The Brief

President Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against California’s governor as “Newscum,” spread misinformation about the causes of the Los Angeles fires and suggested that California will not receive the typical federal aid for recovery unless it changes its water policy. Or its forestry policy. Or its immigration sanctuary policy.

This morning, as he prepared to fly to the fire zone, he added a new one: voter ID.

“I just want voter ID as a start, and I want the water to be released,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac during a stop in North Carolina. “After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen.”

The demand further politicized a fragile situation that has left Gov. Gavin Newsom scrambling to respond to the whims of the president — or even to speak with him at all — to secure billions of dollars from the federal government to help Los Angeles fight an ongoing firestorm and rebuild. For days after Trump announced his intent to travel to Los Angeles to survey fire damage, it was unclear whether Newsom would join him, given that the president failed to invite him.

Yet by the time he arrived in California, Trump seemed to have found his West Coast chill. Newsom was indeed waiting for the president on the tarmac at LAX this afternoon and Trump greeted him warmly, shaking his hand, embracing him and repeatedly patting him on the arm as he promised to “take care of things.”

“We’re going to get it fixed — though we’ll get it permanently fixed so it can’t happen again,” Trump told reporters. He expressed awe at the scale of the damage, which he compared to the destruction of World War II: “It’s like it got hit by a bomb.”

“We’re going to need a lot of federal help,” Newsom said, before brushing off a question about Trump’s voter ID demand. “I have all the confidence in the world we’ll work that out.”

The whiplash reflects the complicated balancing act for Newsom as he tries to advocate for his state while simultaneously appeasing a president for whom California has served as the ultimate political foil.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tour a fire-affected area in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 24, 2025.

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Mandel Ngan

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AFP via Getty Images

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Tension between the newly reinstalled Republican president and California’s Democratic governor — longtime political nemeses who nevertheless routinely worked together on disaster recovery during Trump’s first term — exploded alongside the fires that have burned through Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other swaths of the Los Angeles region over the past two weeks.

The governor had quickly extended an invitation to Trump to visit Los Angeles, an effort to lower the temperature as partisan demands soared to punish California for supposedly mismanaging the disaster. But Newsom acknowledged late Thursday afternoon that he had still not heard back from the president, less than a day before his expected touchdown in California.

Excluding Newsom would have been a stinging rebuke of the governor, who met with Trump when he traveled to California fire zones in 2018 and 2020.

But Newsom remained outwardly optimistic about the strength of their relationship as he spoke with reporters Thursday, after approving $2.5 billion in fire recovery funds that he hopes will eventually be reimbursed by the federal government.

“I’m glad he’s coming out here. I’m grateful that the president’s taking the time,” Newsom said. “And I hope he comes with a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. That’s the spirit to which we welcome him.”

It’s common for presidents and governors of opposing political parties to do battle on policy differences and then come together when natural disasters strike, said state Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat whose district has been badly damaged by the Palisades fire.

“It would be a delicate balance under any president and certainly, it’s more delicate under this president,” he told CalMatters. “It may appear a little messy, and perhaps it is, but it’s also an integral part of our federal system.”

Trump chose not to snub the state’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, whom he dubbed “Shifty Schiff” for investigating him during his first term.

“A number of us invited (the president) to come to this state and he reciprocated, inviting us to join him to go to these fire areas,” Schiff said in an MSNBC interview this morning. “Regrettably, Senator Padilla and I have votes today in the Senate so we aren’t able to go. But I’m glad he’s going.”

As for Newsom, he’s at a precarious moment in his relationship with the president. While he initially positioned California at the forefront of a renewed resistance after Trump won a second term in November, even calling a special session to fund litigation against the incoming administration, Newsom now finds himself dependent on the goodwill of a federal government almost fully under the sway of Trump.

It’s unclear how forthcoming federal assistance will be. Since the outbreak of the Los Angeles fires more than two weeks ago, Trump has continued to inaccurately claim that Los Angeles lacked water to fight these fires because the state does not send enough water south from Northern California. He has depicted them as Newsom’s fault and even demanded that he resign, although fire and climate experts have repeatedly attributed the blazes to off-the-charts dry conditions in the face of ferocious Santa Ana winds.

