The Brief

In the Mojave Desert Land Trust office hangs a letter from Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In it, she recalls driving down Route 66 in the 1960s thinking people took California’s desert areas for granted as it was littered with old cars and discarded mattresses. She looked past the trash and marveled at the flora and fauna.

California Desert Protection Act of 1994

Later, as California’s first woman senator, Feinstein became a champion for preserving the state's desert landscapes. In 1994, she sponsored the California Desert Protection Act that elevated Joshua Tree and Death Valley from monuments to national park status. The act also established more than 1.4 million acres of land as the Mojave National Preserve.

The creation of the national parks opened up Joshua Tree and Death Valley to federal funding and increased staff on the park roster to include biologists, rangers, and Department of Interior staff.

Cody Hanford, the joint executive director of the nonprofit organization Mojave Desert Land Trust, said Feinstein "is the true desert champion, and it started with the original protection."

He added that the act enabled “people all over the country and all over the world [to] appreciate those places and with that appreciation comes that affinity, brings protection and resources.”

On the 20th anniversary of the law, Feinstein called it one of her proudest accomplishments in the Senate.

“When I look back on it, the really true remarkable thing is, you know, basically saying the desert really matters," Hanford said. "The desert is an area worth protecting. It is as special and biodiverse and has cultural importance and just as much as anywhere else in the state, and of course anywhere else in the country."

Recent legislation to protect California deserts

In 2016, Feinstein asked then-president Barack Obama to designate Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains as national monuments, which he did, protecting those areas from activities like mining and logging.

In 2019, Feinstein authored the California Desert Protection and Recreation Act, which would expand protections for over 700,000 acres of desert land. The legislation also expanded Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks.

“This bill is the completion of a 25-year effort to better manage the California desert,” Feinstein said at the time. “It fulfills the promise I made to off-roaders and environmental groups that we wouldn’t stop with the 1994 bill. More importantly, it shows that by working together we can expand protections for this region while ensuring it remains open for all visitors to enjoy.”

In her honor, Hanford said, he is going to keep advocating for desert lands.

“We're fighting for future desert national monuments, there's a national monument called Chuckwalla National Monument that we're actually helping pushing forward this year,” he said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles will be under a heat wave advisory until Monday evening as temperatures show no signs of letting up over the weekend.

Temperatures will linger in the high 80s and low 90s in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, including Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake.

The National Weather Service projects temperatures will peak on Sunday afternoon. Meteorologist Bryan Lewis with the National Weather Service said residents can expect more humidity than usual. 

While dense, urban centers have more concrete and see more vehicle traffic, downtown and the surrounding areas will not be the hottest locations during this heatwave in the Southland, as the Antelope Valley will be under an extreme heat advisory over the weekend.

During hot weather, the beach is an immediate go-to for folks that want to stay cool, but Lewis warns against this as the surf will be extra choppy.

The Pacific Coast will see large swells “coming up from tropical systems off the coast of Mexico,” Lewis said. “We are issuing a beach hazard statement that’ll be in effect through at least the weekend [which] may be extended.” 

While the weather is expected to cool down on Monday, forecasts show that another heatwave could develop by the end of next week.

Pools nearby

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Pico Union Branch Library

Felipe de Neve Branch Library (Westlake)

Pio Pico – Koreatown Branch Library

Councilmember Heather Hutt’s office recommends residents to rest in shade or a building with air conditioning and to stay hydrated with plenty of water.

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Chai is more than just a drink for South Asians around the world. It’s a symbol of hospitality, community and respect.

Shilapjot ‘Sunny’ Singh, co-owner of Chaiwale & Co., joined AirTalk Friday host, Austin Cross, to talk about how he’s preserving the traditions around the drink — and to sip some chai, of course.

Community and connection

For as long as he can remember, Singh has been connecting with loved ones over a cup of traditional homemade chai.

Co-owner Shilapjot ‘Sunny’ Singh joins AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross for Food Friday

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Faheem Khan

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LAist

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“Desi chai is very different from what the Western world knows – not only in taste, but the meaning of it too,” Singh said.

The phrase desi comes from the Sanskrit word desha, meaning "land" or "country," and is used to describe people, cultures and products of South Asia and its global diaspora.

Singh and his brother opened the chai shop in 2024 with a clear goal in mind — community and connection.

