The Brief

The University of California admitted more California residents for the upcoming fall term than last year, but not at the system’s most exclusive campuses.

Overall, UC admitted 149,368 first-year students, including 100,947 Californians — 7% more in-state students than the system admitted for fall 2024, according to data UC released Monday.

That increase was driven by gains in the number of Californians admitted to the Merced and Riverside campuses, and to a lesser degree, the Davis and Santa Cruz campuses. That offsets the decline in the number of first-year California residents accepted to the remaining campuses, including UCLA and Berkeley. However, the share of admitted students who choose to enroll at those campuses is much higher than at campuses such as Merced and Riverside, where only a small percentage of accepted students end up attending.

Among first-year Californians, there were also gains across racial groups, with the number of admitted Black, Latino, Asian and white students increasing systemwide.

Most campuses also admitted more students from other states and countries than last year, as well as more transfer students from community colleges.

The systemwide first-year admission rate was 77% for Californians and 73% for all students, both up by 7% from last year.

In recent years, UC has faced pressure from lawmakers to offer more spots to California residents and, as part of a deal with Gov. Gavin Newsom, has agreed to enroll more of those students in exchange for annual budget increases. This year’s funding increase, however, was deferred and will be paid to UC in subsequent years.

“We continue to experience significant growth — a clear indication that Californians recognize the value of a UC degree,” UC President Michael V. Drake said in a statement. “Our latest admissions numbers demonstrate that families across our state recognize that UC degrees prepare students for a lifetime of meaningful contributions in their communities and far beyond.”

Merced accepted 17,481 more first-year Californians than it did a year ago, a staggering 72% increase. Riverside also saw a massive jump, offering admission to just under 17,000 or 46% more in-state students than it did for fall 2024.

At Berkeley and UCLA, the number of first-year Californians offered a spot declined by 8% and 2.4%, respectively. There were also modest declines at the Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara campuses.

However, Berkeley was among the campuses to admit more California community college transfer students. The system as a whole admitted 27,845 transfer students from California community colleges, up 6% over last year.

“Creating pathways to a UC education for a wide range of top California students yields benefits not only for those students, but for the state at large,” Han Mi Yoon-Wu, UC’s associate vice provost and executive director for undergraduate admissions, said in a statement.

UC also extended admission offers to far more out-of-state students. The system accepted 2,150 more domestic out-of-state students than last year, a 9% increase. The increase was even more significant for international students, with UC admitting 3,263 more than last year, or a 17% gain.

Facing state budget uncertainties and federal funding cuts, UC could stand to benefit from enrolling more out-of-state students, who pay significantly higher tuition prices than California residents and will pay even more this fall.

In a press release, though, UC said the increased offers to international students were “due to rising uncertainty of their likelihood of enrolling.”

Across California and nationally, many experts and college staff are concerned that international students will be less likely to enroll this fall out of fear that the Trump administration could cancel their visas.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the visas of more than 1,500 international students across the country, including many in California. The administration later reversed those terminations, but said at the time that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was “developing a policy that will provide a framework” for visa terminations.

A dangerous atmospheric river is poised to deliver “excessive rainfall” across Southern California, raising fears that the rain could unleash a threat that has been lingering in the burn scars of wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles communities in recent years.

Called debris flows, these fast-moving slurries of floodwater and sediment can hurtle down slopes carrying cars, trees and even boulders with them.

They’re like “a flood on steroids,” said Jason Kean, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s landslide hazards program. “It’s really hard to stop these things. The best thing to do is get out of the way.”

Northern California is already reeling from the atmospheric river that unleashed catastrophic flash flooding in Redding over the weekend, killing a 74-year-old man who became trapped in his pickup truck on a flooded roadway.

Now, another storm is expected to reach coastal Northern California this evening, with strong winds and especially heavy rainfall pushing into Southern California.

Forecasters warn that the rain “will cause life-threatening flash flooding, along with landslides, rockfalls, and/or mudslides,” particularly for areas along Southern California’s Transverse Ranges, including the San Bernardino, San Gabriel, and Sierra Madre mountains. “Urban flooding in the greater Los Angeles metro area is likely.”

