The Brief

The priority deadline for California students to apply for federal and state-based financial aid is March 2. And as students hustle to meet this deadline, the state is also encouraging them to claim their CalKIDS Scholarship—up to $1,500 that can be used to pay for college or a career training program.

Typically, scholarship applications involve writing essays, meeting GPA requirements and maybe even securing letters of recommendation in a competition for limited funds.

But the scholarship requires none of that, said Noah Lightman, an assistant deputy director at ScholarShare Investment Board, which oversees the program.

About 60% of California’s public school students are eligible for the scholarship, and it’s non-competitive. Students are entitled to the money by state law, Lightman said — they just have to claim it.

CalKIDS launched in 2022. To date, about 850,000 California students have claimed their scholarships.

Lightman pointed to research showing that children with even a modest amount of money set aside for higher education are three times more likely to attend college—and four times more likely to graduate college than children who don’t have any savings.

He knows from personal experience, having juggled coursework, extracurriculars, standardized tests and college applications while figuring out how he’d pay for college. Knowing there’s easy-to-access money “can be life-changing,” he added.

How are the CalKIDS Scholarship amounts determined? And how do I claim it?

Students in second grade and up who are eligible for a scholarship will get at least $500.

The state determines eligibility based on a variety of factors, including family income and whether the student is learning English as a second language. If a student is unhoused or fostered, they will receive an additional $500. Eligible students who are unhoused and fostered will receive $1,500.

Lightman encourages everyone to check, though.

To claim their scholarships, Lightman said, students just need their 10-digit Statewide Student Identifier, which is assigned to them at school. (If you don’t know what yours is, ask your teacher or counselor.) Once they have their SSID, students or their parents can go to the CalKIDS website, plug in that number, along with their birthdate and county where they attend school, and readily find out if they are eligible and, if so, for what amount.

Students do not need a Social Security number to access these funds.

The process takes about five minutes or less, said Julio Hernandez, a college and career administrative coordinator for Los Angeles Unified School District. Counseling teams across the district have been instructed to tell students about CalKIDS, Hernandez added. He’s also used the website to secure a $500 scholarship for his son. Once he graduates, Hernandez’s son will be able to use that money to help cover tuition or other higher ed expenses.

According to CalKIDS, students have used their scholarships to pay for everything from books to housing bills.

Students can start using their CalKIDS funds as young as 17, and they don’t have to spend it while they’re undergraduates. If they would like to hold on to that money till grad school, they may, Lightman said—but the money must be spent by the time they turn 26. Currently, he added, nearly 150,000 students are using CalKIDS to help pay for college.

What might keep students from claiming their scholarship?

At Long Beach Unified, counselors help students and parents navigate the claim process.

Counselors at the district also describe the process as quick and straightforward. But, Candyce Simpson, a counselor at Jordan High School, noted in an emailed statement to LAist that students and their parents are often “bombarded with emails about college and the cost of college.”

“There are predatory programs that spam our kids about scholarships, if you pay a fee,” she added. “As counselors, we constantly remind our students and families that if they ask for a credit card, they should delete the email immediately. These programs are very savvy, and they look very legitimate.”

Messages from CalKIDS may get “buried,” Simpson said. “Students know FAFSA and Studentaid.gov; we need to add CalKIDS to our narratives more intentionally.”

Hey, new parents! There is also a CalKIDS scholarship for babies 

Every baby born in California on or after July 1, 2022 is also eligible for a separate CalKIDS scholarship—regardless of their family income.

These scholarships start at $100. To access them, parents need their child’s 13-digit local registration number, which can be found on their birth certificate. If families choose to link this money with the state's official college savings program, ScholarShare 529, CalKIDS will add another $50 to their account.

The scholarship, though small in comparison to escalating college costs, “serves as a conversation starter,” Lightman said, “helping families look at college savings in general.”

The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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