The Brief

With tax revenues in a free fall comparable to the Great Recession and the dot-com bust, California faces a projected $68 billion budget deficit next year that will require spending cuts and reserve funds to close, state finance officials said today.

The new estimate from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, released as Gov. Gavin Newsom finalizes his January budget proposal, reflects a substantially delayed tax-filing period this fall where collections came in far below what lawmakers expected when they adopted a spending plan over the summer.

This projected deficit would be a record for California. But officials noted that it is partly because the budget has grown so much in recent years — the most recent was more than $300 billion — and that the state has closed similar or worse spending gaps, by percentage, in the past.

Legislative analyst Gabriel Petek cautioned that California is better prepared to respond to the situation than during the economic recession 15 years ago, because it has since built several multibillion-dollar rainy-day funds, though the state is also looking at a structural deficit of about $30 billion annually going forward.

“I go with the word ‘serious.’ A serious budget problem,” Petek said during a briefing with journalists. “I would stop short of calling it a crisis.”

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance, said the administration will have different numbers when the governor presents his 2024-25 spending plan next month, but Newsom is preparing to address a significant deficit.

“Both the Governor and the Legislature have a substantial challenge before them in closing a very large revenue gap in this budget,” Palmer told CalMatters. “The IRS, with the best of intentions, created a situation this year that is entirely new territory.”

Severe winter storms prompted the federal government to delay the income tax filing deadline for most Californians from April until November, and the state followed suit, giving an incomplete picture when legislators and the governor crafted the budget this summer.

It already accounted for a $30 billion deficit, after two years of record surpluses driven by economic recovery and federal aid related to the coronavirus pandemic. But those collections were ultimately another $26 billion below estimates — a drop of 25% from the prior year — digging a financial hole based on money the state committed in its spending plan.

This year looks weak as well, according to finance officials. California has been hit particularly hard by inflation, which pinched the housing market; a stock market downturn, affecting capital gains; and a drop in investments in the tech industry, which has pulled back on initial public offerings. Overall tax revenues are projected to be $58 billion below assumptions in the multi-year budget window.

Though the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that tax revenues will begin growing again next year, the recovery is likely to be slow, opening up long-term funding shortfalls that could affect essential programs in future years.

“There are enough options available to address this immediate problem,” Petek said. “Our high-level suggestion to the Legislature is just to be judicious about reserves because there’s a lot of uncertainty ahead, so preserving some of that resilience would be helpful.”

His office recommended that Newsom declare a fiscal emergency, allowing the state to dip into as much as $24 billion of its rainy-day funds, and that legislators pull back on one-time spending allocations that have not yet been distributed, potentially saving $10 billion or more that had previously been set aside for transportation, environmental and education programs.

Petek also suggested that California could cut the deficit by nearly $17 billion over the next three years by recalculating its constitutionally-mandated funding obligation to schools and community colleges, known as Proposition 98, based on the lower revenues. Though this would decrease the state’s base education funding over the long term, Petek said the immediate effects could be offset with reserves.

That option, in particular, could encounter stiff resistance in the Legislature. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Hollister Democrat, released a statement last week, when it became clear that tax revenues would be substantially below estimates, committing to a budget that “protects classroom funding.”

Newsom and lawmakers are also likely to confront months of tremendous pressure from advocates arguing that their priorities should be protected in any budget solutions. Statements started rolling out mere minutes after the Legislative Analyst’s Office published its report.

“California leaders have stepped up before to prioritize Californians who are struggling to get by and they must continue this in 2024,” said Pete Manzo, president & CEO of United Ways of California.

Republican legislators chastised their Democratic colleagues for continuing to make new spending commitments in recent budget cycles even as it became clear that the economy was increasingly shaky.

“Hopefully, the supermajority will see it is time for a more realistic budget strategy,” Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones of San Diego said in a statement, “instead of throwing money at a laundry list of projects that sounds nice on the national television debate stage.”

A dangerous atmospheric river is poised to deliver “excessive rainfall” across Southern California, raising fears that the rain could unleash a threat that has been lingering in the burn scars of wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles communities in recent years.

Called debris flows, these fast-moving slurries of floodwater and sediment can hurtle down slopes carrying cars, trees and even boulders with them.

They’re like “a flood on steroids,” said Jason Kean, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s landslide hazards program. “It’s really hard to stop these things. The best thing to do is get out of the way.”

