The Brief

After Los Angeles moved to significantly lower yearly increases in most of the city’s apartments, some City Council members now want to change the rules again. This time, they’re hoping to give small landlords the ability to raise rents more than their corporate counterparts.

The council was scheduled to vote Tuesday on a proposal that would let small landlords — those who own 10 units or fewer — raise rents by an additional 1% each year. The idea was put forward by Councilmembers John Lee and Monica Rodriguez.

But during the meeting, Lee requested sending the proposal back to the Housing and Homelessness committee for a “more robust conversation.”

In a written statement to LAist, Lee said the two-tiered approach would recognize “the difference between a family that owns a few units and a large corporate operator. Our goal is to keep small landlords in the system and prevent the loss of rent-controlled homes.”

While the idea is gaining support from landlord groups, tenant advocates say the proposal would create a cumbersome and unfair system where some renters must pay more than others.

The changes coming for LA rent control 

In a culmination of years of debate, the City Council voted last month to lower the maximum allowable rent increase in the city’s rent-controlled housing to 4% per year. That’s down from the previous maximum of 10%.

Lee, whose district includes the northwest San Fernando Valley, voted against the changes after expressing concern about how the lower increases would affect the bottom line of small rental property owners. Rodriguez, whose district includes the northeast San Fernando Valley, supported the changes, but said more should be done to keep “mom-and-pop” landlords afloat.

“The motion proposes a modest adjustment to help ensure these small landlords remain viable, rather than being pushed out and accelerating the further corporatization of housing in Los Angeles,” Rodriguez said in a statement to LAist.

Landlord groups said the proposed 1% increase could help at the margins, but small landlords would still have to contend with insurance premiums and maintenance costs that have been rising faster than overall economic inflation.

“Throwing a bone in the form of an additional 1% to smaller owners is necessary but will be insufficient to keep many owners in the housing business,” Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said in an email. “More and more, owners are being forced to look for the exit ramp in the city of Los Angeles.”

Do small landlords really have it harder?

But researchers paid to investigate the issue have not found evidence that small landlords face stronger headwinds than corporate owners. A city-commissioned report by the Economic Roundtable, an independent research nonprofit, found no significant differences between the financial health of small and large landlord operations in L.A.

“The study found that, in general, small landlords are not suffering greater distress,” Anna Ortega, who is with the city’s Housing Department, said during a recent City Council meeting.

Tenant advocates with the group Keep L.A. Housed opposed the 1% bump for small landlords, saying it would be unfair to charge some tenants more every year simply because they’re renting from a non-corporate owner. The coalition also said enforcing the rules would be difficult.

“Allowing small landlords to self-certify creates the opportunity for abuse, as some will fraudulently claim the status and charge incorrect (and potentially illegal) rent increases to already rent-burdened tenants,” said Pablo Estupiñan, a Keep L.A. Housed member and an organizer with the nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.

The rules in LA and beyond

The city’s rent control rules generally apply to rental units built before October 1978, though some newly built apartments are covered as well. About 70% of the city’s apartments are subject to the rent hike caps.

Some other Southern California jurisdictions with rent control allow small landlords to increase rents more than larger owners.

L.A. County allows small landlords in unincorporated areas to increase rents an extra 1%. The city of Inglewood allows owners of buildings with four apartments or fewer to increase rents by an extra 5% compared with owners of buildings with five or more units.

Republican Steve Hilton will advance to the November general election in the race for California governor, setting up a longshot contest against Democrat Xavier Becerra in which he’s promised to slash spending and regulations if elected.

Hilton, a British American former Fox News host, secured about 25% of the vote in the June 2 primary, with about 88% of votes counted as of Tuesday evening.

His opponent, Becerra, is a former state attorney general and U.S. Health and Human Services secretary who emerged from a large pool of Democratic candidates.

Hilton’s win knocks billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer from contention after he spent $215 million of his own money to boost his populist campaign and blanket the airwaves with ads. It will make the general election a traditional partisan matchup during a midterm election year that Democrats will treat as a check on President Donald Trump’s administration rather than the intra-Democratic Party brawl that Steyer supporters had hoped for. California uses a top-two primary system; the two candidates with the most votes advance to the November ballot regardless of party.

With a crowded field of Democrats all competing for votes, Hilton led in the polls for much of the race, energizing conservative voters with promises to cut income taxes and the gas tax, boost oil drilling and overturn environmental regulations such as the state’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

He’s sold his candidacy as an opportunity for Californians crushed by high costs to end “16 years of one-party rule.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican to lead California, left office in 2011.

“The people of California have really been generous in giving the Democratic Party the opportunity to show that their ideas work,” Hilton said last week, declaring victory early at a press conference in Sacramento. “I think the patience is running out, really.”

He faces an uphill battle in November.

California Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one. Though Hilton says he’s presenting the chance for the state to go in a different direction, there has been a GOP candidate in the general election for governor in every race in the past two decades — and besides Schwarzenegger’s tenure, Democrats have won them all.

He’s also endorsed by Trump, whom Californians disapprove of by high margins.

But he has not downplayed the endorsement.

“I think it’s going to be very helpful to Californians to have a governor who has a good working relationship with the president and his team,” he said.

Hilton’s signature campaign promise is to eliminate the income tax for the first $100,000 in earnings and institute a flat tax rate above that; he said last week that his campaign will consider raising that cap after conducting an economic analysis of the California cost of living. Either option would represent an enormous reduction in state revenue that Hilton has said he expects to offset by cutting a third of state spending.

He has not said how, if elected, he would get such a proposal through the Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature.

Hilton was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants to the United Kingdom. He got his start in politics working for the British Conservative Party and played a prominent role in the rise of Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010. He moved in 2012 to Silicon Valley, where his wife was a Google executive, and dabbled in startups before launching a weekly Fox News show in 2017 during Trump’s first presidency. The show, The Next Revolution, ran through 2023.

Federal agencies responsible for immigration enforcement are set to receive tens of billions more dollars after Congress voted to fund them not just for the year, but through the rest of President Trump's term.

The House narrowly voted on Tuesday to direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the second multi-billion dollar infusion of money to the agencies in the last year muscled through by Republicans alone.

The measure passed by a vote of 214 to 212.

The vote marks the end of a 115 day standoff over immigration policy. After federal officers shot and killed two protesters in Minneapolis earlier this year, Democrats refused to back more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, with the goal of forcing changes to immigration enforcement tactics.

But as negotiations fell apart, Republicans moved to circumvent Democrats using a special procedure known as reconciliation to fund the agencies without acquiescing to any of the reforms they were demanding.

In the Senate last week, one Republican joined all Democrats in an unsuccessful attempt to block the measure. The lopsided votes highlighted a Republican caucus continuing to endorse Trump's immigration agenda as Democrats warn that Congress has ceded its ability to provide oversight by funneling these agencies billions of dollars with few strings attached.

ICE gets more than three times its annual funding

Through this legislation, Congress is giving ICE more than three times its last annual budget. Though technically this funding is meant to cover three years, unlike a traditional annual funding bill, the money comes with few stipulations on how and when it should be spent.

While most annual spending measures provide funds for just that fiscal year, this measure includes lump sums that need to be spent only by the end of fiscal year 2029, including:

• $38 billion for ICE to hire, pay, train and equip its officers and agents. That includes $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for immigration enforcement work like hiring more attorneys, supporting local law enforcement who coordinate with ICE and technology like body cameras;
• $22 billion for Border Patrol to pay, train, recruit and equip agents and personnel. That includes $13 billion specifically for immigration enforcement work;
• $5 billion for border security technology and screening, including artificial intelligence;
• $350 million for enforcement in localities that do not coordinate directly with ICE.

Legislation passed in April to fund most of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol did include provisions that would provide funding for the agency to purchase body cameras, stipulate congressional oversight of detention centers and deescalation training for officers and agents.

Lawmakers agreed to separate funding for ICE and Border Patrol as Republicans and Democrats struggled to reach a compromise on reforms even as a record-long DHS shutdown dragged on.

But now ICE and Border Patrol will be funded without the changes Democrats were demanding, including requiring judicial warrants to enter homes and prohibiting officers from wearing masks. The package also lacks reforms with bipartisan support, such as requiring officers to wear body cameras.

Neither measure included funding for internal oversight offices that conduct investigations into detention center conditions; however, the April measure to fund all of the agency included $20 million for the DHS inspector general to specifically conduct oversight of detention facilities.

Not only is this standoff ending without Democrats achieving the reforms they pressed for, the agencies will be insulated from additional pressure through the appropriations process for three years.

More dollars after an unprecedented boost

Both ICE and CBP received a massive influx of funding last year, also passed by Republicans through the budget reconciliation process, that has allowed both agencies to largely continue operating even as Democrats refused to provide them annual funding for the last several months.

ICE's usual annual budget is about $10 billion. The $75 billion boost last summer made ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency and enabled a hiring surge that doubled its ranks in a matter of months.

Former agency leaders, Democrats and even some Republicans have warned that the surge of money limits the ability of Congress to provide oversight when it comes to how that money is spent and how the agency operates.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was the only Republican to vote against this latest funding measure in the Senate last week. She wrote in a statement that by appropriating funding for three fiscal years instead of the usual one, the measure "weakens the normal budgeting process and sets another precedent for avoiding it when we find ourselves in disagreement."

"In doing so, it reduces Congress' ability to apply reasonable checks on immigration policy for the remainder of this administration and into the next," she wrote.

