The Brief

Measure ULA was pitched to Los Angeles voters two years ago under a much more catchy moniker — the "mansion tax." More than a year since it took effect, most of the money raised so far is not coming from pricey single-family homes.

The measure voters passed in 2022 funds housing and homelessness efforts in the city through a new tax on real estate selling for more than $5 million.

From the start, despite being widely described as a “mansion tax,” the measure has applied to most real estate transactions that meet the $5 million threshold. That includes apartment buildings, offices and retail centers. Recent data show most of the measure’s revenue so far is coming from buildings that are not mansions.

A report last month from the L.A. Office of Finance estimated that since the tax took effect in April 2023, about 46% of revenue has come from the sale of pricey single-family homes. About 54% has come from the sale of other types of real estate, such as offices, retail and apartment buildings.

Is “mansion tax” a misnomer?

Critics say the tax has broad effects beyond real estate deals involving millionaires and billionaires buying and selling lavish estates in the Hollywood Hills.

“Calling it a mansion tax is a misnomer, given the true economics involved,” said Eric Sussman, an adjunct professor in accounting and real estate at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Some have argued the measure could be deterring the development of new apartment buildings, which are also subject to the tax.

“When you already have a sort of slowdown in the economy and in real estate transactions, layering on taxes is just probably the last thing that you want to do,” Sussman said. “It's going to further exacerbate the slowdown and result in fewer transactions.”

Proponents say the tax is doing what it promised

Proponents defend the “mansion tax” moniker, arguing a large chunk of revenue does come from mansions, and it’s a pithy way to underscore the goal of requiring wealthy households to pay more to address the region’s housing and homelessness crisis.

“Mansion sales far and away are the single largest portion of the revenues that Measure ULA directs towards making housing affordable and protecting Angelenos from eviction,” said Joe Donlin, director of United to House L.A., the coalition that backed the measure.

Commercial and multi-family properties are the second and third largest money-raisers.

“The nickname captures the importance of putting the overheated market for the wealthiest Angelenos in service of those who are experiencing homelessness or living on its edge,” Donlin said.

Where’s the money going?

City finance officials say the tax has now raised more than $375 million. That’s far lower than the original revenue projections of up to $1.1 billion annually.

The money is being allocated to new rent relief efforts to compensate landlords with tenants behind on payments, an expansion of eviction defense programs, stronger enforcement of the city’s anti-harassment rules and the production of new affordable housing.

To outside observers, parishioners at the Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles might seem less pious this year. In the summer, attendance at the Catholic church plummeted, according to the Rev. Brendan Busse, Dolores Mission’s pastor, who said the pews were about half as full as usual.

The disappearance of a substantial portion of the faithful was not altogether surprising: It came just days after the Department of Homeland Security launched immigration raids across the city in June — followed by others around the country — at the behest of President Donald Trump.

Almost immediately, social media feeds and then television news reports brought the initial immigration raids to life: Masked federal agents tackled and arrested Latinos in parking lots, on street corners and at workplaces. Those detained looked like they could be part of Dolores Mission’s overwhelmingly-Latino parish.

Dolores Mission is in L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, an unmistakably Mexican American area where vibrant Chicano murals adorn public walls, music from Jalisco often rings out in Mariachi Plaza and 93% of residents are Hispanic or Latino.

Following the raids, some Boyle Heights residents were afraid to leave their homes. Many worried that they too might get swept up by one of the armed government agents roaming their neighborhoods, grabbing people off the streets and forcing them into unmarked vehicles.

That fear was compounded when it became clear that immigrants were being transported to far-off detention centers that have racked up human rights complaints — including places such as the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades and the much-criticized prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The impression of being under siege in Boyle Heights speaks to a larger disconnect in heavily Latino and predominately Catholic communities across the country.

Despite winning 55% of Catholic voters in the 2024 presidential election, Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement has disproportionately affected many Catholic communities and organizations around the country. It has also resulted in sudden drops in church attendance, according to Catholic officials in various parishes.

That may be because even though Catholics represent fewer than 20% of U.S. adults, they make up 61% of the population at risk of deportation, according to a March report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the National Association of Evangelicals, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief. In 2022, about 43% of U.S. Hispanic adults considered themselves Catholic, according to Pew Research Center.

Rev. Brendan Busse stands outside his church after leading a Spanish-language Mass.

