Topline:
Turning Point chapters continue to grow on California campuses months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Why it matters: Campuses are seeing tensions rise as conservative students become more vocal both in and out of the classroom.
The backstory: While conservative students say they’ve felt hesitant to speak aloud in the past, they now say emerging Turning Point chapters have helped them break out of their shells in California, with one student even describing them as a “safe space.”
Despite being a political junkie and longtime fan of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, Shasta College senior Raymond Randolph hesitated to speak up about politics on campus. But Kirk’s assassination during a Turning Point USA event at a Utah university in September 2025 changed that.
“God was calling me up to the plate,” said Randolph.
The day after Kirk’s death, Randolph reached out to Turning Point, which Kirk had founded, to start a chapter at his college in Redding. As the chapter’s president, he said he’s not alone in feeling mobilized after Kirk’s assassination.
“It drove a lot of people like me to get up and do something,” he said.
While conservative students say they’ve felt hesitant to speak aloud in the past, they now say emerging Turning Point chapters have helped them break out of their shells in California, with one student even describing them as a “safe space.”
As of March this year, Turning Point USA told CalMatters it has 1,462 active college chapters nationally. Over 70% of those were founded after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Turning Point’s presence has nearly tripled on California campuses as of March, with 78 of the state’s 119 active college chapters founded after Kirk’s death.
But conservative views continue to be overshadowed by more liberal voices on California campuses as tensions persist both in and outside classrooms, students and professors say.
“Most of [the liberal students] think we’re racist, most of them think we’re fascists … especially in California,” Randolph said.
Kameron Tessier, president of the statewide California College Democrats organization, said Turning Point’s rhetoric is “disgusting and very bigoted” and must be investigated on campuses.
“I’m a firm believer in the First Amendment, but also the First Amendment has its consequences,” said Tessier, a senior at UC Santa Cruz. “If they are pushing actively dangerous rhetoric on campuses, then I think it’s worth it for administrations to look into that.”
Turning Point founder Kirk was a highly controversial political figure. His organization is notorious for its Professor Watchlist, an online database identifying “radical” professors. The watchlist has been called inaccurate, and has led to threats and harassment against faculty members across the country. It was also the reason why Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego denied a third attempt by students to establish a school-affiliated Turning Point USA chapter last November.
Some of Kirk’s most controversial comments include calling the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake,” spreading COVID-19 misinformation and saying some gun deaths each year were worth it to protect the Second Amendment.
In California, Generation Z, or those under the age of 29, is 1.5 times as likely to identify as liberal compared to their grandparents’ generation, according to a 2022 statewide survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.
This lack of conservatism among young people spills onto campuses. Only three California institutions are featured on a list published last fall by college-ranking website Niche of the 100 most conservative colleges in the country. The list is based on student reviews of the political leanings of their campus communities. All three California institutions are private universities: Biola, California Baptist and National.
Students founded a Turning Point chapter at Claremont McKenna last spring. After Kirk’s death in the fall, college security supervised each of the chapter’s events. Several students heckled a vigil they held after Kirk’s assassination in September. And at a February campus Turning Point tabling event, dozens of partially nude bikers rode by in protest of the national organization’s viewpoints.
Bike protest organizer Luca Davis called Turning Point’s values “un-American,” and said the national organization’s harmful rhetoric should not be tolerated on campuses. A junior at Pitzer College, which is part of the Claremont consortium, Davis said he hoped that having dozens of students laughing and blasting music as they biked by the tabling event would act as a visible “foil” to Turning Point’s values.
“We’re living our beliefs and values while they’re working to tear them down,” he said. “It’s an active expression of everything they’re trying to destroy.”
Despite the pushback, a Turning Point student leader said that membership has grown substantially since Kirk’s death, and most members are underclassmen.
A die-hard Floridian, 19-year-old Gabriel Khuly said he became disillusioned by Democratic politics after he moved to California to attend Claremont McKenna for college.
“You really only get to see how stupid and bad Democrat policies are once you get to [really] see them,” he said, citing the high concentration of homelessness on Skid Row and high food prices.
The self-described “gadfly” and well-known conservative on campus said he noticed his right-leaning peers often don’t feel fully comfortable sharing their views, both in and out of the classroom.
“There is still a sort of desire… to at least partially conceal those views,” he said.