Other Republicans say they were left with no choice once Democrats decided to withhold funding for these agencies as leverage to extract reforms.

"We're attempting here to fund ICE and CBP at last year's operating budget plus inflation, that's all we're talking about here," House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said shortly before the vote. "This is not a slush fund, it's regular, normal funding. And we're going to do it not for one year, but for three years so we don't end up here again."

ICE "got a shopping list" 

ICE officials have been gearing up for the potential new cash for months.

"Apparently we're going to get more reconciliation money, so I got a shopping list," said Matt Elliston, ICE assistant director for law enforcement systems and analysis, speaking on a panel at the Border Security Expo in Arizona last month.

Among the items on his list are wearable headset displays so that officers do not need to be on their phones during an operation and data to help identify where someone targeted for arrest lives.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said absent the reconciliation funds, the agency was struggling to correctly pay its employees and fulfill contracts.

While the agencies welcome the funds, immigration advocates are concerned that funding the agency outside the normal appropriations process means provisions that tell the agency how to do its work are not included.

ICE agents confront protesters as they gather outside the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall on June 8, 2026, in Newark, New Jersey. The agency will receive tens of billions in new funding through the end of Trump's term under a GOP bill passed by Congress.

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Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Coalition, said in the past DHS annual funding bills included specific guardrails on the spending including requirements for the agency to report data on who it is detaining and specific treatment of pregnant women in custody.

"It's very dangerous," Altman said. "And it means that the agency will move forward with even fewer accountability mechanisms than we've seen in the past."

Altman also raised concerns about the $350 million dedicated to immigration enforcement in areas that are not "qualified cooperating jurisdictions," meaning a locality that is not a part of programs that allow local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.

"The DHS secretary has wide discretion to just say these are not sufficiently cooperating with the White House's mass deportation agenda," she said. "So it's concerning in terms of where the money will go."

Politics of immigration enforcement 

President Trump shakes hands with the newly sworn in Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin in the Oval Office on March 24, 2026. Mullin has dialed back some of the aggressive enforcement operations that drew the national spotlight.

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Jim Watson

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After the two killings in Minneapolis, Democrats and a contingent of Republicans in Congress said they wanted to take action to reign in the tactics of federal immigration officers.

For weeks this winter, debate over President Trump's immigration policy consumed Capitol Hill. But despite the protracted fight over immigration enforcement funding, that discussion has largely subsided.

Republicans criticized Democrats for pushing an unserious list of demands. Democrats criticized Republicans for dismissing attempts at meaningful reform.

A new DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, has dialed back some of the aggressive enforcement operations that drew the national spotlight. And other controversies, like the war in Iran, have overtaken the immigration policy debate.

So much so that when Senate Republicans finally moved to approve the $70 billion for ICE and Border Patrol, much of the debate focused on an unrelated fund proposed by the Trump administration to compensate people who claim to have been wrongfully targeted by the government.

Reflecting on what followed after the two deaths in her home state, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., says it has been hard for her personally to come to terms with the reality that Democrats were unable to extract the policy changes they demanded.

And meanwhile, Smith says Minnesotans are still dealing with the fallout from the crackdown — like kids who did not return to school or businesses that never reopened — even as public attention shifted away.

"This is the way it goes, Americans have really busy complicated lives, they're trying to figure out how to pay rent and buy groceries, but what they saw, I don't think they're going to forget it," Smith says. "And that's what I mean when I say we've lost these votes but that doesn't mean we've lost the fight."

Even if public opinion on Trump's immigration agenda does help Democrats' take control of Congress next year, Democrats' ability to extract changes through the appropriations process will be limited now that the agencies have resources to last until 2029.
Copyright 2026 NPR

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

For the first time since California insurance commissioner became an elected position, two Democrats will vie for the job in November.

The top two vote-getters in the June primary were former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen, who received about 27% and 20% of the vote, respectively. One of them will succeed Ricardo Lara, the former Democratic lawmaker who has served two terms as insurance commissioner. Lara has presided over the Insurance Department in the past eight years, during which the state saw its deadliest and most devastating fires.

Kim or Allen will be taking on complicated, enormous challenges that have implications for local communities, people’s ability to buy homes and start businesses, and the state’s economy.

In the past few years, insurance companies stopped writing new policies or renewing old ones, especially in high-risk areas, citing increasing wildfire risk from climate change and inflation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. This caused homeowners to turn to the last-resort FAIR Plan, which is mandated by law to provide fire insurance. The plan, run by an alliance of insurers, has grown to more than 684,000 policies in force as of March, an increase of 152% since September 2022. It has warned about its ability to keep paying claims after major disasters.