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Jeremy Lindenfeld

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Capital & Main

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In the months after the raids began, multiple Dolores Mission congregants told Capital & Main that their friends or family members were detained by DHS and later deported.

Among them were two nephews of Dolores Mission’s pastoral assistant; they didn’t return home from their work as gardeners one day, Busse said.

By the time church members tracked them down days later, they were at separate ICE detention centers in California, and were later deported to their home country of Guatemala, according to the pastoral assistant who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of being targeted by authorities. DHS did not respond to Capital & Main’s questions regarding both nephews’ detainment and deportation.

“Everybody here, no matter who they are, has felt the impact of fear and anxiety that has kept people from feeling safe in the streets,” Busse said.

In response to questions from Capital & Main about the impact of immigration enforcement on Catholic communities across the country, Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said that “lawbreakers should unquestionably be living in a climate of fear and anxiety that they will be caught and sent home,” meaning the countries in which they were born.

Mass deportations

A news release on the DHS website claimed that as of Oct. 27, the agency had carried out more than 527,000 deportations during Trump’s second term.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the vast majority of deportation flights during the first several months of 2025 were to countries whose populations are predominantly Catholic, such as Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

The sometimes violent tactics used to detain and later deport immigrants have convinced some to abandon the United States. That includes Juan González, a longtime Catholic resident of Southern California who attended St. Andrew Church in Pasadena and earlier this year chose to move back to his home country of Mexico after three decades.

As for church attendance, Boyle Height’s Dolores Mission is far from the only heavily Latino parish to see faltering numbers as a result of immigration enforcement.

Parishioners walk past a shrine depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe in Dolores Mission Church.

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Jeremy Lindefeld

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Capital & Main

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In Chicago, the Rev. Carmelo Mendez, pastor of St. Oscar Romero Parish on the city’s South Side, told NPR in November that attendance at Mass had fallen by 40% since enhanced immigration enforcement operations began in the city in September.

In Washington, the Rev. Emilio Biosca Agüero, pastor at Shrine of the Sacred Heart, estimated that one out of five parishioners had stopped going to Mass after federal agents were deployed on the city’s streets, the Religion News Service reported in August.

At St. Thomas Mission in Brownsville in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, the Rev. Joel Flores told the New York Times that he too has seen a significant drop in the size of his flock in recent months.

The climate in California’s Southland is such that Bishop Alberto Rojas excused parishioners in the Diocese of San Bernardino from Mass if they feared immigration enforcement.

McLaughlin, who has spoken about her own Catholic faith, said that “ICE does not raid churches” but added that the Trump administration will “not tie the hands” of federal agents, clarifying that “there may be a situation where an arrest is made” inside of a church.

In Southern California, Christmas parades and other events have been canceled for fear of ICE raids targeting Latinos. Dolores Mission Church alone canceled numerous gatherings — including an annual community volunteer picnic, a women’s conference and a series of public religious services called “Misas del Barrio” (Neighborhood Masses) — to protect the community.

Parishioner Alejandra Benavides summed up the situation as she sees it: “Immigration enforcement is kicking our ass and breaking our hearts.”

Cafeteria Catholics

Trump has claimed to “stand for everything … that the church stands for,” and has selected Catholics to some of the nation’s most powerful positions: Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, border czar Tom Homan and Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In January, Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, defended the Trump administration’s deportation policy by invoking a Catholic theological concept called “ordo amoris” (Latin for order of love), asserting that people should love their families before loving strangers. The claim was quickly rebuked by Pope Francis, who wrote that true ordo amoris is discovered by meditating on love “open to all, without exception.”

In February, soon-to-be Pope Leo also publicly challenged Vance’s interpretation, sharing an article titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others” on his X account.

A recent survey conducted by the right-wing Catholic media organization EWTN News and conservative pollster RealClear Opinion Research found that 54% of Catholic voters surveyed supported “the detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants on a broad scale.”

In contrast, many Catholic leaders now say that some of the administration’s policies — such as the targeting of immigrants and the defunding of humanitarian programs — run directly counter to deeply held Catholic teachings.

“What they confused for Christianity is a white nationalist vision of racial purity and national purity that should be called out by anybody of faith as a real heresy,” Dolores Mission’s Busse said.

