The Brief

Tuesday is the final day for constituents of Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez to vote on whether she should remain in office. The outcome of the controversial recall — which is mired in legal dilemmas — could determine whether Orange County's second-largest city continues to lean in favor of policies like rent control and police oversight, or does an about-face.

Here's what you need to know:

Why is Jessie Lopez facing recall?

The recall is primarily backed by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association, which has spent more than $500,000 on the recall effort since January. Real estate groups have also kicked in at least $223,000 for the effort, including $100,000 from the National Association of Realtors.

Tim Rush, a real estate executive who chairs the recall campaign, cited Lopez's voting record in favor of rent control and cutting the police budget as primary reasons for the recall. Rush told LAist that Lopez's politics were "very, very liberal" and that she had an "anti-business sort of philosophy."

"[Lopez] wants to portray it that it's the corrupt police union [funding the recall effort]," Rush said. "But that isn't, by any means, all of it. … The money that's poured into this campaign has a lot to do with business owners and property owners who are upset over rent control."

Santa Ana is the only city in Orange County with a rent control ordinance. Its policy restricts rent increases to 2.54% through the end of August 2024. A handful of cities in L.A. County also cap rent increases under 3%.

You can read more from recall proponents here.

Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez was elected in 2020 to represent the city's Ward 3.

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City of Santa Ana

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What do her supporters say?

Lopez's supporters say her actions on the city council have led to greater police oversight and helped low-income residents fight unjust evictions and steep rent hikes. She has also noted that she voted in favor last year of increasing the number of police officers by 24 positions.

Lopez's effort to fight the recall is backed by community members, local Democratic leaders, including county Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, and several unions. These include the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has contributed close to $25,000.

In all, Lopez has raised around $200,000 to fight the recall.

Hairo Cortes, executive director of the Latinx youth advocacy group Chispa, said if Lopez loses her seat on the Santa Ana City Council, it could also mean the end of the council majority that championed policies like rent control, for which his group has advocated for years.

"It really is about losing the gains that the community has made if this recall were to be successful," Cortes told LAist.

You can hear more from Lopez and supporters here and here.

What are the legal issues with the recall?

A couple of weeks ago, the Orange County Registrar of Voters made a late discovery that the recall election was based on bad data.

Specifically, the city used population data and geographic boundaries from Lopez's current district when it should have used information from when voters first elected her in 2020, before redistricting took place.

Using the correct data, the registrar determined that the recall petitioners didn't actually collect enough signatures to trigger an election. And nearly 1,200 voters who should be able to vote didn't get ballots.

A Santa Ana voter who said they should have gotten a ballot filed a legal complaint asking for an injunction. But an O.C. Superior Court judge denied that request last week and said he won't make a ruling until after the election.

So, the election is going forward according to its original parameters.

Lopez told LAist she and her legal counsel are still considering options for challenging the election. And she noted that she and her supporters already have one previous legal claim pending in which a supporter alleged that recall proponents were lying to voters to get their signatures for the recall petition.

"This election is not about me anymore. The issues are so much bigger," Lopez told LAist last week. "The voters need to make a decision who they really want to represent them, special interests that push policies that harm working class people, or people who were born and raised in this city who are always willing to listen to their concerns."

Who gets to vote?

Lopez is encouraging constituents who didn't get a ballot to request a provisional ballot and vote.

It's unclear whether those ballots would be counted — O.C. Registrar Bob Page told LAist last week he intends to administer the election based on the current district boundaries and voter population initially approved by the city. That means voters who live in the city's current Ward 3.

You can look up your address on the city's interactive map.

How can I vote?

Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 14.

Two vote centers are also open on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the following addresses:

• O.C. Health Care Agency - Public Health Learning Center, 1729 W. 17th St., Building E, Santa Ana
• O.C. Registrar of Voters, 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, Santa Ana

Voters can also take ballots to one of three official drop boxes up until 8 p.m. Tuesday:

• O.C. Health Care Agency, 1725 W. 17th St., Santa Ana
• Orangewood Foundation, 1575 E. 17th St., Santa Ana
• O.C. Registrar of Voters, 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, Santa Ana

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Inglewood is staring down the barrel of a $30.8 million budget deficit next year, the city’s largest in at least two decades, but officials said locals don’t need to be worried. 

Inglewood’s budget ballooned after SoFi Stadium opened in 2020. City officials roughly doubled their spending from the general fund — the pot of money that pays for basic services from police to parks. 

Revenue also boomed in the first few years after the stadium’s opening, but since then hasn’t quite kept up with what’s been spent. 

City officials downplayed the projected deficit last week, saying in reports and presentations that reserves of more than $150 million will cover the gap this year and that they expect increased tax and other revenues to help take care of the problem in the future.  Mayor James Butts said locals have no reason to worry, and that the city’s reserves have enabled officials to be ambitious in their planning. 