Proposition 103, a law approved by voters in 1988, means that among many other things, the elected commissioner has the power to approve rate increases. It has kept the state’s rates from rising too much over the years — Californians’ homeowners insurance premiums have hovered around the middle of the pack nationwide — but that could change. Last year, the commissioner put in place regulations that include new factors insurers can use when setting their premiums, such as catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs. Some companies have applied for and received approval to raise their rates, so they’re starting to write policies again.

Keeping insurance available but affordable will be the most pressing issue for either Kim or Allen, whose responsibilities will also include regulating auto, pet and some aspects of health insurance, plus workers’ compensation.

Another problem that will need plenty of attention: making sure insurance companies pay their claims in a timely manner that helps communities to rebuild. The L.A.-area fires shed a light on insurer practices that delay and deny claims, as well as underinsurance and the lack of standards for smoke damage, which have held up recovery. Pending legislation — such as those authored by Allen, whose district was hit by the fires last year — and lawsuits will address some of those issues. Well-organized fire survivors who called for Lara’s resignation over his department’s response to their concerns will surely keep up the pressure on his successor.

Here’s a look at each candidate’s record and how she or he would approach the job, based on their interviews with CalMatters and what they have said publicly, including at candidate forums.

Jane Kim

Kim’s proposal to create “natural disaster insurance for all,” inspired by a program in New Zealand, has gotten a lot of attention. She plans to fund such a system with a portion of policyholder premiums that insurance companies would collect and divert to the state. The state would then guarantee fire and flood coverage, while insurance companies would continue to cover other risks.

Naysayers, including consumer advocates, wonder why she hasn’t released any specifics about how much capital such a fund would require. Kim told CalMatters that it would need to be studied, but that at its core her proposal would generate revenue.

Opponents of her proposal also say it’s a bad idea to shift catastrophic burden onto the state, pointing to what they say is the failure of splitting off earthquake insurance from homeowner insurance — most California homeowners now have no insurance coverage.

“We (taxpayers) already are on the hook,” Kim said. “When insurers and utilities refuse to pay, they just pass it on to us anyway. Sharing the risk is important.”

Kim also told CalMatters that an idea Merritt Farren, a Republican candidate for commissioner, proposed — that the state create a reinsurance authority to encourage insurers to write policies in the state — “may turn out to be a more efficient model.”

Among Kim’s shorter-term priorities if she wins:

• Create public dashboards to show how insurance companies are spending policyholder premiums, and that show their record on claims.
• Expand eligibility for a program that provides low-cost insurance to drivers who make less than $38,000 a year. 
• Tie a company’s ability to sell auto insurance in the state to its willingness to write homeowner policies.
• Make the FAIR Plan more transparent by requiring that its list of board members be public, and that its board meetings be public.
• Freeze rates when policyholders file claims.

The former San Francisco elected official, an attorney, touts among her accomplishments free community college for the city’s residents; the first $15 minimum wage ordinance in the state; and a tenant-protection ordinance to avoid unjust evictions. She worked as the California director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 U.S. presidential campaign and most recently as California Director for the Working Families Party.

Kim has a long list of endorsers, including many unions such as SEIU California. Besides Sanders, another U.S. lawmaker, Rep. Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley, has also endorsed her.

Ben Allen

The state senator, who will be termed out of the Legislature, wants to bring together the state, insurers, builders, local governments and firefighters to work on risk-reduction strategies.

“I think that's ultimately going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this mess,” he told CalMatters.

What he calls a comprehensive approach includes thinking about where people live and build: “We shouldn't be building new construction that is irresponsible in high-risk areas. We should be looking for ways to carefully and sensitively encourage people to pull back from high-risk areas.”

If he wins, Allen’s other plans include:

• Create a consumer advocate position within the insurance department, and increase staff to handle customer service. 
• Require insurers to explain claim denials and provide real-time reports of delays and outstanding claims after a disaster.
• Increase oversight of the FAIR Plan and make sure it complies with commissioner orders.
• Ban the insurance commissioner and staff from working for the industry immediately after they leave the department.

Allen has played up his experience as a legislator, including writing and passing bills related to holding insurance companies accountable. For example, a law he wrote now requires insurers to pay 60% of policyholders’ contents coverage without a detailed inventory, and gives consumers more time to provide that inventory. He also touts writing Proposition 4, the bond measure approved by the state’s voters in 2024 “for safe drinking water, wildfire prevention and protecting communities and natural lands from climate risks.”

Other pending bills authored by him include one that would require insurers to give homeowners 90 days notice before they intend not to renew their policies, along with a clear explanation. Another would penalize insurance companies that fail to correct their practices after the insurance department finds that they have violated laws and regulations.

Allen also has many endorsements, including the two leaders of the state Legislature, Senate Pro Tem Monique Limon and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, both from California, unions and the Consumer Federation of California also endorse him.

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