Good works

Catholic organizations that have long mobilized to support vulnerable communities, including immigrants, have in some cases ramped up such efforts in response to Trump’s policies.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, hardly known for liberal beliefs when it comes to issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, seemingly stayed the course when the the nation’s bishops elected conservative Archbishop Paul S. Coakley as their new president in November.

But nearly all of those same bishops — 96% of those who voted in a fall assembly — took aim at the Trump administration’s immigration policies in a Special Message, the first such message it has agreed upon in more than a decade. In it, the bishops called for an end to Trump’s “indiscriminate mass deportation” and “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence.”

“To our immigrant brothers and sisters, we stand with you in your suffering, since, when one member suffers, all suffer (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:26),” the statement said. “You are not alone!”

The conference also praised and encouraged many activist Catholics to continue their work on behalf of immigrants.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the country, is also trying to adapt.

Isaac Cuevas, the archdiocese’s director of immigration and public affairs, said parishioners who normally run food pantries are now combating hunger by delivering food to the homes of immigrants who are too afraid to go out in public.

The archdiocese has also provided court accompaniment training to about 180 priests, deacons and religious sisters. The hope, Cuevas said, is that by accompanying immigrants to court hearings, judges, bailiffs and clerks “all understand that that moral presence is there,” and that legal officials will be “as graceful as they can when dealing with these cases.”

Despite such actions, some Catholics feel the church has not taken a courageous enough humanitarian stand to protect immigrants.

Silvia Muñoz, who runs the department of social action at the Pedro Arrupe Jesuit Institute in Miami, is trying to pick up the slack.

Silvia Munoz sits at her home in Doral, Florida

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Jeremy Lindefeld

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Capital & Main

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“I’m in contact with other Catholic women who are as passionate about the rights of immigrants as myself, to try to do something in South Florida to wake up a silent church,” Muñoz said.

Every Wednesday, Muñoz, who arrived in the United States as a Cuban refugee in 1961, joins other activists outside the ICE detention center in Miramar, Florida, to accompany immigrant families as they wait to learn the fates of their loved ones.

Muñoz has also attended interfaith vigils in front of Alligator Alcatraz — where Amnesty International has accused guards of subjecting detainees to cruel treatment “which may amount to torture,” such as confining shackled prisoners to an outdoor cage smaller than a standard dryer for hours — calling for operations at the site to be halted.

DHS did not respond to Capital & Main’s request for comment on alleged abuse at Alligator Alcatraz.

Despite being 79, Muñoz said, “I cannot sit at home and do nothing. I believe this is a calling from God that I, even at my age, need to do.”

On Nov.13 — the feast day for St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants — Muñoz helped organize a procession and prayer service in front of the immigration courthouse in downtown Miami.

That event was part of a national day of action spearheaded by the Ignatian Solidarity Network, a nonprofit Catholic organization dedicated to social justice advocacy.

Christopher Kerr, executive director of the network, told Capital & Main that the purpose of his organization’s public advocacy events is to “demonstrate that the church stands with immigrant people and that our faith, to be Catholic, is to uphold the dignity and humanity of immigrant people.”

Kerr said the gatherings are increasingly important now that the Trump administration has drastically cut funds that many Catholic organizations and institutions relied on to facilitate humanitarian services such as refugee resettlement.

On the first day of his second term, Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program — which just last year awarded the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and its affiliates more than $62 million — and froze its funding. The move forced hundreds of layoffs of church employees and halted humanitarian services such as housing assistance and migrant child foster care for thousands of refugees across the country.

Trump later allowed his then-special adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. That action decimated Catholic Relief Services, which was the largest recipient of USAID funds, receiving about half of its $1.5 billion annual budget from the agency.

“The Trump administration has … reduced the funding so drastically that none of the organizations that were settling refugees are really able to sustain their operations,” Kerr said.

People in the pews

At Dolores Mission Church, Busse said the pews have been fuller recently.

December — with Advent, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Christmas — is usually the busiest time of the year. But he said he sees increased attendance as more than just a sign of a loyal flock.

Busse leads a well-attended Mass during Advent — the period leading up to Christmas.

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Jeremy Lindefeld

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Capital & Main

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To Busse, a well-attended church is its own defense against the immigration enforcement activities that he said many local Catholics are enduring like “a terror campaign.”

“When people are together, there’s less fear,” Busse said. “When a community actually shows up, the [ICE activity] falls apart” — not just because it becomes harder to carry out on a logistical level, but also because the community’s solidarity shows that the enforcement actions are clearly against the will of the people.

