The Brief

The winds of change blew swiftly and relentlessly into this oceanside city in northern Orange County.

Not long after winning election last November, the new conservative majority of the Huntington Beach city council adopted an ordinance that prevents the rainbow LGBTQ+ flag from flying at city hall during Pride Month.

Then this summer, the council dissolved a human relations committee formed after two notorious hate crimes by white supremacists in the mid-1990s; rewrote a declaration on human dignity to eliminate any reference to hate crimes but recognize “from birth the genetic differences between male and female”; and took away the ability to select who gives the invocation before its meetings from an interfaith council also founded in the wake of those 1990s hate incidents.

Last month, council members passed a ban on government mask and vaccine mandates in a city that has none, then placed measures on the March ballot that would add the flag policy to the city charter and require voter identification at the polls.

Hardly a few weeks pass anymore without another contentious vote pushing the community to the right — and right into some of the country’s fiercest cultural battles. Claiming a mandate from voters, Huntington Beach’s conservative council majority has set out to erase any vestige of progressive governance or “wokeism.”

They’ve been cheered on by constituents including Cari Swan, a local activist who helped organize an unsuccessful recall attempt against five members of the previous city council for passing liberal policies that she considered out of step with Huntington Beach’s values.

“The left kind of brought it on themselves,” Swan said. “They were poking the bear and the bear fought back.”

But now an opposition, growing fearful of just how far and how fast the conservative council may go to reshape their community, has galvanized around their latest move to create a citizen review panel to monitor library books for sexual content.

At a tense meeting last month, public comment dragged on for five hours as hundreds of residents filled the council chambers, frequently shouting at the conservative majority for promoting a book ban. Opponents have since launched a campaign against the March ballot measures, effectively turning the election into a referendum on the council members and their vision for Huntington Beach.

“They have just come in and taken a wrecking ball to the city with all of these things they have passed,” said Carol Daus, a library volunteer who has lived in Huntington Beach for more than three decades. “Now the community is divided. There is no place for the middle.”

How did the political center fall out, even in this swing region of California where the close partisan divide might have once invited moderation instead of conflict?

Welcome to the era of backlash politics.

Lacking power at the state level — where Democrats are so dominant that they can dismiss these cultural concerns without so much as a debate — conservatives are leaning into local governance as a form of protest against liberal California.

Their efforts can also be seen in Shasta County, where far-right activists took control of the government for not doing enough to fight coronavirus pandemic mandates and then got rid of voting machines at the center of election fraud conspiracies, and in school boards across the state, which have been roiled by fights over the rights of LGBTQ+ students.

It tracks with a growing repolarization among California voters. After decades of steady gains in independent registration, the trend has undergone a sharp reversal over the past five years as more voters embrace the Democratic and Republican parties again. Surveys find an increasing number have a favorable view of their own party and an unfavorable view of the opposition.

“It almost feels like you have to overcompensate for some of the damage being done,” said Gracey Van Der Mark, the Huntington Beach council member who proposed the library book review committee. “The more radical they got to the left, the more I felt myself pulling to the right.”

Gracey Van Der Mark, one of the conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council, in her City Hall office on Nov. 11, 2023.

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Many residents and former officials in Huntington Beach have watched with shock and horror as the city of nearly 200,000 emerged as a leader in this movement. They emphasize that the community historically leaned conservative, but not overly partisan, and had long been on the same page about maintaining its suburban beach town vibe.

The 2020 presidential election split fairly evenly, with Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by fewer than 4,000 votes. Several Democrats were elected to the nonpartisan city council, which began taking steps that might have once seemed unthinkable, such as flying the rainbow flag for Pride Month for the first time.

The Trump era and the pandemic deeply unsettled the community, however. Huntington Beach was the site of regular protests — in support of Trump and against pandemic restrictions, occasionally violent and sometimes led by white supremacist groups, recalling its history as a magnet for skinheads in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The unsuccessful recall effort two years ago tapped into a sense among many conservative residents that they were losing their community. Local activist Russell Neal said the then-council’s decision to fly the Pride flag exemplified how progressives encourage moral weakness to bring people under control of the government.