Khuly has received a lot of flak for voicing his conservative political opinions on campus, particularly on the anonymous, campus-based social app Fizz. In late September last year, Khuly wore his MAGA cap and, alongside his friends, debated students on abortion and climate change at a table outside the campus dining hall. Later, a post on the campus app called him “the most insufferable, weird, and unf*ckable guy on the planet,” receiving over 1,500 upvotes.
Khuly said “he could not care less” about the retaliation.
“These sorts of people, they don’t exist in the real world,” he said. “They exist online, they exist on college campuses, they exist at bougie millennial coffee shops … they’ll block up the streets for traffic for some protest or whatever, but outside of that, they don’t exist.”
Up north in Shasta County, voters aged 18 to 20 are more likely to register Republican than those aged 21 to 29. But Shasta College itself, according to Randolph, is still a liberal hotspot, where speaking against liberal viewpoints wasn’t really allowed — until his Turning Point chapter came along.
“People have said that they’ve gotten a lot of relief now that they know we’re on campus.”
In some instances, tensions have boiled over, like at Turning Point’s final tour stop at UC Berkeley in November. Fights broke out, with one man hospitalized after he was struck in the head. Police in riot gear arrested several people. In March, a heated exchange occurred at Cerritos College between Democratic congressional candidate Shonique Williams and Republican students and activists.
Scott Waller is the chair of the Political Science Department at Biola University in La Mirada, which Niche calls the most conservative college in California — and the 24th most conservative in the nation.
During both of Trump’s administrations, Waller said he has noticed an increased “anxiousness” in the classroom.
“If a student expresses his or her displeasure with the current Trump administration, they will know that there are students similarly animated in a very virulent way to defend the Trump administration,” he said. “That creates some tension in class.”
Yet, some educators relish in-classroom conflict. Stephanie Muravchik and other scholars across the Claremont Colleges analyzed millions of college syllabuses last year to see how professors teach about some of the most contentious subjects in academia, including the ethics of abortion and the Israel-Hamas war. They argued that only a small fraction of professors teach the full range of controversy in the classroom.
Professors must build “more contention” into the classroom in order to encourage healthy intellectual debate, the Claremont professors wrote in an October online magazine op-ed.
So, in sections of her “Introduction to American Politics” class, Muravchik runs simulations with students taking on characters across the political aisle on topics such as social media regulation and constitutional ratification.
She builds the simulations to include prominent conservative characters such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and FBI Director Kash Patel. While all of her students have fun taking on these roles, she noted that her “quietly conservative students” can choose them and feel like they have “equal play in the political conversation.”
“They have fun fighting,” she said. “They get to argue in a civil way.”
Freshman Ava Khansari was in Muravchik’s American Politics class last fall. She said she enjoyed the simulations, and found them eye-opening. In one simulation, as she took on the role of TikTok CEO Shou Chew in a debate on deregulating social media, Khansari said she realized her true viewpoints “went the opposite direction” to her character’s views.
“The games were a lot of fun,” Khansari said. “I really did change my viewpoints on certain topics.”
In a separate course on “American Jews and Liberal Democracy,” Muravchik allows a few tense class sessions where, in class discussions, students debate more right-wing perspectives as well as other views.
“A number of students had some sort of revolution in their political thinking in all kinds of directions,” Muravchik said. After some particularly exciting debate, one student even “came out as conservative.”
Claremont McKenna student Khuly was part of a course titled “Liberalism and Conservatism” at the college last fall, which explored political opinions over multiple centuries, and was, for the first time, co-taught by a left- and a right-wing professor.
“I think that it allows the space for genuine, real study of politics,” he said. “You don’t get many spaces for that.”
Despite these benefits, there is one thing Khuly would change.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, [but] I wish we read more [work by] liberals.”
Kahani Malhotra is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.
Topline:
Long Beach's budget proposal would shutter libraries on Mondays and lay off more than a dozen library workers, including ones who staff counters, shelve books and offer mental health services to teens.
Why it matters: In response, educators, the local library foundation and union leaders are pushing back, saying the city can’t afford to lose a vital service for kids and families.
Details: Under the budget proposal, five of the city’s 12 libraries — Bay Shore, Burnett, El Dorado, Harte and Michelle Obama — would drop from six days of service back to five, losing their Monday hours.
The city of Long Beach has proposed cutting library hours and laying off librarians to help balance its budget. In response, educators, the local library foundation and union leaders are pushing back, saying the city can’t afford to lose a vital service for kids and families.
Under the budget proposal, five of the city’s 12 libraries — Bay Shore, Burnett, El Dorado, Harte and Michelle Obama — would drop from six days of service back to five, losing their Monday hours just a few years after those hours were added. (The city’s other libraries were already closed on Mondays, and all are closed Sundays.)
