The Brief

A federal judge is ordering the city of Los Angeles to prove that it provided more than 2,600 rental subsidies for unhoused people, evidence that L.A. is complying with long-standing agreements to create more shelter.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter made the order at the end of a hearing held to determine whether the city is fulfilling its legal obligations in a lawsuit with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a downtown business group that sued the city.

Los Angeles is required to create 6,000 new beds for unhoused people under a 2020 deal known as the Roadmap agreement. The city has been counting rental subsidies in compliance reports submitted to the court.

But Carter said in an amended order issued Thursday that he had “serious concerns about the accuracy” of the numbers. He required city representatives to provide evidence about the rental subsidies by next week.

The judge is expected to make a decision by the end of the month on whether L.A. has breached its legal obligations, as laid out in the agreements, and if control of the city’s homelessness spending should be handed to a third party.

Why it matters now

Several witnesses, including the city administrative officer and deputy mayor for Homelessness and Community Health, testified during the federal court hearing, which lasted more than a week in downtown L.A.

Part of the evidence focused on what are known as time-limited subsidies, which are a means to get unhoused people into apartments and other rental units on the private market, typically for up to two years.

The regional Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, has said the subsidies support people experiencing homelessness by helping them access permanent housing quickly.

According to his order, Carter is concerned about 2,679 of these subsidies, which court-appointed assessors testified they could not verify because of missing addresses and other information.

Skid Row community

Among the witnesses who testified during the hearing were members of the Skid Row community, including those who were previously unhoused.

Don Garza, who has lived in Skid Row for 26 years, said people are languishing on the streets while they wait for housing.

“They didn't have to die,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “There's enough money for the shelters, there's enough money to do all of it. We don't have to fight for one or the other, there's plenty.”

“Where did the money go?” he continued. “Why are these people dying on our streets? Why are they dying?”

Suzette Shaw, a Skid Row resident and advocate, came to court nearly every day of the hearing to listen and observe. She told LAist she was triggered by some of the testimony, including when Carter thanked the city’s new lawyers for visiting Skid Row.

“ It should be mandated that any city, county employee, especially attorneys that are involved in this homeless sector, that you have to come into a community called Skid Row,” she said. “ And you need to work …  side by side with us.”

What’s next

The city is required to provide specific information on each rental subsidy by next Wednesday, including the addresses and whether someone at each address is living there.

All of that information will be filed under seal, meaning it won’t be disclosed publicly, according to the court order.

Starting Monday, the attorneys in the case will submit written arguments to the judge. Their arguments are expected to focus on whether the city breached its obligations and whether control of L.A.’s homelessness spending should be transferred to a third party.

Carter is expected to make a decision by the end of June.

Conductor Daniel Harding will take over as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director next year, the organization announced Tuesday.

The appointment follows three years of intense speculation about who would succeed Gustavo Dudamel to oversee the influential orchestra, including concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Ford Theater and with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles.

Harding’s tenure starts in the 2027-28 L.A. Phil season. The Oxford-born conductor is currently music director of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Italy and is well-known in L.A. as a guest conductor.

“ Daniel is a musician favorite during his last couple of times here during that Hollywood Bowl,” Kim Noltemy, L.A. Phil president and CEO, told LAist’s AirTalk Tuesday. “ He's a brilliant musician,” Noltemy continued. “He is absolutely committed to the idea of music education and helping develop the audiences of the future.”

Harding said in a statement Tuesday that making music with LA Phil musicians is a thrill and inspiration.

“So many great artists have found possibilities here that don’t exist anywhere else, and I come to California full of excitement for what we will discover and create together,” Harding said.

Harding will be the creative lead behind a team of acclaimed musicians, according to the L.A. Phil.

“This is gonna be the ultimate dream team,” Notlemy told AirTalk.

That includes Dudamel, who has led the orchestra since 2009 and will make his debut as the director of the New York Philharmonic this year. He was appointed last week as L.A. Phil’s artistic and cultural laureate.

It also includes LA Phil creative director Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor-in-residence Anna Handler, creative chair John Adams and others.

“We are taking a non-traditional approach to all of the artistic strategy — essentially by having a team of brilliant people working together to create a season that really inspires people and meets various audiences where they are,” Notlemy said.

Harding will conduct eight weeks of programming in his inaugural 2027-28 season, according to the L.A. Phil. That will increase to 12 weeks of programming in the seasons to follow.

