The Brief

A highlight of L.A.’s World Cup summer was the free watch parties: city-sponsored events where more than 45,000 Angelenos watched soccer matches on big screens in their local parks.

City officials want to bring those local gatherings back for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and they're beginning to map out how they’ll look and feel.

At a city council committee meeting on the Olympics earlier this month, city staff laid out a plan to host at least one site in each council district. They also said L.A. will need dedicated staff, security and as many as 2,000 volunteers to put them on.

Paul Krekorian, head of the city’s major events office and former council president, told the council the city would also need to invest in shade structures to keep people cool in the summer heat.

“In many of our parks, there isn't a lot of shade to begin with,” Krekorian said, reflecting on the World Cup watch parties. “[In] many of our parks, these screens were sited on asphalt or other places where it was exceptionally hot.”

At the council’s direction, city staff has identified potential watch-party locations in the 15 city council districts.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson indicated that the council would likely want even more.

“ The size of our districts are too big, and the topography — and even demographics — are too different to just have one in most districts,” he said.

The big outstanding question is the price tag. So far, no city funds have been allocated to the watch parties. Each one will need screens, portable toilets, lighting and other amenities.

“ It will be a very expensive program; there's no doubt about it,” said John Wickham of the Chief Legislative Analyst’s office, who presented on the plans at a city council committee meeting on the Olympics earlier this month.

Wickham suggested sponsorships could help reduce the price tag of the events for the city — but a city report notes that private organizing committee LA28 has the right to sponsorship deals around the 2028 Games.

According to that report, compiled by the city’s chief budget adviser and legislative analyst, the city’s Olympic watch parties will require substantial funding in L.A.’s next two budget cycles.

Democrats lost the 2024 elections in part because of their eroding support among Latino voters, a constituency that was once a reliable segment of their base.

That November, Kamala Harris won the Latino vote by three points, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2020, Joe Biden carried them by 25 points.

This year, swing districts with large Hispanic populations could help decide which party controls the House. And Democrats are scrambling for ways to win those voters back.

One new effort comes from the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, also known as BOLD PAC. In February, they launched a program to personally connect social media influencers with voters.

"We're turning to trusted voices in local communities that have followings giving them information and then allowing them to create content in a way that is organic and authentic," said Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Calif., who chairs BOLD PAC.

That includes Latina content creator Alexa Flores, who not long ago mostly posted about beauty tips and fashion. But the Arizona resident shifted to politics in response to the Trump administration's immigration policies.

She says she wants Latino voters to understand their impact if they vote.

"My job is to get people to understand that so that they can go and move that needle," said Flores, who has nearly 500,000 followers across her platforms.

Her job now includes "get-out-the-vote" events with BOLD PAC in swing districts around the country. Flores, for her part, will appear at a wine tasting event in Las Cruces, N.M. – where Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez is locked in a close race against Republican Greg Cunningham. She'll also appear at a Día de los Muertos event with lowriders and voters in Tucson, Ariz., where Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza is trying to unseat GOP incumbent Juan Ciscomani.

BOLD PAC says it is not paying content creators for posts. Instead, they're providing stipends of $1,500 for flights, hotels and other travel costs for each event. 

Sánchez says content creators could help bridge a gap for her party. Thirty percent of Latinos regularly get their news from influencers on social media, according to Pew Research Center. That's more than any other demographic.

"So whether that's ... Instagram or YouTube or TikTok, that's how they're getting their information," she said. "So we need to be in those spaces."

Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Calif., chairs BOLD PAC. She says content creators can help bridge a gap for her party. Above, Sanchez speaks on immigration at the U.S. Capitol on May 10, 2023.

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Democratic strategist Stephanie Valencia says Democratic efforts to win back long term support from Latino voters is going to be an uphill battle. Valencia is co-founder of Equis Research, which estimates that roughly a third of Latinos are considered independent voters.

Of those, more than 40% think neither party cares about people like them.

"One election cycle is not going to solve the problem that Democrats have had and a frayed trust with Latino voters that has developed over the last several election cycles," Valencia said.

In 2024, Latinos shifted right in response to what they saw as liberal immigration policies and a focus on foreign intervention over domestic policy under former President Biden. That year, President Trump grew his party's share of Latino votes by double digits to 48%, leaving Democrats with a slim majority, according to Pew Research Center.

It's those kinds of swings that can cost a party a close election.

This year, leaders at BOLD PAC sense an opportunity, as they've watched a growing number of Latinos say they feel betrayed by President Trump's immigration and economic policies.