On an average Monday, those branches see a total of more than 1,000 visitors, according to city data.
“In a city the size of Long Beach, and with our population, we could be seeing a 2027 where there are no libraries open on Monday. I think that’s pretty crazy,” said Kristen Hernandez with the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. The nonprofit, which raises money for the local library system, is gathering signatures on a petition protesting the cuts. As of Friday, it had more than 1,800 signatures.
Changes to the city library system are a sliver of the cuts unveiled last week by Long Beach City Manager Tom Modica as part of a citywide winnowing in programs and services to close next year’s expected $58 million deficit.
Beyond cuts to programs and facility hours, Modica proposed laying off more than 260 city workers and cutting more than 200 additional vacant positions — about 4% of the city’s roughly 6,000-person workforce.
Local libraries would lose 14 positions, 11 of them currently filled, including five library clerks, four library assistants, a vacant general librarian position at the Billie Jean King Main Library, and a mental health associate who serves as the library’s teen specialist. The plan also cuts funding for library pages who stock books and funding for security services, as well as nearly all print and digital newspaper subscriptions.
The combined cuts would save the department a little more than $1.4 million.
Elizabeth Cespuglio, a librarian at Billie Jean King Library, said that the library assistants at risk of being cut are responsible for planning and running workshops and programs at the branches, pulling materials, tracking which books and genres are most in demand and staffing the information desk. Clerks handle check-outs, check-ins and library cards, while pages keep the shelves organized.
Perhaps most at risk, Cespuglio said, is the library’s mental health associate, Jasmin Flores, who spends her days building rapport with teens in need. Losing that specialist, she said, leaves her “quite fearful” for the patrons and staff alike, since the library’s other social worker focuses on unhoused adults and doesn’t have the time and energy to build the same relationships with youth.
Each day, Flores is the calming face for more than a dozen kids. Many of them are in and out of homelessness; some have been in juvenile detention. Others are LGBTQIA and struggle to find friends; others struggle to find food. She’s already told some that she may not be showing up anymore. It’s a difficult conversation, she said, having to console others for the loss of her job.
“It honestly breaks my heart that I probably will not be in that position anymore,” she said.
Flores’ main worry is that some of them will stop showing up. “We’ve built that rapport, and it hasn’t been easy to build,” she said. “It’s taken a while to get there, and I just hate to see all that go to waste.”
The real problem, Cespuglio said, is that libraries are losing funding even as they’re increasingly in demand — more than 2,800 patrons visit daily across Long Beach’s 12 branches, an 8% rise since last year. The number of programs offered has increased by 50% in the past year, with more than 1,000 adult participants.
Annually, city libraries have continually climbed in foot traffic since the onset of the pandemic, though averages are still lower than in 2018 and 2019.
Branches have been understaffed for more than a decade, Cespuglio said, at least since the last time the city announced library layoffs in 2012.
“There’s still an expectation on the system for us to be doing all of these things and continue the same level of service as we’ve done,” she said. “Cutting those hours, or those Mondays, not only does it impact the public’s access to the library all over the city, but it has these other ramifications in the rest of the five days that the rest of us are working.”
The looming cuts have created an “undercurrent of anxiety” among staff who still don’t know which of them may lose their jobs, according to Cespuglio. Her own position is not at risk, but her partner’s is, and she said the possibility of losing half her household income is real. She said that rent in Long Beach has outpaced her pay raises for the 12 years she’s lived and worked in the city.
The library cuts are part of a far larger fiscal reckoning for Long Beach.
The proposed layoffs stretch across more than a dozen departments and offices, hitting fire, police, homeless services, parks and libraries alike, as the city grapples with rising personnel costs, mounting legal payouts, the loss of federal grants and a local economic slowdown that has weighed on tax revenue.
City officials have said the strategy of previous years — pulling from cash reserves to delay layoffs — is no longer sustainable; the city drained tens of millions of dollars from its reserves, including its emergency fund, just to close out the current fiscal year.
Sashi Muralidharan, a labor representative with the city’s largest union, IAM Local 1930, said they will “fight for every job,” even as labor negotiations — which coincide with the budget talks — are looking grim.
Eighty percent of the positions proposed to be cut are represented by IAM, including 209 filled positions.
“Anything that does result in a layoff, we will be bargaining over those impacts to make sure that we lessen the negative impacts,” Muralidharan said.
