The Brief

A new website launched Thursday that aims to make the best available mapping data accessible to everyone.

Called SoCalEarth.org, the online mapping tool was developed by Pitzer College’s Robert Redford Conservancy in partnership with Redlands-based GIS leader Esri.

Susan Phillips, a Pitzer College professor and the director of the Robert Redford Conservancy, said it’s a “one stop shop” for all kinds of data — from climate risk to air pollution to housing, biodiversity, and more.

“It's an invitation to explore, and to empower yourself through that exploration,” Phillips told LAist. “Our target audience is everyone from a very bright fifth grader up to a community planner and everything in between and beyond that,” Phillips, who led the project, said.

The website allows anyone from curious individuals to teachers, community advocates, researchers, urban planners, developers and more to learn how the climate crisis intersects with other issues, build actionable plans with accurate information, and create custom maps with the most reliable and up-to-date datasets.

“SoCal Earth provides a holistic perspective,” said Nathan Lu, a Pitzer College student who helped develop the website over the last two years. “We want to tackle as many community issues as we can. ‘Community first, climate first’ is our core value in designing this.”

Data to empower education and action

Phillips said the goal is to help Southern Californians engage with climate, environmental and civic issues in their own backyards and beyond, as well as directly connect the climate crisis with too-often siloed conversations around land use planning, housing, poverty, food access, wildlife and more.

“We brought together the best data that we could from a variety of sources so that everybody could at least have a common place to start a conversation,” Phillips said at a press event announcing the website's launch.

A map on the SoCal Earth site showing conserved lands in LA County.

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Courtesy SoCal Earth

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Phillips told LAist she recently used data from the website to help submit comments around a recently-approved housing development near the world’s oldest known living oak tree in the city of Jurupa Valley in Riverside County.

Website users can build their own custom maps on the website to visualize local climate-related issues, and there’s a tool to help residents and city officials alike examine if a local project takes a “community-first, climate-first” approach.

Ollie the burrowing owl is the mascot of the SoCal Earth website.

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Courtesy SoCal Earth

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Already, urban planners and community advocates are using the website. For example, city planner Jonathan Pacheco Bell will use the website’s data and mapping tools to help develop a plan for a new linear park in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood of L.A., in partnership with L.A. County Parks and Recreation.

Making data accessible

If the word “data” intimidates you or puts you to sleep, don’t worry, SoCal Earth is meant for you. The website is designed to be colorful, playful, and easy to navigate. There’s even an adorable mascot to guide you through it: a burrowing owl named Ollie.

Why Ollie? Burrowing owl habitat and populations have declined significantly in California, largely due to development.

In fact, the California Fish and Game Commission voted Thursday to consider them for protections under the Endangered Species Act. That means the owls will be protected statewide until the commission votes on whether to permanently protect them after a scientific review, which could take more than a year. It’s a win for those who have fought to protect the quirky owls' populations from dwindling further.

Ollie is named in honor of a recently lost battle against a warehouse project in Ontario, where environmental advocates argued that burrowing owls would be detrimentally impacted.

“For us, the burrowing owl is a symbol of resilience,” Phillips said. “It's a tremendously adaptable bird. Even with that strength, it's struggling. If you prioritize the most vulnerable people, species, and places, you will benefit everyone. And that's the story of the burrowing owl, Ollie, our mascot.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

On a Friday evening in Boyle Heights, several dozen people gathered on Whittier Boulevard for a night out.

It was open mic night at InnerCity Struggle, but a crowd of about 60 got there an hour early. Elders, youth, Spanish and English speakers packed a room inside the community center with a larger mission in mind: They were training to become neighborhood vote protectors. 

Trainees were advised to encourage voters to stay in line. To observe, document and report any form of voter suppression. To know their First Amendment rights.

“These are your everyday community members … that came out for a common goal, which is to learn how to protect our community,” said Michelle Benavides, InnerCity Struggle’s director of civic engagement.

Voter education forums are being held across the state as California experiences a surge in immigration enforcement that community and labor organizations condemn as a coordinated campaign by the federal government to intimidate voters. That’s on top of the U.S. Department of Justice’s deployment of 1,000 federal election observers that State Attorney General Rob Bonta has labeled as “the source of interference.”

In Los Angeles, immigrant rights advocates and elected officials have urged residents to remain vigilant and to vote early, either by mail or by dropping their ballot off at an official ballot drop box as soon as possible.

“The timing of these actions, just weeks before the midterm elections, is no accident,” CHIRLA’s policy director Jeannette Zanipatin said at a convening with election leaders last Friday. “These tactics seek to silence immigrant communities, suppress civic participation and divide our neighborhoods.”

Commerce resident Martha Moya attended the training at InnerCity Struggle last Friday and shared an experience she had at a polling place some years ago when she was asked if she was a U.S. citizen as she prepared to drop off her mail-in ballot.

