The Brief

This story is part of ICE vs. LA, a collaborative reporting project by LA Public Press, Caló News, Capital & Main, Capital B, LA Taco, and Q Voice.

Four months after nearly 5,000 federal troops descended onto Los Angeles, Marsha Mitchell, a Black organizer in South Central, explained what made it impossible for her not to act: her neighbors.

At the peak of the federal immigration raids this summer — when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was arresting an average of 540 people per week in the city — her neighbor, Erica, and her husband and friend were taken by federal agents while eating breakfast in their home.

All three were placed in a van and driven toward downtown Los Angeles.

But Erica knew she had to get back to her small children, recalled Mitchell, a lifelong South Central resident, from a conversation she had with her neighbor.

“As a mother, her whole thing was, I got to get to my babies,” Mitchell said.

When the agents opened the van doors in downtown L.A., Erica broke free — still tied up, still terrified — and ran. While Erica managed to escape, her husband was placed in the detention center, where he said conditions were unbearable. According to Mitchell, he self-deported rather than endure them, choosing to escape the system that had trapped him.

Erica was the family’s breadwinner through her tamale stand, but with her husband gone, she is too afraid to leave her home. The family has collapsed financially under the weight of a single raid, Mitchell said.

“Not only has she lost her business, but also her husband and the ability to give her family what they need to survive,” said Mitchell, an organizer with Community Coalition, the long-standing anti-violence and drug addiction group founded by now-Mayor Karen Bass in 1990.

In South L.A., where Los Angeles City Council Districts 8, 9, and 10 have transformed from predominantly Black to predominantly Latino, and where the highest percentages of undocumented residents in the city now live, Erica’s story is part of the new normal.

For some South Central residents, the raids have triggered economic and social catastrophes. During the first weeks of concentrated immigration enforcement, 465,000 fewer workers reported for work. One local business owner told the economic justice group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy that he’d lost 80% of his business in the first month of the ICE crackdown. Other shops across South Central and downtown lost business for weeks.

The raids are posing a new hurdle for Black and Latino families to pay rent in one of America’s most expensive cities. But they’ve also catalyzed Black neighbors to act.

“[Erica] is a member of our community, and she is afraid to come outside,” Mitchell said. “She is not alone, and that is why we’re helping with mutual aid.”

Immediately, that looked like bringing her family groceries and referring them to resources for free mental health care.

Community Coalition, known as CoCo, is training dozens of block captains to canvass their communities and coordinate food drop-offs, safety check-ins, and care referrals in real time. They’re organizing their neighbors around the threats facing everyone, regardless of their race or residency status.

The immediacy of this care network — 18 block captains now, with hopes to reach 28 — emerged after Erica’s abduction by ICE, according to Mitchell, who works for CoCo.

L.A. County’s Black residents — 20% of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants — are standing in solidarity with their Latino neighbors, saying they are part of a shared fight against over-policing and racialized violence. Nine out of 10 ICE arrests have been of Latinos.

“Seeing families torn apart is so reminiscent of the white supremacist playbook that we’ve seen historically in communities of color, and that starts with our Indigenous siblings to slavery and through these latest ICE raids,” Mitchell said.

Neighbors moved to action

Pamela Riley envisions her South Central neighborhood with all the resources it needs to thrive, but that starts at the block level, she said.

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On a quiet stretch of 92nd Street, Pamela Riley propped open her front gate around 8 a.m. For one Saturday in October, her front yard — one of the typical South Central flair caged in by a sagging iron gate — became the heartbeat of a block fighting back against abandonment.

Within minutes, her neighbors began to gather. Grandmothers sipped coffee, young mothers munched on donuts, and teenagers organized flyers printed in Spanish and English.

Just steps from the 110 freeway and the ghostly remains of shuttered shops and clinics, her community is forging new lines of solidarity amid chronic neglect and a deep need for connection. This is the new frontline in South Los Angeles, where a coalition of Black and Latino residents is launching a network of “Neighborhood Action Hubs” along the Vermont and Broadway corridors to keep mutual aid alive as official support shrinks.

