The Brief

A two-peat is looking that much better for the defending MLB champs Dodgers.

Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old flamethrower, announced Friday that he's signing with the team.

Who is Roki Sasaki?

The right-handed Japanese pitcher gained international attention in 2023 when he helped Japan win in the World Baseball Classic, alongside MLB superstar teammates Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

In his home country, Sasaki first jumped onto the scene in 2019 when he broke the Japanese high school fastball record, clocking a pitch at 101 mph — breaking Ohtani’s 99 mph record for the fastest pitch thrown by a high schooler.

Soon after, Sasaki made his Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) debut in 2021 playing for the Chiba Lotte Marines. The following year, at the age of 20, Sasaki quickly reached near superstar status in Japan when he pitched the league's first no-hitter game since 1994 — the 16th overall for the league — against the NPB’s Orix Buffaloes. That game saw Sasaki pitch 13 consecutive strikeouts — a Japanese baseball record.

Now, with four years of professional experience under his belt, the young Japanese phenom has turned his attention to the major leagues here in the United States.

The stats

The flamethrower, known for his fastball, slider, and splitter, averages throws near 100 mph — one of the fastest in Japan. During the exhibition games leading up to the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Sasaki shot off  a 102.5 mph fastball, tying Ohtani’s NPB record for fastest pitch. In his four years with the Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki has recorded 524 strikeouts, 91 walks in 414 ⅔ innings, and a 2.02 ERA.

Why this all matters

The 23-year-old has often been compared to fellow Japanese national and Dodger’s own superstar Ohtani, and rightfully so.

Sasaki has consistently matched or outperformed Ohtani's own Japanese records. And now that the young pitcher has made it known he plans to enter the MLB, baseball fans are speculating how this might compare with Ohtani’s own journey.

Much like Ohtani back in 2017, Sasaki will be making the move under the age of 25.

That matters, because under NPB rules, players must have nine years of professional experience before they can register as an international free agent. As such, Sasaki will be considered an international amateur free agent. And now that Sasaki reached an agreement with the Dodgers, the NPB’s Chiba Lotte Marines will receive a “release fee” based on the value of his contract. Historically, when players such as Sasaki enter at this stage of their career, it translates to a lower-valued contract, which can often result in more interest and competition between MLB teams.

How we got here

Sasaki’s agent had said the pitcher was in talks with several MLB teams, including the Dodgers. Coming off of their recent World Series win, the L.A. team ended up the op choice for Sasaki. His agent said he was looking to join a team that will help him develop his skills — something that the Dodgers have consistently focused on with its own talent development farm system.

The amateur signing period opened on Jan 15. Sasaki's decision comes well ahead of that period ending on Jan. 23 at 5 p.m. ET.

In 2022, faced with mounting criticism from California parents and students who couldn’t get into the state’s three premier public universities, legislators and UC officials struck a deal.

UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego would admit a combined 900 more in-state students a year, and the state would up their budgets to cover the loss of revenue from non-resident students, who pay three times what in-state students pay.

That deal has since cost taxpayers $276 million and allowed around 3,000 more students to enroll at the three universities.

While the costs were expected, the number is far higher than the annual $31 million figure Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators routinely cite for funding the in-state student expansion, a CalMatters analysis shows. Now, with one year to go in the five-year plan, some are wondering whether the program’s high costs should continue as-is, particularly as California faces several years of multibillion-dollar deficits.

Questioning the non-resident swap

At least one lawmaker and the Legislative Analyst’s Office are questioning the ongoing wisdom of the non-resident funding swap.

“We are now living with those decisions, and we need to decide whether those are decisions we want to stand by still, or perhaps there is another approach,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a March meeting of the budget subcommittee on education, which he chairs.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office supported enrolling more California students in 2022, but its analysts now are proposing that the state no longer add new resident students in lieu of out-of-state students. The analyst’s office says it’s an unnecessary expense for multiple reasons and going forward can be made cheaper, especially given “the state’s projected budget deficits.”

Instead, it proposes that the Legislature direct the UC to enroll more resident students without limiting the enrollment of non-resident students. That would cost the state $25 million annually, rather than the $61 million predicted for the fiscal year starting July.

One reason for the office's skepticism about keeping the current formula is that the three campuses were able to add thousands more undergraduates from California since the funding program began, aside from those who replaced non-residents.

UC data shows 6,000 more Californians were enrolled at the three campuses, on top of the students added through the funding program, since the swap began. That growth was fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding increases to the UC between 2022 and 2024 that lawmakers and the governor also approved in addition to the non-resident funding swap.

