The Brief

In 2022, the Los Angeles electorate voted to slap the sale of mansions and other high-value real estate deals across the city with a hefty tax.

Locals have been debating Measure ULA ever since. Supporters call it a vital lifeline for the city’s unhoused and housing insecure who stand to benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars the initiative has already raked in. Critics call it an economic own-goal that has choked off new apartment construction in a city where new housing is in excruciatingly short supply.

That debate is about to go statewide.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a low tax advocacy group, is currently gathering signatures to put a measure on California's November 2026 ballot. A central part of their pitch: No more Measure ULAs.

The proposed constitutional amendment takes aim at two types of taxation common across California:

• Transfer taxes on the sale of real estate. The measure would cap rates at a little more than one-twentieth of one percent of the value of the property. Los Angeles' highest rate is one hundred-times higher.

• Local tax measures put on the ballot by voter-backed campaigns (as opposed those put there by city councils) that are earmarked for a particular purpose. The tax-capping proposal would raise the electoral support needed to pass these types of “special” tax measures to two-thirds, up from a simple majority of more than 50%. 

Municipal governments across the state stand to lose billions of dollars (with taxpayers standing to save just as much) if the measure ultimately succeeds. Voter-proposed tax hikes have been approved by simple majorities in cities and counties across California. Transfer tax hikes have also been a popular funding source for certain local governments.

Measure ULA, which 58% of Los Angeles voters backed in 2022, happens to be both. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and its political allies appear happy to make it the face of the statewide campaign.

Putting a lid on both citizen-initiated tax measures and high transfer taxes “is something that we have always had as a priority,” said Rob Lapsely, president of the California Business Roundtable, a coalition that has yet to take a formal position on the measure but which backed an earlier version. “The question was, ‘can we actually find the right opportunity?’”

“And then suddenly, along came Measure ULA.”

The fight over the “mansion tax”

The City of Los Angeles’ measure was sold to voters as a “mansion tax,” because it sticks new, elevated transfer fee rates on only the highest value sales: 4% on properties between $5 million and $10 million and 5.5% for those above that. Those numbers have inched up with inflation. All sales below those thresholds are taxed at roughly half of 1%.

Since going into effect in 2023, the measure has raised some $830 million for affordable housing construction, subsidies for cash-strapped renters and legal assistance for tenants facing eviction. It is by far the largest single contributor to the city’s overall homelessness spending.

But ULA has its critics. Not just a tax on mansions, the high rates apply to commercial, industrial and multifamily residential projects too, including land sales for new apartment developments. Apartment construction has indeed slowed to a crawl across the city in recent years and developers and researchers have laid at least some of the blame on the city’s high transfer taxes which they argue has driven new construction down further than in surrounding cities. One report by researchers at UCLA and the Rand Institute estimated that the measure has resulted in 1,910 fewer apartments per year, including 168 fewer affordable units. Another study by researchers at Harvard, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, found that property tax collections fell steeply as a result of the dramatic slow down in sales, off-setting an estimated 63% of the collect transfer tax revenue, if not significantly more.

Backers of the mansion tax have taken issue with the UCLA study in particular. They also note that the program is currently accepting applications for its first major distribution of funds, with plans to push nearly $400 million out the door, which could ultimately ramp up affordable housing development across the city.

But there’s growing concern, both in Los Angeles and among Democrats in Sacramento, that ULA as it currently exists has become a political vulnerability — and one that could fuel the campaign behind the statewide tax busting measure.

“Measure ULA is the tail wagging the dog,” said Mott Smith, a developer and board member of the California Infill Builders Association who co-authored another study that found a chilling effect on the housing market. “Anyone with assets in Los Angeles is like, ‘please where can I send my check to Howard Jarvis?’”

In the final days of the California Legislative session, Mayor Karen Bass and former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg tried to hammer a grand bargain into state law. Senate Bill 423 would have exempted certain new residential developments from the tax, offering a reprieve to many multifamily housing developers. It would have also given the city more flexibility to renegotiate affordability requirements on housing projects funded by the measure, addressing concerns by some developers and financiers that ULA cash comes with too many strings attached to be of use.

The bill would have also exempted homes destroyed in the recent wildfires.

But there was a catch: The ULA tweak would only go into effect if the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association pulls its ballot measure or it fails to qualify for the ballot.

All of that ultimately proved too complicated, contentious and of questionable legality to ram through the Legislature in the final days of the session. Long Beach Sen. Lena Gonzalez and Inglewood Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, both Democrats, vowed to pick it up again in January.

