The Brief

This past year California lawmakers passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed more than 1,000 bills, and most of those will become new laws in 2024. Plus there are bills from previous years that are also scheduled to take effect after Jan. 1.

Not all of those laws will impact your day-to-day life. The establishment of “Workplace Readiness Week” (now the week of April 28) or new procurement rules for transportation analytics software may not really change your 2024 (though maybe they will!).

We took a look at a few new laws that may, from new rules for building affordable housing to how you interact with police officers and new emission standards for certain small engines (think leaf blowers).

• Making it easier for faith groups and colleges to build affordable housing on their land
• Leave for reproductive loss
• Police officers have to say why they stopped a driver
• Expansion of traffic speed cameras
• Increasing city council member pay
• Ending suspensions for “willful defiance”
• LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for teachers
• Adding Asian American history, media literacy to California’s K-12 curriculum
• Requiring owners to clean up “orphaned” oil wells
• New emission rules for small gasoline engines

Making it easier for faith groups and colleges to build affordable housing on their land

Religious institutions and nonprofit colleges in California will be allowed to build affordable housing on their properties without having to go through complex and expensive rezoning processes under a new state law that goes into effect in January.

Senate Bill 4, often called the Yes In God’s Backyard (YIGBY) bill, gained bipartisan support in the Legislature and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October. State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, authored the bill, which is officially called the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act.

The law rezones land owned by nonprofit colleges and religious institutions, such as mosques, churches, and synagogues, to allow for affordable housing. Many faith-based groups and nonprofit colleges are currently located on lands where multi-family housing is expressly prohibited by local zoning rules.

It allows them to bypass most local permitting and environmental review standards that can take years to complete. The law is set to sunset in 2036.

Neither “CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) nor local political processes can be misused to stop these affordable housing projects,” according to a news release Wiener issued in October.

SB 4 requires that all housing built through this streamlined process must remain affordable through a deed restriction for at least 55 years for rental properties and 45 years for properties that can be owned. It must also adhere to state affordable housing density and height requirements.

A recent report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center found there are approximately 171,000 acres of land throughout the state that would be eligible for affordable housing under SB 4, including about 1,700 acres owned by faith-based organizations in Sacramento County.

Housing advocates say the lack of available land is one obstacle to building more affordable homes. Securing the necessary funding presents an equally large challenge.

The legislation was sponsored by the California Conference of Carpenters, Inner City Law Center, Jewish Public Affairs Committee, Non-profit Housing Association of Northern California (NPH) and Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH).

Several cities, local government and neighborhood groups opposed the bill due to concerns over the loss of local control. They said local zoning and land use planning documents would be ignored. Those opposed included the cities of Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach and Visalia, among others.

— Chris Nichols 

Leave for reproductive loss

Pregnant people who miscarry or couples who experience a failed adoption will now be eligible for five days of time off through California’s “reproductive loss leave.”

The law covers “miscarriage, unsuccessful assisted reproduction, failed adoption, failed surrogacy, diagnosis negatively impacting pregnancy, diagnosis negatively impacting fertility, or stillbirth,” and applies to both people in the couple. Previously, people could only get time off if they were incapacitated after the loss of a pregnancy, and family and bereavement leave don’t cover most situations.

“I wanted to ensure that this was for everyone, not just women who are pregnant, but those that want to be parents in other ways,” said bill author state Senator Susan Rubio, a Democrat who represents eastern Los Angeles County.

The law, SB 848, comes after Utah and Illinois passed their own reproductive loss laws last year.

Under California’s new law, employers are not obligated to pay employees for the time off and employees are only allowed to use 20 days of reproductive loss leave within a year-long period.

Rubio said a big part of putting forward the legislation was “signaling to women and those experiencing such a horrific loss that it's okay to speak about it,” she said. “I think for many years it felt like women did something wrong because they couldn't carry a child to term and it's not their fault.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, about 10-20% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, although the number is estimated to be higher when including people who never know they’re pregnant.

— Kate Wolffe

Police officers have to say why they stopped a driver

“Do you know why I stopped you?”

If you’ve been pulled over by police, you may have been asked that question.

Beginning in 2024, it will be illegal for law enforcement to make it the first thing they say to you. Instead, they’ll have to tell you why they stopped or pulled you over before engaging in any questioning.

Their reasoning for stopping individuals must also be documented on any citation and on police reports.