Still, Valencia warns that some Democratic campaigns continue to underestimate how "swingy" a good chunk of the Latino electorate is. That is, they show up with too little, too late when it comes to campaign spending and messaging.

"Latinos are just a more persuadable universe and can't just be treated as a base turnout universe for Democrats," she said.

Solangie Hernandez Hollowell, a Texas influencer who is also working with BOLD PAC, agrees. Like others, her posts often don't even mention specific candidates, but they do focus on issues that Democrats are campaigning on this cycle – issues like taxes and immigration.

So she wants to help Latinos connect with candidates in a way that goes beyond the transactional.

"Latinos feel like politicians show up just right before the election. I don't feel like we feel very heard," she said.

So she's translating what this political moment can mean for them.

"My main goal right now is making sure that everything that's happening around the world reaches my family and my community in a way that they can understand it," she said.

Flores, the Arizona influencer, says she hopes for more awareness that Latinos are having a growing impact on major pieces of American life.

"The wave of Latinos growing in this country is becoming a bigger voice for a lot of things," she said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

California’s next governor must reckon with a state of extremes — where weather swings from drought to deluge, and water divides the land of backyard swimming pools from places where grandmothers fear to bathe babies in water from the tap.

Climate change is raising the stakes, amplifying the cycles of wet to dry and fueling conflicts between water haves and have-nots that have defined California for generations.

The next governor — Republican Steve Hilton or Democrat Xavier Becerra — will inherit these challenges, and more.

Groundwater overuse and sinking land in the state’s agricultural heartland continue to jeopardize both water supply and delivery systems. The fishing industry is cratering, and farmers feel so squeezed that some are planting solar panels instead of crops.

And hundreds of thousands of Californians still lack access to safe, affordable water.

From this shared reality, the two candidates’ strategies diverge: Hilton is outspoken about his plans to clearcut environmental regulations in order to build more ways to store and move water to farms and cities.

Becerra leans on his history as attorney general, the legal arm in California’s first-term fights against President Donald Trump. But Becerra offers no specific proposals on water.

“(Becerra) knows that there is not a whole lot of upside for him in coming out with detailed plans ahead of the election,” said Max Gomberg, an independent water consultant and former climate and conservation manager for the State Water Resources Control Board, who resigned in protest of the Newsom administration’s water policies.

“Because no matter what he says, someone will pop up to criticize it.”

More is more

Republican Hilton’s water strategy is: more.

More water for farms. More storage. More desalination. More water recycling. More of the state’s money, spent to cut expensive water bills and build more infrastructure. Less of the rulebooks for protecting endangered species from California’s water delivery systems — which he says get in the way of more.

“We can and should have abundant water in California, and there’s no reason that we don’t other than bad policy and mismanagement,” Hilton told CalMatters. “You get to abundant supply with a much more aggressive plan for building and running capture, storage, distribution of water in all its forms.”

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks during a campaign event on Wednesday July 22, 2026 in Los Angeles.

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Hilton, political strategist and former host of The Next Revolution on Fox News, traded the United Kingdom for California permanently in 2012 and settled in the wealthy Bay Area enclave of Atherton. In 2024, he wrote a water policy strategy with Edward Ring of the libertarian think tank California Policy Center.

The plan, titled “Achieving Water Abundance,” estimates that making abundant water a reality could take as much as $150 billion, assuming regulatory reforms.

Hilton and Ring proposed a combination of funding sources, including a 2% allocation from the state’s general fund gleaned by “cutting wasteful and ineffective programs.”

Water experts are skeptical.

“Rule 1. There is plenty of water, there is no more cheap water,” said Greg Gartrell, retired water manager at a Northern California water district and now an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “The only cheap water is water that someone else pays for and gives to you below cost.”

Hilton is bullish on building. That includes Sites Reservoir — the Northern California reservoir expected to cost between $6.2 and $6.8 billion that’s intended to store Sacramento River water to send south. The project is closer to clearing a major permitting hurdle after pressure from Newsom and other backers to relax limits aimed at protecting fish and others relying on the river’s water, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Hilton also backs the Trump administration’s controversial proposal to build Shasta Dam higher.

The powerful Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest farm water supplier and a major player in California’s $60 billion agricultural industry, has long supported both.

“It is good to hear that Mr. Hilton is considering water infrastructure, and really already considering water projects,” said Allison Febbo, Westlands general manager. Neither candidate, Febbo said, has met with Westlands staff, and the district is not permitted to make endorsements or contributions to campaigns.

Opponents of the reservoir project and dam raise, including fishing and environmental groups as well as the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, fear that further loss of river flows will harm iconic salmon and other species already imperiled under federal and state water management.