The goal: to weave a grassroots shield against ICE crackdowns and social services cuts and offer a model for how neighbors, not institutions, can bridge fear and isolation.

“That blueprint of success is there. The road is paved, we just need to walk it together,” said Riley, a 64-year-old lifelong South Central resident.

Later that morning, as the sun tried to fight through the gloomy sky, a group of three of the women who showed up at Riley’s event — two Black, one Latina — passed the same mural-painted utility boxes and chain-link fences that mark so many South L.A. blocks. Old-school Chevys, some missing hubcaps, were parked next to pickups and battered minivans, while the sound of cumbia drifted from a doorway where a woman watered her agave under the music’s sway.

As they moved from house to house, the group stopped at gates and asked neighbors about the specific issues facing their blocks and individual households. At one, a longtime Latino immigrant, gray-haired and smiling, shared how she planned to vote in the now-passed November election.

Riley’s block has become a lot more quiet and less frequented since ICE raids began.

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Deeper onto the block, the canvassers encountered two undocumented migrants — one a young father, the other a middle-aged woman. The father spoke to tangible issues in the neighborhood: “People have started stealing car tires at night and cutting wires from light poles for quick money,” he said.

The mother spoke quietly about work drying up and more neighbors “laying low” as rumors of ICE sightings swept through the area. The Latina canvasser asked directly about food access and whether anyone still sold homemade snacks. The woman hesitated, then explained in Spanish that she stopped selling crepes out of fear.

The canvassers turned to the others and suggested a solution: organizing a block-wide food vendor party, so people could sell their products safely.

Walking farther, they found themselves cautiously welcomed by a Black city worker who had lived on the block for decades. She described losing sleep as the city’s racial demographics shifted and her worry about Black and Latino votes being split or erased.

At each stop, the canvassers handed out cards with voting information and explained how to register, where to find drop boxes, and how to access rapid response teams if ICE was spotted or the lights went out again.

“Solidarity is literally in L.A.’s DNA,” Mitchell said. “We know that when communities come together, we weather all kinds of storms — governmental, financial, whatever comes our way.”

L.A.’s long-history of racial coalitions

Neighborhood canvassers speak to a women. This specific Saturday, these two canvassers knocked on dozens of doors for over 2 hours.

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Riley said her memories are filled with better days: bustling shops, a hospital on 94th, neighbors who’d send their kids to college together. She has watched her neighborhood swing from prosperity to depression and now, uncertainty.

Today, Riley’s yard and days are devoted to strategizing — she and other block captains count names, rehearse response plans and dream of new “welcome to South Central L.A.” signs at every corner. During meetings, they talk about how, in other parts of the city, neighbors stand by each other in crisis; here, too, unity could mean survival. The terror of recent abductions — a beloved tamalera torn from her routine and dayworkers swiped off the streets — still haunts these blocks, sharpening every knock at the door.

“I grew up in a civil rights era of the ’60s, and I’m starting to realize this is the new era of civil rights,” Riley said, explaining that the attack on civil rights today has extended far beyond immigration raids. “It is requiring more from all of us.”

Having lived through what she considers broken promises following the devastation of the 1992 L.A. Riots, Riley said she understands that revival cannot rely on state intervention alone, and it bridges racial divides. Instead, she insists, “what’s going on in Washington DC is showing us we need to join together and support each other.”

It also reminds her of the power of community. During the 1992 protests against police brutality, Latinos constituted the largest portion of arrests despite making up a smaller percentage of the overall population at the time.

Dozens of volunteers began their Saturday at 9 a.m. to door knock.

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The roots of Black and Latino collaboration go back to the founding of L.A. itself, where 26 of the city’s 44 original settlers in 1781 were Black/Afro-Latino with Spanish surnames — establishing a tradition of mixed neighborhoods and joint political action. This foundation was later strengthened during the Great Migration and again throughout the 20th century, when Black and Latino residents forged working alliances in the face of shared exclusion from citywide power.

