The Brief

Copper wire thieves have damaged the LA Metro system, darkened swaths of neighborhood streetlights, and swiped cell phone towers for years.

Now, L.A. City Councilmembers Traci Park and Kevin de León are calling for a new LAPD task force to fight back against the spike in copper crime that's costing the city millions of dollars each year.

“The city, quite literally, is being stripped for parts,” de León’s motion said.

About the issue

Park, whose 11th district includes West L.A, Venice, and Brentwood, told LAist copper wire theft is one of the most serious problems the city is facing.

There’s been nearly 400 thefts reported using the MyLA311 app since 2020 in her district alone, Park said, and that doesn’t include the number of reports to the LAPD or other agencies.

“Thieves and vandals have tampered with traffic signals in our intersections, with rail crossings, and other infrastructure that actually puts people's lives at risk,” she said. “So this is something that we just simply cannot tolerate.”

Miguel Sangalang is the director of the Bureau of Street Lighting, which handles all of the streetlights for the city of Los Angeles.

That includes roughly 250,000 streetlight assets, connected by about 9,000 miles of underground conduit and 27,000 miles of copper wire, which covers two-thirds of the city.

Sangalang told LAist it’s not unheard of to have these kinds of thefts because the components in an electrical system are valuable, but the pace of the problem has reached a level they’ve never seen before.

He said they’ve dealt with a tenfold increase in repair reports over the last five years — from about 500 to 700 incidents on average to nearly 7,000 a year.

South L.A. and downtown are some of the hardest hit areas. Sangalang said the San Fernando Valley also sees a similar number of incidents, but they’re more spread out and not necessarily concentrated in one neighborhood as in other parts of the city.

Cost of the crime

The thefts from last year alone cost the city an estimated $17 million in repairs, Park noted.

With L.A. heading for some difficult budget decisions in the next fiscal year, she said that’s a lot of money going towards fixing criminal activity rather than addressing homelessness, repairing sidewalks, or other essential services.

“It isn't a drop in the bucket, not at all,” Park said. “That is going to come at the expense of additional sanitation workers, or getting potholes filled, or addressing other dangerous conditions.”

Sangalang said copper wire thieves typically rip into the infrastructure, which can knock out several streetlights. He said getting them working again isn’t as simple as changing a bulb — it’s more like rewiring a whole house.

He said they have to send out multiple electrician crews to pull out all of the wire and reconnect it, which can take several hours. It costs about $36,000 to repair, and strengthen, one circuit and the 18 lights connected to it.

“We've been struggling because those are things that we've had to ask the mayor and city council to actually fund us,” Sangalang said.

He added that they’ll have to make some tough choices in the near future as the city faces the fiscal reality of a tight budget.

How they’re hoping to fix it

Park and de León introduced a pair of separate, but related motions late last month.

The first, from de León, calls for a Copper Wire Task Force that would tackle thefts in downtown L.A., Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights — all communities in his 14th District.

Thieves have damaged more than 3,700 streetlights in those last three areas alone by ripping out the copper wire, according to the motion.

The 6th Street Bridge has also been a popular stop. De León said criminals have stolen tens of thousands of dollars of copper wire from that infrastructure in recent weeks. He also offered $200,000 of his district funds to help cover the cost of the task force.

The second motion, from both Park and de León, would create a reward program designed to encourage people to report copper wire thefts and streetlight crimes in the city.

Park said their proposals would add onto the other work the city has done to combat the issue, including warning letters sent to recyclers about the potential criminal consequences of stolen copper.

“This is a problem that none of us should have to put up with,” she said. “What we're seeing is multiple tools being made available that can be utilized together to have a comprehensive crackdown on this citywide.”

Sangalang said they have to leave the investigative work to the LAPD, but the Bureau of Street Lighting has also been taking steps to deter thefts.

For example, they’ve started fortifying specific lights by using cement, steel, and concrete to hide all of the accessibility points.

“Think of it as building the biggest castles we can around our streetlights,” Sangalang said.

That process can take several days, if not weeks. He said there was one streetlight in South L.A. they were working to repair and fortify for nearly two months.

