The Brief

A nonprofit in South L.A. has found lead in the tap water of homes in the region, including in public housing units.

Over the course of four months, volunteers with the Better Watts Initiative, the environmental justice branch of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, fanned out across the neighborhood and gathered more than 500 water samples. The volunteers included residents from the majority Black and Latino neighborhood, as well as students from UCLA and USC.

Researchers found lead in 21 of the samples, at varying levels. The amount of lead in five of the samples exceeded 15 parts per billion, which, the researchers note, is considered a “violation of the detectable safety limit set by the EPA." Just under half the units sampled came from apartments or condos. Another 41% came from single-family homes, and the remainder from multi-family homes.

The units also include public housing. Units at Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs had lead concentrations between 5ppb and 15ppb. The Nickerson Gardens community had levels above 15ppb.

Researchers tested several areas in Watts for lead contamination in water (shaded areas). Numbers in orange reflect the number of samples that contained lead between 5ppb and 15ppb. Numbers in red reflect the number of samples that contained lead above 15ppb.

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Courtesy Better Watts Initiative

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What happens now?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, when water systems reach this level, action is required, including replacing the lines that connect to customers.

The agency has also indicated that there is no safe level of lead in drinking water. Lead poisoning is especially harmful for children, in part because it accumulates more easily in their bloodstream. Once there, lead puts children under age 6 at risk of brain damage and other negative health impacts. About 60% of the homes in the study have at least one child under age 18.

The nonprofit released a study Wednesday detailing the findings. In it, researchers said “many injustices in Watts are a result of malign neglect on behalf of elected leaders.”

That history also surfaced through the study in other ways. Asked by researchers who they trust to provide information on water safety, residents expressed a distrust of LADWP, their local government, and healthcare providers.

Danielle Hauge, a doctoral student at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the study’s lead researcher, hopes the findings will lead to more comprehensive testing.

“This was a preliminary study, where we collected small amounts of water,” she said. “But, ultimately, it's the government's job to further investigate these issues.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said on X Thursday that she had convened leaders from LADWP and the Housing Authority to address the issue, and that testing will be conducted in Watts and at HACLA locations across the city.

"It’s absolutely unacceptable for families to not have access to safe, clean drinking water," she wrote.

The Biden-Harris Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency also recently announced a $26 million grant to protect children from drinking lead in schools and daycare facilities.

Who’s in charge of the area’s water?

LAist reached out to the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), which owns the public housing properties. There are "19,000 low-income families, individuals, senior citizens, and persons with disabilities" in Los Angeles public housing.

In an email statement, spokesperson Courtney Harris said:

Harris also noted that, “In the past, HACLA participated in a detailed water quality study at Jordan Downs and other public housing sites in Watts, conducted by [the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power], and it was determined that there were no contamination issues with HACLA's plumbing systems.”

HACLA has “a well-established and well-known process for residents to submit complaints and concerns, which are always addressed promptly,” she added. "To date, there has been no record of resident complaints on this matter.”

What is the response from officials?

LAist shared the study with public officials at the state and local level. So far, only L.A. city councilmember Tim McOsker has provided comment.

“Sadly, for many decades, the Watts community was left to look out for itself, which contributed to the environment today where lead levels are high in local pipes and a metal recycling center is next to a school,” he said in a statement.

McOsker also said that he discussed the issue with the Watts Neighborhood Council on Tuesday night.

“I will work with the Department of Water and Power and other entities to investigate and address the contamination issues raised in the report,” he added, “to immediately and urgently pursue a remedy.”

The vendors:

Last week, AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross talked to two folks involved with Ubefest — which takes place Saturday and Sunday in Cerritos — about their work in highlighting Filipino food culture. This week, two more vendors that you'll find at the food festival joined Austin — Cyclops Coffee, which has a shop in Long Beach, and The Burger Ghoul, a smash burger pop-up.

Steven Than, Cyclops Coffee owner, and Geoffrey Manila, owner of The Burger Ghoul, discussed the drinks and food inspired by their heritage.

Than started in graphic design, but he then segued his interest in coffee through another company — Steelhead Coffee.

“They helped me build Cyclops Coffee,” Than said.

Manila pointed to L.A.'s influential burger scene during the conversation.

"I wanted to be a part of that,” he said.