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When it comes to California’s climate future, the most important figure in the state’s chaotic governor’s race may not be any of the candidates on the debate stage. It may not even be outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, or President Donald Trump.

Instead, it might just be Chevron, the multinational oil company that was founded in the Golden State more than 100 years ago. It is among the largest producers, refiners, and sellers of petroleum products in a state rapidly shifting toward electric vehicles. Depending on which candidate is talking, the company is an example of how Big Oil is strangling consumers or an example of how climate regulations are strangling the state economy.

The behemoth — it reported $12.3 billion in profit last year — took the spotlight last month when an interviewer asked leading Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra about Chevron’s contributions to his campaign. The former state attorney general and Biden-era health secretary gave what seemed to be a candid response:

“Chevron, that’s the problem with politics. They’re not the bad guy. Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron. I need Chevron. My people of the state of California need Chevron … Chevron wants to give me a check, that’s — that’s their prerogative.”

The phrase “I need Chevron” soon appeared in anti-Becerra videos by the likes of climate hawk Jane Fonda, implying that the candidate was saying he needs Chevron to get elected. Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, Becerra’s lead Democratic opponent, urged him to return the contribution and said he is “doing [the] bidding” of Big Oil. Representative Katie Porter, another leading Democrat, said in a statement that she “hasn’t made millions off Big Oil or taken their checks.”

Becerra is not entirely wrong. California consumes around 13 billion gallons of gasoline annually, all of it specifically formulated to meet the state’s stringent clean air standards. Most of it comes from just six refineries, and Chevron owns two that account for one-third of the state’s production. That gives the company and its peers tremendous leverage. But California’s gas consumption has declined by about 15% from a peak in 2004 due to improved fuel economy in conventional vehicles and growing adoption of electric vehicles. It could fall by half over the next two decades.

The primary is June 2. The challenge for the next governor will be to continue the energy transition while retaining the infrastructure needed to move and refine oil. This has never been accomplished in a place as large as California, which was the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2025. The risks are tremendous: If the state moves too quickly, it could create shortages and price spikes for drivers already paying the highest prices in the country. If it moves too slowly, it could lock in decades of air pollution and hinder global climate progress.

“It’s messy,” said Emily Grubert. She is a civil engineer and sociologist at Notre Dame who has studied fossil fuel transitions and advised the state government on oil infrastructure. “As soon as you realize that actually transitioning away from fossil fuels means you have to close things, people get really freaked out.”

Newsom spent much of his governorship going after Big Oil, an effort that included a series of executive actions to restrict fracking in Kern County oil fields. When the war in Ukraine sent gas prices surging, Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature passed a series of bills to stop what he called “price gouging.” These laws empowered a new oil-focused watchdog agency, created a tool that could impose refinery price caps, and required refineries to maintain certain storage reserves, all of which cut profit margins for Chevron and others. The new refinery rules added to multiple carbon taxes that make selling gasoline in California more expensive.

However, there is some evidence refiners have overcharged Californians. Even after accounting for state taxes, environmental fees, and production costs, a gap remains between gas prices in the Golden State and everywhere else. This gap appeared in 2015 after a refinery fire in Torrance and has come to be known as the “mystery gasoline surcharge.” It now averages about $1. Last fall, a state regulator concluded that refiners’ monopoly power may be the reason for the price spikes.

Oil companies accused Newsom of trying to regulate them out of existence, and many threatened to leave. Two major refiners, Wilmington and Benicia, announced last year that they would close their operations, forcing a state that already imports about 60 percent of its oil to rely on imports of gasoline refined in Asia. Chevron relocated its corporate headquarters from the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon to Houston in 2024, and it has delivered a series of ominous warnings this year as climate regulators have revised the state’s almost 15-year-old carbon tax.

“The proposed regulation will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry,” Andy Walls, the president of Chevron’s refinery business, wrote in an open letter to Newsom in March. The implication was clear: unless you relax your regulations, we will leave the state and strand you without gasoline. That would mean paying Asian refiners to produce more of the state’s specific blend, at significant cost.

The Newsom administration spent much of 2025 trying to work out a grand bargain with the industry. The Legislature eased rules governing drilling in Kern County oil fields, helping maintain a stable supply of crude to refineries, It also delayed implementing a refinery profit cap, and allowed the temporary sale of gasoline with higher concentrations of ethanol. The state’s climate regulator has also suggested giving refineries free allowances under the state’s cap-and-trade system, even if it means less money for big projects like high-speed rail and sustainable housing. The idea is to give investors enough certainty that they’re willing to remain in California even as the state uses less gasoline.

