The Brief

Here's an unassailable fact: Trees are awesome. Among the laundry list of benefits, they provide shade in our increasingly warming weather, they clean the air, prevent soil erosion, reduce noise pollution.

Which is why a rise here in Southern California of a practice known as "topping" is worrying arborists and others. You've probably noticed it: Trees having their canopies and branches cut off. The result (see photo above) is dramatic.

"This is sadly a very common practice.... I should say malpractice, honestly," said Bryan Vejar, a senior arborist at the environmental organization TreePeople. "Once you notice it and start to understand the hazards and harms of 'topping,' you'll see it everywhere."

Rachel Malarich, L.A.'s forest officer, said topping has indeed become more pervasive.

"I have seen the proliferation of tree topping across our region over the past decade or so," she said. "When I see trees that are cut that way, it is a little gut wrenching."

Why less is more when it comes to trimming

The practice of topping is hard to kick partly because of simple economy, said Vejar, explaining that people paying for tree trimming equate value with volume.

"So if I took out 90 or 100% of the volume out of the tree, you would think, 'Oh wow, what a good value I got," he said.

He added that people also mistakenly think that the more you chop off, the longer it'll take for it to grow back. In reality, he said "less is more with trees," meaning taking more care with what is trimmed can prolong the life and health of a tree, and make rapid growth less likely. That's because a lot of pruning can lead to what he calls "sort of a vicious cycle of regrowth."

Why topping = rapid regrowth

The rapid regrowth happens because topping triggers a panic response and sends the tree into overdrive.

"When you top a tree, the physiological response from the tree is to produce a lot of what are called water sprouts," Vejar said.

Those are all the long, thin branches that shoot out from a tree around its stumps.

"When you remove its photosynthetic array, all of its leaves and canopy, you're robbing the tree of its ability to feed itself," Vejar said. "It needs to put out some growth in order to shade the tree and also produce enough photosynthesis to keep the system running."

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These branches are weaker and more at risk of breaking and falling. Big cuts also make trees prone to pest and diseases.

A topped tree with water sprouts.

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"That big surface area of the cut is basically a Petri dish for disease. And if there's any exposed heartwood, that is the central wood in the middle of the wood, then that is a prime real estate for wood decay organisms to start infesting the tree and killing the tree," he said.

Malarich, who manages the city of L.A.'s urban forest, said topping also makes it difficult to cool the city down.

"It really makes it hard for us to meet our canopy goals as a city, because when we're trimming trees this way, it reduces the shade provided by those trees," she said.

Malarich added that city crews, which service trees in public parks and those planted between curbs and sidewalks, don't engage in topping. But she said with 80% to 90% of the city's overall canopy on private property, Angelenos have an important part to play in preserving these natural covers.

"The goal should be to take as little as possible off the tree," she said.

When topping makes sense

There are circumstances where topping a tree could make sense, Vejar said, like if there's a fast-growing tree under the power line. Or, if a tree is dying.

"You want to retain this tree for as long as possible, but you also want to make sure that the limbs that do fail don't fall on your house or on your car or on your property," he said.

All is not lost, even if you have topped a tree. With time, patience and the help of an arborist in a process called "restorative pruning," the stronger new branches are nurtured to help the tree regain its health.

"It takes years to build a house and only a few moments of carelessness to burn it down, right? Well, it's sort of the same with trees," Vejar said.

Pro-tips on tree maintenance

• Think through where you are going to plant a tree. "You don't want to, you know, put a tall, fast growing tree underneath the power line because eventually it's going to become in conflict and you're going to have to top it," Vejar said.
• Find an arborist certified by either Tree Care Industry Association or the International Society of Arboriculture to help you with tree maintenance, Vejar said. The latter has an online directory of certified arborists local to your area. Malarich said to also ask whether they follow the ANSI A300 standards for tree care.
• Try to trim back a tree during cooler months. "It's very stressful for the tree to be trimmed in the summer," Malarich said.
• Get multiple bids.
• Talk to your arborist and ask questions before deciding. "They should be able to tell you why they're removing certain portions of the tree," Malarich said.

After all, the better we treat these majestic organisms, the better they will treat us. "They're good for us mentally, psychologically and socially," said Vejar, who urges everyone to be realistic when making decisions about trees.

Everybody, he said, wants a big tree that grows fast, but also one that's low maintenance, drought tolerant, disease resistant and with no invasive roots — all while holding its shape over time.