Chai in its truest form

Chai takes on many different shapes and sizes, but its truest essence can be traced back as early as the 19th century, when British colonizers established plantations in western India, where the Indian populace made their own version of tea, called chai.

To set the record straight once and for all, chai in Hindustani directly translates to “tea.” So, the term “chai tea” — which many people use — is actually redundant because it translates to “tea tea.”

Traditional chai is prepared in a dhoodh pati style, which refers to chai that is boiled with milk, sugar, green cardamom and sometimes other aromatics like cinnamon, ginger and star anise, a combination known as masala. So, chai tea latte — also redundant.

Singh was inspired by all the misconceptions around chai to fill what he saw as a gap in the market.

New Desi wave

In addition to the nostalgia Chaiwale & Co. provides, they’ve also dabbled in South Asian fusion, most notably with their rendition of a gulab jamun cheesecake.

Gulab jamun cheesecake

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Shilapjot ‘Sunny’ Singh

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Courtesy of Chaiwale & Co.

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Gulab Jamun — deep-fried dough balls soaked in a sugar syrup — are a South Asian household staple, usually enjoyed at festivities and weddings, and of course, over chai.

The clay cup tradition

Dhoodh pati style chai served in a traditional clay cup

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Shilapjot ‘Sunny’ Singh

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Courtesy of Chaiwale & Co.

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The chai at Chaiwale is served in traditional clay cups and copper teapots to pay homage to how it's done back in the subcontinent.

One of the most nostalgic chai snacks is Parle-G cookies, which are served complimentary with the chai.

The ultimate Chaiwale experience

Every Sunday, Chaiwale & Co. has ‘Bollywood High Tea’ from 12-2 p.m. at its Orange location, where you can experience traditional chai and samosas to fusion items like a butter chicken burrito and gulab jaman cheesecake.

The experience costs $35.99 per person ($15 online reservation + $20.99 in-store) with a table minimum of two people.

You can find tickets here.

NEW YORK (AP) — Skydance-owned Paramount on Friday agreed to delay closing its $81 billion buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery well into next year, as a judge continues to consider a challenge from 12 states seeking to block the deal altogether.

In a court filing, Paramount said it wouldn’t close the merger until five days “after the merits determination in these matters” or June 1, 2027. The move arrives just days after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a temporary restraining order requested by the states to freeze the transaction for several weeks.

Twelve states, led by California, sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last month — alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers. Paramount has called the states’ claims meritless and vowed to “vigorously defend” its merger.

Homelessness went up in Los Angeles this year following two previous years of declines, according to official homeless count findings released Friday.

The population of people living outdoors in the city of L.A. grew by 7.9% between early 2025 and 2026, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.

When including people in shelters, a total of 45,194 people were living either outside, in vehicles and tents, or in homeless shelters.

Across L.A. County, the overall homeless population increased more slightly, by 1.2%, to 73,040, while unsheltered homelessness rose by 3.3% countywide.

The findings are a setback for the region — especially for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who is campaigning for reelection against City Councilmember Nithya Raman and frequently touts prior declines in the homeless counts as evidence her approach is working.

Bass, who took office at the end of 2022 and set addressing homelessness as her top priority, was not at the homeless count news conference Friday — a departure from the previous three years.

She released a video message ahead of the news briefing:

When including sheltered and unsheltered people, the total homelessness count was up 3.4% in the city of L.A. That includes the 7.9% increase in unsheltered people (up by 2,143 people) and a 3.9% decrease in sheltered people (down by 644 people).

The latest count took place in January of this year. The prior count was in February of last year, following a delay due to the January 2025 wildfires. The city’s unsheltered population grew to about 29,000, after previously dropping a total of 17.5% across the first two years of counts in Bass’ mayoral term.

Meanwhile, the city’s sheltered population — people living in group shelters, hotel rooms and tiny homes — declined to around 16,000 at the time of the count.

Local officials expressed frustration over the results.

“It felt like we had turned a corner these past few years and this latest count feels like a setback,” said L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

“This year’s numbers are disappointing, but not surprising,” said a statement from Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has chaired the city council’s homelessness committee for the last several years and is running for mayor against Bass.

