The Brief

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is taking steps to make electric vehicles more accessible by installing and operating EV Fast-Charging Station Plazas in underserved communities, which are mostly in south and east L.A. and the San Fernando Valley.

The LADWP is now looking to connect with local partners, especially those with land, who want to help the city reach its goal of 100% carbon-free energy by 2035. Some local churches, including the City of Refuge Church in West Rancho Dominguez and Restoration-Los Angeles Church in South L.A., have agreed to help with the expansion plans.

“We realized each one of our churches has property,” said Bishop Noel Jones, senior pastor at the City of Refuge Church. “So that when we put together the EV stations, we wouldn’t have to buy the property and church folk can come and get charged while they’re in church.”

The LADWP has also increased its rebate for used electric vehicles.

If your household is participating in the Lifeline or EZ-SAVE Low Income Customer Assistance programs, you can now apply to get up to an additional $2,500 rebate, bringing the total rebate amount to $4,000.

“Residents in our underserved communities may discover that an EV is no longer beyond their family's financial reach,” said Cynthia McClain-Hill, president of the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners.

The parking lot at LADWP’s Hope Street headquarters is an example of what the new plazas might look like. It has 24 Level 2 EV chargers, which can charge fully electric vehicles from empty to 80% in about 4 to 10 hours, and plug-in hybrid EVs in about 1 to 2 hours.

It also has three DC fast chargers, which can charge fully electric vehicles from empty to 80% in just 20 minutes to 1 hour, but will not work for most plug-in hybrid EVs currently on the market, according to the Department of Transportation. These publicly available chargers are free for up to 4 hours at a time on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The EV chargers and boosted rebate is part of the LADWP’s “Powered by Equity” initiative. It’s designed to “rectify past inequities and ensure a just and equitable clean energy transition” for the city, according to the utility.

“Powered by Equity” is the result of a two-year study between UCLA and the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Researchers analyzed an archive of energy consumption data and hosted listening sessions to come up with “LA100 Equity Strategies.” The study is a detailed analysis of L.A.’s clean energy investment inequities. It also outlines more than 50 ways officials can address those inequities, including housing, local solar, and truck electrification.

Stephanie Pincetl was one of those researchers. She’s a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities.

Pincetl told LAist the city needs to really communicate the benefits of going 100% renewable with the residents and ratepayers of Los Angeles. That’s not an easy message to get across, she added, and the LADWP can’t do it alone.

Pincetl believes there needs to be a coordinated strategy between the LADWP and other city departments, specifically those that manage transportation and housing.

Pincetl also said she thinks residents underestimate the significance of having a municipal utility. That's because investor-owned utilities are more concerned about shareholder revenue than they are about the ratepayers and are much less willing to take these kinds of steps toward electrification, she added.

State capitalism. MAGA Marxism. Crony capitalism.

Those are just some of the terms business and political commentators have used this year to describe how President Donald Trump's policies are reshaping U.S. free-market capitalism. There are some differences in definition — but all of these terms underline how dramatically Trump has blurred the boundaries between business and government, to an extent that could have long-term consequences for the U.S. economy and the country's global standing.

"When the American government appears to favor a company over rival companies, that distorts the marketplace," says Ann Lipton, a veteran business law expert and professor at University of Colorado's law school.

"It means that other firms have less incentive to compete on innovation, which is sort of the opposite of how a free market is supposed to operate," she adds. "It's just bad for the economy."

There's ample evidence this year of Trump actively favoring some U.S. companies and investors, while threatening others. In August, he publicly called for the resignation of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan — until Tan came to the White House to meet with him, and agreed to give the U.S. government a 10% stake in the tech company.

Several other tech CEOs also spent the year appearing to personally court Trump. Take Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who runs the world's most valuable company and is among the donors funding Trump's controversial plans to build a White House ballroom. This month, Trump said the U.S. would grant Nvidia permission to sell one of its more advanced semiconductor chips in China — as long as the U.S. government gets a 25% cut of sales.

