The Brief

For California political observers, the housing plan that Kamala Harris recently unveiled may have caused a twinge of familiarity.

As a central plank of her agenda to “lower costs for American families,” the Democratic presidential nominee pledged in August to build 3 million additional affordable homes and rentals over the next four years to address “a serious housing shortage across America” — echoing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s platform during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, when he called for California to add 3.5 million housing units by 2025.

Housing policy experts are enthusiastic about many of the ideas that Harris floated to promote production, which include creating a new tax incentive for developers who build starter homes for first-time homebuyers, expanding a tax incentive for affordable rental housing projects and establishing a $40 billion “innovation fund” to finance construction, as well as repurposing some federal land for housing and streamlining the permitting processes for projects.

Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, called it a wonk’s wish list: “This is all of the stuff we talk about at dorky academic conferences.”

But transforming the housing market from the top is difficult, as Newsom’s experience has demonstrated.

While California has increased production during his time in office — about 112,000 units were completed last year, according to the Department of Housing and Community Development, compared to about 70,000 in 2018 — it is still only building at a fifth of the rate necessary to meet his original target.

The governor has since acknowledged that 3.5 million units “was always a stretch goal” and scaled back. His office declined an interview request for this story.

Even with new policy priorities in place, high construction costs, onerous regulations, lack of public funding and community resistance remain major hurdles to supercharging homebuilding in California — offering lessons for a potential Harris administration.

“You’re going to be limited in your ability to change things on the ground,” said Ben Metcalf, a former state and federal housing official who is now managing director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. “Even when you are trying to move carrots and sticks, you find years later, what do you have to show?”

Set manageable goals

The high cost of housing has long been a top concern for Californians, but the problem is spreading across the nation. Industry data indicates that home prices exploded over the past five years, up more than 50% since 2019, while rent surged by about a third during that time, oustripping raises.

People moving from expensive cities to outlying areas for more affordable housing or moving into bigger homes during the coronavirus pandemic has driven up demand in new places, while even many recent pro-growth boom towns are becoming strained by the natural limits of expansion or a dimming taste for development.

“There is plenty of reason to think that it could get worse, in the sense that California is a bellwether,” Lens said.

Construction is constrained in California by pricey land, local zoning limits and fees, lengthy permitting processes and the threat of litigation, all of which drive up the cost of building and make it difficult for many projects to pencil out financially.

It’s unclear where the Harris campaign came up with its goal of 3 million housing units over the next four years — or how exactly it would measure success, given the emphasis on affordability. A campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions seeking a more detailed explanation, though he did clarify that this would be above current production.

That would require a President Harris to immediately boost construction nationwide by 50%, to levels not seen since before the housing market crashed during the 2008 financial crisis. The country built about 1.45 million new homes last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's first gubernatorial campaign in 2018 called for California to add 3.5 million housing units by 2025.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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The strategy carries some political risk. Newsom set an ambitious housing goal as a candidate for governor, which would have required California to build 500,000 new homes per year, and then faced criticism for falling short.

Metcalf noted that Harris’ plan for 3 million homes is more aggressive than the 2 million figure that President Joe Biden was campaigning on before he dropped out of the race this summer, but far below the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which targeted the construction or rehabilitation of 26 million units over the next decade, including six million for low- and moderate-income families.

“The last time we saw an incoming president really putting a big, bold number on the board was that,” Metcalf said. “She wants to be able to campaign for a second term saying, ‘Hey, we did it.’”

Clear regulatory hurdles

California officials are undertaking a serious push to make it easier to build housing.

Over the past several years, they have passed major legislation:

• SB 9 allows landowners to add additional units on single-family lots in residential neighborhoods.
  
• SB 6 streamlines the process for turning empty commercial properties into housing.
  
• AB 14449 shields certain affordable projects from lengthy environmental reviews and legal challenges.
  
• SB 423 opens up land owned by religious institutions and colleges for construction.
  
• AB 1893 gives developers more tools to speed up permitting in uncooperative cities and counties.

Advocates projected these policies could unlock millions of new homes across the state, but the impact so far has been significantly more modest.

“That’s a precursor to making a lot of these things work,” Lens said. “We have to make housing more allowable in more places.”

New housing construction in Elk Grove on July 8, 2022.

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Rahul Lal

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A series of laws to encourage more “accessory dwelling units” has been a promising exception, according to Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor with an expertise in land use and housing law. Since California forced local governments to waive fees and affordability requirements and grant faster approval for backyard cottages and other secondary units, the state has seen a boom of ADU construction.