“It was ridiculous. If I wasn’t a citizen, then I wouldn’t have been there at all,” Moya recalled telling the worker. 

That experience emboldened her to fight for voter rights, she said.

A voter casts their ballot in the California Primary Election at Weingart East LA YMCA on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Los Angeles, Calif.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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The training on Friday was held in partnership with the nonprofit Catalyst California, through its coalition known as We Are California, which includes partners like CHIRLA and PICO California. The Can’t Stop California campaign is holding statewide vote protector trainings in Koreatown, the Inland Empire and the San Fernando Valley.

About 20 who attended the training signed up to monitor polls. Organizers said they can choose which poll locations they’d like to monitor. They’re encouraged to show up with a partner. Trainees will be provided with “NEIGHBORHOOD VOTE PROTECTOR” hats and T-shirts.

Residents were taught how to observe, document and report voter suppression at a training on Friday, Oct. 16 at InnerCity Struggle.

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Alejandra Molina

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Attendees of the training in Boyle Heights learned that intimidation tactics can include voters being blocked from accessing polling locations, being threatened with criminal actions or being questioned about their citizenship. People holding signs reading “Only Citizens Can Vote – We’ll Be Checking” are a form of voter intimidation, they learned.

The training covered how election workers are also at risk of intimidation if they’re disrupted from opening or closing polling locations or from counting ballots, and offered a hotline number to call if they witness any kind of suppression happening at their local polling sites.

Trainees discussed their First Amendment right to photograph or film anything in plain view, including law enforcement. However, they were told, filming anyone within 100 feet of a polling place could be interpreted as intimidation. 

Directing focus to voters and encouraging them to stay in line is key, they learned.

Kaylanie Santos, an 18-year-old first-time voter, attended the training. “There’s a lot more intimidation tactics than I realized,” she said. 

Santos said she planned to monitor polling sites on Election Day from a safe distance, despite the fear of being profiled.

“There should be people there protecting other people, help out the village, be there for another person even if you don’t know them. That’s your people. … It’s important to look out and defend,” Santos said.

Garbed in purple and holding signs that read “Fair contracts now!” and “Here to serve, not to starve,” thousands of state workers rallied at government buildings across California Wednesday to protest what they describe as unfair labor practices by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration.

SEIU Local 1000’s first strike in its 44-year history unfolded in several cities including Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The union — which represents about 100,000 workers, nearly half the state workforce — has been in contentious labor talks with the Newsom administration since its latest contract expired in late June.

Its members want a better raise than Newsom has offered as well as more flexibility to work from home. Newsom just a year ago demanded wage reductions from the union to help shore up a budget crisis. State workers have accepted pay cuts in three of the eight years Newsmom led the state.

“The budget is balanced on state employees’ backs,” said Local 1000 President Anica Walls. “It’s just showing how frustrated employees are with the lack of prioritizing us as people who really help California remain the fourth largest economy in the world,” she said.

Angela Musallam, a spokesperson for the California Department of Human Resources, which handles labor negotiations on behalf of the administration, said the department “remains focused on achieving a fair and responsible agreement and continues to be available at the bargaining table.” Both parties are scheduled to resume mediation talks on Oct. 30

In anticipation of the strike, operations at some state departments have been modified or limited, including at DMV offices and parks. Outside the Elihu M. Harris State Office Building in downtown Oakland, workers marched outside chanting “No contract, no peace.” They played drums, snacked on muffins and Little Caesar pizzas and cheered as cars honked along Clay Street in solidarity.

Amy Dickinson, an information technology associate at California Department of Industrial Relations’ Office of Information Systems, said she was striking “because the state has decided that we are not worth even bargaining with.”

“They have done nothing but say ‘no’ all this time. They won’t even give any counteroffers — that’s not bargaining, that’s a maximalist position,” said the San Leandro resident.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, who represents the East Bay Area,, spoke to the crowd in Oakland before joining them briefly in marching.

“Nothing happens without the workers,” said Simon. “For anyone to say that you don’t deserve wage justice, they haven’t looked at the rates of rent … at grocery prices.”

“There is enough for everything that you’re asking for. But the floor is respect.”

Unions, including Local 1000, traditionally are Newsom’s allies. They contributed to his campaigns and helped him defeat Republican opponents. But the Local 1000 strike is the second state worker walkout to occur on his watch. Previously, the California Association of Professional Scientists held a three-day strike in 2023.

Besides pay boosts, Local 1000 members are pushing for higher state contributions for healthcare coverage, and changes to Newsom’s four-day-a-week in-office mandate, which they argue costs workers and taxpayers money and increases traffic and pollution.

