The Brief

The Democratic candidate for Orange County assessor has lost her party’s endorsement as a result of complaints from her campaign staff that she repeatedly sought to use campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses, LAist has learned.

Such expenditures would violate state law, which allows candidates to tap campaign contributions only to pay campaign expenses.

The candidate, Janet Keo Conklin, denied trying to misuse campaign funds.

“ I have not done anything wrong,” she told LAist.

Multiple former campaign staffers who spoke with LAist also allege Conklin engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace, including taking staffers’ hands and placing them on Conklin’s breasts.

Conklin denied the allegations in an interview with LAist. She acknowledged that during a conversation with a staffer who was working on Conklin’s cellphones — both a work phone and a personal phone — she alluded to receiving a nude photograph from a former client.

Conklin is a licensed real estate broker and La Palma City Council member. She is on the June ballot, where she faces Republican Party-endorsed incumbent Claude Parrish.

Parrish has had his own troubles.

Last year, LAist was the first to report on a workplace misconduct investigation commissioned by the county that found Parrish violated gender discrimination and retaliation policies in the assessor’s office and harassed a subordinate over a medical disability.

Parrish was found to have downplayed the employee’s chronic illness, shared her private medical information with coworkers, regularly commented on her diet and told her to stop taking her medicine and to “drink baking soda mixed with tap water to ‘fix’ her medical condition.” Citing the 2023 investigation’s findings, the county’s HR director sent a letter to Parrish late that year telling him to stop violating harassment policies.

Parrish told LAist he was not at fault.

The primary job of the assessor, an officially nonpartisan office, is to supervise appraisals of all taxable property in the county.

Florice Hoffman, the chair of the Orange County Democratic Party, said in an interview that party activists first told her about Conklin’s alleged improper campaign spending requests in February.

She said she and Lauren Johnson-Norris, the party’s vice chair, quickly met with Conklin and urged her to drop out of the race. Instead, she said, Conklin agreed to give up the endorsement, which the party had made weeks earlier.

Hoffman, who is a lawyer, recalled telling Conklin, “Our advice is you need to get a lawyer, a criminal lawyer.”

Janet Keo Conklin

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Johnson-Norris did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

When asked about Hoffman’s advice in an interview with LAist, Conklin said, “ Lawyers, they sometimes get a little too dramatic.”

She added:  ”Lawyers, they get spooked easily over any allegation, seriously, so I'm not concerned. I have not done anything wrong.”

Endorsements removed from campaign website

When LAist began reporting this article, Conklin was endorsed by key figures in the Democratic establishment, including O.C. Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento and U.S. Rep. Derek Tran, according to her campaign website as of April 24.

Tran’s endorsement was removed from Conklin’s campaign website before the entire list of endorsements was eventually removed as well.

Sarmiento told LAist he reached out to Conklin’s campaign to rescind his endorsement on Saturday pending further investigation.

“I certainly don’t want to support anyone involved in any misconduct, especially after my experience with a former colleague who is serving five years in federal prison,” he said, alluding to former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do serving time in federal prison for his role in a corruption scheme uncovered by LAist.

Tran did not respond to a request for comment.

LAist asked Conklin about losing Tran and the Democratic Party of O.C.’s endorsements.

" Endorsements come and go. If it doesn't come with money, so what?” Conklin said.

Details of the allegations 

LAist interviewed eight of Conklin's current or former campaign staff, including her former campaign treasurer.

Cine Ivery, the former treasurer, said Conklin fired her after she requested receipts for a campaign credit card and rebuffed the candidate’s repeated requests to use campaign money to pay personal expenses, including rent for Conklin’s two-bedroom apartment in La Palma.

Ivery told LAist Conklin was “constantly trying” to use campaign funds for personal use.  

“She was always trying to find a way: 'Can I pay my rent? Can I pay the house bill? Can I do this?'” Ivery recounted from meetings with the candidate.

Ivery recalled explaining federal campaign finance laws to Conklin in detail.

“You can't skate around. You can't pretend. You can't hide,” she said, recounting their back and forth.

Ivery showed LAist email exchanges with Conklin in which she asked Conklin, unsuccessfully, to produce receipts for about $1,100 in charges on a maxed-out $2,500 campaign credit card. She said Conklin fired her after these email exchanges.

Michael Trujillo, Conklin’s new campaign consultant, told LAist in an interview that allegations of misuse of campaign funds are “100% not true.”

“If they believe it to be true, they can file an FPPC complaint. They haven't, and they won't because it's not true,” he said.

Fair Political Practices Commission oversees campaign finance laws.

Over email, Trujillo told LAist Conklin terminated Ivery in January and scheduled her last day for Feb. 9.