They’re also looking at deploying sensors and cameras to try and safeguard certain areas, especially those that have been hit by “repeat customers.”

“Looking at smart technology that can actually give us alerts, so that we can share some of this information with the enforcement side of the city and try and deal with that as well,” he added.

They’ve also added about 90 all-in-one lighting systems that are solar-powered and battery-enabled.

Sangalang said those are easier to repair, and it makes the lights more resilient.

“The power system might go out,” he said. “Well, we'd still have emergency lighting in the form of battery backup for several days.”

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene became a household name in the run up to the 2020 election for divisive rhetoric, political stunts and enthusiastic support of President Donald Trump. But after growing disagreements with Trump during his second term, Greene announced she will leave Congress in January before her term is up.

Greene said it would not be fair to her northwest Georgia district, one of the most conservative in the country, to have them "endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for" while noting that "Republicans will likely lose the midterms."

Greene's split with Trump widened in recent weeks as she pushed for the release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

For months, Greene had been publicly pressing Trump and top Republicans in Congress to release all files from two federal investigations into Epstein. She was part of a small cadre of Republicans who helped force a vote on the House floor to release the files — a process that drove Trump to reverse his position on the documents and led to near-unanimous support for the measure this week.

But before Trump reversed course, he lashed out last week, calling her "Marjorie Traitor Greene," and told reporters, "Something happened to her over the last period of a month or two where she changed politically."

In her post Friday night, Greene defended her decision to fight for the release of those documents.

"Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for," Greene wrote.

Greene's defiant push against Trump

On a brisk morning this week, Greene stood outside the Capitol with some of the women who say they were abused by Epstein.

"I've never owed him anything," Greene of the president on Tuesday. "But I fought for him and for America First. And he called me a traitor for standing with these women."

The cracks between Trump and Greene grew over the last year, as Greene increasingly pointed out where she saw the president falling short: she called the war in Gaza a genocide, criticized Trump's decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and pressed for expiring health subsidies to be extended, citing the threat of skyrocketing premiums for people in her district, including her own children.

And she was doing it not just on social media or right-wing outlets, but on programs like ABC's The View.

"What Happened to Marjorie?"

"I was thinking, if this was the first time I'd ever seen this person, it sounds like a normal congressperson from Schoolhouse Rock," said University of North Georgia professor Nathan Price after Greene's appearance on the daytime television staple.

For some, this new persona may be hard to square with the Greene many Americans first got to know: the congresswoman who embraced QAnon conspiracy theories, liked a post that called for violence against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. and heckled school shooting survivor David Hogg in 2020, before he became a prominent political activist.

Even Trump has publicly mused in recent weeks: "What happened to Marjorie?"

Georgia Republican strategist Brian Robinson says it's a fair question.

"I am open to the idea that she's had a 'road to Damascus' moment, a conversion, that she sees the errors of the toxicity and wants something that's better," Robinson said in an interview with NPR earlier in the week.

On her own social media and with journalists, Greene has been open about addressing claims from Trump and others that she has changed or abandoned the president. NPR reached out to Greene for further comment.

"Nothing has changed about me," Greene told the hosts of The View. "I'm staying absolutely 100% true to the people who voted for me, and true to my district."

Robinson said the changes could be part of a natural evolution for Greene, a former CrossFit gym owner from the Atlanta suburbs.

"We love to elect outsiders to Congress," Robinson said. "They go to Congress with very little idea of how it works. And if at some point you're like, 'I want to do substantive things that make America better, then I've got to do this a little bit different."

Or, Robinson said, she may be trying to broaden her appeal with an important constituency as she weighs a bid for higher office. Trump said last week he showed Greene polling earlier this year suggesting she would flounder in a race for Georgia governor or Senate.

"Is she intentionally signaling to women, 'The good old boys club ignores us, and I understand your struggles?" Robinson said.

Both Robinson and Price said Greene's evolution was more about style than substance. She has disavowed some of her more controversial views, but not others, like the unproven assertion that widespread fraud upended the 2020 election result.

