The Brief

Gingerbread houses have become a Christmas tradition the world over since they appeared in Germany in the 16th century. And it is only appropriate that in Southern California, their construction would come with an extra nod toward structural integrity.

At least that's the idea behind the Southern California Gingerbread Challenge, a competition held by — and features — structural engineers from around the region that takes place this weekend in Tustin.

"Most of us are practicing structural engineers. We make sure that a building has all the components it needs to withstand various forces throughout its lifetime," said Maria Mohammad, a structural engineer and one of the organizers behind the challenge. "This is what we do in real life, and now we get to do it in gingerbread."

The challenge

The challenge started in 2022, Mohammad said, as a way to bring together the nearly one thousand or so members of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California during the holiday season for a good-nature competition.

2023 game day

A participant uses a handheld saw to cut gingerbread pieces.

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Making sure the frosting that holds gingerbread pieces is steady and dry is one secret to a stable gingerbread house.

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Rules include a size limit of a 3-feet diameter for the structure, and that all material used in its construction — including for structural support — must be edible.

"Rice Krispie Treats were used a lot to help support the gingerbread," said Mohammad.

Submissions are evaluated for creativity, flashiness, and of course, structural soundness among a variety of categories. Last year, the nation's premier earthquake expert Lucy Jones was among the panel of judges.

"There are no specific aesthetic requirements, but looking at the structures that were built last year, aesthetics was not lacking in all of the structures that were built," Mohammad said.

Bragging rights asides, the event also raises money for good causes. For every vote cast by the public, a dollar is automatically donated to a participating local charity.

Gingerbread Union Station

The award-winning Union Station replica by Structural Focus and Architectural Resources Group at the SoCal Gingerbread Challenge in 2022.

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One of the big winners at last year's inaugural challenge was a gingerbread house version of Union Station, built by the structural engineering firm Structural Focus and the architecture firm Architectural Resources Group.

"Union Station is pretty close to most of our hearts," said Taylor Funk with Structural Focus.

Funk said the two firms had partnered up before to conduct renovations work on the real-life Union Station in downtown, so to build a gingerbread homage was a no brainer.

"We started with kind of a virtual model and then that became paper cutouts," Funk said of the process, which involved a team of about a dozen members, including Mohammad.

Then they went about getting the details down.

"We wanted to make sure that we got all of the storefront doors correct," Funk said. "We made small molds that you had to pour the sugar glass into. And then one of the architects very carefully painted on top of it so that it looked like the true Union Station doors."

The clock tower, Funk noted, was made with a stack of Rice Krispies Treats with gingerbread pieces glued with frosting to the outside.

Next, the two firms got together for a pre-competition test run. "We tried some decorating tips, tried to make sure that the structure would stand up before we actually got there and built it," Funk said.

Finally, on "build" day, the different teams gathered for a multi-hour closed-door session to construct their respective entries live and in person.

Gingerbread Union Station took home the President's Award, as well as the People's Choice Award, at last year's challenge.

The 2023 entries

Van de Kamp's Bakery by Architectural Resources Group and Structural Focus

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Monster House by CalPoly Pomona

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Happiest Team on Earth by Degenkolb Engineers

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Super ES World by ICC Evaluation Service

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Mission San Juan Capistrano by Mott McDonald

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The Bite Sized Grand (Wilshire Grand Center) by Brandow & Johnston and AC Martin

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The McCallister House by Cal State University Los Angeles

Hogwarts Castle by PBK and Kubala

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Gru’s Residence by Grimm & Chen

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House From Up by MHP Structural Engineers, HPI Architects, and P2S Engineering

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A BarbenHeimer Christmas by Holmes

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Merry Griffith Observatory by Hohbach Lewin and HMC Architects

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The Burrow (Harry Potter) by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger

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Barbie Dreamhouse by MiTek

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Santa's Surf Shack by Hilti

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Winter in San Francisco by Walter P Moore

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The Van de Kamp windmill

This year, the team is at it again with another iconic entry: a replica of the Van de Kamp windmill, with blades spun by a teeny tiny motor smaller than the size of someone's fist.

"[That's] the only inedible thing on our structure, which we've passed by the Board," said Funk.

For the blades, the team is going stringy.

"The windmill itself, we have to make sure is very light," said Mohammad. "So we're using spaghetti."

The windmill is going up against more than a dozen other submissions. All in all, it's a more structurally ambitious project, and Funk and Mohammad are hopeful that the team's engineering and gingerbread construction chops will pay off.

"It is vertical, so the foundation, it's even more important for it to hold," said Funk. "I'm 90 percent confident that it's going to stand up and move."

Pro tips on construction

• "Make sure that all the icing holds before you let go of anything," said Funk. For example, when you put the roof on, be sure to hold it there for as long as it takes for the icing to dry.
• "Be smart with the geometry," said Mohammad. "Pick geometries that are stable on their own. Like a triangle, the base is wider than the top. So you have more support at the bottom than the weight you have at the top."
• "Use lighter materials," said Mohammad, like the spaghettis in their Van De Kamp gingerbread windmill.

Event and voting details

2023 Southern California Gingerbread Challenge
Public Exhibition Viewing Dates:

• Dec. 1 - Dec. 2, 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.
• Dec. 3, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Location: The District at Tustin Legacy, 2437 Park Ave., Tustin
Admission: Free
Cast your vote for this year's winners here

Topline:

Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.

Here are some of the topics they covered:

• Extreme heat
• Emergency preparedness and recovery
• Protecting communities from pollution
• Water
• Public transit

About the organizers: The event is organized by a coalition of local environmental and environmental justice groups including: Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment

LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.

The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.

Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.

The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.

The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.

The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."

The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.

"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."

The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.

The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.

The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.

Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.

"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."

Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.

The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.

The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.

Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.

This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare. 

Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."

NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. 
Copyright 2026 NPR

A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.

The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.

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The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.

“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.

It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”

The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.

Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.

State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.

“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.

“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”

In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”

Since the news of the deal broke late last week, it has sparked condemnation from a number of Democratic state leaders, including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, as well as Attorney General Rob Bonta and Bonta’s predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who leads the race for California governor.

“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”

The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs, staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.

Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”

The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”

Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”

“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”

Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.

Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.

“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.

The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.

Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.

Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.

To qualify, a business must:

• Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
• Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
• Be currently open and active for business
• Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
• Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships

The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.

It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.

His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.

Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.

The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.

“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.

In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”

Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.

He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.

“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.