The food:

Cyclops Coffee's specialty drinks for Ubefest, their piña colada ube latte (left) and cookies & cream ube latte (right).

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Courtesy Steven Than

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From Cyclops, we tried the cookies & cream ube latte and piña colada ube latte.

The Burger Ghoul's ube-bun smash burger, a specialty item that will be available at this weekend's Ubefest.

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Courtesy Geoffrey Manila

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From The Burger Ghoul, we tried the ube-bun smash burger.

You can find both at Ubefest.

The verdict:

“I love the flavor of coconut … and this one delivers exactly what I want out of it,” Austin said about the piña colada ube latte

About the burger, Austin said, “The ube definitely kicks it up a notch, with the crispy pork on the edges.”

Listen to the full conversation here:

This weekend’s California Republican Party convention was poised to be a drama-filled event. The party held out a slim hope that its two gubernatorial candidates, if they played nicely enough, could lock Democrats out of the November election and reclaim statewide office for the first time in 20 years.

But then President Donald Trump weighed in, backing former Fox News host Steve Hilton over Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Now, the state party’s endorsement is far less consequential.

“He screwed over California Republicans yet again,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant, of Trump. “It's just political malpractice to not have done a dual endorsement,” he added. “People were briefing the White House on the situation.”

The weekend’s festivities in San Diego mark the first gathering since the state GOP’s bruising loss last November on Proposition 50, the Democrats’ gerrymandering plan designed to oust five Republicans from Congress in the midterm election. That loss only magnified the state party’s growing irrelevance since the ouster and resignation of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield congressmember who made sure the national GOP didn’t forget about its California members.

The gubernatorial contest, as well as legislative races, had become the new focal points for a party in search of a way out of the political wilderness. Trump’s endorsement probably dashed any hope of a Republican governor, leaving the Legislature as Republicans’ best chance for wins.

Bianco, who recently made headlines for seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots over claims of alleged voter fraud, is still expected to put up a fight for the 60% of delegate votes required to earn the party endorsement. Hilton will likely consolidate GOP support as loyal base voters fall in line behind Trump. Even without the party’s endorsement, Hilton is well positioned to finish in the top-two in June.

But the president’s nod is practically the kiss of death for a general election candidate in deep blue California, a state where even some Republicans tout bucking the president as a talking point on the campaign trail.

“The big fight if you're trying to be elected governor is actually to have a broad-based appeal in California,” said Matt Rexroad, a Republican campaign consultant who used to work for Bianco. “President Trump doesn't provide that.”

Republican candidates Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton participate in a gubernatorial candidate forum at Fresno State on April 1, 2026.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters

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Without the drama surrounding the gubernatorial endorsement, Rexroad decided the convention was no longer worth attending. He canceled his flight from Sacramento and his hotel reservation in San Diego, opting instead to send a proxy ballot with another delegate friend. Rexroad planned to back Bianco.

Trump’s popularity has fallen dramatically nationally since the war in Iran began and gas prices have skyrocketed, worsening his already poor standing among heavily Democratic California voters. Both Bianco and Hilton have sought to minimize their support for Trump, as nearly three-quarters of Californians disapprove of him, and many strategists believed the party’s best shot at the governorship was keeping the president out of it.

“The party is relevant in some localities of the state. But on a statewide basis, the Republican Party is like the Democratic Party in Utah,” said Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant.

“You can’t think of a worse brand than Donald Trump in California,” Murphy said. “If they cancel the Republican state convention, as far as state politics are concerned, it’d make no difference to the outcome.”

Down the ticket, Republicans hope to hold and maybe even pick up additional seats in the state Legislature.

GOP looks down-ballot for an opening

With a brand irretrievably tied to Trump, one strategy for clawing back Republican losses is to focus on more conservative, inland parts of the state in local races. That includes pockets of Southern California, where Latino voters swung heavily in favor of Trump in 2024 and the party picked up three statehouse seats.

“What’s really going to be the difference-maker for Republicans in California is really focusing the ground game on districts that matter,” and raising money, said Jon Fleischman, a longtime Republican consultant. “If we can hold the seats we are capable of holding on a year that looks like a wave year for Democrats, then Republicans will do really well.”

