Trump slush fund is potentially the most corrupt act of presidential power in American history," Ballou told NPR.
The lawsuit targets the unusual way in which the fund was created. Trump sued the federal government — of which he is the head — for $10 billion over the IRS leak of his private tax records, and then created this fund as part of a settlement over the claim.
"Donald Trump was functionally on both sides of the case," Ballou said.
The lawsuit also notes that Trump's mass pardons restored gun rights for many Jan. 6 defendants. The "Anti-Weaponization Fund," Ballou argues, could also provide them with a major financial windfall.
"They can get money, they can get guns," Ballou said. "And right now they have the endorsement of the president showing that they will be financially rewarded for their violence."
Jake Lang used a bat to attack police protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6. His trial for assault and other charges was pending when Trump ordered the case dismissed and released him from jail.
Lang does not dispute that he used the bat against police, but argues that his actions were justified as self-defense, because he believed that the 2020 election had been stolen.
Since his release from jail, he has become a white power, anti-immigrant, antisemitic and anti-Muslim activist and provocateur. He has been recorded on video using racist slurs, including the n-word, and giving a Nazi salute.
When contacted by NPR for comment on Wednesday, Lang answered the phone by saying, "Jake Lang's office, America's newest billionaire."
Lang said he was joking about becoming a billionaire, but confirmed that he plans to apply for compensation through the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" and expects other Jan. 6 defendants to do the same.
"The misdemeanor cases should be looking to receive several hundred thousand dollars," Lang said, "and some of the cases like mine may be looking at upwards of a million dollars."
Lang said Trump's message in establishing the fund was clear.
"If you sacrifice for your country, if you do the right thing in the face of evil, you will be rewarded for your bravery, for your patriotism, for the love of your country," Lang said. "That's the message President Trump is sending."
If Lang receives compensation from the Trump administration, the money could go towards his legal expenses. He is currently facing criminal charges in Minnesota, where he was recorded knocking down an ice sculpture protesting federal immigration enforcement, and in Washington, D.C., where he was charged with threatening a police officer. Lang has denied all wrongdoing in both cases.
Lang is one of dozens of former Jan. 6 defendants who have been charged or convicted of additional crimes since Trump issued mass pardons to the rioters.
In Florida, defendant Andrew Paul Johnson is currently serving a life sentence in prison for sexually abusing two young children. According to a police affidavit filed last year, Johnson told his victims that he would share a portion of restitution money that he expected to receive from the Trump Administration. "This tactic was believed to be used to keep [the victim] from exposing what Andrew had done to him," the affidavit said.
The mother of one of the victims, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her child's privacy, told NPR that Johnson told the children he would buy them things with "my Trump bucks."
Johnson made those comments well before the announcement of the "Anti-Weaponization Fund," but at a time when some Trump Justice Department officials, including U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, were publicly discussing restitution for Jan. 6 defendants.
"He said not to tell anybody," one of Johnson's victims testified at his trial.
"We were scared," Johnson's other victim testified. "Like, we didn't realize that this stuff was not okay because we were 12 years old."
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., pressed Blanche about Johnson's case at a congressional committee hearing.
Blanche said the facts of the case were "disgusting" and "it's horrible that that happened."
But he did not state whether Johnson would be eligible to apply for compensation through the "Anti-Weaponization Fund."
Speaking at the White House, Vance said that law schools and the media are biased against Jan. 6 rioters and Trump supporters compared with other criminal defendants.
"There are people who objectively committed heinous crimes, but the American media and the American legal academy has decided that even though they committed bad crimes, their sentence was disproportionate — they were mistreated in some way," Vance said. "You know who never ever gets an ounce of sympathy when it comes to that disproportionate sentencing is people who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the Jan. 6 protest."
According to NPR's database of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 criminal cases, the median prison sentence for Capitol riot defendants was 30 days. About a third of the rioters who went through sentencing received no jail time.
Copyright 2026 NPR
The topic:
Los Angeles city property owners should have received a ballot for voting on whether to pay more for street light repairs — an area of funding that has been frozen since the 1990s. An increased budget could mean faster repair times and more efficient maintenance. But — why is voting on this issue set up this way? Why vote now now? And what will your vote mean?
When is the final day to vote? Coincidentally the same day as the primary — June 2. But remember, this is completely separate from your primary election ballot.
The background: The city's budget for repairing streetlights has been frozen since the 1990s. In 1996, a statewide ballot proposition made it a requirement for municipalities to seek voter approval for general taxes and fees, such as increasing streetlight funding.
Read on ... to learn about the state of the Bureau of Street Lighting and what your vote means.
Los Angeles city property owners should have received a ballot for voting on whether to pay more for streetlight repairs — an area of funding that has been frozen since the 1990s. An increased budget could mean faster repair times and more efficient maintenance.