"Those don't exist," he said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Koreatown Senior & Community Center is bringing back its free lunch program for seniors, this time with its longest guaranteed run yet.

The center is partnering with the YMCA under a two-year agreement, which would allow the program — for the first time — to run continuously for that long. In the past, the center’s free lunch program typically lasted only a few months at a time before funding cuts forced it to scale back or stop temporarily.

If all goes as planned, the program is expected to relaunch by late April.

“We’re committed to identifying funding beyond the two years,” said Mario Valenzuela, chief mission advancement officer at the YMCA. 

The program is returning as meal services for seniors across L.A. face ongoing funding challenges. In September, LA Public Press reported that some senior centers were cutting back on meals as pandemic-era funding expired and longer-term funding looked uncertain. Valenzuela said that across the YMCA’s 29 food distribution sites in the county, seniors now make up the majority of those seeking assistance.

The YMCA was awarded $7.5 million last year to address food insecurity, and Valenzuela said the Koreatown senior lunch program is one way those funds are being used.

The center launched its free lunch program in January 2024 with about 200 meals a day, funded by the city’s Department of Aging. But the number of meals steadily declined, from 200 to 50, before the program ended in early January.

Hyun-ok Lee, president of the board of the Koreatown Senior & Community Center, said the sudden halt was difficult for people who had come to rely on the meals.

“When the meal service suddenly stopped, a lot of seniors and people in the community really felt it,” Lee said.

After the program stopped, the center began looking for new funding sources. That effort eventually led to a connection with the YMCA, facilitated by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, according to both the center and the YMCA.

“It was important for the Assemblymember to ensure that meals are culturally sensitive, especially for the seniors in our district, so we were able to connect the YMCA with KSCC and reinstitute the daily distribution of Korean lunch boxes at KSCC,” Nina Suh-Toma, Gonzalez’s field representative, said. 

Valenzuela said the organization stepped in after hearing from multiple senior centers that funding for services was being cut.

The Koreatown senior center’s free lunch program will cost between $210,000 and $250,000 a year and will initially provide 100 meals a day from Monday to Friday, with the goal of eventually increasing that number to 200.

Valenzuela said the program is part of a broader shift at the YMCA to work more directly in communities. 

“We can no longer just focus within our four walls,” he said. “We really have to meet the community where they’re at.”

The YMCA and the center are still working out the details of the partnership, including how meals will be distributed. Valenzuela said they’re currently looking for a food vendor that can provide Korean meals that are both culturally appropriate and meet nutritional guidelines.

Valenzuela said he’s already seeing growing demand for these services. 

“I think the emerging need is there are a lot of cuts coming down the pipeline particularly to social services and the most vulnerable population right now are seniors,” he said. “We’re seeing it across L.A. County.”

One of the many tools of the farmworker movement in the 1960s was Teatro Campesino, a traveling theater troupe that told the plight of the farmworkers through “actos,” or short skits.

It was a mostly male-dominated space until a group of Chicanas came together to tell the stories of women who were also part of the civil rights and farmworker movement.

Teatro Chicana was the product of Felicitas Nuñez, Delia Ravelo, Laura Garcia and dozens of other first generation college students attending San Diego State College, now known as San Diego State University, in the early 1970s. Their work is documented in the memoir Teatro Chicana.

“We protested the action and behavior of the males in MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) because we didn’t agree with their disrespect, abuse and a lot of that was coming from the older Chicanos like people that were already professors, counselors and in administration,” Nuñez said.

One of their first performances was a seminar that the women put together for their mothers who visited them on campus called Chicana Goes to College.

“We just wanted to present how a young woman wanted to get out of a traditional home, very religious kind of atmosphere,” Nuñez said. “But towards the end, you know, the Chicana struggles through getting out of the house, struggles in college, and then struggles within the movimiento Chicano. She makes up her mind that she's gonna get educated regardless of being put down.”

Teatro Chicana performed at a UFW convention, in fields, anti-war demonstrations, high schools and anywhere they could. Their plays like Bronca challenged men to see women as more than notetakers, cooks and childcare.

Of course, it’s hard to talk about the farmworker movement without mentioning the late César Chávez, who was recently accused of sexually assaulting girls and women. Nunez and Garcia said the news was devastating but not that surprising.

