The Brief

For 25 years, a group of the country’s top experts has been fastidiously tracking the ways that climate change threatens every part of the United States. Their findings informed the National Climate Assessments, a series of congressionally mandated reports released every four years that translated the science into accessible warnings for policymakers and the public. But that work came to a halt this spring when the Trump administration abruptly dismissed all 400 experts working on the next edition. Then, on June 30, all of the past reports vanished too, along with the federal website they lived on.

A lot of information about the changing climate has disappeared in President Donald Trump’s second term, but the erasure of the National Climate Assessments is “by far the biggest loss we’ve seen,” said Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

The National Climate Assessments were one of the most approachable resources that broke down how climate change will affect the places people care about, she said. The reports were also used by a wide swath of stakeholders — policymakers, farmers, businesses — to guide their decisions about the future. While the reports have been archived elsewhere, they’re no longer as easy to access. And it’s unclear what, if anything, will happen to the report that was planned for 2027 or 2028, which already existed in draft form.

So why did the reports survive Trump’s first term, but not his second?

You can view their disappearance a few ways, experts said — as a flex of executive power, an escalation in the culture war over climate change, or a strategic attempt to erase the scientific foundation for climate policy.

“If you suppress information and data, then you don’t have the evidence you need to be able to create regulations, strengthen regulations and even to combat the repeal of regulations,” Gehrke said.

This isn’t climate denial in the traditional sense. The days of loudly debating the science have mostly given way to a campaign to withhold the raw information itself. “I don’t know if we’re living in climate denial anymore,” said Leah Aronowsky, a science historian at Columbia Climate School. “We have this new front of denial by erasure.”

By cutting funding for research and withholding crucial data, the Trump administration is making it harder to know exactly how the planet is changing. In April, the administration pulled nearly $4 million in funding from a Princeton program to improve computer models predicting changes in the oceans and atmosphere, claiming the work created “climate anxiety” among young people. That same month, the Environmental Protection Agency failed to submit its annual report to the United Nations detailing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ended its 45-year tradition of tracking billion-dollar weather disasters. Trump also hopes to shut down the Mauna Loa laboratory in Hawaiʻi, which has measured the steady rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide since the 1950s — the first data to definitively show humans were changing the climate.

“This kind of wholesale suppression of an entire field of federally sponsored research, to my knowledge, is historically unprecedented,” Aronowsky said.

In a response to a request for comment, a NASA spokesperson said that it has “no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov’s data,” referring to the site that hosted the National Climate Assessments, adding that the U.S. Global Change Research Program had already “met its statutory requirements by presenting its reports to Congress.”

The EPA directed Grist to a webpage containing past greenhouse gas emissions reports, as well as a version of what was supposed to be this year’s report obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund. However, the agency confirmed that the latest data has not been officially released.

The White House declined to comment, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did not respond.

Last year, a leaked training video from Project 2025 — the policy roadmap organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — showed a former Trump official declaring that political appointees would have to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.” The strategy appears to be designed to boost the fossil fuel industry at a time when clean energy has become competitive and the reality of climate change harder to dismiss, as floods, fires, and heat waves have become perceptibly worse. “We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said in his inauguration speech in January.

The administration hasn’t exactly been subtle about its endgame. Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA, doesn’t deny the reality of climate change (he calls himself a “climate realist”), but he’s zealously dismantled environmental programs and has recommended that the White House strike down the “endangerment finding,” the bedrock of U.S. climate policy. It comes from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Air Act that required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants since they endanger public health. If the administration can convince the courts that climate change isn’t a health consideration, it could end that regulatory obligation.

“If you’re removing information about climate change, its reality and its impact on people, then I think it’s a lot easier to make the case that it’s not an environmental health issue,” Gehrke said.

There’s a word for the idea that ignorance can serve political ends: agnotology (from the Greek “agnosis,” or “not knowing”), the study of how knowledge is deliberately obscured. What Trump is doing to information about climate change fits squarely in that tradition, according to Aronowsky: “If you remove it, then in a certain sense, it no longer exists, and therefore, there’s nothing to even debate, right?”

Climate denial first took off in the 1990s, when the oil and gas companies and industry-friendly think tanks started sowing doubt about climate science. Over the decades, as the evidence became rock-solid, those who opposed reducing the use of fossil fuels gradually shifted from outright denying the facts to attacking solutions like wind and solar power.

