The Brief

This story is no longer being updated. For the latest information check:

• Laguna Beach city website
• SoCal Edison for information on power outages
  

The Rancho Fire started Monday afternoon in Orange County, burning near homes in the Bluebird Canyon area of Laguna Beach. A live feed from Alert California showed smoke had dissipated by about 6 p.m.

By 7:30 p.m. all evacuation orders and warnings were lifted, according to the Laguna Beach city website. Orders were initially in place for La Mirada Street, Katella Street, Summit Drive and Baja Street. An evacuation warning had been in place for areas south of Del Mar Avenue, according to the city.

Earlier in the day

People who evacuated were able to go to the Laguna Beach Community and Susi Q Center at 380 3rd St., the city said.

Road access heading uphill from Pacific Coast Highway was restricted at Nyes Place, Bluebird Canyon/Summit Drive and Alta Vista Way/Glenneyre as of about 6 p.m.

About the fire

Cal Fire mapped the Rancho Fire at about 3 acres on Monday afternoon.

The fire started about 2:15 p.m., and as many as five helicopters and one airplane were involved in the firefight. Laguna Beach Mayor Alex Rounaghi said the likely cause is fireworks. The city reported some power outages, with service expected to be restored by 6:30 p.m.

The area's fire history

In October 1993, the Laguna Fire destroyed hundreds of homes and burned in the area near where the Rancho Fire was burning Monday. The fire more than 30 years ago was fueled by strong Santa Ana winds; but Monday's weather was calm, with light winds and a high of 70 degrees forecast for the day.

Listen to our Big Burn podcast

Fire resources and tips

Check out LAist's wildfire recovery guide

If you have to evacuate:

• Why fire officials don't want you to stay and defend your home
• How to get packed up
• How to leave your house
• What evacuation terms mean and how to sign up for alerts

Navigating fire conditions:

• How to drive in high winds and fire danger
• How to prep for power outages
• How to navigate poor air quality

How to help yourself and others:

• Resources for fire victims, evacuees and first responders
• If you want to help fire victims, resist the urge to volunteer
• How to help find lost pets

How to start the recovery process:

• What to do — and not do — when you get home after a wildfire
• How to make an insurance claim
• How to safely clean up wildfire ash

What to do for your kids:

• How to talk to children about wildfires and losing a home
• What parents should know about wildfire air quality

Prepare for the next disaster:

• Every day is now fire season. Let's get you ready for the next wildfire
• Yes, wildfires are getting worse. The history that got us to this moment

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced Thursday that it has joined hundreds of school districts across the country in a landmark lawsuit against social media companies, alleging platforms have fueled the youth mental health crisis and disrupted education for students in the district.

“Los Angeles Unified educators, counselors, and administrators are confronting unprecedented levels of student anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, self-harm, suicidal ideation, disordered eating, cyberbullying, sextortion, and excessive exposure to extreme and exploitative content, much of which is amplified and monetized by social media design features,” the announcement said.

The lawsuit, which targets Meta, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, X and other platforms, aligns with broader efforts in California to address a youth mental health emergency “tied to defendants’ social media features, misrepresentations about the safety, and failures to warn about the dangers of their platforms for youth,” according to the announcement. The lawsuit also pointed to a sharp rise in reported sexual exploitation and mental health referrals for students experiencing eating disorders.

A 2025 report from the Los Angeles County Youth Commission revealed that mental health has become the leading concern for young people in Los Angeles, surpassing education and employment, with nearly two-thirds of surveyed youth identifying it as their top need.

Ghost, the pinkish Pacific octopus that inspired wonder for dategoers, parents and children across Southern California, has died at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

Aquarium officials said that Ghost died of senescence, a natural end-of-life process for female octopuses that started after she laid eggs last fall. Staff say the eggs are unfertilized and will not hatch, even if they try to relocate them.

No arrangements have been announced as staff at the Long Beach aquarium decide how to memorialize her.

Originating from the waters of British Columbia, Canada, Ghost first came to the aquarium in May 2024 at a weight of about three pounds.