“ If you look at the women in the teatro, out of the 17 women that wrote their memoir about 80% had been sexually molested, or abused within their families or a neighbor,” said Garcia. “ We need to talk about it in order to stop it.”

Green-card holders no longer qualify for loans from the Small Business Administration, eliminating a longtime source of financing for immigrants that advocates say will discourage job creation and harm the economy.

The SBA limited access to its loans to U.S. citizens and nationals only starting in March, and expanded that policy to SBA-backed loans beginning in April. On top of that, any business that’s even partly owned by a permanent legal resident with a green card is no longer eligible for the loans.

California — which has the most small businesses and the largest immigrant population in the nation — could be most affected. SBA loans have been important to immigrant entrepreneurs because they typically are low-interest and available to those without an established credit history. The agency has also backed loans by private funders, providing a government guarantee for people banks may deem riskier. Now, all those loans are off the table for owners and would-be owners of restaurants, bake shops, law practices, medical clinics, taxi medallions, nail salons and more who hold green cards.

Small business owners are responsible for 99% of net new jobs in the state, according to the California Office of the Small Business Advocate. Immigrant entrepreneurs make up 40% of the state’s business community and generated $28.4 billion in income in 2023, according to GO-Biz, the governor’s office of business and economic development.

Small Business Majority, a national business advocacy group, wrote to the SBA in mid-March, urging the federal agency to reconsider the changes. The letter, signed by dozens of state and national groups and chambers of commerce, called the new policies "a misguided approach that ignores critical economic data underscoring the job creating power of the immigrant community."

The SBA has a limited lending capacity, said Maggie Clemmons, a spokesperson for the agency. “The agency’s rule change will help ensure more American citizens have access to funding previously granted to noncitizens,” she said in an email.

The SBA approved 3,358 loans for small businesses owned partly by a lawful permanent resident in fiscal year 2025, largely during the Biden administration, Clemmons said. That represented 4% of the 85,000 loans approved by the agency.

In California, the changes could affect about 220,000 small business owners who hold green cards, said Carolina Martinez, chief executive of CAMEO Network, a national association of organizations that support small businesses.

“The most important thing for us is to really understand that this SBA decision… is really bad for the American economy,” Martinez said.

Pursuing the American Dream

Cristina Foanene, a Romanian immigrant who arrived in the United States 20 years ago, was a green-card holder when she obtained an SBA loan in 2018 that allowed her and her husband to buy a building and expand their glass company, MCS Glass, in Fresno. They now have 30 employees.

“The loan gave us an opportunity to create more jobs, to have an even greater impact in our community,” Foanene said. Their goal is to manufacture more products and create more positions, she added.

She said she doesn’t know where the business would be today without the SBA loans they received over the years. They just signed their third loan last month, Foanene said, their first as American citizens.

She called herself loyal to this country and said she’s sad that others like her may not have the same opportunities to pursue the American Dream by securing SBA loans while “respecting the laws.”

“It literally breaks my heart,” Foanene said. “There are so many good people with good intentions. I feel it’s unfair.”

Other entrepreneurs or independent contractors also lose a possible safety net that SBA loans once provided.

“During the pandemic, these loans were crucial to people’s survival,” said Dung Nguyen, program and organizing director for California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, an organization that advocates for Vietnamese immigrants, many of whom work in the nail-salon industry. The group signed the Small Business Majority’s letter to the SBA.

Nguyen said the nail-salon workers and owners who took out those loans during the pandemic are still paying them back.

‘A new kind of status’

Kenia Zamarripa, spokesperson for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, which also signed the letter to the SBA, said this latest policy change is another example of how immigrants are more vulnerable as federal funds for other programs have been taken away. Her group and others are pushing for immigration reform that includes a standardized path to citizenship, she said.

“This is a community that’s doing things the right way, looking for a legal path,” she said. “It’s like you’re punishing them for doing the right thing.”

The SBA changes push green-card holders to “informality,” Zamarripa said. “What’s next? What other resources will be taken away? How else will immigrants continue to be targeted?”

Others echo that concern.

“This dialog is really challenging our concept of what undocumented means,” said Gabriela Alemán, a spokesperson for Mission Asset Fund, a San Francisco organization that supports and lends to small business owners. “These are community members that are now being pushed into a new kind of status.”

