Fifty years ago, just after Thanksgiving of 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the landmark law that created special education as it exists today, and guaranteed all children with disabilities the right to a "free appropriate public education." Yet, "rather than celebrating progress, we face a crisis," warned a recent letter to Congress, signed by hundreds of disability, civil rights and education groups.
The backstory: The Trump administration has fired, or tried to fire, many of the federal staff at the U.S. Department of Education who manage and enforce federal disability law, though Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said federal funding for special education is not at risk. But, in interviews with 40 parents, educators, disability-rights advocates, subject matter experts and Education Department staffers, NPR heard a growing fear: that the Trump administration's efforts to cut federal staff and oversight of special education could return the U.S. to a time, before 1975, when some schools denied access or services to children with disabilities.
Why it matters: Before 1975, children with disabilities were commonly denied access to public school classrooms.
Fifty years ago, just after Thanksgiving of 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the landmark law that created special education as it exists today, and guaranteed all children with disabilities the right to a "free appropriate public education."
Yet, "rather than celebrating progress, we face a crisis," warned a recent letter to Congress, signed by hundreds of disability, civil rights and education groups.
That crisis, according to the letter, is "the dismantling of the very infrastructure Congress created to ensure children with disabilities could reach their full potential."
The Trump administration has fired, or tried to fire, many of the federal staff at the U.S. Department of Education who manage and enforce federal disability law, though Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said federal funding for special education is not at risk.
In a November op-ed in USA Today, McMahon wrote that "returning education to the states does not mean the end of federal support for education. It simply means the end of a centralized bureaucracy micromanaging what should be a state-led responsibility."
But, in interviews with 40 parents, educators, disability-rights advocates, subject matter experts and Education Department staffers, NPR heard a growing fear: that the Trump administration's efforts to cut federal staff and oversight of special education could return the U.S. to a time, before 1975, when some schools denied access or services to children with disabilities.
What special education means to one mom and her daughter
Maggie Heilman's 14-year-old daughter, Brooklynn, has never known a world without the 50-year-old law later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Maggie Heilman and her daughter Brooklynn play checkers. Brooklynn loves games, painting her nails and listening to Taylor Swift.
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The family lives in a Kansas City suburb. Brooklynn, who has Down syndrome, loves hanging out with her sisters, playing basketball and listening to music "all day, and on the bus," Brooklyn says.
"And she dances all day," her mom adds.
"In circles," Brooklyn says. "Over and over."
The teen is now in eighth grade, has her own special education plan, thanks to IDEA, and loves her middle school. But sixth grade was difficult.
"I was having a hard time," Brooklynn says.
In October 2023, Heilman says, she got a call from Brooklynn's school that her daughter had become agitated after refusing a request to come to the classroom's reading table. Eventually, Heilman says, Brooklynn was secluded for 20 minutes in a padded room the size of a closet.
"That 20 minutes changed the trajectory of our lives," Heilman recalls. "I had a child who loved to sing and dance and communicate and hug, and, after that moment, she stopped talking."
Seclusion in school, as a practice, is allowed in many states — if students pose an immediate danger to themselves or others. However, the practice can also be traumatic.
Heilman says she told school staff she thought Brooklynn's seclusion was extreme. Through the winter, she said, the school turned to informal seclusion, separating Brooklynn in other physical spaces or school offices.
Brooklynn, center, loves playing Uno with her mom and sisters.
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As a result, Heilman says, Brooklynn repeatedly missed some of her traditional classes. "And we just saw our daughter's health — physically, mentally, emotionally — deteriorate."
Finally, Heilman asked that Brooklynn be transferred to a different middle school, where staff assured her they don't seclude students. Brooklynn's situation improved dramatically, but, worried for the students who came after Brooklynn, Heilman still requested a state-level investigation into her daughter's previous seclusion. The state did not find the district at fault.
Heilman also filed a complaint with the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), arguing that Brooklynn had been secluded unnecessarily and that, as a result, she was denied her right to a free, appropriate public education.
That complaint kickstarted a new ordeal for Heilman and her family.
Counting on a federal system as it's being dismantled
OCR is the fail-safe for families who believe their child's civil rights are being violated at school because of their disability. A family can submit a discrimination complaint, and one of OCR's attorneys will review it and, if justified, open an investigation — no need to hire an expensive lawyer or advocate.
Department records show OCR began investigating Heilman's complaint in October 2024.
But Heilman says her assigned attorney was removed around the same time the Trump administration began a broad reduction-in-force. According to emails Heilman shared with NPR, her case was then assigned to a different attorney.