Though Hilton said he sees the salmon industry as “hugely important, just as important as the ag industry,” his goal, he said, is to “rebalance the system in favor of agriculture and domestic use away from the very, very narrow focus on what they call environmental use, but actually it’s much narrower than that — it’s a couple of fish species.”

Plummeting population numbers forced the cancellation of salmon fishing for three years in a row during Newsom’s tenure as governor.

The one thing Hilton’s determined not to build is the Delta tunnel, Newsom’s version of a decades-old plan to route water around — rather than through — the fragile Delta in order to send more water south. That, for Hilton, is a building project too far.

“I’m totally against it,” Hilton said. “It’s ridiculous, and unnecessary.”

Abundance: a bipartisan buzzword

Frontrunner candidate Becerra — former state assemblymember, congressman, California attorney general, and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services — is much more cautious about making promises.

Unlike Hilton, Becerra has not detailed water plans and has no specific water policies on his campaign website. He refused multiple requests from CalMatters for an interview on water issues. CalMatters eventually emailed his campaign the same list of questions that Hilton responded to over the phone.

Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks at the California Democratic convention in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.

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After several follow-ups, spokesperson Jonathan Underland responded:

“As governor, Becerra will bring everyone to the table to modernize our water infrastructure, guarantee safe, affordable drinking water for every Californian, give farms and businesses the reliable supply they need to grow, and prepare for the wet and dry years ahead.”

Becerra’s is an audible silence in a state where 83% of Democrats, 77% of Independents, and 67% of Republicans say they are more likely to support a candidate who “prioritizes improving California’s water reliability and affordability,” according to polling earlier this summer by the Association of California Water Agencies and FM3 Research.

Instead, Becerra has said he’ll listen.

“I will tell you, as governor, when you’re at the table sitting with me, I will listen to what you think we need to do,” he told the audience at an April forum in Fresno hosted by powerful agricultural groups. “Because water is more precious than gold. Let’s make it work.”

Some water experts say Becerra’s deliberative approach is refreshing on an issue as complex as California’s water.

“The idea of a governor who wants to think about things and talk to everyone — that’s music to my ears,” said Felicia Marcus, who led the State Water Resources Control Board under Gov. Jerry Brown. “It’s something you want a governor to do even after they’re elected, you know, versus being fully baked.”

Others are more cynical.

“Becerra’s right. It would be great if everybody was at the table,” said Peter Gleick, climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank. “But what’s being served?”

Where Becerra is light on specifics, he’s deep on history. As attorney general, he sued the Trump administration more than 120 times. His lawsuits beat back a Westlands-assisted effort to raise Shasta Dam, and contested a Trump proposal affecting water delivery systems that state officials feared would harm salmon and other species.

At their only one-on-one debate, Hilton described this track record as Becerra “suing to stop our farmers getting the water that they need.”

Becerra fired back: “Donald Trump was trying to impose his standards on California when it comes to water infrastructure. We have a right to make sure water in California is regulated by California.”

For all of Becerra’s and Hilton’s barbs, though, they echo each other in some ways.

Both agreed at the Fresno forum during the primary election that protecting groundwater is important and both agreed the state’s landmark policy to rein in agricultural overpumping may be overburdened by bureaucracy.

But where Hilton said the answer is more surface water and that “it’s all insane. It all needs to be cut back and shut down wherever possible,” Becerra said rules are necessary.

“I’m not sure how some folks who want to get rid of our rules that help us manage groundwater believe that we can do the right thing without some guidance. I agree that maybe there’s too much regulation … and we have to trim it back. But let’s be honest: we need groundwater.”

Like Hilton, Becerra, too, has centered his limited public remarks on the promise of abundance — predictable supplies for farms, conservation, groundwater recharge and wastewater recycling.

“We have to do a far better job of storage, of conveyance, and we have to do a far better job of conservation and distribution,” Becerra said at the Fresno forum. “We have enough water in California. It’s making the best use of it, and the state has an obligation to be the big investor to make it work for everyone.”

Unlike Hilton, though, Becerra’s version of "more" may include the deeply controversial Delta tunnel, called the Delta Conveyance Project.

Questioned about it at a January forum hosted by California Environmental Voters and others, Becerra nodded to ecological concerns tunnel opponents raise, but added, “We should never say no to anything until we’ve examined it completely … everything should be on the table, and everyone should be at the table.”

The history of more

"More" is a strategy that California governors have tried before, over and over, with mixed results. But none have moved water at the scale — or with the hubris — of Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.

In the 1960s, in a feat of nature-defying engineering, Brown spearheaded construction of the State Water Project to carry Northern California river water to Central and Southern California.