Nonetheless, with the support of many congressional Republicans, the president has threatened to withhold or condition disaster aid.

Trump’s interest in voter ID goes back to at least 2016, when he began insisting, without any evidence, that he failed to win the deep blue state of California because people who aren’t citizens participated in the presidential election. A new California law that took effect this year prohibits local governments from requiring voters to present identification to cast their ballots in an election.

In a post on social media, Newsom’s press office pointed out that California requires people to present identification when they register to vote and wrote, “Conditioning aid for American citizens is wrong.”

Newsom has substantially, though not entirely, pulled his punches against Trump in recent weeks. He largely kept a low profile leading up to the president’s visit, working on fire response from Los Angeles. After the president erroneously complained in Monday’s inauguration speech that the fires were burning “without even a token of defense,” Newsom issued a gentle statement that emphasized “finding common ground and striving toward shared goals” with the Trump administration.

“In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history, this moment underscores the critical need for partnership, a shared commitment to facts, and mutual respect,” Newsom said.

Yet he also, on social media, slammed several of Trump’s early executive orders on immigration and climate change, then sent an email to supporters deriding the passage from Trump’s inaugural speech as “nonsense” and “insulting” to firefighters.

Meanwhile, the governor’s special session to “safeguard California values” from the Trump administration continues on, with Democrats in the state Senate voting Thursday to advance $25 million for legal fees. Republican lawmakers have lambasted the session as a distraction from wildfire response and an unnecessary poke at the president.

Allen, the senator from Santa Monica, said he understood that Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises to the Americans who supported him, but that California politicians would be derelict if they didn’t push back, because voters had elected them with a different vision for how to run the country.

“We want, and our constituents want us, to cooperate with the federal government to help on the areas of mutual agreement and need,” he said. “The flip side is, we are also part of the loyal opposition.”

Newsom told reporters Thursday that it was important for the state to prepare to fight Trump at the same time that he is courting the president’s help, noting that Trump “already assaulted the Fourteenth Amendment” with his day one executive order challenging birthright citizenship, which California immediately sued to stop.

The governor evoked the “great relationship” he had with Trump during the COVID pandemic, when they spoke nearly every week, and said he did not expect the special session to affect that because it was “nothing personal,” but rather based on “fundamental policy disagreements.”

“This is situational. Don’t color it in any more than it needs to be,” Newsom said. “I’m here for the long haul, to support the president where we can, to defend our values where we must.”

Southern California is getting a dose of unseasonably cool weather — a welcome break after a series of hot, humid heat waves over the last few months.

Lower than normal temperatures are expected to stick around through the weekend.

Highs along the coast will be in the 70s over the next few days. Inland areas of L.A. and Orange counties will get up to the 80s. Even the Inland Empire is expected to peak at about 90 degrees on Friday.

The cooler temperatures are also expected to come with cloudy skies across the region.

The cloud cover will likely be widespread on Friday and much of Saturday, but concentrated mostly in the morning hours and along the coast, where skies could stay cloudy through the afternoon.

The cool, mild conditions won’t last long, though.

Forecasters say temperatures will start to tick back up on Saturday. They will stay below normal seasonal levels for a few days, but the summer heat will be back by the middle of next week.

So this weekend might be a good time to go on a hike or host that barbecue.

Low pressure equals mild temperatures 

The cool weather is a pretty stark change.

Just a few weeks ago, the National Weather Service was issuing warnings across Southern California for extreme heat and predicting nearly record-breaking temperatures. Now, atmospheric conditions have shifted.

Much of that suffocating heat was driven by a massive system of high pressure air hovering over the Southwestern U.S.

High pressure systems trap warm air beneath them and compress it, further warming the air and preventing cooler air from displacing it.

This week, the high pressure system finally loosened its grip.

“That ridge of high pressure kind of broke down, and then a trough of low pressure developed off and along the coast of California,” said Devin Black, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Low pressure systems force air to rise, and as air rises it cools. It also eventually condenses, often forming cloud cover.