Lipton calls this capitalism by "schmoozing," and warns that it could seriously damage the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, thus hurting the overall economy in the long term.

"We're not going to get the best innovations. We're not going to get the best products," she says. "If [businesses] are competing on their ability to schmooze, then that's bad for everybody."

Intel did not respond to an NPR request for comment. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Nvidia said, "In our discussions, President Trump focuses on his desire for America to win as a nation and his efforts to protect national security, American prosperity and technology leadership."

China-style 'state capitalism'

Business leaders have always spent some amount of time trying to cozy up to the White House, no matter its occupant. But Lipton and business insiders across the political spectrum say that Trump's direct influence over private companies this year — and the degree to which some of those companies and their leaders have sought to appeal to him personally — is pushing the U.S. economy away from free-market or "rules-based" capitalism.

This system, traditionally embraced by both businesses and Republicans, has helped make the United States into the dominant global economy.

But now, these business insiders say, Trump's policies are creating a government-controlled style of "state capitalism," in which the government — rather than competition between private businesses — shapes the economy. Some go so far as to call it "crony capitalism," meaning that the U.S. government picks winners and losers based on the president's personal relationships.

"We are seeing a shift away from the type of rules-based capitalism that has made America's economy so robust for so long. And there's a lot of risk in that," says Daniella Ballou-Aares, who co-founded the consulting firm Dalberg and served in President Obama's State Department. She now runs the Leadership Now Project, a coalition of business leaders that has endorsed candidates from both political parties.

In October, her group and The Harris Poll surveyed business leaders across the political spectrum — and found that 84% are worried "about the current political and legal climate's impact on their companies."

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang listens as President Trump speaks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in November in Washington, D.C. Nvidia has spent the year seeking the U.S. government's approval to sell more of its semiconductor chips in China.

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A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says "this narrative about how [President Trump] reshaped capitalism is significantly overstated" and calls Trump's policies by and large "the traditional free-market policy-making that you would expect coming out of a Republican Administration."

The official dismissed claims that the White House is engaging in "crony capitalism," and says "there are companies that are benefiting [from Trump's policies] whether or not they have a good relationship with the administration."

The official also notes that so far, the U.S. government has largely sought to take ownership stakes or revenue-sharing deals from companies that play a role in economic and national security: For example, Intel and Nvidia both sell the semiconductors at the center of the artificial-intelligence arms race with China. The U.S. government has also taken stakes or other interests in U.S. Steel and MP Materials, a rare-earth minerals mining company, among others.

"What we're trying to do is very much embracing the free market and the growth that it unleashes, but making targeted interventions where there's too much on the line," the official says.

Tech winners vs. everyone else in corporate America

Businesses largely welcomed President Trump's victory in last year's election, in part due to frustration with what they perceived as a harsh and "anti-business" regulatory climate under President Biden.

And some seem pretty happy with his first year in office — especially the tech billionaires whose "Magnificent Seven" companies are powering the A.I. boom.

"The Magnificent Seven and Trump 2.0 are really on the same page to a large extent," says Daniel Kinderman, a political science professor at the University of Delaware who studies what he calls "authoritarian capitalism" and business responses to right-wing movements.

Some of President Trump's policies, including his sweeping tariffs and his changes to immigration policies for highly-skilled foreign workers, have complicated the business of Big Tech. But most tech CEOs have tried to avoid criticizing those policies publicly, and instead focused on donating to Trump's personal projects. Apple's Tim Cook, for example, this summer presented Trump with a gold-plated and glass plaque as his company promised to invest $600 billion in the United States.

Such gifts appear to have helped: Apple's iPhones have escaped the worst of Trump's tariffs.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Kinderman points out that for wealthy and powerful CEOs, Trump's degree of personal involvement in their businesses at least makes it efficient to deal directly with him — if they can keep him happy — instead of wading through the slow and complicated red tape of federal regulatory processes.

"These companies are a huge portion of the American economy," he says. "And I think Trump is also giving them, to a large extent, what they want."