Northern California is already reeling from the atmospheric river that unleashed catastrophic flash flooding in Redding over the weekend, killing a 74-year-old man who became trapped in his pickup truck on a flooded roadway.

Now, another storm is expected to reach coastal Northern California this evening, with strong winds and especially heavy rainfall pushing into Southern California.

Forecasters warn that the rain “will cause life-threatening flash flooding, along with landslides, rockfalls, and/or mudslides,” particularly for areas along Southern California’s Transverse Ranges, including the San Bernardino, San Gabriel, and Sierra Madre mountains. “Urban flooding in the greater Los Angeles metro area is likely.”

Burn scars — slicked by fire and stripped of plants — are especially dangerous during heavy rains. A storm after the Thomas Fire in 2018 spurred debris flows in Montecito that killed 23 people. And in February, a debris flow in the Palisades Fire burn zone swept a Los Angeles Fire Department member and his SUV into the Pacific Ocean.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works warns that there’s a risk of moderate debris and mudflows capable of blocking roadways and endangering some structures in the burn scars of more than a dozen fires — including January’s Eaton, Hurst and Palisades fires.

The county has issued evacuation warnings in and around recent burn scars, and urged those who may take longer to evacuate to consider leaving now. Officials also announced some targeted evacuation orders for specific properties “at higher risk for mud and debris flows impacts.”

“Recent burn areas, including those impacted by the January wildfires, remain highly susceptible to mud and debris flows,” county officials warned Monday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that more than 225 personnel and resources including 45 fire engines, 10 swiftwater rescue teams, helicopters and more have been pre-deployed to a dozen northern and southern California counties.

Meteorologists are discussing it as a “one in every five years type of storm,” said Lisa Phillips with the National Weather Service. “There's going to be problems everywhere. We have a lot of canyon roads and mountain roads, and things will fall down.”

Phillips said she expects to see mudslides, landslides, sinkholes — even after the rains have ended, and urged people to stay off the roads if they can.

“There's going to be issues outside of the burn scars too, and flooding,” Phillips said. “We want everyone to stay at home, stay safe and don't get yourself into any trouble unnecessarily.”

We spoke with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Kean, an expert on debris flows after wildfires, last month about what to expect when storms strike burn scars. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

As this storm really takes hold in L.A. and Southern California, I'm hearing a lot of concern about it hitting areas that burned this past year, including in the Eaton and Palisades fires. Why is this such a big concern? What could happen?

Last January those fires removed much of the vegetation on really steep slopes, and that made those slopes really vulnerable to erosion during intense rainfall. That protective blanket of vegetation is gone, and heavy rain can rapidly make a flash flood. And that flood, in some cases, can pick up material and turn into what we call a debris flow — which is like a flood on steroids.

Damage along Tanoble Drive near Mendocino Street is visible after heavy rainfall triggered multiple mudslides in the Eaton Fire burn scar area in Altadena on Feb. 14, 2025. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters These burn areas are still vulnerable, even though it's now many months after the fire and there have been flows already. There's still plenty of material that could be mobilized. So the threat’s still there. And so we know they're bad actors, and we’re concerned they could be bad actors again.

I’m hearing a lot of different terms: mudslide, debris flows, landslide. What are the differences, and which ones are the burn scars at risk for? 

Landslide is an umbrella term that captures all kinds of mass movements, from rock falls to debris flows — these floods on steroids — to big, slow movers. The type of flow that we're most concerned about in a recent burn area is a debris flow. It's also called a mudslide. But geologists don't like to use the word mudslide as much because it sounds like there's some mud on your driveway — not a big issue, not something that could kill you. And these things, if you're in the wrong spot at the wrong time, they can cause serious damage.

You called it a flood on steroids. What happens in a debris flow? 

Flash floods are bad, and they can cause lots of problems, too. They can get even worse if they pick up enough sediment to turn into the consistency of wet concrete. But it's worse than just concrete, because it can contain boulders the size of cars. And, very close to the mountain front, it can move very quickly — faster than you can run. And when it gets all bulked up with debris, the rocks, the gravel, the mud, trees, the flow can be a lot bigger. It just turns into a different animal.

Now, debris flows pack a bigger punch than floods, but thankfully, they don't have as long of reach. So usually, the debris flows are confined really close to the mountain fronts. That's where they put those debris basins to catch them. But if there isn't one protection like that, then they can travel downslope and impact neighborhoods, and then flooding can extend even further down.