Burn scars — slicked by fire and stripped of plants — are especially dangerous during heavy rains. A storm after the Thomas Fire in 2018 spurred debris flows in Montecito that killed 23 people. And in February, a debris flow in the Palisades Fire burn zone swept a Los Angeles Fire Department member and his SUV into the Pacific Ocean.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works warns that there’s a risk of moderate debris and mudflows capable of blocking roadways and endangering some structures in the burn scars of more than a dozen fires — including January’s Eaton, Hurst and Palisades fires.

The county has issued evacuation warnings in and around recent burn scars, and urged those who may take longer to evacuate to consider leaving now. Officials also announced some targeted evacuation orders for specific properties “at higher risk for mud and debris flows impacts.”

“Recent burn areas, including those impacted by the January wildfires, remain highly susceptible to mud and debris flows,” county officials warned Monday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that more than 225 personnel and resources including 45 fire engines, 10 swiftwater rescue teams, helicopters and more have been pre-deployed to a dozen northern and southern California counties.

Meteorologists are discussing it as a “one in every five years type of storm,” said Lisa Phillips with the National Weather Service. “There's going to be problems everywhere. We have a lot of canyon roads and mountain roads, and things will fall down.”

Phillips said she expects to see mudslides, landslides, sinkholes — even after the rains have ended, and urged people to stay off the roads if they can.

“There's going to be issues outside of the burn scars too, and flooding,” Phillips said. “We want everyone to stay at home, stay safe and don't get yourself into any trouble unnecessarily.”

We spoke with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Kean, an expert on debris flows after wildfires, last month about what to expect when storms strike burn scars. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

As this storm really takes hold in L.A. and Southern California, I'm hearing a lot of concern about it hitting areas that burned this past year, including in the Eaton and Palisades fires. Why is this such a big concern? What could happen?

Last January those fires removed much of the vegetation on really steep slopes, and that made those slopes really vulnerable to erosion during intense rainfall. That protective blanket of vegetation is gone, and heavy rain can rapidly make a flash flood. And that flood, in some cases, can pick up material and turn into what we call a debris flow — which is like a flood on steroids.

Damage along Tanoble Drive near Mendocino Street is visible after heavy rainfall triggered multiple mudslides in the Eaton Fire burn scar area in Altadena on Feb. 14, 2025. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters These burn areas are still vulnerable, even though it's now many months after the fire and there have been flows already. There's still plenty of material that could be mobilized. So the threat’s still there. And so we know they're bad actors, and we’re concerned they could be bad actors again.

I’m hearing a lot of different terms: mudslide, debris flows, landslide. What are the differences, and which ones are the burn scars at risk for? 

Landslide is an umbrella term that captures all kinds of mass movements, from rock falls to debris flows — these floods on steroids — to big, slow movers. The type of flow that we're most concerned about in a recent burn area is a debris flow. It's also called a mudslide. But geologists don't like to use the word mudslide as much because it sounds like there's some mud on your driveway — not a big issue, not something that could kill you. And these things, if you're in the wrong spot at the wrong time, they can cause serious damage.

You called it a flood on steroids. What happens in a debris flow? 

Flash floods are bad, and they can cause lots of problems, too. They can get even worse if they pick up enough sediment to turn into the consistency of wet concrete. But it's worse than just concrete, because it can contain boulders the size of cars. And, very close to the mountain front, it can move very quickly — faster than you can run. And when it gets all bulked up with debris, the rocks, the gravel, the mud, trees, the flow can be a lot bigger. It just turns into a different animal.

Now, debris flows pack a bigger punch than floods, but thankfully, they don't have as long of reach. So usually, the debris flows are confined really close to the mountain fronts. That's where they put those debris basins to catch them. But if there isn't one protection like that, then they can travel downslope and impact neighborhoods, and then flooding can extend even further down.

Is there something about Southern California that makes it higher risk?

Southern California's kind of the world capital for these kinds of events. It's got this combination of very steep topography, like the San Gabriel Mountains that just shoot right up, Santa Monica Mountains, Santa Ynez — very steep topography. It burns fairly frequently. And then there are a lot of people living very close to the mountain front, so that's what puts the risk up.

The thing about a burn area is it takes much less rainfall to cause a problem than it would in unburned conditions. So we've now made the slopes really vulnerable. They're extra steep. There's a lot of people there. That's why the risk is so high.

