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.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $200 million plan to revive the state’s stalling electric-car market faces several fundamental problems: It isn’t enough money, it may not reach consumers quickly enough and the state hasn’t decided whether to subsidize – or exclude – wealthier buyers.

The Newsom administration’s budget proposal — rolled out after President Donald Trump dismantled federal electric vehicle incentives and blocked California’s clean-vehicle mandate — would cover rebates for only about 20% of last year’s EV sales. That CalMatters estimate assumes the state follows the model of the Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, which offered rebates of up to $7,500 toward some electric and hybrid cars before the California Air Resources Board ended it in 2023.

So far the administration has released few details about the proposal, leaving experts and lawmakers circling a basic question: Who should get the money?

“It is better than nothing, which is what a lot of things are getting right now,” said Mars Wu, a senior program manager with the Greenlining Institute, which advocates for investments in communities of color. “How far that $200 million goes really depends on how the program is going to be structured.”

A small incentive in a huge market

California’s electric car market is one the governor celebrates on the world stage. While at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this week, Newsom highlighted that California has surpassed 2.5 million clean car sales, saying the achievement came after the state “invested in this future when others said it was impossible.” He framed the number against a modest goal to get 1.5 million clean cars on the road, set more than a decade ago.

California officials remain confident the state’s policies will succeed in pushing the transition to electric cars. Even as sales have slipped, EVs will drive future electricity demand, according to a long-term forecast approved Wednesday by the California Energy Commission.

But the limits of the governor’s $200 million EV proposal become clear in the numbers. A CalMatters analysis found the incentive would cover only one out of every five EV sales, assuming similar sales to last year, and the same average rebate level as the state’s last mass-market rebate program.

Advocates are also raising concerns about how quickly the money can get to consumers. Christopher Chavez, deputy policy director at the Coalition for Clean Air, a California-focused advocacy group, warned that the proposed rebates may not reach consumers until 2027, given how long it takes to approve the budget and to set up a new program. If the funding only lasts a year, the program would leave out buyers who need time to plan or save, he added.

“It's not going to be enough — just to be blunt about it,” Chavez said. “Two-hundred million for a mass-market program will go very quickly.”

The proposal comes as the latest sales numbers show an electric car market slump. Nationally, the loss of the uncapped, popular federal tax credit has accelerated manufacturer write-downs and sales declines as automakers adjusted to a tougher EV market.

In California, the slowdown has pushed the state further off course from its climate goals: even before Congress and President Trump blocked its vehicle mandate last year, California was struggling to hit a requirement that 35% of new cars sold in 2026 be zero-emission. Last year electric and other zero emission cars made up about 23% of new car sales in 2025, down from roughly 25% the year prior, California Energy Commission data shows.

Sales slowed down dramatically at the end of the year, when EVs and other clean cars accounted for just under 19% of new car sales in the fourth quarter of 2025 — the lowest quarterly share since mid-2022.

The Newsom administration will likely lay out the details of its proposal in a draft bill tied to the state budget. The Clean Vehicle Rebate Program would be “the foundation we’d be building from,” wrote Lindsey Buckley, an air board spokesperson, in an email, adding that the goal would be to deploy the $200 million “as soon as possible to support the market.”

Buckley said it is “speculative” to predict the impact of a new EV incentive or how quickly the money would reach consumers.

An environmental activist places signage calling for increased electric vehicle use outside the California Environmental Protection Agency building in Sacramento on June 9, 2022. Environmental activists urged the California Air Resources Board to push for a transition toward 100% electric vehicle consumer use. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters With limited funding, advocates say the question of who qualifies for the rebates becomes critical.

“What we really don't want to see is that money going towards higher-income folks for whom it would just be kind of like a bonus coupon,” said Wu, of the Greenlining Institute.

Fast or targeted: lawmakers face a choice

How the Newsom administration and lawmakers design the state’s next EV incentive will determine how quickly the air board can deliver rebates — and whether the program avoids recreating past inequities. California ended its last, broad EV rebate program in 2023 over concerns it benefited higher-income buyers. Targeting lower-income drivers delivers the greatest benefits because they tend to drive the most, and switching to EVs saves them money on fuel and maintenance, said Ethan Elkind, a climate law expert at UC Berkeley.