Is there something about Southern California that makes it higher risk?

Southern California's kind of the world capital for these kinds of events. It's got this combination of very steep topography, like the San Gabriel Mountains that just shoot right up, Santa Monica Mountains, Santa Ynez — very steep topography. It burns fairly frequently. And then there are a lot of people living very close to the mountain front, so that's what puts the risk up.

The thing about a burn area is it takes much less rainfall to cause a problem than it would in unburned conditions. So we've now made the slopes really vulnerable. They're extra steep. There's a lot of people there. That's why the risk is so high.

We've seen debris flows in Northern California burn areas as well. It's not just a Southern California problem, and it's not just a California problem.

Is there anything that could have been done to reduce this risk? Anything that should be done now? 

Not long after the fires, in particular the Palisades Fire, (there were) a number of fairly widespread debris flows that disrupted the roads. There were also, in the Eaton fire, floods and debris flows there. Thankfully there's a dense network of LA County debris basins, which are designed to catch the material before it enters neighborhoods, and those largely saved the day.

Planners have planned ahead and put in these debris basins — these big, giant holes in the ground — designed to catch the material. That's the best defense against these. They're not everywhere, but there is a good network of protection. Other than that, it's really hard to stop these things.

What should people who live near the recent burn scars know? What should they do now, as the rain starts? 

The best thing you could do is, if you're really close to a drainage in one of these burn areas, is to get out of the way. You're going to get a heads up from the National Weather Service, who's closely monitoring the rainstorms. They know how much rain it's going to take to cause a problem, and they'll get out warnings, and local authorities will reach out to get people out of the way. So there's a lot of eyes on the situation. And so at this point, the best thing to do is listen to the weather service, listen to local authorities.

If they ask you to get out of the way, take their advice. These things can happen really fast if there is an intense burst of rain, a flash flood, where debris flow can start within minutes.

So there is no escaping a debris flow once it starts? 

It's pretty difficult. If you have a two-story home and you happen to be there at the wrong time, get up to that second floor for sure. Fight like heck if you get trapped in one. But best to be out of the way.

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

Of everything I saw on TV in 2025, the one show I thought was the very best, and has haunted me ever since, was the four-part Netflix drama Adolescence. It's the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate, and it's told in such a way, emotionally and technically, that I can't and won't forget it. It's the show I recommend most highly, but with a major caveat. It's grim. And it's almost unbearably intense.

Intensity, it turns out, is a common factor among many of my very favorite shows from this year. HBO Max's The Pitt was a medical show with an impressively credible tension factor. So was Netflix's The Diplomat, with its unpredictable, high-stakes plot twists. And so was FX's The Bear, even though it wasn't about life or death, just appetizers and entrees. The Bear even calls itself a comedy, but it's not. Much, much too dramatic for that.

A couple of my other favorite TV dramas, almost equally intense, featured ragtag, mismatched investigative teams thrown together to solve specific crimes. One, HBO's Task, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with lots of emotional baggage, played by Mark Ruffalo. Another, Netflix's Dept. Q, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with even more emotional baggage, played by Matthew Goode.

And maybe it's just me, but this year I definitely gravitated to dramatic shows that made me uneasy. It was another great season for Netflix's Black Mirror, and the end-of-year final episode of another dark Netflix fantasy series, Stranger Things, is eagerly awaited by many. Including me, because I've seen all the new episodes leading up to it, but the finale is being kept under wraps.

Stranger Things has been around since 2016 — almost a decade — but other terrific genre productions were new takes on old ideas. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, on Netflix, was an excellent and very different adaptation. And what Noah Hawley did by reinventing the Alien movie franchise, for the FX TV series Alien: Earth, was thrilling — and, at times, truly scary. And still churning out weekly episodes, brilliant ones, is Pluribus, the new, indescribably original Apple TV sci-fi series from Vince Gilligan.

The comedies I liked best this year? Some were set behind-the-scenes of show biz — like the new Apple TV series The Studio, starring Seth Rogen as a bumbling but well-meaning studio head, and the returning HBO Max series Hacks, starring Jean Smart as a female comic landing a job as a TV talk-show host. The other comedies were lighthearted mysteries benefiting greatly from their veteran cast members: Hulu's Only Murders in the Building and Netflix's A Man on the Inside. Both of those shows made me feel good — which is a lot to ask of any TV show these days.