The anti-interventionist, anti-elite principles that first propelled her to Congress also remain core to her identity. "What she's responding to is believing that the President has shifted on these issues," said Price.

Some potential political opponents see an opportunity in Greene's break with Trump. Robinson, who worked for Greene's opponent in her first primary race, says in the past he has warned potential challengers not to underestimate her.

"You are wasting your time," Robinson said. "She will beat you. And I would have said that into infinity until this week."

How Greene's district reacted to the shift

But in the 14th Congressional District, it was not clear this week that anything had changed. As chair of the Paulding County Republican Party, Ricky Hess spends a lot of time talking with voters.

"The issues that they want to talk about involve high property taxes, high health care costs, whether or not their kids will be able to buy a house when they graduate," Hess said this week ahead of Greene's resignation.

Hess told NPR he believes Greene's "America First" worldview resonates in this heavily working class and rural stretch of Northwest Georgia.

"She's pretty tapped into what her constituents are wanting, and I have to believe that most of her actions are in service to that," Hess said.

Hess said voters saw Trump and Greene as fighters on the same team. Though Martha Zoller, who hosts a political talk radio show that airs across North Georgia, said in an interview Wednesday she didn't believe everyone's minds were made up.

"People are kind of reeling, if you want to know the truth," Zoller said. "We haven't had a lot of listeners discussing it because they're waiting to see what happens."

Georgia political observers noted that Greene has been anything but a predictable politician — including her surprise resignation.

Trump has come to a truce with other politicians he's feuded with, including Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. And his future relationship with Greene could still evolve.

But Zoller said the conflict between Trump and Greene has been about more than just two big personalities falling out on the national stage.

"I think that the big discussion we're going to be having as Republicans over the next few years is what is the Republican movement once it's not Trump?"

Zoller said earlier this week it seemed clear that Greene wants to be part of that discussion. But with her resignation, the answer to that question is may be less clear now than before.

NPR's Stephen Fowler contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Promoting illegal car sideshows and street races in Long Beach, whether through social media, print, or group chats, could soon cost you up to $1,000 and six months in jail.

The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday voted to create a new ordinance that makes it illegal to encourage or advertise street takeovers, saying these exhibitions are an outstanding danger to the public and a nuisance to neighborhoods.

The item will come back to the dais as a draft prepared by the city’s attorney’s office, which would then be voted into law.

It will allow police to levy penalties on those they can prove promoted or encouraged people to attend the illegal exhibition, which often includes cars doing donuts and burnouts in public intersections ringed by crowds. Police will track promoters through testimony and social media. Promotion bans like this one already exist in other municipalities like San Jose and Alameda County.

It builds on a 2022 city law targeting those who attend these events, making it a misdemeanor for those within 200 feet of a street takeover. Tuesday’s vote also included an amendment that exempts accredited news reporters from the existing spectator ban.

The city’s northernmost 9th City Council District, where the proposal originated, continues to claim the majority of reported street races across Long Beach, with more instances reported there than other parts of the city combined.

Ninth District Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie said the law was a direct response to what her constituents experience regularly.

“Illegal street racing and sideshows remain some of the most dangerous public safety challenges in our city,” she said.

Between 2022 and 2023, the police received 349 calls about street racing or other exhibitions of speed — 210 of which were in Ricks-Oddie’s district that encompasses most of the city above South Street. When asked, police did not provide more up-to-date statistics.

Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, whose district borders Rick-Oddie’s, said in the Longwood neighborhood, sideshows are a common occurrence on Susana Road, a street that borders unincorporated land and is next to an elementary school.

“Reckless driving is harmful for everyone,” she said. “It is unacceptable in areas that are highly utilized by children, and we must return our streets and neighborhoods to a state of normalcy.”

In the city’s plan to eliminate all vehicular deaths by 2026, commonly known as Vision Zero, a survey section found nearly a quarter of respondents listed traffic enforcement as the top priority. Ahead of the 2026 budget, respondents ranked public safety among the top three priorities for the city.

The city also plans to install three automated speeding ticket cameras in the 9th District, along Artesia Boulevard from Harbor Avenue to Butler Avenue; Atlantic Avenue from the L.A. River to Artesia Boulevard; and Long Beach Boulevard from Artesia Boulevard to 70th Street.