“The whole transformation of culture goes together as a cohesive package,” Neal said. “The fundamental form of slavery is slavery to sin and when they’re slaves to sin, presto, they’ll find themselves slaves externally.”

It’s a message that can be heard at meetings of Republican groups around town and at Calvary Chapel of the Harbour, an influential evangelical church overlooking a marina on the northern edge of Huntington Beach. The conservative council candidates campaigned from the stage there last year, with Pastor Joe Pedick telling congregants he was voting for the foursome. One of the intern pastors is running for city council next year.

“We look for those types of leaders” who will “stand up for righteousness,” Pedick said after this past Sunday’s service, where a guest speaker preached to hundreds that Planned Parenthood is the source of all wickedness in modern American culture and that Democrats are demons.

Running as a slate last year, however, the conservatives focused their platform not on cultural issues but on fighting high-density development in the city, including a state requirement to plan for more than 13,000 new units in the next eight years, as well as on reducing homelessness and crime. They swept the four open seats last November, receiving at least 12,000 votes more than their closest competition, and celebrated the results as a mandate, though with lower turnout, each won the support of less than a fifth of Huntington Beach residents.

“Our voters have no more appetite for progressive governance or the wokeism,” said City Attorney Michael Gates, a staunch conservative elected to a third term last November after campaigning with the council candidates.

So opponents are flummoxed by how much the city council focused this year on issues that never came up in the campaign. They have come to see the housing and homelessness message as a bait-and-switch — though to what end, they’re not sure. To simply undo the work of the previous council? To boost future runs for higher office? To create a laboratory of conservative policymaking that could become a playbook for other communities?

“It’s a banana republic down here,” said Dan Kalmick, one of three Democrats on the city council who regularly oppose the conservative majority. “This isn’t Republicanism. This is nihilism.”

The political divisions have consumed city government — sometimes quite literally. The conservative majority chose adjoining offices on the same hallway in city hall, booting the Democrats to the other side of the building.

Council meetings are filled with open hostility and executive staff have fled for neighboring communities. While a potential budget deficit looms, the council majority recently approved a secret $7 million settlement with a political ally who sued the city after the final day of his popular air show was canceled in 2021 due to a massive oil spill.

“That whole philosophy, you would think it would be small government and fiscal prudence because they are Republicans. But they are ones who are Republicans in name only,” said Democratic Councilmember Rhonda Bolton, who slammed the conservative majority for advancing policies such as voter ID and the library book review committee without considering how much they might cost to administer or defend in court. “What I’m seeing is Trump ideology, MAGA ideology, and in that respect, no original ideas.”

The conservative council members say they are responding to concerns raised by constituents during more than 100 town halls they held on the campaign trail.

One of their first major steps, about two months after taking office, was adopting a policy that allows only flags for the United States, California, Orange County, Huntington Beach and the military to fly on city property. Councilmember Pat Burns, who introduced the ordinance, said it was a move to unify the community behind symbols that represent everyone equally. He said he has nothing against LGBTQ+ people, but believes the rainbow flag — the only flag previously approved for display in front of city hall that was not included in the new policy — promotes divisive identity politics that are actually counterproductive to LGBTQ+ acceptance.

“They’re such a small population and why would we recognize anybody special?” Burns said, adding that it would be like him asking for an NRA, white or Christian flag in front of city hall. “We’re all marginalized in some way or victimized in some way, but we don’t get months or parades or whatever.”

Known as the Fab Four to their fans, the council majority, along with Gates, have become rock stars to local Republicans, who hooted and hollered for them at a Veterans Day ceremony on the beach.

Supporters spun off groups like HB Lady Patriots, which aims to bring a patriotic education back into Huntington Beach schools and was active in promoting the library book review proposal. Gates said he hears from officials in other communities who want to replicate their policies, including Fresno County, which recently voted to create a panel to screen children’s books in the libraries.