At a Long Beach City Council meeting this week, nurses, union shop stewards, library staff and other city workers turned out to protest the cuts, arguing they would bring greater ramifications to the public’s quality of life and further enervate its remaining staff, pushing them to look for work elsewhere.
Nate Kim, a city nurse and negotiator with IAM Local 1930, told the council that while his own position had been renewed, many of his colleagues had not been so fortunate. “Many have been laid off already,” he added. Emily Quest, a resident who uses the library’s free craftspace, begged council members through tears not to cut the hours or the staff who run it.
Mayor Rex Richardson has proposed restoring 70 of the positions slated for elimination and said the city remains on track for its first structural budget surplus by 2028, even as another deficit, projected at $27.3 million, looms for the following year.
The City Council is expected to hold public hearings on the budget through the summer before a final vote in late September. You can find a schedule of hearings to attend here or fill out an online survey to share your priorities with the City Council, which must debate and pass the budget by Oct. 1.
Topline:
Two months after a pipeline rupture sent more than 25,000 gallons of crude oil onto East Los Angeles streets and into storm drains, many businesses along the Cesar E. Chavez Avenue corridor are still waiting to be paid back for their losses.
Why now: Reimbursement from pipeline operator Pacific Pipeline System has been slow, said Kelly LoBianco, director of the LA County Department of Economic Opportunity. As of Tuesday, 19 businesses had filed claims and only one had been approved.
The backstory: The May spill forced weeklong street closures near East Cesar E. Chavez and Eastern avenues, prompting restaurants, barbershops and bike shops to cancel appointments, delay deliveries or close entirely. A survey of nearly 50 businesses found a 70% to 75% loss in revenue following the spill.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
Two months after an oil spill shut down streets in East Los Angeles and disrupted businesses along the Cesar E. Chavez Avenue corridor, many owners are still waiting for reimbursement.
The May spill forced street closures after crews punctured an underground pipeline, sending more than 25,000 gallons of crude oil onto nearby streets and into storm drains. Along the commercial corridor, owners of restaurants, barbershops and bike shops had to cancel appointments, delay deliveries or close their doors for a week as cleanup crews worked in the area.
In the days following the spill, a survey of nearly 50 businesses near the intersection of East Cesar E. Chavez and Eastern avenues found a 70% to 75% loss in revenue, according to Kelly LoBianco, director of the LA County Department of Economic Opportunity.
“You know how the barbershop gets on a Friday. … We lost a lot of business that week,” said Barber Avila, owner of Brooklyn Lab Barbershop. Avila preferred not to share his first name for this story.
For the past month, Avila has been working with LA County and pipeline operator Pacific Pipeline System (PPS) to submit documents – including tax records, sales reports and expenses – to show how the spill affected his business and file a claim for reimbursement.
Avila said his claim was approved this week and he is now awaiting payment.
Many other businesses are seeking reimbursement from PPS, but the process has been slow, LoBianco said.
As of Tuesday, 19 businesses had filed claims. Only one had been approved, while three others were close to approval, LoBianco said. She did not have details on the amount reimbursed.
Veronica Ramos, co-owner of Ramos Industries, a commercial and residential glass and aluminum contractor, said she was reimbursed by PPS a week after submitting a claim. The spill caused contracted jobs to be canceled and deliveries to be rescheduled for a fee because trucks could not access the shop.
Ramos said her business had a bookkeeper who was able to quickly gather the required documents but she worries her neighbors may struggle to provide the needed records for a claim.
A PPS spokesperson said claims are still being accepted and processed. A third-party claims administrator has been helping businesses with the filing process in English and Spanish, the company said.
“We understand how important a timely resolution is for those affected and remain committed to working through each claim as efficiently as possible,” PPS said.
What lies ahead are months of soil testing and excavation to remove contaminated soil from the site of the spill, which county officials say could continue into January 2027. Neither Avila nor Ramos knew about the remaining work and worried about how additional street closures could affect their business again.
“It’s good to keep it in mind,” Ramos said.
Anyone who believes they were impacted by the oil spill can still contact the PPS claims line at 1-877-817-5465 to be connected to a third-party administrator who can guide them through the process in English and Spanish, PPS said. There is currently no deadline to submit a claim.
The Department of Economic Opportunity’s Office of Small Business (OSB) is continuing to provide guidance on claim preparation, documentation requirements, and submission for affected businesses. To book a one-on-one appointment, businesses can:
All impacted businesses seeking assistance should indicate that their request is related to the East LA oil spill.