Whether they have to dip into those savings at all depends on how locals vote for a ballot measure on Nov. 3. Officials predict Measure AT could wipe out the deficit entirely by bringing in as much as $45 million to $50 million extra in taxes on tickets to major events.

But_, if Inglewood continues to spend more than it takes in over the coming years and pulls too much out of its reserves, city officials could be pushed to lay off staff and cut funding for services, as they did during a fiscal crisis 15 years ago.

The City Council approved the budget proposal in a 4-0 vote at its Tuesday meeting. Councilmember Eloy Morales Jr. was absent.

Here’s a breakdown of Inglewood’s budget

Inglewood’s annual general fund revenue has grown by about $100 million over the last 10 years, driven in large part by increased property taxes and admissions tax.

But that growth has plateaued over the last five years, while expenditures continued to grow. The city plans to spend $279 million out of its general fund this year, more than double its annual spending prior to 2020.

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The LA Local

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The city’s total budget is $675 million. It includes the general fund as well as special funds that pay for things like major construction projects and affordable housing.

Police take the largest bite out of Inglewood’s general fund, followed by the public works and parks departments.

Outside the general fund, the city has also budgeted $239 million for capital projects.

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The LA Local

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Some of Inglewood’s largest sources of general fund revenue are property tax, sales tax and admissions tax. 

Property tax revenue has grown by leaps and bounds over the last five years, according to budget documents, but admissions tax and sales tax haven’t matched the growth.

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The LA Local

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Officials hope city reserves and a ballot measure will fill the deficit

Inglewood has had budget issues before. The deficit approached $18 million in 2010, just before Mayor James Butts was elected, while reserves fell to around $11 million.

This time around, officials say Inglewood has over $150 million in reserves. 

Butts said those reserves have allowed the city to take an aggressive approach to improving streets, traffic lights and other city infrastructure.

“We put the money there because we want the city to be rehabilitated,” Butts said.

Pulling from reserves, though, isn’t something a city can do indefinitely. City Manager Louis Atwell wrote in a budget report that staff expect tax revenue to keep increasing and new developments to give the city an additional boost. With staff keeping an eye on operating costs, Atwell wrote, those revenues would narrow the city’s budget gap down the line. 

This year’s election could also come into play. The two city ballot measures voters will see — AT and BB — are the product of a larger battle between the city and its stadiums over billboard advertisements and the development deal that brought SoFi Stadium to Inglewood.

Either measure could have a substantial effect on the city’s books. 

Inglewood currently pulls in a 10% tax on SoFi Stadium tickets, but with an annual ceiling on how much the city can get. Measure AT, backed by billboard company WOW Media, would remove the cap and add a new 2.5% tax for the Intuit Dome.

Officials estimated it would bring in between $45 million and $50 million extra annually, more than enough to cover the city’s current deficit. Atwell cautioned, though, that the figures aren’t guaranteed and could depend on economic conditions, the timing of the measure’s roll-out and other factors. 

On the flip side, officials said Measure BB could curtail billboard fees and ratchet the deficit up to almost $39 million. 

The initiative would ban most commercial advertising on the large video billboards that have cropped up along the city’s main roads. Measure BB would cut off a revenue stream that, according to past budget documents, has brought the city between $3 million and $7.5 million. 

City officials itemized how much Inglewood made from billboards in each of the last 10 years, but did not do so in this year’s budget. 

The ballot measures are just a few items on a packed Inglewood ballot that includes elections for mayor, two city council members and three Board of Education trustees. 

International politics moved front and center in the Los Angeles mayor’s race Tuesday night, with the candidates offering differing views on how to describe what’s happening in Gaza.

Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and challenger City Councilmember Nithya Raman answered questions separately at a forum sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles at the Skirball Cultural Center in the Sepulveda Pass. The candidates were interviewed back-to-back on stage by moderator Alex Cohen.

The forum was designed to address the concerns of Jewish Angelenos.

Raman was asked about her use of the term “genocide” and whether it is appropriate to describe Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, right, on stage with moderator Alex Cohen at the Skirball Cultural Center during a mayoral forum on Tuesday, September 29, 2026.

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Jeff Rowe

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“I used it because other experts have used it to describe what’s happening,” she said. “And I used it because I felt compelled to speak out about issues that we saw, the images that we saw, the targeting of hospitals, the deaths of children.”

Bass had a different response from her opponent when asked whether she believes the term applies in Gaza.

“When I think of foreign affairs, especially conflicts, my focus is on how they impact the city of L.A. — no, I don’t,” Bass responded.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass answers questions at a mayoral candidates forum held at the Skirball Cultural Center.

The Gaza Health Ministry estimates 74,000 Palestinians have died in the war, including many children and noncombatants.

