The Brief

The California Supreme Court sided with Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders in the Legislature on the constitutionality of a sweeping anti-tax measure, ruling Thursday that it cannot go before voters in November.

The business community-sponsored initiative, formally known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, broadly aims to make it more challenging to raise taxes in California, including by requiring the Legislature to seek approval from the voters for any new or higher state tax.

Newsom and legislative leaders sued last fall to stop the measure, arguing that it amounts to an illegal attempt to revise the California Constitution and would impair essential government functions.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court agreed, ordering Secretary of State Shirley Weber to refrain from taking any steps to place the initiative on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The proposed changes “are within the electorate’s prerogative to enact,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote, “but because those changes would substantially alter our basic plan of government, the proposal cannot be enacted by initiative.”

Proponents, led by the California Business Roundtable, introduced the initiative to crack down on what they contend are loopholes created by legislators and court rulings that weakened previous voter-approved tax accountability measures and allowed an unelected administrative bureaucracy to flourish. It has been heavily supported by the real estate industry and a private ambulance company, which frequently battle local governments over taxes, fees and assessments to fund public services.

The measure would also increase the margin to pass a voter-initiated special tax at the local level, to two-thirds from a simple majority; restrict how officials can calculate the cost of fees that fund public services and programs; and reclassify some of those charges as taxes.

These changes could upend the operation of California government at every level, prohibiting administrative agencies from setting levies and requiring the Legislature or local governments to turn to the voters to adjust them. Cities, counties and the unions that represent their employees have raised alarms that the initiative would blow a hole in their budgets, threatening their ability to provide essential services.

Opponents argued in court during a hearing last month that, rather than simply amending tax law in the state constitution, this amounted to a fundamental restructuring of how government operates — a more substantial change that can only be proposed by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or through a constitutional convention. The initiative’s proponents countered that the power of the legislative branch has always been shared with the public and urged the justices not to intervene in a political conflict that should be settled by voters.

Democratic lawmakers had already placed a competing measure on the November ballot designed to undermine the California Business Roundtable initiative.

The legislative measure flips the California Business Roundtable’s own higher standards around, requiring any changes to the threshold for approving state and local taxes pass by that same margin. So if voters adopt it, the tax initiative would need to secure two-thirds support from the electorate to become law, rather than a simple majority, a high hurdle for a statewide ballot measure.

A Trump administration official on Friday signaled a potential rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal government forms.

Supporters of those categories fear that any last-minute modifications to the U.S. government's standards for data about race and ethnicity could hurt the accuracy of census data and other future statistics used for redrawing voting districts, enforcing civil rights protections and guiding policymaking.

Those standards were last revised in 2024 during the Biden administration, after Census Bureau research and public discussion.

A White House agency at the time approved, among other changes, new checkboxes for "Middle Eastern or North African" and "Hispanic or Latino" under a reformatted question that asks survey participants: "What is your race and/or ethnicity?" The revisions also require the federal government to stop automatically categorizing people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups as white.

But at a Friday meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics in Washington, D.C., the chief statistician within the White House's Office of Management and Budget revealed that the Trump administration has started a new review of those standards and how the 2024 revisions were approved.

"We're still at the very beginning of a review. And this, again, is not prejudging any particular outcome. I think we just wanted to be able to take a look at the process and decide where we wanted to end up on a number of these questions," said Mark Calabria. "I've certainly heard a wide range of views within the administration. So it's just premature to say where we'll end up."

OMB's press office did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Calabria's comments mark the first public confirmation that Trump officials are considering the possibility of not using the latest racial and ethnic category changes and other revisions. They come amid the administration's attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a push to stop producing data that could protect the rights of transgender people and threats to the reliability of federal statistics.

In September, OMB said those Biden-era revisions "continue to be in effect" when it announced a six-month extension to the 2029 deadline for federal agencies to follow the new standards when collecting data on race and ethnicity.

Calabria said the delay gave agencies more time to implement the changes "while we review."

The first Trump administration stalled the process for revising the racial and ethnic data standards in time for the 2020 census.

The "Project 2025" policy agenda released by The Heritage Foundation, the conservative, D.C.-based think tank, called for a Republican administration to "thoroughly review any changes" to census race and ethnicity questions because of "concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden Administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas."

Advocates of the changes, however, see the new categories and other revisions as long-needed updates to better reflect people's identities.

"At stake is a more accurate and deeper understanding of the communities that comprise our country," says Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "I am not concerned if it's reviewed in an honest attempt to understand what the process was. I am concerned if it's for a predetermined outcome that would be to ignore the entire process that was done in a very transparent manner."

Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2025 NPR

A large black bear that was relocated earlier this year after being found under a house in Altadena is up to his old tricks again.

The bear, nicknamed Barry by the neighbors, was found last week under a different Altadena home, and wildlife officials are using a caramel- and cherry-scented lure to entice the roughly 550-pound male bear out of his hiding spot.

So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.