The only exception to the new law is if a police officer “reasonably believes that withholding the reason for the stop is necessary to protect life or property from imminent threat,” according to the text of the law.

People of color, particularly Black people, are stopped by police at higher rates than white people. The new law is meant to track that disparity and the outcomes of police stops. The law, AB 2773, was approved in 2022.

— Nicole Nixon

Expansion of traffic speed cameras

Your next speeding ticket could come from a traffic camera under a law authorizing some cities to set up surveillance in certain areas under a new pilot program.

The cameras would automatically capture the license plate information and ticket drivers who are traveling at least 11 miles per hour over the road’s speed limit. The first violation up to 15 mph over the limit would result in a warning.

For now, only six cities are allowed to set up the cameras: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Long Beach and Glendale.

The speeding cameras can only operate for five years and will only be allowed in school zones, safety corridors or areas where speeding is a common problem. They will not be allowed on freeways.

California law already allows traffic cameras to automatically ticket drivers for running a red light.

Pedestrian safety advocates say the new law will lead to safer streets and fewer crashes. Cities that install the speeding cameras will be required to report whether – and by how much – the cameras reduce traffic incidents.

— Nicole Nixon

Increasing city council member pay

Senate Bill 329 increases the maximum salaries most City Council members can receive and sets rules for increasing their pay. Advocates say the bill reduces financial barriers for people to serve in public office.

The bill applies to general law cities, but not charter cities such as Sacramento and Los Angeles. Charter cities operate under their own charters, while general law cities follow general state laws. Most of California’s 482 cities are general law cities, said Johnnie Pina, a legislative affairs lobbyist for the League of California Cities.

The state has not adjusted maximum salaries for council members in general law cities since 1984, Pina said. Increasing the maximum salaries allows cities to adjust council members’ pay for inflation.

New limits for council member pay range from $950 per month in cities with a population of 35,000 or fewer people to $3,200 per month in cities with a population of more than 250,000 people. The bill also allows council members to approve ordinances to increase their salaries past these maximums based on inflation or their previous pay adjustment.

The bill may increase the diversity of people who serve on City Councils, said Roger Dickinson, the policy director for CivicWell, a nonprofit that supports developing sustainable policies.

“There's a distinct need to have people sitting on City Councils who are able to devote sufficient time to the work … and to increase the diversity of those who serve on City Councils,” Dickinson said. “To make it more practical for not just not just people of color, but also people who may have less economic means to serve on City Councils.”

The law goes into effect Jan. 1, but a city can only implement salary increases for council members when at least one begins a new term.

— Kristin Lam

Ending suspensions for “willful defiance”

Introduced by state Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), SB 274 — also known as “Keep Students in School” — will prohibit the suspension or expulsion of public school students in 6-12th grade based on what’s known as “willful defiance.” The law goes into effect July 1, 2024 until July 1, 2029.

Willful defiance, outlined by the policy, is the disruption of school activities or defiance of authority such as supervisors, teachers, or administrators. Suspensions are still pursued by the superintendent or principal for actions including, but not limited to, physical injury to another person, unlawful possession or use of an intoxicant, and attempted damage to school property.

This legislation appends Skinner’s previous bill — SB 419 — which permanently eliminates willful defiance suspensions in grades TK to 5 and prohibits them in grades 6 to 8 until 2025.

Additionally, the bill mandates that school employees utilize intervention methods, including in-school and outside support, and document the actions taken within five days of the incident.

Mark Harris, the diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility monitor for Sacramento City Unified School District, said he continues to be concerned about the underlying teacher subjectivity with deeming a student willfully defiant.

“No one yet has come up with what will replace the current system,” explained Harris. “So they no longer are going to be kicked off campus. But what are they going to do? And where are they gonna go and who's gonna teach? I don't know the answer to those questions.”

Sacramento City and Elk Grove Unified have been subject of high Black and brown suspension rates in the state as recently as 2019. Despite the policy demanding that the state reimburse the school for any expenses incurred in providing intervention, there are no actual monies associated with the bill.

— Srishti Prabha

LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for teachers

A law taking effect in the new year requires the California Department of Education to establish LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for teachers. It's called the "Safe and Supportive Schools Act."

