The Brief

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved another large settlement for hundreds of people who alleged they were abused as children while in the county’s care.

This $828 million settlement covers 414 cases for alleged sexual abuse in its probation department and the Department of Children and Family Services. This is the second payout for roughly 14,000 claims brought under Assembly Bill 218, a measure that extended the statute of limitations back decades.

The settlements have attracted controversy because of claims of attorney misconduct.

The sign off means the county will shell out close to $5 billion between this and the historic settlement approved earlier this year.

Where will the funds come from?

The hefty payout comes as the county is dealing with the financial fallout of the January fires and facing unprecedented federal cuts.

County officials have formed a finance plan to fund the latest settlement over the next few years. They’re moving $400 million from the Provisional Financing Uses fund to write the first check, due by Dec. 1. That’s a chunk of its $1.9 billion budget that’s intended to supplement future projects, according to county documents.

The rest of the settlement will be factored into the Judgement and Damages fund during the next few years.

This may not be the end of the payments, however. About 2,500 cases still need to be decided, with more expected on the horizon.

“ These settlements are unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my 30 plus year history with the county,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said at the meeting. “ These settlements will impact the county for decades to come, especially in our mission to serve as a safety net for our residents.”

The problem is more than money 

One of the key issues is the way AB 218 was written, which meant the door was thrown open for sex abuse claims going back decades.

Childhood sex abuse is usually an area where officials want to quickly support victims. However, the payouts have been under heavy scrutiny after an L.A. Times investigation alleged plaintiffs were paid to join lawsuits — including with fabricated claims.

County counsel Dawyn Harrison says fraud was anticipated because of the volume of cases, but it was the “unmanageable law” that allowed it to happen at a wide scale.

“This reality is compounded by the fact that this is not like a traditional mass tort case,” she said. “AB 218 allowed for decades-old claims, which means most evidence is not available, nor are the witnesses.”

Two levels of fraud review typically happen in a county settlement that includes reviewing a plaintiff’s claim details and interviews. All AB 218 claims will now go through at least the first level, Harrison said.

A new third level will be for all claims tied to the specific law firm suspected of fraud or for plaintiffs who indicated they were brought in by a recruiter or vendor. That will look into how people were signed up to sue.

Attorneys also have agreed to let the county interview the plaintiffs, which wasn’t allowed previously by court order.

“ The focus now needs to be on fixing the statutory scheme that created these vulnerabilities,” Harrison said. “Not upending the settlement for doing the right thing under impossible circumstances.”

Keeping children safe today

The Board grilled officials for more than an hour before approving the settlement, focusing on other concerns such as ways to prevent future sex abuse.

When the allegations first came out, they spurred a county action plan. One of the changes from that includes a new process for people to step forward via a dedicated hotline. That’s expected to launch by the end of the year. However, the Board questioned whether that and other changes discussed are proactive enough to keep children safe today.

“ When I looked at all the corrective actions, none of it, not one of it was to prevent. It was all after the fact,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said. “ We’re trying to hire as fast as we can, but clearly, that’s also the place we need to lean in vetting people who are coming in to be the caretakers in our juvenile facilities.”

Many of the allegations stem from the county’s juvenile system. Chief probation officer Guillermo Viera Rosa appeared to disagree with her overall assessment, saying robust changes have been made.

On his show Monday night, Kimmel responded to first lady Melania Trump's call for ABC to "take a stand" against him for a joke he made about her ahead of the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Two days after Kimmel's original segment aired, authorities subdued a heavily armed man who they say entered the event at the Washington Hilton ballroom in an attempt to target administration officials.

In a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday, the comedian delivered a mock White House Correspondents' Dinner roast. "Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow," Kimmel quipped.

In a post on X, the first lady called Kimmel's joke about her "hateful and violent."

On Monday, Kimmel told his audience, it "obviously was a joke about their age difference, and the look of joy we see on her face every time they're together." He said it was a "light roast" and was "not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that." Kimmel added that he's been very vocal for many years against gun violence.

Melania Trump didn't see it that way. "His monologue about my family isn't comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America," she wrote on Twitter on Monday. "People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate."

Mrs. Trump urged ABC, the network that airs Kimmel's weeknight show, to take action, asking "how many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community?"

First lady Melania Trump attends the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25, 2026.