“I wanted this to be a monument to me,” Brown said of the project, which now funnels water through 705 miles of aqueducts and canals to two-thirds of California’s population and Central Valley farmland.

The emphasis, noted Norris Hundley — one of California’s great chroniclers of water — was Brown’s.

But the lengths California’s leaders have taken to move water from rivers and aquifers to cities and farms have consequences. A dying Delta. Undrinkable water. Disappearing species. Sinking earth.

In his 1952 novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck described how the turning of California’s great water wheel drove out memories of what came before: “And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

But in this new California, where the wheel turns wild and fast, Californians remember both. The state is recovering from its driest three-year stretch on record, followed by catastrophic floods. The Colorado River’s massive reservoirs plunged to record lows this past summer. Now, California is on the brink of an El Niño winter, and the rainfall and flooding it could bring.

The question is whether the next governor is ready to manage what’s coming. Gleick isn’t sure.

“Here’s the problem: The problem is what we’ve always done for California water no longer works,” Gleick said. “And no governor has been able to move beyond incremental approaches, incremental changes to past policies.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

From his veranda on the Peninsula, VR Venkataraman gets a front-row seat as wave after wave fueled by Tropical Storm Rachel slams the bulkhead and sprays upwards, more than two stories into the air.

For now, his defenses are holding.

In recent days, city officials and work crews reinforced the bulkhead with 12-by-2 boards and added vertical columns supported by wooden braces, riveted into the boardwalk at the angles Venkataraman determined would provide the most support. He’s not an engineer, but he’s acting like one to protect his Seaside Walk home.

“I did the geometry, figured it out, taught the crew how to do it, and did one with them,” said Venkataraman, a former doctor who now owns an Indian-Mexican fusion cafe. “I’m a human being with adequate knowledge and experience of life. That’s all.”

He is one of many Long Beach Peninsula residents taking swift, creative action in an attempt to save their homes after high surf and tides from multiple storms have eroded beaches and battered properties along the coast. On Saturday, though some residents expressed frustration that there wasn’t more preventative action ahead of this fall’s extreme weather, they said they appreciated how the city has sprung into action and partnered with them to salvage whatever they can. Venkataraman praised Jake Heflin with the fire department and Cory Forrester of Parks, Recreation and Marine for their work to help him harden his property, as well as the support provided by Councilmember Kristina Duggan.

“It’s a process of learning,” Venkataraman said.

On Saturday, city crews continued to shore up beaches where sand was washed away as surf driven by Hurricane Marie pounded the Peninsula last month. By morning, sand berms were piled up ahead of high tide. Other emergency repairs included pumping water off streets and filling in the exposed bulkhead with 1,000 sandbags. Storm drains appeared clear and were able to receive water from flooded streets.

“In an emergency, we act. We spend the money we need to. We protect life and safety, but then we record all of those costs,” City Manager Tom Modica said at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

More than $1 million in one-time costs has already been spent so far, he said. The city will aggressively pursue funding from other sources as it undertakes a seven-part plan for near- and long-term resiliency, Modica said. The city is currently in conversation with the governor’s Office of Emergency Services, he added.

More than $1 million spent so far

Venkataraman was not prepared last month when high surf rushed into his ground floor and dumped more than a foot of sand, rubble and shells into his crawl space, he said. He was forced to rip out several feet of drywall and air out his home with 66 heaters and 18 dehumidifiers from Home Depot.

His first floor was still torn up when powerful waves charged by Tropical Storm Rachel arrived at his door again this week. But this time, he knew he had to take quicker preventative action. He reinforced the planter on his lower level with wood and sandbags and bolstered the bulkhead with various supports.

Though he and his family evacuated and are staying in another home they own, he has been returning to his Peninsula residence during high tides to check on the reinforcements and evaluate what else needs to be done.

He said he now hopes to reinforce the bulkhead on the ocean side, adding 2-by-4 planks for stability. And he said he will continue to periodically tighten the rivets on the support beams, as they loosen with each wall of water that crashes down.

Caught off guard by Hurricane Marie

Other residents have also stepped in to buttress the bulkhead. On Friday, the sand berm protecting 62nd Place washed away, and waves “brought the whole ocean and sand down the street,” said Marc Moore, who lives there. Once the water had receded, he started picking up 10-foot pieces of wood and digging them into the sand near the bulkhead — a DIY solution in the hopes of taking a bit of power out of each swell. “Every wave you can stop might protect somebody’s home,” he said. He added the city should have done more to avoid this current disaster, but now they were fully activated and working closely with residents.