That’s one reason behind the clouds in Southern California this week.

Meanwhile, a deep marine layer and onshore winds are helping push those clouds farther inland. Forecasters note that the low pressure system and onshore winds are also keeping humidity levels up.

Despite the cloud cover and moisture, it’s unlikely there will be much, if any, rain. Some minimal precipitation could be possible in Ventura and Santa Barbara county mountains.

The low pressure system and marine layer will start to shrink on Saturday, allowing heat-generating high pressure to move back into the region.

The deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for the removal of all rotting food from the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility in Boyle Heights is fast approaching.

Bass reiterated on Thursday to The LA Local that all of the approximately 88 million pounds of food that had been stored inside when the facility caught fire in June is expected to be removed by Friday. 

City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents District 14 where Lineage is located, said in a press release Thursday afternoon that the cleanup efforts will likely not meet the deadline. 

“I fully support the Mayor leveraging all the enforcement, cost-recovery, and accountability tools available to make clear that when the City establishes a public-health deadline, corporations are expected to meet it — and there are consequences when they do not,” Jurado said in the statement.

The company’s reports on the cleanup progress, similarly, have not appeared to be on pace with meeting that deadline. And some residents believe the putrid air they’ve had to live with for months will linger indefinitely despite the bureaucratic goal posts being met or moved.

Here’s what we know about the final phase of cleanup.

What is the deadline?

Workers continue to clear out the Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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Soon after a fire broke out on the roof of the 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility on Los Palos Street on June 17, the managers cut the power to the two massive refrigerated rooms in the building. While firefighters took about a week to contain the blaze, the millions of pounds of food inside quickly began to rot in the summer’s heat.

Bass on June 29 issued an executive order requiring the removal of all remaining food in 45 days, or Friday, Aug. 14. Food cleanup began in early July.

Meanwhile, residents of Boyle Heights, East L.A. and several other neighboring communities who were left to deal with the putrid odors, have made more than 4,000 air quality complaints to regulators since early July.

It’s not the only deadline Lineage Logistics faces.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates air pollution in the region, issued 19 notices of violation alleging the odors created a public nuisance. Last week, the agency ordered the company to meet dozens of cleanup and air quality control standards, including enforceable requirements for food removal and full facility cleaning.

That agency set a separate deadline of weeks for the food and other material to be removed before the remaining freezer room is fully sanitized.

What’s been cleaned up so far?

The freezer that was extensively damaged by fire has been cleared. The remaining freezer held the vast majority of the rotting food that has been polluting the air in nearby neighborhoods.

Lineage Logistics has for weeks reported on its website about its progress toward 100% cleanup. 

Residents can get a sense of their pace for cleanup by tracking their reports:

• Aug. 7: 85% of food waste had been removed 
• Aug. 11: 92% of “bulk food cleanup” was completed
• Aug. 12: 93% of food had been cleaned up

It’s unclear how exactly Lineage is arriving at these measurements and how the city or some other agency is independently verifying this progress.

Will they meet the deadline?

The deadline set by Mayor Karen Bass for the removal of all rotting food from the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility in Boyle Heights is fast approaching.

Lineage is clearing between 1% and 1.5% of food each day, according to their progress reports. This roughly aligns with the weekly goal AQMD ordered Lineage to maintain, 10% or 8.8 million pounds of food removed each week.

At that pace, it is unlikely they’ll be able to remove the remaining 7% of food waste in the next 24 hours. 

Unless they significantly accelerate, this puts full food cleanup somewhere into next week. That revised timeline better aligns with the one Dominic DiCarlo, vice president of global safety and compliance for Lineage, outlined during the AQMD hearing last week.

DiCarlo added that the company expects to spend between $80 and $100 million on the cleanup and related expenses, which has been described as continuing around the clock.

Lineage did not respond to The LA Local’s request for more information about their progress toward the mayor’s deadline on Thursday.

What happens if they blow the deadline?

Jurado reported Thursday that Lineage would not meet the deadline, and expressed frustration with what residents have had to deal with.