Heilman says she has heard nothing about the investigation since June, when this second OCR attorney assured her, in an email, that Brooklynn's case is "currently still in investigation."
Several OCR attorneys spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Trump administration. Two of them said Heilman's second attorney worked in an OCR office that was gutted in October, in a second round of layoffs. Those fired workers have since been reinstated, but Heilman says she has heard nothing about her complaint.
Of the administration's decision to cut many attorneys who protect students' civil rights, Heilman says, "it's telling families with children like Brooklynn that their hurt doesn't matter."
Before special education, children with disabilities were "invisible"
Before 1975, children with disabilities were commonly denied access to public school classrooms.
"They were invisible," says Ed Martin, who helped write the landmark 1975 law. "They had been kept at home. Our goal was to end that."
Ed Martin began his career as a young professor of speech therapy at the University of Alabama. He was invited to Washington, D.C., in the 1960s to work on disability issues.
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In 1970, U.S. public schools educated just 1 in 5 children with a disability, according to the Department of Education, and excluded nearly 1.8 million children.
Martin, now 94, says he organized hearings for parents to share their stories with lawmakers.
"There was one mother who told us a story about the school bus stopping at the foot of her driveway," Martin recalls, "and her daughter standing in the window crying, saying, 'Why can't I go with the other kids?'"
When Ford signed the new law, it cemented a bold idea: that students with disabilities have a right to an individualized, public education and that the U.S. government would help pay for it.
Margaret Spellings ran the Education Department under Republican President George W. Bush, and says special education isn't just about doing what the law requires — it's a public good.
"We're talking about a lot of kids who have abilities and disabilities that can be remediated, that can make them productive citizens," Spellings says, "and that is in our interest as a nation to have these students meet their full potential."
In fiscal year 2024, the law provided nearly $15 billion to help school districts pay for specialized classroom instruction and speech and physical therapy, among other services.
Including its early intervention programs for infants and toddlers, IDEA helps more than 8 million children with disabilities in the U.S.
To manage and enforce not just IDEA but a cluster of federal disability laws, Congress placed a pair of offices inside the Department of Education. The Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), which includes the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), oversees special education under IDEA, providing guidance to states and directly to families. The other key office is OCR, the Office for Civil Rights. It does not enforce IDEA but investigates allegations of disability discrimination, which often overlap with family complaints that allege IDEA violations.
Since these offices were created, support for their mission — to help families, districts and states in their efforts to protect and educate children with disabilities — has transcended politics. Spellings says, "We have long had, for the last 50 years — until this year — huge bipartisan support and fealty to the law."
"We can't, in our wildest imagination, understand how the secretary can fulfill her obligation under the law with so few staff," said Denise Marshall, head of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).
Since those cuts, the 121 staffers have been reinstated as part of the deal to end the shutdown, though the administration could lay them off again after Jan. 30.
When NPR asked the Education Department if it planned to retain these staff beyond that date, the press office replied with a statement: "The Department has brought back staff that were impacted by the Schumer Shutdown. The Department will follow all applicable laws."
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon during a television interview outside the White House. In an op-ed published in USA Today, McMahon wrote, "protecting students' civil rights is work that will never go away."
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"This is a part of the process of making a smaller federal footprint and turning responsibilities over to states," says Jonathan Butcher, acting director for the Center for Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Heritage's Project 2025, created as a policy blueprint for a second Trump administration, calls for IDEA funding to be "converted into a no-strings formula block grant" to be sent directly to districts — that section's author, Lindsey Burke, now works at the Education Department.
In her op-ed, and previously, McMahon has reassured families that funding for students with disabilities "will continue indefinitely." It's the federal oversight she's cutting or moving.
But an OSERS staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, worries that, without federal support staff, "states don't have the systems or the staffing to do this."
Ed Martin, who helped write IDEA 50 years ago, says that, without enough staff, there's also no guarantee the money will be spent on the children who need it most: "The administration has decided that nobody needs to watch [the money]."
"The secretary's words are hollow"
The Trump administration has also made deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights. In March, it moved to close seven of OCR's 12 regional offices and to fire 299 workers, leaving roughly half the staff the office had in January. This is when Maggie Heilman lost her first attorney.
In October, the administration attempted to fire another 137 staffers, including gutting the office investigating Heilman's complaint. This left 62 employees at OCR who had not received a termination notice — about 10% of the office's January headcount.