“We’re willing to be the tip of the spear on this,” Van Der Mark said, attributing everything the council is doing to a philosophy of fighting government overreach. “We want to make Huntington Beach the city that protects your individual liberties and freedoms.”

Gracey Van Der Mark, a Huntington Beach City Councilmember, with a book she says should be banned from children’s sections of the library in Huntington Beach Nov. 11, 2023.

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Van Der Mark’s sunny fourth-floor office at city hall is stacked with books that she finds obscene. Many of them are sex education manuals, borrowed from the Huntington Beach public library and filled with sticky notes to mark offending passages — discussions of masturbation, explanations of fetishes, images of erect penises and gay sex.

She’s particularly perturbed by a picture book called “Grandad’s Pride,” currently on order for the library, which features a drawing of a Pride parade where two men in leather are kissing in the crowd; she equates it with promoting bondage to kids. Van Der Mark also returns again and again to a page in a sex education book that describes how to use lubricant to insert a tampon if it does not fit.

“The lines are so blurred that we don’t even know where to stop and where to start,” she said. “I don’t need to learn how to stick a finger up my vagina with K-Y jelly. We survived without that kind of graphic information. And if you want it, then you go talk to your mom.”

It’s the type of sexual content that her library book review committee, which the city is in the process of establishing, could move to the adult section or prevent the library from acquiring in the first place. Though a challenge process for library books already existed — there were five in the previous five years, including one by Van Der Mark herself — she said more robust steps are necessary to protect young readers from damaging material, even if it appears within the context of an educational or creative work.

“This one page is going to stick in their brain,” she said. “We should have one area that is completely safe for all children.”

Her crusade has mobilized library supporters — the central branch, a concrete marvel with a spiraling atrium, is beloved far beyond Huntington Beach — and First Amendment groups, who sent a letter to the council in October warning that the plan would infringe on free speech. Daus, the library volunteer, worries that the vague language of the ordinance could allow the committee to impose its own morality on the entire community, especially with LGBTQ+ books.

“It’s feeling like a China or a Russia or a Hungary,” Daus said as she toured the children’s room, which has a reading area designed as a pirate ship. The sex education section had only three books on the shelf.

Among the conservative council majority, Van Der Mark seems to especially rankle the opposition. She was a divisive activist even before her election, which she winkingly acknowledges in her office with a framed wall hanging of her entry in the OC Weekly’s Scariest People of 2018 list.

That was the year Van Der Mark got kicked off two school district committees after troubling comments she had made online resurfaced. In 2017, Van Der Mark joined alt-right protestors, including some with ties to white nationalist groups, to crash a racial justice workshop in Santa Monica. Beneath a video of the incident posted by Van Der Mark, she referred to Black attendees at the meeting as “colored people” who were doing the bidding of “elderly Jewish people” there. Her YouTube account also had a playlist of Holocaust denial videos titled “Holocaust hoax?”

The comments have continued to follow Van Der Mark through her rise in local politics. This summer, as the council majority voted to eliminate the human rights committee, Democratic Councilmember Natalie Moser publicly questioned whether Van Der Mark was a Holocaust denier, leading the conservatives to censure Moser.

“She was masking a face of radical extremism and she did it to infiltrate a government institution so she could become legitimized,” said Gina Clayton-Tarvin, a liberal school board trustee who initially appointed Van Der Mark and who finished fifth in last year’s city council election. “It’s a total threat to democracy, because they are acting in ways that are quasi-fascist.”

Van Der Mark said she has never doubted the Holocaust happened; she was unfamiliar with the conspiracy theory, she said, until she spoke with one of the Jewish organizers at the racial justice workshop she crashed, whom she said sent her the hoax videos as an example.

A 49-year-old grandmother and daughter of immigrants from Ecuador and Mexico, Van Der Mark said she was largely apolitical until around 2016, when she was pulled into advocacy against the local sex education curriculum. She acknowledged that, in the early stages of her political awakening, she attended all types of rallies “to find the truth,” not necessarily aware of who she was affiliating with, but she denied harboring any racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic sentiments.

