The Brief

Democrat Derek Tran's lead over Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in the race for the 45th Congressional District inched up to 581 votes Monday night as ballot tallies slowly neared the finish line.

A little over 1% of the estimated vote total remains to be counted in one of three remaining House races that have yet to be called.

Tran has 157,622 votes to Steel's 157,041, according to the latest vote count released from Orange County, where the majority of the district is. L.A. County did not release a new vote tally as of Monday evening.

That means Tran's lead grew by 36 votes from the vote tally over the weekend.

How we got here

The Democrat took the lead over Steel by 36 votes on Nov. 16. In a little more than a week, his lead increased to more than 500 votes.

The two other undecided races are Iowa's 1st Congressional District and California's 13th House district in the San Joaquin Valley. In both contests, the Republican incumbents are ahead by razor-thin margins.

Steel was beating Tran the day after the election, leading by more than 5 percentage points. But her lead steadily declined as more ballots were counted.

The shift has prompted some people to claim voter fraud. Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Democrats were “stealing a House seat right from under us.” Elon Musk reshared a tweet that said California was “corrupt as hell.”

Experts said shifts during the counting process are normal.

“This is a process that happens every election cycle,” said Paul Mitchell, whose firm, Political Data Inc., tracks vote trends. “We’ve had elections that haven’t been called for an entire month after the election because they were so close.”

According to Mitchell’s analysis, Democrats had a 5.1% advantage over Republicans with ballots cast before Election Day and Republicans had a 15% advantage with ballots cast in-person on Nov. 5.

With late arriving and other ballots counted after Election Day, Democrats had an 18.5% advantage, Mitchell said, explaining Tran's growing lead over Steel.

Republicans control the House with 219 seats. Democrats have 213.

Steel is a two-term incumbent. Tran, a lawyer, is the son of refugees who fled Communist Vietnam as part of a group that became known as the “boat people.”

Tran is hoping to become the first Vietnamese American to represent the district, which also includes Little Saigon.

The district straddles Los Angeles and Orange Counties and covers 17 cities, including Garden Grove, Buena Park, and Fountain Valley, and Cerritos as well as parts of Fullerton and Lakewood.

Could there be a recount?

How recounts work: Unlike other states, California doesn’t have an automatic recount threshold. State election law allows any voter to request a recount for any contest as long as they pay for it. For most races, this has to be done within five days after the election is officially certified (that’s by Dec. 5).

For statewide or cross-county elections, that request can only be done within five days after Dec. 6. California law also allows the governor to order a state-funded recount for any statewide office or ballot measure if the difference is less than 1,000 votes.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has been investigating the Lineage warehouse fire since the first week of July, contradicting Mayor Karen Bass’ recent statement that the elected attorney had chosen not to.

City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto had not publicly disclosed the investigation, and it’s unclear whether Bass knew about it when she told student journalists at The LA Local that she had asked Feldstein Soto and state officials to investigate the fire but was met with inaction.

The rare public admission of the nearly three-month old investigation came a week after The LA Local reported that the two candidates vying to replace Feldstein Soto said her office could do more to help Angelenos in the wake of the fire. The City Council asked the city attorney to report in closed session on what legal options are available to them. But that report has not yet been completed and may not reach the public when it is.

Bass had previously declined to comment on possible legal action related to the fire despite residents’ demand for help. On Wednesday, student journalist Edgar Vasquez asked if she would request the city attorney open a corporate accountability investigation.

“I asked [Feldstein Soto] to open one quite a while ago,” Bass responded. “I also asked Attorney General Bonta to open one. I am not in charge of them. They are independent elected officials. They can choose to do it or not. So far, they have not chosen to do it.”

Karen Richardson, the city attorney’s communications director, told The LA Local that Bass may have “misspoke” and defended Feldstein Soto’s decision to keep the investigation from the public and presumably from other elected officials in the city.

“We do not comment on pending investigations or litigations but in this instance our office will confirm that we have had an open investigation since the first week of July and that investigation is ongoing and active,” Richardson said by email. “The City Attorney, in her capacity as Chief Prosecutor for the City, investigates and brings actions without prompting or reporting to City Officials or the press. As a prosecutor, the client of the Office is the People of the State of California, not the City of Los Angeles.”