But income-based “means testing” can slow programs down, requiring income verification and layers of bureaucracy that eat up funding and discourage participation.

That’s a critique of one California program aimed at low-income buyers, Clean Cars 4 All, which offers grants to help drivers trade in older, more polluting vehicles for cleaner alternatives. As the state moved from budget surplus to deficit, the Newsom administration and lawmakers never adequately funded it, advocates say.

Lawmakers provided no new funding in the 2024–25 budget year, and in the current budget cycle, the state provided only about $45 million through a combination of funds and one-time budget actions, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That falls well short of a sustained, long-term commitment, said Chavez, of the Coalition for Clean Air.

“It's become — especially as the budget has become more difficult — more of a secondary priority, which is unfortunate,” he said.

Competing ideas, no clear consensus

California’s EV problem has no shortage of potential solutions — only disagreement over which one to choose.

Some policy analysts argue the state should focus on first-time adoption. A recent brief from Atlas Public Policy found that incentives are most cost-effective when they bring a household’s first electric vehicle into the garage — because once a family owns one EV, it is far more likely to buy another.

Elkind, of UC Berkeley, said a simpler approach — a point-of-sale rebate tied to lower-priced vehicles — would be easier for the air board to administer while avoiding subsidies for high-income buyers.

“If it's just tied to the price of the vehicle, that's pretty straightforward,” Elkind said.

Some lawmakers told CalMatters the air board should tightly target the rebates to communities most affected by pollution and transportation costs. State Senator Ben Allen, a Democrat from El Segundo, said incentives should focus on communities that suffer the most from air pollution, “so as to increase the bang for air quality buck.”

Senator Josh Becker, a Democrat from Menlo Park, said new incentives should go to the people “who are most burdened by transportation costs and drive the most."

Fewer easy EV buyers in California

California needs to design its next rebate program well because its most eager EV buyers are gone and the state now faces a harder, more price-sensitive market, experts said.

“California is one of the first states to sort of get into that mainstream market: and it's a harder market to convert,” said Loren McDonald, a Danville-based EV analyst. Potential buyers now expect seamless charging and balk at waiting 30 to 40 minutes. They also are not keen to install home chargers or pay more upfront. Many, he says, stick with traditional gasoline-powered vehicles.

“We burned through the innovators and the early adopters — those people who want to save the planet, those people who make good money,” McDonald said.

Staff writer Erica Yee contributed to this report.

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

Topline:

Why it matters: Wedding is accused of running a drug trafficking operation that shipped narcotics from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, and ultimately throughout the United States and Canada. He is also accused of ordered the killing of a witness who was set to testify against him.

The backstory: FBI Director Kash Patel calls him "the largest narco trafficker in modern times." At a news conference announcing Wedding's arrest, Patel said "He's a modern-day El Chapo. He is a modern-day Pablo Escobar, and he thought he could evade justice."

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell says their investigation into Wedding with the feds led to the seizure of more than 5,000 pounds of cocaine and more than $55 million in assets.

How we got here: Patel says Wedding has been wanted on charges for cocaine trafficking and murder since 2024. He competed for Canada in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

What's next: Wedding is expected to make his first court appearance on Monday.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California has taken steps the past few years to protect transgender young people on the playing field, in the classroom and in the doctor’s office. But a handful of federal court cases and new policies could threaten those protections.

A case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court could affect transgender students’ right to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity. Another case — possibly headed for the Supreme Court — could overturn California’s law banning school districts from requiring staff to “out” transgender students to their parents. And in December, the federal government said it would crack down on health care for transgender minors.

“We are witnessing a widespread, concerted, strategic attack on trans people existing in public spaces and in particular, trans young people,” said Dale Melchert, senior staff attorney for the Transgender Law Center, a nonprofit law firm based in Oakland. “The religious right is targeting trans people, and we know that these cases and policies are going to have a critical impact on trans young people, who are already such a vulnerable minority.”

The legal moves and policy shifts follow President Donald Trump’s vow to eliminate rights for transgender people, a topic he brought up frequently during his campaign and addressed in his inaugural speech. It was among his first executive orders.

