The Brief

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved a motion to declare a state of emergency at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, which state authorities have said was unsuitable to house youths because of insufficient staffing and other problems.

The declaration authorizes the Probation Department to hire or move staff to the juvenile hall and offer incentives, like signing bonuses and other benefits.

Supervisors voted 4-1 to approve the declaration. It comes less than a week after the Probation Department blew a state Dec. 12 deadline to move more than 200 youths out of Los Padrinos.

The Board of State and Community Corrections said low staffing was leading to youths being kept in rooms too long, missing medical appointments and outdoor recreation time.

“It’s not about the physical location or the facility,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger told reporters at a Tuesday news conference. “The biggest issue continues to be staffing.”

In a statement, Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa said he supported the supervisors’ emergency proclamation.

“Drastic and decisive measures are needed to root deep-seated issues plaguing our only secured youth facility, Los Padrinos,” Viera Rosa said.

But many who spoke during the public comment period at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday said the declaration was a step in the wrong direction. Dozens of criminal justice reform activists with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, the Youth Justice Coalition and other groups spoke against the motion.

Tyrique Shipp with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition urged the supervisors to vote no, arguing that the declaration would undermine the county’s plan to eventually replace juvenile detention halls with home-like housing and programs that provide a range of mental health and other services.

“In this motion we’re trying to give Probation more power,” Shipp said.

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath was the sole dissenting vote, saying she was not convinced the declaration would grant any additional powers to the Probation Department.

“Doubling down on failed tactics — which led to crisis after crisis — is not the way forward,” Horvath said. “I believe this motion reinforces young people being subjected to unsafe conditions, not accountability on them or on stuff."

What the emergency declaration does 

Among other things, the local emergency declaration:

• Allows the county to designate certain employees who work at Los Padrinos as Disaster Services Workers, which mandates their attendance
  
• Directs County Counsel to pursue all legal options to prevent youths housed at Los Padrinos from being released into the public. An amendment from Hahn requires the declaration not to hinder ongoing work to place youths outside of jail-like settings, whenever possible.
  
• Calls for bringing on qualified California peace officers and recent law-enforcement retirees to work with the Probation Department, offering sign-on bonuses of $24,000 or other bonuses to those who make the move.
  
• Directs the county human resources department to expedite hiring and recruitment.

Ongoing staffing problems

In a recent letter to the Probation Department, the state board said a re-inspection of Los Padrinos this month found that of 45 shifts reviewed, 24% did not meet the department’s required minimum staffing.

“We found that the current staffing numbers do not allow for all required activities, operations, programs and facility functions, and to ensure the safety of youth and staff,” the letter states.

L.A. County officials are pushing back on the Board of State and Community Corrections that Los Padrinos was unsuitable to house incarcerated youth. In a letter sent to the board last week, county attorney Esteban Rodriguez wrote that the board had “applied incorrect standards to determine whether Los Padrinos had adequate staffing,” and called for a stay of enforcement.

What’s next? 

The state board has called a special meeting Wednesday to discuss the situation, but it’s unclear what enforcement actions, if any, the body can take.

The agenda is available on its website.

Probation officials are due in L.A County Superior Court next week when they are expected to make a case to a judge as to why they shouldn’t be ordered to shut down Los Padrinos.

Updated April 25, 2026 at 22:18 PM ET

President Donald Trump and the first lady are uninjured after a shooting incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday in Washington, D.C., according to a statement from the U.S. Secret Service. A suspect is in custody, the statement said.

"The U.S. Secret Service, in coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department, is investigating a shooting incident near the main magnetometer screening area at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The president and first lady are safe along [with] all protectees," the statement reads. "The condition of those involved is not yet known, and law enforcement is actively assessing the situation."

What sounded like gunshots were heard by gathered reporters shortly after 8:30 p.m. ET in the Washington Hilton. Several guests were seen fleeing the ballroom where hundreds of journalists, politicians and attendees were gathered — including Trump, Vice President Vance and other members of the administration.

Shortly after the incident, President Trump said he planned to brief the press.

Watch President Trump's briefing

Video from inside the room showed security quickly clear the guests on the main stage — including the president and first lady. Someone can be heard shouting "stay down."

President Trump took to social media shortly after being rushed out to praise the Secret Service.

"Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we 'LET THE SHOW GO ON' but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we'll just, plain, have to do it again," Trump wrote.

Law enforcement was seen evacuating prominent cabinet officials to rooms within the hotel, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Getty Images photographer Andrew Harnik takes photos as a security official points his weapon after an incident at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

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The president said in a later post that all cabinet members are safe.

Several members of Congress were seen leaving the event by foot, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.

Weijia Jiang, the president of the correspondents' association, later announced from the stage that President Trump planned to give a briefing later Saturday night from the White House. The president said he hoped to reschedule the event within 30 days.

"I said earlier tonight that journalism is a public service, because when there is an emergency, we run to the crisis, not away from it. And on a night when we are thinking about the freedoms in the First Amendment, we must also think about how fragile they are," Jiang said. "I saw all of you reporting, and that's what we do. Thank God everybody's safe and and thank you for coming together tonight. We will do this again."

Many details around the incident remain unclear. Both the president and members of the press have been targeted for violence in recent years.

During his 2024 reelection effort, Trump was injured in a shooting at a July rally in Pennsylvania when a bullet whizzed past his head, grazing his ear. Two attendees were wounded, and rally-goer and former fire chief Corey Comperatore was killed.

A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the perpetrator.

In September 2024, a Secret Service agent saw a man holding a semi-automatic rifle hidden in the tree line at Trump International in West Palm Beach. The fled in his car and was arrested a short time later.

He was later sentenced to life in prison.

This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Before they ever picked up a paintbrush, youth artists behind a new mural in MacArthur Park started by listening.

“We interviewed people in MacArthur Park about their experiences living in the community,” said Tania Castro, a recent high school graduate and one of 20 young artists who worked on the project. “Some stories were a little bit sad because they said they lost their jobs and they need more opportunities.”

Those conversations shaped “Roots of Our Labor,” a new mural unveiled this week by LA Commons across the street from MacArthur Park. The project, led by artists Luis Mateo and Shakir Manners, draws from stories collected in a yearlong process from more than 75 residents in and around MacArthur Park.

Castro says those stories were about more than struggle.

“They also said they loved the community. In the park, you can see a lot of vendors selling things like fruit and ice cream,” she said. “And the kids love it.”

Youth artists and members of LA Commons pose for a photo in front of the "Roots of our labor" mural during its unveiling event on Thursday, April 23, in MacArthur Park.

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The mural shows a tree bearing avocados and oranges, with a trunk made of intertwined hands and a farmer harvesting the fruit. On one side, a tamale vendor is depicted selling food, and on the other, an ice cream vendor pushes a cart as children gather around him. In the background, scenes from MacArthur Park play out. 

In a neighborhood where ongoing immigration raids have fueled fear and instability, and where MacArthur Park is often defined by visible homelessness and crime, organizers said the mural is intended to highlight the diverse communities who live there and to frame the park as a shared space of connection, culture and daily life.

“I enjoyed making it because it really teaches us about the importance of community and being more inclusive and kind to each other,” said high school artist Leslie Gonzalez. “Most of the people we talked to told us about their backgrounds and they weren’t that pleasant but they still pushed through and got together for each other.”

Painted in March at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), the mural is installed on the southeastern side of the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center.

“Immigrants are critical to the community, especially here in MacArthur Park,” said Beth Peterson, community arts program director at LA Commons. “And I think the mural does a beautiful job of really sharing that story. It really shows how the hands of immigrants have really hung together to form this very beautiful community that we live in today.” 

Detail of "Roots of Our Labor" mural at UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center. The mural celebrates workers in the Westlake community.

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For the lead artists, working alongside youth was central to how the art took shape.

“This artwork honors both the neighborhood and the people who shape it,” Mateo said. “Working with youth was essential to the process, allowing the mural to emerge from shared reflection rather than a single perspective.”

The new mural builds on LA Commons’ ongoing work in the area, following another mural unveiled last September at MacArthur Park Elementary School. “Roots of Our Labor” is the organization’s second mural supported by Stop the Hate, a statewide initiative led by the Asian American and Pacific Islander community aimed at addressing hate incidents and promoting cross-cultural understanding.