"I'm just shocked that they can destroy an entire unit of an organization that's created by statute," said R. Shep Melnick before some cuts were reversed. Melnick is a professor of American politics at Boston College who has been writing about OCR for decades.
As at OSERS, the employees who were fired in October have since been reinstated, but, again, there is no guarantee they will be allowed to stay beyond Jan. 30.
In a statement, the department's press secretary for legal affairs, Julie Hartman, told NPR: "We are rebuilding and refocusing OCR to enable the office to protect students and enforce the law."
Thousands of languishing civil rights complaints
Even as the administration has tried to cut OCR's enforcement attorneys, it has aggressively used the office to enforce new priorities, going after districts and colleges that support transgender students or embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.
In a statement, Hartman told NPR that OCR had "strayed" under Biden and that Trump "is reorienting OCR to what it's meant to be: a law enforcement agency, not a social-justice advocacy arm of the federal government."
Public data suggests a shift away from disability-related investigations.
Since Trump took office, OCR has reached resolution agreements in 73 cases involving alleged disability discrimination. Compare that to 2024, when OCR resolved 390, or 2017, the year Trump took office during his first term, when OCR reached agreements in more than 1,000 such cases.
In these agreements, school districts often commit to a host of fixes — such as launching a program to monitor the use of restraint and seclusion — that help not just the student at the center of the complaint but other students as well. Still, they require labor-intensive investigations into complaints like Maggie Heilman's, with attorneys conducting interviews and collecting documents.
After Brooklynn's first day at her new middle school, her mother, Maggie Heilman, remembers, "She was smiling. She said, 'Thank you, Mommy. I fit in. I love you.'"
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In her USA Today op-ed, McMahon said, in spite of the cuts to OCR, "protecting students' civil rights is work that will never go away."
To that, Marshall, of COPAA, replied: "Bullcrap. The secretary's words are hollow."
It is possible some of OCR's responsibilities could be shifted to other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, says Kenneth Marcus, who ran OCR during the first Trump administration and founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
That doesn't appear to have happened yet, Marcus says. But if it does, he says, "it is entirely possible that this shift will leave us stronger when it comes to civil rights, but we will need to see the details."
Spellings, the former Republican education secretary, says that if the administration continues to focus its diminished resources on high-profile political fights, it will run the risk of failing the parents of disabled children even as it says it champions parents' rights in general: "I believe it when they say, 'Let's put parents in charge.' … OK, so what about the parents who want their options as described in [federal disability law]?"
What's next?
The endgame for the Trump administration, as the president and his education secretary have said repeatedly, is to close the U.S. Department of Education and move the federal jobs and funding streams it considers essential to other agencies.
On social media, McMahon and her staff have openly mocked the department, which she has said is "mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states."
The problem with that view, says Jacqueline Rodriguez of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, is that states need and often want support when it comes to special education. And that support comes from the hundreds of federal staff the administration has been trying to fire.
Without them, Rodriguez says, "we are concerned special education will cease to exist."
"I'm fearful," says one state director of special education, who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity out of concern the government would retaliate against that state. "I think it's good for states to know there's federal oversight and that they'll be held accountable. The concept of leaving special education up to states sounds great, but it's scary. What happens if one state decides to interpret the law one way, but another state disagrees and interprets it differently?"
Fifty years ago, Ed Martin helped write the law that made clear to all states and all public schools: Children with disabilities deserve better. The law, he says, was "an affirmation of the values of the country."
He hopes that's still true.
Edited by: Nicole Cohen Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
Makenna Sievertson
breaks down policies and programs with a focus on the housing and homelessness challenges confronting some of SoCal's most vulnerable residents.
Published January 7, 2026 3:10 PM
RVs and a homeless encampment in the city of Los Angeles.
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Topline:
A coalition of housed and unhoused residents in West L.A. is asking a court to stop the city of Los Angeles from moving ahead with a pilot program that allows local officials to remove and dismantle more recreational vehicles the city deems a nuisance.
Why it matters: The move from the CD11 Coalition for Human Rights comes in response to a new state law that gives L.A. County the authority to dispose of abandoned or inoperable RVs worth up to $4,000, a major increase from the previous $500 threshold.
The backstory: There are more than 3,100 RVs parked across the city of L.A. being used as improved housing, according to last year’s homeless count estimates from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
The move from the CD11 Coalition for Human Rights comes in response to a new state law that gives L.A. County the authority to dispose of abandoned or inoperable RVs worth up to $4,000, a major increase from the previous $500 threshold.