Long Beach is on track to have more than 50 traffic deaths this year.

Millions of Americans have shed pounds with help from drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound.

But people who take these drugs often experience unpleasant side effects.

"They lose weight, which is a positive thing," says Warren Yacawych of the University of Michigan, "but they experience such severe nausea and vomiting that patients stop treatment."

So at this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, Yacawych and other researchers held a session to describe their efforts to understand and solve the side-effect problem.

The weight-loss products are called GLP-1 agonists. They work by mimicking a hormone that reduces appetite and slows digestion.

Yacawych and his colleagues wanted to know if they could tweak these drugs to suppress appetite without making people queasy.

The team focused on two areas in the brain stem where GLP-1 drugs have a big effect.

"The first is affectionately known as the brain stem's vomit center," Yacawych says. "It's naturally designed to detect any accidentally ingested toxin and coordinate the feeling of nausea and the vomit response."

The second area monitors food intake and tells people when they're full.

The team found a way to direct GLP-1 to the area involved in feeling full, while keeping the drug out of the vomit center.

When the researchers did this, the mice no longer felt sick. But they also didn't get thin — probably because there are specific cells in the vomit center that do not induce vomiting but are critical to weight loss.

"So it's very challenging," Yacawych says, "to be able to separate these side effects, like nausea, from GLP-1's intended effects, like weight loss."

A possible workaround came from a team led by Ernie Blevins of the University of Washington. They gave obese rats a low dose of a GLP-1 drug along with the hormone oxytocin, which is itself an appetite suppressant. That allowed the rats to lose weight without feeling sick.

Not just nausea

Another side effect of GLP-1 drugs is a decrease in thirst, which could be dangerous for people who are already losing lots of fluids from side effects like vomiting and diarrhea.

"If you're in that state of dehydration and you're not feeling thirsty to replace those fluids, that would be a problem," says Derek Daniels of the University at Buffalo.

To understand how GLP-1 drugs reduce thirst, Daniels and a team began studying the brains of rats. And they got lucky.

"We had a happy accident in the lab," Daniels says. "And the happy accident involved a rat called the Brattleboro rat."

Brattleboro rats are laboratory rodents with a genetic mutation that makes them thirsty nearly all the time. But the scientists discovered that these rats are also very sensitive to GLP-1 drugs, which drastically reduced their water consumption.

The team studied the rats' brains to see where GLP-1 was influencing thirst. That led them to several areas of the brain that appear to affect thirst but not appetite.

The discovery could help scientists preserve thirst by designing drugs that "target good places but not bad places," Daniels says.

Appetite and addiction

A team from the University of Virginia found that GLP-1 drugs are already targeting a brain area that plays a role in addiction as well as eating. It's a region involved in emotion and the reward system.

When the researchers delivered GLP-1 to this brain area in mice, it reduced their desire for "rewarding food, like a burger," says Ali D. Güler of the University of Virginia.

But the animals continued to eat healthy, nonrewarding foods, he says — a bit like people choosing a salad bar over dessert.

Identifying this brain area should help scientists find GLP-1 drugs that target the reward system while avoiding areas involved in appetite, Güler says. And that could lead to new treatments for alcoholism and other substance use disorders.

The finding also could explain the observation that people who take GLP-1 agonists tend to reduce their consumption of alcohol.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas' 2026 congressional redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.

The court's conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.

The order came about an hour after the state called on the high court to intervene to avoid confusion as congressional primary elections approach in March. The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.

The order was signed by Alito because he is the justice who handles emergency appeals from Texas.

Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer as part of Trump's efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year's elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle. The new redistricting map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.

If that ruling eventually holds, Texas could be forced to hold elections next year using the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 based on the 2020 census.

Texas was the first state to meet Trump's demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state's new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there.

The redrawn maps are facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.

The Supreme Court is separately considering a case from Louisiana that could further limit race-based districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It's not entirely clear how the current round of redistricting would be affected by the outcome in the Louisiana case.