In August, Apple CEO Tim Cook presented President Trump with a gold-plated and glass plaque, as his company pledged to invest a total of $600 billion in the United States.

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Still, he and others warn that, taken to the extreme, codependent relationships between political leaders and CEOs don't always end well for the latter.

In more authoritarian countries, where leaders exert much more control over private businesses, the stakes can be especially fraught. Russia, Hungary, and China all exercise some form of state-controlled capitalism, where an autocratic leader cultivates relationships with oligarchic business CEOs — and can quickly force them out of favor.

As one extreme example, Ballou-Aares invokes Jack Ma, the Alibaba founder who built one of China's biggest tech companies before criticizing the country's financial regulations … and then largely disappearing from public view for several years.

"We know that crony capitalism never really ends well for most companies," she says. "I mean, tell Jack Ma that autocracy is okay for business."

'Most CEOs are pretty frustrated'

Outside of Big Tech, many businesses feel a lot more conflicted about how President Trump is reshaping U.S. capitalism. Some have even filed lawsuits against the administration, over its tariffs and its immigration policies.

"Despite the handful of tech titans that do seem to admittedly genuflect at the White House and at Mar-a-Lago, most CEOs are pretty frustrated with what's happening," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor who regularly speaks with CEOs.

Pockets of frustration from corporate America have become more visible recently. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the administration over its plans to start charging $100,000 for H-1B visas for highly-skilled foreign workers — although it did so while praising Trump's "ambitious agenda."

And JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon, who runs the country's largest bank and is one of the most prominent non-tech CEOs in the country, recently told CNN why his company had declined to donate to Trump's White House ballroom.

"Since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful about how anything is perceived," Dimon said. "We're quite conscious of risks we bear by doing anything that looks like buying favors or anything like that."

That said, most businesses are reluctant to publicly criticize President Trump or his policies. Smaller companies lack the power to effectively stand up to the White House. And even those running the country's biggest companies are unwilling to draw the personal attacks that Trump can often wield, or the ensuing partisan boycotts and financial damage that can follow.

Earlier this month, demolition work continued where the East Wing once stood at the White House. President Trump ordered the East Wing and Jacqueline Kennedy Garden leveled to make way for a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom that he says will be paid for with private donations from companies including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google.

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Many businesses have neither the appetite nor the capacity to take on the U.S. government. They just want to focus on making money, even if that means adapting to dramatic tariffs or other sharp shifts in government policy.

"It's tactical fire-fighting," says Drew DeLong, who advises businesses around the world as head of corporate statecraft for the consulting company Kearney, and who served in the State Department during Trump's first administration.

"Every moment and every hour you spend on tariff mitigation is one less hour that you spend on innovation," he says. "There is an urgency towards fire-fighting as best as they possibly can, but there's also a fatigue."

'Merger review has been weaponized'

The Trump Administration's approach to approving — or not — corporate mergers has drawn some of the highest scrutiny, because of the nexus of political and business issues at stake.

For example, the Federal Communications Commission this year approved several telecommunications mergers only after Verizon and T-Mobile agreed to terminate internal policies around "diversity, equity, and inclusion," or DEI. Then it threatened to take federal action against some ABC affiliates over Jimmy Kimmel's comments about Charlie Kirk's killing on his ABC late-night show; the owners of some of those stations were also seeking federal approvals for mergers. (ABC parent Walt Disney suspended Kimmel's show for almost a week, before reinstating him. ABC did not respond to requests for comment.)

"Merger review has been weaponized into a tool for control," says Elizabeth Wilkins, the former chief of staff to Lina Khan, who oversaw U.S. merger review as chair of President Biden's Federal Trade Commission.

"With those kinds of tools hanging over corporate leaders' heads, we have seen an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear — which breeds silence," adds Wilkins, who now runs the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank.