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Mandel Ngan

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Hours later, President Trump took to social media to lend support to his wife. Trump wrote that Kimmel's comments went "beyond the pale" and that Jimmy Kimmel should be "immediately fired by Disney and ABC."

In September, Kimmel was taken off the air after a conservative backlash over comments Kimmel made in the aftermath of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk's assassination. In his monologue, Kimmel said the "MAGA gang" was trying to score political points from the Kirk killing.

The FCC Chair Brendan Carr responded to the backlash by threatening ABC affiliates. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said to podcaster Benny Johnson. "These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Disney — which owns ABC — decided to suspend Kimmel's show. That decision sparked a furor over free speech and censorship. Kimmel's show returned six days later, and the host said, "it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man." Kimmel accepted why some people were upset with his remarks and said they had been "ill-timed,or unclear or maybe both."

Meanwhile, users on X have been responding to Melania Trump's post. Some appear to be supportive. Others point to the president's history of strongly worded, disparaging and racist remarks in posts about women and his political detractors such as Barack Obama.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Huntington Beach suffered another courtroom loss in its culture war battles this week when a judge ordered the city to pay $1 million in legal fees for restricting minors’ access to library books.

The City Council passed a resolution in 2023 prohibiting children from accessing books deemed to contain sexual content in the city's public libraries. Critics said the policy amounted to illegal censorship, and that it was actually an excuse to restrict books with LGBTQ characters and themes.

In September 2025, Orange County Judge Lindsey Martinez found the policy violated California’s newly passed Freedom to Read Act.

The city had also established a citizen review board with the power to censor children’s books at the library. Voters repealed that review board in a special city election in June 2025.

Since the start of last year, the city has lost court battles over state housing mandates, voter ID requirements and California’s immigrant sanctuary law, racking up millions in legal fees.

“The City Council continues to burn through taxpayer dollars to pursue their own personal grievances,” said Erin Spivey, the named plaintiff in the library lawsuit who is now running for City Council.

The city has received some pro bono legal counsel from the conservative law firm America First Legal, co-founded by Trump advisor Stephen Miller, including a recent appeal over the sanctuary law.

The city has appealed Martinez’s decision and, in the meantime, has not taken many of the steps required in the judge’s order, according to library advocates. Those include returning a handful of censored books on puberty and the human body to the children’s section, and restoring the central library’s once-popular teen section.

In a statement to LAist, Mike Vigliotta, the city attorney, said officials were “evaluating next steps.” He also noted that the judge’s award of $1 million was reduced from the $1.5 million initially requested by plaintiffs.

Just a few months after California overhauled the way it teaches children to read, a new bill takes on math education — and may be just as controversial.

Senate Bill 1067 would require schools to screen all kindergartners, first- and second-graders for basic math skills, and give them extra help if they’re behind. The idea is to help those children catch up to their peers who might have had much more exposure to math before starting school.

“A student’s early math skills are the most powerful predictor of their later success in school,” said Amy Cooper, a senior advisor at EdVoice, an education nonprofit that’s cosponsoring the bill. “We're not talking about tracking kids. There's no labels. It's just about getting support to students so that they can get up to grade level.”

California students, in all grade levels, have long struggled in math. Last year, just 37% of students performed at grade level in math, with some groups of students faring far worse. Just 16% of Black 11th-graders, for example, met the state’s grade-level standard. Nationwide, California ranks 43rd in 4th grade math scores, behind Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and dozens of other states.

One reason for the poor performance, experts say, is California’s uneven early education landscape. Until transitional kindergarten became available to all 4-year-olds last year, children showed up at kindergarten with a wide array of abilities and skills. Some had years of exposure to early math — either at preschool or at home — and could count, do basic arithmetic and even read a little. Others, especially low-income children, had no prior exposure to the ABCs and 123s, and lagged far behind. Even now, TK and kindergarten are optional, so some students start first grade with no previous math instruction at all.

‘Critical tipping point’

Some of those children catch up eventually, but many continue to fall further and further behind, research shows. And because math is sequential, catching up becomes harder over time, and the gap widens. Some researchers found that early math skills can even be a predictor of how well students do in high school and college.

It’s still too early to gauge the impact of transitional kindergarten on students’ long-term math performance, but so far there’s still a gap between children who’ve had exposure to math — either through preschool or at home — and those who haven’t. Low-income children are far less likely to get that early exposure, said Alice Klein, a developmental psychologist and research director at the education research firm WestEd.