Richardson did not immediately respond to a follow-up inquiry about the nature and scope of the investigation or if those impacted by the fire will be told of its findings.

Bass’ office also did not immediately respond to questions after the city attorney’s team told The LA Local about the months-old investigation.

The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment for this story.

Marissa Roy and John McKinney, one of whom will become the next city attorney, previously told The LA Local that the city attorney’s office should have acted publicly sooner. Both said they would be more transparent and would launch a corporate accountability investigation of the fire if elected. Depending on how long the current investigation takes to complete, the next city attorney could inherit it.

Past L.A. city attorneys have pursued such investigations and won settlements for people harmed by corporate misconduct. Roy has worked on similar lawsuits for the California Department of Justice, contributing to a landmark settlement against the tech company Meta. 

Community advocacy groups, meanwhile, have asked the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to open a criminal investigation of the fire. That agency declined to comment for this story. 

McKinney, who currently is a deputy district attorney, said if the investigation found criminal activity, he would pursue filing charges. 

Bass told the student journalists that the fire department’s investigation “was a preliminary one” and that more can be expected. 

“There’s other investigations coming, and by the way, I really want those investigations because you know I’m blocking them from rebuilding,” Bass said Wednesday.

Bass and the City Council established a temporary suspension of the permit to rebuild Lineage’s damaged facility. 

Lineage’s CEO has said that the company has not decided yet if it will rebuild the damaged facility. Bass conceded that the company has a legal path to rebuild if it chooses to. But after several public disputes about blown cleanup deadlines and other matters, Bass said she does not support the company rebuilding.

“I know it’s your right, but you lost your right by the harm you inflicted on this community,” Bass said. “Then if they don’t rebuild. Then the community has to ask itself: then what?”

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

Construction of the green metal fence is expected to begin in November and continue through spring 2027, Recreation and Parks officials said during a public meeting.

The park will stay open while the fence is being built. Once construction is finished, the gates are expected to close from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. LAPD officers will patrol the park while it is open.

Officials said the fence is not intended to be permanent.

The Department of Recreation and Parks plans to review the fence after three years, looking at maintenance, crime and feedback from people who use the park. The department has set specific benchmarks that could eventually lead to the fence coming down.

The three-year review will include a comparison with Lafayette Park, which Recreation and Parks is using as a benchmark for maintenance and crime.

The department wants MacArthur Park to eventually have no more than about twice as many maintenance and repair requests as Lafayette Park. MacArthur Park covers about 35 acres, while Lafayette Park covers about 10 acres. General Manager Jimmy Kim said Thursday that MacArthur Park had a 230% higher rate of repair work orders than Lafayette Park.

A rendering shows a proposed green metal gate at one of MacArthur Park’s entrances.

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Courtesy LA Recreation and Parks

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From January through August 2026, MacArthur Park also recorded 136 robberies and aggravated assaults, compared with 20 at Lafayette Park. Neither park recorded a homicide during that period.

MacArthur Park recorded 694 arrests during those eight months, compared with 36 at Lafayette Park.

The department also plans to survey park users and conduct another community survey through the council office as part of the three-year review. 

The nightly closures will also change how law enforcement handles the park. 

LAPD plans to sweep the park every night before the gates close, according to Capt. Ben Fernandes, who represented the Rampart Division at Thursday’s Recreation and Park Commission meeting.

“For right now, we will do a full sweep of the park before the gates close on each side of the park,” Fernandes said. He added that LAPD has been “very good about keeping encampments out of the park.”

Officers will monitor the park while it is open, working with LAPD’s Security Services Division, Fernandes said. First responders will have keys and access to the park at all hours.

Community members attend a Recreation and Park Commission meeting Thursday, Oct. 1, where commissioners approved final plans for a new fence around MacArthur Park.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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The nightly sweeps also raised the question of what will happen to people who are found sleeping in the park. 

Fernandes said the mayor’s office would provide service providers who can assist people struggling with substance use and people experiencing homelessness.

“So, if we do come across someone who is asleep in the park during our sweep, we will be able to hopefully make them be involved in those services and hopefully get them housed,” he said.