In recent decades, the demographic mix in South Central has shifted further. Where once the community was predominantly Black, Latino residents now form the majority. The change created new opportunities for solidarity, as well as challenges, especially after Latino L.A. City Council members were caught on tape using racist anti-Black language while discussing concerns about the political power of Black residents. The tapes reopened wounds over neighborhood displacement.

Today, the skepticism remains real for a lot of Black people in L.A. In June, a viral moment spread across the internet after Latino protesters hurled racial insults at a Black L.A. police officer.

“A significant number of Black folks don’t see this as their fight,” author and commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson said after the protest in June. “They’ve seen anti-Blackness in Latino communities. They’ve felt left out when it came to our issues. That breeds skepticism.”

But “if anything, the debate over whether Blacks should link hands with Latino activists in the immigration battle seems age old,” Hutchinson wrote on his daily blog.

Hector Sanchez, CoCo’s Deputy Political Director, agreed.“It takes a lot of work. I’m not going to say it’s very easy … but it’s people that are willing to have those difficult conversations at times to ensure that we have each other’s back.”

Just a day after the city council tapes leaked, more than 400 people came together in Boyle Heights “to talk about the importance of multi-racial solidarity,” he said. Despite the tensions, neighbors continue fighting side by side for justice and belonging.

When canvassers could not get in contact with residents, they left behind these door hangers with a list of resources.

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In the years since, organizers have responded by promoting cross-cultural events, joint canvassing efforts, and language exchange programs. Language exchange workshops and “know your rights” sessions — alongside mutual aid deliveries — have become linchpins of the hub approach.

“We are not just helping Black folks, not just one population. It’s for all of us,” explained Sequarier McCoy, a 49-year-old lifelong L.A. resident.

“I grew up in a Black and Brown community,” she added. “I smelled Black-eyed peas, but I also smelled tortillas. I like corn on the cob and Esquites.”

McCoy is also acutely aware that the issues of migration, detention and deportation are far from just Latino issues. “It’s also for Dominican folks. It’s also for Belizean folks. It’s also for Caribbean folks,” she said. She said her partner, a Belizean migrant, is living in fear too.

Black undocumented migrants are deported at a rate four times more often than their numbers would suggest, according to an analysis of federal data by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

It is why this practical solidarity spans crises, organizers said. When SNAP benefits run dry, when an ICE van is spotted, or when a neighbor’s lights go out, the same phone trees and rapid response plans kick in.

“This work is an honor as a human being, not just as an activist,” McCoy said.

Scientists have now gotten closer to understanding how gene mutations may lead some people to develop profound autism.

The clues, they say, lie in the murky space between genes and disease — where key proteins come together and interact.

A team of researchers from UC San Francisco mapped more than a thousand interactions between many proteins that come from certain autism risk genes. This molecular atlas, published in the journal Science, could point researchers toward new and promising treatments.

"It's an unprecedented resource for the field," says Dr. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of human genetics, neurology, and psychiatry at UCLA who was not involved with the study. "A lot of people interested in understanding autism and drug development are going to be using this."

For families affected by profound autism, it offers hope for eventual drug therapies. "This is the kind of scientific advance we have been waiting for and praying for," says Alison Singer, president of the nonprofit Autism Science Foundation, who has a daughter with severe cognitive impairment. "There's still a lot of work ahead, [but] this paper makes the path from genetic discovery to treatment much clearer."

The work builds on progress made in recent years to identify single genes that harbor mutations found in a subset of individuals with profound autism.

Getting past the "wall"

People with profound autism often live with severe intellectual disability and require around-the-clock care. They're nonverbal or minimally verbal, and often have serious medical conditions like epilepsy.

Pinning down the biology behind profound autism has always been a complicated endeavor — while both genes and environmental factors play a role, those factors can vary widely from person to person.

In the past decade or so, some genetics researchers have had remarkable success in identifying high-impact genetic differences in a subset of people with profound autism.

"They've discovered several hundred genes and corresponding mutations that are prevalent in [these] individuals," says Nevan Krogan, director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at UC San Francisco.