Cort Klopping, information specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told LAist the bear seems to be spooked by increased activity around the home, including media crews outside and helicopters overhead.

“It seems as though in this case, this bear has found this poor guy's crawlspace as a comfortable, safe-seeming, warm enclosure for denning purposes,” he said.

He said the space is “somewhere for this bear to kind of hang its hat when it's relaxing.”

How the bear returned

Wildlife officials can tell it’s the same bear who was lured out from under an Altadena house after the Eaton Fire because of the tag number on his ear.

The bear was trapped and relocated about 10 miles away to the Angeles National Forest in January, but Klopping said he’s been back in the Altadena area for around five months.

The male bear after it was removed from under an Altadena home earlier this year.

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The bear spooked a SoCal Gas crew who stopped by for repairs after the Eaton Fire in January.

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The Department of Fish and Wildlife fitted the bear with a temporary GPS collar so officials could keep track of it. The collar came off a couple months later while the animal still was living in the forest.

The bear is believed to have been spotted around the home last Tuesday, Klopping said, and the owner reached out to wildlife officials a few days later for help.

“I’ve seen pictures of this bear, and I’m shocked to be under that house,” homeowner Ken Johnson told LAist media partner CBS LA.

Officials said they were hopeful the bear would move along on its own. They encouraged the homeowner to set up a camera on the crawlspace and line the area with ammonia soaked-rags or a motion-activated wildlife sprinkler system to deter the bear from returning, Klopping said.

“These are all actions that would not harm the bear, not harm people, but they would make it less comfortable for the bear to be there,” he said.

But the bear stayed put.

“Right now, it seems like it's stressed,” Klopping said. “It seems like it's scared, and therefore, it's not really wanting to leave the security of where it is at the moment.”

The hope ahead

A pair of wildlife officials stopped by the home Thursday to set up the sweet-smelling lure and camera so the department can keep an eye on the bear’s activity remotely.

Barry didn’t take the bait immediately, Klopping said, but officials are hopeful the animal will feel more comfortable leaving the crawlspace once activity around the home dies down a bit.

Klopping also is warning people in the area to secure access points on their property so the bear just doesn’t move in there next.

“If I were in that neighborhood, I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that my crawlspaces would not be accessible,” he said, including covering it with something stronger than the wire mesh the bear got through before.

Bears also are extremely food motivated, and Klopping said they can smell your leftover chicken in trash cans on the curb from 5 miles away.

He encouraged residents to be mindful of trash that could be an easy meal for wildlife, as well as pet food and hummingbird feeders, which Klopping said biologists have seen bears drink “like a soda.”

You can find tips on how to handle a bear in your backyard here and resources from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife here.

There’s a new way you can track pollution in your neighborhood.

The SoCal Clean Manufacturing Coalition, a climate advocacy group, has released a map with the locations of more than 1,800 fossil fuel-burning industrial boilers across Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Many are at universities and hospitals, as well as some apartment complexes like the Park La Brea apartments in the Miracle Mile.

The map is part of an effort to push the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates our air quality, to pass rules to require these large boilers to be phased out.

Why do these boilers matter?

Industrial boilers aren’t exactly the poster child of pollution, but they do play a role in Southern California. Boilers come in different sizes, and although there are electric types, many still burn fossil fuels to generate hot water, steam and, as a byproduct, nitrogen oxide.

South Coast AQMD says that makes it a source of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide contributors are not only a problem for smog and respiratory issues but also for the agency’s effort to meet federal air quality standards.

That’s why last year the agency approved new requirements for certain buildings to use zero-emission water heaters and boilers when they need replacement.

Teresa Cheng,  California director for Industrious Labs, a coalition member focused on creating cleaner industries, says these rules were for smaller “baby boilers” and that the coalition wants to see that applied to larger ones, which are covered under the agency’s 1146 and 1146.1 rule.

The push has caused concern in the gas industry. The California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, which represents small fuel retailers and industry suppliers, says boilers are essential in a wide range of manufacturing facilities that need high heat, like food processing, fuel production and more.

“CFCA is deeply concerned that requiring industrial facilities to abandon gas-fired boilers at the end of their useful life before the market is technologically or economically ready will still have severe consequences for manufacturers, workers and consumers,” the alliance said in a statement.

The organization says many facilities already have invested in “ultra-low” nitrogen oxide technology and that requiring a switch to zero-emissions equipment could destabilize the industry because of costs.

See the map

The map includes the number of boilers in each place, including how many aging units, and their permitted heating capacity. (That metric essentially correlates with how much pollution it can release.)

Cheng says the map is being shared to make the “invisible visible” so residents can know what’s around them. Most boilers are in communities that already deal with environmental pollution problems.

Boilers are even close to K-12 schools, like Glendale’s Herbert Hoover High School, which has its own.

“ These boilers have a very long lifeline,” she said. “If the air district doesn't pass zero-emissions rules for these boilers, we actually risk locking in decades more of pollution.”