The Brief

Pointing to a series of problems and a breakdown in trust, L.A.’s city attorney is now recommending yanking control of the troubled Skid Row Housing Trust from the person she had a judge put in charge just a few months ago.

In a memo dated Friday, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto and the city’s housing director outlined their support for asking the judge to replace Mark Adams as the properties’ receiver — and have the city lend up to $10 million toward fixing problems with the apartments.

To incentivize the judge to replace him, the city would be offering the low interest loan on the condition that Adams is replaced. City councilmembers are expected to take up the recommendation at a budget committee meeting Monday. The committee's chair, Bob Blumenfield, told LAist Friday afternoon that he supports the move to replace Adams.

“All of these red flags move from being red flags to being flashing red lights that say, 'watch out'," Blumenfield said.

"We really need to do everything we can to prevent a human tragedy from getting worse, and to look after the public dollar as well. Because that is very much at stake," he added.

Back in late March, Feldstein Soto had asked a court to put Adams in control of the trust’s 29 properties, which are home to about 1,500 formerly unhoused people — after the nonprofit Housing Trust fell apart financially and many of its apartments were deemed health and safety risks.

But in a reversal of confidence, Feldstein Soto joined with L.A. Housing Department chief Ann Sewill to recommend Adams be replaced by Kevin Singer of Receivership Specialists, for “some or all” of the properties.

'Disappointing' progress

“[Adams’] progress toward resolving serious code enforcement violations such as repairing the fire/life safety systems, fixing plumbing problems in common area restrooms and restoring units that have been cited for abatement by HACLA for minor code violations has been disappointing,” states the memo to the city council.

“In addition, just a couple of weeks ago, the property management company hired by [Adams] sent out 3-day eviction notices to hundreds of tenants which were then rescinded but which should never have been sent.”

Feldstein Soto previously told the Los Angeles Times the 451 eviction notices were illegal under the city’s tenant protection law and violated his promise to not evict anyone solely for being behind on rent.

The memo also says Adams hasn’t hired enough staff to repair and secure the properties and says he hasn’t provided the court-ordered reporting and accounting that the city and other agencies require.

“It became apparent that the receivership would be better served with a different receiver,” it states.

Adams didn’t respond to LAist’s requests for comment Friday morning, and a spokesperson for the city attorney said they had no comment.

In recommending Singer to replace Adams, officials wrote that Singer has handled nearly 500 receiverships statewide — more than Adams’ roughly 300 — and that San Francisco officials spoke highly of his work in the city, which included “a very challenging receivership” in the Tenderloin District.

Asked if Singer received more vetting by the city attorney than Adams did, Blumenfield said he and others have asked and "we have been assured there’s been considerably more vetting."

What happens next

The request to extend city loans up to $10 million — as long as the court replaces Adams — now heads to the city council’s budget committee for a decision. That meeting is set for Monday at 2 p.m.

“One way or the other, the public ends up on the hook for this," Blumenfield told LAist, saying that he believes if the Housing Trust implodes, many of the residents will end up back on the streets with no other options.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We need to be smart about this and engage as early as we can to prevent a bigger catastrophe that will also end up costing us a tremendous amount of money – which is why we're even entertaining the idea of engaging with our own tax dollars in this process.”

As part of the loan, Blumenfield said, the city would put in place more stringent requirements for the new receiver to update the city – and consequences if that doesn't happen.

Blumenfield said that's something the city can't currently require, because the receivership is a court-controlled process and the city isn't a lender.

It will ultimately be up to L.A. Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff whether to replace Adams. His support of Adams could be waning — last week, during a tense court hearing in downtown L.A., Beckloff removed seven properties from the receivership and questioned Adams’ efforts to improve the properties. Still, the judge expressed support for Adams, saying he thought he was the right person for the job.

It’s unclear what the status is of the city attorney’s investigation of Adams’ performance, which she revealed last week. Her spokesperson declined to comment about it Friday.

The key going forward, Blumenfield said, is for the housing units to be fixed up quickly so they can become financially stable. Currently, hundreds of the units are ineligible for federal housing voucher dollars because the city has declared they violate livability standards, including for issues like fire safety.

Past issues

The move comes after the improper eviction notices, and reports by the L.A. Times and LAist about multiple judges finding problems with his past receiverships, including major overbilling for his company’s services.

LAist also reported earlier this month that a company Adams created for his receivership work has been banned by the state from doing business since 2015 over unpaid taxes. Adams told us he’d look into it and said his current company is in good standing.

City officials have said the stakes are high with the housing trust. For decades, it’s been one of L.A.’s largest providers of affordable housing to unhoused people. But its buildings have fallen into disrepair in recent years as its nonprofit owner descended into disfunction and financial ruin, according to the memo and reporting by the Times.

On April 5, just before Adams was put in charge, three people were found dead in a Skid Row Housing Trust building due to suspected overdoses.

When Feldstein Soto announced in late March she would be seeking the receivership that put Adams in control of the properties, she said the 1,500 people living in its buildings are extremely at-risk.

“[These] are among our most marginalized and vulnerable populations,” Feldstein Soto told reporters. “If they lose their housing, there is very little question that they will spill out onto our streets.”

LAist reporter David Wagner contributed to this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US lifts naval blockade

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

The United States lifted its naval blockade on Iran.

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

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

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

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

Israel remains defiant against the deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump signed the deal to avoid 'economic catastrophe'

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

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

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

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

The memorandum gives major concessions to Iran

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

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

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

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

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

The negotiation over Iran's nuclear program

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

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

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

Has Iran come out of the war stronger?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two smoke relief centers are now open for residents impacted by the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.

The centers in Boyle Heights and East L.A. offer resources such as masks, food, water, temporary shelter, pet assistance and information from public health and air quality officials. They’re open 24 hours a day until further notice.

The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks and Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office opened the Pecan Recreation Center as a smoke relief center Friday. A second center opened Saturday at City Terrace Park through the office of L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis. 

Here’s where they’re located: 

The fire broke out Wednesday, prompting an hours-long shelter-in-place order due to hazardous materials, including ammonia.

On Friday, a wind-driven flare-up at the site of the fire sent plumes of smoke over the city, hours after a second shelter-in-place order was lifted. Residents in the immediate area reported seeing ash on their homes and cars. On Saturday, many across Los Angeles County — from Pasadena to the West Adams neighborhood — also reported smelling smoke and experiencing poor air quality.

Two smoke relief centers are now open for residents impacted by the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.

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Courtesy City Terrace resident

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Jurado and her team were in the residential neighborhood near the fire site Friday, distributing air purifiers and masks. She said community groups, including Proyecto Pastoral, Running Mamis and Centro CSO, also went door to door distributing masks. 

Residents can contact Jurado’s office at Boyle Heights City Hall to request air purifiers and masks or to make donations at (323) 526-9332.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke outside the building Friday evening, praising firefighters’ efforts. She added that people in the area could expect to continue to see smoke, and she urged people and their pets to stay inside as much as possible. She asked people to wear masks when they needed to go outside.

“We know that this is concerning. This is inconvenient, but we are doing everything we can to end this as soon as possible,” she said. “And we want everyone to be safe in the meantime.”

Read more:

• What materials burned in the fire and what to know about air quality
• How to keep yourself safe from the dismal air quality driven by fires

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