Recreation and Parks says the fence would give the department more control over the park after hours. The department said MacArthur Park had a 230% higher rate of repair work orders for lighting, plumbing and graffiti than Lafayette Park between January 2025 and June 2026, and that damage and vandalism typically occur overnight.

Those improvements are part of a larger list of changes planned for the park. Recreation and Parks plans to restore access through the tunnel connecting the park’s north and south sides, improve accessibility, add free Wi-Fi and replace some of the park’s existing lights with solar-powered fixtures.

The department listed more recreational programming, including run and walk events, movies in the park, sports and fitness classes, quarterly community events and the return of pedal boats on the lake.

Recreation and Parks plans to return to the community later this month with another update on the project.

The post LA will start building a fence around MacArthur Park in November appeared first on LA Local.

The second of two state-commissioned, independent reports on the 2025 L.A. fires has been released.

The analysis by the Fire Safety Research Institute details the effectiveness of the response to the Palisades and Eaton fires, which killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 homes and buildings, mostly in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Gov. Gavin Newsom called for an independent investigation into the response to the fires just a few days after they started on Jan. 7, 2025. His administration commissioned the nonprofit Fire Safety Research Institute to carry it out. L.A. County (via the McChrystal Group) and the L.A. Fire Department have released similar reports.

The 724-page analysis released today details “the effectiveness of prevention and alerting efforts, conditions influencing the original fire situation, attempts to stop its rapid progression, and evacuation efforts.” The first report by the Fire Safety Research Institute recreated the timeline of each fire’s progression and associated emergency alerts.

The latest report highlights the unprecedented weather conditions ahead of the fires, the chaotic nature of the fires themselves and a lack of planning and coordination among authorities, despite many heroic rescues by field deputies, officers and civilians.

In the Eaton Fire, the report includes that observations by paramedics of embers into West Altadena was not conveyed to incident command hours before the first evacuation alert was sent there. In the Palisades, the report found that the L.A. Fire Department did not have a proper protocol to ensure the Lachman Fire was out, and a lack of communication among authorities led to heavily disorganized evacuations. And with multiple major fires occurring across a heavily urban landscape, firefighting and evacuation resources were stretched beyond capacity.

“The fires revealed implementation challenges, operational limitations, and areas where policies and practices have not evolved at the same pace as the wildfire risk facing California communities,” the report states.

The report also lays out 266 recommendations to improve before the next fire.

Find the whole report here.

Police divers have found the body of a patient who went missing after a medical helicopter crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, bringing the death toll to three while two other people were recovering from their injuries, authorities said Friday.

Divers with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department found the victim’s body Thursday in the wreckage of the helicopter after searching more than 156 square miles (404 square kilometers) over 23 hours, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Relatives of the missing person told ABC7 that the woman was being transported from Catalina Island to the mainland for medical care after having an allergic reaction. They also said her 20-year-old son went with her in the helicopter to help translate.

The helicopter with five people aboard went down shortly after takeoff and hit the water not far from the island, officials said. The cause is not clear and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

First responders pulled four people from the water on Wednesday night.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said that authorities were not yet identifying the victims by name. But he described the two people who died as the male pilot and a female nurse. He also said another medic and a fourth person, a man, were hospitalized.

Luna said the helicopter wreckage was about 200 feet (60 meters) deep in the water.

The helicopter’s operator, REACH Air Medical Services of Sacramento, confirmed that two of its crew members died and a third was recovering at a hospital. The company declined to provide more details.

“In the days ahead, our focus will remain on caring for our people, supporting their families and honoring the lives and service of those we have lost,” REACH said in a statement.

A memorial service was held on the island to honor the victims.

The crash came 11 days after a firefighting helicopter went down, killing two pilots in Yosemite National Park in California, and two weeks after a news helicopter crashed in Los Angeles, killing two people.

Emergency personnel were called to the Catalina crash shortly before 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Two people were pronounced dead at the scene, and two, in stable condition, were brought to hospitals on the mainland, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

The helicopter landed on the island shortly after 7 p.m., following a 24-minute flight from an airport in Oceanside, according to the flight tracking service Flightradar24.