The Brief

Undocumented Californians affected by winter storms and floods are slowly starting to receive money from a special relief program the state launched for them two months ago.

In June, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced it plans to spend $95 million from the state’s Rapid Response Fund to help thousands of flood victims recover from storm damage and financial setbacks. The beneficiaries would be immigrants who don’t qualify for federal emergency assistance or state unemployment insurance because they are undocumented.

More than 20 nonprofits have contracts with the Department of Social Services to distribute the money. So far, they have begun handing out nearly $18 million to about 12,000 residents — but it’s at an uneven pace.

About 4,000 residents in San Joaquin County are expected to receive a total of about $6 million, according to Aug. 6 data from the state. Fewer people have received aid in other big counties. For instance, only a few hundred thousand dollars went to 415 households in Kern and San Mateo counties so far.

Some residents in smaller qualifying counties have not received any funds yet, as their counties qualified for disaster assistance later. The money will be available through May 31, 2024, or until the money runs out. Subtracting administrative expenses, nearly a quarter of the available aid has been distributed so far.

Although most recipients are undocumented people, who likely speak Spanish or an Indigenous language, some of the state’s information about the Storm Assistance for Immigrants program is in English and has not been translated into Spanish or any other languages.

Efrén Pérez, a political science professor at UCLA, said he’s puzzled that the state is not doing more aggressive canvassing and outreach, especially in Spanish.

“I think the most important question is why can’t we make this relatively easier?” Pérez said. “What are the barriers that make this the best that we can do? I think if I’m an agency that has money to hand out and I really want to … provide a public service, I think I would be trying to make something like this a little bit more streamlined.”

Pérez also questioned the state’s reliance on independent organizations to do outreach, saying it could result in varying results across counties and target populations.

“It’s good when you can partner with organizations,” Pérez said. “The challenge is when you decentralize it in that way, you basically are increasing the chances that there is no standardized approach across these organizations to get delivery of that info.”

Scott Murray, a spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services, said the nonprofit organizations are responsible for conducting outreach. He added that a Spanish version of a “Frequently Asked Questions” document has been provided to the nonprofits.

“It’s important to remember that the undocumented community can be fearful of accessing benefits and assistance through Government entities,” Murray told CalMatters in an email.

“Therefore, as trusted community messengers, the nonprofit organizations are conducting outreach to the undocumented community through their existing networks and through the local amplification of the existence of these recovery supports to eligible undocumented Californians.”

Who qualifies for storm damage aid?

The state’s Immigrant Storm Assistance Program, is only for undocumented residents living or working in the 25 counties that qualified for “direct assistance” from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Qualifying families can receive up to $4,500 in state aid, depending on the number of qualifying adults and children in their household, while individuals can qualify for $1,500. The nonprofits contracting with the state interview applicants in person and provide them with preloaded debit cards or checks.

Many Californians harmed by the floods were working as farmworkers in rural or coastal communities. Not only did many lose weeks of work during the months of rain and floods, but others also lost their homes, vehicles and other property. One UC Merced study of Planada’s residents found nearly $20 million in damages to the Central Valley town of 4,000.

A flooded neighborhood in Orosi on March 12, 2023.

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Larry Valenzuela

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About 88% of California’s farmworkers speak Spanish at home and almost 8% speak an Indigenous language rather than Spanish at home, according to data from the UC Merced Community and Labor Center.

Like most California state agency websites, the social services landing page for the storm assistance program has a Google Translate tool in the upper right corner that can translate the webpage into more than 100 languages, including Spanish.

However, the department has not posted translated versions of some key program documents linked on the webpage, including the list of service providers and the contact people, email addresses and phone numbers of the nonprofit organizations distributing the immigrant disaster aid.

The website launched in June, but its main page says “Translated versions will be posted soon.”

Also, the Google Translate tool embedded on the state’s website cannot translate PDFs linked to that page. Some information on those PDFs — such as the main state hotline number and the community organizations assigned to each eligible county — is included on another page that can be translated, however.