First-time GOP Assemblymembers Jeff Gonzalez of Coachella and Leticia Castillo of Corona are examples. Each ran a successful campaign in their predominately Latino and slightly left-leaning districts in 2024.

Seeking vengeance, a handful of Democrats have lined up to unseat Gonzalez. Meanwhile, Castillo will face an old challenger. Both Republicans will be walking into this weekend with the party’s endorsement already in hand.

Castillo clinched her seat by fewer than 600 votes two years ago, defeating Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who had more money and name recognition. But Cervantes, who sought to replace her sister, Riverside Democratic state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, led a campaign that was muddied by revelations of Clarissa Cervantes’ two DUI convictions.

Assemblymember Leticia Castillo at her desk during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 23, 2025.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Gonzalez, a retired Marine, flipped his Coachella Valley district in 2024, which swung for Trump by fewer than two percentage points. He faces three other Democrats, including Indio City Councilmember Oscar Ortiz, and so far has amassed a bigger war chest than all of them.

Some Republicans also worry whether the party is headed in the right direction. In San Diego, local infighting over whether a moderate or far-right candidate would be best positioned to succeed term-limited Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones has stunted the party’s ability to back a single candidate.

Jones and the party establishment have backed Ed Musgrove, a San Marcos City Councilmember, while Assemblymember Carl DeMaio and his group Reform California are pushing for two-time unsuccessful candidate Kristie Bruce-Lane.

Republicans could also look to flip a newly competitive San Diego district represented by first-term Democratic lawmaker Catherine Blakespear. The district has been trending leftward since redistricting in 2020 pulled in more parts of liberal San Diego County and dropped portions of more conservative Orange County. Blakespear has significantly outraised her two GOP competitors, Laura Bassett and Armen Kurdian, one of whom could be endorsed this weekend.

Incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Niello of Roseville could also face a more difficult than usual path to reelection in a midterm where moderate Republicans in liberal areas will have to fight the anti-Trump momentum.

A challenging picture in the U.S. House

Post-Prop. 50, California’s five remaining incumbent Republican House members face a bleak road to reelection. The districts were redrawn so drastically that several members have chosen to vacate their original seats and seek reelection in different districts.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Roseville resident whose current district spans much of the California-Nevada border, left the GOP entirely and is running as an independent for a Sacramento-area seat that Prop. 50 made more conservative. Rather than risk his political future by challenging Rep. Tom McClintock, an influential party fixture, Kiley settled on the 6th Congressional District after months of deliberation.

“This is, I think, probably an attempt to salvage something of a career later down the road by putting in the old college try,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project.

Longtime Rep. Darrell Issa, whose San Diego County district went from a Republican stronghold to a toss-up, announced his retirement barely before the deadline to file for the ballot. He reportedly explored moving to Texas to seek reelection there, but abandoned that plan when he failed to earn Trump’s approval.

And rather than retire as the longest-serving congressional Republican in California history, incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert is seeking to topple his colleague, Rep. Young Kim, in pursuit of an 18th term after his Inland Empire district was drastically reshaped into a liberal stronghold. Each has raised millions of dollars that they will undoubtedly deploy as they fight for one of the only remaining solidly Republican seats in California.

One bright spot for Republicans could be Rep. David Valadao’s campaign in the Central Valley. The six-term congressman has worked to distance himself from Trump over the years, voting in favor of the president’s second impeachment after the Jan. 6 insurrection attacks. He has only lost reelection once, in 2018 as part of an anti-Trump blue wave. He won back his seat in 2020 in the same election that former President Joe Biden won his district by double digits.

But Valadao faces one of his most difficult reelections yet as Democrats seek to saddle him with his vote for the GOP’s mega budget bill, which has stripped hundreds of thousands of his own constituents of their health insurance through Medi-Cal.

If California Republicans want to notch wins in races like Valadao’s, they know they need to motivate their voters to show up in November for what’s expected to be a bruising election for GOP candidates up and down the ticket.

The weekend’s gathering in San Diego should provide a good pulse check. Trump’s endorsement in the gubernatorial race could energize the base. Or, it might convince enough GOP voters that the result is a foregone conclusion.

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

What happens when a self-proclaimed “cultural provocateur” who’s embraced titles like the “Pope of Trash” and “Duke of Dirt” turns 80?