We've seen debris flows in Northern California burn areas as well. It's not just a Southern California problem, and it's not just a California problem.

Is there anything that could have been done to reduce this risk? Anything that should be done now? 

Not long after the fires, in particular the Palisades Fire, (there were) a number of fairly widespread debris flows that disrupted the roads. There were also, in the Eaton fire, floods and debris flows there. Thankfully there's a dense network of LA County debris basins, which are designed to catch the material before it enters neighborhoods, and those largely saved the day.

Planners have planned ahead and put in these debris basins — these big, giant holes in the ground — designed to catch the material. That's the best defense against these. They're not everywhere, but there is a good network of protection. Other than that, it's really hard to stop these things.

What should people who live near the recent burn scars know? What should they do now, as the rain starts? 

The best thing you could do is, if you're really close to a drainage in one of these burn areas, is to get out of the way. You're going to get a heads up from the National Weather Service, who's closely monitoring the rainstorms. They know how much rain it's going to take to cause a problem, and they'll get out warnings, and local authorities will reach out to get people out of the way. So there's a lot of eyes on the situation. And so at this point, the best thing to do is listen to the weather service, listen to local authorities.

If they ask you to get out of the way, take their advice. These things can happen really fast if there is an intense burst of rain, a flash flood, where debris flow can start within minutes.

So there is no escaping a debris flow once it starts? 

It's pretty difficult. If you have a two-story home and you happen to be there at the wrong time, get up to that second floor for sure. Fight like heck if you get trapped in one. But best to be out of the way.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Of everything I saw on TV in 2025, the one show I thought was the very best, and has haunted me ever since, was the four-part Netflix drama Adolescence. It's the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate, and it's told in such a way, emotionally and technically, that I can't and won't forget it. It's the show I recommend most highly, but with a major caveat. It's grim. And it's almost unbearably intense.

Intensity, it turns out, is a common factor among many of my very favorite shows from this year. HBO Max's The Pitt was a medical show with an impressively credible tension factor. So was Netflix's The Diplomat, with its unpredictable, high-stakes plot twists. And so was FX's The Bear, even though it wasn't about life or death, just appetizers and entrees. The Bear even calls itself a comedy, but it's not. Much, much too dramatic for that.

A couple of my other favorite TV dramas, almost equally intense, featured ragtag, mismatched investigative teams thrown together to solve specific crimes. One, HBO's Task, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with lots of emotional baggage, played by Mark Ruffalo. Another, Netflix's Dept. Q, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with even more emotional baggage, played by Matthew Goode.

And maybe it's just me, but this year I definitely gravitated to dramatic shows that made me uneasy. It was another great season for Netflix's Black Mirror, and the end-of-year final episode of another dark Netflix fantasy series, Stranger Things, is eagerly awaited by many. Including me, because I've seen all the new episodes leading up to it, but the finale is being kept under wraps.

Stranger Things has been around since 2016 — almost a decade — but other terrific genre productions were new takes on old ideas. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, on Netflix, was an excellent and very different adaptation. And what Noah Hawley did by reinventing the Alien movie franchise, for the FX TV series Alien: Earth, was thrilling — and, at times, truly scary. And still churning out weekly episodes, brilliant ones, is Pluribus, the new, indescribably original Apple TV sci-fi series from Vince Gilligan.

The comedies I liked best this year? Some were set behind-the-scenes of show biz — like the new Apple TV series The Studio, starring Seth Rogen as a bumbling but well-meaning studio head, and the returning HBO Max series Hacks, starring Jean Smart as a female comic landing a job as a TV talk-show host. The other comedies were lighthearted mysteries benefiting greatly from their veteran cast members: Hulu's Only Murders in the Building and Netflix's A Man on the Inside. Both of those shows made me feel good — which is a lot to ask of any TV show these days.

Nonfiction TV also offered many excellent options this year. Artistic profiles to seek out from 2025 include Apple TV's Mr. Scorsese, about film director Martin Scorsese, and HBO's Pee-wee as Himself, about actor Paul Reubens. Most recently, there's the short but powerful Netflix documentary All the Empty Rooms, about a TV feature reporter and photographer who visit the families of children killed during school shootings, to memorialize the children's empty, but still intact, bedrooms. It's as tough to watch as Adolescence — and, oddly, touches on a similar subject.