The exception is, again, for leaders who cultivate close ties with the president. This year, the White House helped broker a deal for a coalition of U.S. investors to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok — and asked for an unusual multibillion-dollar payment to the federal government, which business experts have compared to a "shakedown" or "extortion." Some of those same investors, including Trump ally Larry Ellison and his son, David, are now seeking even more media deals.

Some business experts say now that corporate America has a better idea of President Trump's playbook in this administration, they expect to see companies and their executives feel more confident about how and when to push back against White House policies that they think will damage their businesses and the wider economy.

"I think it is clear that the administration's approach here is broadly unpopular, including with business," says Ballou-Aares.

But Kearney's DeLong, the veteran of Trump's first administration, warns businesses to brace for much more policy change, and uncertainty about what capitalism and the economy will look like in the future.

"This is just year one," he says. "Where do we go [during] the rest of this administration? Where do we go after?"
Copyright 2025 NPR

When L.A. hosts the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the city will need to mobilize police, fire, transit and traffic control to put on more than a month of competitions and celebrations.

The question is — who will pay for all that extra work?

Los Angeles is in high-stakes talks over what city services the private Olympics organizing committee will pay for during the Olympic Games, and negotiations have dragged nearly three months past a deadline to make a deal.

City funds could hang in the balance. The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games.

But the nuts and bolts of that arrangement have not been finalized, despite an Oct. 1 deadline.

City Administrative Officer Matthew Szabo, who is leading negotiations on the city's behalf along with the chief legislative analyst, acknowledged that the deal was past due at a City Council committee meeting on the Olympics earlier this month.

"It is of great significance to the city, and getting it right takes precedence," Szabo said. "We are working as quickly as we can, but this needs to be the right agreement for the city."

If the agreement leaves L.A. exposed to unexpected or additional expenses, taxpayers could end up paying many millions. Organizers have said that putting on the Olympic and Paralympic Games is the equivalent of hosting seven Super Bowls every day for a month.

Why the delay?

Neither the city nor LA28 have shared publicly what's holding up the deal. But the Dec. 8 City Council meeting hinted at potential sticking points.

One could be the boundaries of where LA28's responsibility for a service like traffic control ends and the city's responsibility begins.

Down the line, the city will need to negotiate individual agreements with LA28 about what public services it will provide at each Olympic venue in the city. The scope of those agreements will be based on venue perimeters. Some in the city appear to be concerned about how those perimeters will be determined and what happens if public services are needed outside of those boundaries.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky raised this as a potential problem to the city administrative officer at the council meeting.

" If we're only getting reimbursed for services within the venue services agreements, does that mean that anything outside of venue perimeter isn't subject to reimbursement?" she said. "Even if costs arise due to a material impact from the Games or the venue perimeters themselves?"

Szabo responded by saying the city agreed that the broader scope of what resources might be required should be included. But he acknowledged that there was an argument for a narrower interpretation.

" Now, another way to look at it, and I do need to be clear about this, is that the general condition of hosting the games may require additional services in other areas," he said.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said he thought additional costs to the city seemed inevitable. He offered an example: If a protest took place outside an Olympic training facility — a location that could be considered outside the list of official Olympic venues.

" We're going to have controversies at some of these places, and I view that as inextricably linked to the events," he said. "That also means protests, which also means sanitation. … Some of these ancillary sites that are not direct venue sites are going to end up with enhanced costs to us as a city."

A spokesperson for LA28 didn't answer a series of questions from LAist, including where expected costs on city services are included in its $7 billion budget. The organizing committee did provide a statement saying it was "committed to delivering these historic Games in a safe, secure and fiscally responsible way."

The other source of funding that the city expects to receive for its resources will come from the federal government, which has allocated $1 billion for security costs. Szabo told the council committee that city spending on security at the Olympic venues, like for local police, should be covered by those funds.

But exactly how much federal money the city of Los Angeles will actually get is yet to be determined.

Why the agreements matter

Hosting the Games is an enormous financial risk for Los Angeles. The city is the financial backstop for the Olympic Games, meaning if the organizing committee runs into the red, L.A. will pick up the bill, along with the state of California.

