The Brief

Tuesday is shaping up to be a big day for L.A. street vendors — and the customers who buy their hot dogs, tacos, fruit salads and countless other products.

Tuesday morning the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously 15-0 in favor of an ordinance that eliminates several so-called “no-vending” zones where street vending is prohibited, including on the busy Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Street vendors who’ve long opposed no-vending zones said they welcomed the ordinance.

“This is what we have fought for,” said Hollywood Boulevard hot dog vendor Merlin Alvarado in Spanish, referring to the lifting of no-vending zones.

Alvarado is among the street vendors who sued the city over no-vending zones in late 2022. The lawsuit alleges that no-vending zones conflict with SB 946 , the 2018 state law that decriminalized street vending. Trial in the lawsuit is set to begin Feb. 15; street vendor plaintiffs and their advocates said that while they cheer the ordinance, they want the trial to continue.

City officials said the city ordinance could take effect in 31-40 days, depending on when Mayor Karen Bass signs it.

No-vending zones and tickets

The Los Angeles area is home to an estimated 50,000 street vendors, 10,000 of whom sell food. Over the decades, L.A.'s street vendor carts have become an integral part of the city's culinary scene, selling everything from sliced mango to the ubiquitous bacon-wrapped hot dog that has become an emblem of L.A. street food.

After years of lobbying by street vendors and their advocates, Los Angeles decriminalized street vending in late 2018, as did the state of California. But it’s taken years for local jurisdictions to work out and finesse city and county regulations.

While street vending was decriminalized in most of the city of Los Angeles, eight busy and lucrative areas like the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Dodger Stadium, Universal CityWalk and several others remained off limits ; vendors have since been prohibited from setting up within 500 feet of these areas, and those who do are ticketed.

The city ordinance eliminates these blanket no-vending areas, allowing street vendors to do business there; however, it would still allow no-vending zones to be set up for health or safety reasons “if there's a farmer's market, or there's filming, or around schools,” said L.A. city councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose district includes Hollywood Boulevard.

Katie McKeon, an attorney with the Western Center on Law and Poverty who is representing the vendors in the case against the city, said she sees Tuesday’s city council vote as affirmation that no-vending zones shouldn’t exist.

“The way that I see the city's actions is that they are worried about losing in court and they would prefer that a judge not rule on this case,” McKeon said. “And so they are making this 11th hour move in order to try to make the lawsuit go away.”

McKeon added that there are no plans to settle the case at the moment, and that plaintiffs want for a judge to rule against no-vending zones. Earlier this week, the city attorney’s office declined comment when asked by LAist if the goal was to resolve the lawsuit prior to trial.

Another reason the plaintiffs want their case to go to trial: Street vendors who’ve continued to sell in no-vending zones — particularly in Hollywood, where vendors brave tickets as a cost of doing business — have racked up hefty fines. The city ordinance does not provide for reimbursement.

“Our position is that a full response from the city should also include a plan to rescind and refund the past citations that have been issued in these zones,” said Doug Smith, senior director for policy and legal strategy with Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit that advocates for street vendors. “And so the ordinance is really important and it's really necessary, but the job isn't done.”

Alvarado said she fears that without a court ruling on no-vending zones, there are no future guarantees.

“They would still have the freedom to establish new ones in the future,” she said.

County health permits, regulations

Also on Tuesday, L.A. County supervisors gave a unanimous final nod to two measures tentatively approved last week.

One applies to street food vendors under the auspices of the county health department, who for years have had trouble obtaining needed county health permits. Until recently, the state’s retail food code was geared toward larger mobile food operations, like food trucks, and not small carts.

A state bill amending the retail food code to be friendlier to street vendors was approved in 2022 . The new county permitting standards will apply to “compact mobile food operations,” such as pushcarts, operating within the county except for those in Pasadena, Long Beach and Vernon, which have their own public health departments.