But that may be too late to neuter the anti-tax campaign. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is already gathering signatures and raising funds.

“This was an attempt to cut us off early in the process, but since we’re moving forward I think the attempt to leverage this is not going to prevail,” Jon Coupal, the association’s president. “Their opportunity to ambush us is now over.”

That’s given local government groups billions of reasons to worry. Along with making it more challenging to raise revenue in the future, cities with existing high transfer taxes would see them slashed. Parcel taxes currently on the books that were approved by majorities of less than two-thirds would be similarly nixed.

Cities would lose between $2 billion and $3 billion each year if the measure becomes law, according to an analysis commissioned by the League of California Cities, a lobbying group. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars in foregone funding dedicated for new housing and homelessness services in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. But it also includes hundreds of millions more for cities that don’t use these transfer dollars for new, specific purposes and projects, but simply to top up their budgets.

The City of Berkeley, for example, stands to lose between $33 million and $63 million, according to the League’s analysis. That’s the equivalent of between 15% to 30% of the town’s general fund.

California’s favorite fight

Californians have been having some version of this fight for nearly half a century.

In 1978, voters passed Proposition 13, which capped property taxes and put strict limits on local and state governments’ ability to raise revenue. Defending, rolling back and revising those limits in court battles and subsequent state ballot measure campaigns is now a storied California political tradition.

The latest chapter begins in 2017 when the California Supreme Court ruled in a case against the southern California city of Upland that citizen-initiated special tax measures only need to get more than 50% of the vote to pass. Up until that point it was presumed that the required threshold was the much more electorally formidable two-thirds.

Since then cities and counties have passed two dozen of these measures by margins of less than two-thirds. That includes taxes on parcels, sales and gross receipts that have been used to fund local schools, parks, street repairs and housing and that have been put on the ballot by homeless advocates, environmentalists and organized labor groups. It also includes Measure ULA.

And since then, business groups have been clambering to close the “Upland loophole.”

“This is now the vehicle for unions and others to be able to try and pass new taxes on targeted business sectors using a majority vote,” said Lapsely. “That only hurts job growth.”

Over that same period some cities have also turned to transfer taxes as a new source of revenue. It’s a fiscal avenue only available to a select number of cities. Under state law, most municipalities max out their transfer taxes at 55 cents for every $1,000 in sale value. But for “charter cities” — local governments with their own municipal constitution — there is no upper limit. Twenty-six have taken advantage of that fiscal opportunity.

They include Santa Monica, which passed its own version of a high-value transfer tax (Measure GS) in 2022, and Los Angeles. Voters in cities across the San Francisco Bay Area have voted to make more modest or incremental hikes over the last 10 years.

Electoral hurdles to come

The transfer tax trend has particularly irked landlords and real estate developers.

Last year, they joined forces with anti-tax advocates and other business groups to rein in both types of bothersome taxation with a ballot measure. The California Supreme Court took the unusual step of striking it from the 2024 ballot, ruling that it proposed too “substantial” a change to state government to be enacted by a mere ballot measure.

This year’s version is much more carefully targeted making it less likely to hit this same constitutional snag.

But even if the signature gathering effort is successful, the Howard Jarvis campaign has its work cut out for it — even for a conservative-coded measure in reliably blue California. In late 2023, the Legislature floated its own head-spinning ballot measure that would require future initiatives that want to hike the threshold needed to pass other measures (see: the business-backed measure) to meet that same higher threshold (in this case, two-thirds) before becoming law.

That effort to hoist the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association on its own petard is already slated for the November 2026 election. If it passes, it would apply to any other measures also on the ballot.

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

Heavy Manners Library, a beloved multipurpose event space on Alvarado Street, is hitting a big milestone. The organization, which hosts classes, music gigs and art exhibits, has outgrown its current location.

Defying the fate that has befallen many small operations in rapidly changing neighborhoods, Heavy Manners is staying in Echo Park.

Yulia Cymbura, head librarian at Heavy Manners Library.

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Book by book

Co-founder Matthew James-Wilson came up with the idea for the space while doing research for a book he wanted to write about the evolution of art in the internet age. During the process, he had an epiphany.

Why write just one book when you can provide access to hundreds of them? Why not start a library that doubles as an art space too?

“ You could imagine a gallery show happening in a library, or you could imagine a poetry reading happening in a library,” said James-Wilson.

An illustration by artist Patrick Kyle.

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Mixed media collages from artist Patrick Kyle's "How To Be Mean" exhibit.

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The name “Heavy Manners,” James-Wilson said, pays homage to a concept in reggae music that goes back to '70s deejay Prince Far I’s album Under Heavy Manners.