Experts believe it will take a lot more than that to manage inevitable changes.

“You actually can’t have a smooth and safe and effective transition without some form of coordinating function for that decline,” said Grubert. She believes a degree of state ownership of refineries will be necessary to keep facilities open if they stop being profitable. The wrong approach, she says, would be to respond to each potential a refinery closure with ad hoc subsidies and state support, since that would allow refiners to extort the state one by one. 

That point was reinforced this month by a report from the California Energy Commission that has not received much notice. The analysis of the state’s shaky fuel system found that “California cannot sustainably manage this transition through repeated crisis interventions at an asset-by-asset level.” It suggested options that included “legal obligations to operate,” “centralized planning of closures,” and “direct state management or ownership of assets.”

The Iran war will accelerate a decline in both the supply of, and demand for, oil. Gas retailers like Chevron are already struggling to find additional imports of refined fuel, and some experts predict shortages if the Strait of Hormuz does not open within weeks. Meanwhile, electric vehicles continue gaining market share, and Newsom plans to roll out subsidies for them this year. Wider adoption of these vehicles, and hybrids, will further crimp demand, making any remaining refineries more likely to shutter.

Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field near Bakersfield is one of the largest oil fields in California. The state’s climate policies have helped reduce gasoline demand by more than 15 percent over the past decade.

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Mark Ralston

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AFP via Getty Images

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All of this helps explain the showdown between the leading Democrats in the governor’s race, who are each trying to find a lane in a field that at one time included more than 50 candidates.

Becerra has given lip service to clean energy, but many public statements suggest a friendliness toward oil producers. As attorney general, he initiated a few lawsuits against petroleum companies, and supported other state climate lawsuits, but punted on major investigations. He has focused his gubernatorial campaign on vows to fight Donald Trump and protect healthcare, and has made controversial promises to freeze utility and insurance rates. On decarbonization, he has noted that “climate action only succeeds if it is affordable, reliable, and fair.”

After the chaos of the early primary, many oil producers have decided that Becerra is their candidate. Chevron last month contributed the maximum allowable amount of $39,200 to his campaign, the first time in a decade it has backed a gubernatorial candidate. Last week, the company contributed another $500,000 to an independent political committee supporting Becerra. California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest driller, also gave $500,000 to a Becerra committee. And gas companies like Sempra are among the donors to an anti-Steyer political committee that has raised more than $24 million.

Steyer, meanwhile, has made attacking Big Oil the focus of his campaign, as it was during his 2020 presidential run. He says he would lower gas prices by activating the refining profit cap that Newsom has declined to use, investigating what is causing high gas prices (something the state has already done), and taxing private jet fuel. When refineries “inevitably” close, he says he will stockpile an oil reserve and import more refined fuel for as long as California needs it.

Steyer has also had to address his own fossil fuel ties. The hedge fund he founded, Farallon Capital, remains a major player in coal power finance abroad, including in Indonesia and Australia. Steyer still holds a stake in the firm, which he left in 2012, but his campaign says he no longer receives dividends from its fossil fuel investments.

California uses a “jungle primary” in which the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party. The latest poll shows Becerra essentially tied with former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, with Steyer trailing at around 15 percent. The most likely outcome is that one of Becerra or Steyer will make it to the general election. (The other Democrats, including Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, trail behind in the double digits.)

Railing against Big Oil has long proven to be good politics in California. But in the wake of Trump’s second election victory, Democrats have sought to downplay climate issues and focus instead on affordability. The question in the governor’s race is how best to achieve that in the long run. Is it better to use a bully pulpit against companies like Chevron in an effort to break their market power, or conciliate them in the hope that they don’t flee?

Mike Madrid, a veteran California political operative, believes Becerra’s approach will resonate more with the young and Latinos, both of whom often decide statewide elections.

“This attack on Chevron, it works for the base Steyer already has,” he said. “Young Latino working-class men are the demographic most affected by gas prices. Do you think they’re saying we need to get rid of Chevron? Of course not.”

Steyer’s campaign may not get him over the line in the primary, but he has at least been consistent. In a 2013 blog post for this very publication, he celebrated the result of the Virginia governor’s race, where a climate-focused Democrat beat a fossil-fuel friendly Republican with help from Steyer’s own war chest.

“A new political dynamic is emerging,” he wrote at the time. “Climate change is a winner, not a loser,” and is “no longer electoral Kryptonite.”

