The Brief

Tears welling in her eyes, Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan paused mid-sentence to calm herself on the Assembly floor.

Almost a century ago, the Nazis forced her grandmother to flee Austria, leaving behind her great-great-grandmother who died in the Holocaust, the Jewish Democrat from San Ramon told her fellow lawmakers. Last year, she said, her daughter told her that the bathrooms at her school had been vandalized with swastikas.

“My children deserve to show up at school and not have to face hate crimes in their building, to face the symbols that represented the end of their relatives,” she said.

Stories like hers, as well as Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, prompted California’s Jewish lawmakers to make countering antisemitism in schools their top priority this year. They sought to create a list of words and ideas that could not be mentioned in classrooms, including heavily disputed claims about Israel. The effort sparked the biggest, most emotional legislative fight of the year: Should the government regulate what can be taught in schools? If so, how far should it go?

At issue was Assembly Bill 715, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law this month after it went through multiple major, sometimes last-minute rewrites during months of political tussling.

Champions have argued the law will protect Jewish students from rising bullying and discrimination, sometimes from teachers. While the state does not collect data on antisemitism in schools, reports of anti-Jewish bias statewide have doubled between 2021 and 2024, according to the California Department of Justice. Last year, more than 15% of all hate crime events in California were anti-Jewish, even though Jewish people make up about 3% of the state population.

“We cannot hide from the profoundly unfortunate truth that Jewish kids are being isolated, made to feel unwelcome, and verbally and physically attacked. And far too often, our schools are failing to protect them,” Assemblymember Rick Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat and co-author of the bill, said during a May hearing, when the bill started as merely a promise to curb antisemitism in schools.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur speaks to lawmakers during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Oct. 1, 2024.

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Fred Greaves

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By July, it had undergone a major overhaul, including determining that any instruction that “directly or indirectly deny Israel’s right to exist,” equating Israelis with Nazis, or disrespecting “the historical, cultural, or religious significance of Israel to the Jewish people” would count as creating an “antisemitic learning environment.” It reinvigorated debates over whether criticism of Israel’s founding, or even the belief that Jewish people should have an independent country in their ancient homeland, counts as antisemitic — something Jewish thinkers do not agree on.

Mainstream Jewish groups maintain that anti-Zionism, a broad term that generally opposes the idea of a standalone state with a Jewish-majority population, is antisemitic. Many Jewish academics, however, don’t think it is antisemitic on its own, but they agree that blaming individual Jews for the actions taken by the Israeli government is antisemitic.

That July version of the bill drew heavy opposition from a vast coalition of education groups, from teachers unions to school boards, civil rights advocates and Muslim community organizations, who feared censorship of pro-Palestinian voices and infringement upon academic freedom. They would remain opposed through its many iterations, and many of them urged Newsom to veto it.

Their concerns lingered even as the bill was ultimately watered down in the final days of this year’s legislative session to address bias more broadly: The final version no longer mentions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bars using professional development materials that violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws. It also requires “factually accurate” instruction that is free of “advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship” — a controversial element the bill’s authors said they ran out of time to tackle and promised to “clean up” next year.

“In its current form, this bill only reinforces broader national trends of silencing constitutionally protected speech, erasing historically relevant curriculum, and persecuting anyone who expresses even the slightest opposition to the federal administration,” said Assemblymember Robert Garcia, a freshman Democratic lawmaker from Rancho Cucamonga and former teacher and school board member, who ultimately abstained from voting on the measure.

The squabble over the bill was messy, marked by hundreds of attendees, hourslong hearings, and accusations of bad faith from both sides. Bauer-Kahan called a teachers union advocate who opposed the bill antisemitic. After the bill passed out of the Legislature, a handful of pro-Palestinian activists protested from the Assembly gallery for more than an hour, yelling: “You will all have blood on your hands!”

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan speaks in support of SCR 135, which would designate May 6, 2024 as California Holocaust Memorial Day on the Assembly floor at the state Capitol in Sacramento on April 29, 2024.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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The tension highlights the discomfort for California Democrats, who, despite having traditionally defended Israel, have had to reckon with a base growing increasingly critical of Israel. They faced a tough choice: Support the bill and risk upsetting some of the most powerful labor allies as well as their pro-Palestinian constituents, or oppose the bill and risk being labeled as antisemitic or unwilling to combat antisemitism. Amid the pressure, some Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill even as they warned it could be used to censor free speech. Others abstained instead of taking a side.

“I'm actually surprised that California state legislators would want to even touch it, because it's just so radioactive right now,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at Sacramento State University. “It just feels like at this political moment, we want to lower the temperature, not shine a spotlight on ways in which we might target each other.”

The issue was such a hot potato that many lawmakers avoided tackling it early in the legislative process, when policy differences are often ironed out, said Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a freshman progressive Democrat from Pasadena who chairs the Senate Education Committee. When the bill arrived in her committee in June, it still had no substantive language. Some lawmakers told her to not touch it either, while others left it up to her to “take care of it,” she said.

“The ball got thrown to me,” she told CalMatters. "And people knew that they were doing that."

'People would end up being very angry on both sides'

California’s Jewish lawmakers introduced the bill in response to intensifying clashes in schools and college campuses nationwide over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. For some Democrats, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

The Gaza war has forced a tidal shift within the Democratic base, as voters’ support for Israel’s military campaign tanked over the past two years. That has forced some Democrats, even moderates who have historically backed Israel, to condemn the country and pull away from pro-Israel donors. Young Democrats are also more critical of Israel than their older peers, so any vote that could be perceived as silencing pro-Palestinian voices is risky.