Youth sports and transgender athletes

The case related to youth sports is based on a pair of lawsuits filed by transgender women in Idaho and West Virginia, states that prohibit athletes from playing on teams that don’t align with their gender at birth. California is one of about 23 states that allow transgender girls and women to play on school-sponsored women’s and girls’ teams.

The court heard arguments earlier in January and is likely to announce a ruling in June. Legal experts expect the court to uphold states’ rights to prohibit transgender women from playing on women’s teams, but it may leave the door open for states to set their own policies.

In that case, “California would be fine,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights.

But that doesn’t mean the case wouldn’t affect California in the future. It could strengthen future legal efforts and federal proposals to restrict states’ abilities to protect transgender athletes, Minter said. A year ago, Trump said he would withhold funding from any school that allows transgender females to play on girls’ and women’s teams; a Supreme Court ruling on the issue could make it easier for the federal government to follow through on the threat.

Parental notification policy in doubt

In a case directly affecting California, a pair of teachers from Escondido, near San Diego, sued the state over its recently enacted law prohibiting schools from requiring staff to notify parents if a child identifies as transgender. The teachers said the law “violates their faith and ethics,” according to the Thomas More Society, the nonprofit law firm that filed suit in U.S. District Court in Southern California on behalf of the teachers.

A federal district court judge agreed, and ruled in favor of the teachers in late December. The state immediately asked for and received a pause on the ruling allowing the law to remain in place while it prepares an appeal, but the plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the pause and implement the ruling immediately. The Supreme Court hasn’t yet issued a decision.

“Right now, California’s parental deception scheme is keeping families in the dark and causing irreparable harm. That’s why we’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene,” Paul Jonna, an attorney for Thomas More Society, said. “The state is inserting itself unconstitutionally between parents and children, forcing schools to deceive families, and punishing teachers who tell the truth.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta is hopeful the court will uphold California's law.

"We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives," said Jordan Blue, spokesman for the Attorney General's office. "We look forward to continuing to make our case in court."

California’s law stems from a policy adopted by a half-dozen school districts over the past few years that would have required teachers and other staff to inform parents if a child uses different pronouns, names or other signs that they identify as transgender. The districts said that parents have a right to know if their children are undergoing such a significant change.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, as well as many lawmakers and advocates, said the policy endangers transgender students because students might not be “out” at home, and their parents might not be supportive. Transgender students are far more likely than their peers to become homeless, often as a result of family rejection, according to the nonprofit advocacy group The Trevor Project. Advocates also said the policy places an undue burden on teachers, who must act as “gender police.”

The issue has propelled at least one school board member to statewide prominence. Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board, is running for state superintendent, largely on the issue of parents’ right to know if their child is transgender. Shaw is a Republican.

Access to health care

Meanwhile, in December the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would bar hospitals from performing gender procedures on children. California health officials pushed back, telling hospitals that they must comply with state laws and continue offering gender care to minors, regardless of what the federal government says.

“We will continue to stand with transgender youth, their families and health care providers, and we will continue to fight the federal administration’s cruel and inhumane policies,” they wrote on the state’s Health and Human Services website.

On the mental health front, the state in July said it would train its counselors on the 988 suicide-prevention hotline to address issues specific to LGBTQ youth. The move came after the Trump administration cut funding for such services.

‘It’s heartbreaking’

Just over 3% of young people identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. They’re more likely to drop out of school, suffer from mental health challenges like anxiety and depression, and commit suicide, according to The Trevor Project. High-profile court cases and heated rhetoric only make matters worse, said Jorge Reyes Salinas, spokesperson for Equality California, which advocates for LGBTQ rights.

While California remains relatively safe for transgender youth, at least for now, Salinas expects right-leaning states and the federal government to continue to ramp up their anti-LGBTQ efforts. A proposed ballot initiative in Nevada, for example, would require any school that receives state funds to identify sports as male, female or co-ed.

“The trans community is being used as a scapegoat. The right is continuing to use trans people as a tool for igniting fear and hate, putting young people at risk in the process,” Salinas said. “It’s heartbreaking. Students feel trapped, like everyone is against you.”

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