The war started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping 251.

Genocide is an international crime defined by the United Nations as any act committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The U.S. government and Israel vehemently deny genocide is going on in Gaza. Many other countries and human rights organizations disagree, saying it is genocide.

Candidates differ on Israel boycott

The two also split on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

Raman called it “a legitimate form of peaceful protest” against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians, prompting loud boos from some in the crowd.

“I support people’s right to protest,” she said. “And I will fight for that right even when I don’t agree with protesters, or when I agree with protesters.”

Raman is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the boycott and divestment of Israel.

Bass said she would oppose any effort to enact sanctions against Israel.

Cohen also asked Raman about her appearance with Hasan Piker, a left-wing Twitch streamer and outspoken critic of Israel.

Raman said she disagreed with some of Piker’s views, saying it’s important for elected officials “to go speak to them even when you disagree.”

Raman said she has been an outspoken critic of antisemitism and was the first L.A. elected official to denounce the 2023 attack on Israel.

National polls on Gaza

The divergence in views between Bass and Raman represents a larger shift in the Democratic Party over Israel.

A new AP-NORC poll found erosion of support for the longtime U.S. ally, with rising opposition from Democrats.

About one-third of U.S. adults — including roughly half of Democrats — believe that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, according to The Associated Press. About 2 in 10 Americans say Israel has not, and the rest, about half, don’t know enough to say.

A similar share, 30%, of Jewish adults say Israel has committed genocide, although about half, 49%, say it has not.

“40 hours, $2M+ AI credits, solve an open problem.”

So read the splashy announcement for the “Mathathon” at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Dozens of teams would work to solve vexing math problems with the help of artificial intelligence as part of “the first hackathon ever devoted to research level mathematics,” according to the early September post. AI juggernauts Anthropic and OpenAI were set to sponsor the two-day competition.

The backlash came swiftly. Critics objected not only to using AI to tackle open problems, but also to the involvement of AI companies whose models and research practices they have criticized.

Within days, current and former Caltech mathematicians published an open letter calling on the undergraduate organizers to suspend the event. The Mathathon, they argued, would only fuel the creation of “slop mathematics” and serve as public relations for the companies.

Instead of canceling the event, Caltech student organizers responded as any mathematician would — they tried to solve the problem.

The undergraduates redesigned the competition. Instead of trying to solve open mathematical problems, teams will now aim to develop alternative proofs for existing, yet unsatisfying solutions. The November event will also no longer be sponsored by the companies that develop proprietary AI models.

“We came to the decision that we want to put up an event that unites the math community, rather than divides it,” Brian Zhao, one of the Mathathon organizers and a junior studying applied mathematics at Caltech, told EdSource.

The controversy over the Mathathon event laid bare the growing tensions unfolding in the mathematics community over what role AI should play in advancing the field.

AI has already helped to solve elusive math problems. OpenAI announced this month that it used an internal AI model “significantly more capable” than the latest publicly available models to solve one of the remaining six Millennium Prize Problems. But mathematicians have warned about AI’s negative impact on mathematics students, and criticized these companies’ approach to solving high-profile problems.

“To put it bluntly, AI companies are engaging in research misconduct,” wrote the authors of the open letter, which gained the signatures of 2,038 academics as of this week.

‘That’s not the culture of mathematics’

Earlier this summer, Zhao and his roommate came up with their idea of a fun weekend: lock themselves in a basement and try to solve math problems for 40 hours straight. He was inspired by hackathon-style competitions in which programmers and designers compete to build hardware or software under deadline.

The idea of using AI to try to solve open math problems was two-fold. With mathematics undergoing one of the biggest changes in decades because of AI, the Caltech undergrads wanted to organize an event to experiment with AI and better understand how the field may evolve by the time they start graduate school.

Also, the students hoped that advertising the event with flashy statements — like suggesting teams would have access to $2 million in AI credits — would attract high-profile professors as judges and big lab sponsors.

“What is the role of a mathematician when AI can solve conjectures faster?” Mathathon organizers initially asked on the event’s website.

The AI-infused premise of Mathathon drew the ire of current and former Caltech mathematicians.

“I found it pretty outrageous, taking $2 million worth of sponsorships from OpenAI and Anthropic (and) partnering with these companies that have been, in my opinion, and many other mathematicians’ opinion, very disrespectful to our field,” said Yujin Kim, a postdoctoral fellow in Princeton University’s math department.

Kim had been critical of OpenAI’s approach to solving elusive mathematics problems in viral social media videos. The companies’ sponsorship of the event “felt like aligning with the empire,” Kim said.

“I can’t imagine [the Mathathon] would go any way other than just essentially button pressing and prompting,” Kim said. “That’s not the culture of mathematics. That’s not how we operate.”