Ghost the Pacific octopus at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

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Photo courtesy of the Aquarium of the Pacific.

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By her time of death, the eight-armed Pacific octopus weighed more than 50 pounds. Unsure of her age, officials guess she was between 2 and 4 years old.

Experts say these octopuses have up to a five-year lifespan, largely in isolation and only seek companionship for reproduction. Afterward, males die while females slowly die over the course of months as they protect their laid eggs from contamination.

Considered the smartest of the non-vertebrates, octopuses are curious creatures that have keen eyesight and plenty of creativity.

Ghost was no exception. Staff said she was known for being “super active,” known to love toys and puzzles specifically made for her. She learned to lift herself into weighing baskets and often took time during feeding to play with her caretakers.

Her final days were spent in delicate care, aquarium officials say, eating quality food and enjoying company with staff to ease her slow decline.

“We are going to miss her,” said Nate Jaros, Aquarium of the Pacific’s vice president of animal care. “Ghost left a big impression on us and on so many people, even those beyond our Aquarium.”

Officials received a new octopus in the fall that, they hope, will carry on the spirit of its predecessor.

Citing fear of authoritarianism and invasive surveillance, California lawmakers voted this week to audit the operation of joint intelligence centers where federal, state, and local agencies share information.

The decision was made Tuesday along party lines by the Joint Committee on Legislative Audit, a 14-member body made up of members of the California Senate and Assembly. Nine members voted in favor, one against, and four did not vote. The audit will be conducted by State Auditor Grant Parks.

Advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Oakland Privacy urged lawmakers to demand the audit to rein in what they described as abuses at the facilities, known as fusion centers. They cited an incident in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly asked La Habra police to run searches on its behalf at an Orange County fusion center and several others in which San Francisco police circumvented a local ban on facial recognition by asking for help from a fusion center with access to the technology.

CalMatters investigations last year and last month found instances where local law enforcement agencies shared license plate information with ICE or the Border Patrol, violating state law. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent letters to more than a dozen local law enforcement agencies since 2024 for potential violations of the state law banning it and sued the City of El Cajon for allegedly violating the ban.

The audit will seek details about three California fusion centers, including:

• Information about violations of legal authority and policies for the past decade and disciplinary actions taken in response.
• What state and local law enforcement personnel are assigned to the fusion centers. 
• What private sector entities work with fusion centers.
• Which state or local officials oversee fusion center activity to ensure compliance with state and local law.

Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside, requested the audit. She believes that fusion centers have undermined state law that prohibits cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies for immigration purposes. A 2024 Surveillance Technology Oversight Project report cited in her audit petition alleges that a California fusion center routinely shares information with ICE. She also said the centers put at risk the privacy of Californians more broadly, particularly given what she describes as the slide of the federal government into authoritarianism.

“It’s been 13 years since the last federal audit,” Cervantes said during the hearing. “I am not seeking to ban fusion centers. I’m seeking transparency, and 40 million Californians deserve to know whether fusion centers are serving their intended counterterrorism purpose or whether they have become unaccountable surveillance infrastructure operating in the shadow of our democracy.”

California has five fusion centers, located in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and San Diego. Fusion centers were established nationwide in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack with federal government funding and a combination of federal, state, and local law enforcement resources.

Lawmakers and activists have since sought to scale back or end fusion center activity in Maine, Massachusetts and Texas.

No Republicans on the committee voted in support of the audit, with one opposing it and three not voting. Carl DeMaio, a Republican from San Diego, called it “a political witch hunt” that places the needs of immigrants over American citizens and, with the war in Iran, comes at a time when we need the centers to detect terrorism threats.

“This is not the time to politicize when homeland security is being stretched,” he said at the hearing.

In response to DeMaio’s remarks, former FBI agent Mike German said a time of national security risk is exactly when you want to know whether centers are functioning in an effective way to identify real risks.