Elmendorf said Harris’ proposed tax incentive for starter homes — which is not an official category, but generally refers to more modest housing that provides a cheaper entry point into the market — could similarly provide a quick jolt to the housing supply.

“If the goal is to promote small, inexpensive, market-rate homes, that’s really different than what California has been doing,” Elmendorf said. “California has been able to pass a lot of laws, but it hasn’t been able to pass many laws that make housing economically feasible.”

Experts argue that California has not been able to maximize the effectiveness of its new pro-housing laws because it is prioritizing so many other goals — demands to use union labor, requirements for more deed-restricted affordable units to reduce gentrification, environmental considerations to discourage sprawl and climate risks — that it’s still too expensive to build here.

The high costs for workers, materials and local regulations have been compounded lately by elevated interest rates, which drive up the price tag to finance projects and may actually be reversing California’s progress on construction. Metcalf compared it to a straw breaking the camel’s back for the building industry.

“That’s something that we’ve made almost no progress on as a state,” he said. “Once you have the table set, if the costs are too high, then nothing gets built.”

It’s of particular concern for affordable housing developers, who rely heavily on public funding. Chione Lucina Muñoz Flegal, executive director of the affordable housing advocacy group Housing California, said that despite state laws that have made it easier to plan projects, developers continue to struggle to pull together enough money to get them over the finish line.

She is hopeful about a surge in financial support — through the tax incentives and innovation fund in Harris’ plan — that has been unavailable from state or local governments, which she said have not generally prioritized money for affordable housing because constituents do not understand the benefits.

“There’s a narrative challenge that we’re grappling with that often translates into a political challenge,” Flegal said. “That’s a way the federal government could be impactful in a way the state could never be.”

Use sticks as well as carrots

Though Newsom made clear his desire to boost housing production in California, not everyone has been on board with his approach.

Some cities, particularly wealthy or coastal suburbs, have vigorously fought to restrict additional development in their own communities, resisting a state mandate to plan for far more housing and suing to exempt themselves or overturn new laws that make it easier to build more densely. They contend these policies would destroy the character of their communities.

Newsom, who argues that everyone must do their part to solve the crisis, has cracked down by creating a new enforcement unit within the state housing department and suing the most intransigent cities for failing to approve housing plans or even specific projects.

The construction project is funded by the No Place Like Home bond, which passed in 2018 to create affordable housing for homeless residents experiencing mental health issues.

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Camille Cohen

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But the federal government does not have the same legal authority that California has given itself to demand local communities build more housing, and there’s no guarantee that Congress would be willing to step in to play more of a role in what has traditionally been a local matter in most states.

“Plans don’t translate into outcomes if people don’t want to build housing,” Elmendorf said.

So to reach her goal of 3 million new homes, Harris would have to rely more on the proposed incentives, such as the tax breaks for starter homes and affordable rentals and the innovation fund, for voluntary compliance.

Experts believe she has a good political opportunity to actually get her plan passed. Congress will be under pressure next year to extend a series of tax cuts made under former President Donald Trump that are set to expire at the end of 2025, which could be used as a bargaining chip for Harris’ housing proposals.

The federal government also has the power of the purse on a scale well beyond California, which it could amplify through regulations — such as tying transportation dollars to building more housing — that make supporting development the more desirable option.

California has tried this type of regulatory incentive, encouraging local governments to remove obstacles to construction with grant money and creating a “pro-housing designation” for cities that adopt streamlined development policies, which gives them privileged access to state funds.

“Unfortunately, that pro-housing designation is not based on outcomes. So that’s a fundamental problem,” Elmendorf said. “That’s something Harris will have to figure out.”

A new law will require local agencies to publicly disclose audio recordings and written records of 911 calls originating from privately run immigration detention facilities. The bill was prompted by CalMatters reporting on alleged sexual assaults at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 423, called the Detention Facility Transparency Act, on Tuesday. It was one of 21 immigration-related bills in a package his office announced the same day.

The law will require local agencies to turn over recordings and written records of 911 calls from privately run detention facilities, if a member of the public requests them. It includes an exception if an active investigation is underway and requires redacting the names of affected individuals.

“Well, it goes without saying, these past two years, Donald Trump has brought fear and has brought anxiety, disruption and stress to our immigrant communities,” Newsom said in a recorded video statement on his website.