In its petition for a writ of mandate from the Superior Court, the coalition argues the law gives that authority only to the county of Los Angeles — not the city. Members of the coalition claim the city is “recklessly charging ahead” with a program it’s not authorized to execute.
“The city’s actions are illegal and will harm vulnerable Angelenos who live in these RVs, while unlawfully wasting taxpayer resources on activities that exceed the city’s authority,” court documents state.
Some city officials who support the new law say L.A. must have the tools to get unsafe and unsanitary RVs off the streets for good.
There are more than 3,100 RVs parked across the city of L.A. being used as improved housing, according to last year’s homeless count estimates from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
“These vehicles create unacceptable health, environmental, and safety risks, putting entire neighborhoods, critical infrastructure, and sensitive environmental areas at risk,” Councilmember Traci Park said in a statement. “Residents want solutions, not ideological wars, delay tactics, and frivolous lawsuits.”
LAist reached out to other city officials for comment but, so far, they have not responded.
How we got here
Park, who represents communities including Venice and Culver City in District 11, introduced a motion in October instructing various city departments to “immediately implement” expanded RV enforcement, about a week after AB 630 was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
According to the motion, the new law “is one more tool to stop the RV to streets pipeline” and complements the city’s efforts to crack down on “van-lords.”
Attorneys for the Coalition for Human Rights, who include some from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, sent a demand letter to L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto on Dec. 18 explaining its arguments.
“The City’s planned implementation of AB 630 is illegal,” attorneys wrote in the letter, which also argued the city would be “liable for any damages for property if illegally removed, withheld, or destroyed.”
The letter gave L.A. officials until Dec. 29 to confirm that the city would not implement the new law.
City officials did not respond, according to Shayla Myers, senior attorney with the Unhoused People's Justice Project at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
The coalition is now asking a judge to resolve the dispute.
“The city of Los Angeles and the City Council in its rush to criminalize homelessness, you know, rushed past the plain language of the statute and instructed city employees effectively to violate the law,” Myers told LAist. “That kind of rushing to criminalize homelessness is the type of action that leads to bad policy making, but it also leads to lawsuits.”
Myers said legal matters like this don’t help get people off the street, but they’re necessary when the city refuses to obey the law and to respect the rights of people experiencing homelessness.
What officials say
L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto’s office did not immediately respond to LAist’s requests for comment on the writ or demand letter.
Mayor Karen Bass proposed AB 630 in partnership with Assemblymember Mark González, who introduced the California assembly bill. According to González’s office, the new law aims to boost public safety, address environmental concerns and “complement programs like Mayor Bass' Inside Safe initiative.”
Inside Safe is Bass’ flagship homelessness program that aims to move people off the street and into housing.
Bass' office has called AB 630 “landmark legislation.”
“For too long, bad actors have preyed on unhoused Angelenos and families through a cycle of buying and auctioning off broken down, inoperable RVs that are dangerous for those inhabiting them and for surrounding areas — they catch on fire and can become death traps, not the type of RVs safe to be used for housing,” representatives from Bass' office previously said in a statement to LAist.
Representatives from González’s office didn’t immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment on the writ.
LAist has also reached out to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, whose office is involved with coordinating the removal of RVs from L.A. streets. Szabo did not immediately respond.
Yusra Farzan
wants to help Southern Californians connect with faith communities around the region.
Published January 7, 2026 1:55 PM
The Eaton Fire destroyed buildings at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center a year ago.
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Topline:
The Eaton Fire destroyed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, where over 400 families would gather to worship and which has served as a Jewish community space for over 100 years. Josh Ratner, the senior rabbi at the temple, says that in the year since he has been leaning on the Jewish history of resilience and rebuilding to provide pastoral care to the congregation.
The context: Thirty families of the congregation lost their homes, while another 40 families have had to relocate.
Read on ... for more of what the synagogue's rabbi said on LAist's AirTalk.
The Eaton Fire destroyed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, where over 400 families would gather to worship and which has served as a Jewish community space for over 100 years.
On the anniversary of the fire Wednesday, Josh Ratner, the senior rabbi at the temple, told LAist’s AirTalk program that the congregation has been gathering at the First United Methodist Church in Pasadena.
“ It has certainly been a unique challenge," he said, "in a sense of us going through a double crisis, a double tragedy of the loss of our building, which has meant so much to so many of our congregants, and the loss of so many congregants’ homes.”
Thirty families of the congregation lost their homes, while another 40 families have had to relocate.