But — why is voting on this issue set up this way? Why vote now now? And what will your vote mean?
L.A. established the Bureau of Street Lighting in 1925 — when the city was much smaller. In partnership with property developers, the bureau helped build a patchwork of streetlights.
In 1996, Proposition 218 required municipalities to seek voter approval for general taxes and fees, such as increasing streetlight funding. Since then, assessment funds, which account for 90% of the bureau's revenue, have been frozen, leaving the bureau chronically underfunded, according to Miguel Sangalang, the executive director and general manager for the Bureau of Street Lighting.
The city's Bureau of Street Lighting says that it takes one year on average to complete repairs due to budgetary constraints.
Last year, the bureau had a third party verify and assess the funding it needed to operate — an estimated $125 million.
This year, the L.A. City Council approved a putting an increase before voters — in this case, property owners near streetlights.
Funding doesn't need to come purely from assessments.
The L.A. City Council could also supplement the bureau's budget, which it has done in the past, according to Sangalang.
City Council offices can assist with repairs in their districts through discretionary funds. The mayor also has the ability to fund such projects through an executive order.
Calling your local council member's office and asking for more funds to go to local street light improvements could help expedite the repair completion process.
Topline:
Best known for creating the eerie child’s painting in Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece, visual artist ZiBeZi brings his vibrant, boundary-free style to Chef Debbie Lee’s Yi-Cha.
More details: If you’ve ever dined at Chef Debbie Lee’s restaurant Yi-Cha, you’ve likely noticed the colorful, cartoon-style mural at the entrance. The vibrant painting features food, animals, nature and bold Korean words such as “Awesome” and “Let’s Eat.” It also captures the lively spirit of Highland Park in Northeast Los Angeles.
About ZiBeZi: His work has traveled farther beyond Highland Park. In Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” one of ZiBeZi’s abstract paintings appears as a prop — a child’s drawing that seems innocent but quietly signals something more unsettling. The placement introduced his work to a global audience, a moment that helped shift the trajectory of his career.
Read on... for more on how ZiBeZi brought his whimsical world to the Highland Park restaurant.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
If you’ve ever dined at Chef Debbie Lee’s restaurant Yi-Cha, you’ve likely noticed the colorful, cartoon-style mural at the entrance. The vibrant painting features food, animals, nature and bold Korean words such as “Awesome” and “Let’s Eat.” It also captures the lively spirit of Highland Park in Northeast Los Angeles.
Last week, in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander History Month, Lee hosted a meet-and-greet with the mural’s artist, Korean visual artist ZiBeZi.
“This event [was] our way of saying thank you to him, and to our guests who have fallen in love with his work,” Chef Lee told The LA Local. She commissioned ZiBeZi to paint the mural last fall when she opened her restaurant.
ZiBeZi, whose given name is Jung Jae-hoon, did not begin as a visual artist. For more than a decade, he worked as a rapper, shaping stories through rhythm and lyrics. Painting came later, after what he describes as a difficult period in his life, when drawing became a form of recovery — a way, he said, “to breathe and heal.”
That origin still lingers beneath the surface of his work. His paintings, at first glance, lean whimsical: rounded forms, bright palettes, a sense of motion that feels almost childlike. But look longer and the compositions begin to open up into something more layered and introspective.
“I enjoy creating scenes where humans, nature, animals and the universe coexist without boundaries,” ZiBeZi told The LA Local. “On the surface, the work may feel playful or cartoon-like, but underneath, there are emotions, memories and questions about life.”
His work has traveled farther beyond Highland Park. In Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” one of ZiBeZi’s abstract paintings appears as a prop — a child’s drawing that seems innocent but quietly signals something more unsettling. The placement introduced his work to a global audience, a moment that helped shift the trajectory of his career.
By 2024, the Grammy Museum had commissioned him to create a mural for its K-pop exhibition, another sign of his growing visibility. Still, he describes these milestones less as turning points than as affirmations.
“Those experiences gave me confidence to continue creating,” he said, “while also reminding me to stay true to my own voice and artistic identity.”
At Yi-Cha, that voice takes on a distinctly local resonance. Lee said ZiBeZi approached the mural less as a commission and more as a process of immersion. “He didn’t just paint a mural he spent time in Highland Park, walked Figueroa, felt the neighborhood. That kind of intention shows in every inch of the wall.”
The result is a piece that bursts with joy. An alien figure hovers near the words “Highland Park,” rendered in Hangul, the Korean alphabet. There are subtle nods to Yi-Cha’s menu and broader references to Los Angeles, woven together in a way that resists a single interpretation.
It is, above all, a mural meant to be lived with and experienced over meals.
“Painting for a restaurant feels very different from exhibiting in a gallery,” ZiBeZi said. “Here, art becomes part of people’s everyday experience — it lives with their laughter, their meals and their memories.”