“If I would have known they were there, I might not have gone,” she said. “But I can’t regret going, because had I not gone out in search of the truth, I would not be where I am today.”

As Van Der Mark prepares to take over as mayor next month, critics worry that she will unleash even more extreme policies. Van Der Mark said she has tried to explain herself to opponents but they remain hostile, perhaps because she betrays their idea of what a Latina politician should be.

“I want to be able to offer this little safe haven that I found for my family, for other people,” she said. “The other side is trying to push conservative values out. We’re saying, ‘no, no, no, this is our city.’ We want to keep it. Why do you want to change it? If this is not a good fit for you, there are other cities that may be a good fit.”

Carol Daus outside of the library in Huntington Beach on Nov. 11, 2023.

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Feeling like strangers in a strange land, some liberals in Huntington Beach are considering leaving.

Daus and her husband have started to explore a move to nearby Long Beach or Pasadena, where a daughter lives. An incident in June when a neighbor had their rainbow flag ripped down and torn to shreds unsettled Daus.

“These are the things that just make you go, you know, do you want to live around this? Or would you rather be in a more welcoming, inclusive neighborhood?” she said. “If I wanted to live in Florida, I’d live in Florida.”

The library fight diverted her attention, though, and the housing market is tough, so now she may wait to see what happens with the March election. The campaign to defeat the proposed charter amendments has provided some comfort and motivation. While she’s not ready yet to put a sign in her yard, she is getting bolder. At a kickoff event last Saturday afternoon, where hundreds gathered at the park outside the central library, Daus ran a table soliciting people to write op-eds in the local media.

Attendees picked up lawn signs and postcards from other booths. The three Democrats on the city council spoke, as did former elected officials. Under a canopy, Shirley Dettloff, who helped write the city’s human dignity statement when she served on the council in the 1990s, signed up volunteers.

“We wanted the city to be known as a city that protected people,” Detloff said. “I was just surprised that anyone would take that on as an issue.”

At the end of the event, dozens gathered around a 33-foot-by-24-foot rainbow flag lying in the grass and chanted, “Vote no! Vote no! Vote no!” The homemade flag is a project of Pride at the Pier, an LGBTQ+ community group that formed this spring after Huntington Beach passed its flag ban. In May, demonstrators unfurled the enormous flag over the side of the city’s famed pier in protest.

Attendees pose for a portrait with a giant Pride flag after a Protect Huntington Beach event in Central Park on Nov. 11, 2023. The group formed in opposition to the new conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council.

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Kane Durham, one of the group’s founders, said this year has raised difficult questions for LGBTQ+ residents about whether they will continue to be welcome in Huntington Beach. He fears the council might next use the updated human dignity declaration, which states that “sex carries advantages and disadvantages that warrant separation during certain activities (i.e. sports),” to prevent trans athletes from participating in the city’s youth sports programs.

Though he does not live in Huntington Beach, Durham has become a vocal activist on behalf of other transgender and nonbinary people whom he said do not feel safe putting themselves out there publicly. For his efforts, he said he’s been doxxed and subject to online rumors calling him a pedophile.

“Too many Californians are in this blue fantasy bubble. We think that it won’t happen here, even while it is happening here,” Durham said. “There are so many people there who are frogs in a boiling pot of water.”

Months of angry council meetings have hardly swayed the Fab Four off their path. They dismiss their opponents as a vocal minority searching for relevance and reject the notion that their actions have divided the community like they accuse their predecessors of doing.

“If just who shows up to city hall’s a reflection of the city, none of us four would have been elected,” said Tony Strickland, who is finishing up his year in the rotating mayorship. “The voters have the final say.”

That will again be the case in March, the first real test for the council majority of how sustainable backlash politics can be in transforming a community.

Even some allies already seem to have grown weary of what’s happening in Huntington Beach.

Pano Frousiakis, a young Republican activist, ended his own campaign for city council last year and worked to elect his conservative rivals so they could regain control of a community that he had always considered “our little oasis in California.”