The worst may be yet to come

Some residents said they were anxious for what was to come throughout the weekend; the National Weather Service issued a coastal flood warning and a high surf advisory on Sunday as rainy weather set to arrive threatened more damage. Flooding impacts could be the most significant the region has seen this season, according to the NWS.

Eight properties were red-tagged as too dangerous for residents to remain, and several structures noticeably creaked and sagged as the waves continued to hit. City officials said they expect the coastal erosion and property damage to worsen on Sunday and throughout the El Niño season.

Still, Venkataraman and his neighbors remained hopeful and focused on action.

“It may be a losing battle,” Venkataraman said, adding he is not ready to give up. “I’m a warrior. I will fight until the bitter end.”

Police officers in cities across the U.S. are quick to extol the virtues of real-time crime centers as a game changer that helps them find missing children, monitor large events from the skies and scope out dangerous scenes before putting an officer in harm's way.

Hundreds of police departments have one of these central hubs, which have existed for years. But many are now being powered with AI software, such as Fusus, from the public-safety technology giant Axon.

Fusus, by Axon's own description, is a "rapidly deployable real-time crime center in the cloud." It functions like the brain of a crime center, synthesizing the data it pulls in and allowing police command centers to watch an entire city from one place.

Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers (ALPRs), have faced intense backlash in recent months amid stories of abuse. Yet privacy experts say they're just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to police surveillance.

"I have been watching the debate about Flock with a little bit of puzzlement," says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University. "Because real-time crime centers have not just ALPR cameras and sensors, but video analytics and drones and essentially a way to create a visual single-pane-of-glass vision of what's going on in a city, with time machine capabilities where you can go back and investigate crime."

How AI-powered software fuels real-time crime centers

Tools like Axon Fusus, which is a leader in this type of software, also pull in footage and data from police body cameras, law enforcement dashcams, 911 dispatch, gunshot detectors and surveillance cameras, including sometimes those of private businesses that opt in.

Its use is growing fast. In 2024, the technology news site 404 Media reported that just over 100 law enforcement agencies had deployed Fusus, which was then its own company and was acquired by Axon that year. The number of law enforcement agencies using the tool has more than doubled since then, according to Axon.

Police officers in departments that use Fusus told NPR that the tool serves as a time-saver and a force multiplier for their agencies.

"We could put analysts in a room and have them access 40 different systems," says Benjamin Weir, a captain with the Oklahoma City Police Department. "But that slows them down. So the biggest leveraging factor for a real-time information center to be productive is to have software that can incorporate all these things into one usable area."

Quincy Whitner, a lieutenant with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina, says Fusus helped his department find a man who shot a police officer and fled the scene, by combining city surveillance footage with license plate data.

"Instead of having to go to a million different systems, a million different places to find answers, we can get it in one platform in one place somewhat instantaneously," says Whitner.

Privacy concerns when surveillance is easy

But that push-of-a-button mentality is exactly what makes privacy experts nervous.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, says even a few decades ago, there were more hurdles to overcome when police officers wanted to surveil members of the community. They might have to physically follow someone or do a stakeout. It took time, staffing and resources.

"In addition to all of the things that you would want in place requiring some kind of criminal predicate to launch it, there is just this kind of organic friction that imposes some constraints," she says. "As that friction gets lifted, it becomes easier and easier to do investigations, to look at people and even to pull up broad-scale information."

Police told NPR that they understand those concerns but that the good — the potential for stopping and solving crime — outweighs the bad — the potential for misuse and mass surveillance.

"I understand people's concerns, but if you're not up to no good, we're not looking at you. We are looking at people who are committing crimes," says Michelle Iezzi, deputy director of the Operational Intelligence Division at the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland.

Axon did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But CEO Rick Smith said on the latest earnings call that the company strongly values privacy: "We just have to be thoughtful and understand those concerns and say, 'Look, this is a tool to amplify human ability, not to replace human judgment.'"

But there is broad potential for abuse when a police department is always watching, privacy experts say; surveillance technology can sweep up innocent people by mistake, and it can enable targeting.

"What happens if there is a government that wants to silence a particular group or even a particular person? And you just built the architecture of surveillance that makes that super-easy," says Ferguson, the George Washington University law professor.

Courts are moving slowly in deciding when or if this kind of surveillance crosses a constitutional line. In the meantime, Ferguson says, lawmakers could act by limiting how long data is stored, for instance, mandating regular audits or restricting surveillance near sensitive sites like abortion clinics or immigration courts.

He says those conversations should be happening before a tool ever is used.

Copyright 2026 NPR