“ Sort of in reference to British colonial culture imposing this etiquette, or heavy manners, on Jamaican culture,” said James-Wilson.

Heavy Manners was just a couple of shelves when it opened in 2021, but through donations by artists and community members, its stacks grew.

The library has hosted more than 1,000 events, from drawing and sewing lessons to live music shows.

A room in Heavy Manners Library where events and workshops are held.

Interior of Heavy Manners.

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A small stage where events are held.

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“The space has taught me, as long as you can keep the calendar full and you can get things that people are excited about, people will share it with more people,” James-Wilson said.

Keep the calendar full

Carly Jean Andrews has been teaching nude figure drawing at Heavy Manners since 2023.

“Yeah, you have all the knowledge in the world on the internet, but it's so much more useful to just come here and have it be really literal,” Andrews said.

Carly Jean Andrews and Bijou Karman, instructors at Heavy Manners, posing in front of one of an art show.

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Bijou Karman teaches clothed figure drawing classes and has published zines and books of her fashion drawings through Heavy Manners.

“Today, I was here hand-assembling one of the books, and Carly was very kindly helping me assemble. It's a very community-oriented space where you actually meet people and learn new things,” said Karman.

Bijou Karman's recent art book "Images De Mode" is displayed near the entrance of the library.

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Changes on the block

Heavy Manners has been looking for more room to grow its library and event offerings.

The dream was to stay in the area and keep its relationship to Echo Park, despite the changes to the neighborhood, starting with the very block where Heavy Manners sits.

A book nook with a bench and a view of the outside street.

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The nearly century-old restaurant Taix is being demolished, while Silverlake Flea, which ran out of the French Bistro’s parking lot, has moved to Atwater Village.

“ It's a construction site that may be ongoing for a long time. You can sort of feel the sense of change happening, just on our block in general,” said James-Wilson.

Luckily, James-Wilson saw a nearby building on Sunset within Heavy Manners' budget and went for it. Their new home, about 400 feet away from the current location, is bigger and more wheelchair accessible. It also has an outdoor area that employees want to convert into a garden, or use for nature-oriented workshops.

Its current space won’t sit vacant though; Whammy Analog Media, a VHS video store expanding from a small backroom to a full-fledged shop, will be taking over.

A shelve with analog media available for check out.

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It takes a village

Recently, Heavy Manners put out a call for volunteers to help move its many books and zines in time for a planned mid-July reopening.

A "Free Zine Library" inside the space.

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“Because it's really close by, I'm kinda hoping to have just sort of a parade of people each carrying a box across the street,” said James-Wilson. “It takes a village to foster something like this, that is not lost on me.”

Various "Heavy Manners Library" prints.

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The newest Air Force One jet, gifted to President Donald Trump from the Qatari government, arrived ahead of schedule Friday to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

On Friday afternoon, Trump toured the luxury Boeing 747 plane that initially stirred controversy. The plane was one of the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the U.S. government and raised legal and ethical questions after Qatar offered to replace the presidential jet last year. Trump said last May he'd be "stupid" not to accept the offer. Industry groups originally said the plane could be worth approximately $400 million.

Trump also spoke standing in front of the plane, thanking the Emir of Qatar.

The president praised the workmanship of the plane, describing it as the "world's most luxurious plane." He also called it the "largest Air Force One ever built," adding, "It flies further and faster than any Air Force One."

"This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody's ever seen before, probably even almost outside of an airplane," Trump said. "Nobody's ever seen anything like this, and in only 10 months, a timeframe no one thought possible."

The exterior of the jet is no longer light blue, silver and white — a fixture since the Kennedy administration. Trump unveiled the new red, white and blue color scheme.

"It was time for a change. … Everything was designed good. It was my taste," Trump said, saying that he approved the new color scheme, which reflects the American flag.

The VC-25B Bridge aircraft will now undertake its commissioning flights, what the Air Force calls a "final exam" for the plane. The plane was modified after serving the Qatari Head of State.

"Once these flights are successfully completed, the aircraft is officially 'commissioned' into the active executive airlift fleet and becomes available for presidential missions," an Air Force press release said.

The aircraft from Qatar will "serve as a bridge until the [long-term] VC-25B is delivered," according to earlier communications from the Air Force. The plane was delivered well before expectations. The Air Force originally estimated the plane would be delivered in 2028 but said by modifying requirements it could deliver the first aircraft in 2027. The modifications "were carefully crafted to prioritize mission over aesthetics, leaving much of the previous head of state interior layout minimally changed," the Air Force said.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach praised the delivery.