As the fire raged, Cantor Ruth Berman Harris raced to save all 13 sacred Torah scrolls, pieces of parchment with Hebrew text used at services, including Shabbat. The scrolls are now being stored at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
Everything else in the temple was lost in the fire.
In 2019, UCLA acquired temple records, including newsletters, yearbooks, board minutes, membership directories, financial reports, booklets, photographs and video and audio recordings. Community members can access that information, tracing Pasadena’s Jewish history from the 1930s to present day.
Ratner said that since the fire, he has leaned into what led him to becoming a rabbi — “the ability to provide pastoral care and love” as the congregation has grappled with losing their spiritual home.
“ The Jewish tradition and Jewish history is we're no strangers to crisis and to dislocation and to exile," Ratner said. "So there are a lot of themes from the Bible itself and the idea of the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the wilderness before reaching the promised land and living in that sense of dislocation and impermanence.”
From ancient times to the recent past, he went on, temples are destroyed and Jewish people are persecuted and forced to relocate.
”We have overcome so much before as a people. I think that that gives us some firm foundation to know that we can recover from this as well,” he said. “And not just recover, but really our histories of people is one of rebuilding even stronger than before. Each time there's been a crisis, we've been able to reinvent different aspects of Judaism and to evolve.”
A brief history of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center
The building was built in 1932 and sits on a 91,000-square-foot parcel of land, according to L.A. County records.
The congregation traces its roots to 19th century Jewish residents of Pasadena. Official incorporation of Temple B’nai Israel of Pasadena by the State of California happened in 1921.
In the 1940s, the congregation purchased the a Mission revival building that later burned in the Eaton Fire.
In 1956 the congregation changed its name to the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center.
Rock singer David Lee Roth had his Bar Mitzvah at the center in the 1970s.
In the late 1990s and 2010s, the congregation merged with synagogues in Sunland-Tujunga and Arcadia.
In 2014 it became the first Conservative congregation to employ a transgender rabbi when it hired Becky Silverstein as education director.
Correspondent Adolfo Guzman-Lopez contributed to this report.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced new dietary guidelines for Americans focused on promoting whole foods, healthy proteins and fats.
The new food pyramid: At a press conference today, the administration unveiled a new food pyramid with red meat, cheese, vegetables and fruits pictured at the top. The guidelines will set limits on added sugar, and encourage diets that include meat and dairy. For years, Americans have been advised to limit saturated fat and the new pyramid is facing criticism.
Why it matters: Though most Americans don't actually read the dietary guidelines, they are highly influential in determining what's served in school meals and on military bases, as well as what's included in federal food aid for mothers and infants, as the guidelines set targets for calories and nutrients.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced new dietary guidelines for Americans focused on promoting whole foods, healthy proteins and fats.
At a press conference today, the administration unveiled a new food pyramid with red meat, cheese, vegetables and fruits pictured at the top.
Secretary Kennedy described the new guidelines as the most significant re-set on nutrition policy in history, calling for an end to policies that promote highly-refined foods that are harmful to health.
The guidelines will set limits on added sugar, and encourage diets that include meat and dairy.
"Protein and healthy fats are essential and were wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines," Kennedy said. "We are ending the war on saturated fats."
As an introduction to the new guidelines, Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called for a dramatic reduction" in the consumption of highly processed foods," ladened with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats and chemical additives.
"This approach can change the health trajectory for many Americans," they wrote, pointing out that more than 70% of American adults are overweight or obese due to "a diet that has become reliant on highly processed foods and coupled with a sedentary lifestyle."
For years, Americans have been advised to limit saturated fat and the new pyramid is facing criticism.
"I'm very disappointed in the new pyramid that features red meat and saturated fat sources at the very top, as if that's something to prioritize, it does go against decades and decades of evidence and research," says Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert at Stanford University. He was a member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which reviewed all the nutrition evidence.
The guidelines also elevate cheese and other dairy to the top of the pyramid, paving the way for the option of full-fat milk and dairy products in school meals. There's growing evidence, based on nutrition science, that dairy foods can be beneficial.
"It's pretty clear that overall milk and cheese and yogurt can be part of a healthy diet," says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist, public health scientist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. "Both low fat and whole fat dairy versions of milk, cheese and yogurt have been linked to lower cardiovascular risk," he says.
"What's quite interesting is that the fat content doesn't seem to make a big difference. So both low fat and whole fat dairy versions of milk, cheese and yogurt have been linked to lower cardiovascular risk," Mozaffarian says.