"But they kind of hit a wall," he added — because scientists haven't been able to turn those gene discoveries into many promising drugs and treatments.

"There was this huge missing piece," says Dr. Matthew State, a clinical psychiatrist and geneticist at UCSF: The genes serve as blueprints for making proteins that drive brain development, but researchers lacked visibility into how those proteins do the work.

State has been a pioneer in identifying high-risk genes, and the mutations in those genes, that are associated with profound autism. Krogan has been at the forefront of using new technology to look into protein interactions.

More than a decade ago, the two researchers were introduced by their mutual boss, the chancellor at UCSF, who encouraged them to collaborate. "[State] had the genes and the mutations. I had the technologies to look at the corresponding proteins," Krogan says.

They focused on filling a knowledge gap. "What we've been missing is the mechanistic understanding of how these mutations [on the genes] are seemingly resulting in autism," Krogan says. "In order to understand that, you need to go to the proteins."

Proteins are the complex molecules that come together to build the body, based on instructions encoded in the genes. "What makes an eye cell an eye cell, and a muscle a muscle, are the proteins and how they work together," State says. "They are the machinery of life."

In this case, the researchers wanted to find the molecular machinery of profound autism — to understand which proteins came from those high-risk autism genes, and how those proteins worked together.

The research was slow at first, but more recent advances in technology — including artificial intelligence — have sped things up.

To start, the researchers went on a "fishing expedition" for protein interactions. They chose 100 proteins from these high-risk autism genes, injected them into lab-grown cells, and then pulled them out, along with the additional proteins that attached to them.

Then, they used an AI system called AlphaFold, developed by Google DeepMind, to help determine which proteins in the clumps were directly touching. "Where AI is playing an important role is being predictive about who's talking to who," says Krogan. "Sometimes they take years to figure out. Now, we can get these insights in an hour." While imperfect, the system has worked well enough to save significant time and money, Krogan says.

Then, they wanted to see what happened to the proteins when the genes got tweaked. They introduced mutations that appear in patients with profound autism, and assessed what changed. "We broke the proteins in the way that they're broken in autism," says State. "That allows us ultimately to answer the question of, when they're going wrong in autism, how are they going wrong?"

They conducted this research in frogs and in organoids, which are lab-grown tissues that model the human brain. In one example, the mutations weakened the connection between two proteins related to which genes turn on and off in a cell. Then, one went rogue, turning on other genes that led to neurodevelopmental defects in organoids.

Molecular convergence

There are hundreds of rare, high-risk autism genes, acting in more than a thousand different ways.

But in mapping more than 1,800 protein interactions, the researchers found that many of them moved along shared biological pathways — particularly those related to early brain development, such as how synapses get constructed, and which neurons develop and when.

The convergence found in this study aligns with other recent publications, adding to an emerging understanding in the field, says Dr. Geschwind of UCLA.

"If we look at multiple mutations and they converge on the same process, that's strong evidence that you're dealing with the things that you want to treat," State says.

Identifying this more limited set of protein complexes that likely contribute to the development of profound autism could change the approach to treatments, says Singer with the Autism Science Foundation. "We've been working gene-by-gene to correct mutations," she says.

And if future drugs could target these shared protein pathways, she adds, "we may not need that separate therapeutic strategy for every autism gene."

Setting sights on new drug-development targets

It takes years to go from a biological discovery like this to an approved drug that treats humans. The findings would need to be translated into drug candidates, then tested for safety and effectiveness.

"It takes time and a lot of persistence and focus," State says. "This [paper] is unlikely to lead to therapies tomorrow — but it lays an important foundation for them."

Most human drugs are made to target proteins, Geschwind at UCLA says, so the newly published map of protein interactions offers an accessible entry point for pharmaceutical development.

And researchers hope to combine recent technological advances in ways that accelerate that progress even more. "When you put together the ability to borrow from successes in other fields [such as cancer treatments], and the development of AI, we're at an inflection point that will hopefully shorten the time cycle," State says.