Two Cutler residents shovel mud out of their driveway on March 12, 2023. A nearby levee was breached during a series of storms hit the Central Valley, flooding streets, farms and homes.

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Larry Valenzuela

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This isn’t the first time the state provided information only in English about a program to help residents who likely speak or read a different language.

In 2020 advocates threatened to sue the Department of Social Services because of gaps in the Employment Development Department’s language accommodations for unemployment insurance. After the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles filed a complaint alleging the state was violating federal and state anti-discrimination mandates, the employment department in 2022 announced plans to expand its language support for the more than 7 million Californians who speak languages other than English.

California nonprofits help hard-to-reach communities

Jose Rodriguez, CEO of the Stockton-based nonprofit El Concilio, said his staff raised concerns about the lack of Spanish translations on the storm assistance website with state officials.

But El Concilio didn’t struggle with outreach, Rodriguez said, because it relies on deep community roots from providing such services as immigration legal assistance and HeadStart to migrant families throughout the county. It also had recently distributed COVID-19 relief and rental assistance funds, he said.

The vast majority of the more than $6 million in aid heading to San Joaquin County is going through El Concilio. More than 2,000 residents – most of whom lost wages due to storms and flooding — have received funds, and another 2,000 are on a waitlist to receive funds.

The Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, a nonprofit in the Central Valley, has distributed more than $1.3 million to nearly 1,000 applicants from Indigenous Mexican communities who live in Madera and Fresno counties.

Its executive director, Sarait Martinez, said the lack of translated materials on the state’s program website might not matter, because few members of the communities her organization serves visit the state’s website for assistance.

“The reality is that if we don’t do this work, then our community does not get the support,” Martinez said. “It is definitely helping folks. Work started late this season. People needed the funds.”

Rodriguez said he hopes to request more money from the state in the future – if there is enough funds. He said he was unsure why the state allocated just $95 million for the program.

“The need is greater,” Rodriguez said.

People applying for the Storm Assistance for Immigrants program can call 866-724-2023 or contact one of the providers assigned to their county on this list.

Traffic collisions in Los Angeles killed 290 people last year, and more than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to Los Angeles Police Department data.

That means L.A. is far from the goal it set more than a decade ago of reaching zero such deaths by 2025. Still, there was a 6% decrease in traffic fatalities compared to 2024. That tracks with trends that appear to suggest traffic fatalities are dropping nationwide.

“I was happy to see the decrease, but I believe we can do better,” Lonyá C. Childs, commanding officer of the South Traffic Division of the LAPD, told LAist.

Childs said prioritizing education about safe driving habits and enforcement of speeding and red light rules could further reduce traffic violence in L.A.

Traffic fatalities claimed more lives in the city last year than homicides, which, according to police data, are also on the decline. At a January rally demanding action on traffic violence, L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez pointed to this fact and said the city’s political institutions aren’t doing enough to bring traffic fatalities down.

“They don’t act with the level of urgency that they would [when] something is more sensationalist,” Soto-Martínez said. “But every single day, people are dying in our streets.”

How does L.A. compare nationally?

The early 2020s saw a sharp increase in traffic deaths nationwide, which researchers hypothesize is due to drivers adopting riskier behaviors on the road. The rate of traffic fatalities grew at a faster rate during that time period in L.A. compared to the U.S. as a whole, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Preliminary federal data show signs that traffic fatalities are decreasing nationwide.

“So changes that we're observing now are, in my mind, the transition out of the peak that happened [during] the COVID-19 pandemic,” Matthew Raifman, a transportation researcher at UC Berkeley, told LAist.

Data from the LAPD indicate that 2025 is the second consecutive year that traffic fatalities on city streets have decreased, but they remain higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Raifman said that, generally speaking, a sustained decrease over a three- to five-year window is a strong indicator of increased safety on roads.

What is the city doing about traffic violence?

In 2015, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti adopted a policy framework known as Vision Zero to zero out traffic deaths by last year.

The city has so far invested nearly $350 million as part of Vision Zero, according to data from the office of the city administrative officer.