"Many thought it could not be done, but the United States Air Force was able to execute and provide a secure, reliable airborne command post on an accelerated timeline," he said.

Vice President JD Vance has delayed his trip to Switzerland to negotiate the terms of a peace agreement with Iran on Friday.

It's unclear exactly why the talks were called off at the last minute, with hundreds of journalists already waiting in the alpine city of Lucerne.

But the delay raises questions over the sturdiness of the memorandum of understanding to end the war, signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

It came as Israel continued to heavily bombard Lebanon, despite the agreement promising to end all military operations, including in Lebanon.

Lebanese media said at least 18 were killed in overnight strikes, and Israel said four of its soldiers had been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.

Here are more details about the agreement and challenges they face in this latest effort to end the conflict:

US lifts naval blockade

There was immediate progress after the preliminary agreement to end the three-and-half month conflict that has killed thousands of people across the Middle East, rocked the global economy and pushed millions more into poverty around the world, according to the United Nations.

The United States lifted its naval blockade on Iran.

The short memorandum of understanding also promises to end military operations on all fronts and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway through which much of the world's oil, gas and fertilizer must pass to reach global markets.

The agreement prompted President Trump to celebrate on Truth Social writing: "Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!"

But there are still many potential pitfalls. Even before the agreement was signed, Trump made its fragility clear: "It's a memorandum of understanding," he said at the G7 summit in France. "If I don't like it, if they don't behave, we'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."

The document doesn't solve the underlying reason for why the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. It creates a 60-day window — extendable by mutual agreement — for the two sides to resolve the enmity that goes back many decades.

Israel remains defiant against the deal

The preliminary agreement promises to end all military operations, including in Lebanon. Israel has invaded and taken large swaths of southern Lebanon in an offensive it says is targeting the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah, which has killed more than 3,800 people, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has made clear that Iran considers Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon essential. "Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end," Araghchi said.

Israel wasn't involved in the negotiations with Iran — though Trump said at a press conference this week that he had sent Israel a copy of the document before he signed it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained defiant, saying his troops will remain in southern Lebanon for as long as Israel's security requires it.

The conflict in Lebanon is causing an extraordinarily open rift between Trump and Netanyahu. "He's a very difficult guy," Trump said of the Israeli prime minister recently said to The New York Times.

On Thursday, Israel's military released a new map ⁠showing an expanded area of southern Lebanon occupied by its troops, which it describes as a buffer zone.

"Trump's agreement does not bind us," Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wrote on social media on Monday. "We are not partners to this agreement that does not ensure our security."

Vice President Vance hit back at critics in the Israeli government, warning at a press conference that "Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time."

Trump signed the deal to avoid 'economic catastrophe'

The agreement promises "the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts" — including in Lebanon, where Israel has continued its offensive. Iran and the United States also promise "not to initiate" any further war or operation against each other. Not long after Trump signed the memorandum, U.S. Central Command said Thursday it had ended its naval blockade of ships to and from Iranian ports, as promised in the agreement.

Iranian state media reported the country's national security council will suspend tolls paid by ships for 60 days, per the deal, but that ships must still request Iran's permission — through a newly established Persian Gulf Strait Authority, before passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which was once considered an international waterway.

Increased ship traffic through the strait will come as a relief to Trump, whose approval ratings have been sliding as Americans see soaring gasoline prices and spiking inflation. Last month Trump insisted he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation in his approach to Iran.

But this week he acknowledged at a news conference that he had signed this agreement because he "didn't want to see an economic catastrophe."

The memorandum gives major concessions to Iran

Trump has repeatedly called the Iran nuclear deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — presided over by President Barack Obama in 2015 the "worst deal ever," and Trump abandoned the agreement in his first term in office. But the framework agreement signed this week hands major financial concessions to Iran that could ultimately go much further than the Obama-era arrangement.

The document says the U.S. will work with regional partners to create a fund of "at least $300 billion" for Iran's reconstruction and economic development. Vice President Vance has said Gulf Arab nations would invest that amount.

It also promises that the U.S. will unfreeze Iranian funds and assets that amount potentially to tens of billions of dollars. Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, told CNN Iran wants to see the release of $24 billion.

These commitments do depend on further negotiations. But the Trump administration also plans to issue sanction waivers to allow Iran to immediately sell its oil. The waiver concedes a major point of potential leverage at the start of these 60-day talks.