LA Commons, a nonprofit arts organization that creates community-based public art projects through partnerships and a mix of public and private funding, has been in the MacArthur Park area for more than 20 years. Its first public art project in the neighborhood was in 2003. “Roots of Our Labor” is its 22nd public art project in MacArthur Park.

Detail of "Roots of Our Labor" mural at UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center. The mural celebrates workers in the Westlake community.

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Courtesy LA Commons)

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Manners, the artist, described the mural as a reflection of what he sees as the underlying spirit of MacArthur Park.

It represents “the unseen hands that sustain communities, emphasizing that true progress is built collectively through persistence, sacrifice and shared purpose,” he said.

For Gonzalez, the mural is personal as well as something tied closely to her community.

“I feel like a light has shone on me and I’m proud of it because I’ve never done anything this big before,” she said. 

The post New mural celebrates labor, multicultural community around MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.

The phone lines at the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station are back up after more than two months of outages caused by copper wire theft.  

The update comes just one week after Boyle Heights Beat reported on the issue, and residents raised concerns at a Maravilla Community Advisory Committee (MCAC) meeting on April 7 about difficulty reaching the station by phone for non-emergencies.

According to the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station, service was restored on Thursday, April 23. By Friday, all dispatchers were back working in the station after temporarily operating out of an off-site communications trailer connected via satellite. 

“This was made possible due to the concerted efforts of the East Los Angeles Sheriff Station Captains Hinchman and Kusayanagi, AT&T, and our Communications & Fleet Management Bureau,” the station said in a statement to the Beat. 

The station also thanked Assemblymember Jessica Caloza’s office and community stakeholders who contacted AT&T to express urgency.

Sheriff’s officials previously said they had called Caloza’s office to help speed up repairs by communicating with AT&T.

What went wrong

According to Sgt. Michael Mileski, the outage was caused by an incident on Feb. 13, where several thousand dollars’ worth of copper wiring was stolen from an electrical vault near the station. Fiber optic cables were damaged in the process, which affected a significant portion of the Eastern Avenue corridor in Boyle Heights and East L.A., disrupting phone lines for 100,000 residents for five days, Mileski said. 

AT&T said in a statement that copper cable outages generally take five times longer to repair on average than fiber outages. 

Copper wire theft has plagued the Eastside in recent years, leaving communities in the dark and disabling public facilities.  

LA Documenter Alex Medina contributed reporting for this story. LA Documenters trains and pays LA residents to take notes at local government meetings around Los Angeles. You can find meeting notes and audio at losangeles.documenters.org

The story Phone lines restored at East LA Sheriff’s Station after 2-month outage due to copper wire theft appeared first on LA Local.

Californians this fall will decide whether to require voters to show proof of citizenship before casting ballots.

A GOP-backed voter ID ballot initiative on Friday qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, marking a significant win for San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who led the signature-gathering campaign. DeMaio and other Republican operatives have pushed for tighter voter restrictions in deep-blue California for years.

If voters approve it, they would be required to show a government-issued ID each time they go to the polls, while mail-in ballots would need the last-four digits of an ID, such as a driver’s license. The secretary of state and county election offices would also be required to verify voters’ registration each time they vote.

Currently, voters only need to provide an ID and Social Security number when they register to vote. Thirty-six states require or recommend voters show some form of identification at the polls, according to a 2025 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“This is an initiative that’s incredibly popular amongst Democrats and Republicans,” GOP state Sen. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach told CalMatters. “I think the only way we don’t get this passed is if we get [outspent]. So we’re working very hard with an on-the-ground campaign apparatus.”

Strickland and others who have helped lead the campaign attribute the initiative’s rapid certification to Julie Luckey, mother of tech billionaire Palmer Luckey who helped seed the majority of the $10 million the campaign committee has raised in the past year.

Voting rights groups say the initiative will suppress turnout among eligible voters who don’t have the documents on hand, many of whom are disproportionately poor and people of color.

Opponents, including the state’s most powerful labor unions, plan to campaign heavily against it.

Voter fraud is rare in California. However, claims of fraud and concerns about election integrity have risen since President Donald Trump touted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Californians broadly support voter identification at the polls but are split along ideological lines when given specific details about the ballot measure, according to a 2026 poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies. When told the measure is meant to combat voter fraud and that it could suppress eligible votes, support dipped to 37%.