In Sacramento, Don Chaddock, a longtime analyst for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, wore a Santa costume and held a sign reading “Newsom + CalHR = Naughty List.” Chaddock, who volunteers as Santa during the holidays for rural schools in his foothills area, said he is frustrated by the state’s in-office policy, which has him commuting to a suburb south of Sacramento.

“I don't mind in-person if we’re actually doing something in-person,” he said. “Right now, I drive to Elk Grove to sit in a cubicle.”

State workers represented by SEIU Local 1000 strike outside the CalHR building in Sacramento on Oct. 21, 2026.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Rebecca Bean, another employee who is against the return-to-office mandate, put it even more bluntly: “We’re not asking for stupid sh—.”

Bean commutes three hours a day by public transportation to Oakland as an analyst at the industrial relations’ office. She said the policy has made it more difficult to take care of her ailing mother who is in her seventies.

“Every time she has an emergency, I have to run all the way home. She won’t go to any medical appointments without me,” Bean said. Before the policy took effect in July, Bean scheduled appointments at the end or beginning of the day and was out only a few hours.

“Whereas here I have to schedule at least four hours to do something,” she said.

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

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

After 32 years in uniform and a career punctuated by declining murders, spiking traffic deaths and challenges retaining officers, Long Beach Police Chief Wally Hebeish announced Wednesday that he will retire in December.

Hebeish, who began his career in 1994 with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and joined the Long Beach Police Department a year later, stepped into the limelight in 2021 when he replaced then-Chief Robert Luna, who went on to become the LA County Sheriff.

Hebeish declined a request to comment on Wednesday. In a characteristically terse and formal statement, he thanked the department that he described leading through “some of the most challenging times we have faced in modern law enforcement.”

In a separate statement sent by department spokesperson Allison Gallagher, Hebeish said he had been “contemplating and planning my retirement for some time,” and wanted to see through the department’s newest round of academy cadets and a tough budget year before leaving. “It’s been a rewarding [five] years as Chief and I’m proud of everything the Department has accomplished,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for Mayor Rex Richardson did not respond to a request for comment. In a social media post Wednesday, Richardson praised Hebeish, saying his legacy is one of “leadership, progress, and a deep commitment to our community and the men and women who serve it.”

“Wally Hebeish has always been a public servant focused on keeping people safe and a person of high integrity,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, who served as mayor when Hebeish first became chief. “Long Beach has been lucky to have had him as Chief, and I’m thankful to have worked with him.”

City Manager Tom Modica said the outgoing chief led the department through a “transformative period in modern policing” and did so with “integrity, compassion and an unwavering commitment” to the public. “We thank Chief Hebeish for his decades of public service and wish him the best in his retirement,” Modica said. “As we begin the search for our next Chief of Police, we will build on the strong foundation he leaves behind.”

Modica said the city plans to hire a recruitment firm in the next two weeks to begin a national search he hopes to finish by early next year. Candidates will be screened through the city’s human resources department and undergo interviews with a community panel, a technical panel and city department directors. The final choice will ultimately be made by Modica.

The city manager will also be creating a “community input process;” the city will announce something in the next couple of weeks.

Gerrit DeJongh of the Long Beach Police Officers Association said the union wants a chief with experience at a department of similar size who is “level-headed and fair-minded.”

The union supports a nationwide search, he said, but believes the department has “phenomenal internal candidates as well.” “If the city manager wants to have a discussion or wants the [union’s] opinion on it, I’d be happy to offer it,” DeJongh added.

Born in Cairo and raised in North Long Beach, Hebeish became the city’s first Arab American and Muslim to lead the department. After joining in 1995, he worked in criminal intelligence, investigations, patrol and internal affairs, and later served as chief of staff, deputy chief of the Support and Patrol bureaus and assistant chief, a post he took in 2019.

He became acting chief in 2021 while Luna, then the chief, recovered after being struck by a truck while crossing a street. Hebeish was appointed to the top job in December of that year.

Commanding a department of 800 sworn officers and another 1,200 employees, Hebeish took over the post amid intense pressure on police departments nationwide following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Meanwhile, the instability of the pandemic led to a spike in murders around the country. Like many departments, Long Beach grappled with new expectations of its police leaders and a need to rebuild public trust against challenges to retain officers.

In Long Beach, it was a balancing act with some success. Hebeish touts a citywide decline in murders, particularly fatal shootings, during his tenure. He said the city saw year-over-year reductions in shootings and, in 2025, its first recorded year without an officer-involved shooting.

He credited a High Crime Focus Team, created in 2024, which directs patrols to the places where violent crime, illegal firearms and quality-of-life complaints occur most often, with helping to reduce gun violence. He also lobbied for funding for a Real Time Crime Center, established a program for drones that back up police, launched a public online crime dashboard and instituted a yearly accountability report.

