The Brief

A budget proposal from House Republicans, if implemented, could mean cuts to Medicaid, according to analysts.

California's Medicaid program is called Medi-Cal, and it provides healthcare for more than one third of Californians, according to the California Budget & Policy Center.

With Medicaid and Medi-Cal in the news, LAist put together a Q&A about the program, how it's funded and who it serves.

Medi-Cal is Medicaid?

Yes. California just has a different name for it.

Nicole Jorwic with the advocacy organization Caring Across told LAist that some people get confused because of the different names, but that it's important Californians know that when they hear about Medicaid, for us that means Medi-Cal.

Who is covered by Medi-Cal?

Californians under a certain income level are eligible for Medi-Cal coverage — up to 138% of the federal policy level for adults and up to 213% for pregnant people.

Other people who can access Medi-Cal include people who are 65 and older, are blind or disabled, are in long-term care, or former foster care youth up to the age of 26.

How is Medi-Cal funded?

Medi-Cal receives funds from the state and the federal government. Nearly two-thirds of the state's Medi-Cal funding is federal.

How many kids in California are covered by Medi-Cal?

More than 40% of California children are covered by Medi-Cal, per the California Health Care Foundation.

What is the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)?

CHIP allows some families above Medicaid income thresholds to access low-cost health insurance for children.

How has Medi-Cal changed over the years?

The number of people enrolled in Medi-Cal has quadrupled in size since 1990, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

A huge bump in those numbers came following the Affordable Care Act, which allowed adults without disabilities or kids to access Medicaid. As of 2024, one-third of Medi-Cal members became eligible under the ACA, per the Public Policy Institute's report.

Medi-Cal has continued expanding. In 2024, all undocumented people who meet income limits became eligible.

That growth has not been without its challenges. California is currently $6.2 billion over projected Medi-Cal spending, according to recent reporting from CalMatters.

How have challenges to Medicaid looked in the past?

In 2017, House Republicans passed a bill that would have walked back parts of the Affordable Care Act, and shrunk Medicaid eligibility. It didn't make it through the Senate.

How could cuts or changes to Medicaid look this time around?

The House budget bill does not include details on how proposed cuts might be achieved.

Adriana Ramos-Yamamoto, a policy analyst with the California Budget & Policy Center, said one approach could include enacting a work requirement for Medicaid, which could lead to many people losing coverage due to ineligibility or inability to navigate the bureaucracy.

Our partners at KFF Health News also took a detailed look at how cuts to Medicaid could look in California.

Would cuts to Medicaid impact other services?

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which gives pregnant people and young mothers under a certain income level free nutritional food and breast-feeding support, could be affected by changes to Medicaid. According to the National WIC Association, that's because of "adjunct eligibility" — which allows families to prove that they're eligible for WIC benefits by showing they already receive other services like Medicaid.

" We know that streamlining the application process for each of these programs, removing administrative burdens, makes it more likely that families will choose to participate, and makes it easier for them to do so," said Nell Menefee-Libey with the National WIC Association. "So any proposals that could result in families losing access to Medicaid or to SNAP would also make it harder for them to access WIC."

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced Wednesday that the city will replace about 60,000 streetlights as part of a new initiative to address the persistent problem of streetlight outages in neighborhoods throughout the city.

Bass signed an executive order launching her Street Light Initiative during a press conference in Pacoima as she redoubled efforts to address public concerns about light outages and the public safety threat they pose.

Bass orders 60,000 streetlights to get solar upgrade in a two-year plan announced Wednesday.

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It’s unclear exactly where the lights will be installed or how much the project will cost, but Bass said she will prioritize locations where the solar lights can operate most efficiently and where crime reports show the greatest public safety need. She added that hundreds of lights already have been ordered, with installations set to begin in May.

“The street light backlog that piled up before I took office is unacceptable — we’re addressing it and making it safer for people to walk their dogs, come home from work and park their cars at night,” Bass said in a prepared statement. “Instead of continuing to patch together antiquated street light technology, we’re using solar to make our lights more reliable, resistant to theft and cleaner to operate.”

The mayor was joined at the Richie Valens Recreation Center by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who represents District 7, and outgoing chief executive officer of LA Department of Water and Power Janisse Quiñones.

Bass and Quiñones said the new initiative will be a joint effort by the Bureau of Street Lighting and the LADWP, an agreement that will allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to keeping the lights on in the city. While the details of the collaboration and its budget are not yet clear, Bass directed the two public agencies to draft a plan to move forward urgently.

The order requires the Lights Bureau to work with LADWP to complete a preliminary 30-day assessment of the 60,000 lights that could be replaced with solar fixtures.

“The plan should prioritize street lights that are in neighborhoods that have had the longest outages and where there are safety concerns,” the order reads.

The solar lights help the city in its attempt to transition to clean energy and have been reported to be less prone to theft and vandalism.

Calls reporting streetlight outages have surged in the last few years to a high of about 45,000 in 2024 and 2025. The lights bureau has a backlog of about 32,000 repair requests and it estimates a broken lamp will take about a year to repair.

The streetlight outages initially plagued the city’s core, leaving the Sixth Street Bridge darkened soon after it was opened to the public in 2022. The outages have since migrated to various neighborhoods, with higher-income areas seeing significant spikes in reported outages last year. Hollywood Hills experienced a 270% increase in calls in 2025; Atwater Village, a 204% increase; and Silver Lake, 189%.

The outages are caused by both long-overdue maintenance and theft of the lamps’ valuable copper wire for resale. The Los Angeles Police Department had deployed a specialized unit to fight wire theft in 2024, but while the team made progress it was disbanded the next year. Bass specifically said that transitioning to solar is a much better use of the city’s money than repeatedly replacing copper wire that is stolen again in weeks.