Other great documentaries this year included Sunday Best, a new Netflix program about Ed Sullivan's contributions to popularizing Black entertainers; PBS's The American Revolution, the latest and perhaps greatest epic history lesson from Ken Burns and company; and the new installment of The Beatles Anthology, presented by Disney+.

On talk shows, I loved the feisty, topical spirit invoked by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — and especially the well-aimed irreverence of the current season of Comedy Central's South Park. Wow. Many of these shows were attacked or censored by their corporate owners, in well-publicized clashes that exposed, and fought against, the interference. The CBS Late Show franchise is being retired from the schedule — but most of the time this year, the comics and their programs persevered.

Finally, my favorite TV moment of 2025 came courtesy of CNN. Not for a news bulletin, but for televising, live from Broadway, a production of Good Night, and Good Luck, starring George Clooney as veteran CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. At the end of the play, Clooney recites Murrow's actual speech to news and TV executives from 1958, urging them to use TV wisely.

In the year 2025, the best of television — from The American Revolution to Adolescence — is living up to Ed Murrow's inspirational ideals. We all just have to find the best that's out there … then find the time to watch it.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Huntington Beach City Councilmember Butch Twining has sued Ocean View School District President Gina Clayton-Tarvin for what he alleges is a “sustained and coordinated campaign to publicly brand” him as “a white supremacist and extremist.”

At the heart of the complaint are Clayton-Tarvin’s tweets about Twining attending a vigil to honor slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. On Sept. 13, 2025, she tweeted, “What’s worse? That Huntington Beach councilman Butch Twining was there gleefully chanting amongst alt right white supremacists. Anyone recognize this behavior? Look no further than his buddy and mentor councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, HB’s resident Neo Nazi since 2017.”

In the lawsuit, lawyers for Twining wrote Clayton-Tarvin “weaponized” the vigil “into a digital smear campaign” against Twining that was carried out across multiple social media platforms and community forums.

According to the lawsuit, the vigil was “hijacked by a small group of bad faith opportunists,” prompting Twining to leave the vigil.

“Twining did not participate in the chant or march alongside the racist opportunists. Twining condemns white supremacy in all of its forms,” the attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit accuses Clayton-Tarvin of being “a prolific poster of misinformation designed to cause reputational harm” and that her recent posts are “increasingly manic and reckless, as if

the author is not only lying but also losing touch with reality.”

Twining also alleges that Clayton-Tarvin’s tweets led to three death threats.

A video that went viral from the day of the vigil that Clayton-Tarvin quoted in her tweet shows Twining holding a candle and an American flag. Some people are chanting “white men fight back” in the video, but it is unclear if Twining was one of them.

In an interview with LAist, Clayton-Tarvin called the legal action a “nonsense lawsuit.”

“ Butch Twining is a very sensitive man and he doesn't understand that he's trying to chill free speech. The facts of the matter are that he was there and he can't deny it,” she said, adding that her tweets were posted three days after the vigil and Twining was seen by hundreds of people.

Twining, she said, is going down a “slippery slope” with the lawsuit, showing other residents in the city that if they speak up or criticize a politician, they can be sued. Twining is seeking $25 million in damages from Clayton-Tarvin.

“This is about squashing the First Amendment, about damaging the public's rights, public participation,” she said.

Cookbooks have always meant more to me than a list of recipes — they're storytelling objects. They carry memory, culture, voice, and visuals and they help us create memorable moments with the people we love.

That's the spirit behind Cookbook LIVE, an LAist live event series co-produced with the James Beard Foundation, that I've had the joy of hosting. Over three evenings, we brought together top cookbook authors and food-lover audiences for nights of culinary connection and exploration.

To close out the series, I sat down with James Beard Award winner and L.A. icon Roy Choi in November. His newest book, The Choi of Cooking — his first in over a decade — reimagines some of his go-to dishes with a lighter, more veg-forward twist. It's a book that reflects where he is now: still rooted in the flavors that made him a chef, but thinking about how we eat for the long haul.

During our conversation, Roy walked us through some of his favorite recipes and opened up about the journey that shaped him: growing up in kitchens filled with his mother’s "future food”, finding cooking later in life, surviving New York's toughest restaurants, and building Kogi into something cosmic and communal. It was an evening full of honesty, laughter, and real talk about food justice, access, and the myths we still cling to about chefs.