Most of that money has supported making high-priority corridors in L.A. safer through various infrastructure projects, public outreach and speed surveys.

The city has also invested $13.5 million under the Vision Zero umbrella to fund overtime for LAPD officers to conduct speed safety enforcement along city streets that see the highest number of traffic-related injuries and collisions.

An audit released in April 2025 found that a lack of cohesion across departments, an unbalanced approach and insufficient political will ultimately hampered the city’s Vision Zero program. In response, the L.A. City Council late last year approved a suite of recommendations to revamp the program. 

In a statement, the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said it “fully supported the implementation of the City’s new recommendations to strengthen traffic safety and achieve the goals outlined in Vision Zero.”

L.A. is expected to launch speed safety cameras throughout the city later this year. The program, which five other California cities are also piloting, will cite speeding drivers on dangerous roads.

The city’s Department of Transportation released the proposed locations for those cameras on Feb. 10.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where she's expected to face questions about the Justice Department's targeting of President Donald Trump's political foes and its handling of the Epstein files.

Bondi's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee comes one year into her tenure atop the Justice Department, a tumultuous period marked by a striking departure from the traditions and norms that have guided the department for decades.

Watch the hearing, set for 10 a.m. ET Wednesday, live:

Since taking the helm, Bondi has overseen the firing of career prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on Capitol riot cases or Trump investigations, investigated and prosecuted prominent opponents of the president, and dropped prosecutions of his allies.

The changes also extend to the department's workforce. The section that prosecutes public corruption has been gutted; the Civil Rights Division, which protects the constitutional rights of all Americans, has seen a mass exodus of career attorneys; and some U.S. attorney's offices — including most recently the one in Minnesota — have been hit by resignations.

In her public appearances, Bondi, who is a former Florida attorney general, has defended the department's actions and sought to tout what she says are major accomplishments — going after cartels and violent crime and helping in the administration's immigration enforcement.

She also says she's made "tremendous progress" toward ending what she says was the department's weaponization in recent years against Trump and conservatives. Biden-era DOJ officials deny they politicized the department, and they point to the prosecutions of prominent Democratic lawmakers and even President Joe Biden's son Hunter as evidence.

Accusations of politicization at DOJ

For decades, the Justice Department has enjoyed a degree of independence from the White House, particularly in investigations and prosecutions, to insulate them from partisan politics.

Critics say that under Bondi, that independence has disappeared and the Justice Department has helped enact Trump's promised campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies.

Last year, for example, the president openly directed Bondi to go after former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — two high-profile political adversaries of the president.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," Trump said in a social media post addressed to Bondi. "They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

Days after that, a new acting U.S. attorney hand-picked by Trump secured an indictment against Comey, overruling career prosecutors who had doubts about the strength of the evidence.

A few weeks later, that same prosecutor secured an indictment against James.

Both cases have since been tossed by a federal judge, who found that the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department is appealing that decision.

Other perceived opponents of the president or individuals standing in the way of his agenda have also found themselves under DOJ investigation, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former Obama-era intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan.

Despite the uproar from DOJ veterans and many legal experts, Bondi still enjoys Trump's support — publicly, at least — as well as the backing of Republican lawmakers.

She has faced criticism from some Republicans, however, over her handling of the files of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The criticism has been focused on the department's failure to meet the deadline to release all of the Epstein files, as required by law, as well as the heavy redactions to many of the documents.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Law enforcement raided the illegal cannabis operation in Shasta-Trinity National Forest months before, but rotting potatoes still sat on the growers’ makeshift kitchen worktop, waiting to be cooked.

Ecologist Greta Wengert stared down the pockmarked hillside at a pile of pesticide sprayers left behind, long after the raid. Wild animals had gnawed through the pressurized canisters, releasing the chemicals inside.

“They’re just these little death bombs, waiting for any wildlife that is going to investigate,” said Wengert, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, a nonprofit that studies the harms caused by cannabis grows on public lands. For all her stoic professionalism, she sounded a little sad.