“So, today, I sign a number of bills to strengthen transparency and to strengthen accountability and oversight over federal immigration enforcement and civil detention in our state,” the governor said.

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, introduced SB 423 as state investigations and courts found serious gaps in essential medical care within the facilities. She said the aim was to stop private operators, and the agencies that work alongside them, from keeping what happens behind detention walls from the public's view.

In February, L.A. Taco reported that detainees inside Otay Mesa were throwing lotion bottles wrapped with notes about conditions inside over the wall of the facility to organizers standing outside.

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh," an Otay Mesa detainee wrote, the news outlet reported. "We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”

Gonzalez, who is chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus, said no person “should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voices heard.”

Earlier this year, CalMatters sought information, including 911 audio records and other reports, about alleged serious incidents at detention facilities through a California Public Records Act request. While a San Diego County sheriff’s spokesperson said the agency was not investigating those cases, he said he was unable to turn over additional records because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.”

“When journalists and reporters attempted to obtain records about reported incidents at these facilities through the Public Records Act, they faced severe pushback from law enforcement, citing vague investigatory records exemptions, despite there being no active investigation,” said Gonzalez.

Immigrant Defense Advocates and the First Amendment Coalition co-sponsored the bill.

“The governor has sent a powerful message: No more secrecy. SB 423 makes clear that 911 calls and related records about events in detention must be released upon request. This will shed more light on a notoriously opaque system, leading to stronger oversight and accountability,” Ginny LaRoe, Advocacy Director, First Amendment Coalition, said in a written statement.

Gonzalez’s bill was one of several detention oversight bills Newsom signed Tuesday. Others impose a new 25% tax on private detention facilities, expand health, safety and oversight requirements for the centers, and add to the state attorney general’s oversight role.

The new laws take effect Jan. 1.

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

Six Flags Magic Mountain is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury caused by the ride.

The Southern California theme park said Tuesday that it is permanently shuttering the ride after nearly 20 years. Six Flags recently settled a wrongful-death lawsuit from the family of a 22-year-old man who died after riding the coaster in 2022, and three more lawsuits alleging traumatic brain injuries were filed last week.

“While X2 consistently passed a multitude of safety tests, we have decided to close the ride because we believe it’s the right thing to do,” park President Brian Oerding said in an online announcement. “Ride safety is a cornerstone of our business, and when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.”

The ride has been closed since the evening of July 12, after two women who rode the coaster less than a week apart both needed to be rushed to the hospital after they exited.

One of them, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson, collapsed shortly after the ride ended and was found to have massive brain bleeding inside the skull that required emergency brain surgery. She remains in a vegetative state in the hospital, unable to speak or move and dependent on a ventilator. Her family filed a lawsuit against Six Flags on her behalf.

Her attorneys said more than 100 people claimed they suffered brain injuries from the roller coaster in the past two years, and more lawsuits would be filed in the coming weeks.

According to the Six Flags Magic Mountain website, the X2 roller coaster reaches a top speed of 76 mph (122 kph) and has a total length of 3,610 feet (1,100 meters). The seats rotate 360 degrees “so your body will be flipping around the entire time,” and the ride features two “raven turns” — half loops that turn into sheer drops midway.

It debuted at the park in 2002 under the name X as the world’s first “fourth-dimension” roller coaster and reopened in 2008 as X2 with new trains and special effects. The uniqueness of the ride drew thrill-seekers from around the world and garnered a fervent fanbase.

The park settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old who died the day after he rode X2. He was taken to the hospital after the ride with severe brain bleeding. The medical examiner’s office said his death was from blunt head trauma. The case was settled at the end of August, a few days before the trial was scheduled to start.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the administration to resume, for now, deportations of migrants to countries that are not identified in their removal orders, handing President Donald Trump another victory in his aggressive immigration agenda.

The court also said it would take up the case for full oral argument in December.

The court's brief order granting the petition did not outline a reason for staying a lower-court order that blocked the third-country deportations. It noted the court's three liberal justices objected to staying the order.

Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices the third-country deportation policy amounted to "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens" in court papers earlier this month. The administration said it has used the policy to deport tens of thousands of noncitizens to Mexico and countries in Africa and Latin America after the migrants' home countries refused to accept them.

"While certain aliens may benefit from stalling their removal, the Nation does not," Sauer wrote in an emergency application Sept. 24.

The action by the high court marks the third time the justices have rejected efforts by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston to pause the deportations, which the judge said violate due process rights and fail to give detainees meaningful notice to raise arguments that they have credible fears of torture or abuse in the countries where they could be sent.