The analyst’s office also indicated that the three popular UC campuses have space to continue adding students. “Over the past five years, all three campuses have initiated and/or completed housing projects adding several thousand beds” and still have available classroom and lab space, a February report from the office said.

Time will tell if the Legislature will agree with the analyst’s office. Lawmakers and the governor face an annual late June deadline to finalize the state budget.

The governor’s office so far supports maintaining the non-resident swap program and doesn’t intend to alter the plan in its forthcoming May revision to the governor’s budget proposal, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, which in effect serves as the governor’s fiscal policy team.

In a statement, UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez underscored that the Legislature’s push to drive down out-of-state enrollment has to come with costs.

“Replacing a non-resident student with a resident student is not an even exchange absent sufficient state buyout,” Rodriguez wrote to CalMatters in an April email. With the higher tuition they are charged, every out-of-state student pays for the equivalent of 2.7 California students, he wrote. The three UCs added about 300 more in-state students through the swap program than they were funded for, Rodriguez added.

CalMatters requested interviews with UC officials, but key personnel were not available, Rodriguez said.

UC officials were ambivalent about the non-resident funding swap five years ago. While they welcomed the money, they worried that future lawmakers would back away from the promise to pay the UC for not enrolling out-of-state students.

Emphasis on Californians

Why do any of this? Lawmakers in 2022 wanted to curb the percentage of out-of-state undergraduates at the UC and the three campuses specifically. At the time, more than 20% of the three schools' undergraduate students came from out of state. The funding swap was intended to bring the percentage down to 18% by the fifth year, which is next year. The non-resident enrollment rate currently is around 19% at the three campuses.

But the decision by lawmakers to require the campuses to limit the number of out-of-state students came at a considerable cost. Had the Legislature instructed those same campuses to enroll more Californians and not cut out-of-state enrollment, the combined price tag since 2022 wouldn’t be $276 million, but closer to $105 million, according to CalMatters’ calculations that were validated by officials at the governor’s Department of Finance as well as the UC.

The final price tag to reach the out-of-state enrollment goal will be about $460 million. After that, the program will cost about $153 million a year to sustain — or less, if policymakers side with the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

California spent more for a reason

In many ways, the Legislature’s actions were a return to form. The state’s interest in enrolling more California students in its prominent public universities is decades-old. Until the mid-2000s, UC campuses enrolled few students from outside of California. After the Great Recession prompted lawmakers to slash state spending, UC’s public funding cratered. To make up the difference, UC tripled its enrollment of undergraduates from out of state.

But then the state, under the guidance of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s five-year higher education compact, promised to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars annually in 2022 so the UC could enroll more California students at all its campuses. That’s in addition to the $30 million annually to limit the out-of-state student body at Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD, the three most popular campuses.

“They’re making good on the reason that you have a state university, which is not supposed to be a purely revenue-making machine,” said Julie R. Posselt, a professor specializing in higher education issues at the University of Southern California, where she’s an associate dean. “It’s supposed to be an engine for your state's population, economy and workforce.”

The UC is arguably one of the best deals for state taxpayers: a world-class education that for more than half of California undergraduate students is tuition-free because of financial aid.

Demand for the three UCs, by the numbers

More than 100,000 students apply to each of three most popular UC campuses annually, the majority Californians. Lately the freshman admissions rate at UCLA has been less than 10% — not quite as exclusive as Harvard’s 4% but well below the admissions rate to UCLA two decades ago, when more than a quarter were admitted.

UCLA is top of mind for the thousands of low-income students in Southern California that Alison De Lucca’s collective serves. She’s executive editor of the Southern California College Attainment Network, which is made up of dozens of nonprofits working to help students apply for college and financial aid.

Additional slots at UCLA matter to the region’s high schoolers seeking to attend a highly selective institution. “Many of them, particularly post-pandemic, would like to stay a little closer to home,” she said.

She didn’t speculate on whether parents think more slots for Californians is worth the extra state spending, “but I will say that parents are quite emphatic about ensuring that their students also have the chance” to gain entry at a school such as UCLA.

National studies of flagship public universities also indicate that as schools rely more on increased revenue from non-resident students, overall campus diversity can decline. That’s because out-of-state students “tend to be richer and are less likely” to be Black or Latino, one study co-written by Posselt found.

Non-resident value

The UC student association representing all undergraduates opposed the out-of-state funding swap when it first became policy. The association didn’t want to see fewer non-residents, which it considered an attack on the diversity of the student body. Students argued that out-of-state students add to the cultural dynamism of a campus and also contribute to the regional economy.