The extra staff and resources the city will dedicate to the Games represents another area where L.A. may end up with surprise costs.

The specter of these potential expenses has dogged the city for months. In July, prominent civil rights attorney Connie Rice wrote a letter to Mayor Karen Bass saying knowledgeable city officials had told her the city was negotiating a bad deal with LA28.

Rice pointed specifically to the boundaries of Olympic venues, claiming LA28 was advocating for narrower venue perimeters "narrowly confined to the physical buildings and immediate sidewalks of the venue." She said the city's broader understanding of venue perimeters that will need city services could leave a substantial gap in funding that would leave the city exposed.

Reached by phone, Rice said her concerns remain the same. She called the city's dealings "incompetent."

" I know 10th graders who plan their prom better than this," she said of city officials. "Their mission is to look good. Their mission isn't to protect the taxpayers."

Whether you love Waymo’s self-driving cars, or love to hate them, the vehicles are becoming more and more common throughout the Los Angeles area — including on freeways.

When Waymo announced last month that it would offer select freeway trips in L.A.’s 120-square-mile service area, my colleague Kevin Tidmarsh and I knew we’d be reuniting for another round of rides. We took a test trip on city streets last fall.

Admittedly, I’ve been nervous about trusting the autonomous tech, especially at higher speeds and merging in our region’s infamous traffic.

But freeways are actually easier for self-driving cars to maneuver than surface streets, according to Rahul Jain, professor and director of the USC Center of Autonomy and AI.

“City driving is more challenging because there are pedestrians and bicyclists and lights and stop signs and whatnot,” Jain told LAist. “On a freeway, it's relatively unencumbered.”

The set up

We teamed up to take a roundtrip Waymo ride from downtown to the Arlington Heights neighborhood of L.A.

According to the company, riders who have opted into Waymo’s freeway list on the app will be matched with those routes when they’re “meaningfully faster,” so we chose destinations with the guidelines in mind.

A side view of a Waymo car from March 2023.

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We called the first ride shortly after 10 a.m. on a Friday to take us from downtown’s Sante Fe Avenue to the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Bronson Avenue in Arlington Heights. The Waymo took about 6 minutes to arrive and cost a little more than $17.

We called the second ride back downtown shortly after 10:30 a.m. The car took 7 minutes to arrive and cost a little more than $15, which was both quicker and cheaper than our test rides from downtown to Koreatown last year.

The positives 

Our Waymo got on the 10 Freeway in downtown almost immediately, speeding up to a smooth 34 mph to merge into flowing traffic.

Waymo then moved a few lanes over to the left as it accelerated to 55 mph, squeezing between human-driven cars — and using its blinker every time.

“A lot of people could take notes,” Kevin said during the ride.

The autonomous car made some driving decisions like a seasoned Angeleno, using thru-traffic lanes around freeway off-ramps to bypass stalled traffic.

Kevin, who takes that route often, said Waymo picked the "absolute safest way” to go.

As we exited the freeway onto a packed off-ramp, Waymo was able to merge into the turning lane (although, it did cut a line of cars).

Once we were back on city streets, I was curious how Waymo would handle a run-in with emergency vehicles, especially after one of the cars drove toward a police standoff in downtown L.A. last month. A video shows a Waymo, with a passenger inside, turning toward a man lying on the ground in front of a line of officers with guns drawn and lights flashing.

But our car slowed to a stop until the ambulance, its siren blaring, passed by in the opposite direction.

The negatives

Waymo topped out around 55 mph for the first leg of our freeway trip, which was noticeably slower than other cars that passed us on the right.

But, as Kevin pointed out during the ride, maybe Waymo’s technology was seeing something we couldn’t. Traffic tightened up less than a mile ahead, and dropping back down to 25 mph felt like a smooth transition.

The biggest snafu was when Waymo seemed to get a bit confused by the freeway lanes toward the end of our trip. The car suddenly jerked to the left as if it was trying to merge before retreating back into the far right lane.

“ What is going on,” I said, several times.