Last week, Krogan's Quantitative Biosciences Institute received a $46 million grant from the Aligning Research to Impact Autism initiative, funded by philanthropist and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The researchers are already working on next steps.

Copyright 2026 NPR

As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to require data centers to disclose how much water they use, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says concerns over AI’s water use don’t hold “up to any scrutiny.”

On the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath released Tuesday, Altman said that it takes 38,000 ChatGPT queries to use as much water as producing a single almond in California.

“If you look at a modern very large data center, it uses the equivalent amount of water as an office building in terms of, you know, people like running the sinks and the toilets and whatever,” Altman told Heath.

The problem, experts say, is that it’s impossible to verify those numbers given what’s public about the secretive industry.

“The information we have is so limited,” said Shaolei Ren, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside.

Far too many factors affect how much water data centers use to boil it down to any one convenient statistic, Ren said, rattling off a handful of variables: the data center’s location, the temperature outside, the type of cooling system, the length of the prompt, the reasoning required, the output. All affect how much water the data center uses.

“This is the whole reason that these bills need the governor’s signature,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment. “There’s no published data — certainly not for California — and what is public seems all over the place.”

Over the past two weeks, California lawmakers passed two bills by Assemblymember Diane Papan aimed at increasing transparency; both now await Newsom’s signature.

One would require operators to report their water sources and usage when seeking business permits. The other would block local governments from approving new data centers unless developers disclose their water plans. They’d also have to pay for any water upgrades needed to connect to the local supply.

It’s the San Mateo Democrat’s second attempt at more transparency around data center water use. Newsom vetoed her bill last year, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements … without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

The heavy-hitting tech industry and business groups again opposed the bills. But now, as data center fights erupt across the state and local governments ban the facilities outright amid a wider bipartisan backlash, the question of how much water data centers really use is gaining urgency.

“If we know what an almond uses, maybe we can figure out what a data center uses?” said Alex Biering, director of policy advocacy who specializes in water issues for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

What the data actually shows

Regardless of whether it takes thousands of queries to match the water needed to produce a single almond in California (a number that varies substantially over time and space, according to a 2019 study), the Congressional Research Service says data centers are using more water than they used to. 

One study reported the facilities directly used about 17 billion gallons in 2023, up from 5.6 billion gallons in 2014. Another report found that hyperscale data centers could use 150 billion gallons of water from 2025 to 2030 — which is as much water as 4.6 million households use in the U.S. in a year.

Annual water use isn’t the whole story, Ren cautioned. The hottest days, when data centers require the most cooling, can substantially increase peak water demand, according to Ren’s research, which is under review by a scientific journal and available online as a preprint.

“For community water systems, the peak capacity is more important because they need to be designed and built to accommodate the peak demand at all times, similar to our power grid,” Ren said.

Ren’s team found that data center cooling systems could call for 697 to 1.45 billion more gallons of peak water capacity per day. It’s comparable to New York City’s average daily supply, the study says. And unlike irrigation water typically used for farms, water for data centers is often treated, potable water from public water systems, the team reported.

That’s a problem, because water systems across the country — and certainly in California — are “aging, fragmented, and/or financially constrained, thus lacking sufficient available capacity to meet the additional peak water demands of large data centers.”

The researchers pointed to examples in Georgia and Virginia where water suppliers worried they “just don’t have the water” to accommodate peak demand from the data centers drawing from their systems simultaneously.

Ren said water use could drop by as much as 50% if data centers opt for less water-intensive cooling systems, like dry cooling, but there are tradeoffs — such as increased energy needs.

And that, too, requires water.

With a little more than two months to go until the general election, the two mayoral candidates running to lead the city of Los Angeles fielded questions about the environment at a Thursday night forum hosted by LAist.

Incumbent Karen Bass and her challenger, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, each answered questions separately about how they would approach many environmental challenges facing the city, including emergency preparedness, water resiliency and transportation policy.

These and other environmental and climate issues are top of mind for many Angelenos during a summer marked by extreme heat, humidity and the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights that affected surrounding neighborhoods for months. Communities are also still rebuilding from last year’s destructive Eaton and Palisades fires.