After the backlash, OpenAI pulled its support from the event.

“We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive,” Dan Roberts, OpenAI’s research lead, said in a social media post after the open letter was published. A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment.

The updated Mathathon competition will allow participants to use AI, but highly encourage them to use open-source tools that can be modified by the public instead of proprietary models run by private entities like OpenAI.

“We are proud of all of our students for the passion, drive, and maturity they have shown throughout this development,” Caltech spokesperson Emily Velasco said in a statement. “The spirit of open inquiry is central to the scientific process, and we hope to see a continued exchange of ideas as the math community charts its course forward.”

Zhao said he and his fellow organizers are determined to move forward with hosting the event. He said organizers hope the Mathathon will allow students to discover ways to use the technology responsibly, and build a bridge between AI developers and the math community.

AI can act like a shortcut to solving math problems

AI has conjured much debate in the math community, some of which has been overdue, said Dimitri Shlyakhtenko, a UCLA math professor who has followed Mathathon developments but did not sign the open letter.

From the outside, it may look like AI is upending the field by solving high-profile problems that have stumped mathematicians for decades. But the reality is more nuanced, Shlyakhtenko said.

“It is very rare that some result in mathematics is obtained out of nothing,” he said. “It usually builds on a mountain of other works that happen, and usually there’s a community of people that care about a particular set of problems.”

Mathematics problems aren’t about the destination of finding a solution, he said. Rather, mathematicians develop new techniques and understandings along the journey to solve a problem. He likened it to hiking to a waterfall. The end goal is to see the waterfall, but the things you discover along the journey are also quite interesting and of value.

With AI, he said that “what we’re seeing right now is that it is sometimes possible to take a kind of a direct shortcut.”

Some mathematicians worry that using AI to solve problems robs training opportunities from younger mathematicians.

Training problems provide opportunities for graduate students to learn skills and approaches to mathematics, but “if those just get solved, then the motivation to do it is kind of gone, right?” Shlyakhtenko said.

Over the past several months, as the Mathathon drama unfolded, Zhao said he has learned two important lessons: Be ambitious and be humble.

Maintaining the lofty goal of the event — of trying to help unravel the thorny debate of AI’s role in mathematics — has helped the team persist in the face of challenges, Zhao said. He added that it also developed the event into something more than just a fun, competitive weekend. The conversations with mathematicians around the world about the event have also taught him to be wary of flashy statements.

“If we just present ourselves honestly as undergrads who are curious about AI, we actually attract more sympathy,” Zhao said. “We actually attract more mathematicians who are willing to help us.”

The Orange County Transportation Authority approved $10.5 million for Metrolink services for the second quarter of the fiscal year as the rail service faces a dip in ridership and rising operational costs.

A majority of Metrolink’s budget is funded by Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties’ transportation departments.

The OCTA board’s approval this week follows a previous $14.5 million contribution in June to support Metrolink services for the first quarter of the fiscal year. Funding for the remainder of the year depends on a formal Metrolink budget request, board approval and approval from neighboring transportation authorities.

How did we get here? 

In December, OCTA told Metrolink that its fiscal year 2026-27 contribution would need to remain at no more than $46 million. But in July, Metrolink submitted an operating budget draft that would exceed OCTA’s contribution limit by about $6 million. OCTA tasked Metrolink with coming back with a revised budget that is within its contribution limits.

“Metrolink ridership has suffered since the pandemic began over six years ago,” Andrew Oftelie, OCTA's chief financial officer, said. “Metrolink ridership today is at about two-thirds of what it was prior to the pandemic. Lower ridership combined with higher costs has meant that Metrolink has asked member agencies like OCTA to fund a greater percentage of the service.”

The amount Metrolink asked for from OCTA has almost doubled since pre-COVID, Oftelie added, and OCTA’s contribution has not been a huge budget issue in the last five years because of a “significant amount of one-time” state and federal funds.

“Those one-time funds have all been exhausted at this point, which is why we gave Metrolink a budget target this year,” Oftelie said. “That budget target was commensurate with the amount of ongoing revenues we expect to receive from Metrolink service going forward.”

Why it matters

In a presentation to the OCTA finance and administration committee on Sept. 17, Metrolink CEO Darren Kettle said the Orange County line is the rail’s highest revenue generator.

Ridership has grown slightly over the last two years, he added, but challenges remain. In creating a budget for this fiscal year, Metrolink officials have made $16 million in budget cuts. In April, LA Metro also proposed to reduce its subsidy to Metrolink by 3%.

“The last thing I want to do … is pin this on our member agencies,” Kettle said. “The fact of the matter is we would have a challenging financial situation without those reductions from LA Metro and OCTA.”

What’s next? 

Oftelie told the OCTA board that a revised budget request from Metrolink is expected this week.