What the Trump administration is doing now marks a radical break from this long-term trend, said John Cook, a climate misinformation researcher at The University of Melbourne in Australia.

“This is a 180, not just a turn, but diving into something we’ve never even seen before,” he said.

On the other hand, Cook said, the administration is taking a classic climate denial tactic — painting scientists as “alarmists” or conspirators who can’t be trusted — and turning it into government policy.

Half a year in, the second Trump administration’s treatment of climate information hasn’t yet reached the “eradication” levels that Project 2025 aspired to, at least on government websites. The EPA’s climate change website, for instance, is still up and running, even though all references to the phenomenon were erased on the agency’s home page. Most of the website deletions so far have served to isolate climate change as an issue, erasing its relationship to topics such as health and infrastructure, Gehrke said.

Until the National Climate Assessments disappeared, she would have said that “climate erasure” was an inappropriate characterization of what’s happening. “But now, I’m really not so sure,” she said.

Rachel Cleetus, the senior policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks that the administration’s actions actually go beyond erasure.

“They’re literally trying to change the basis on which a lot of policymaking is advanced — the science basis, the legal basis and the economic basis,” she said. Her biggest concern isn’t just what facts have been removed, but what political propaganda might replace them. “That’s more dangerous, because it really leaves people in this twilight zone, where what’s real, and what’s important, and what is going to affect their daily lives is just being obfuscated.”

Many Southern California cities and institutions are dropping big, grabby news today. Before you go "what the what" — remember, it's the first day of April.

Here's a roundup of some of the April Fools' news dump items.

Irvine, the 'pickleball-only' city

Irvine announced that it'll be converting all tennis courts into pickleball courts by 2027. That's one notch for Team Pickleball in the ongoing turf war between tennis lovers and pickleball players over the fight for court space to engage in their beloved sport.

"Starting today, April 1, all tennis courts are being converted to pickleball courts as part of a citywide effort to make Irvine a pickleball-only City by 2027," the post stated. "We don’t just think this is a good idea … we dink it’s a great one."

Catch that? They "dink" it's a great idea.

All hail Queen Latifah in Long Beach

Over in Long Beach, Mayor Rex Richardson announced the city's reigning royalty, the Queen Mary, will be renamed after another queen.

"After careful consideration, I am proud to announce that the Queen Mary will officially be renamed the RMS Queen Latifah," he said. "Long Beach is stepping into a new era as a major music destination — with a new amphitheater, a deep cultural legacy, and a future built on sound. It’s only right that our most iconic Queen reflects that energy."

In real-real news, LBC native and everyone's favorite Olympics commenter Snoop Dogg is headlining the grand opening show of the Long Beach Amphitheater in June. That's the new waterfront venue near the RMS Queen Latifah.

Prolific author gets his own library branch

Suspense writer James Patterson has more than 200 novels to his name, selling more than 450 million copies. If anyone deserves his own namesake branch, it would be Patterson, no?

The Los Angeles Public Library certainly dinks so, announcing today the James Patterson Canoga Park branch, "with wall to wall Patterson books and programming centered around this prolific author."

Eau de corpse flower

The opening of the corpse flower has become an annual event at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. The event brings legions hoping to get a whiff of the famed flower's "pungent aroma."

The San Marino institution announced that it's bottling the scent, as part of its new "The Huntington's Stank Collection."

"A musky gym sock note opens this unique fragrance, with a sweet, rotten-egg base to ground it. Smells like you – but smellier," the post explained.

Adopt something you can just leave at home, always

Pasadena Humane got in on the fun with a special event — today only — where you can adopt a rock.

"Adoption ROCKS! And today only, you can adopt a friend you won't take for granite," the message said.

Los Angeles may not be the fashion capital of the world, but it could contend for best thrift, at least in our humble opinion!

The key is knowing where to look.

Here are some of the best thrift and resale stores in different parts of Southern California according to our listeners and (very stylish) LAist colleagues.

Pasadena

Pasadena City College Flea Market

The pinnacle of Pasadena and open every third Sunday of the month, the flea market houses 400 vendors with goods ranging from antique furniture to unique second-hand clothing.

1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Ritz Resale

For high-end designer clothing, Dee in Pasadena, who likes handbags, recommends the consignment boutique, Ritz Resale.

