The Brief

Children are more aware than adults often realize, even when parents try to shield them. With Los Angeles at the center of federal immigration crackdowns, psychologists say it’s crucial to have honest conversations about what’s happening.

Whether you’re directly affected or not, it’s difficult to ignore the fear and anxiety communities are experiencing as immigration officers patrol neighborhoods, targeting schools, grocery stores and workplaces.

Despite efforts to halt immigration sweeps, the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed federal agents to continue stopping people in L.A. based on their appearance, accents and where they work and questioning them about their immigration status.

So how do parents talk about this? Should they even bring it up with their kids, especially toddlers or young children?

LAist spoke with psychologists to help parents and caregivers address tough topics like immigration and deportation with their young ones.

Have honest conversations

Don’t shy away from talking openly to your child about what’s happening around them, even if they’re young.

Brandi Eichstedt, a licensed marriage and family therapist at Children’s Institute, said kids are more exposed to issues than many adults realize. It’s better to be honest and upfront.

She recommends keeping it simple when explaining immigration. For example: “Some people are not allowed to live in the country because of the current law, so they may have to leave. That’s why they won’t be around like they used to.”

Going into politics isn’t necessary, she said.

Kids generally have a strong sense of fairness, so talking about race and racism at an early age can help them grasp these realities.

Parents should also prepare their children for conversations they may hear at school or elsewhere, especially with current policies allowing immigration sweeps and racial profiling.

Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA–Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, recommends parents talk to their children, especially if the family is at risk of separation or if they are citizens worried about being wrongly detained.

Make sure it’s age-appropriate

How to approach tough conversations varies by age.

When talking to toddlers, use simple language. For example, you might say that a friend can’t live here anymore.

For children who could be separated from their parents or caregivers, Brymer said it’s important to let them know there’s a family plan and reassure them that they will be cared for.

If a child is 6 to 10 years old, Eichstedt said it’s OK to talk about the legal system.

Explain that some people were born in this country, while others were born in different countries. Those who come from elsewhere hoping to live here are supposed to fill out paperwork to enter. Sometimes that doesn't happen, and if they don’t complete the paperwork properly, the government can ask them to leave. Until they complete the application the way the government requires, they have to live somewhere else.

Eichstedt also encourages parents and children to watch “Sesame Street” resources on displacement and resettlement.

Teach your child empathy

It’s important to teach your child empathy when talking about difficult topics like immigration and separation, Eichstedt said.

If a child knows someone who has been detained or deported, show them how to keep that person in their heart even if they’re no longer nearby. Stay connected through calls, texts, or letters. This can also help your child accept the separation and may even give them hope that this relationship doesn’t just end because of a traumatic event.

Be a safe space for your child

Taking care of yourself helps your child feel safe too.

Children pick up on their parents' emotions, Brymer said. If you’re anxious or doomscrolling, they’re feeling that same anxiety too.

Take a break from the news and social media. Staying informed is important, but the news shouldn’t be on 24/7, and you don’t need to be glued to your devices. Try to limit media exposure for both you and your children.

Instead, keep routines. Our brains crave patterns, Eichstedt said, so providing your child with daily structure helps foster safety and security. Sticking to a consistent schedule for bedtime, dinner, and getting ready for school makes a big difference.

“They need something very predictable in this very unpredictable world,” Eichstedt said.

While day-to-day routines are important, Brymer also recommends family check-ins. Questions can include: “What was one good thing that happened in your day?” and, “What are things that maybe didn’t go so well or maybe created anxiety for you?”

These check-ins can help start conversations with your child and uncover worries children may have about immigration enforcement or other important things you’d want to know about.

During heightened times of stress, acknowledge their feelings. If they’re sad, upset, angry, confused, scared, greet their emotions with comfort and validation. Eichstedt said it’s helpful to connect their feelings to what they’re experiencing.

For example: “It hurts that we don't get to see Timmy, right?” or, “It's painful when we hear words like that about people who we love and care about. I don't like it either. It makes me sad too.”

Giving children space to feel helps them feel safe again.

Most importantly, remind your child that they are loved by you.

Watch for stress signals

There are many ways to help children cope with the stressors in their lives, but first parents need to recognize the signs. Eichstedt shared some stress signals to look for:

• Aggression 
• Clinginess to a parent, caregiver or teacher 
• Regression like bedwetting, baby talk or thumb sucking  
• Depression such as shutting down or withdrawal 
• Physical symptoms like headache and stomachache 

Helping “kids be kids” and supporting play can ease stress and make children feel calmer. Toys, outdoor activities, board games, and arts and crafts all help children cope.

If your child is anxious, Brymer suggests a simple breathing exercise: Ask them what their favorite color is, then have them breathe in that color — and everything that makes them happy — and breathe out gray, which is all the “yucky” feelings. (If they like the color gray, you can improvise.)

Balance honesty with hope

While honesty is important, Eichstedt said, instilling hope nurtures their resiliency.