Though he’s happy with the overall direction of the council, Frousiakis concedes that “the past few months have been getting a little bit off-track.” He established a political organization this year, the HB Patriots, and is running again for city council in 2024 with a message about getting back to local quality-of-life issues.

“Unfortunately, I feel that our residents get sidelined as a result of that. I feel sidelined as a resident,” he said. “The other issues that are being talked about, that’s why I vote for president.”

Hiring remained anemic in December, closing out the weakest year for job growth since the beginning of the pandemic.

U.S. employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, according to a report Friday from the Labor Department. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dipped to 4.4%, from 4.5% in November, while job gains for October and November were also revised down by a total of 76,000 jobs.

For all of 2025, employers added 584,000 jobs — compared to 2 million new jobs in 2024. That meant that last year was the worst for employment growth since 2020.

Health care and hospitality were among the few industries adding jobs in December. Health care employment is generally immune from ups and downs in the business cycle.

Manufacturing continues to lose workers, cutting 8,000 jobs in December. Factories have been in a slump for the last 10 months, according to an index of manufacturing activity compiled by the Institute for Supply Management. The sector has been hit hard by President Trump's tariffs, since many domestic manufacturers rely on some foreign components.

"Morale is very low across manufacturing in general," said an unnamed factory manager quoted in this week's ISM report. "The cost of living is very high, and component costs are increasing with folks citing tariffs and other price increases."

The federal government added 2,000 jobs in December, but is still down 277,000 jobs from the beginning of the year. The government recorded big job losses earlier in the fall, when workers who accepted buyouts officially dropped off the government's payroll.

While unemployment remains low by historical standards, workers are increasingly nervous about job security. A survey last month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found workers slightly more worried about losing their job in the coming year, and less confident about finding a new job if they are laid off.

The slowdown in hiring makes people who already have jobs reluctant to give them up. The resulting lack of turnover means fewer job openings for young people and others trying to get a foot in the door.

Concern about the weakening job market prompted the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rate in December for the third time since September.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Producer and engineer Rich Mouser built his recording studio, The Mouse House, more than two decades ago — it was part of his home in the Altadena hills. The space featured 35-foot ceilings, soundproofed isolation rooms and a library of vintage recording gear that the 63-year-old musician had been collecting since he was a teenager. A year ago, the Mouse House burned to the ground in the Eaton fire.

"I went through and started making a list and adding it up. It's got to be close to half a million [dollars] in lost equipment," Mouser tells NPR. "In hindsight, if I had known the house was going to burn down like that, I would have gone to great more lengths to get stuff out."

The Los Angeles wildfires destroyed more than 16,000 homes and businesses. Mouser, who has worked with bands including Weezer, Dream Theater and Spock's Beard, is one of countless musicians doubly impacted by the natural disaster. He not only lost the house for which he'd finished paying off the mortgage and everything inside it; suddenly, a large chunk of his livelihood also vanished.

"Three days after the fire, I went to London to run sound for some live shows. A lot of people were like, 'Are you really going to go? You have to cancel,'" Mouser remembers. "I thought, 'This might be the only work I have for who knows how long, so I'm going to go do it.'"

Adron McCann, a singer-songwriter, visual artist and audio producer who performs as Adron, was facing a similar uncertainty. She'd been renting half of a duplex in Altadena with her partner, who is also a working musician, for two years when the Eaton fire tore through their home. Overnight, the couple lost virtually all their personal belongings — including McCann's three treasured aquariums — as well as their at-home studio setup. A lifetime's worth of gear, instruments, paintings, vinyl albums and a collection of vintage synthesizers disappeared.

"I'm still working on just the personal grief of it, the whole story," McCann says. "And so trying to put the pieces back together professionally — it's just really, really blended with our personal lives."

Starting to piece things back together

Immediately, friends and family for both Mouser and McCann sprung into action, setting up GoFundMe pages that raised tens of thousands of dollars. Mouser says he initially purchased core items needed to get back to work: a graphic equalizer, Neve microphone preamps, a portion of the same model of mixing board he lost in the fire. Fellow musicians loaned him studio spaces, equipment and helped him scour the internet for gear. Much of what he lost is irreplaceable, he says, or has significantly gone up in value since he bought it decades ago.