Health permit fees for these street vendors will range from $309 for “low-risk” vendors selling packaged foods to $1,186 for “high-risk” vendors preparing and selling hot food items. To that end, supervisors approved a related motion from Supervisor Hilda Solis that would make low-income street vendors in unincorporated county areas eligible for a 75% fee subsidy.

The board also voted on a formal plan to regulate street vendors in unincorporated areas. Unlike in the city of Los Angeles, the county so far has not had an official program with which to regulate street vendors in unincorporated county zones, like busy East L.A. The ordinance sets official rules for these vendors, including a $604 annual registration fee. This fee would be subsidized the first year by the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity, and partially subsidized after that.

The two county ordinances are set to take effect in 30 days.

Once again, Taylor Swift tops this week's Billboard albums and singles charts. Elsewhere, two holidays collide, as Halloween perennials coexist with the charts' first flurries of the Christmas season. Along the way, Michael Jackson's Thriller shoots up the chart, making this the sixth consecutive decade in which Jackson has scored at least one top 10 hit. That's an all-time chart record.

Top story

Before the streaming era, holidays rarely had much of an impact on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart. You'd see an occasional novelty hit here and there, but generally speaking, the Hot 100 in December didn't look all that different from the Hot 100 in, say, March.

The streaming era has changed that radically — and in ways that extend well beyond Christmas time. Just this year, Toby Keith 's 35 Biggest Hits compilation zoomed back into the top 10 in the aftermath of July 4. Earth, Wind & Fire 's Greatest Hits re-entered the Billboard 200 albums chart because so many fans like to stream the group's 1978 song "September" — with its famous question, "Do you remember the 21st night of September?" — on Sept. 21.

And Halloween? Well, Halloween has become a musical season unto itself — for at least a few weeks, anyway.

Last week's charts reflect the seven days immediately before Halloween — the "spooky season," you might say, but not the holiday itself or the weekend that followed. And several titles did re-enter the charts, led by Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which resurfaced on the Hot 100 at No. 32.

This week's charts cover a seven-day stretch beginning with Halloween, so you get a full reflection of costume-party playlists and titles streamed on front porches for the benefit of trick-or-treaters. And, though it can't compare to the annual pre-Christmas onslaught, a handful of spooky and spookiness-adjacent songs do make their way back onto the Hot 100 this week.

The songs themselves are more or less exactly what you'd expect: Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers' "Monster Mash" (No. 21), Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" (No. 22) and Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" (No. 24) all reemerge from their respective crypts in lockstep, with The Citizens of Halloween's "This Is Halloween" (from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) right behind them.

But one Halloween jam outshines them all — and hits some massive milestones in the process.

"Thriller" was the seventh single from Jackson's 1982 mega-blockbuster of the same name and hit No. 4 during its initial chart run. It became a durable classic — and Halloween staple — thanks to its iconic video , which premiered in December 1983.

"Thriller" has re-entered the Hot 100 numerous times since then, most prominently in the aftermath of Jackson's death in 2009. This week, it jumps from No. 32 all the way to No. 10.

For Jackson, that triggers a remarkable chart milestone: He's the first artist in history to hit the top 10 in six different decades. Before, he was tied with … who, The Beatles ? Nope. Elvis Presley ? Nuh-uh. The answer is Andy Williams , who had loads of hits in the '50s, '60s and '70s, then returned to the top 10 in the 2010s and 2020s thanks to the streaming-fueled holiday hit "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."

In Jackson's case, his six decades have been consecutive — and there's even a seventh with an asterisk, because The Jackson 5 cracked the top 10 with "I Want You Back" in December 1969. Prior to this week's "Thriller" renaissance, Jackson's last appearance in the top 10 arrived thanks to his posthumous appearance in Drake 's 2018 hit "Don't Matter to Me."

Don't expect "Thriller" to remain in the top 10 now that Halloween is an increasingly distant memory. The spooky season is well and truly over, provided you don't look too closely at the Hot 100 and grimace in terror as you spy the song at No. 31.

It's Mariah Carey , who reenters the chart — earlier than ever — with "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Eeeeeeeeeeeek!

