The Brief

Here’s something you might not have thought a lot about but, when it comes to environmental pollution, the fashion industry is a major culprit. More than three-quarters of all the textiles worn in the U.S. end up in a landfill, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Fighting the appetite for fast fashion

It’s driven in part by a demand for inexpensive clothes that often reflect the trend of the moment but are not designed last past a season. Fast fashion brands like Zara, Forever 21 and Shein are extremely popular for this reason. But there’s been a movement to create more sustainable styles — clothes that last longer and are made locally with more organic materials. Some might call it “slow fashion,” and a lot of it is happening in Los Angeles.

“It's really difficult to define sustainable fashion because there are so many factors,” said Tracie Tung, a professor of fashion design and merchandising at California State University Northridge. “It really needs a collective effort that's beginning with designers, how they design their product, and how they can manage less waste.”

Made in LA

About 83% of all American-made clothing is made in L.A. and there’s a number of designers who have made the shift to producing clothes hyper-locally, and to recycle materials and make things that can be worn many times over for years — an important thing in our a climate-crisis stricken, fast-fashion world.

Mary Price is one of them. She started her small clothing brand Ocean + Main seven years ago. She had worked for a big fashion house but says she wanted to create a brand that truly represents the “ethos of Los Angeles.

“I've been in the business for 30 years and have seen the copious amounts of waste in production across the globe,” Price says. “And the way that we treat people and the planet to produce garments has gotten so far away from how we used to manufacture. Between making our clothes and growing our food, we've just gotten so far from the source.”

In her business, there’s no single use plastic. She ships products – caftans, dresses and gauzy pants – in cloth bags. She uses materials that are either upcycled or biodegradable. Every article of clothing is made within a few blocks downtown, and she says the company only produces what it can sell.

“There's so much chaos created in the production of our clothes, from overproduction to overconsumption,” Price says. “In everything we do, we want to look at that decision. Is this creating calm or is it creating more chaos for people on the planet? So if it's creating calm, we feel like it's the right decision and we move forward with it.”

The How to LA team went downtown to check out Ocean + Main’s operation in L.A.’s Fashion District. In a recent episode, Price shares the intricate process of how she makes sustainable fashion work with host Brian De Los Santos and producer Megan Botel — from making textiles to the cutting of fabric to the packaging.

Mary Price, founder of clothing company Ocean + Main in L.A., talks to the How To LA team Brian De Los Santos and Megan Botel about how she tries to make her clothes as sustainably as possible with little waste.

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Fair labor practices 

Probably the most important thing that separates a sustainable clothier from others, said CSUN’s Tung, is the treatment of the people who cut and sew the clothes. The Labor Department surveyed more than four dozen manufacturers and contractors last year and found that 80% of them violated wage laws — a practice that's been going on for years. Often this has to do with manufacturers paying by item made rather than by the hour. Last year’s survey found one manufacturer was paying its garment workers as little as $1.58 per hour

“If you can buy this item at a really cheap price, you can imagine how low the cost is, including how much money they pay to…laborers,” Tung said. “So for sustainable fashion, we of course are trying to find a balance between the cost and the affordability, but more focus will be on do we pay our workers fairly? Do we provide a comfortable and safe environment for our workers?”

Ocean + Main’s Mary Price tells How to LA that both part-time and full-time garment workers in her shop make “above the individual living wage benchmark of $21.22” per hour.

A garment worker named Daniel helps make the clothes at Ocean + Main, an L.A. based clothing company

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The downside to all this is, of course, the cost to the consumer. Clothes made sustainably are more expensive.

Tung’s response? “Change your shopping habits,” she said. “Create your own style, use your creativity, reduce consumption.”

Basically, buy less. Buy better.

Listen to the rest of the episode here.

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

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