Jurado’s statement reflected this: “For nearly two months, families in Boyle Heights have lived with unbearable odors, flies and pests, truck traffic, uncertainty, and disruption to their homes, businesses, and daily lives. They were told there was a deadline, and they had every right to expect that deadline to mean something.”

Bass’ executive order does not provide details on what will happen if Lineage does not meet the Friday deadline for clean up. Her office told The LA Local that it will provide more information on Thursday about the consequences if the deadline is not met.

She is also hosting a virtual community meeting Thursday about the cleanup efforts. 

Bass was among several local elected officials who had pushed AQMD to levy fines on Lineage for its air pollution violations, which it did not do. She has pushed city agencies to prevent Lineage from reconstructing the facility and continuing its business there. Local lawmakers have also introduced legislation that could increasingly regulate similar businesses in the future.

AQMD can levy penalties if Lineage does not meet its deadlines for cleanup in the coming weeks.

What are residents saying?

Residents on Prado Street were still hopeful Thursday that cleanup would be finished by the deadline.

“Ojalá,” that’s what Irma Soto said when she was asked if she believed workers would finish in time. “I hope they finish so this could all end.”

“It smells horrible,” she added as the stench emanated from the neighborhood early Thursday afternoon.

Soto said she’s been seeing more trailers picking up debris lately. Her neighbor said there appears to be more nighttime work near the facility recently.

“Who knows if they’ll finish, but they are working faster,” the neighbor said.

The post Lineage unlikely to meet deadline to clear 88 million pounds of rotting food from Boyle Heights appeared first on LA Local.

Jake Hemann grabbed a board and headed out to surf. But an hour later, he wound up sitting at the lifeguard station soaking his foot in a pail of hot water alongside four other beachgoers.

It is a common scene at Bolsa Chica State Beach and some other popular beaches in Southern California where the number of people being hit by the sharp, serrated caudal barbs found on the tails of stingrays has gone up significantly from a year ago as a marine heat wave draws more stingrays — and people — to shore.

Hemann, a 31-year-old tourist from New Mexico, said he was learning to surf when he hopped off his board and landed on what he thought was a sharp stick. “It hurt pretty bad,” he said, while sinking his throbbing foot into the hottest water tolerable to ease the pain. “It was radiating up to my ankle.”

Bolsa Chica and Huntington State Beaches reported more than 3,100 incidents so far this year, twice the number for all of 2025. The city of Huntington Beach’s 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) stretch of shoreline has reported more than 2,000 such incidents so far this year, more than during all last year, while more than 900 stings were recorded on San Diego’s beaches during the first half of 2026, more than during the first six months of any of the past five years, lifeguard data shows.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase,” said Bryan R. Etnyre, state park superintendent in northern Orange County. “A lot of it is due to warming ocean temperatures that are consistently staying in the 60s. I don’t think there was a week all winter where we dropped below 60 this year.”

Warmer water draws rays and people

Round stingrays are found in Pacific Ocean waters from Panama to Southern California and are known to veer toward the shore when the swell is down and the water warm.

In recent years, many species that feed on rays, such as sharks, sea lions and giant sea bass, have seen their populations dwindle, causing the number of stingrays to grow, said Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach.

Rays are known to prefer warmer water, such as lagoons. Females prefer these waters to reproduce, and during the summer male rays have a higher metabolism that drives them to seek out food in the invertebrates along the shore, Lowe said.

“They’re really a subtropical species that is thriving at the end of its range because of climate change,” Lowe said.

The ocean already has been warming because of human-caused climate change, according to meteorologists.

This year has seen even more rays with a marine heat wave persisting off parts of the West Coast, marking the third time on record that such a large section of coastal waters stayed warm for so long, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In June, officials confirmed the formation of an El Niño, the natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide, that is expected to grow to historic strength.

Meanwhile, more people have been heading to beaches seeking outdoor recreation since the coronavirus pandemic. And when the water is warm, they are more likely to swim.