Top albums

For the fifth straight week, Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl sits atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. But Swift's grip on the top spot would at least appear to be slipping, with several high-profile albums on the immediate horizon.

Though she's yet to hit the Billboard 200's top 10 in her career, Rosalía 's LUX is due to hit next week's charts, and has gotten tremendous reviews. (Seriously, it's so great.) Summer Walker 's Finally Over It drops this Friday and will enter the Billboard 200 the following week. Michael Bublé 's Christmas has — [emits deep, tortured sigh, followed by a three-minute stare, unblinking, into the middle distance] — already reentered the chart at No. 65.

The Life of a Showgirl easily survived this week's top new threat, as Florence + The Machine debuted at No. 4 with a Halloween-friendly new album called Everybody Scream. And a huge chart leap for Tyler, The Creator 's CHROMAKOPIA — boosted by the release of deluxe editions surrounding the anniversary of its release — only sent it from No. 117 to No. 5.

Still, for The Life of a Showgirl — and for those of us who toil aggressively to avoid exposure to Bublé's music — winter is coming.

Case in point: There are now four Christmas albums on the Billboard 200. Bublé leads the way, followed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio 's A Charlie Brown Christmas (No. 85), Carey's Merry Christmas (No. 113) and Bing Crosby 's Ultimate Christmas (No. 160). Whole lotta holiday-music enthusiasts are out there opening their gifts early this year.

Top songs

Taylor Swift is a master of extending her chart runs, thanks to a deep bag of tricks that includes remixes, staggered releases on vinyl and CD, acoustic versions and more. The woman possesses a great many talents, but she's an all-timer when it comes to leveraging her fans' enthusiasm.

On the albums chart, it's a challenge to extend The Life of a Showgirl's run at No. 1, in part because she's already exhausted so many of those opportunities in the album's first week of release. The price of that record-setting sales week is that it gets harder and harder to go back to the well and sell fans more copies of the same album.

But when it comes to "The Fate of Ophelia," which tops the Hot 100 for a fifth straight week, she's still got some bullets in the chamber as she labors to remain ahead of two colossal hits. And she needs them, because the song isn't No. 1 in streaming or radio airplay this week.

The top song on streaming is HUNTR/X's "Golden," from the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. When it comes to commercial radio airplay, the top song is Alex Warren 's "Ordinary," which is likely evident to anyone who's tried to listen to a commercial pop station since, say, June. But the former lags a bit in airplay, the latter lags a bit in streaming and "The Fate of Ophelia" leads the field in sales — an area where Swift's bag of tricks comes in especially handy.

"The Fate of Ophelia" gets a boost this week from two alternate versions: an "Alone in My Tower Acoustic Version" that's padding her streaming and sales numbers, and a brand-new remix by the duo Loud Luxury that dropped on Nov. 6.

Those moves were enough to keep the song atop the Hot 100 for another week, but as the holidays loom, all three songs face a force as predictable as the tides. Today, they're jockeying for the top of the charts; tomorrow, they'll all be eating Paul Anka 's dust.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Seven detainees at an immigration detention center in California City have sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alleging the facility is polluted by sewage leaks, infested with bugs and is denying people access to food, water and their lawyers.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California also claims detainees do not have appropriate clothing for the chilly desert nights, nor appropriate medical attention for life-threatening conditions. The lawsuit alleges detainees with mobility issues don’t have access to wheelchairs, and in some cases are unable to bathe or dress themselves.

The plaintiffs are seeking to make the lawsuit a class action on behalf of all detainees housed at the California City Immigration Processing Center, which is about 75 miles east of Bakersfield and run by the private prison company CoreCivic.

“In their haste to warehouse hundreds of men and women in this isolated facility, defendants have failed to provide for the basic human needs of the people for whose lives and wellbeing they are legally responsible,” the lawsuit alleges.

ICE opened the immigration detention center at the site of a closed prison and began admitting detainees in August. On average, there were about 480 people held in the detention center each day in September, and the facility has the capability to house up to 2,560 people. The lawsuit asserts 800 people are now housed there.