“Leadership at City Hall has not shown the willingness to shift toward an approach that actually moves people into permanent housing,” she added. “These results make clear that the Mayor’s approach is not working well enough.”

A dramatic lead-up to the count’s release

In an unusual move, Bass acknowledged that L.A.’s numbers had gone up before the count’s official release. She responded to a report late Wednesday by Fox 11 citing anonymous sources who had been briefed on the findings. On Friday, Gita O’Neill, LAHSA’s interim CEO, said the results were “leaked to media early.”

In statements earlier this week, Bass blamed the local increase in homelessness on a range of factors, primarily state funding cuts she said led to fewer permanent housing placements and some federal policy changes she said worsened the affordability crisis and caused instability.

“For two years straight, we drove down homelessness by historic margins — but as expected, last year our efforts ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts at the federal and state levels that pushed more people onto the streets,” Bass said in a statement.

Last year, the city and county’s homeless populations dropped by 3.4% and 4%, respectively. The 2024 count also showed a decline — those numbers were smaller and within the count’s margin of error.

L.A.’s homeless count doesn’t provide a complete picture of homelessness year-round. It doesn’t include people who are couch surfing or living doubled up with others, people staying in motels on their own dime, or those inside hospitals and jails.

The point-in-time census — conducted by LAHSA across a few nights in January — provides a data snapshot. Local officials use it to gauge year-to-year fluctuations and it also helps the federal government determine how millions of dollars in federal homelessness grants flow.

That could be especially important this year, after the Trump administration suspended LAHSA from federal homelessness funding while it investigates alleged mismanagement by the agency. LAHSA sued to undo that federal freeze, with a hearing scheduled in U.S. District Court on Aug. 6.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass waits to speak during a news conference in Los Angeles.

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How we got here

Los Angeles has long been the epicenter of U.S. homelessness. The city’s unhoused population began surging about a decade ago — years before the national count did, and is now up 59% since 2016.

The crisis also peaked in L.A. before the rest of the country. L.A.’s unhoused population crested in 2023. At a single point in time that year, 1 in 83 city residents were experiencing homelessness — 1.2% of the city's population or roughly six times the national rate, according to LAHSA and U.S. Census data.

Nationwide, the unhoused population count continued climbing for another year, reaching a record high in 2024 of 1 in 435 U.S. residents, or roughly 0.23% of the population, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

That year, the city was home to just over 1% of the nation’s total population, but nearly 6% of its unhoused population.

As L.A.’s unhoused population multiplied, so did the taxpayer spending.

Voters in the city and county have repeatedly approved tax measures related to homelessness, adding billions of public dollars aimed at the crisis.

Together, Measure H, passed in 2017, Measure ULA, passed in 2022, and Measure A, passed in 2024, have increased city and county resources by about $6 billion. That's on top of Measure HHH, a $1.2 billion bond voters approved in 2016 to build supportive housing.

In 2016, the city of Los Angeles budgeted about $139 million a year to address homelessness. By 2026, the city's annual homelessness budget has grown to nearly $1 billion, alongside growing L.A. County homelessness dollars.

Funding for LAHSA, a joint city-county homelessness agency, grew ten-fold since 2016 to more than $800 million.

While funding sources fluctuated, LAHSA revenues increased in the budget years preceding this year’s homeless count, according to LAHSA’s audited financial statements.

Between 2016 and 2025, the L.A. region’s homeless services system roughly doubled in size from about 34,500 beds to about 69,600, according to HUD's housing inventory reports for the region.

Officials and experts have attributed much of L.A.’s homelessness to a housing affordability crisis in which rent has become more unaffordable to people making very low incomes. L.A.’s expanded shelter system has not kept pace with the number of people falling into homelessness.

LAHSA says the number of newly unhoused people seeking services each year has grown 30% between 2022 and 2025.

For every person housed by the homeless services system over the past year, about 2.3 newly unhoused people sought out services, LASHA said.

While in office, Bass has pursued a “housing first” strategy focused on relocating unhoused people from tent and RV encampments into hotel rooms and other shelter settings.

That approach, which includes Bass’ signature Inside Safe program, helped move thousands of tents and people off the street and in hotel rooms, but costs three times as much as other shelter options, according to a city analysis.