The forum, held at Los Angeles Trade Technical-College, was organized by the L.A. League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment, and was moderated by LAist climate and environment Reporter Erin Stone.

Here are three takeaways from the event:

Differing visions of LA

Bass, who was elected mayor in 2022, painted a picture of an L.A. that’s made significant progress on environmental issues during that time, while Raman said the city has stalled under Bass’ leadership.

Bass referenced her work transitioning the city off of coal-generated energy and expanding the city’s electric bus fleets and clean-energy jobs. She said she wants to build on that momentum, particularly with a focus on helping communities impacted by environmental and industrial pollution.

She pointed to many communities of color that bear the brunt of industrial pollution, including in South L.A. neighborhoods dotted with oil wells and residents who live in close proximity to the Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights.

“Where we need to go now in the future is focusing on environmental justice, focusing on the communities that are disproportionately impacted by greenhouse gases and by the environment,” she said.

Raman also talked about a need to focus on environmental justice, but she said environmental programs are underfunded and understaffed, and that she would invest more in them if she becomes mayor.

She said Bass’ administration has not prioritized environmental climate issues enough, and that there should be a more aggressive policy around them.

“Too much of that work remains unfinished,” she said. “Our transition to clean energy has slowed. Efforts to build a resilient water supply, close neighborhood drilling sites, make our streets safer, all of these have slowed over the last four years.”

Raman specifically called out Bass for her proposal to cut funding for the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office as the city faced a billion-dollar budget shortfall last year.

Bass defended the proposal, arguing the program had not developed a climate action plan as directed and needed to be revamped.

The office has shrunk under Bass’ leadership, and she removed the city’s chief heat officer and quietly appointed a new one earlier this year.

Emergency response failures

Both Bass and Raman said L.A. has room for improvement when it comes to preparing for fires, earthquakes and other disasters.

Raman criticized the city’s response to last year’s Palisades Fire, saying there was no clear leadership to guide the community through the recovery effort. She pointed to Bass' appointment of Steve Soboroff to head the recovery. He left the post after his three-month term and was not replaced.

 ”What we saw in the Palisades, I think, was an example of what shouldn't happen,” Raman said. “ A lot of residents in the Palisades have been feeling like they don't know who to reach out to, who is the person that they need to connect with in order to make sure that recovery really happens.”

But she defended her administration’s response, and said confusion over city and state land made it more difficult.

 ”Part of the brush was the city, part of the brush was the state. There was a reluctance to go into state territory because our folks were told they couldn't do that,” Bass said. “As far as I'm concerned, that's not gonna happen again.”

Bass said the biggest impediments to the recovery process — and to people moving back into their homes — are insurance companies and banks. She called for legislative reforms to the insurance process.

Raman also criticized the response to the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights this summer, calling out Bass directly for sharing misleading information about air quality.

Bass said she relied on inaccurate information from public health and air quality management officials.

Both candidates said there’s a need for stronger enforcement and higher fines that could be levied against corporations like Lineage, the warehouse owner, and better planning for emergencies around industrial buildings.

Shared goals

Although the candidates leaned into their differences, the reality is that they align on many climate and environmental policies.

Unhoused Angelenos are especially at risk from extreme heat, and Bass said the city needs to provide more places for them to cool off.

“My plan, priority one, is to get people off the streets,” Bass said, adding that during heat emergencies that needs to include providing emergency shelters and other ways to cool off.

Raman talked about similar solutions.

“ Responding to people who are experiencing homelessness to ensure that they're actually able to get indoors and off the streets, so that they're not dying from exposure to heat, because that is a very, very high risk that people who are experiencing homelessness face,” she said.

They had other shared goals.

Both said incentives and rebates that keep down the cost of utility bills need to be more accessible, especially in low-income communities.

Both called for more severe penalties for owners of industrial sites like the Boyle Heights warehouse.

And they both said they want to grow the city’s electric vehicle fleet, and decrease car use by building more public transit ridership and expanding biking infrastructure.