The Brief

My 110 Freeway commute to LAist’s Pasadena office is lined with beige, concrete walls that (try to) insulate the surrounding neighborhoods from the din of my car and the thousands of others on the road.

But on a recent morning, a thick garland of yellow flowers spilled over the top of the sound walls from the 91 through the South Figueroa Corridor and glowed in the early light.

I wondered what could grow, let alone thrive, in such an unforgiving place. So I put my journalistic powers to use and found more questions along the way.

‘Showy, but invasive’

Since the 1940 opening of the Cahuenga Pass Freeway, Angelenos have complained about highway noise. The first soundwall was finally built along Interstate 680 in Milpitas, near San Jose, in 1968.

As of 2023, there are about 338 miles of soundwall in L.A.and Ventura Counties according to Caltrans' office of environmental engineering (including one segment made from mulch in Long Beach.)

L.A. Metro and the State Department of Transportation collaborate to build the county's soundwalls, and Caltrans is responsible for their upkeep. I sent one of their representatives a photo taken from my car window and received an answer two days later.

Dolichandra unguis-cati. Common name: “cat’s claw” vine.

Cat's claw flowers engulf the sound wall on the westside of the 110 sound wall near Vernon Avenue on April 10, 2025.

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The Caltrans spokesperson ended their email with “please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.”

And I did have questions.

Because when you punch cat’s claw into Google, one of the top search results is a university article that calls the “showy but invasive plant” a “major nuisance” that is illegal to sell or buy in Florida.

“Invasive plants don't support our local fluttery and flying and crawling species — birds, bees, butterflies, caterpillars,” said Erik Blank, a horticultural educator at the nonprofit Theodore Payne Foundation. “They may out-compete the plants that do support those species.”

The climbing vine is native to the West Indies, Central and South America, but is now found around the world from China to Australia. Blank pointed me to a USDA report that estimated that cat’s claw could establish itself in about 20% of the United States.

“That tells me this plant is super adaptable,” Blank said. ”I admire plants like that, but I don't wanna… play with fire, so to say.”

In mid-April 2025, I noticed thick garlands of yellow flowers spilling over the top of the sound walls from the 91 through the South Figueroa Corridor.

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I thought about this the next time I drove on the 110 and noticed the plant had crawled up and obscured part of a diamond-shaped highway sign, which now read “____ WORK AHEAD.”

Changing the narrative on urban plants

Alessandro Ossola studies how plants can create greener, healthier cities at the University of California, Davis. One of his current research projects examines how vines can cool urban spaces.

“The beauty of vines is that they grow fast — much faster than a tree,” Ossola said. “We can actually use the two of them together because if we want to green cities faster, the tree is your long-term goal, right? But the vines can be that stopgap measure to create shade fast.”

He was familiar with the vine because it grows in the UC Davis greenhouse and features in a lesson on “vines and climbers.” His students, like me, are fans of the yellow flowers.

“It's really, really hard to find plants that can thrive in these [urban] environments,” Ossola said. “Particularly flowering plants that can also bloom and somehow beautify landscapes that otherwise would be just gray concrete.”

The plant's eponymous "claws" are specialized leaves that help the vine climb with—intention! “They use another object in the landscape to be able to position themselves so they can maximize the amount of light that they can get,” Ossolsa said.

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Part of the reason the vine thrives along the 110 Freeway is that it doesn’t need much water, he said. Florida’s comparative abundance of moisture likely contributes to the plant’s invasive nature there.

Cat’s claw is not on California’s list of invasive plant species. Ossola said that Southern California’s frequent droughts and maintenance can help keep the plant in check.

“We need to change, a bit, the narrative where you plant and forget,” he said. “Plants need our care. They can provide us with a lot of benefits, beautifying our cities, providing cooling and so on, but they need a bit of care.”

Cat's claw flowers turn to string-bean like seed pods that eventually release brown seeds with "paper wings," according to the University of Florida.

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He said cities can benefit from a variety of plants, both native and exotic.

“The best solution will be to create a biodiverse landscape where you don't have only this particular species, but you have many different species,” Ossola said. “Even if one species fails or becomes invasive, then the rest of the ecosystem is somehow well balanced.”