For over a decade, Wengert and her colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows like this one dangerously pollute California’s public lands and pristine watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems, water and wildlife.

Now, they’re sounding another alarm — that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal level are leaving thousands of grow sites — and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more — to foul California’s forests.

Dozens of fertilizer bags wept blue fluid onto the forest floor. Irrigation tubes snaked across the craters of empty plant holes. The cold stillness felt temporary — as if the growers would return at any moment to prop up the crumpled tents, replant their crop and fling more beer cans and dirty underwear into the woods.

Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California’s public lands.

Greta Wengert, co-founder and co-director of the Integral Ecology Research Center, leads a team documenting the chemicals and environmental damage caused by an illegal cannabis site in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

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Fred Greaves

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It’s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up.

No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert’s nonprofit for an unofficial tally.

Most of the sites Wengert’s team identified are in national forests, where “limited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials” is driving a backlog in clean ups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email.

The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it’s leaving a mess in California.

A new playbook  

The federal government owns nearly half of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it’s California’s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows — even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say.

Staff assist with clean ups on federal lands “when asked,” said cannabis program director Amelia Wright — typically on California’s dime. But, she said, “That’s not our mandate.”

Fees and taxes on California’s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts — supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover clean-ups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts like fish conservation.

The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade.

An aerial view of Post Mountain, where cannabis is grown on private land near the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

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But former Assemblymember Jim Wood, a North Coast Democrat, said that as he prepared to leave office in 2024, progress on cleanups was still too slow.

“It doesn't reflect what I see is the urgency to watersheds, and the water and the people that are served by them,” he said.

In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood’s bill directing the Fish and Wildlife department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private.

To Wright, that’s a path forward, however prospective it may be.

“It just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,” Wright said. “It's a one of a kind program. So we didn't have a playbook — we're still creating it.”

But the study, which Wengert’s organization is conducting on the state’s behalf, isn’t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land has been demanding California's attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016.

“It's like whack-a-mole. They pop up in a new location, and then we have to go there — but the impacts are occurring across the landscape,” said Scott Bauer, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis office.

The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a “substantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.” Of the 605 sites where a multi-agency state and federal task force ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands — up from an average of 3 to 4%.

“Everybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,” said Wood, the former assembly member.

But, he added, the sites remain. “It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.”

And the contamination, new research confirms, lingers.

‘This site will sit on this landscape’

On a cold November morning, down one dirt road and up another, ecologist Mourad Gabriel led a safety briefing at the grow site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Gabriel, who previously spearheaded a U.S. Forest Service effort tackling trespass grows on public lands, co-founded the research center with Wengert and now co-directs it with her. He’s also her spouse and a foil to her calm watchfulness — dismayed by the state of the forest one moment and bounding off to investigate an interesting mushroom or animal scat the next.

“Please don't push the red shiny buttons, or lick the big pink things,” Gabriel joked at the mouth of a well-worn path growers had carved into the woods. (Carbofuran, a dangerous and illegal pesticide often found on grow sites, is bright pink.)

The team, Gabriel explained, wasn’t there to clean up the grow. They didn’t have the money for that. Instead, he said, shouldering his backpack and strapping on a first aid kit, they were there to document the contaminants as part of a U.S. Forest Service-funded investigation into wildlife around cultivation sites.

“This site will sit on this landscape until someone acquires some level of funding,” Gabriel said. “And no one can really push it, until we actually get that data.”

Jenna Hatfield, a member of Wengert’s team, takes notes at the grow site.

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Fred Greaves

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Wengert and Gabriel have spent years collecting data at grow sites like this one. They’ve found carcasses of creatures so poisoned even the flies feeding on them died, and detected dangerous pesticides in nearby creeks more than a year after raids.

In recent work they published with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the team found that illegal grows pulsed pollutants from plastic, painkillers, personal care products, pot and pesticides into the soil that could be detected months or even years later. Some contaminants also showed up in nearby streams.

The pollutants diminished over time — absorbed into the landscape and washed into waterways. By the time the researchers tested for them, the concentrations had declined to levels lower than those found in agricultural soils.