McCann says her community has majorly stepped up, too. Through the generosity of friends and strangers — including comedian Fred Armisen, who donated a couple of his guitars — McCann and her partner have been able to continue playing gigs. Artists share resources about grants and other rebuilding efforts, leaning on one another to find housing, work opportunities and instrument replacements. None of this, McCann says, would be possible without being plugged into their local music scene.

"I'm really aware of the trade-offs that we make as musicians," McCann says. "We trade off stability and security, but we gain friendship and community and the care and concern of people very far away who we don't even necessarily know in person, but they are moved by the art we make, and so they come to us when we're hurting."

Adrienne McCann in her original home studio before the fires.

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Both McCann and Mouser say they've received support from a wide patchwork of colleagues, mutual aid networks and official relief organizations, all working together to address the ongoing needs of wildfire survivors as time passes. That includes government agencies like FEMA and Los Angeles County, nonprofits like Guitar Center Music Foundation and MusiCares, and more grassroots collectives like Altadena Musicians, an instrument-giving network started by composer Brandon Jay.

Myka Miller, the executive director of Guitar Center Music Foundation, says that for the first six months of 2025, the organization fulfilled grants for over 700 people to replace lost or damaged equipment, in addition to supplying instruments to 15 affected schools and community organizations. Miller says it's the largest natural disaster relief effort the nonprofit has tackled in recent history. "What was surprising to me was that a lot of people were asking for studio gear overwhelmingly," Miller tells NPR. "Studio monitors and microphones were one of the top things — DJ equipment, that kind of stuff."

One of Guitar Center's partners has been MusiCares, the nonprofit founded by the Recording Academy to support the financial, mental and physical wellbeing of people in the music industry. The organization says that since the wildfires broke out last year, it's provided more than $15 million in assistance to over 3,200 music professionals. In December, the nonprofit hosted a health and wellness clinic in Altadena for industry professionals impacted by the fires. The event offered physical therapy, vision and hearing screenings and opportunities for survivors to connect with one another over the ongoing challenges of finding a new normal. Executive director Theresa Wolters says these kinds of spaces — and a focus on mental health specifically — will be a big part of the work going forward, along with ongoing financial help.

"It is not too late to access support. We are still here," Wolters tells NPR. "We know that so many people are just now starting to come up for air through this disaster. They're just now starting to figure out what they need and what kind of assistance they might benefit from."

Looking ahead

As the anniversary of the fires passes, Wolters emphasizes that recovery is a long and nonlinear process. While some artists have made significant progress, others are still operating on survival mode.

Today, Rich Mouser and his wife are renting a house with a converted garage that doubles as Mouser's temporary studio. He's been able to continue his work mixing albums, touring with bands and is getting used to the newer equipment.

He's also working with an architect and sound engineer on rebuilding plans for his permanent home and studio in Altadena. They'll be prioritizing concrete over wood in case of future fires, he says, and are planning on a few improvements, like building a separate entry for The Mouse House so musicians don't have to walk through his kitchen to enter the studio. Mouser hopes building can begin within several months so the project is completed by summer or fall of 2027.

Insurance and relief aid are currently covering his rent, but he's worried that won't last all the way until the new house and studio are ready. Finding and applying for grants, he half-jokes, is a full-time job of its own. "We need this place because it's got this back house where I can work," Mouser says. "If we didn't have this situation, we could move into a smaller apartment, but I'm able to work out here and generate income."

McCann and her partner, on the other hand, are still taking things day by day. They are no longer living in their dream neighborhood of Altadena, but they're settled into a new rental home for now. Due to federal funding cuts to public radio, she recently lost a significant portion of her income as a producer for WABE, leading to more fear and uncertainty. Songwriting, she says, has taken a backseat for now.