“A very strong part of Democratic and leftist values that we are seeing expressed now is anti-genocide or anti-war,” Nalder said. “(For) my students who are politically active, this is one of the chief issues that they care about.”

The bill also came as President Donald Trump ordered immigration agents to arrest student activists critical of the Israeli government and withheld billions of dollars in funding from universities for their alleged failure to protect Jewish students. At least half a dozen other state Legislatures sought to fight antisemitism in schools this year, with some adopting a highly disputed definition of antisemitism in state education codes. Enraged, some opponents accused California Democrats of taking a page out of Trump’s playbook.

But the Democratic lawmakers had to balance all that with the risk of upsetting the Jewish community, a key voting block. A no vote could be construed as antisemitic, making the lawmaker vulnerable to challenges in the next election, Nalder said.

The bill was the sole priority of the 18-member California Legislative Jewish Caucus, which is composed entirely of Democrats and led by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel of Encino and Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who chair the budget committees in their respective chambers.

Neither would speak with CalMatters about what happened with the bill. Gabriel’s office did not respond to several CalMatters emails seeking an interview, whereas Wiener declined to comment, pointing CalMatters to the bill authors instead.

David Bocarsly, executive director of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, which sponsored the bill, said the caucus’ backing was crucial.

“The Jewish caucus was able to leverage their influence and respect with their colleagues and effectively represent the Jewish community’s needs,” he said.

Pérez acknowledged the political challenge, telling CalMatters she would have preferred to hold the bill until next year, but said legislative leaders had promised to deliver a bill the governor could sign this year. She said some colleagues told her it was “an impossible situation” to navigate.

“They felt like there was no winning,” she said. “Regardless of what they would try to do to make amendments to it … people would end up being very angry on both sides.”

A debate over academic freedom

The clash over AB 715 is the latest episode of yearslong strife over how to teach about marginalized communities in California’s K-12 schools and who should be included.

In past years, the fight primarily focused on ethnic studies — a mandatory high school course on the history and culture of groups such as Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans and Native Americans. The state adopted a model curriculum in 2021, after years of fine-tuning amid disputes over which ethnic minority groups to teach about and criticism from Jewish advocates, who accused past versions of being antisemitic.

Jewish lawmakers championed a bill earlier this year that aimed to tackle antisemitism by restricting the ethnic studies curriculum, but the effort was stopped early in its tracks, and legislators turned to AB 715 instead.

“This is a bill about protecting Jewish students, and it shouldn't have been controversial,” said Bocarsly, of JPAC. “If we don't teach empathy and understand it, we're going to build a generation of intolerance, and that's what we're trying to correct for.”

He said AB 715 was “the hardest political fight in JPAC’s history” and that the initial definition of an antisemitic learning environment was only meant to offer teachers guidance.

But opponents had two major concerns: that the bill’s initial definition of antisemitic learning environment risked silencing discord about Israel, and that even in its final watered-down version it could chill free speech and open teachers up to lawsuits for teaching about anything controversial.

“Jews are most safe when democracy flourishes, when pluralism flourishes, not when rights are taken away,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association and a Jewish father to three children who attend public schools.

A classroom at a high school in Imperial County on Dec. 12, 2023.

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Kristian Carreon

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What’s safe for Jews was itself a matter of disagreement among the bill’s backers and dissenters. Bocarsly said CTA leadership’s opposition to every version of the bill shows that they “have little interest in supporting a bill that would protect Jewish students.”

Goldberg, in an interview, called that accusation “a lot of chutzpah, frankly.”

The fact the bill even tried to prescribe what an antisemitic environment looked like in classrooms was concerning to Kenneth Stern, a scholar on hate. More than 20 years ago, he was the lead author of the highly controversial definition of antisemitism that’s been adopted by some states this year. It all but labels anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism. Now, nearly 50 countries, including the U.S., have embraced the definition.

Though Stern wrote the definition, he opposes using it to restrict speech in schools, arguing that it could threaten academic freedom and fuel censorship by chilling discussion about controversial topics. Stern said despite all the revisions made during the process, the final version will likely make antisemitism worse.

The law creates an antisemitism prevention coordinator to advise education and legislative leaders and says the person in that role should use federal guidelines published under former President Joe Biden as “a basis” for decision-making. The controversial definition of antisemitism Stern wrote is labeled as the most prominent definition of antisemitism in those guidelines, though it mentions others.

“I understand why people care about (preventing antisemitism in schools),” he said. “They want the Legislature to do something. I think the legislators are sincere that they want to do something. This is the wrong thing.”

Educators like Goldberg worry the bill could allow bad-faith critics to also dispute a wide array of controversial topics taught in schools. Will it become the basis for critics of the transgender community to pressure teachers to say there are only two genders, he wondered.

Gabriel Kahn, a Jewish teacher in Oakland who said he’s being investigated by his school district after challenging the content of an antisemitic training last year, said he fears prosecution for voicing the need to distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of Israel.

“What I’m most afraid of is that in the Democratic state of California, we can pass a censorship bill that protects a foreign nation from criticism implicitly,” he said. “What does that say about the future of academic freedom in our country?”

CalMatters reporter Carolyn Jones contributed reporting.

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

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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J.W. Hendricks

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.