Nonfiction TV also offered many excellent options this year. Artistic profiles to seek out from 2025 include Apple TV's Mr. Scorsese, about film director Martin Scorsese, and HBO's Pee-wee as Himself, about actor Paul Reubens. Most recently, there's the short but powerful Netflix documentary All the Empty Rooms, about a TV feature reporter and photographer who visit the families of children killed during school shootings, to memorialize the children's empty, but still intact, bedrooms. It's as tough to watch as Adolescence — and, oddly, touches on a similar subject.

Other great documentaries this year included Sunday Best, a new Netflix program about Ed Sullivan's contributions to popularizing Black entertainers; PBS's The American Revolution, the latest and perhaps greatest epic history lesson from Ken Burns and company; and the new installment of The Beatles Anthology, presented by Disney+.

On talk shows, I loved the feisty, topical spirit invoked by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — and especially the well-aimed irreverence of the current season of Comedy Central's South Park. Wow. Many of these shows were attacked or censored by their corporate owners, in well-publicized clashes that exposed, and fought against, the interference. The CBS Late Show franchise is being retired from the schedule — but most of the time this year, the comics and their programs persevered.

Finally, my favorite TV moment of 2025 came courtesy of CNN. Not for a news bulletin, but for televising, live from Broadway, a production of Good Night, and Good Luck, starring George Clooney as veteran CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. At the end of the play, Clooney recites Murrow's actual speech to news and TV executives from 1958, urging them to use TV wisely.

In the year 2025, the best of television — from The American Revolution to Adolescence — is living up to Ed Murrow's inspirational ideals. We all just have to find the best that's out there … then find the time to watch it.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Huntington Beach City Councilmember Butch Twining has sued Ocean View School District President Gina Clayton-Tarvin for what he alleges is a “sustained and coordinated campaign to publicly brand” him as “a white supremacist and extremist.”

At the heart of the complaint are Clayton-Tarvin’s tweets about Twining attending a vigil to honor slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. On Sept. 13, 2025, she tweeted, “What’s worse? That Huntington Beach councilman Butch Twining was there gleefully chanting amongst alt right white supremacists. Anyone recognize this behavior? Look no further than his buddy and mentor councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, HB’s resident Neo Nazi since 2017.”

In the lawsuit, lawyers for Twining wrote Clayton-Tarvin “weaponized” the vigil “into a digital smear campaign” against Twining that was carried out across multiple social media platforms and community forums.

According to the lawsuit, the vigil was “hijacked by a small group of bad faith opportunists,” prompting Twining to leave the vigil.

“Twining did not participate in the chant or march alongside the racist opportunists. Twining condemns white supremacy in all of its forms,” the attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit accuses Clayton-Tarvin of being “a prolific poster of misinformation designed to cause reputational harm” and that her recent posts are “increasingly manic and reckless, as if

the author is not only lying but also losing touch with reality.”

Twining also alleges that Clayton-Tarvin’s tweets led to three death threats.

A video that went viral from the day of the vigil that Clayton-Tarvin quoted in her tweet shows Twining holding a candle and an American flag. Some people are chanting “white men fight back” in the video, but it is unclear if Twining was one of them.

In an interview with LAist, Clayton-Tarvin called the legal action a “nonsense lawsuit.”

“ Butch Twining is a very sensitive man and he doesn't understand that he's trying to chill free speech. The facts of the matter are that he was there and he can't deny it,” she said, adding that her tweets were posted three days after the vigil and Twining was seen by hundreds of people.

Twining, she said, is going down a “slippery slope” with the lawsuit, showing other residents in the city that if they speak up or criticize a politician, they can be sued. Twining is seeking $25 million in damages from Clayton-Tarvin.

“This is about squashing the First Amendment, about damaging the public's rights, public participation,” she said.

Cookbooks have always meant more to me than a list of recipes — they're storytelling objects. They carry memory, culture, voice, and visuals and they help us create memorable moments with the people we love.

That's the spirit behind Cookbook LIVE, an LAist live event series co-produced with the James Beard Foundation, that I've had the joy of hosting. Over three evenings, we brought together top cookbook authors and food-lover audiences for nights of culinary connection and exploration.

To close out the series, I sat down with James Beard Award winner and L.A. icon Roy Choi in November. His newest book, The Choi of Cooking — his first in over a decade — reimagines some of his go-to dishes with a lighter, more veg-forward twist. It's a book that reflects where he is now: still rooted in the flavors that made him a chef, but thinking about how we eat for the long haul.