When rays are stepped on, they instinctively flick up their tails, stinging people with venomous barbs. Lifeguards urge bathers to shuffle their feet as they enter the water as the movement often gets rays to slide out of the way without stinging.

In Southern California, lifeguards can treat 10,000 stingray injuries a year, Lowe said.

In Seal Beach, one area draws so many due to an influx of warm water from a nearby power plant it is known as “ray bay,” though lifeguards there haven’t seen much change in stings this year.

Using a 75-foot-long net, researchers swept up some 200 stingrays, each about the size of a dinner plate, on a section of the beach on a recent morning.

“There can be so many that they actually carpet the bottom, like you can’t see sand,” Lowe said. “During El Niños, we get more of them up from the south, and they come closer to shore. So this year, we’re expecting record numbers.”

Sting advisory and booties aim to help

Lowe said he is working with television stations to develop a stingray advisory to help reduce the number of people who get stung, and the number of rays that get squished. Rays help keep the beach healthy by feeding on small clams and aerating sediment.

Many beaches use an app to notify bathers when there are multiple stings at a location. Meanwhile, a company has developed surf booties that claim to be barb-resistant — though swimmers are urged to still tread lightly to avoid trampling the rays.

At Bolsa Chica State Beach, swimmers suffering stings to the sides of their feet and toes sat in a circle refilling their pails with hot water from a hose. Some were there more than an hour waiting for the pain to ease.

Most stings don’t require additional medical attention. If redness and swelling continue more than four or five days, there could be a medical complication such as an infection or a retained barb that can be seen on an X-ray, said Dr. Christanne Coffey, who researches the stings at University of California, San Diego Health.

Allen Lowry said he was playing with his 7-year-old grandson when he came down on something squishy. He lifted his foot and saw blood so his wife drove him to the lifeguard station for a hot water soak, which is the remedy for stings.

Lowry, 69, said he swims three times a week at another beach, and getting stung, though painful, won’t change that. He said some people in his swim group have been stung multiple times.

“Usually, once the pain you feel goes away, you feel fine the next day,” he said.

California's prison system has systematically failed to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse and harassment by guards, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

The federal investigation also found that California’s corrections department failed to provide victims with a safe way to report sexual abuse and harassment without retaliation. On top of that, staff who were tasked with investigating the misconduct were often themselves accused of sexual abuse or harassment.

The investigation, which began during the Biden administration, focused on two state prisons: the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino. It uncovered numerous instances where guards regularly sexually abused incarcerated women. In at least one instance, a guard was convicted of rampant abuse over roughly a decade and sentenced to 224 years in prison.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Women were told to report misconduct on an online system that wasn’t confidential and that the accused officers had access to, according to Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Dhillon said that women are “fully aware of this gap in confidentiality, and this serves as a deterrent from women reporting this misconduct.” She named at least one sergeant whose job it was to investigate misconduct who was himself sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to receiving child sexual abuse images on the job.

“The upshot of our investigation is that California’s prison system, when it comes to women, has inadequate systems in place to deter, detect, and hold accountable rampant sexual misconduct and assault on female prisoners,” Dhillon said at a news conference held in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The Associated Press in previous years exposed similar patterns of rampant abuse by federal prison staff against women held in Dublin, California, a facility that at the time was nicknamed the “rape club.” The prison was closed following the AP investigation.

The federal government on Thursday gave California's prison system 49 days to remediate the conditions  that enabled the rampant abuse, warning that a failure to do so could result in civil litigation.

The measures include expanded camera coverage, enhanced confidential reporting channels and strengthened investigative protocol.U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who was appointed by President Donald Trump as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said California has to take action.“The State must confront the persistent failure of its own employees to prevent and address sexual abuse at these facilities,” Essayli wrote in a statement, “and the systemic breakdowns that have permitted these conditions to persist.”

How to report abuse

An incarcerated person, or someone acting on their behalf, has several options to report alleged abuse while in custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR):

• Complete a form
• Call the Office of Inspector General’s hotline at (800) 700-5952 or *7732# (quick dial from a CDCR phone or tablet)
• Write to: OIG, 10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, CA, 95827