Mission Asset Fund’s lending circles — modeled after the Mexican community-based lending practice called tandas — can provide up to $2,500 in loans to small business owners. The group just got its California lenders’ license and will eventually be able to provide larger loans, Alemán said.

But it will be tough for groups like it to fill the gap left by the SBA’s new policies for permanent legal residents who may want to start or grow their businesses.

“There are not any other options at this scale (that the SBA provides),” said Brian Kennedy Jr., entrepreneur ecosystem director at AmPac Business Capital, a Los Angeles-area community development financial institution and SBA partner. “We’re talking about $35,000 up to $30 million.”

What’s next

Many small business owners already use — and may increasingly rely on — community development financial institutions and other lenders whose mission is to help people with limited options, credit histories and savings.

They could also turn to the state for help. State-funded options include a small business loan guarantee program through its IBank, and programs through the treasurer’s office that reduces risks to lenders by pledging state funds as collateral, or contributing to loan-loss reserves.

Microenterprise Collaborative of Inland Southern California works with lenders, technical assistance providers and community partners to help small business owners in Inland Southern California.

Pamela Deans, the group’s executive director, said the SBA’s policy change will alter how the organization refers entrepreneurs to sources of capital. Rather than pointing them to “a relatively straightforward” SBA process, she said the group will have to inform them of a more fragmented set of options and warn them about predatory lending.

“Many of these would‑be owners will have a much harder time piecing together enough safe, affordable capital to lease a space, buy equipment or cover early working capital — so the taquería, the child care business, the trucking startup may never open in the first place,” Deans said.

Bianca Blomquist, California director for Small Business Majority, also is concerned about small business owners turning to unscrupulous lenders. She said her group found out recently that an owner of a child care business in downtown L.A. took out a $10,000 loan at what she thought was 13% interest. It was actually closer to 250%.

Other advocates are hoping philanthropy and impact investors will step up and make more capital available to small lenders.

“Women, entrepreneurs, immigrants and communities of color always have had to think outside the typical paths,” said Leticia Landa, executive director of La Cocina, a small business incubator in San Francisco. “I do hope, especially in California, that we’re going to come up with something.”

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

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could remain at U.S. airports even after Transportation Security Administration workers receive their paychecks, according to White House border czar Tom Homan.

Asked if ICE agents will leave airports once TSA workers begin receiving pay again, Homan said on Sunday "we'll see."

"It depends on how many TSA agents come back to work [and] how many TSA agents have actually quit and have no plan [of] coming back to work," Homan told CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper.

Homan also said he spoke with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, adding that there is a plan to get TSA workers paid "hopefully by tomorrow or Tuesday."

"It's good news… because these TSA officers are struggling. They can't feed their families or pay their rent," Homan told Tapper.

NPR reached out to DHS for additional comment on the timing of when workers would get paid but the department has not responded. A DHS social media post on Friday indicated TSA had begun the process of paying its workforce and that paychecks could arrive as early as Monday. That announcement came after President Donald Trump signed a memo ordering that workers get paid from existing funds, even though Congress has not allocated the money amid an impasse over passing legislation to fund DHS. It remains unclear where the money would come from to fund the paychecks as NPR previously reported.

It's been a week since the president ordered ICE to send agents to airports around the country to help TSA with security as the DHS shutdown entered a sixth week.

ICE officers have been assisting TSA agents by "checking identification" and "plugging other security holes," allowing remaining TSA workers to focus on tasks that require more training, such as monitoring machines that examine luggage, according to Homan.

About 50,000 transportation security workers have been forced to continue working without pay, missing multiple paychecks since disagreements in Congress led to a DHS shutdown. More than 480 TSA workers have quit, according to TSA Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill. She told lawmakers at a hearing last Wednesday that worker absences were as high as 40% at some airports. That has led to long wait times for passengers at security checkpoints.

Homan says those lines have already become shorter.

"I was in Houston — wait lines decreased in about half. We got additional agents going to Baltimore yesterday, to bring those lines down," Homan told CNN.

A notice on Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport's web page Sunday afternoon said wait times had improved since Saturday but remained longer than normal. At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, security wait times were under two hours Sunday. But the airport warned travelers that "TSA lines could exceed four hours."

As for when permanent funding for DHS can be reached, that remains unclear. Negotiations in Congress remain stalled as lawmakers left Washington for a planned recess. The Senate returns April 13. The House is back on April 14.
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