"Now in this time, especially with the heightened attacks against the LGBTQ+ community,” said bill co-author Torrance Democratic Assembly member Al Muratsuchi, “I believe it is the position and the values of the state of California that we take this important step forward to lead the country in terms of the right thing to do."

Under the act, the DOE will need to set up a training curriculum for teachers and other certified school employees to support LGBTQ+ students.

Proponents of the legislation — including a transgender student from Sacramento County — urged state lawmakers to send it to the governor's desk.

One of those proponents identified himself as Adrian, a 10th grader attending a high school in Elk Grove.

Adrian told lawmakers he came out as transgender to a small group of people but didn't want it known by others. A teacher found out and attempted to affirm Adrian's gender identity by calling Adrian he/him in front of the whole class, without permission.

"I was mortified,” Adrian said during a legislative hearing. “All of a sudden, all control I had over my own decision to come out at school had been taken away from me."

The new law requires the Education Department to have an online training program in place by the 2025-26 school year. The online training will start with the 2025-26 school year and only apply to educators who teach seventh to 12th graders.

Researchers say LGBTQ+ students miss fewer classes and get better grades when they have supportive teachers.

— Steve Milne

Adding Asian American history, media literacy to California’s K-12 curriculum

California’s K-12 curriculum will undergo another overhaul soon — thanks to two bills, Assembly Bill 873 and Assembly Bill 1354, which respectively require the state’s Instructional Quality Commission to consider including media literacy content at each grade level and expanding instruction on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander history in the U.S.

On Jan. 1, California K-12 students won’t find their day-to-day curriculum disrupted immediately. But these laws jumpstart the work of updating the curriculum framework to encompass both subject areas.

Only three other states — New Jersey, Texas and Delaware — have passed similar legislation on media literacy curriculum. Democratic Assembly member Marc Berman, who introduced AB 837 and represents portions of the San Francisco peninsula, called media literacy education a “bipartisan issue.”

“This is really just about trying to make sure that the next generation has the skills that they need to navigate the reality of today,” he said.

And media literacy education has been on California legislators’ minds. In 2018, the state’s department of education, California School Library Association and KQED compiled media literacy information in three free databases to fulfill the requirements set forth in Senate Bill 830.

AB 1354 also reflects another legislative priority: responding to racist, xenophobic violence against Asian Americans that sprung up at the COVID-19 pandemic’s start.

Among the topics the instructional commission will consider incorporating into curriculum are “examples of racism, discrimination and violence perpetrated against Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the United States, including, but not limited to, hate crimes committed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” AB 1354 reads.

Even outside that, Asian American history is a particularly relevant issue. Asians are the fastest-growing ethnic group in California, a state which has the largest population of Asian Americans in the U.S. The bill aims to paint a fully contextual picture of history to “help prevent and decrease discrimination and violence perpetrated against the Asian American community.”

— Janelle Salanga

Requiring owners to clean up “orphaned” oil wells

A new law targets California’s “orphaned” wells, which are inactive wells where the owner does not have the money to clean up the site. It requires companies interested in purchasing idle or low-producing oil wells to have money set aside to sufficiently cover the costs of plugging, abandoning and restoring the site of the well.

Advocates say this will help prevent large oil companies from selling wells to smaller companies who may not have the resources to clean up the site. Wells that aren’t properly maintained can contaminate groundwater, leak hazardous gasses like methane and pose health threats for nearby communities.

“Because California doesn't have a setback law on the books, which just means a mandatory distance between oil wells and … places where people live, work and play, these oil wells are right outside of people's homes,” said Jasmine Vazin, a field organizing strategist with the Sierra Club.

Vazin said negative health threats posed by these wells — which can include respiratory diseases and birth defects — are “impacts that are completely avoidable.” Although the law does not impact already existing orphaned wells, she said the law will prevent wells from becoming orphaned in the future.

— Manola Secaira

New emission rules for small gasoline engines

Small gasoline engines used to power lawn mowers, leaf blowers and other equipment will need to meet zero-emission requirements on Jan. 1.

The rule, approved by the California Air Resources Board in late 2021, applies to newly-manufactured small off-road engines, known by the acronym SORE. These small engines pollute well beyond their size and weight, with CARB saying a commercial operator using one backpack leaf blower for one hour generates the same smog-forming emissions as a car driving 1,100 miles.

According to CARB, the volume of smog-forming emissions from this type of equipment has surpassed emissions from light-duty passenger cars and is projected to be nearly twice those of passenger cars by 2031.