“We’re living here, we’re voting here, we’re working here, we’re tenants in our campus cities. We’re still treated as second-tier students,” said Riya Master in 2021, when she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley from Virginia.

Master is now in her fourth year of attending UC San Francisco’s highly ranked medical school. She gained residency as a Californian by working at a UCSF laboratory on drug discovery after graduating from UC Berkeley. As a result, she’s paying the in-state tuition rate. Her goal is to specialize in pediatrics, a field of medicine undergoing a massive shortage nationally.

California enrollment grew

The UC system added 19,000 slots for new California undergraduates across its nine undergraduate campuses since 2022 — equal to a mid-sized UC campus without having built one. That includes about 9,000 more at the three sought-after campuses.

The number of non-resident undergraduates at the UC fell by 3,500 students in that time.

The growth in enrollment availability coincided with higher admissions rates for Californians, as the share of applicants gaining admission jumped from around 65% to 77% in that time.

But it’s a different story at the three most popular campuses: admission rates there haven’t increased, meaning it’s as difficult to get into UC Berkeley, UCLA or UC San Diego now as it was five years ago — and harder compared to nearly a decade ago.

Even with loads of new state spending, UC reports less money per student. Though state support has jumped by more than a billion dollars since 2000, inflation has eroded those gains while enrollment soared. As a result, UC academic spending for every student decreased from $46,000 at the start of the millennium to $28,000 today.

Public universities, such as the three UC campuses, have to manage a tough balancing act, said Posselt, the USC professor. They need to preserve their academic rigor, but “they absolutely have a mandate to not become exclusionary institutions, and they must do all of that while maintaining financial solvency.”

She said the UCs are “probably the best in the country in terms of a state system that is actively trying to maximize” student access.

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

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing — a nearly 1-acre structure expected to reconnect areas used by SoCal’s wild animals — will open to wildlife on Dec. 2 after years of planning and construction.

Construction began on Earth Day in 2022. Once completed, the bridge will allow all forms of wildlife to safely cross the busy 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills, from mountain lions and bobcats to birds and butterflies.

Beth Pratt, regional executive director at the California Regional Center with the National Wildlife Federation, said the crossing is unlike any other wildlife crossing in the country.

“This project is four projects in one, and it is of a complexity, coordination and magnitude that is off the charts,” Pratt said. “The Santa Monica Mountains are one of 36 biodiversity hot spots in the world, and we designed this for an array of wildlife so that all wildlife in this region would have a future.”

The project’s cost is around $90 million to $100 million, and is considered one of the most expensive wildlife crossings in the world.

Officials with the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing announced Wednesday that SoCal animals will be able to traverse the crossing on Dec. 2, 2026.

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Destiny Torres

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Why it matters 

Jeff Sikich, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service, told LAist that the mountain lion population is small and isolated in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the 101 Freeway is a major barrier for movement.

“We don't have many lines from north of the freeway crossing south, so that can lead to very low genetic diversity. We have documented inbreeding fathers breeding with daughters and granddaughters,” Sikich said. “It's not a numbers problem in the Santa Monica Mountains here … It's a genetic diversity issue.”

Vehicle strikes are the leading cause of death for this mountain lion population, Sikich added. The bridge will allow animals born in the Santa Monica Mountains, especially those with diverse genetics, a safe way to leave.

Officials with the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing announced Wednesday that SoCal animals will be able to traverse the crossing on Dec. 2, 2026.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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What’s next? 

Construction of the first structure is complete, and crews are now building the second half over Agoura Road. That second structure is expected to go up over the summer.

Robert Rock of Rock Design Associates said crews are using methods to reduce effects to drivers who rely on the 101 Freeway.

“We had precast box girders that were built at a facility in Perris, California, that were all essentially giant concrete Legos that came and got placed,” Rock said. “That reduction in impact to the traveling public was a key deciding factor that motivated how we changed the design.”

Next, crews will move three million cubic feet of soil to regrade the land surrounding the site.

A lot of the work on the second structure has been happening 60 to 100 feet underground, Rock added.

“As we get to the end of the summer, I think people will start to see how much transformation actually is occurring on the site because we'll have met that moment in the schedule where all that work is coming back up to the point where you'll be able to see it from the freeway again,” he said.

As worsening climate-related disasters like fires and floods drive up insurance costs in California, state Sen. Scott Wiener and fire survivors are pushing for a bill that could give the state a way to force oil companies to pay for their role.