"We're still not done recovering in the immediate sense. We're still not done trying to figure out home and gear and recording and our basic building blocks of our life we're still working on," McCann says. "I'm just going to keep trying to get a more stable foundation under my feet. But as an artist, that's a surprisingly comfortable place for me."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Maria Silva works at the El Super off Century Boulevard in Inglewood, in the same sprawling parking lot as a Home Depot.

She's been on the job for 17 years. The work is hard, and her wages are low. But since summer, her role as a supervisor at the grocery store chain has included a new challenge: co-workers and customers are worried about ICE.

Her customers come in talking about recent sightings, or asking if federal agents have been in the area. After a regular stopped coming into the store, Silva said she heard through the grapevine that he'd been picked up by federal agents.

" It's somebody that I would interact with almost every single day, because he would come and get his coffee and bread," she said, holding back tears. "It upsets me. It makes me feel like I can't do anything about it."

Silva is among the workers at seven unionized El Super locations in Southern California, including the store in Inglewood, who are asking their employer to implement more protocols to protect them and shoppers at their stores from federal agents.

Around 700 workers are currently negotiating a new contract with the grocery store chain. Their union, United Food and Commercial Workers, says the supermarket's owner, Chedraui USA, which also owns Smart & Final, is refusing their demands, including substantial wage increases.

Chedraui USA declined to comment on the specifics of ongoing negotiations.

"We value our team members and the communities we serve, and remain committed to bargaining in good faith, following all labor laws, and creating a safe and respectful workplace for every associate while continuing to provide affordable food for our customers," the company said in a statement.

What are they asking for?

Maricruz Ceceña, the organizing director for UFCW local 770, said the El Super workers want the company to agree to establish certain safety protocols in the contract, such as not allowing federal agents into non-public areas without a signed judicial warrant and establishing private areas in stores.

She said they also want the employer to re-affirm compliance with certain laws, such as a requirement that federal officials give three-day notice before inspecting I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification forms.

According to UFCW, other major grocery chains, including Ralphs, Super A, Vons, Pavilions, Gelson's and Albertsons, have agreed to similar protections in contracts with workers represented by the union.

"That Chedraui or El Super is still refusing to put basic language in that would protect its customers and its workers when other companies have already done so?" Ceceña told LAist. "I think workers just find that baffling and insulting."

Why workers are pushing for this

The grocery store workers are part of a broader effort to win immigration protections through labor negotiations. Victor Narro, an expert on workplace rights for immigrant workers and a lecturer at UCLA Law School, said more and more unions have been adding the type of language El Super workers want to their contracts in recent years.

"Especially unions that have a large immigrant workforce as members," he said. "One of the misconceptions is that the unions are then trying to circumvent immigration laws in the union contract. But that's not the case. What they're trying to do is get the employer to do what they are able to do under the law."

The first push for these types of union protections dates back to the 90s, Narro said, in the wake of a Reagan-era immigration law that established penalties for employers who knowingly hired unauthorized workers.

Narro said contract language can help add a layer of protection for some workers, but pointed out that the vast majority of private-sector workers in the U.S. have no union representation. He said policy change is needed to keep all workers safe.

" So what unions have been doing for the majority of workers who are not unionized is doing the policy work," he said.

'Customers, they're scared'

El Super markets itself to a Spanish-speaking clientele. Its website states "El Super is at the heart of your cocina." The union says most customers and workers are Latino.

Araceli Ortiz has worked at a unionized El Super store in Pico Rivera for eight years. She said after immigration sweeps ramped up in June, her store was quieter than usual, and she saw customers buying groceries for multiple families who were too afraid to do their grocery shopping in person.

She had one customer burst into tears at the checkout counter, saying her husband had recently been detained by ICE.

" We get customers, they're scared," Ortiz said. "Mostly every day they mention ICE, immigration and their surroundings. And they ask us, 'Have they come around here?' And what can I say? They're everywhere."

Ortiz is on a team of El Super workers who are bargaining with their employer over the new contract. She said that the grocery chain has said verbally that it will follow the law.