Generators and large power washers won't have to meet the zero-emission rule until 2028, but beginning on Jan. 1, they will have more stringent emissions standards — a reduction of 40 to 90%.

The Legislature has allocated $30 million to be dedicated to sole proprietors and other small landscaping businesses in California to help them purchase zero-emission small off-road equipment, including leaf blowers, lawn mowers and string trimmers.

— Mike Hagerty

More new laws

• Employees Get Protection For Using Cannabis
• New California Laws Raise The Minimum Wage For 2 Industries
• Key Bills Gavin Newsom Signed Into New California Law (And Some He Rejected)

A room on the second floor of a Camarillo building is quickly filling with smoke. From the far end of the room, flames start to shoot across the ceiling.

While the flames and smoke are real, the danger is not.

This is the Ventura County Fire Department’s new Live Fire Training Complex. A firefighter is controlling the flames and smoke with what looks like a TV remote control.

The $32 million project includes live fire training buildings, a dedicated ladder training prop, and other facilities designed to give firefighters hands-on experience.

"This complex has a 'Class A' combustible burn building, which we are standing in now," said Ventura County Fire Department Training Chief Casey Rosdaile. "The 'Class B' building is propane-fed. This building allows us to train in real fire conditions and real fire behavior. That building (the 'Class B' building) allows us to do a lot more of the operational steps. There's always a gap between the simulated thing and a real thing, and we're trying to limit that as much as possible. That way, when someone trains, they aren't going to be the real thing and say that it's nothing like they practiced."

The buildings are made of concrete, so they won't be affected by the flames and smoke. The smoke kind that's used on movie shoots, so it doesn't leave clothing with the smoky smell like you get from a brush fire.

He added that the new facilities can help train firefighters, as well as other first responders, on ways to deal with a number of emergencies.

"These buildings can host anything from sheriff's operations to (simulated) structure fires, to search and rescue," said Rosdaile. "There are a million things you can do in here. You can train 50 to 60 firefighters at a time, so it really gives us a lot of flexibility."

The two new buildings are just part of the fire department’s fire training complex. It covers 22 acres of land on the southeast side of Camarillo Airport. There are nearly 18,000 square feet of indoor training space, with 32 training rooms.

The dedicated live fire training buildings give firefighters experience with scenarios that were often difficult and time-consuming to create.

"We would light the materials, and let the fire conditions and environment build, to create a realistic training environment, and then send the folks in to extinguish it," said Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner. "Then, we would have to clean it all out, and reset it, and start again. We would get a couple of burns a day done. Now, we're getting multiple burns an hour."

Gardner said it's a complex they've sought to create for years.

"This facility allows us to close the gap between training and reality. This allows us to expose our firefighters to as realistic an environment as we can repetitively, and under safe conditions."

Among the props at the facility is a vehicle chassis equipped with gas lines, which can be ignited, so firefighters can practice fighting those types of fires.

"This is our vehicle prop, and it lets us simulate fire. We can push the fire to different parts of the vehicle, so we can set it in the interior, in the cab, the wheel well, as well as the engine compartment," said Ventura County Fire Department Quartermaster Jake Finley. "It creates a good learning environment, with teachable moments. You can see in the background some of the old vehicles (we used to burn salvaged vehicles), and it was a really intensive process. We couldn't repeat it as quickly."

While the Ventura County Fire Department owns and operates the facility, the goal is for it to be used to train first responders from throughout the region. It’s already hosted firefighters from a number of other agencies in the county, as well as teams from neighboring counties.

When the war with Iran started, one of the top economic concerns globally was the slowdown of oil shipments. But there was another critical export that got stuck in the region when hostilities began: fertilizer.

Before the war, around one-third of the world's fertilizer transported by sea passed through the Strait of Hormuz, according to UN Trade and Development. The waterway has become a shipping chokepoint in recent months.

With the strait closed, fertilizer shipments from the Persian Gulf slumped and prices rose, affecting countries all around the world that import fertilizer. The war also created a global shortage of natural gas, a key component in nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing.

It caused a massive headache for U.S. farmers who were hit with higher fertilizer prices and limited availability just as they were deciding what to plant for the upcoming growing season.

But the costs borne by farmers don't necessarily get passed on to consumers, and food system experts say they're unlikely to have a major impact on the retail prices of fruit and vegetables.