Hope can mean acknowledging current laws while also discussing the possibility that laws can change in ways they might want.

“[Black, Indigenous, and other people of color] in this country are resilient people. We lived through so much, right?” she said. “And so, there’s always that hope.”

The Senate is poised to pass a sweeping bipartisan bill on Monday that would regulate college sports, an attempt to end “chaos” in an industry that has been upended by skyrocketing athlete payments and near-unrestricted transfers between schools.

Passage of the legislation would be the strongest effort yet by Congress to set national regulations governing payments to college athletes for their name, image and likeness and how often they can transfer. It would give the NCAA new authority over those rules and limited antitrust protections to enforce them.

The bill is the product of years of Senate negotiations that intensified as some in the industry pleaded with Congress to step in after a 2025 lawsuit settlement uprooted the college sports landscape by allowing colleges to pay their players. The legislation, which would still have to pass the House, would codify the settlement into law but also establish new guardrails around the system in an attempt to rein in the runaway costs for colleges.

“It would be nice if college sports could somehow magically fix itself, but this is a matter of law, federal law, and only Congress can fix it,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who negotiated the bill with the top Democrat on the panel, Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.

The bill’s backers — more than 70 senators from both parties — say it aims to curtail constant litigation and uncertainty across college sports for athletes, schools and fans. It would also give hundreds of thousands of student athletes new health and labor protections.

Critics say the bill doesn’t do enough to protect athletes or curtail the enormous sums of money flowing to coaches, colleges and conferences.

“This is a bill that essentially ensconces a system of exploitation, and it doesn’t fix the broader problems,” said Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who has worked with labor and civil rights groups to rally opposition to the bill.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed an interest in the legislation, and the White House formally endorsed the bill last month. But it could face an uphill battle in the House, which failed repeatedly over the last year to get a different version to the floor and is in recess until after the November elections.

Lawmakers will have to start over in the next Congress if the bill doesn’t pass both chambers by the end of the year.

Bill addresses skyrocketing spending, unlimited transfers

College sports have been reeling in the wake of the 2025 court settlement allowing colleges to directly pay players for their name, image and likeness. The fallout has reshaped the industry and led to football roster payrolls that can exceed $40 million.

The bill codifies the court settlement, including a revenue cap that allows schools to share up to $21.5 million in revenue with their players. The legislation would more than double that amount for some schools, allowing up to an additional $27.5 million in payments through a retention fund, and would give schools and conferences the option of pooling their TV media rights to potentially raise more revenue.

The legislation also aims to stabilize the NCAA transfer portal that has led to players constantly switching teams. It would restrict player transfers to one “free” move over five years without sitting out a year, with some exceptions, and also restricts players to five years of total eligibility.

The proposed eligibility limit comes amid backlash to schools that have increasingly pushed boundaries, including LSU’s now-canceled plans to place players on the roster who had participated in NFL training camps.

“That was probably like a big lamp for some people who saw it and said, ‘Oh my God, this is so out of control,’” Cantwell said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “You can see how out-of-hand the situation was getting.”

The bill also would restrict coaches from leaving their schools during the season and prevent conferences from growing larger than 19 programs, an effort to prevent so-called “superleagues” from taking over sports. It would force schools that want to switch conferences to spend three years as an independent — down from five years in the original bill. That change brought new supporters on board, including Florida State and Clemson of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Critics say it wouldn’t do enough to help athletes

The legislation includes new protections for athletes, including caps on agent fees and guarantees for health insurance and certain scholarships. It would also require schools to maintain a minimum number of sports and roster spots — an effort to ensure that women’s and Olympic sports are not cut in favor of football, basketball and other sports that generate more revenue.

Still, some Democrats say it wouldn’t do enough to limit the big money in college sports.

The legislation “places a cap on the students’ cut of the revenues, but there are no caps on coaches’ salaries or on the size of donations to athletic programs,” Murphy said last week.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said that the new antitrust protections would make it harder for athletes to sue universities, and “taking away their legal rights strikes me as a bridge too far.”

Groups like the NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus and AFL-CIO have also opposed the bill, in part, because it leaves unresolved whether athletes should be considered employees with the ability to collectively bargain.

All four Black Democrats in the Senate — Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland — have opposed the bill.

Booker, who played football at Stanford in the late 1980s on a scholarship, said in a Senate floor speech earlier this month that he was “afforded opportunities I never would have had if it wasn’t for college athletics” but that he also “saw how unjust the NCAA is.”

He said it wasn’t until college athletes were able to begin to win cases in court that the power started to shift, “and now the NCAA is coming here to the United States Senate, asking for sweeping powers” to exempt antitrust laws.

Some Republicans also said it is overreach.

The legislation “goes way too far inserting the federal government into collegiate athletics,” said Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who is opposing it.

House passage is uncertain

Despite strong bipartisan support in the Senate, the bill faces a murky path in the House.