And the interim deal also opens the door to ending all U.S. and international sanctions on Iran. Iran has been under a plethora of U.S. sanctions since the 1979 Revolution. The penalties have kept Iran cut off from the global economy, preventing it, for example, from accessing the international banking sector. This new pledge goes far beyond the JCPOA deal, which removed some sanctions in exchange for Iran reducing its stockpile of uranium.

The negotiation over Iran's nuclear program

President Trump has boasted he will achieve a much "better" agreement than the JCPOA. The substantive talks on this are yet to begin, but so far, the commitment Iran has made in the memorandum that it "shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons" is the same promise it has made for years, including in the 2015 nuclear accord.

The details of Iran's nuclear program are complex and technical. The JCPOA was negotiated over years by the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China, with nuclear physicists and non-proliferation experts, and ran to 159 pages. Trump's framework was negotiated bilaterally by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — a property developer and the president's son-in-law. An Iranian diplomat who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly told NPR they believed the last round of talks with the Trump administration did not progress because "the Americans at the table did not understand the subject."

The U.S. had been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program before abruptly launching the bombing campaign with Israel on Tehran that began this war on Feb. 28. For this latest round of talks, Witkoff and Kushner visited the national lab in Oak Ridge, Tenn., earlier this month for consultations with a team of technical experts that could play a role in nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Has Iran come out of the war stronger?

Trump began the conflict promising to set conditions for regime change in Iran. "I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand," he told Iranians in a televised address on Feb. 28. "When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take."

It was a nightmare scenario for the Iranian regime, to face down the bombardment from two of the world's most powerful militaries. The war killed more than 3,300 Iranians, according to state media, including top leaders, and pounded the country's infrastructure and armed forces. But the regime's survival, and its ability to target U.S. assets in the region and control the Strait of Hormuz, empowered Iran.

The country has learned "that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works," Bill Cassidy, Republican senator from Louisiana, said in a blistering attack on the Trump administration. He called the offensive against Iran "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades."

Iran's response forced the Trump administration to set aside the goal of regime change to focus on seeking a way to reopen the vital strait.

"The only 'achievement' of the ceasefire is the likely reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — which was open before the war started. And we will apparently pay Iran to do so," Antony Blinken, who was secretary of state under former President Joe Biden, posted on X.

Trump has countered critics by saying on social media that anyone who thinks he hasn't "been tough enough on Iran," when the stock market is high and oil prices are falling, is either jealous, bad or stupid. And Vance called on critics to "have a little bit of faith in the president of the United States."

But in a hard accounting of the war, the facts are undeniable: Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz gave it the leverage to secure from Trump concessions that unlock vast sums of money — even more, potentially, than under Obama.

And regarding Iran's nuclear program, the Iranians so far appear not to have offered Trump any more concessions than they did at the Geneva talks two days before the U.S. and Israel launched their offensive in February.

Now new negotiations are set to begin, and the Iranians will be coming to the table having shown Trump, and the world, the power they can wield over the global economy.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has witnessed more than a century of American history, in all its heartbreak and majesty. Crowds have gathered around it in protest and in praise, to denounce American wars and hear great voices sing and speak.

Today, it's the center of a slimy controversy.

President Donald Trump said in April he found the water in the reflecting pool "filthy" and "disgusting." He authorized a no-bid contract to resurface the basin of the 2,000-foot long pool and paint it "American flag blue" in time for July 4th celebrations.

"I have a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools," the president crowed, before the National Park Service gave out no-bid contracts for sealing and upgrades.

After weeks of renovation, the project has cost taxpayers more than $14 million and … the reflecting pool looks green. And I mean green. Like the Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day. But that river is dyed green for a day. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is green because of algae.

Look, algae happens. It's clouded the reflecting pool since it was first filled in 1923. Algae blooms flourish when sunlight falls on warm, sluggish water — like you'd find in a shallow, still pool absorbing the glare and swelter of a Washington, D.C., summer.

But a University of Virginia satellite analysis commissioned by the Washington Post saw more algae in the Reflecting Pool this month than at any other time in the past five years.

The Interior Department says workers have deployed "a state-of-the-art ozone nanobubbler filtration system" to banish the algae.

"President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who has fixed the reflecting pool for good," spokesperson Kate Martin said in a statement this week, "unlike the failed and extremely costly attempt by Obama and Biden."

That's a reference to a major project during President Barack Obama's first term to stop the pool from sinking and add a filtration system.

In these deeply divisive and partisan times, it's good to remind ourselves that many issues aren't just Republican red or Democratic blue. The Reflecting Pool algae doesn't care about our party lines. It's green, and it's not going anywhere.