"Consumers are going to see higher food prices come September to January, once harvests start coming in, and the few months thereafter," said Chris Barrett, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University. "Very little of that is going to be directly attributable to fertilizer."

That's because food inflation is generally driven by larger factors affecting multiple parts of the food supply chain, such as fewer workers and high fuel costs.

US farmers are rethinking their plans

About one-third of the fertilizer used by U.S. farmers is imported, according to The Fertilizer Institute, an industry trade group. TFI Vice President of Public Affairs Christopher Glen said little of that comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

"But we get impacted in a big way because the fertilizer market is global," Glen said over email. "Even if those tons from the Mideast aren't coming to the US, they are still tons that have been removed from the market and need to be made up elsewhere. That's where the pressure comes from."

An American Farm Bureau Federation survey released in April reported that 70% of respondents said they couldn't afford all the fertilizer they needed this season.

Some farmers are more vulnerable to price swings than others. Producers of corn and wheat, which rely heavily on fertilizer, can spend around a third of their operating costs on fertilizer alone. Half of the farmers who responded to a survey released by the National Corn Growers Association in early April said they wouldn't apply the full amount of fertilizer to their corn crop this year, due largely to higher costs and limited availability.

Because farmers often secure their fertilizer stores well before a growing season begins, some weren't seriously affected by the price swings created by the war in Iran. (Iran said it closed the Strait of Hormuz shortly after it was attacked by the U.S. and Israel at the end of February. U.S. corn growing season typically begins in April.) But they are worried about the future: corn growers who responded to the survey were twice as concerned about the 2027 corn crop as they were about this year's.

This season, some farmers may opt to plant crops that require less nitrogen fertilizer than corn, such as soy beans, in response to rising costs.

According to USDA data, farmers are expected to plant 95.3 million acres of corn this year, down from 98.8 million acres last year. But the total acreage of soybeans is predicted to rise to 85.4 million acres this year from 81.2 million acres last year.

US grocery prices probably won't take a huge hit

If higher fertilizer costs lead to smaller harvests, that could contribute to modest retail price hikes. A TD Economics analysis estimated that a 2-5% production shortfall in North America could grow food inflation by around 0.1-0.5 percentage points in 2027.

Sponsor MessageBut experts say the costs of the fertilizer shortage will be largely shouldered by farmers.

The amount a farmer spends on fertilizer is a small fraction of the total cost to grow food and get it to grocery store shelves. Just 12 cents of every dollar U.S. consumers spend on food goes to farms, while the rest is received by transportation companies, processors, wholesalers and grocery stores, according to the USDA. And the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that U.S. farms spent around 7% of their budgets on fertilizer, lime and soil conditioners in 2024 (though farmers growing crops more reliant on fertilizer such as corn would spend more).

Additionally, farmers don't have much bargaining power to negotiate with wholesalers for higher crop prices when their operating costs rise, according to Rob Vos, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "Those buyers will go to other farmers to try and get it cheaper," he said.

But there are factors other than the fertilizer crunch that are more likely to cause food prices to jump. Barrett said the global food industry is facing a "really unpleasant layer cake" of pressures, from tariffs and extreme weather to higher prices on labor, fuel and fertilizer.

"No one of those by itself is especially painful," he said. "But when you add them all up, they become quite painful together."

In parts of Africa and Asia, the effects of the fertilizer shortage could be far worse. Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services, said in April that the reduction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz may prove "very significant and severe" for poorer countries. Less-developed countries that rely heavily on fertilizer from the Persian Gulf include Sudan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Somalia.

The fertilizer industry is recovering — and may adapt in the process

Some fertilizer prices have begun to fall again in recent weeks, after the U.S. and Iran reached a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz last month.

The Trump administration has also taken steps to lower fertilizer costs for American farmers. This week, Trump temporarily suspended "countervailing duties" on certain phosphate imports, which are added to some imported goods to cancel out subsidies provided by foreign governments.

Still, it will be a while before the fertilizer sector returns to normal. Vos estimated that it could take weeks or months for fertilizer manufacturing plants to come back online and return to previous production levels. If high prices stick around, that could snarl the plans of U.S. farmers preparing to plant cool-season crops this autumn, he added.