“ Thinking with its steering wheel, it seems like,” Kevin replied.

It repeated the move two more times, without any obvious hazards or obstacles ahead.

Final thoughts 

Overall, we were pleasantly surprised with the Waymo freeway rides.

Kevin noted there were a couple of hiccups, including the sudden steering, but the driving was generally smooth and the car seemed to adjust to the various conditions we encountered.

I felt like Waymo handled the stop-and-go traffic better than I would’ve behind the wheel, and both Kevin and I agreed it felt like the autonomous technology has made notable improvements since our last test ride.

“ When it can take me on the Arroyo Seco through Highland Park, then, then I will give everything to our robot overlords,” I joked during the ride. “If it can do the stop sign on-ramp onto 60 miles per hour of that freeway … I'll never drive again.”

A series of immigration raids across California in 2025 had one thing in common: Most of the federal agents detaining people wore masks over their faces.

In January, the state of California and its largest county will ban law enforcement officers from covering their faces, with a few exceptions, putting local and state police at odds with masked immigration agents.

The state law gives law enforcement officers a choice: If they cover their faces, they lose the ability to assert “qualified immunity,” the doctrine that protects officers from individual liability for their actions. That means they can be sued for assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest or malicious prosecution, and the law adds a clause that says the minimum penalty for committing those offenses while wearing a mask is $10,000.

Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, a Los Angeles Democrat who co-authored the law, said it was necessary to rein in anonymous federal agents.

“We initially were under the understanding that, oh, they're only targeting folks who were not citizens,” Gonzalez said, “And then actually over time you learn they don't give a shit who you are, they're attacking you no matter what, with no due process.”

The Trump administration has sued to block the bill, and more than a century of federal court precedent is on its side. An 1890 Supreme Court case provides that a state cannot prosecute a federal law enforcement officer acting in the course of their duties.

The Trump administration said in its brief to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that forcing agents to reveal their identities would put the agents at risk.

During Immigration and Customs Enforcement “actions, individuals can be heard threatening to doxx and find out who officers and their family members are and where they live,” the administration’s lawyers said in the Nov. 17 brief. “There are even public websites that seek and publish personal information about ICE and other federal officers to harass and threaten them and their families.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the issue may not be as cut-and-dried as one or two Supreme Court cases. He pointed to a 2001 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that allowed the case of a federal sniper who killed a woman during the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, standoff to go to trial.

“It basically says that a federal officer can be criminally prosecuted for unreasonable actions,” Chemerinsky said. “Federal officers, by virtue of being federal officers, do not get immunity from all state civil and criminal laws.”

Brian Marvel, president of an organization that represents California police unions, said the law will make life harder for local cops and county sheriffs’ deputies. The organizations that represent police chiefs, sheriffs, agents in the Attorney General’s office and California Highway Patrol officers opposed the law, too.

“I think that the state has put us in a tenuous position with this battle they’re having with the Trump administration,” said Marvel of the Peace Officers Research Association of California. “We don’t want to be in the middle of this fight. But unfortunately, (with) the desire for higher name recognition and elections in 2026, they decided to create things that are much more political and not geared toward legitimate public safety issues.”

Marvel said another drawback of the law is giving “a false sense of hope to the immigrant community in California” that the law will force federal agents to leave the state.

Los Angeles County supervisors have also approved a local mask ban on law enforcement for unincorporated areas of the county, a measure that will go into effect in mid-January, unless a court decision comes sooner.

Gonzalez noted that masks have played a significant role in recent California history. First,, during the pandemic California temporarily made masks mandatory in public and at work. Then, a couple of years later, a rush of smash-and-grab robberies were harder to solve because the suspects all wore masks. Now, California finds itself in its third back-and-forth over face coverings.

The law provides exemptions for N-95 or medical-grade masks to prevent infection transmission, and permits undercover operatives to wear a mask.

“This is specifically aimed to federal agents because we gotta combat these kidnappings somehow,” Gonzalez said, “and this was our way in.”

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