“I found a Coach bag that I paid about $19 for that I use all the time,” she said.

2028 E. Villa St., Pasadena

Hotbox Vintage

If you’re looking for more affordable clothing and household items, Delaine Ureño, LAist senior institutional giving officer, frequents Hotbox Vintage in South Pasadena.

1125 Mission St., South Pasadena

Los Angeles

The Ticktocker Thrift Shop

This thrift shop in San Pedro is owned and operated by the Peninsula Chapter of National Charity League and comes recommended by Mel in the South Bay, who says proceeds support local charities and scholarship funds.

353 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Public Estrellas

If you’re ever in Lincoln Heights, Sarah Steinman, LAist's membership manager, encourages people to check out her neighborhood thrift store.

2701 N. Broadway, Los Angeles

Society of St. Vincent de Paul

This thrift store rec near Elysian Park comes from Lulu in Glendale, who says shoppers can grab a cute pair of pants along with unique furniture to put them in.

210 N. Avenue 21, Los Angeles

Berda Paradise

“Full of treasures and benefits the Hollywood Health Clinic, which is a few doors down,” said Malka Fenyvesi, LAist's major gifts officer.

3506 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

The Left Bank

LAist's Lucie Russo recommends The Left Bank in Frogtown if you’re looking for something more curated.

2479 Fletcher Dr., Los Angeles

Far Outfit

Anything on Long Beach’s aptly named Retro Row is worth hitting, according to AirTalk producer Manny Valladares. His favorite spot is Far Outfit. They have unique finds mostly from the early 2000s with a self-described “weird” factor.

2020 E. 4th St., Long Beach

Orange County

Laura’s House

With several locations throughout Orange County, including Costa Mesa and Aliso Viejo, LAist reporter Yusra Farzan recommends Laura’s House, noting they have a great curated collection and proceeds help domestic violence victims.

23635 El Toro Road, Suite F, Lake Forest

Timeless Vintage

Old Towne Orange is home to many great thrift stores and antique malls. If you’re looking for some good streetwear and sports jerseys, Timeless Vintage is a good choice. They have a great selection of 90s Looney Tunes and Disney graphic tees as well.

110 1/2 S. Glassell St., Orange

Retropolis

Another O.C. favorite is a fairly new addition to downtown Fullerton. Retropolis has a wide selection of apparel, but I like to go there for their chunky 80s sweaters and colorful jackets.

206 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton

And Beyond

Eco Thrift

“[Eco Thrift] has really good discount days on top of already affordable clothing,” said Dañiel Martinez, LAist’s Weekend Edition producer. “Tons of good vintage and designer finds hidden in the racks.”

1190 S. Garey Ave., Pomona

Revivals

“I went to Palm Springs where they have some of the best thrifting,” said AirTalk listener Monica in Artesia. She bought a pair of Ferragamo shoes for just $8.

Kevin Tidmarsh, LAist’s All Things Considered producer, specifically recommends Revivals, a thrift chain with locations throughout the Coachella Valley.

611 South Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs

Some of Los Angeles’s most iconic eateries — Papa Cristo’s in Pico-Union, Guerrilla Tacos in Downtown and French eatery TAIX in Echo Park — have closed their doors, prompting hand-wringing about the decline of the city’s rich and diverse food scene.

But those closures obscured a more notable achievement; 758 new restaurants opened last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2024, when 729 restaurants opened.

The split-screen view of dining in Los Angeles is part of a broader transformation that is reshaping the industry nationwide.

The explosion of digital-order services has rewritten the business model for restaurants, which are now operating with less space, reduced staff and tighter margins. Many of the new eateries do much of their business from behind a screen—either through self-service tablets or off delivery apps such as DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats.

So-called “limited-service” restaurants now account for nearly a third of all newly opened establishments. The number of traditional, or full-service, restaurants has also been growing, hitting 539 openings in 2025, and a record-high 587 the year before. If you count the number of coffee, smoothie and snack joints, the numbers rise even further.

Pizza to go

Many of Los Angeles’s restaurateurs are adapting to this burgeoning business model. Last year, Liz Gutierrez turned her pop-up restaurant, Fiorelli Pizza, into a small brick-and-mortar location in Beverly Grove with just a couple of stools at a counter for seating. As she saw restaurants closing their doors, the advantages of the new business model quickly dawned on her.