For one thing, writer and filmmaker John Waters told LAist, applause comes easier: “People applaud and I say, ‘Why?’ I haven't even said anything yet.’ It's 'cause I'm still alive.”

Not only is he still alive (and not quite 80 yet) he’s still “out there” and is not slowing down.

“I go to heavy metal concerts. I'm always going to things to spy on young people,” Waters said. “I'm always watching. All writers watch all the time.”

In addition to writing, he’s touring with a new one-man show titled “Going to Extremes” (with a stop in Los Angeles on April 14).

And as for what “extreme” means to him at this stage in his life, Waters said, “It used to be a good word, [but] now it's so bad because the government seems so extreme in such a ludicrous way to me. But the left and the right are both extreme now, they both are touchy, they have no humor. So I'm in the middle, using humor as a weapon [...] Humor is the only thing we have left to change things.”

Here are some highlights from Waters’s interview with LAist host Julia Paskin ahead of his “Going to Extremes” show in L.A. — condensed and edited for clarity.

“Provocative” versus “shocking”

Julia Paskin: Is it harder to be provocative or to make art that shocks in today's world? Talking about spying on the young people, I think about young people and how they're saturated with imagery that previous generations weren't. How do you penetrate that?

John Waters: That’s true. But to me, it's hard to be provocative. It's easy to be shocking, but shocking isn't always that good or funny or doesn't change anything.

What’s more intriguing to me, is to go to that edge where you can't walk and have both sides laugh with you, and at themself first, and then that's change. That's the only way we're gonna solve this. That's the only way we're gonna bring the country together.

 And maybe we should have sex with each other. Maybe every Proud Boy should have sex with antifa.

The pros and cons of Los Angeles — for writers and book-lovers

John Waters:  I don't wanna be around people that only talk about show business. And unfortunately, most everyone I know in Los Angeles, and I have great friends there, and I have a great time there, but they're all in the arts in some way. So that's all anybody talks about. In the other cities [San Francisco, New York, Provincetown and Baltimore, where Waters has residences] I know people that are truck drivers, funeral directors. I get more material that way.

Julia Paskin: You wrote in your 1986 book Crackpot that “Los Angeles is everything a great American city should be: Rich, hilarious, of questionable taste and throbbing with fake glamour.” Does that assessment still hold true for you?

John Waters:  It certainly does. But I also like being in L.A. recently when I have friends that take me to places that I've never been, because I'm always working when I'm in L.A. I'm never there with time off. 

So I really have fun there — lots of good bookshops and lots of neighborhoods I didn't know, like Echo Park. So I have fun in L.A. in a whole different way.  But that's when I'm not working.

Julia Paskin:  Any spots in L.A. you wanna shout out? Anything that was particularly cool? 

John Waters: [Stories Books and Cafe], that bookshop I love in Echo Park, there's a guy named John Tottenham who wrote a hilarious book about working there that you should really read. So I like to always go there. They have a really good selection of books.

Artificial intelligence for art?

John Waters:  Everybody asks me about AI and the thing is, I've used it a couple times and was shocked at how good it was, but then I didn't want to use the image, so I had to have it repainted by a real artist so I wasn't using it. 

But I want AI to cure cancer. I want AI to cure AIDS. I want AI to cure COVID. I want AI for science, and I'm all for it, if that works. 

Julia Paskin: What about in art?  

John Waters: I mean, nothing is off limits for art. You can use anything in a new way and AI is new, so of course it can be used for something. The problem is it's a good first draft that you didn't think up, but you sort of thought it up because you told it what to do.

So it is astounding. It is a magic trick to me that's amazing. But it's here, it's certainly not gonna go away. I always thought it would be good for just porn, but you can tell immediately, it never looks real. It's too good. It looks ridiculous. 

Advice for aspiring artists, writers filmmakers

 John Waters: Always have a backup career. I like to tell stories, so if I can’t get a movie made, I write a book.

Go see everything. Whatever field you wanna be in, participate. If you wanna be an artist, go to every gallery 'till you see a gallery that might like your work. See every movie, watch 'em with the sound off so you can see how they're edited. 

You have to participate in the world that you want to enter. If you wanna be in fashion, go to the thrift. You don't have to spend lots of money. Go to the thrift shops and buy the worst outfits that cost a nickel, that then are referenced by big designers that cost $5,000 a week later.