A spokesperson for ICE declined to comment on the lawsuit for this story.

In September, a state disability rights group conducted a two-day inspection of the facility and found that its operators failed to distribute medication for life-threatening conditions and did not schedule timely surgeries for people that needed them.

CalMatters reported on conditions at the detention center last month. Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, in a written statement at the time said the site provides robust medical care. He said those services adhere to “standards set forth by our government partners.”

The detention center’s accelerated opening was part of the Trump administration’s plan to execute the largest deportation program in U.S. history. California City’s mayor previously told CalMattersthe federal government opened the facility without proper permits or a business license as required by state law.

“In the rush to expand capacity, ICE has cobbled together a patchwork system of county jails, private prisons, and newly converted facilities across the country. The rapid and haphazard growth of the detention system has outstripped any meaningful system of accountability or oversight,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit was filed by Prison Law Office, a nonprofit organization that focuses on conditions in California prisons; along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the advocacy group California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and the law firm Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP.

Conditions in immigration detention facilities have long been the subject of complaints and lawsuits. Counties in California have the option to inspect immigration detention facilities, although few do. Three of the four counties in California that host the facilities have not held inspections .

Seventeen people have died in ICE facilities this year, two in California. The agency’s official list of deaths in custody documents 15. Two subsequent deaths — one each in California and New York have not yet been added to the ICE list.

One plaintiff in the lawsuit, Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, alleged that he has been denied medication for a heart condition for days at a time. The lawsuit alleges the lack of medication led to him being hospitalized twice.

“During the last hospitalization, a doctor told Mr. Roque Campos that he could die if this were to happen again,” the lawsuit alleges. “Mr. Roque Campos has yet to see a cardiologist and still does not consistently receive his medication.”

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

California plans to revoke 17,000 commercial driver's licenses given to immigrants after discovering the expiration dates went past when the drivers were legally allowed to be in the U.S., state officials said Wednesday.

The announcement follows harsh criticism from the Trump administration about California and other states granting licenses to people in the country illegally. The issue was thrust into the public's consciousness in August, when a tractor-trailer driver not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that California's action to revoke these licenses is an admission that the state acted improperly even though it previously defended its licensing standards. California launched its review of commercial driver's licenses it issued after Duffy raised concerns.

"After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we've exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked," Duffy said, referring to the state's governor. "This is just the tip of iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses."

Newsom's office said that every one of the drivers whose license is being revoked had valid work authorizations from the federal government. At first, his office declined to disclose the exact reason for revoking the licenses, saying only they violated state law. Later, his office revealed the state law it was referring to was one that requires the licenses expire on or before a person's legal status to be in the United State ends, as reported to the DMV.

Still, Newsom's spokesperson Brandon Richards shot back at Duffy in a statement.

"Once again, the Sean 'Road Rules' Duffy fails to share the truth — spreading easily disproven falsehoods in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader," Richards said.

Fatal truck crashes in Texas and Alabama earlier this year also highlight questions about these licenses. A fiery California crash that killed three people last month involved a truck driver in the country illegally, only adding to the concerns.

Duffy previously imposed new restrictions on which immigrants can qualify for commercial driver's licenses. He said earlier this fall that California and five other states had improperly issued commercial driver's licenses to noncitizens, but California is the only state Duffy has taken action against because it was the first one where an audit was completed. The reviews in the other states have been delayed by the government shutdown, but the Transportation Department is urging all of them to tighten their standards.

Duffy revoked $40 million in federal funding because he said California isn't enforcing English language requirements for truckers, and he reiterated Wednesday that he will take another $160 million from the state over these improperly issued licenses if they don't invalidate every illegal license and address all the concerns. But revoking these licenses is part of the state's effort to comply.

The new rules for commercial driver's licenses that Duffy announced in September make getting them extremely hard for immigrants because only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible. States will also have to verify an applicant's immigration status in a federal database. The licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant's visa expires sooner.