“This was something that could be operated with minimum labor, it could be way more manageable in terms of fixed costs and expenses, and we could still deliver restaurant-quality [food],” Gutierrez said.

The bevy of new food establishments opening their doors is a lone bright spot in an otherwise bleak economic picture: The total number of new businesses opening in the city is nearly half what it was a decade ago. That is driven in part by some of the same forces, such as Amazon.com, Inc. and other online retailers that put pressure on businesses operating out of traditional storefronts.

But the flourishing restaurant industry has been able to buck that trend so far. While Amazon can deliver clothes and even groceries, it still can’t deliver a fresh pizza or poké bowl.

The QR code will take your order

Linchi Kwok, a hospitality management researcher at Collins College of Hospitality Management at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, said a lack of interest in working in the hospitality industry, paired with rising labor costs, has pushed restaurant owners to find cost-effective workarounds to run their operations with fewer people.

“Limited-service restaurants don’t have to hire many people to do the work. It saves labor costs, saves space, and saves the service turn-around time. They don’t have to worry about it,” Kwok said.

Restaurants must share a portion of their already slim profit margins—usually between 2-4% in L.A.—with an app service and the driver. To offset that, restaurants have cut down on staff, letting go of waiters, hostesses and dishwashers, many of whom are no longer needed when orders are increasingly being delivered in disposable containers.

Despite the record number of openings, running a restaurant in the city has not gotten any easier. Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Association, noted that in 2024 taxable restaurant revenue hit $11 billion, which, when adjusted for inflation, is on par with 2012 levels.

“The piece of the pie that each restaurant gets is slimmer.”

Condie also said that the hollowing out of entertainment work, increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and stricter regulations “are conspiring against the L.A. restaurant scene.”

Condie said that regulations from city hall, such as stricter labor oversight and a proposal for a $30 minimum wage for some workers, are making it even tougher.

“The business environment is bad generally in L.A., but the city council and the mayor seem to be throwing salt in the wound.”

As the number of new restaurant openings has spiked, so have the number of closings reported to the city. However, business closure figures are not as reliable as business opening data, as some establishments close without reporting it to the city. Since 2021, 593 full- and limited-service restaurants have reported closing, compared with 3,148 openings.

Jimmy Chu spent several years working in fine dining, which inspired him to start his own restaurant. He knew it would be expensive. Rather than opening another fine-dining establishment, he opted for a limited-service restaurant where customers could order at the counter, no waiters involved.

Chu quit his job by the end of 2024, and in May 2025, he opened Bomb Hot Dog in Downtown Los Angeles. He estimates that his eatery gets roughly a third of its customers through mobile delivery orders.

Ghost kitchens

Ghost kitchens, or private kitchens used exclusively for delivery and takeout, have become a business model of their own. At Beverly Bites, 56 restaurants operate out of one facility serving the densely populated Beverly Hills and Beverlywood neighborhoods, though not all of them are open simultaneously. At Echo Park Eats, 40 restaurants are now within a five minute walk of Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers schedule was hung on the wall inside the facility, so owners can anticipate heavy foot traffic and delivery orders during home games.  

Last December, Ali Elreda rented out a space for his Mediterranean-Mexican fusion restaurant, Fatima’s Grill, at Echo Park Eats. 

Elreda operates four brick-and-mortar Fatima’s Grill locations, and this is his first time renting a ghost kitchen. He said the decision to start a delivery and takeout location was both a matter of savings and efficiency.  

“A lot of people are going the ghost-kitchen route because it’s quicker, it’s faster,” Elreda said. “You avoid a lot of overhead and foot traffic and having to find staff these days with the expensive economy out there is kind of tough.” 

With ghost kitchen facilities, business owners also no longer have to compete with each other to find prime real estate in Los Angeles.  

“You don’t have to do that research where you’ve got to find the right location. It’s just right there waiting for you,” Elreda said. 

How we did it: We examined more than 15 years of business license data reported to the Los Angeles Office of Finance.  Have questions about our data or want to ask us something? Write to use at askus@xtown.la 
Hyperlocal News

VAN, Turkey — It has been more than one month since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran. The U.S. says it has hit more than 10,000 targets. But U.S.- and Norway-based human rights groups estimate that at least hundreds of Iranian civilians have also been killed.