“They would make some arrests, but it didn’t solve the problem,” Bass said of LAPD’s task force, adding later that the enforcement amounted to playing “whack-a-mole” with thieves.

Councilmember Rodriguez added that she appreciated LAPD’s efforts, mentioning that an arrest recently happened in the Foothill Division where a person was found with $50,000 worth of wire. But she said that police alone can’t solve the problem.

Many of the city’s streetlight problems stem from the limited budget of the department responsible for repairing and replacing the city’s approximately 220,000 lights. The Bureau of Street Lighting plans to ask voters in the coming election to increase its budget. That initiative was approved by the Los Angeles City Council earlier on Wednesday. 

Bass’ executive order doesn’t appear to impact that voter initiative.

In the meantime, various City Council members have spent millions out of their budgets to pay for additional workers to repair or replace lights that are persistently out in their neighborhoods.

Bass appeared in Koreatown last week to speak with business owners there about how streetlight outages affect them. Koreatown saw a 16% increase in reports of streetlight outages last year. Assemblymember Mark González, of District 54, joined Bass in Koreatown as she announced her support for AB 1941, his bill attempting to strengthen law enforcement efforts against wire theft. 

Meanwhile, the new executive order emphasized the severity of the lighting crisis and underscored that urgency is needed to address it. 

“We want everybody to know that help is on the way and help is on the way quick,” Bass said. “We’re not gonna study this. We’re not gonna do, you know, explorations as to what is needed. We know what is needed. The lights have been ordered.”

Similar to yesterday, low clouds will keep the coast and some valleys cooler in the morning followed by afternoon sun. Come Friday, a warmup will take over the weekend.

L.A. County beaches will see temperatures in the mid 60s to low 70s, while Orange County beaches will be mostly in the low to mid 70s. More inland for areas like downtown L.A. and Hollywood temperatures there will reach upper 70s to low 80s.

Highs in the San Gabriel Valley will stick around the upper 70s to mid 80s. Meanwhile, the San Fernando Valley and the Inland Empire will see temperatures around the low 90s.

In Coachella Valley, temperatures will reach the upper 90s.

Josh Groban reminded audiences of his musical — and comedic — skills when he performed at this year’s Oscars with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, as host Conan O’Brien acted out how ungracious he would be if he won an Oscar himself.

While the “I Won” performance was operatic, if you were wondering if it was a nod to actor Timothée Chalamet’s recent dismissive comments about the cultural relevance of ballet and opera, Groban says it was decided on before those remarks went viral.

“We were ready to do that regardless,” Groban told LAist, adding, “I think that having these moments that were like a tip of a hat, not so much like in the face of Chalamet, but more like in the direction of just supporting these arts and showing these arts on a popular culture stage, I think was great.”

Backstage at the Oscars, Groban said he talked to ballet dancer Misty Copeland, who performed later in the show and whom he counts as a friend.

“She's in her incredible costume that she had this historical, wonderful outfit that she wore for her Sinners piece,” Groban recalled. “And I'm in this, you know, medieval outfit, and I just gave her a hug. And I'm just like, ‘How lucky are we that this is our job?’ Like, this is the best that we get to do this. So wonderful that we got to kind of — her more than me — loosely rep those worlds.”

While Groban is no stranger to awards shows, either as a performer or nominee — he has multiple Grammy, Tony and Emmy nominations and almost one for an Oscar (“Believe,” the song he performed for The Polar Express, was nominated for best original song, but only songwriters are credited in the category) — he’s so far never won.

It’s something that he and his fellow 2018 Tonys co-host Sara Bareilles poked fun at with a musical number dedicated to “the people who lose!” And were he to win now, Groban joked,  “I would probably, at this point, 25 years in, react exactly the way Conan did.”

A new album and ‘a call to keep us where the light is’

The idea for Groban’s new album was inspired in part by another performance of his last year, for AFI’s tribute to director Francis Ford Coppola.

Coppola asked Groban to perform “Brucia la Terra,” the Sicilian ballad from The Godfather Part III, for the event, and it’s now one of the songs included on Cinematic, out May 8.

“To be looking out at many of my cinematic heroes and just to kind of be reminded of the incredible brilliance of that score, that put a spark in my head of like, ‘Oh, these songs are wonderful and I love singing them,’” he said.

The first song Groban has released from the album is “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from The Lion King, featuring the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

That song, Groban said, “which on the face of it is a beautiful hit Disney song, in today's climate, we were really thinking about uplifting and how can we take some of these songs and really use them as a call to action, a call to keep us where the light is, a call to allyship.”

Groban says he felt such a strong connection to each of the songs on the album, from movies like Casablanca and Stand By Me, “that I knew I would sing my face off, I knew they'd be songs people would want to sing in the car, the surprise for me was the depth of the emotion that went into [them].”

“Moon River,” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, was especially personal for Groban because it features his father, Jack Groban, playing a trumpet solo: “He played trumpet in college and gave it up for 45, 50 years, and I got him to dust it off,” Groban said.

And being able to have his dad play on a song of his “for the first time ever, was one of the most emotional days in the studio I've ever had.”

‘We need to be reminded of our humanity’

While Groban got his first “big break" at just 17 years old, singing with Celine Dion as a fill-in for Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli during the 1999 Grammy Awards rehearsals, what led up to it was his arts education at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).

As a shy kid who had a hard time making friends in school, Groban says seeing what his music teachers saw in him, “was so life affirming for me.” And it led him to found the Find Your Light Foundation, that supports K-12 arts education programs in schools.

“ At a time when our humanity is being tested more than ever,” Groban said, “we need to be reminded of our humanity through these programs. And especially our young people, learning about the beauty inside themselves and the beauty inside others through the arts, I can't think of a more vital time than now.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.