Under the new rules, only 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizens who have commercial licenses would qualify for them, which would only be available to drivers who have an H-2a, H-2b or E-2 visa. H-2a is for temporary agricultural workers while H-2b is for temporary nonagricultural workers, and E-2 is for people who make substantial investments in a U.S. business. But the rules won't be enforced retroactively, so those 190,000 drivers will be allowed to keep their commercial licenses at least until they come up for renewal.

Those new requirements were not in place at the time the 17,000 California licenses were issued. But those drivers were given notices that their licenses will expire in 60 days.

Duffy said in September that investigators found that one quarter of the 145 licenses they reviewed in California shouldn't have been issued. He cited four California licenses that remained valid after the driver's work permit expired — sometimes years after.

Newsom's office said the state followed guidance it received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about issuing these licenses to noncitizens.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is officially over after President Trump signed a bill passed by Congress on Wednesday night.

The federal government is reopening. But after 43 days on pause, things may not return to business as usual right away. For instance, federal workers are still awaiting backpay and air travel disruptions are expected to linger.

And some impacts could continue much longer than six weeks, whether that's national parks trying to make up for lost visitor revenue or taxpayers waiting longer for refunds from a backlogged Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

There's also the looming threat of another potential shutdown in the not-too-distant future, since this bill only funds the government through Jan. 30.

Here's a look at where things stand for now.

Keep scrolling for updates, and jump by category here:

Federal workers | SNAP | Smithsonian

Federal employees return to work, awaiting back pay 

Roughly 1.4 million federal workers have gone without pay for six weeks. Roughly half of them were required to keep working without paychecks, while hundreds of thousands of others were furloughed.

Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told agency heads to direct furloughed employees to return to work Thursday.

"Agencies should take all necessary steps to ensure that offices reopen in a prompt and orderly manner" on Thursday, Vought wrote in a Wednesday memo .

The timing of backpay is a different question.

After the government shutdown ending in January 2019 — then the longest in history — Congress passed a law ensuring back pay for federal workers "at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates."

But Trump appeared to suggest otherwise in public comments last month, leaving many feds worried.

The bill that Congress passed to end the shutdown guarantees back pay. It also reverses several agencies' attempted staffing reductions during the shutdown, which were paused by a federal judge , and prevents additional layoffs of federal employees through January.

Shaun Southworth, a federal employment attorney, said in an Instagram video that the timing of backpay will vary by agency based on their payroll providers, but most employees should start seeing deposits within days.

"Many employees historically saw deposits within the first business days after reopening," he says of the last shutdown. "A minority may roll to the next cycle if the system needs extra processing."

SNAP is back 

The bill Congress passed to reopen the government funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through September 2026.

The program, which some 42 million Americans rely on for food assistance, has been the subject of much uncertainty — and an escalating legal battle — in recent weeks. The Trump administration said last month that it would suspend SNAP funding in November due to the shutdown, prompting a wide outcry and a series of legal challenges.

While the administration initially said it would comply with two rulings requiring it to provide at least partial funding for SNAP in November, it balked — and ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court — after one of those judges said it must fund the program fully for the month. The Supreme Court paused that order (and extended that pause again on Tuesday, with the end of the shutdown in sight).

At this point, beneficiaries in some states have gotten their full monthly allocations, while others have gotten partial payments or nothing at all. Reopening the government means restarting SNAP, but it's not clear how quickly full payments will resume, since that varies by state. And, as NPR has reported , many who rely on the program are worried that benefits could be cut again.

Smithsonian institutions will reopen on a rolling basis

The Smithsonian, which encompasses 21 museums and the National Zoo, says its reopening will be gradual.

Its website says the National Museum of American History, as well as the National Air and Space Museum and its Virginia annex, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, will open their doors on Friday.

All other museums and the zoo — including its beloved live animal cams — will reopen to the public "on a rolling basis" by Monday.

This is a live story that will be updated throughout the day as we learn more.

Copyright 2025 NPR