The war has also widened bitter ideological divides among Iranians in and outside the country over whether the conflict has been justified.

"There is difficulty [with the bombing], but we are not that weak," says one Iranian woman from Tehran, traveling to Turkey for a short break, given that her work has stopped due to the U.S. and Israeli bombing of the capital city. "In the past few years, the Islamic Republic [of Iran] has proved to us that we cannot trust them. But we were in war with Israel in the summer [during the 12-day war], and we saw how precise their targeting was, so we trust them."

"We are going to build a nuclear bomb now, because there's no fatwa against it anymore," interjects an Iranian man, overhearing her remarks, referring to a rumored religious ban on nuclear weapons issued by Iran's former supreme leader, whom Israel assassinated with U.S. help at the beginning of the war in late February.

Like all the Iranians in this story, the two people asked to remain anonymous. They have received texts from the Iranian government and have seen signs coming out of Iran warning them not to speak to foreign media on pain of arrest.

A microcosm of divergent opinions

Just across the border with Iran, in eastern Turkey, the Turkish city of Van is just as full as during prewar times, with thousands of Iranian workers, consulate employees, students and tourists, who are traveling despite the war in their home country. Van has also become a microcosm of the full range of divergent opinions that Iranians have about the war.

"There is no such thing as hardship in Iran," says one Iranian man, who crossed into Turkey for his job last week. "Everyone lives freely, woman or man."

Next to him, a second Iranian man looks at him, wide-eyed and shaking.

"In two days, the government killed 40,000 people," the man says, referring to a government crackdown in January on protesters. A U.S.-based human rights group has confirmed over 7,000 deaths, but many Iranians believe the death toll is far higher.

NPR has not been able to travel and report inside Iran, so it has been interviewing Iranians traveling through border areas, including in eastern Turkey.

The dozens of Iranians NPR has interviewed transiting through Van may not be representative of all Iranians in the country. Many Iranians in Van are those wealthy enough to travel. But there are also poorer Iranians working, often under the table, in Turkey. A few Iranians I met and interviewed say they are heading off to study abroad.

The commonality among most Iranians NPR spoke with is that they feel they have lost opportunities — to make a living, to voice their opinions, simply to live — under the current government, which they say must go.

"Our pain is something you have to feel for yourself [to understand]," says one Iranian man who has been working in Turkey for the last year. He spent the previous seven years in prison, he says, after being accused of being an anti-Islamic heretic. "Iran's security forces … took everything from us. They only give pain. They are pain incarnate," he says, so much so, he is willing to lose all he has, even his family in Iran, for his government to be wiped out.

"The war should never have started," says one Iranian university student. "But now that it has, the U.S. and Israel should finish it," she says, meaning toppling Iran's regime.

"Met with bullets"

Some Iranians who support the war against their own country say their perspectives are indelibly shaped by that government crackdown in early January. This year's killings of demonstrators finally made them realize, they say, that decades of popular resistance would never change their government.

"Three of my own friends were killed" in the crackdown, says one Iranian man. He crossed into Turkey last week to earn money, more than he could make in Iran. "My friends were all young. I knew them all my life. Yet the government killed them so easily."

"Every two years, there is a big protest," he says. Research from Stanford University published this year found thousands of instances of dissent over the last decade and a half, averaging to one protest every three days inside Iran.

But this time, his hometown, in Iran's western Kermanshah province, was brutally punished by government paramilitary groups for people in his town participating in January's protests.

"It is as if my town has been burned down. Nothing is left of it," he says. "I see no future for my children in Iran." His only hope now, he says, is a foreign intervention. "Our only hope is Trump. Our only hope is that Trump and Bibi [Israel's prime minister] make the right moves."

"We are scared of the bombing," an Iranian woman says. "But we are happy thinking that there might be a light at the end of this darkness. When our young people went out and protested this January, they were met with bullets. With slaughter. With executions."

Nearly all the Iranians traveling in Turkey who spoke to NPR said they are hopeful about Iran. They have immediate plans to return to their country and stressed that they are not leaving it. Migration data from the United Nations shows fewer Iranians are leaving Iran for Turkey than before the war.

"We are not fleeing," says one young Tehran resident. Even though she almost lost an eye in the anti-government demonstrations this winter, she says she is going back to Tehran in a few days. "We are determined to rebuild our country, and if the government changes, I will work, for free if needed."
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