SB 982, a streamlined version of a bill that did not pass last year in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles-area fires, aims to blunt rising insurance costs by allowing the state attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies for damages connected to a climate disaster such as a wildfire, heat wave, drought or storm.

In a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, supporters and opponents shared their thoughts on the bill with lawmakers.

Gayle Ali and her husband, Rasheed, said they were celebrating their 43rd wedding anniversary when the Eaton Fire destroyed their house in Altadena, where they have lived for 30 years. The fire took her photo studio, her husband’s music studio, furniture, cars and family photos.

“A life erased,” she said.

They’re rebuilding with the help of their community and crowdfunding grants, but they don’t know if insurance will be available or how much it will cost in the future.

The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures around Los Angeles.

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“What truly angers me is knowing that this wasn’t just bad luck,” Ali said. “I’ve since learned that back in the ’80s, years before we bought our home, Exxon’s own scientists warned the effects of their products would be catastrophic. They chose to hide the truth and spend millions on PR campaigns that are still running today. They keep profiting while putting our communities in danger.”

Oil companies such as ExxonMobil had their own internal research decades ago showing that burning fossil fuel would contribute to global warming, which intensifies extreme disasters like fires and floods. Publicly, however, they sought to undermine the science and cast doubt on the effects of human-caused climate change. Meanwhile, they have continued to rake in large profits year after year.

“While so much of our community has lost everything — I mean everything — and so many families can barely afford food, let alone rebuild, the five largest oil corporations made nearly $400 billion in profit over the last three years,” Ali said.

Yet right now, taxpayers and disaster survivors are the only ones paying for climate change, she said.

“We have to ask, who’s not paying?” Wiener said while speaking in support of his bill. “We know that the victims, the survivors, are paying in profound ways. Taxpayers are paying. And of course, policyholders are paying with much higher premiums. Who’s not paying? The answer is the fossil fuel industry, the corporations whose products fueled this crisis by fueling climate change.”

The bill’s current version is simplified from the proposal that Wiener and a colleague introduced last year, which would have allowed disaster survivors or insurance companies themselves to sue for damages.

“We heard the feedback [from last year],” Wiener said. “This bill is profoundly narrower.”

In the bill’s current version, the amount of damages sought in a civil action filed by the attorney general would be in proportion to a company’s market share. Any payouts would go to a newly created Attorney General Climate Disaster Fund and be distributed to policyholders; the California FAIR plan, which is the state’s insurer of last resort; the California Safe Homes grant program, which provides funding for fire-hardening work in high-risk areas; and to cover litigation costs.

Industry opponents say the bill would raise gas prices and kill jobs. A report released this month by the California Center for Jobs and the Economy details concerns ranging from higher premiums to less tax revenue.

Wiener rebutted these concerns, saying that gas is a global commodity, with prices set by worldwide market forces and not “the threat of hypothetical litigation,” and that the analyses ignore the benefits of payments to disaster survivors.

Louise Bedsworth, executive director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment, spoke in support of the bill and pointed out that by the end of the century, the average area burned by wildfire in the state is projected to increase by 77% if emissions continue to rise.

As Santa Ana reckons with a $16 million budget shortfall, the police and city officials on Tuesday reported that around $500,000 was spent responding to anti-ICE protests last summer — and that legal claims filed by protesters could push that cost even higher.

Around $400,000 of that amount was spent over four days last year — June 9, 10, 11 and 14 — when residents descended on the downtown area to protest ramped up immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration.

City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said during Tuesday’s City Council meeting that the city has received four claims and one lawsuit stemming from the police department’s actions during the protests.

It’s unclear how much the claims could end up costing the city.

Call from the DOJ

Robert Rodriguez, Santa Ana’s police chief, said officers were sent out during the first day of protests after Carvalho received a call from the Department of Justice.

 ”It wasn't in a threatening manner, but it was basically if your department cannot provide the security that we need, then we're going to bring in federal resources,” she said. “We had a discussion about what that might look like in terms of safety for our community and what that would mean to people in our community.”

That’s when the police department made the decision to send in officers.

Rodriguez said the department was “ trying to create some distance between our community and the federal officers.”

How we got here

Last June, protesters took to the streets across Southern California calling out the ramped-up immigration sweeps across the region. This prompted the Trump administration to send in the military and the National Guard, further inflaming tensions.

But the ensuing local police response during the protests also drew the ire of residents and community members, particularly in Los Angeles and Santa Ana.

One councilmember in Santa Ana, Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, said during a council meeting last year that police officers shot at him using rubber bullets during anti-ICE protests.