Flourishing in a freeway environment 

The Caltrans spokesperson forwarded my questions to the department’s regional landscape architecture team.

In a statement, the team wrote that the vine I saw was planted around 1996, “a boom time for soundwall construction.”

Around that time, I imagine it was becoming clear that while the walls are useful, aesthetically, they leave a lot to be desired.

The wide expanse of concrete is blank canvas for enterprising taggers and the walls can radiate heat into the surrounding community.

“Vines were field-tested to see which vines would flourish in a freeway environment where wind, glare, pavement temperatures, and road dust can damage a plant's health,” they wrote.

As to whether the plant could threaten the natural environment?

“Almost any plant, whether native or non-native, can be considered invasive in a pristine environment if introduced,” Caltrans wrote. “The vine in this landscaped area receives periodic maintenance, which keeps its growth in check."

It’s unclear why, but Caltrans couldn’t find records of the cat’s claw planted elsewhere in the region.

“There were a few previous locations, and due to construction, the vines were removed and never replaced in kind. To my knowledge, the cat's claw vine has not been used in over twenty years.”

I, for one, am grateful for the pop of color along my morning commute — and the reminder that a resilient environment is one that includes the contributions of many.

California legislators passed two bills Monday that would require insurance companies to follow new state rules for testing and cleaning homes contaminated by toxic smoke as the result of fires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of this month to sign the bills into law.

Assembly Bills 1642 and 1795 would work in tandem to establish what Assemblymember John Harabedian, the author of one of the bills, calls “first-in-the-nation testing and remediation standards based on science.” One change would require insurance companies to keep paying policyholders' additional living expenses until their property has been restored to pre-fire condition and cleared for occupancy.

Harabedian, whose district includes Altadena, said a lack of clear, post-fire cleaning rules has left survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires to battle with their insurers over testing for, and remediation of, harmful contaminants.

If such rules had been in place after last year’s devastating L.A. fires, Harabedian said, “a lot of the survivors now, who are dealing with smoke damage, would be back in their homes.”

He said many of his constituents are now “trying to afford rent, trying to get the remediation and cleanup done to a satisfactory level."

"And, frankly," he added, "they're spending a lot of the money they need to rebuild their lives in litigation and disputes with their insurance companies.”

Their homes survived, but they still haven’t returned

Last year, a group of residents affected by the Eaton Fire released testing results that found many homes still tested positive for lead and asbestos, even after professional remediation.

Dawn Fanning, managing director of Eaton Fire Residents United, said she likely will not be able to return to her home until 2027 because of ongoing disputes with her insurance company.

“The night of the fire was traumatic,” Fanning said. “But what I and thousands of others have had to go through since then is more traumatic — at least for me. Being constantly gaslit and delayed and denied, it’s just an absolute nightmare.”

The legislation calls on the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control to establish those testing and cleaning standards for lead and asbestos by Dec. 31, 2028. The department would need to establish guidance on heavy metals and other contaminants by Dec. 31, 2029.

What will the changes mean for CA’s strained insurance market?

Proponents say the rules will also protect renters seeking answers on when their homes are safe to reoccupy. Some renters who lived near Eaton and Palisades fire burn zones have felt pressured by their landlords to return to homes they believed were not adequately cleaned.

Opponents of the legislation — which included insurance industry groups, the California Association of Realtors and the San Diego Gas and Electric Company — argued the proposals inappropriately strip oversight and regulation from the California Department of Insurance.

“Given the complexity of smoke within insurance claims, CDI convened a Smoke Claims and Remediation Task Force in the Summer of 2025,” the insurance industry groups wrote in a joint letter to state legislators earlier this year.

They added that the legislation “usurps the ongoing work of the CDI and subsequent policy negotiations.”

When asked if imposing new requirements on insurers could raise premiums for homeowners already seeing spikes in home insurance coverage, Harabedian said he felt the change could actually stabilize costs.

“There have been millions, if not billions, of dollars spent in these insurance disputes,” he said. “The rates that we are currently paying are baking those costs in, because it is so inefficient. I think survivors and — I think — insurance companies want certainty.”

After nearly a month of intense closed-door negotiations, California lawmakers on the last day of session killed a compromise bill that failed to insulate utilities when they cause catastrophic wildfires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the utilities had fought to significantly reduce what utility companies pay when they cause a wildfire. Last week Newsom struck a compromise with Senate and Assembly leaders that would have imposed no limits on fire survivors’ compensation or lawyers’ contingency fees for individuals’ lawsuits. It also would have retained insurance companies’ ability to sue utilities to recoup their costs for claims, and would have barred private equity firms from investing in insurance claims. The utilities’ stocks plunged since the deal was reached. The Assembly did not take up the bill on Tuesday, effectively killing it.

“The proposal before us does not yet deliver the relief, accountability or meaningful reform that Californians deserve,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to “hundreds of hours” spent on the effort in the past few weeks.

'Here until January'

Newsom had hoped the bill would address his concerns over rising electricity rates and the potential for another utility bankruptcy in California in the event of more catastrophic wildfires. He hinted to reporters Monday night at the Capitol that he’s “here until January” and wasn’t done with his effort.

“I know we all hate utilities, so no one wants to defend a utility, but you’ve got to deal with reality," Newsom said. “This thing’s not going to get better on its own.”

His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the deal fell apart.

The compromise legislation, Senate Bill 492, was seen as a victory for some Los Angeles County fire survivors, consumer advocacy groups and insurance companies, all of whom urged the governor and lawmakers not to shift utilities’ possible costs to them.

“It’s tragic the way this all played out,” said Jamie Court, president of advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “They negotiated a deal, and renege when the utilities didn’t like it.”

“We have invested hundreds of hours to fight back the utility bailout and the attacks on victims’ rights,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivors Network. “If the speaker says his focus is on survivors, then we would expect that those attacks don’t come back in any legislation that comes out of any special session.”

Utility stocks drubbed

The high-profile campaigning in the past few weeks cost the state’s investor-owned utilities dearly. Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison stock plummeted and San Diego Gas & Electric shares fell in the past few days as Wall Street investors digested what some analysts called a “Sacramento strikeout” for utilities.

The chief executives of PG&E and Edison wrote to Senate Pro Tem Monique Limon and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas on Monday, telling them that the utilities had collectively lost $20 billion in market value since Thursday. They warned of possible waning investments and financial risks that “will have cascading impacts” on the state’s economy and climate ambitions.

The utilities did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Lobbyists and some lawmakers likewise lamented Monday that decreased investor confidence in the utilities will lead to higher borrowing costs, which could mean job cuts and less investment in critical energy infrastructure.

“Workers got screwed, ratepayers got screwed, lawyers and insurance companies win,” said Scott Wetch, a lobbyist for the California Coalition of Utility Employees and the State Association of Electrical Workers, at an Assembly Utilities and Energy committee hearing.

“It is a big disaster that we were not able to come up with that structural reform,” said Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, a Democrat representing Thousand Oaks.

'Folks miscalculated'

Some lawmakers pushed back Monday, referring to the limited amount of time they had to work on the bill, which they said centers the interests of fire survivors.

“If you expect to back us into a corner, and then approve something without an opportunity to amend it, to talk to our constituents, to talk to groups that are impacted by it, this is the outcome,” said Assemblymember Chris Rogers, a Ukiah Democrat, at the hearing.

Assemblymember John Harabedian, a Pasadena Democrat, on Monday called the Wall Street reaction “hysteria.”

“The market had false expectations,” he said at the hearing. “Folks miscalculated exactly what could get done” in the last few weeks of the legislative session, he added.

But on Tuesday, Harabedian said the bill does not help survivors and issued the following statement: “This proposal only rearranges the chairs on the deck of the Titanic when all Californians are desperate for meaningful utility reform.”

Yue Stella Yu and Kate Wolffe contributed to this report.

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

Is this the year that Gov. Gavin Newsom allows students without legal status to legally work at California’s public colleges and universities?

A state bill with wide support from Democrats but opposed by Republicans seeks to do just that by adopting an untested legal theory that argues a 1980s federal law banning employment for people without legal status doesn’t apply to state agencies. But university leaders and Newsom worry that acting on the theory could put the state on another collision course with the Trump administration.

The bill easily cleared the Legislature Friday, including a "yes" vote from one Republican. The bill now heads to Newsom’s desk.

Assembly Bill 713 by Assemblymember José Luis Solache, a Democrat from Lakewood, is seemingly straightforward: The University of California, California State University and community colleges cannot disqualify students without legal status from campus employment. If it becomes law, it would kick in Jan. 6.

The systems together enrolled an estimated 60,000 students without legal status in 2023 and most were in the community colleges. Some attend private colleges and wouldn’t be covered by the bill.

Leading the charge for this right to work on campuses are students without legal status, immigration rights groups and legal scholars. Access to safe working conditions for students without legal status is a high priority because they’re ineligible for federal Pell grants — up to $7,400 annually — and federal student loans that come with more borrower protections than ones offered by private lenders. California awards eligible in-state students tuition waivers regardless of immigration status, so many students without legal status can at least attend a public institution tuition-free.

“While California has a longstanding commitment to expanding access, affordability, and student success in higher education, our undocumented students continue to face significant financial and structural barriers,” Solache said at a bill hearing in June.

Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2024, echoing a chief worry put forward by the University of California: Any effort to employ students without proper status would incur the wrath of the Trump administration, which could attempt to pull some or all of the $17 billion in annual federal support the system gets.

The state’s Department of Finance is recommending a "no" vote on Solache’s bill. The fear of federal litigation and budget cuts are the main reasons why.

The University of California abandoned its own review of employing students without legal status in 2024 for those reasons. Students at the public meeting cried and shouted at the board’s regents when they made the decision.

Some Republicans cited the risk of the Trump administration cutting federal higher education funding as a reason for their opposition to the current bill.

“If we're going to move something forward like this that then threatens 100% of all of the students, I think that's irresponsible for us as legislators,” said Assemblymember David Tangipa, a Republican from Fresno, at a January bill hearing. He voted "no" on the bill Friday.

After Newsom vetoed the 2024 bill, which sailed through the Legislature with minimal opposition, some students sued the University of California. A state appellate court ruled that UC's argument that the federal government might sue the system was an abuse of discretion under the state’s law banning employment and housing discrimination. The court said UC’s policy of not hiring students without legal status was legally indefensible unless it can show that federal law requires the UC to continue its policy of not hiring them. The UC appealed, but the state Supreme Court let the appellate ruling stand. Still, the court ruling was silent on the soundness of the legal theory that the state can hire workers without legal status.

The court ordered UC to pay more than $500,000 in legal fees on behalf of the plaintiffs, a student and a former lecturer.

It’s unclear if Solache’s bill can even force the UC to comply if it becomes law. Since 1879 the state constitution has granted the system a high degree of autonomy.

What is the legal theory being tested?

The bill, like its predecessor that Newsom vetoed, takes its cues from a team of UCLA scholars who advanced a theory in 2022 that a federal law banning employers from hiring workers without legal status doesn’t apply to state employers. The architects of the legal argument say the law in question, 1986’s Immigration Reform and Control Act, never actually listed state agencies as employers covered by the law.

Other laws passed by Congress clearly included states in restrictions that also applied to the private sector or federal employers. The omission, the UCLA scholars say, means Congress never intended to tie the hands of state agencies on whom they can hire. An analyst at the state Senate’s judiciary committee also noted that Congress may be unable to dictate whom states can hire, because that undermines protections for states’ rights.

Student advocates then persuaded the UC Board of Regents to consider adopting that legal theory so students without legal status could obtain campus jobs. But momentum for that policy stalled, culminating with the UC dropping the plan.

Student voice

Some students have found a way to work while enrolled despite the ban on campus jobs.

Working without proper immigration status is not illegal, but employers cannot knowingly employ individuals who lack proper legal status, wrote University of Oklahoma law professor Kit Johnson in a 2022 law article. Employers often take advantage of the legal precarity of immigrants without legal status by paying them less than they’d earn with proper legal status.

A legal workaround, she writes, is for such immigrants to form limited liability companies, or LLCs. That business structure makes them consultants hired for a job, as opposed to employees.

Some students without legal status at the UC did just that, or they formed similarly structured cooperatives. But not every campus student can form an LLC or knows to do that.

Is student data safe from federal inquiry?

Backers of Solache’s bill and the Senate’s judiciary committee analysis say students without legal status employed at a campus aren’t at greater risk of immigration action despite concerns raised by skeptics of the proposed policy to hire them. The judiciary committee wrote that state agencies arguably aren’t required to verify employment eligibility for roles that aren’t funded by the federal government. They also say federal and state laws bar universities from sharing personal student information without that student’s consent.

But public California universities have shared student and personnel information with the federal government under the Trump administration’s investigations into alleged campus antisemitism. Critics say the administration exploited antisemitism accusations to coerce campuses across the country into settlements that align with the conservative values of the White House. The Cal State system settled with staff and faculty unions after they sued over the disclosure of personal information, promising to alert workers before their information is released to federal authorities investigating antisemitism.

Advocates of the bill also argue that the risk of apprehension and deportation is not reason enough to oppose it. Students understand the risk and that doesn’t change if they work legally or not.

Bill addresses questions the appellate court wouldn’t

As a result of the lawsuit students and advocates filed against the UC, the court sided with the plaintiffs because it found that the university’s employment policy discriminated against students based on their immigration status, which state law prohibits. It challenged the UC to provide an argument for why it thinks the federal government would go after the system for establishing this policy. Importantly, the court did not order the UC to begin hiring students without legal status.

“The UC now has to either end the discrimination against undocumented students or defend its decision to do so by reference to federal law, neither of which it has done to date,” wrote Ahilan Arulanantham in an email. Arulanantham is one of the UCLA scholars behind the legal theory and a counsel in the plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the University of California.

Omar Rodriguez, a UC spokesperson, wrote in an email that the "UC is evaluating its options in light of the court’s ruling and will take appropriate action when that evaluation has concluded.”

“UC does not have a position on AB 713,” he added.

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

Two litters of a rare southwestern rattlesnake were born at the L.A. Zoo last month. The six New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake pups are the first to be bred under a multi-agency recovery program that started two years ago. 

The shy, gray-and-tan snake lives in isolated mountain ranges in Arizona, New Mexico and Northern Mexico and is considered “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

" Conservation … isn't just about protecting the animals that look most similar to us or that are the easiest to like,” said Byron Wusstig, the L.A. Zoo’s reptile curator. “It's about preserving that ecosystem as a whole.”

The L.A. Zoo is one of three institutions working to breed the snakes so their offspring can be released back into the wild as part of Project Obscurus (the rattlers’ scientific name is crotalus willardi obscurus). This year’s litters are the first zoo-bred pair in the project and the result of pairings made about a year ago. The pups’ parents were collected from the mountains of Sierra San Luis, Mexico, for breeding.

What's life like for the snakelets?

Unlike most egg-laying reptiles, rattlesnakes give birth to live young and “hang out” with the neonates for the first few weeks of life. Wusstig said the baby ridge-nosed rattlesnakes have been basking in the light on top of their mom and sipping water that beads up on her scales. The pups snack on centipedes in addition to bite-sized pieces of the mice and quail that adults eat.

“There is a bit of parental behavior that happens with rattlesnakes that we still have a lot to learn about, but it's really interesting to observe,” Wusstig said.

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In the coming months, Project Obscurus will decide whether these snakes are released back into the wild or remain in the breeding program.

“Success won't be measured by how many individuals we can breed here in the zoo,” Wusstig said. “Ultimate success is getting the populations in the range where they're most threatened in Arizona and New Mexico, getting those to have sustainable populations … that are genetically diverse and stable in the long term.”

Can I see the babies?

The zoo’s ridge-nosed rattlesnakes are quarantined to prevent them from picking up illnesses that could spread to wild populations once they’re reintroduced to their native environment. However, the zoo has several other species of rattlesnake that you can safely observe from behind panes of thick glass.