The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is representing migrants facing deportation, said in court papers that their clients are facing significant harms.

"The record shows that class members removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present country-specific protection claims have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection," wrote lawyer Trina Realmuto. "These harms cannot be undone."

The Department of Homeland Security said Murphy's rulings have created a logistical nightmare, including canceled flights, potential diplomatic clashes, and a lag in removing people convicted of assault and drug crimes.

The administration argued that if a country has assured Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it will not engage in persecution or torture, that should be enough to deport a noncitizen to a country that's not their own.

The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority has recognized the president has substantial authority over the border. Last summer, in a 6-to-3 decision, the court ruled President Trump has sweeping power to end the temporary protected status program for people who can't return to their home countries because of wars and natural disasters.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The bell had already rung on a recent morning at Newport Beach’s Ensign Intermediate School. But two of the school’s students hadn’t made it to class. Instead, they were sitting on a sidewalk across from campus, detained by a police officer for parking their e-bikes on the street.

The situation at Ensign has gotten messy since the school district, Newport-Mesa Unified, voted to ban e-bikes from middle and elementary school campuses, citing safety concerns. Many students kept riding their e-bikes to school anyway, parking them in swarms in the surrounding neighborhood.

The neighbors did not like this. Shouting matches ensued between students and homeowners. At least one student returned from class to find her tires deflated.

The city responded to the tension by putting up “No e-bike parking” signs on several streets.

The city of Newport Beach prohibited e-bikes on some streets around Ensign Intermediate School after neighbors complained.

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“I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood either, like, I get it,” said Corey Gulbranson, who got a $100 parking ticket on behalf of his daughter, one of the Ensign students detained for allegedly illegally parking her e-bike. “But at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our kids to school on a legal mode of transportation.”

Crucial teen commuting tools? Or dangerous devices?

E-bikes and significantly more powerful e-motorcycles have become very popular in many Orange County suburbs, where the streets are wide, public transit is spotty, and distances are longer than some are willing to pedal on a regular bike. For teens and tweens, e-bikes provide a taste of independence. They also relieve parents of some of their driving duties. Plus, e-bikes can replace polluting cars.

But their popularity has brought an alarming increase in serious injuries, especially among young riders.

At Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, e-bike crashes are now sending more kids to the ER than any other cause, according to Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the hospital’s trauma medical director. More than 70% of those patients had some level of head injury, from minor concussions to devastating brain damage, he said, often because they were not wearing a helmet.

But even Takeuchi recognizes the nearly irresistible draw of e-bikes.

“If you ride one, you realize how easy it is to go everywhere with it,” he said.  “I am not by any means surprised at how popular this is, especially amongst kids.”

‘Bicycle-shaped devices’

Not all e-bikes are equally fast, or equally dangerous. California uses a three-tier system, developed by the bike industry, to classify e-bikes depending on:

• engine power
• max speed
• whether the bike has pedals 
• whether a cyclist has to use those pedals before the engine kicks in 

California law prohibits children under age 16 from riding Class 3 e-bikes with engines capable of reaching 28 miles per hour. In reality, though, many kids are riding e-vehicles that go faster — in some cases, much faster.

“There are lots of what I will call 'bicycle-shaped devices' being ridden,” said Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. “Some of them are legal e-bikes. Some of them are not.”

Agrawal recently co-authored a 210-page report on e-bike safety. It includes data collected from middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties, which showed that only 12% of students’ e-bikes fit into the legal classification system. The other 88% were more powerful than legally allowed under California law.

A Newport Beach Police officer tickets a middle schooler for parking her e-bike on the street across from Ensign Middle School on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Any bicycle-shaped device that goes faster than 30 miles per hour is technically an e-motorcycle, which requires a special driver’s license and, if ridden on public roads, insurance and registration.

Agrawal said it’s hard for parents, and even police officers, to figure out what’s legal and what’s not.

“Nobody understands this,” she said. “It’s very hard to enforce.”

The crackdown

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has taken some unusual approaches to addressing the e-bike dilemma. To date, he has pressed criminal charges — including for child endangerment — against four parents after their children were involved in collisions, all of them on e-motorcycles, not e-bikes.

One of those parents, a woman from Aliso Viejo, was charged with three felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, after her 14-year-old son allegedly struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest on an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 miles per hour.

People with e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos move through the long line at the Orange County District Attorney's buyback event at Angel Stadium, Sept. 13, 2026.