House lawmakers won’t return to Washington until mid-November, after the elections. And it’s unclear what will be on Republican leaders’ agenda in the chaotic last few weeks of the session.

Pressure from Trump could help push the bill to passage. But some House Republicans have insisted on language explicitly stating that athletes are not employees, which the Senate bill does not have — a key concession to Cantwell to win enough Democratic support.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said in a statement in May that “any lasting framework must confront the central issue that continues to cast uncertainty over the future of college sports: whether student-athletes will ultimately be treated as employees.”

“Congress cannot deliver real stability, consistency, or certainty to schools, conferences, and student-athletes while leaving that question unresolved,” the two Republicans said.

Each year, Congress passes laws which allocate money to the federal government's various programs and agencies. Trump, for the second year in a row, is refusing to send some of that money to the places that Congress says it has to go, setting off a fresh battle with lawmakers over who controls federal spending.

Of the $810 million being withheld, $567 million comes from programs that "provided services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens," according to a memo from the White House.

The move, called a pocket rescission, is illegal, according to the Government Accountability Office, an independent, non-partisan watchdog agency charged with providing federal agencies fact-based information.

Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to levy taxes and decide how federal funds are spent — known as power of the purse. If the president disagrees, he or she can send a request to Congress to cancel the fund, but that is supposed to happen with 45 days notice in order to let Congress agree or disagree.

A pocket rescission happens when the president decides to cancel funds without ample time for Congress to weigh in or reallocate the money. With the end of the fiscal year less than a week away, the announcement means the funds will go unspent and Congress can't respond.

"This is the most recent attempt by this Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to undermine Congress's Constitutional power of the purse," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate Appropriations committee, wrote in a statement posted to X. "OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding."

The canceled funds are fueling anger from Democrats who say OMB director Russell Vought is violating the separation of powers and undermining Congressional authority.

"This is theft from the American people, plain and simple," wrote Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee on X. "Every Republican who voted for these bills should be furious, because Vought is saying their votes don't count."

"Donald Trump knows he can't get these cuts through Congress, so he is illegally making them through the back door," Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget committee, said in a statement. "Trump's actions are a blatant attack on Congress's constitutional power of the purse."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The administration also says it withheld $15 million to a Justice Department team tasked with "preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions, incidents, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial stability and harmony," $70 million to "programs provide grants and fellowships to support institutions bringing foreign students and faculty to the United States to study or teach language," and tens of millions to various research and non-profit grant programs that target climate change or racial and gender minority work.

A detailed accounting provided by the administration can be found here.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed two pieces of legislation aimed at increasing accountability and protections for communities in the aftermath of the Lineage warehouse fire.

One bill by Assemblymember Mark González, AB 817, prevents the city and county of Los Angeles from issuing new building permits to cold storage facilities like Lineage unless the company maintains a contingency fund, or insurance, that can support residents in states of emergency.

The other bill by state Sen. María Elena Durazo, SB 716, increases fines for violations of local ordinances when companies pose a risk to health and safety. If the violation results from a state or federal disaster declaration, fines can reach up to $50,000 per violation.

The fire on June 17 blanketed the LA region with thick smoke for days and led to a monthslong cleanup of 88 million pounds of rotting food. Residents dealt with putrid odors, toxins in the air, an infestation of flies and rats.

“Boyle Heights showed us the lasting impact a major facility emergency can have on a community. These laws strengthen the tools, resources and accountability needed to protect residents and help communities respond when emergencies happen,” Newsom said in a statement.

The laws will be in effect locally and will expand statewide until July 1, 2028.

Earlier this month, Lineage Chief Executive Officer Greg Lehmkuhl told Boyle Heights Beat and The LA Local that the company has not decided whether to rebuild its Boyle Heights warehouse.

“We haven’t even come close to making a decision or determination there,” Lehmkuhl said. “We’re still focused on holding the right people accountable here and making sure that we’re continuing to support the community.”

The CEO’s comments about the uncertainty surrounding a rebuild come after permit applications were filed in late July to restore the warehouse in Boyle Heights. Lineage described it as a repair permit that’s typical when a building is significantly damaged, adding it was filed by the building’s owner via a contractor.

The post Newsom signs new safety laws aimed at accountability after the Lineage fire appeared first on LA Local.

California officials say they will not use a federal database pushed by the Trump administration to check voter eligibility. That’s after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way last week for states to use it.

The Trump administration wants states to use its controversial data system, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — or SAVE — to check citizenship status on voter rolls.

The system has faced criticism for mistakenly flagging some eligible voters as noncitizens.

California says nothing is changing despite the SCOTUS ruling. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber told LAist’s AirTalk that the system has had “a number of errors.”

“We did not find the list valid for us and as a result decided some while ago we would not use it,” Weber said. “And as a result, Californians can feel secure that they're not going to be run through some other list in terms of trying to determine who will vote and who will not.”