“It’s a waste of resources when they’re not operating in a manner that can stand up to public scrutiny,” he told the committee. “As federal law enforcement and immigration agencies are increasingly acting lawlessly, it's essential to subject these state and local intelligence operations to democratic controls.”

A 2022 study of fusion centers coauthored by German for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found that there is little to suggest that fusion centers have aided counterterrorism efforts. It said they have repeatedly portrayed racial justice, environmental and abortion activists as violent extremists or otherwise menacing. A 2012 congressional report that took two years to complete found that Department of Homeland Security support for fusion centers has resulted in little benefit to federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts and has endangered Americans’ civil liberties and privacy.

No representatives from California’s five fusion centers spoke in opposition to the audit.

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

The Senate voted overnight to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security after a 42-day standoff over immigration enforcement tactics.

The measure does not include additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol — and it does not include any of the demands Democrats made to limit the tactics of federal immigration officers.

The legislation now goes to the House for a vote.

The DHS funding lapse forced tens of thousands of employees to work without pay or quit, and resulted in long waits at some airports amid peak spring break travel.

For weeks, Democrats have refused to support funding for DHS after federal officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

The latest package allowed Democrats to fund operations like the Transportation Safety Administration, or TSA, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, while still pressing for additional guardrails on immigration enforcement officers.

"Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump's rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor. "I'm very proud of our Democratic caucus. Throughout it all, Senate Democrats stood united — no wavering, no backing down. We held the line."

But some Democrats have warned that a funding agreement without the policy changes they are seeking diminishes their leverage. Senate Republicans have indicated that the time to negotiate has now passed.

"We could be standing here right now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms if Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement, but they didn't," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on the floor early Friday morning. "It is now clear to everyone that Democrats didn't actually want a solution, they wanted an issue."

The department has been operating without regular appropriations for more than a month. But some divisions, like ICE, have continued to function thanks to about $75 billion provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Republicans passed last summer. Others, including the TSA, have relied on employees working without pay.

Ha Nguyen McNeill, the TSA acting administrator, told lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday that absences are as high as 40% in some airports and more than 480 TSA officers have quit during the shutdown.

"We are really concerned about our security posture and what the long term impacts of this shutdown is going to have on the workforce and our ability to carry out this mission," McNeill said.

Negotiations under pressure

All week, top Republicans opposed funding DHS piecemeal. On Thursday, Thune said Republicans had delivered Democrats a final offer: fund all of DHS, including ICE, except the division responsible for enforcement and removal operations.

At least a handful of Democrats seemed open to this option, but worried the administration would use funding for other ICE divisions for enforcement and removal operations. Throughout the day, negotiators shuttled between the Senate chamber and Thune's office, trading language.

But by the evening, lawmakers were still struggling to reach an agreement to end the impasse, even as many viewed the worsening situation at the nation's airports as untenable.

Then, President Trump announced he would unilaterally move to declare a national emergency and pay TSA agents. It was not immediately clear where that money would come from – and whether such a move was legal.

Earlier in the week, Trump insisted that any DHS funding deal also include the voting law overhaul he wants ahead of the midterms, known as the Save America Act.

Not long after Trump's TSA announcement Thursday night, Thune told reporters about an agreement to fund most of DHS except for ICE and Border Patrol. The legislation was approved by voice vote after 2 a.m. with just a few members on the floor.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Thursday that House Republicans have not been in favor of breaking up the funding, calling it "shameful" to fail to fund the agency. It is unclear how the House will respond to the agreement.

Top Republicans have pledged to fund ICE through a party-line reconciliation bill that would include elements of the Trump-backed voting bill.

Such a package would not require buy-in from Democrats, but the effort is not a sure bet. It is unclear how much of the Save America Act could move through reconciliation, which can only be used for changes that directly affect the budget. And Republicans may also differ about what else should be included, such as additional funds for the war with Iran.

Congress is scheduled to leave Washington today for a two-week recess, meaning lawmakers will return next month to unresolved debates on two knotty issues: immigration enforcement tactics and voting procedures.

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