Conklin told LAist in an interview it was staffers who lost the receipts for expenses they incurred. She added she has since brought in a new treasurer.

LAist reviewed the credit card statement, and the expenses without receipts were mainly incurred at restaurants. Former staffers, who asked to speak anonymously with LAist to protect their job prospects, told LAist those expenses were all incurred by Conklin personally.

In a written statement to LAist, Conklin’s campaign said Ivery “made the transition process unnecessarily difficult and combative.”

Ivery restricted the campaign’s access to fundraising and compliance platforms, according to the statement, and refused to transfer needed information to the campaign’s new treasurer.

The statement goes on to say that the campaign sought legal counsel and has considered filing a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Ivery, the former treasurer, refused to transfer campaign funds until the receipts were provided for the outstanding credit card charges, according to the statement.

Conklin asked Ivery to retain $2,500 in campaign funds to pay off the credit card and transfer the rest of the money, according to the statement.

Ivery told LAist she could not use campaign funds to pay off the credit card charges without the receipts. Ultimately, Ivery said, she used her own personal funds to pay off the credit card charges as the credit card was issued through Ivery’s company. And, Ivery said, she transferred over the campaign materials to the new treasurer after making sure she followed federal campaign finance guidelines.

Trujillo, Conklin’s campaign consultant, told LAist, when candidates lose receipts on a campaign, they eat the charges. And, Trujillo said, campaign treasurers can pay off credit card charges with campaign funds without receipts.

Per FPPC guidelines, all expenditures above $25 require receipts.

“ It is literally the craziest thing in the world to try to figure out our credit card charges when the campaign's not even over,” Trujillo said. He said at the end of the campaign when they close out the books, they’ll chase every receipt. If a receipt is not found, the candidate will eat the charge with an in-kind donation to the campaign.

LAist checked the FPPC database Friday. No complaints appear for Ivery or Conklin.

Some of the former campaign staffers also allege that after they left the campaign, campaign payments were made to Conklin’s daughter, Natalie Khay, and to Shauna Harris, a friend of Conklin’s, who they said, did not work on the campaign. Both were reported as consultants on Form 460, a state filing required by people running for office on donations they receive and payments they make with campaign funds.

When asked about these transactions, Conklin told LAist her daughter did some work on the campaign last year and she finally paid her back when she raised money.

“ I took her for granted and I said, look, I don't have any money at this time if you can be patient, please just be patient, and allow me to raise enough money because we're grassroots,” she recalled telling her daughter.

When asked about the payments to Harris, her friend, Conklin first said she rented office space from her friend. Former staffers told LAist they were unaware of any campaign office space. They said they would work out of Conklin’s home office, cafes or over Zoom.

Trujillo, Conklin’s current campaign consultant, told LAist, it is normal for campaign staffers to work from home post-COVID.

The payment to Harris on the Form 460 filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission however was listed as a payment for a campaign consultant.

When asked about that, Conklin said,  ”Well, she gives me advice, too.”

“ She is a silent partner. And if it's a problem with the filing, then we will adjust that. But she has been with me since last year,” she said. “She's been with me from the get go.”

Harris, Conklin said, provided “advice in the background” and “ she looks over the math; she looks over the numbers.”

Harris is a longtime public educator, according to her LinkedIn profile, working over 20 years at Los Angeles Unified School District. She currently runs a Mathnasium in Lakewood. The profile does not list any experience related to campaigns.

Khay and Harris did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

Former staffers allege sexually inappropriate behavior

Four former staffers allege Conklin engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace. They all told LAist they left the campaign because of these allegations.

In one incident, two former staffers, who asked not to be named due to fears of hurting future job prospects, told LAist the candidate grabbed both of their hands and placed them on her breasts during a campaign meeting at a cafe in Newport Beach.

“She was telling us about how her breasts were not real and that she has, quote, 'she has no feeling in her nipples,' end quote,” one staffer recounted.

“ We hesitated because we didn't want to touch her at all in that aspect, but she proceeds to grab both of our hands and lays them on her breast,” he said.

She then told the female staffer to “give it a squeeze,” he said.

“We took our hands off because we were just in shock,” he said.

LAist spoke with three additional people who had been told of the incident and corroborated the details of the allegations they heard at the time.

Conklin denied the incident happened.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Conklin told LAist when asked about the allegation. “That's really ridiculous.”

Another former staffer alleged in a separate incident Conklin asked her to organize files on two cell phones, and in the process, she said Conklin joked to avoid “d*ck pictures” while going through the phones.

When LAist asked Conklin about the allegation, she told us she had a nude photograph on her phone that she received from a client during a prior job as a salesperson.

“He sent me a d*ck pic,” Conklin told LAist. ”That's the only thing that I alluded to, OK, is that story. But no, I wouldn't say anything inappropriate to a staffer because it's not a thing.”

Conklin said she believed the former staffers are “pulling things out of context to villainize me, and I'm not comfortable being staged as this person who is acting inappropriate.”

Conklin added that she viewed her staff as family and would sometimes share personal details with them.

“Trauma dumping is emotional bonding.  That's how you bond with people when you're vulnerable,” she said.

Resources for abuse victims

LAist’s Ted Rohrlich contributed to this article. 

A refrigerated warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics has burned in Boyle Heights for nearly a week. Public health officials are urging residents nearby and downwind to protect themselves from the smoky air.

But what exactly is in the air is still unclear.

Authorities say they’ve cleared the most hazardous materials — ammonia and lithium-ion batteries — from the fire zone. A spokesperson for the L.A. Fire Department said foam insulation, wood pallets of food, and solar panels on top of the 500,000 square-foot building continue to smolder.

Materials including plastics, electronics and even rotting meat are likely burning, which means the pollution particles emitted “tend to be highly enriched with toxic organics, toxic metals, that are above and beyond what just normal, day-to-day air pollution would look like,” said UCLA air pollution researcher Yifang Zhu.

She said air quality indexes may capture the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not necessarily the specific toxins in them.

“You'll have almost like a double jeopardy in a sense that the levels [of particulate matter] are higher, and the toxicity is also higher,” she said.

Measuring heavy metals or volatile organic compounds requires special monitoring equipment, Zhu said.

“It’s very difficult to measure,” she said.

But she suspects at least some types of health-harming heavy metals are likely to be in the smoke.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for more specifics about what is in the smoke.

People “shouldn't have to guess about what they're breathing or rely on rumors, scattered information and updates, and incomplete information,” she said at a news conference. Jurado, whose council district includes Boyle Heights, added that data from regulators, such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, should be released in clear, understandable language in English and Spanish.

The South Coast AQMD told LAist before Jurado spoke that the agency has monitors that measure particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, but not other types of pollutants. The agency said it has set up additional monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. The agency added that the Environmental Protection Agency is also monitoring air quality at the fence line of the facility. LAist has reached out to the EPA for details.

Zhu added that even when the fire is eventually put out, the cleanup can kick up even more pollution — a lesson learned through her research after the L.A. fires.

“ I think people really need to take precautions,” Zhu said, emphasizing that those closest to the fire and downwind should avoid being outside as much as possible, keep windows closed, run a HEPA or MERV 13 air filter, and wear an N95 or similar mask otherwise.

UC Irvine toxicology professor Michael Kleinman said if thawed meat is also burning, that could lead to further toxic gases being released.

Experts urged precautions, especially if you smell smoke.

“ For people who are very close to the fire, like the firefighters themselves, they have exposure to both particulate matter and potential toxic gases, and that's why you'll see them wearing respirators,” said UC Irvine chemistry professor Suzanne Blum. “But once you're some feet away from the building, then the primary concern is the particulate smoke that is coming from this fire.”

As the Boyle Heights warehouse fire burns into its sixth day, SoCal residents are increasingly concerned about the air quality and potential health risks that come with breathing in the smoke. So, what alerts have been issued so far and how can residents be prepared?

Both Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on Saturday, a designation that helps California coordinate with local agencies to make sure there are enough resources for the firefight and residents who have been affected after a fire started at a cold storage industrial facility. Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said at a press conference Monday that  the county is "delivering supplies, air filters, and air purifiers" to local households.

Los Angeles County public health officials and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) also issued a particle pollution advisory that remained in effect until today. Affected areas included: Central Los Angeles County, the San Gabriel Valley, East San Fernando Valley and Northwest San Bernardino Valley.

Although recent air quality readings appear as “moderate” to “good” on South Coast AQMD’s website, the fire is still burning and might be for a few more days.

So what can SoCal residents do to protect themselves?

If the air quality index reads “good” or “poses little to no risk” in some areas, hazardous ash can still be present. If you see ash on your car, or windowsills, you might want to stay inside if possible. In “moderate” or yellow zones, unusually sensitive people are also recommended to avoid longer periods outside.

In the next few days, some might notice windblown ash floating in the air or coating outdoor surfaces. These particles are otherwise known as “fine particulate matter,” which consists of soot, burned plastic and perhaps even traces of the spoiling frozen food from inside the warehouse.

Why that matters

Too much exposure from these materials may cause temporary irritation to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. If you suffer from health issues that are exacerbated by poor air quality, like respiratory illnesses, you may be affected by these conditions even more.

Four expert tips to protect yourself and your family:

• If you smell smoke or see ash, try to remain indoors with the windows closed. If you can’t, consider stepping outside with an N-95 mask, and refrain from engaging in any rigorous physical activity. 
• In your homes, also avoid using whole house fans (air conditioning is okay), as they can bring in the polluted air from outdoors. 
• If you have an air purifier, this is the time to use it. 
• Avoid using fireplaces, candles and vacuums, as they can introduce toxins into the clean, indoor environment.

For more guidance on precautions following the fires, visit Los Angeles County’s public health website for more. South Coast AQMD’s website also has more healthy and safety tips.

Updated June 22, 2026 at 16:22 PM ET

Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi has broken the record for most World Cup scoring.

Messi made the record goal, his 17th, during the first half of Monday's game against Austria. It was a heated match. Austria attacked relentlessly, and Argentina relied on its defense and on goalkeeper Emiliano "Dibu" Martinez. And, near the end in stoppage time, Messi scored again, finishing off at 2-0.

The team captain started off the World Cup with a bang: in the opener against Algeria, Messi scored a hat trick: three goals. A rare feat in soccer. He has scored all five goals for Argentina this World Cup. With the win, Argentina advances to the knockout round.

Messi hails from the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, an area known for producing excellent players. He faced challenges at an early age: he had a hormonal growth deficiency, which was difficult to treat in his hometown, given the severe economic crisis facing Argentina in the late 1990s. By 2001, the Messi family had decided to accept an offer for him to join La Masia, FC Barcelona's youth academy, in Spain. Messi was 13 years old.

It was at Barca that he rose to fame and developed his unique style of walking the pitch, patiently waiting for the right opportunity to jump on the ball, dribble skillfully past his opponents, and score.

Argentina's Lionel Messi, now the all-time World Cup scoring leader, celebrates scoring his team's second goal during the FIFA World Cup 2026 group match against Austria.

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Although a legend of Barca and European soccer, he often expressed a desire to play for the Argentine national team in a World Cup. He got his chance in his 20's, but it wasn't smooth: he was widely seen as a foreigner who had not paid his dues in the Argentine soccer system. His measured, calculating style of play was often misunderstood in South America, where players tended to have a quicker, more aggressive technique.

There were several World Cup attempts that were disappointing, and after the 2016 World Cup, he announced he would not be playing again. "It's over," he said outside the locker room, visibly shaken. "I tried so hard, it is unbelievable, but it hasn't worked. Me and this team are through."

The tides turned under the leadership of Argentine Coach Lionel Scaloni, and Messi led the team to a Copa America victory in 2021. Argentina won the World Cup the following year.

This is Messi's sixth World Cup and he's considered one of the best players in soccer history.

Messi also surpassed Brazilian superstar Marta, who had scored 17 goals at the Women's World Cup.

Copyright 2026 NPR

More than two dozen state historic parks are free through the end of the year in honor of Juneteenth — and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the free “special edition Historian Passport,” which typically costs $50, as a rebuke to President Donald Trump’s attempts to “rewrite the past,” according to a news release by the governor’s office.

Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered staff working at all National Park Service locations to remove any content that casts Americans in a negative light from parks, monuments and memorials.

“California doesn’t hide from hard truths and uncomfortable history — in fact, we embrace it and learn from it,” Newsom wrote.

Until July 6, Californians can download the state historic park pass for free and use it as many times as they want through the end of 2026. The pass gives free entry to state historic parks for up to four people.

The Historian Passport grants entry to more than 30 state historic parks, including parks like Olompali and Malakoff Diggins which, rather than just providing outdoor recreation, also have an educational emphasis on the state’s history.

Jack London State Historic Park in Napa Valley, California.

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Many of these parks tell the story of the state’s cultural or indigenous history, from missions and museums to temples and the site that sparked the California Gold Rush.

Newsom made a similar move to make state parks free for Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, in response to Trump’s decision to eliminate the holiday from the list of fee-free days at national parks across the country, replacing it with his birthday on Flag Day.

How to get your free Historian Passport for up to four people

You must make an account with the state’s reservation site ReserveCalifornia.com to obtain a Historian Pass. Then, visit the site’s Advance Passes page and select “Special Edition Historian Passport” from the dropdown menu, which will show as costing $0. No payment information is required.

After checking out, you’ll receive an email with an attached PDF version of your Historian Passport.

The state recommends you print off this PDF to present at any California state historic park for free entry, although you may just be able to show the image on your phone too.

Bear in mind that cellphone service may be poor at many state historic parks, so it’s worth screenshotting the PDF to save it as an image on your phone in case you’re unable to search your email.

Looking for free entry to other state parks that aren’t included in the Historian Passport? Consider checking out a parks pass from your local library, which provides these passes as part of the California State Library Parks Pass program.

KQED’s Carly Severn contributed to this report.