For Busse, protecting immigrants is one of the most foundational manifestations of his faith.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Catholics fundamentally believe that God’s self is kind of an immigrant, that the act of hospitality, of welcoming others in our homes and in our hearts is the central precept of Christianity and the Catholic faith,” Busse said. “It’s not just a nice thing to care for immigrants, it’s really the most sacred thing we can do.”

Copyright 2025 Capital & Main.

All photos by Jeremy Lindenfeld.

Psychologist Cami Winkelspecht decided to familiarize herself with artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, after patients started asking her for advice about how they could use the technology responsibly.

"One of the interesting questions that kids and teenagers, in particular, brought in is how can you utilize AI to help support ideas or editing process or things like that for papers and assignments and presentations, but also make sure that you're not utilizing it to write something for you, [so] that you're not violating your school's honor code" says Winkelspecht, who is a child and adolescent psychologist with a private practice in Wilmington, Delaware.

"So I have also then started to experiment with it to see what these tools will also do," she says, so she could feel "confident and comfortable" in her own understanding of these platforms, their advantages and risks.

Winkelspecht is among the 56% of psychologists recently surveyed by the American Psychological Association who are using AI tools in their practices. That's significantly higher than the 29% who said the same last year. And nearly a third of respondents said they use these tools on a monthly basis — up by more than two fold since last year.

Winkelspecht incorporates AI into some of her office and administrative tasks, like creating templates for letters she has to send to her collaborators — schools and pediatricians. It saves her time, but she can still write and edit the letters each time.

Most psychologists are "using AI to help write emails, to help develop homework assignments, to help maybe with some report writing or using AI scribes to assist with documentation," says psychologist Vaile Wright, senior director of the Office of Health Care Innovation at the APA.

"Psychologists are seeing potential opportunities to incorporate AI into their practices, by making their work more efficient, which we think could have downstream effects to reducing burnout, reducing those aspects of the workplace that people don't particularly enjoy," she adds. "And that would then give them more time to really provide patient care. So I think that that's really promising."

As more psychologists adopt AI tools, Wright says there is also growing awareness about artificial intelligence tools, especially with respect to patient safety and data privacy.

A majority of psychologists said they are concerned about potential harms of this technology, with more than 60% saying they are worried about potential data breaches, biased inputs and outputs and social harms. Many also expressed concerns about hallucinations, where the platforms fabricate facts or present inaccurate information.

"What's clear to us is that we need to help continue to provide both resources to members so that they can and effectively, responsibly incorporate these types of technologies," says Wright. "And we have to ensure that these technologies are regulated in ways that ensure to the best of their ability, safety and efficacy."
Copyright 2025 NPR

Rat poison continues to sicken and kill California’s wildlife at alarming rates, despite legislation designed to prevent the use of such chemicals.

That’s according to a recently published report from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The 2024 survey found anticoagulant rodenticides — a fancy name for one of the most toxic types of rat poison — in the bodies of 95% of mountain lions and 83% of bald eagles tested, as well as dozens of other species, including foxes, bobcats, owls, hawks, black bears and endangered California condors.

Even river otters have been poisoned, a sign these chemicals may be seeping into waterways.

“We’re still seeing too many animals being victims of rat poison,” said Lisa Owens-Viani, director of Berkeley-based nonprofit  Raptors Are the Solution.

How we got here

Rats are a big problem in Southern California. And people resort to rat poison to solve the problem, placing it in baits and traps. The problem with that is wild animals also fall for the lures. Or, hungry predators feast on the poison-filled rats.

Anticoagulants were one of the final blows to L.A.’s most famous mountain lion, P-22. He was sickened by such rodenticides likely after eating prey that had ingested them. Disoriented and ill, the beloved puma then wandered into the road and was struck by a car just south of his home in Griffith Park. P-22 later died from his injuries.

Famed mountain lion P-22 suffered from mange linked to rat poisons and died after being struck by a vehicle near Griffith Park.

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Courtesy Center for Biological Diversity

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Why legislation hasn’t solved it

For more than two decades, California has passed laws to limit the use of certain pesticides. Starting in 2020, the state passed a series of legislation banning some of the most toxic types:

• The Ecosystem Protection Act of 2020 (AB1788) placed a moratorium on all second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, which are stronger and last in animal tissue longer than earlier types. 
• The California Ecosystem Protection Act of 2023 and the Poison-Free Wildlife Act of 2024 expanded that moratorium to first generation anticoagulant rodenticides, including chlorophacinone and warfarin, which are older versions of rat poison that take longer to build up in the body.