Rafael Carbajal, director of the LA County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs (DCBA) said bad actors may prey upon communities during environmental disasters like the oil spill including contractors and legal services providers.
Carbajal said the DCBA office is helping residents verify contractors, legal services providers and is providing information on their website on how to recognize scams.
Residents who have concerns or questions can call the DCBA hotline at (800) 593-8222.
Topline:
Composer Charles-Henri Avelange has spent nearly 20 years trying to find a way to honor firefighters with music.
Why now: In July, that longtime dream took shape when dozens of Hollywood orchestral musicians gathered at Sony Pictures Studios to record the "Fireman's Prayer."
Back story: The poem was written by Wichita firefighter Alvin William "Smokey" Linn, inspired by a 1958 apartment fire in which three children died — words that firefighters have recited ever since.
What's next: Thanks to private donations, Avelange recorded with the Los Angeles Children's Chorus and the Los Angeles Master Chorale in May, then returned last month with Grammy-winning conductor Grant Gershon and dozens of Hollywood's best musicians — some of them survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires — to record the orchestral portion. He is still fundraising to add the California Professional Firefighters Pipes & Drums Corps.
Composer Charles-Henri Avelange has wanted to find a way to honor firefighters with music since the 9/11 attacks.
Last month, that longtime dream started to take shape when over 85 orchestral musicians working in Hollywood gathered at a Sony Pictures Studio soundstage to record the “Fireman's Prayer.”
The poem, written by Alvin William “Smokey” Linn, was inspired by an apartment fire in 1958 in which three children died. It’s something every firefighter learns to recite.
Not long after moving to the U.S., Avelange found the Fireman’s Prayer inscribed on the wall of a firehouse in 2006 — and began singing a melody.
Avelange asked the firefighters whether the piece was already set to music. “Because to me, this is not just a prayer, it's an anthem,” he said.
Twenty-four hours later, he had written the first draft of the anthem.
Avelange’s vision was to have 200 to 250 musicians, including a children's choir, full adult choir, full orchestra and a 56-piece drum and bagpipe corps for the recording, which costs nearly $100,000. All proceeds from the song would go to firefighters.
“Everybody who knows me eventually always heard about the Fireman's Prayer,” he said. “I have no idea how or when it will get done.”
Then the January 2025 fires hit Los Angeles. Avelange and his wife found themselves just blocks from a Palisades Fire evacuation zone. They could see the firefighters protecting homes on their street.
“My wife, Jennifer … looked at me and she said, ‘Well, if this is not a sign, Charles, this thing is needed. It is really time.’”
Thanks to private donations, Avelange recorded with the Los Angeles Children’s Choir and the Los Angeles Master Chorale in May. He is still fundraising to record the Pipes and Drums of California Professional Firefighters performing.
Last month, he was joined by Grammy-winning conductor Grant Gershon and many of Hollywood’s best musicians — some are survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires — to record the orchestral portion of an anthem he had heard only as digital samples for nearly 20 years.
The recording is being funded through the nonprofit, Los Angeles County Fire Museum. Learn more on how you can help.
Joining them in the audience were members of the firefighting community.
“When I heard them playing, it sounded exactly the way it's supposed to and actually even better,” he said. “It was quite a magical moment.”
Topline:
A brush fire burning in Wildwood Canyon above Burbank has prompted evacuation orders for DeBell Restaurant and Golf Course and Stough Canyon Nature Center, according to the city of Burbank.
What we know so far: The Walnut Fire broke out Saturday afternoon near the intersection East Harvard Road and Wildwood Canyon Road.
Read on ... for more on evacuations and weather conditions.
This is a developing story and will be updated. For the most up-to-date information about the fire you can check:
Evacuation orders for DeBell Restaurant and Golf Course and Stough Canyon Nature Center remain in place for a fire burning in Wildwood Canyon above Burbank.
Evacuation warnings for Churches Ct. and Country Club Drive were lifted at 6:20 p.m.
As of 5:55 p.m., the fire had burned 40 acres and 70% contained, according to Burbank.
The Walnut Fire broke out Saturday afternoon near the intersection East Harvard Road and Wildwood Canyon Road.
Hiking trails around the area are closed. The Starlight Bowl concert scheduled for tonight has been canceled.
Check out LAist's wildfire recovery guide
If you have to evacuate:
Navigating fire conditions:
How to help yourself and others:
How to start the recovery process:
What to do for your kids:
Prepare for the next disaster:
