The Brief

In the ever-evolving Inland Empire, the city of Ontario is experiencing significant changes, largely due to a growing “sports empire.”

Often dubbed the Gateway to Southern California, the city stretches across San Bernardino and Riverside counties and has shifted from an agricultural colony to a bustling residential hot spot.

Ontario Sports Empire

Last week, Ontario opened its brand new ONT Field, home of the Dodgers’ Single-A affiliate, the Tower Buzzers, which holds up to 6,500 fans.

Ontario City Manager Scott Ochoa joined AirTalk, LAist 89.3’s daily news show, to talk about how it’s shaping the city.

“The idea of putting together a sports complex that allows both community play and attracts the burgeoning market for travel teams really manifested itself into the potential of that 200-acre parcel,” Ochoa said.

The city plans to use this field and its surrounding area, calling it the Ontario Sports Empire, for a variety of tournament sports.

Here are some of the key features:

• Eight full-size baseball diamonds, 14 youth diamonds 
• 20 multipurpose fields for soccer or lacrosse that can be converted into four football or rugby fields
• Three large playground areas
• 227-room hotel  
• 51-foot jumbotron
• Six-level parking garage

Ontario Sports Empire will open in October. You can read more about the project’s development here.

‘A chip on our shoulder’

“The Sports Empire is really born from a chip on our shoulder,” Ochoa said, adding that they may be in the Inland Empire, but the goal is to remain as part of Greater Los Angeles.

That’s part of the Ontario City Council’s long-term strategy to expand offered amenities consistent with the boom in single-family home development over the last few decades. Ochoa said that, given Ontario’s proximity to L.A., he believes the city has a unique opportunity to evolve into an entertainment hub.

“Compared to the coastal communities, we are affordable,” he said.

Kome Ajise, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), pointed to sports entertainment hubs like those in Inglewood that have grown around SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome.

“Ontario has stepped forward to create a center that will dominate,” he said.

More growth

The City Council is working to expand the city’s 130-acre Grand Park to 340 acres, making it longer than Central Park in Manhattan, as well as a new Capital City Project that will be an entertainment mixed-use space.

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This weekend’s California Republican Party convention was poised to be a drama-filled event. The party held out a slim hope that its two gubernatorial candidates, if they played nicely enough, could lock Democrats out of the November election and reclaim statewide office for the first time in 20 years.

But then President Donald Trump weighed in, backing former Fox News host Steve Hilton over Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Now, the state party’s endorsement is far less consequential.

“He screwed over California Republicans yet again,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant, of Trump. “It's just political malpractice to not have done a dual endorsement,” he added. “People were briefing the White House on the situation.”

The weekend’s festivities in San Diego mark the first gathering since the state GOP’s bruising loss last November on Proposition 50, the Democrats’ gerrymandering plan designed to oust five Republicans from Congress in the midterm election. That loss only magnified the state party’s growing irrelevance since the ouster and resignation of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield congressmember who made sure the national GOP didn’t forget about its California members.

The gubernatorial contest, as well as legislative races, had become the new focal points for a party in search of a way out of the political wilderness. Trump’s endorsement probably dashed any hope of a Republican governor, leaving the Legislature as Republicans’ best chance for wins.

Bianco, who recently made headlines for seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots over claims of alleged voter fraud, is still expected to put up a fight for the 60% of delegate votes required to earn the party endorsement. Hilton will likely consolidate GOP support as loyal base voters fall in line behind Trump. Even without the party’s endorsement, Hilton is well positioned to finish in the top-two in June.

But the president’s nod is practically the kiss of death for a general election candidate in deep blue California, a state where even some Republicans tout bucking the president as a talking point on the campaign trail.

“The big fight if you're trying to be elected governor is actually to have a broad-based appeal in California,” said Matt Rexroad, a Republican campaign consultant who used to work for Bianco. “President Trump doesn't provide that.”

Republican candidates Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton participate in a gubernatorial candidate forum at Fresno State on April 1, 2026.

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Larry Valenzuela

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Without the drama surrounding the gubernatorial endorsement, Rexroad decided the convention was no longer worth attending. He canceled his flight from Sacramento and his hotel reservation in San Diego, opting instead to send a proxy ballot with another delegate friend. Rexroad planned to back Bianco.

Trump’s popularity has fallen dramatically nationally since the war in Iran began and gas prices have skyrocketed, worsening his already poor standing among heavily Democratic California voters. Both Bianco and Hilton have sought to minimize their support for Trump, as nearly three-quarters of Californians disapprove of him, and many strategists believed the party’s best shot at the governorship was keeping the president out of it.

“The party is relevant in some localities of the state. But on a statewide basis, the Republican Party is like the Democratic Party in Utah,” said Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant.

“You can’t think of a worse brand than Donald Trump in California,” Murphy said. “If they cancel the Republican state convention, as far as state politics are concerned, it’d make no difference to the outcome.”

Down the ticket, Republicans hope to hold and maybe even pick up additional seats in the state Legislature.

GOP looks down-ballot for an opening

With a brand irretrievably tied to Trump, one strategy for clawing back Republican losses is to focus on more conservative, inland parts of the state in local races. That includes pockets of Southern California, where Latino voters swung heavily in favor of Trump in 2024 and the party picked up three statehouse seats.

“What’s really going to be the difference-maker for Republicans in California is really focusing the ground game on districts that matter,” and raising money, said Jon Fleischman, a longtime Republican consultant. “If we can hold the seats we are capable of holding on a year that looks like a wave year for Democrats, then Republicans will do really well.”

First-time GOP Assemblymembers Jeff Gonzalez of Coachella and Leticia Castillo of Corona are examples. Each ran a successful campaign in their predominately Latino and slightly left-leaning districts in 2024.

Seeking vengeance, a handful of Democrats have lined up to unseat Gonzalez. Meanwhile, Castillo will face an old challenger. Both Republicans will be walking into this weekend with the party’s endorsement already in hand.

Castillo clinched her seat by fewer than 600 votes two years ago, defeating Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who had more money and name recognition. But Cervantes, who sought to replace her sister, Riverside Democratic state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, led a campaign that was muddied by revelations of Clarissa Cervantes’ two DUI convictions.

Assemblymember Leticia Castillo at her desk during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 23, 2025.

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Gonzalez, a retired Marine, flipped his Coachella Valley district in 2024, which swung for Trump by fewer than two percentage points. He faces three other Democrats, including Indio City Councilmember Oscar Ortiz, and so far has amassed a bigger war chest than all of them.

Some Republicans also worry whether the party is headed in the right direction. In San Diego, local infighting over whether a moderate or far-right candidate would be best positioned to succeed term-limited Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones has stunted the party’s ability to back a single candidate.

Jones and the party establishment have backed Ed Musgrove, a San Marcos City Councilmember, while Assemblymember Carl DeMaio and his group Reform California are pushing for two-time unsuccessful candidate Kristie Bruce-Lane.

Republicans could also look to flip a newly competitive San Diego district represented by first-term Democratic lawmaker Catherine Blakespear. The district has been trending leftward since redistricting in 2020 pulled in more parts of liberal San Diego County and dropped portions of more conservative Orange County. Blakespear has significantly outraised her two GOP competitors, Laura Bassett and Armen Kurdian, one of whom could be endorsed this weekend.

Incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Niello of Roseville could also face a more difficult than usual path to reelection in a midterm where moderate Republicans in liberal areas will have to fight the anti-Trump momentum.

A challenging picture in the U.S. House

Post-Prop. 50, California’s five remaining incumbent Republican House members face a bleak road to reelection. The districts were redrawn so drastically that several members have chosen to vacate their original seats and seek reelection in different districts.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Roseville resident whose current district spans much of the California-Nevada border, left the GOP entirely and is running as an independent for a Sacramento-area seat that Prop. 50 made more conservative. Rather than risk his political future by challenging Rep. Tom McClintock, an influential party fixture, Kiley settled on the 6th Congressional District after months of deliberation.

“This is, I think, probably an attempt to salvage something of a career later down the road by putting in the old college try,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project.

Longtime Rep. Darrell Issa, whose San Diego County district went from a Republican stronghold to a toss-up, announced his retirement barely before the deadline to file for the ballot. He reportedly explored moving to Texas to seek reelection there, but abandoned that plan when he failed to earn Trump’s approval.

And rather than retire as the longest-serving congressional Republican in California history, incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert is seeking to topple his colleague, Rep. Young Kim, in pursuit of an 18th term after his Inland Empire district was drastically reshaped into a liberal stronghold. Each has raised millions of dollars that they will undoubtedly deploy as they fight for one of the only remaining solidly Republican seats in California.

One bright spot for Republicans could be Rep. David Valadao’s campaign in the Central Valley. The six-term congressman has worked to distance himself from Trump over the years, voting in favor of the president’s second impeachment after the Jan. 6 insurrection attacks. He has only lost reelection once, in 2018 as part of an anti-Trump blue wave. He won back his seat in 2020 in the same election that former President Joe Biden won his district by double digits.

But Valadao faces one of his most difficult reelections yet as Democrats seek to saddle him with his vote for the GOP’s mega budget bill, which has stripped hundreds of thousands of his own constituents of their health insurance through Medi-Cal.

If California Republicans want to notch wins in races like Valadao’s, they know they need to motivate their voters to show up in November for what’s expected to be a bruising election for GOP candidates up and down the ticket.

The weekend’s gathering in San Diego should provide a good pulse check. Trump’s endorsement in the gubernatorial race could energize the base. Or, it might convince enough GOP voters that the result is a foregone conclusion.

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

What happens when a self-proclaimed “cultural provocateur” who’s embraced titles like the “Pope of Trash” and “Duke of Dirt” turns 80?

For one thing, writer and filmmaker John Waters told LAist, applause comes easier: “People applaud and I say, ‘Why?’ I haven't even said anything yet.’ It's 'cause I'm still alive.”

Not only is he still alive (and not quite 80 yet) he’s still “out there” and is not slowing down.

“I go to heavy metal concerts. I'm always going to things to spy on young people,” Waters said. “I'm always watching. All writers watch all the time.”

In addition to writing, he’s touring with a new one-man show titled “Going to Extremes” (with a stop in Los Angeles on April 14).

And as for what “extreme” means to him at this stage in his life, Waters said, “It used to be a good word, [but] now it's so bad because the government seems so extreme in such a ludicrous way to me. But the left and the right are both extreme now, they both are touchy, they have no humor. So I'm in the middle, using humor as a weapon [...] Humor is the only thing we have left to change things.”

Here are some highlights from Waters’s interview with LAist host Julia Paskin ahead of his “Going to Extremes” show in L.A. — condensed and edited for clarity.

“Provocative” versus “shocking”

Julia Paskin: Is it harder to be provocative or to make art that shocks in today's world? Talking about spying on the young people, I think about young people and how they're saturated with imagery that previous generations weren't. How do you penetrate that?

John Waters: That’s true. But to me, it's hard to be provocative. It's easy to be shocking, but shocking isn't always that good or funny or doesn't change anything.

What’s more intriguing to me, is to go to that edge where you can't walk and have both sides laugh with you, and at themself first, and then that's change. That's the only way we're gonna solve this. That's the only way we're gonna bring the country together.

 And maybe we should have sex with each other. Maybe every Proud Boy should have sex with antifa.

The pros and cons of Los Angeles — for writers and book-lovers

John Waters:  I don't wanna be around people that only talk about show business. And unfortunately, most everyone I know in Los Angeles, and I have great friends there, and I have a great time there, but they're all in the arts in some way. So that's all anybody talks about. In the other cities [San Francisco, New York, Provincetown and Baltimore, where Waters has residences] I know people that are truck drivers, funeral directors. I get more material that way.

Julia Paskin: You wrote in your 1986 book Crackpot that “Los Angeles is everything a great American city should be: Rich, hilarious, of questionable taste and throbbing with fake glamour.” Does that assessment still hold true for you?

John Waters:  It certainly does. But I also like being in L.A. recently when I have friends that take me to places that I've never been, because I'm always working when I'm in L.A. I'm never there with time off. 

So I really have fun there — lots of good bookshops and lots of neighborhoods I didn't know, like Echo Park. So I have fun in L.A. in a whole different way.  But that's when I'm not working.

Julia Paskin:  Any spots in L.A. you wanna shout out? Anything that was particularly cool? 

John Waters: [Stories Books and Cafe], that bookshop I love in Echo Park, there's a guy named John Tottenham who wrote a hilarious book about working there that you should really read. So I like to always go there. They have a really good selection of books.

Artificial intelligence for art?

John Waters:  Everybody asks me about AI and the thing is, I've used it a couple times and was shocked at how good it was, but then I didn't want to use the image, so I had to have it repainted by a real artist so I wasn't using it. 

But I want AI to cure cancer. I want AI to cure AIDS. I want AI to cure COVID. I want AI for science, and I'm all for it, if that works. 

Julia Paskin: What about in art?  

John Waters: I mean, nothing is off limits for art. You can use anything in a new way and AI is new, so of course it can be used for something. The problem is it's a good first draft that you didn't think up, but you sort of thought it up because you told it what to do.

So it is astounding. It is a magic trick to me that's amazing. But it's here, it's certainly not gonna go away. I always thought it would be good for just porn, but you can tell immediately, it never looks real. It's too good. It looks ridiculous. 

Advice for aspiring artists, writers filmmakers

 John Waters: Always have a backup career. I like to tell stories, so if I can’t get a movie made, I write a book.

Go see everything. Whatever field you wanna be in, participate. If you wanna be an artist, go to every gallery 'till you see a gallery that might like your work. See every movie, watch 'em with the sound off so you can see how they're edited. 

You have to participate in the world that you want to enter. If you wanna be in fashion, go to the thrift. You don't have to spend lots of money. Go to the thrift shops and buy the worst outfits that cost a nickel, that then are referenced by big designers that cost $5,000 a week later. 

The U.S. war with Iran and the resulting spike in energy prices have pushed inflation to its highest level in nearly two years.

A report from the Labor Department Friday showed consumer prices in March were up 3.3% from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase since May of 2024. Prices jumped 0.9% between February and March, with higher gasoline prices accounting for nearly three-quarters of that increase.

Gas prices have jumped by more than a dollar a gallon, on average, since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack on Iran. Pump prices have remained high this week, despite a tentative ceasefire.

Higher jet fuel prices also contributed to a jump in the cost of airline tickets last month, although food prices were flat, as rising costs for restaurant meals offset a decline in grocery prices.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called "core" inflation was 2.6% in March.

Inflation spike reverses stabilizing trend

Although inflation is nowhere near the four-decade high it reached in 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, progress on stabilizing prices fizzled out last year, partly as a result of President Trump's tariffs. The wartime jump in energy prices has pushed inflation even higher.

"We were making progress, making progress. Then we kind of stalled out and now it's been inching itself up the other way," Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee told the Detroit Economic Club this week.

Goolsbee worries that the longer inflation stays above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, the greater the risk that high inflation becomes baked into the economy. But a survey from the New York Fed this week showed that even though people expect higher inflation in the short run, they still believe it will come down in the long run.

Fed policymakers try not to overreact to a spike in gasoline prices, which are notorious for bouncing up and down. But core inflation has also been climbing, which is likely to make the central bank cautious about any quick cuts in interest rates.

The Fed is also keeping a close eye on the job market, which showed some signs of life in March when employers added 178,000 jobs, after cutting workers the previous month. While employers have not been adding a lot of jobs, they've been reluctant to lay people off as well.

"I think it's from uncertainty," Goolsbee said. "I think that's what happens when businesses are uncertain and they say we're just going to sit on our hands until we figure out, is the war going to be a temporary shock?"

Copyright 2026 NPR

Hudson Idov wasn’t excited about any of his college options — that is, until his Los Angeles house burned down in the Palisades Fire his senior year of high school.

Less than a week after graduation, he and one of his classmates enrolled in the carpentry program at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, a community college just south of downtown. Their goal is to start a construction company one day and help rebuild the Palisades. “We have big, big 10-year plans,” he said during a break in his morning class.

His personal tragedy drove the decision, but he also considers it wise to pursue a high-demand job, especially now. Before the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, Los Angeles was already short roughly 70,000 qualified construction workers. The destruction of thousands of homes and businesses during the fires made that problem even worse. The city now needs over 100,000 new workers in construction and construction-related careers, according to one state analysis, which estimates median pay at just under $30 an hour, though it varies depending on the position and the level of experience.

Student Hudson Idov during class in the carpentry department at Los Angeles Trade Technical College on March 24, 2026.

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Jules Hotz

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Last year, the state awarded five Los Angeles community colleges a total of $5 million to train more workers who can help rebuild from the Palisades and Eaton fires. The money only recently arrived at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, where it will fund supplies and new curricula for students who are entering the construction industry. Pasadena City College, a few miles northeast of Los Angeles Trade-Tech, is using part of the money to build a 55,000-square-foot center for construction training.

Historically, it takes years to recover after devastating fires, and some California cities hit hard by fires in 2017 and 2018 still have just a fraction of their homes rebuilt.

“We can’t put out enough people,” said Jaime Alvarez, one of Idov’s carpentry instructors, as students hammered, sawed and drilled all around him. This semester, Alvarez has about 30 students. The four-semester carpentry program at the technical college is likely the largest such program in the state, enrolling over 1,800 people per year.

Rebuilding the foundation of the Palisades

Idov still lives in an AirBnB with the few belongings he grabbed on the night he evacuated his home. He has some of his clothes and a couple of personal items he could fit in his car, such as a bowling pin from a birthday party he went to as a kid. The rest is gone, he said.

Most days, he starts school at 7 a.m and finishes around noon. He normally spends the afternoons working part time for a general contractor. The carpentry program is designed to take about two years to complete, roughly 25 hours a week. This semester, he’s learning how to build concrete foundations, how to drill rebar into those foundations and to construct the frame of a building — work that’s particularly needed in fire-damaged parts of Los Angeles.

Nicole Jordan, a carpentry instructor, teaches a class at Los Angeles Trade Technical College on March 24, 2026.

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Jules Hotz

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The extreme heat from fires doesn’t just burn down wood; it also makes concrete foundations brittle and unstable, Alvarez said. His course has to be sparing with its use of concrete, though, since it’s expensive.

Although the college’s construction, maintenance and utilities programs have a total annual budget of over $10 million, most of the money goes to staff salaries, leaving just over $575,000 for many of the supplies students use, said Abigail Patton, the vice president of academic affairs. She said the state grant for fire recovery will help supplement supply costs, including the concrete in Alvarez’s class.

While the state funding is helping, other money recently fell through. In 2024, Los Angeles Trade-Tech was one of the recipients of a $20 million federal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The college was set to receive $2 million through that grant, part of which went to the Coalition for Responsible Community Development, an economic development organization based in south Los Angeles.

The money was supposed to support the college’s construction programs, where students would learn about home weatherization, lead abatement, and residential energy audits. The federal agency disbursed just over $88,000 of the grant to the Coalition for Responsible Community Development before suddenly cancelling it last May after President Trump took office. Environmental justice groups filed a lawsuit appealing the Trump administration’s decision.

The Coalition for Responsible Community Development refused to comment about the grant, but the Environmental Protection Agency was unsparing in its remarks. “Maybe the Biden-Harris Administration shouldn’t have forced its radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ priorities on the EPA’s core mission,” said Brigit Hirsch, press secretary for the department, in an email to CalMatters. “Thankfully, those days are over.”

‘It’s not all fun and games’

Some short-term community college certificates in construction can lead to high-paying jobs, including some that pay over $40 an hour. Many of Los Angeles Trade-Tech’s programs, including carpentry, electrical maintenance and welding, are popular and often at capacity.

But students who enroll rarely graduate. Ultimately, about 33% of students who started at Los Angeles Trade-Tech’s construction, maintenance and utilities programs got a certificate, degree or transferred to a university within four years, according to the college’s data from students who started in 2021. Low graduation rates are typical for most community colleges. Many students, especially low-income students, struggle to manage the demands of school along with caring for children or aging parents and working full- or part-time jobs.

Students participate in hands-on classwork at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College on March 24, 2026.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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Students participate in hands-on classwork at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College on March 24, 2026.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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“We get floods of students that want to do this, and I say it’s not all fun and games in terms of swinging a hammer,” said Nicole Jordan, who teaches the first semester in the carpentry program. “We do a lot of math and a lot of book work.” Before Jordan’s students start building anything, they have to study blueprints and Los Angeles building codes so they know what is possible and legally required.

Still, there’s a sense of community among the students, who vary in age and ethnic background. To help them get through it, Jordan’s first semester students have a cheer. “We the best,” one student yells as they sit in a classroom. “Carpentry,” responds everyone in unison.

After the cheer, Jordan walks up to the white board and the class settles down. She sketches out the blueprint of a home. If they stick around, the students will build that home in just four semesters.

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