City officials and the department also point to its largest academy class on record, the opening of a new police academy, creation of a Neighborhood Safety Bike Team and expansion of its team that handles nonemergency calls.

DeJongh is especially proud of the department’s Wellness Division and its Community Services Bureau, which Hebeish helped lead while assistant chief. The program, he explained, watches for traumatic officer-involved incidents and refers them to counseling. It came about shortly after a string of officer suicides rocked the department.

“I cannot help but to think or believe that the experiences and the trauma they experienced on this job played into their decision to take their own lives,” he said. “You can only help but wonder, you know, could we even save just one of them if we had something like this in place at the time?”

But Hebeish leaves a department that has long suffered high vacancy rates, which has slowed response times. An August 2024 analysis of city data by the Post found 155 vacancies, about one in five officers. For all but the highest-priority calls, officers were taking more than 20 minutes longer to respond than they had three years earlier, the analysis found.

While dealing with a shortage of officers, the department announced it would stop responding to many minor noninjury crashes to focus on priority calls. Questions remain over how the department has handled traffic safety enforcement, as the city recorded 53 fatal traffic collisions in 2025 — the most in over a decade and surpassing the city’s homicide count that year.

Fatalities continue to climb into 2026, reaching more than 40 traffic deaths as of mid-October.

Public trust in the city police department continues to be an issue, as well, as criticisms are regularly slung at the department during city council meetings over the department’s handling of homelessness and the federal immigration raids that have continued throughout Long Beach over the past year.

The city’s Office of Police Oversight, established in 2022, has also urged the department to improve how it deals with the families of those killed by police and witnesses to shootings, following the 2024 killing of Brandon Boyd. The oversight commission has previously questioned whether internal investigations are handled in a timely manner and asked the department to review policies for when officers respond to domestic violence calls.

Countries are not doing enough to cut emissions that cause climate change, according to a new report from United Nations scientists. And the United States is a big part of the problem.

The U.S. sticks out as the only major economy where planet-warming pollution increased dramatically last year, the report notes.

Among the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the U.S. was tied last year with Russia for the most emissions per capita. China emits significantly more total greenhouse gases each year than the U.S., but has more than four times the population.

Overall, global emissions were basically the same last year as they were the previous year.

U.S. emissions grew because of increased electricity demand, as well as Trump administration policies that support the burning of fossil fuels. The Trump administration has ordered coal-fired power plants in the U.S. to stay open longer than planned, rolled back fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles and ended tax credits for solar and wind projects.

Those policies have made the U.S. an outlier when it comes to escalating greenhouse gas emissions, says Inger Andersen, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.

"Right now, everybody is scrambling a little bit regarding energy security," Andersen says, pointing to global oil and gas disruptions stemming from the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

Despite the geopolitical upheaval, "several G20 members have shown sustained emissions reduction," she notes.

That includes the European Union, which has invested heavily in energy-efficient appliances and renewable electricity sources such as wind and solar, partly in reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. is pulling out of U.N. climate work

The Trump administration has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, and is working to remove the U.S. from all U.N. climate work, arguing the international system imposes unfair burdens on Americans. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now says greenhouse gases do not pose a threat to human health and welfare, reversing its previous position.

The new report includes a statement from the U.S. government, saying the U.S. "does not endorse or agree with its analysis or conclusions, and has not provided comments to this report." The U.S. State Department did not respond to NPR's questions.

The new report, which is compiled annually by an international group of scientists, comes less than a month before global climate talks kick off in Turkey. World leaders will gather to discuss how to speed investments in clean energy and how to pay for the costs of dealing with climate change. The Trump administration will not participate in those talks.

Still, whether or not American leaders formally participate in international climate efforts, the effects of America's reliance on oil, gas and coal are being felt around the world, the U.N. warns. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping extra heat that warms the entire planet. The effects of all that pollution are felt globally.

The Earth is about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) warmer on average than it was in the mid-1800s, according to the World Meteorological Organization. That warming is driving widespread disasters, from deadly heat waves and floods to more intense storms and wildfires.

"All countries, especially the big emitters, must do more," says U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "Every fraction of a degree matters."

The Earth is on track for 5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming this century

Right now, the planet is on track for upwards of 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius) of warming this century, which would cause catastrophic impacts, such as massive sea level rise and the mass extinction of plants and animals, the report warns.

The U.N. Paris Climate agreement sets a goal of limiting warming to well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), in the hopes of avoiding such cataclysms.

This is the first year the annual report has acknowledged that even lower targets are now out of reach. However, it finds it is still possible to keep warming below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, if global greenhouse gas emissions fall by about 25% in the next decade.

But countries are currently lagging far behind that goal.

Under the Paris agreement, about two thirds of countries have submitted formal, up-to-date plans for cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. If they all follow through on those plans, it would reduce emissions by about 15% in the next decade — far less than the 25% needed.

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