“It is a critical tipping point,” Klein said. “Unless those students get intervention, the gap will widen. It’ll be harder for them to access higher-level math classes later on, and this will have implications for future job opportunities and the economic future of California. It’s a continual closing of opportunities.”

Transitional kindergarten teacher Rachelle Bacong leads students during a math lesson at Ira Harbison Elementary School in National City on April 21, 2026. Photos by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters Klein supports the math screening legislation because she said it’s an effective way to identify students who are struggling and provide them with support. At least 20 other states have math screenings and have seen positive results, she said.

“I’m so happy that California is considering passing this bill,” Klein said. “It’s a great start, and could be the next step” in improving math outcomes in California.

Numbers and objects

Districts would have their choice of several screening tests to choose from, each ranging from 10 to 20 minutes long and testing children’s knowledge of basic math concepts. For example, kindergartners might be asked to look at two groups of dots and decide which group has more. Or they’d be asked to identify certain numbers and show that they understand what the numbers mean — that “three” means three objects, for example. English learners would take the test in their native languages.

The bill is authored by state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, a Democrat from San Diego, and last week passed unanimously in the Senate education committee.

Its cosponsor, EdVoice, was behind the push for phonics-based literacy instruction in California public schools. That initiative passed, but only after a long fight with the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, and English learner advocates, who argued that it didn’t give teachers enough flexibility and that it wouldn’t be effective for students whose first language isn’t English. The final version of the bill doesn’t require schools to take advantage of state-funded teacher training, but it does require them to use phonics-based classroom materials.

Too many tests?

There might be a fight over the proposed math testing as well. The California Teachers Association opposes it, as well as California County Superintendents, the Association of California School Administrators and the California Mathematics Council.

They argue that the screening is unnecessary because the state already has a comprehensive new math framework and has made other big investments in early math. It’ll take time for those investments to show results. Also, the math framework emphasizes critical thinking and real-world math problems, and the screening might be too narrow and not take into account young children’s developmental differences.

They also argue that the testing will be pointless unless the state funds tutoring to help those students who are identified as needing extra help.

Transitional kindergarten students arrange number blocks during class at Ira Harbison Elementary School in National City on April 21, 2026. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters Nick Johnson, an associate professor of teacher education at San Diego State University, questioned whether schools need yet another standardized test. The federal education policy No Child Left Behind, adopted in the early 2000s, focused heavily on testing, and led to few improvements, he said.

“Since No Child Left Behind testing, we've assumed that (standardized testing) will improve student learning," Johnson said. "But the evidence shows that's rarely true. Is public education in a better place now than it was 25 years ago?"

Magic of math

Rachelle Bacong has been teaching kindergarten and TK for 30 years in National City, near San Diego. She weaves math into every activity the children do. When she sets up an art project, she asks them how many chairs are at the table and how many scissors they’ll need. When she makes smoothies with them, she asks them how much juice or how many chunks of bananas they should add. When the children wash their hands, she asks them how long they spent at the sink.

They also spend a good portion of their day playing with blocks, tiles and tubes, experimenting with shapes and dimensions. Bacon’s goal is to make math fun and easy to grasp, no matter where the child is developmentally.

“Math crosses all cultures, abilities and backgrounds. It’s accessible to everyone. It’s my job to design the learning environment to make it accessible to everyone,” Bacong said. “That’s what’s so magical about it.”

Transitional kindergarten teacher Rachelle Bacong insider her classroom at Ira Harbison Elementary School in National City on April 21, 2026. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters She also spends time every day explicitly teaching them math, although in a way that’s blended with play. She’ll teach them songs about numbers, show them how shapes fit together, and gently guide them when a solution might not be clear. Math instruction needs to come from several angles, she said, because children’s cognitive skills develop at such different rates.

She welcomes extra help for children who need it, but she’s skeptical that a test will reflect how individual children process math concepts. She already knows how her students are faring, and she fears that screening results will be used to stigmatize children, teachers or schools.

“My fear is that it’ll focus on a child’s deficits,” Bacong said. “Math needs to be joyful, fun and developmentally appropriate. We want to set students up for success, so they’ll be prepared for whatever they’re going to be designing or building in the future.”

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