But, they point out, remote habitats and sensitive headwaters are not where these chemicals are supposed to be. Past a marshy flat cratered with holes and piled with poison-green insecticide bags, Gabriel, Wengert and ecologist Ivan Medel trailed an armed U.S. Forest Service officer to a massive trash heap cordoned off by barbed wire.

Medel wedged himself through the strands and handed empty fertilizer bags dripping blue liquid out to Gabriel.

Force-feeding waterways the excess nutrients in fertilizer can upend entire ecosystems and spur algae blooms. The site is in the greater South Fork Trinity River watershed — vital, undammed habitat for protected salmon and other fish species.

“That was pretty nasty,” Gabriel said, as one bag spilled liquid over his gloved hands. He counted up the haul. “Twelve bags right there.”

By day’s end, the team discovered enough empty bags and bottles to have held 2,150 pounds of fertilizer and more than 29 gallons of liquid concentrate. All of that, the growers had poured into the land.

A scientist walks through empty planting holes at the illegal cannabis site, where growers chopped away brush and laid irrigation lines.

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Fred Greaves

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A federal void

In 2018, a federal audit lambasted the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up — or even document — trespass grows in national forests.

The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put “the public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination” and could allow growers to return more easily.

Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service “prioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.”

But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn’t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request.

The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.

“We have tried just about everything,” said Huffman. “It’s clearly not enough.”

Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing “has remained steady,” roughly 5,000 non-fire employees “have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so” through “multiple voluntary separation programs.”

Huffman put it more starkly. “They’ve been gutted,” he said. “The Forest Service right now has a sign on the door that says, ‘We're out of the office. We're not sure when we'll ever be back.’”

Mourad Gabriel, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, looks at a bottle found in the abandoned camp.

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Fred Greaves

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Cleaning it up

The Shasta-Trinity grow stretched for more than 6 acres through national forest land. Trash, and the smell of pot, were everywhere.

Law enforcement officers had removed the mouth of the irrigation tube diverting water from a nearby creek, but all the piping remained. It slithered over downed trees, past the craters of another abandoned grow to a waterfall where leaves and black tubing snarled in the rocks.

Gabriel clambered up the waterfall, where he discovered a sock and a plastic bottle with the top sliced off — a makeshift filter the growers used to keep the line clear of debris. He hung the bottle on a tree branch, like a ghoulish Christmas ornament.

Few organizations are qualified to do science-informed cleanups, and none work as widely as Wengert and Gabriel’s.

California’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program is paying the team more than $5.3 million to conduct the legislatively mandated study on cleaning up grow sites, and also to train and support tribal teams and other organizations to do this work.

The study, and the training, include best practices for handling and disposing of hazardous waste, Gabriel said. More teams means more competition for the pot of state-allocated money, but he wants more allies in the fight.

“Until someone cleans it up, it stays out here,” Gabriel said from his perch in the waterfall, surrounded by a tangle of black irrigation pipes. He expected it could take years.

Wengert and Gabriel follow an irrigation pipe that leads to the water source growers used to water their cannabis crop.

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Fred Greaves

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But that’s not what happened.

Two weeks later, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife choppered away nearly 1,500 pounds of trash, 4,000 feet of irrigation pipe and 7 pesticide containers — restoring the rugged, remote forest.

The department had offered to help out the U.S. Forest Service and take the lead on the clean up, with its own helicopter, on its own budget, according to spokesperson Sarah Sol.

Months later, when Gabriel learned about it, he was shocked — and concerned. Sol said that Fish and Wildlife staff did not encounter any banned or restricted pesticides, and all had masks and nitrile gloves available to them.

But Gabriel’s team found residue in the pesticide sprayers on the hillside from a class of chemicals that includes banned and dangerous carbofuran. He worried that the cleanup team could have unknowingly put themselves and others at risk.

“There is a proper way to do it, and there is a cowboy way to do it,” Gabriel said.

It’s one site down — one patch of forest cleared. But thousands like it remain, littering California’s landscape.