However, there are exemptions in those laws, including the use of such rodenticides in agriculture, certain public health settings, such as hospitals, and other sensitive settings.

Owens-Viani thinks that’s a big reason why the number of poisonings continue to be high.

“We're not seeing the decreasing trend that we had hoped for,” she said.

A bobcat sickened by rodenticides is cared for at Simi Valley-based wildlife rescue Wildlife Care of Southern California.

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Anna Reams

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Wildlife Care of Southern California

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Jonathan Evans, the Environmental Health Legal Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, noted that some of the state’s best protections against rat infestations — great-horned owls, hawks and other raptors — are also dying at some of the most alarming rates from rat poisons.

“All of these animals are some of our best rodent control mechanisms. Like these animals feed on rats and mice and can do it very efficiently,” Evans said. “We really should be looking at figuring out why we still have high levels [of poisonings] and what we can do to close the loopholes and make rodent control more ecologically effective."

Why the problem could get worse

There are also gaps in the data, meaning the real numbers of poisonings are likely far higher, Evans said.

As part of its methods to calculate poisoning rates, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has to analyze dead carcasses that often have to be submitted to them by the public, he said.

“Most of these animals that die of rodenticide poisonings are going to die out in the woods where nobody finds them,” Evans said.

A mountain lion photographed with a motion sensor camera in the Verdugo Mountains overlooking the city lights of Los Angeles.

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National Park Service

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And now, the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation is considering rolling back many of these protections by allowing more than 100,000 new locations, including grocery stores, restaurants and even parks, to use most toxic rat poisons.

Six lawmakers who helped craft the 2024 moratorium on these chemicals sent a letter to the agency earlier this year asking them to rescind the proposal.

Here’s how you can help protect wildlife 

• For one, don’t use rodenticides in your yard. Death by anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning is painful and slow — these poisons cause species to slowly bleed out from the inside, with signs in hawks and other raptors often being blood seeping from their beaks and eyes. Larger mammals, such as mountain lions and coyotes, can also develop mange as a result of the poisons weakening their immune systems.
  
• Securing your trash, pet food and even bird feeders are other important ways to keep rats (and unwanted wildlife) from your home. Evans noted there are also new technologies, such as fertility control, electric traps and improved methods of fortifying buildings from rats. You can find additional resources for wildlife-safe rodent control from the Center for Biological Diversity and Raptors are the Solution at SafeRodentControl.org or here.
  
• And if you do come across wild animal you suspect has been poisoned, report it to your local wildlife rescue agency or animal control office, as well as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife at WHLab@wildlife.ca.gov or (916) 358-2790.

A person was fatally shot on a Los Angeles Metro bus Wednesday afternoon in South L.A.

According to Metro, a group of “young men” got into an altercation on the street.

That altercation then continued on a bus on Route 206, where “a member of the group shot and fatally injured another member of the group,” the transportation agency said to LAist.

The suspects fled before police arrived, according to Metro.

LAist has reached out to the LAPD for further information.

Safety on Metro

Since summer 2024, the transportation agency has been testing scanners that can detect concealed weapons at the entrances to rail stations throughout L.A. County and is in the early stages of possibly adopting the same approach for its buses.

In the latest 12-month-long phase of the pilot, which began in late April, Metro has been testing the technology at two rail stations at a time in two-month increments.

In a September report to its board, Metro staff said the “most frequently encountered” items during screenings have been “bladed objects.”

“In most cases, these were legitimate work-related tools that patrons were lawfully transporting,” staff said, adding that only one firearm had been detected as of the report.

Metro tested its weapons detection system at the San Pedro stop along the A line.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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In the same September update to its board, Metro staff said the transportation agency remains in “active discussions” with a vendor for its bus-centered program.

Over the summer, the vendor demoed how the scanners would work on different size buses, according to the update.

“Further coordination with the vendor will take place to determine which bus or buses will be equipped and when the installation will occur,” Metro staff said in the update. “The pilot has not yet been finalized.”

According to Metro, systemwide violent crime in September 2025, the latest month for which data is available online, fell nearly 15% compared to last September.