About 41% of the people who’ve participated in the program since it began have returned to homelessness, according to LAHSA’s Inside Safe data dashboard. Bass defends the program, but has said it needs to reduce costs.

L.A. City and county leaders expanded the L.A. homelessness response system primarily by adding fast, short-term solutions like emergency shelter beds and temporary rental subsidies. They lagged behind, in comparison, on permanent supportive housing, service providers said.

The number of people permanently housed by the system declined from about 28,600 in 2024 to 25,532 last year, according to data provided by LAHSA Friday.

Placements into shelter and permanent supportive housing went down this year, while the number of people returning to the streets after being in shelter went up.

Family homelessness decreased by 14%, according to LAHSA’s data, but the agency said that likely reflects a recent decline in the supply of family resources, not demand.

LAHSA also broke findings down by region. The Metro LA and East L.A. areas each saw their unsheltered populations rise by about 20%, the agency found. In the Antelope Valley, unsheltered homelessness dropped 37%.

Tents for unhoused people are seen on a Skid Row sidewalk.

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Frederic J. Brown

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Follow the money 

Los Angeles homelessness officials said even with increased local spending, much of the current system has relied on state and federal dollars, including one-time pandemic dollars. Dips and changes in those funding sources had consequences for this year’s count, they said.

Bass said reductions last year to the state of California’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant program, known as HHAP, “severely impacted our work to keep people housed and get more Angelenos off the streets.”

Bass did not respond to multiple interview requests by LAist seeking comment on the latest homeless count results.

In the 2024-25 budget year, state funding made up just under $115 million, or 13% of LAHSA's overall budget. Then, in 2025-26, those sources of state funding dropped 26% to about $85 million, or 9% of the agency's budget, according to LAHSA reports.

But LAHSA's overall budget held roughly flat. Decreases in state funding were largely made up for by year-over-year increases in city and federal dollars.

LAHSA officials said during Friday’s presentation that this year’s increase in homelessness reflects major cuts to a rental-subsidy program it administers known as Time Limited Subsidies, or TLS. The agency also cited drops in state revenue.

The program provides up to two years of rental assistance to formerly unhoused people in private-market apartments, relying on a mix of county, city, federal and state dollars. Funding for L.A.’s time-limited subsidies declined by nearly half before this year's homeless count — from $240 million in 2024-25 to $123 million in 2025-26, according to LAHSA figures presented to the L.A. City Council.

More than 3,000 households housed through the program about a year ago were slated to lose those subsidies by the end of last month.

 "When our unhoused neighbors lost access to rental subsidies, the system slowed, interim shelters stayed full, and progress stalled," said Paul Rubenstein, LAHSA chief of staff.

Local service providers told LAist they saw deep cuts to their time-limited subsidy programs.

“Without these subsidies, people are staying in shelters longer because they cannot secure housing, reducing available shelter capacity and leaving more individuals with nowhere to go but the streets,” said Jennifer Hark Dietz, CEO of PATH.

Trump administration pressure

Regional officials and service providers also say federal policies, funding cuts and proposed cuts are also driving L.A.’s homelessness crisis — and could make it worse.

“The Trump administration's reckless policies threaten to deepen the homelessness crisis by prioritizing tax breaks and benefits for the wealthiest Americans and corporations while cutting programs that working families and vulnerable residents rely on,” L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said.

A Bass spokesperson echoed the sentiment in a statement to LAist: “Rising gas prices, healthcare costs, tariffs, and grocery bills — that puts more people at risk of homelessness.”

Local officials also point out the federal government is actively trying to reduce the level of funding that can go toward permanent housing in L.A. and nationwide.

Meanwhile, the full effects of many of the federal policy changes local officials are worried about have yet to kick in, experts said.

“We could start seeing homelessness increase again in the near future primarily because of harmful federal changes to basic need programs like Medi-Cal, CalFresh, and changes in HUD programs — all which will make it even more difficult for individuals and families to afford their homes,” said Monica Davalos, an analyst with the California Budget & Policy Center.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said the homeless count results are just one data point, not the whole picture.

“People experiencing homelessness — and the communities impacted by this crisis — care less about esoteric debates over the numbers,” Horvath said.

“They care more about what they see on our streets.“Housing production, affordability, and supportive services are the biggest drivers of lasting change, and getting people housed permanently is the change L.A. needs," she added.