Barrett said the trouble with the fertilizer industry has also gotten farmers thinking about how they can protect themselves from these kinds of supply-chain disruptions in the future and looking for other ways to replenish their soil, such as manure, compost and cover crops.

"Just like we're seeing more people interested in electric vehicles because the price of gasoline and diesel has gone up, you see more farmers interested in other ways of replenishing soil nutrients as the price of fertilizer has gone up," he said.

A consequential act of defiance secured tea's place as perhaps the most iconic beverage of America's colonial era.

The Boston Tea Party became an essential ingredient in the recipe for revolution in the following years.

But tea wasn't the only hot beverage with a prominent role in America's fight for independence.

Coffee was an important part of American culture from the start. And coffeehouses were essential, too — serving as hubs for brewing ideas of independence.

As the United States celebrates 250 years, here's what to know about America's early history of coffee.

Colonists were drinking coffee long before the United States existed

Europeans brought coffee with them when they came to America.

"The first documented example of a mortar and pestle used to grind coffee beans was on the Mayflower" in 1620, says historian Michelle Craig McDonald, the author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States.

"The fact that coffee was present so early is not surprising if you think about it," McDonald says. "A number of those who were on the Mayflower came to North America from Amsterdam, which was a major coffee trading center in Western Europe by the 17th century."

The first coffeehouse in the colonies opened in 1676 in Boston, a century before the U.S. declared independence, she says. Some taverns sold coffee even earlier.

The Boston Tea Party probably wasn't the dramatic turning point toward coffee that some claim

On the night of Dec. 16, 1773, disgruntled colonists boarded three ships moored in Boston Harbor and threw overboard more than 92,000 pounds of tea owned by the British East India Company.

Tensions had been building between the Crown and the colonies over the previous decade, as Britain tried to levy taxes on its colonies to recoup war debts.

The Boston Tea Party protest was targeted at the British government's passing of the Tea Act in 1773, which granted the East India Company a monopoly over tea sales in the colonies. While the British had removed some unpopular taxes in the preceding years, they left tea taxes in place. Colonial merchants were especially upset that the act allowed the East India Company to undercut their tea business.

To build solidarity for their cause of sovereignty, some patriots called on colonialists to swear off tea in favor of coffee. It's why many histories point to the Boston Tea Party as a turning point when Americans switched from mostly drinking tea to mostly coffee. The anti-tea sentiment was immortalized in a founding father's now-famous letter.

In July 1774, John Adams (before he became the second U.S. president) wrote to his wife Abigail, recounting an incident during his travels. After a long day, he asked the proprietor of the house where he was lodging for a cup of tea, provided it was smuggled and free of British taxes.

" 'No sir, said she, we have renounced all Tea in this Place. I cant make Tea, but I'le make you Coffee.' Accordingly I have drank Coffee every Afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned, and the sooner, the better," Adams wrote.

Despite John Adams claiming a newfound patriotic duty to appreciate coffee, McDonald says colonists had been drinking lots of coffee all along.

She studied advertisements from the 1760s and '70s to estimate how many shops sold coffee versus tea. Even before the Boston Tea Party, she says, "coffee is definitely more broadly available than tea is."

A big reason? It was cheaper. "Its price again per pound is significantly less, which tells you about its availability, its accessibility to drinkers."

Historians say it's hard to definitively compare tea with coffee consumption, though, as official records from before America gained independence were inconsistent.

And smuggling was rampant, making official records even less reliable.

"There is a vast amount of smuggling," says Joyce Chaplin, a professor of early American history at Harvard University. "So they're not paying formal duties on tea that they get from the Dutch. They're probably not paying formal duties on coffee from the French Caribbean."

And Chaplin notes that people who loudly proclaimed a new appreciation for coffee over tea weren't always doing what they said. It could have been political pandering. "I do not drink tea that comes via the East India Company," she posits someone of the era saying. "But, you know, other sources are fine. Ditto for the coffee."

Coffeehouses were a hub for revolutionary ideas 

In the colonial era, coffeehouses were hotbeds for seditious thought — where people planned acts of revolution.

"Coffeehouses are kind of famous for being places where people think and plot things," says Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World.

A coffeehouse called the Green Dragon served as one of the locations for planning the Boston Tea Party. Years earlier, the Old London Coffeehouse in Philadelphia was a meeting place for strategizing responses to another British tax, the Stamp Act of 1765.