Mozaffarian says he supports the recommendations to lower consumption of highly processed foods. "Highly processed foods are clearly harmful for a range of diseases, so to have the U.S. government recommend that a wide class of foods be eaten less because of their processing is a big deal and I think a very positive move for public health," he says.
Though most Americans don't actually read the dietary guidelines, they are highly influential in determining what's served in school meals and on military bases, as well as what's included in federal food aid for mothers and infants, as the guidelines set targets for calories and nutrients.
Family members of victims of the Palisades Fire participated in memorial events Wednesday.
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Topline:
In the Pacific Palisades and Altadena today, families of fire victims, survivors, elected officials and others gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of the fires that killed 31 people and reduced L.A. neighborhoods to ash and rubble.
Pacific Palisades: A memorial honored the 12 people who died. Then people gathered for a protest that directed anger at L.A. city leadership.
Altadena: Survivors called for more support — from SoCal Edison, from insurance companies and from the federal government — at a news conference.
Read on ... for details about the events and photos.
At American Legion Post 283 in the heart of the Palisades, more than 100 fire survivors gathered Wednesday morning for a private ceremony for the families who lost loved ones in the fire. After the memorial, Los Angeles police officers on horseback led a procession, followed by bagpipers, then families of those who lost their lives in the fire a year ago.
Then in a ceremony on the Palisades Village Green, a bell was rung 12 times for the 12 people who died in the fire.
“No community should have to endure this level of devastation and loss and trauma,” said Jessica Rogers, executive director of the Palisades Long Term Recovery Group, which organized the memorial. “This past year has tested us beyond measure — physically, emotionally and spiritually. And yet, here we stand together.”
Eaton Fire survivors call for support
Hundreds of people turned out for a news conference in Altadena on the one-year anniversary of the Eaton Fire.
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Meanwhile, in Altadena, survivors and elected officials held a news conference to raise concerns about their recovery experience so far and to call for action.
They said survivors have been wrongfully denied the support they need to stay housed in the wake of losing their homes — by the utility company whose equipment is believed to have started the fire, by key insurance companies and by the federal government.
Southern California Edison has acknowledged that its equipment likely started the fire, speakers Wednesday said. But they added that the compensation offered by the utility is inadequate.
State Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, who represents Altadena, said she had sent a letter to SoCal Edison leadership urging the company to provide urgent housing relief to the community.
“Part of them taking responsibility is providing the financial resources that this community needs to thrive,” Perez said to applause from the crowd. “We will not allow this community to fall into homelessness. Edison, you need to step it up.”
That was a worry for fire survivor Ada Hernandez, who said her family is at risk of having to live in their car when their housing support runs out next week.
Ada Hernandez, joined by her young daughter at Wednesday's news conference, says her family may have to live in their car.
Other speakers called out their home insurers, some of whom, they said, have illegally delayed and denied coverage. A particular focus was State Farm. A spokesperson for the insurer said they couldn't discuss individual customers' cases, but that the company is "committed to continuing being a partner with our customers throughout their recovery."
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the area, also called on President Donald Trump to approve California’s request for tens of billions in relief to help people rebuild.
The events were just two among many held or planned for this week and in coming weeks — marking the tragedy, honoring victims, creating art and building community.
L.A. mayor's role
A key figure missing from the Palisades event, which transitioned to a planned protest as the morning progressed, was L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. Her office told LAist the mayor was attending private vigils and directed flags at City Hall to fly at half-staff.
Anger about her role in the early days of the fire response remains fresh for many Palisades Fire survivors, as evidenced by a sign at the memorial calling on her to resign, as well as people wearing shirts that said, “They let us burn.”
At a protest after the vigil, dozens of Palisadians gathered to share their frustration and demand accountability and action, including officials taking responsibility for the cause of the fire, waiving rebuild permit fees and improving responses in the case of the next disaster.
Anger was directed at L.A. city leaders at a protest in the Palisades on Wednesday.
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Bass said on LAist’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle on Wednesday that the anniversary is a difficult day of remembrance and mourning, but she also said that it’s “a day to recommit and be hopeful and to forge on.” She added that she was encouraged to see so much rebuilding underway on recent trips to fire areas.
“I did not have a hand in writing the report, in editing the report, or, frankly, in reading the reports, the various versions,” Bass said on AirTalk. “I had no idea there were so many versions of the report.”
Bass said she requested that the City Administrative Officer review the report’s characterization of the Fire Department budget: “I just said, ‘Get accurate information,’ and that’s what I assume they did.”
Matt Szabo holds that role. LAist has reached out to him for comment.