If Chevron has its way, next week’s primary results will prove otherwise.

California foster youth and children who have lost a parent to COVID can now apply for a trust fund to help them begin their adult lives.

The Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance and Empowerment (HOPE) program, created by the state Legislature in 2022, will invest $3,000 per child in a trust fund that they can access when they are 18. About 56,000 children could benefit from this program, according to a state press release.

“For California’s most vulnerable children, early financial support can help counter the long-term impacts of poverty and instability, and create a foundation for long-term financial security,” said California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, who serves as chair of HOPE. “HOPE is designed to provide that equitable access and make a lasting impact.”

Children who have spent at least 18 months in foster care or have had family reunification services terminated, and children who have lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID can apply for funds at hopeaccount.ca.gov.

For more information, contact HopeForChildren@treasurer.ca.gov.

Immigration courts inside the Justice Department are drastically accelerating immigrants' hearings and bunching them together with the goal of issuing more deportation orders.

The new and unprecedented tactic was shared with NPR by immigration attorneys and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade association that tracks trends in these courts.

Immigrants are now being scheduled for massive master calendar hearings — or "mega masters" — that include 100 or more people at a time. That's up from two or three dozen people at a time, which had been typical before for a first hearing. For many immigrants, this is their first appearance in court to try to make their case to be able to stay in the U.S.

Attorneys say these new hearings largely target people without lawyers representing them. Those who show up late, or not at all, are receiving removal orders, further truncating the already-limited due process available to immigrants.

"The major concern is that [since] this is going to be a group of people without attorneys, that they're not going to have gotten proper notice," said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practicing policy counsel at AILA, adding that courts often lack enough seats for hearings with so many people at once. "So it's almost like they are being designed to increase" how many people get deportation orders automatically, she said.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that runs the immigration courts at the DOJ, did not respond to a request for comment on this new strategy.

Lawyers said the practice had started in the Chicago, Boston and Chelmsford, Mass., courts and is soon to start in the Dallas Immigration Court.

The effort comes as President Donald Trump seeks to deport a million people a year — much higher than the 600,000 people the administration deported in 2025. Trump has also complained about the backlogs of millions of cases inside immigration courts, pointing to courts as an obstacle to rapid deportation.

No notice, overwhelmed courthouses

When someone does not appear for their scheduled hearing, even by mistake, the judge can issue an official removal order that allows immigration officers to detain and deport the person. That's been happening a lot more often under this Trump administration, an NPR analysis found last year, with fewer people showing up in court for fear of being detained.

Dojaquez-Torres and other immigration attorneys who spoke to NPR worry that immigrants, especially those without a lawyer, may not know that their hearing dates had been rescheduled for a sooner date, leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

She added that in some cases, little to no notice is being issued by the government by mail or electronically to immigrants or their lawyers, meaning those not regularly checking their online accounts could miss any changes.

These "mega masters" are made up of people whose original hearings were scheduled for 2027, 2028 or 2029.

"They're anticipating that the majority will not show up and they'll just be able to say that they completed X number of cases because they'll be in absentia orders of removal," said one Texas-based immigration attorney. The attorney spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals for their ability to practice in Texas courts.

The attorney noted that if people do show up to the massive hearings, it could overwhelm court staff and judges and overcrowd courtrooms.

In some cases, attorneys said their clients may benefit from cases getting scheduled sooner, even if it increases pressure and creates sudden legal filing deadlines. However, most people in immigration court do not have a lawyer and are unlikely to see these benefits.

DOJ begins to staff up to take on cases

This is not the first time the agency has pushed to streamline cases under Trump's second term.

EOIR has also moved to quickly prioritize cases of people from specific nationalities, including Somalis, Syrians and Iranians. And, cases of juvenile immigrants are also being pushed up, their lawyers say.

The strategy of hosting mega masters comes as the DOJ announced its largest-ever class of new immigration judges. Last week, the agency onboarded 77 judges and five temporary military lawyers serving as judges. The agency has boasted hiring 153 immigration judges this fiscal year, the most in any year.

"The Trump administration is committed to reestablishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule to the law in our nation's immigration system," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

The rapid hirings come after EOIR lost about a quarter of its immigration judges last year, with more than 100 of them fired. And even as more judges were hired last week, several more were fired the same day, including in courts in New York and California.

An NPR analysis last year found that judges with backgrounds in representing immigrant clients were more likely to be fired compared to those who only had prior experience working at the Department of Homeland Security.

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