Below, I've pulled together a handful moments in the conversation have stuck with me — moments that resonated long after we left the stage.

Roy Choi in his own words

On his journey into cooking

Chef Roy Choi and LAist's Gab Chabrán discuss "The Choi of Cooking" before a sold-out crowd at Cookbook LIVE

(

JVE Photo

/

LAist

)

"The beginning of my chef career — entering the hardest kitchens before I even knew how to cook.

I found cooking a little bit later in life, in my mid-20s. A lot of cooks get into the kitchen very young. I grew up in a restaurant, but I wasn't really focused on being a cook. I was just in the restaurant as a restaurant kid.

I didn't really get into it until my late 20s, and so I felt like I had to make up time before I even knew how to cook, I was going to jump into the hardest top kitchens in the world and just figure it out on the fly.

Those kitchens were in New York City .... in 1997, I worked in the number one, number two and number three kitchen in New York City. Four stars on all restaurants. And I was not ready for that at all.

By the time I was done with those kitchens, I was just at a point where I should have been when I entered. But it built my palate, it built my work ethic, my technical skills and my sensory aptitude of everything."

On growing up in his parent's kitchen and "future cooking"

"My mom cooks for like 300 people and there are three of us in the room. She doesn't know how to alter the recipe . . . the recipe's built for 50 pounds of chicken. So she's still doing it to this day.

I grew up always in a house that smelled like cooking all the time. There was always food on the stove or on the table or in the laundry room. But that food wasn't for eating, it was for the future.

My mom was a futurist. Everything she was cooking was for the future, and what I was eating in the moment was from the past.

It never stopped. It was relentless — almost like maintaining a sourdough starter or working a 24-hour shift . . . soy sauce steeping, kimchi fermenting, garlic being roasted. On another level when you're 16, 17 and you bring friends over — you gotta explain it.

With a beef bone broth soup . . . it takes three days to cook that soup. You have to decide on Thursday that you're going to eat it on Sunday. You have to think of the soup today."

On starting Kogi and what it unlocked

Roy Choi, left, hands out food from his Kogi BBQ truck in Maywood in January 2024.

(

Allen J. Schaben

/

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

)

"We started from a drunk night. It was a drunk night eating tacos in Koreatown, and my partner said, 'What if we put Korean barbecue in this? It'd be delicious.' And that's how it started."

When we started Kogi, when we were out on the streets, it was all of the ladies of the lot. That's why my name is Papi Chulo. All the tías embraced me . . . Kogi wouldn't exist if we didn't get the pass from the tías.

To me, Kogi is very cosmic. It never gets old. We've been around 17 years now . . . In 17 years, it's never felt like it needed to change. There are not many foods that live within this lexicon of timelessness . . . I've been very fortunate to crack the code on one of them."

On food justice and the reality of price

The chef's new book "The Choi of Cooking"

(

JVE Photo

/

LAist

)

"We still have to figure out why so much food goes to waste and why so many people are hungry . . . we have to move the priority of that dilemma upwards... build, like, a TikTok eating culture around the disparity in food justice.

I would like food to be a lot more affordable. The chef world is getting out of control. $42 for a pasta is ridiculous; a pasta without lobster shouldn't be $42 just 'cause it was handmade.

Price is the number one coded message within the disparity within food. It's the hidden thing. It's the secret message, the secret handshake and the dirty secret that no one wants to talk about. If you charge $42 for that pasta, it's going to just automatically exclude a whole sector of society and close the door on anyone being able to affect change in the future because they'll never be exposed to it."

On the fallacy of the restaurant chef

"A myth about being a chef or a restaurateur . . . that we got our shit together is a big fallacy.

You guys write about [chefs] like they're gods . . . like they're elves . . . the word 'genius' is thrown around a lot around chefs. That's so untrue, man. Chefs are hardworking people. A lot of chefs that you think have everything put together are literally figuring it out as you see them.

I don't believe that we're perfect, that we're geniuses and that we're gods and otherworldly. It's a job and a profession that requires you to get down on your knees, on your elbows, fingers in the dirt and really cook. You're more a sailor than you are a god or an elf."