In Britain, coffeehouses were nicknamed "penny universities," Pendergrast says: "because for a penny you could go and learn a whole lot by sitting around in a coffeehouse and discussing everything." The same attitude traveled across the Atlantic.

Early American coffeehouses would commonly have city business directories, libraries of newspapers and currency exchange information. People could get maritime insurance there or buy things at auction.

"There's a reason why coffeehouses become places of colonial protest … in the 1760s, in the 1770s, and it's because it is the place where traders and merchants tended to gather," historian McDonald says. "That's where they heard about the economics of the day."

Taverns were more likely than coffeehouses to have rooms for rent and stables for travelers' horses. They were also more likely to have food.

Interestingly enough, coffeehouses could serve alcohol and taverns could serve coffee.

But the vibes at each were different. While women and men could "riotously drink together" in taverns, coffeehouses often didn't allow women, according to Chaplin of Harvard.

"The sense was the coffeehouse was the place where you had a clear head — to argue about politics, to find out what was going on in the business world, to cut a business deal," she says. "Whereas taverns were places where, in a sense, you refueled."

Still, she says, the lines between the two "weren't completely clear."

The cost of America's revolutionary drink 

Coffee (and tea for that matter) was part of a growing globalization of trade around this time.

Much of the coffee in the colonies was grown in the Caribbean, while tea came from China.

Supply was up and coffee was easier than ever to drink. "Trade and frankly, imperialism, are making it possible for … colonial products to be produced and transferred to other parts of the world in greater and greater quantities," says Chaplin.

As a result, by the time of the American Revolution, both coffee and tea were in reach for many common people. "They're both becoming affordable luxuries," Chaplin says.

Fancy coffee and tea paraphernalia were also part of this increasingly global market. Middle and upper-class people would have wanted special implements for drinking these beverages and a place to drink it. That meant they needed wood for coffee tables, silver for coffeepots, and porcelain for teapots.

"These two beverages are encouraging people to consume all kinds of new stuff," says Chaplin. "The mahogany that comes out of the Caribbean, the china coming out of China, silver that is mined principally in South and Central America and processed in a lot of the parts of the world."

There's a dark side to coffee's history, too. The plantations that supplied the crop ran on the labor of enslaved people. By 1790, half of the world's coffee was being grown in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in what is today Haiti, Pendergrast says, where slaves were routinely mistreated, raped and murdered.

The Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, is infamous for a contradiction. It proclaimed that "all men are created equal," but failed to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people living in America at the time.

Coffee carried a similar contradiction. The beverage that fueled conversations that inspired America's fight for independence — centered on the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — depended on enslavement.

"Coffee had this paradoxical effect, that it did promote revolutionary thought," Pendergrast says. "But it was also grown by slaves."

Wearing gloves and a KN95 mask, Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas hunkered down near a storm drain, just steps away from the smoldering Lineage warehouse fire, as he filmed himself pointing to what he described as insulation and foam flowing into the drain.

“The thing about this water is that it all gets dumped straight into the L.A. River,” Carrera Ruedas, of Cudahy, told his Instagram followers in a June 22 reel.

In the past two weeks, Carrera Ruedas has spent evenings gathering water samples outside Lineage and from the L.A. River as he and other community scientists are partnering with experts from UCLA and Columbia University to learn what’s in the runoff. Samples will soon be sent to a lab in New York.

“For far too long, the river has just been a drainage, a dumping site for companies,” said Carrera Ruedas, 27, who often encounters toads, birds and fish inhabiting its ecosystem.

“There is life in there,” he told Boyle Heights Beat. “We’re all in proximity to the river, and that’s kind of the vein that runs through the city that really connects us all.”

Community-led testing

Since the Lineage fire ignited June 17 in Boyle Heights, residents, environmental advocates and researchers have taken it upon themselves to find out what’s in the air and water. They’ve launched their own sampling efforts, seeking answers about what people have been breathing and contaminants that may have entered the L.A. River.

The community-led testing comes as residents have reported eye irritation, nausea and headaches while questioning whether the government has done enough to capture the fire’s environmental and public health impacts.

Those concerns are especially alarming in Boyle Heights, East L.A. and neighboring Southeast L.A. communities, where neighbors have long faced disproportionate pollution burdens.