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The DA’s office said it has also sent letters to retailers reminding them of a ban on selling products used to modify e-bikes to go faster than legally allowed.

Spitzer recently tried another novel approach: buybacks. On a recent Sunday, hundreds of people brought their e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos to an event at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, hoping to turn them in for up to a thousand dollars in gift cards. The county event was paid for with $100,000 in asset forfeiture funds.

One man near the front of the line said he had arrived at 1 a.m. By the time the event started at 10 a.m., sheriff’s deputies were turning people away.

“Holy smokes,” Spitzer said from behind a podium mounted in the parking lot. “Look at the participation. … And you can see why, because we have a serious problem here in Orange County and across the nation with individuals who have e-bikes and e-motorcycles.”

Spitzer spoke about the dangers, but also the attractiveness of a high-powered personal vehicle, especially for teen boys.

 “We're not gonna change our internal DNA about who we are as young people and the fact we wanna go places, and we wanna experiment, and quite frankly, we like fast things,” he said. “ But the fact of the matter is when you have a machine, and you don't understand its capabilities, you can find yourself in harm's way very quickly before you can control that mechanism.”

Orange County District Attorney is testing out a range of strategies to crack down on illegal e-bikes and e-motos, including a buyback event at Angel Stadium on Sept. 13, 2026.

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Are unsafe riders ‘ruining it for other people’?

Paul Dumont drove to the buyback event all the way from Chatsworth in hopes of exchanging five e-bikes he had bought for his kids and grandkids.

“They got injured on them when we first got them, so they've been sitting in storage,” he said of the bikes.

Dumont said he wished he had bought less powerful e-bikes. “But I bought them the best ones,” he said. “I thought they'd be better.”

Denise Mills and her 17-year-old son Nathanael came from Torrance to turn in three e-motorcycles that he had been riding to and from his high school last year. He stopped after the school told him it was illegal. A new state law defining e-motorcycles took effect in January.

A student at Ensign Middle School runs to campus after parking his e-bike at a nearby park, Sept. 4, 2026.

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“That was very unfortunate because it's his primary source of transportation,” Mills said. “Now it's his dad and I.”

Nathanael said he had logged several thousand miles without an accident.

“ Partially it's, like, people ruining it for other people,” he said of efforts to tighten the rules for young riders.

Local leaders grapple with the flood of e-bikes

Cities and school districts are testing a variety of approaches to decrease e-bike crashes and injuries, from prohibiting riding on sidewalks to outright bans for young riders. The Brea City Council has even discussed using police drones to follow unsafe youth riders home in order to inform their parents.

In a more typical approach, the Huntington Beach City School District requires all student e-bike commuters to pass a safety course in order to get a permit to park their bike on campus. Newport-Mesa has a similar program for high schoolers.

Marin County limits youth under age 16 to riding Class 1 “pedal-assist” e-bikes, which have motors that kick in only while pedaling, and shut off once the bike reaches 20 miles per hour. The ban on more powerful e-bikes for young riders is part of a pilot program approved by the state legislature that sunsets in 2029.

At the federal level, O.C. Congressman Dave Min, D-Irvine, co-authored a bill earlier this year, the Safe SPEEDS Act, that would develop nationwide safety standards for e-bikes, including minimum age recommendations.

A dilemma for parents

Parents of student e-bike commuters have said they do not oppose regulating the vehicles, and they want authorities to crack down on dangerous and illegal riding. But an outright ban goes too far, they’ve said.

“ I know there are kids that are a little wild,” said Kellie Newcombe, whose 13-year-old daughter is still riding her pedal-assist bike from their home in Costa Mesa to Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach.

“That is not my child. That is not her friends. They are so ridiculously safe and by the book,” she said. “It's just super frustrating that they would say every kid cannot ride an e-bike.”

A spokesperson for Newport-Mesa Unified told LAist in an email that the school district’s new e-bike restrictions have gone smoothly and are helping to reinforce safety. But that is not how Gulbranson and Newcombe see it.

“We've had my daughter intimidated by multiple neighbors now,” Gulbranson said. “This whole guise of doing it under safety is totally misguided.”

Newcombe said she worries about her daughter’s safety more now that an increasing number of parents are driving their kids to school.

“They're in a rush because the traffic is insane,” she said. Plus, her daughter now has to cross a busy street to get to campus.

Newcombe said she wishes the school district would work with local leaders and police to enforce e-bike rules and to create safer paths to school for responsible riders.