" But you know, we want them to put it in the contract," she said. "Because if there's signs right there [saying] it's only for employees only, the employees are gonna feel a little bit safer."

An upgrade to the website used to make camping reservations within California State Parks may have you locked out of your account — just as highly-sought-after campsites are being released for the summer. 

The overhaul, which happened in late October of last year, requires anyone who had a ReserveCalifornia account before the change to reauthenticate their account before making any camping reservations.

That means if you’re planning on logging on at 8 a.m. to snag a campsite for a busy summer weekend, you may get caught in login troubles while other people are snapping up your top choice.

If you have a ReserveCalifornia account, keep reading for step-by-step instructions on what to do now — so you’ll be ready when summer reservations become available.

Jump straight to:

• What should people with existing ReserveCalifornia accounts do?
• What about those who never had an account?

What happened to the California State Parks reservation website?

On Oct. 29, 2025, the ReserveCalifornia website, which California State Parks uses to help visitors book campsites and other park amenities, underwent a system upgrade, said Adeline Yee, a spokesperson for the agency.

That upgrade helped improve the system’s operations and incorporated multi-factor authentication for users, requiring anyone trying to log into an account to provide a code sent to their email address to improve system security.

A public campground near Camp Richardson is shown on Aug. 4, 2013, in South Lake Tahoe, California. 

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George Rose

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Getty Images

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An email about the changes was sent to ReserveCalifornia account holders in advance of the Oct. 29 switchover, Yee said — but the initial instructions it contained for reauthenticating accounts, encouraging users to use a “Forgot Password?” link, didn’t actually work on the version of the website that went live on that date.

The day after the update went live, Yee said, state parks added a banner alert to ReserveCalifornia with updated login directions – which now required even existing account-holders to hit “Create Account” to reauthenticate their details.

Yee said while the update affected all 1.2 million ReserveCalifornia accounts, only around 400,000 of those accounts have been active in the past two years. During the first five days after the update, the ReserveCalifornia customer service line saw a 30% increase in calls and emails, Yee said — around 300 more inquiries per day than normal.

“State Parks apologizes for the confusion and inconvenience and will work with ReserveCalifornia so future website updates and account enhancements go smoother,” Yee said.

I have a ReserveCalifornia account, and I want to reserve a state parks campsite soon. What should I do?

First, don’t panic. Your account is still active, and your reservation and account history haven’t been lost — so if you were signed up for the lottery of a must-have spot like the Steep Ravine Cabins, you’re still on the list.

But you will have to go through a couple of steps to log back in – and it may take a few minutes, so it’s best to do it before you’re racing others to get a prime camping spot this summer.

Campsites are filled at Half Moon Bay State Beach in Half Moon Bay, California, on June 29, 2010. How to reauthenticate and reactivate your ReserveCalifornia account:

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Paul Chinn

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The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

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How to reauthenticate and reactivate your ReserveCalifornia account:

Go to “Log In/Sign Up” on the top right of ReserveCalifornia.com, and click the “Create an Account” link.

Then, use the same email address of your existing account, and re-set up your profile. You can use the password you previously used for your ReserveCalifornia account, or create a new one.

Once you do so, your new ReserveCalifornia account should be automatically linked to your old one, Yee said — and you’ll be immediately able to make campsite reservations once more.

If you got an email or searched the web and got different instructions, like those saying to hit the “Forgot Password” button — ignore those.

And if you’re still having trouble or are stuck in password reset purgatory, try refreshing the page and starting over — or call ReserveCalifornia between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. PST at 800-444-7275.

I’m new to ReserveCalifornia. What should I know?

New account users shouldn’t have any issues. Simply go to ReserveCalifornia.com, hit the “Sign Up” button in the top right corner and create a new account.

Make sure you know the reservation policies at state parks, as they’ve just changed this year — and make canceling campsites more costly in an effort to keep more reservations open.

And you should know that campsite and cabin reservations open up to six months in advance at 8 a.m., so if you have big summer plans to get out into the wilderness, you may want to check now for availability. Read our full guide on how to snag desirable California campsites for summer 2026.