During our conversation, Roy walked us through some of his favorite recipes and opened up about the journey that shaped him: growing up in kitchens filled with his mother’s "future food”, finding cooking later in life, surviving New York's toughest restaurants, and building Kogi into something cosmic and communal. It was an evening full of honesty, laughter, and real talk about food justice, access, and the myths we still cling to about chefs.

Below, I've pulled together a handful moments in the conversation have stuck with me — moments that resonated long after we left the stage.

Roy Choi in his own words

On his journey into cooking

Chef Roy Choi and LAist's Gab Chabrán discuss "The Choi of Cooking" before a sold-out crowd at Cookbook LIVE

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"The beginning of my chef career — entering the hardest kitchens before I even knew how to cook.

I found cooking a little bit later in life, in my mid-20s. A lot of cooks get into the kitchen very young. I grew up in a restaurant, but I wasn't really focused on being a cook. I was just in the restaurant as a restaurant kid.

I didn't really get into it until my late 20s, and so I felt like I had to make up time before I even knew how to cook, I was going to jump into the hardest top kitchens in the world and just figure it out on the fly.

Those kitchens were in New York City .... in 1997, I worked in the number one, number two and number three kitchen in New York City. Four stars on all restaurants. And I was not ready for that at all.

By the time I was done with those kitchens, I was just at a point where I should have been when I entered. But it built my palate, it built my work ethic, my technical skills and my sensory aptitude of everything."

On growing up in his parent's kitchen and "future cooking"

"My mom cooks for like 300 people and there are three of us in the room. She doesn't know how to alter the recipe . . . the recipe's built for 50 pounds of chicken. So she's still doing it to this day.

I grew up always in a house that smelled like cooking all the time. There was always food on the stove or on the table or in the laundry room. But that food wasn't for eating, it was for the future.

My mom was a futurist. Everything she was cooking was for the future, and what I was eating in the moment was from the past.

It never stopped. It was relentless — almost like maintaining a sourdough starter or working a 24-hour shift . . . soy sauce steeping, kimchi fermenting, garlic being roasted. On another level when you're 16, 17 and you bring friends over — you gotta explain it.

With a beef bone broth soup . . . it takes three days to cook that soup. You have to decide on Thursday that you're going to eat it on Sunday. You have to think of the soup today."

On starting Kogi and what it unlocked

Roy Choi, left, hands out food from his Kogi BBQ truck in Maywood in January 2024.

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"We started from a drunk night. It was a drunk night eating tacos in Koreatown, and my partner said, 'What if we put Korean barbecue in this? It'd be delicious.' And that's how it started."

When we started Kogi, when we were out on the streets, it was all of the ladies of the lot. That's why my name is Papi Chulo. All the tías embraced me . . . Kogi wouldn't exist if we didn't get the pass from the tías.

To me, Kogi is very cosmic. It never gets old. We've been around 17 years now . . . In 17 years, it's never felt like it needed to change. There are not many foods that live within this lexicon of timelessness . . . I've been very fortunate to crack the code on one of them."

On food justice and the reality of price

The chef's new book "The Choi of Cooking"

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"We still have to figure out why so much food goes to waste and why so many people are hungry . . . we have to move the priority of that dilemma upwards... build, like, a TikTok eating culture around the disparity in food justice.

I would like food to be a lot more affordable. The chef world is getting out of control. $42 for a pasta is ridiculous; a pasta without lobster shouldn't be $42 just 'cause it was handmade.

Price is the number one coded message within the disparity within food. It's the hidden thing. It's the secret message, the secret handshake and the dirty secret that no one wants to talk about. If you charge $42 for that pasta, it's going to just automatically exclude a whole sector of society and close the door on anyone being able to affect change in the future because they'll never be exposed to it."

On the fallacy of the restaurant chef

"A myth about being a chef or a restaurateur . . . that we got our shit together is a big fallacy.

You guys write about [chefs] like they're gods . . . like they're elves . . . the word 'genius' is thrown around a lot around chefs. That's so untrue, man. Chefs are hardworking people. A lot of chefs that you think have everything put together are literally figuring it out as you see them.

I don't believe that we're perfect, that we're geniuses and that we're gods and otherworldly. It's a job and a profession that requires you to get down on your knees, on your elbows, fingers in the dirt and really cook. You're more a sailor than you are a god or an elf."