Crews navigate around piles of debris and puddles of water on the eastern edge of the Lineage warehouse as they begin cleanup efforts on June 25, 2026.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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An estimated 31,700 workers, about 81% of whom are Latino, live in the county and city zones where a smoke advisory was issued, according to new data from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. They work in health care, manufacturing and food service industries. About half of the workers earn $3,333 or less a month, below L.A. County’s “very low income” threshold.

The area also experiences diesel pollution levels three times the county average, as well as higher rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease-related emergency department visits, according to UCLA. Nearly 10,000 households in the area lack air conditioning.

“This is not only an air quality emergency but also a worker and environmental justice issue,” UCLA said.

Behind the push for environmental justice

For years, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice has shed light on how Latinos on the Eastside often bear the brunt of the region’s pollution and climate disasters, such as the East L.A. oil spill in late May that dumped nearly 25,000 gallons of crude oil onto streets and into the L.A. River. For the organization, “We are just trying to breathe” is a common phrase.

“Something I’ve told many people over a long period of time is, ‘We’re not polar bears. We’re not whales.’ Nobody is coming to save us. We have to step up and defend ourselves,” said mark! Lopez with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

Antonia Castillo, 73, helps her grandson Aiden Velez put on a mask near their Boyle Heights home.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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East Yard members opted to take air samples themselves, dissatisfied with the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s assessment of the fire’s air-quality impacts. They placed sorbent tubes, which Lopez described as passive air monitors, outside nearby homes for about seven days. Soon, they’ll send the findings to a Columbia University lab with the help of UC Irvine.

What officials have done so far

South Coast AQMD said it conducted “mobile monitoring” during the first two days of the fire that found “significantly elevated concentrations” of particulate matter. The agency then deployed particulate matter monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School that provide “near-real time exposure information.” AQMD noted that the L.A. Fire Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted their own monitoring, while third-party contractor Onterris has continued monitoring during the cleanup phase.

AQMD also observed smoke impacts throughout the region, issuing a particle pollution advisory in English and Spanish that remained in effect through June 24.

What's next and lingering questions

Meanwhile, Lopez said more sampling is necessary, and he questioned the effectiveness of efforts by Lineage, AQMD and LAFD. He and other advocates criticized public statements from officials, including Mayor Karen Bass’ assurances that “the air is not dangerous,” even as residents were reporting feeling sick. He also took aim at LAFD Chief Jaime Moore’s statements that ammonia was not toxic to individuals unless they had respiratory issues or came in direct contact with it. East Yard also called for evacuations in the area.

“It feels like at the city and county level they don’t currently have the capacity to really handle this situation,” Lopez added. “I think it really requires state and federal intervention to make sure that the cleanup and restoration isn’t mismanaged.”

Yoshira “Yoshi” Ornelas Van Horne, an exposure scientist and assistant professor with the UCLA Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, said the Lineage fire is exposing how little is done to “respond to public health emergencies and disasters” in communities like Boyle Heights and East L.A., areas “that have so often been referred to as environmental injustice communities.”

Residents and community organizations like East Yard, Ornelas Van Horne said, “are always the ones having to respond.”

“They’re relying on each other. They’re relying on their networks and their organizing power to be able to do that on the ground sampling.”

Ornelas Van Horne reached out to colleagues at Columbia’s Multi-Element Trace Analysis Laboratory in New York after she learned of the sampling taking place and of community concerns about the runoff making its way down to the L.A. River.

Those samples will be analyzed for heavy metals like cadmium, lead and arsenic, she said.

The L.A. County Public Works Department, according to the Los Angeles Times, deployed three containment booms on the L.A. River and continued to monitor the water as it made its way to the ocean.

Carrera Ruedas began collecting water samples on the third day of the fire. He said he took the first sample from the L.A. River, about 100 meters from the spout where it spilled out. The second was taken from outside Lineage. He has amassed dozens of samples since then.

Cudahy sits alongside the lower L.A. River, and after the fire, Carrera Ruedas recalled a “heavy stench that affected people in our community.” The trash he saw in the river was the foam and insulation that came from Lineage, he said.

“It really pissed me off, just to see all this trash go in there and nobody doing anything about it,” said Carrera Ruedas, who also serves as the parks and environmental justice commissioner for Cudahy.

The L.A. River, Carrera Ruedas said, is “part of our ecosystem.”

“This is not just affecting me. This affects everybody else around me. This affects people who love the beach, people who just want our water systems clean,” he said.