Topline:
Ballots are going out in less than a month, and California remains locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the president’s push to rein in universal mail-in voting.
Why it matters: The back-and-forth has some California voters likely wondering whether they’ll be able to vote by mail in this upcoming election. And if so, should they?
Read on for the state of play.
Ballots are going out in less than a month, and California remains locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the president’s push to rein in universal mail-in voting.
The back-and-forth has some California voters likely wondering whether they’ll be able to vote by mail in this upcoming election. And if so, should they?
In short — yes, mail-in voting will still be an option this year. And yes, it’s still safe and generally reliable, although county election officials are urging voters to send in their ballots as early as possible ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
In case you missed it, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling that will determine, at least for now, whether President Donald Trump can force the U.S. Postal Service to restrict vote-by-mail ballots in time for the midterm election. Trump wants to create a federal database of registered voters that the postal service would then cross-reference to ensure mail-in ballots are only delivered to eligible voters — in other words, U.S. citizens. His plan would have the postal service refuse to deliver ballots in states that withhold the data.
The dizzying, monthslong legal saga has baffled voters and even some election officials, which some voting rights advocates argue is probably the point.
But California election officials say the state is well-equipped to administer the election, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules. Although county registrars are monitoring the court rulings, they’re also preparing to mail ballots as usual by the state’s Oct. 5 deadline. Local and state officials are urging voters to make a plan to vote early and to use the state’s various non-mail voting options, such as drop-boxes and in-person voting sites, if they’re worried about the postal service.
“Like we do for all of our elections, we have contingency plans or disaster plans put into place,” said Tricia Webber, clerk and registrar of voters for Santa Cruz County and president of the California Association of County Election Officials.
Some counties, including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, are exploring options for pop-up stations where voters could request and submit ballots. In Santa Cruz County, Webber said her team is strategizing how to deploy their votemobile around the county to add yet another option for voters.
“Until there’s an answer,” Webber said, speaking of the pending court ruling, “California counties are doing business as usual.”
Trump issued an executive order in March that sought to give the federal government control over who receives mail-in ballots. Almost immediately, more than 20 Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, sued the Trump administration on the grounds that the Constitution allows only Congress and state governments to administer elections.
Federal district and appellate courts sided with the Democratic states and upheld a temporary injunction preventing the postal service from implementing any part of its plan while litigation continues.
The central questions in the case remain unresolved. The Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to continue planning for how it would implement the president’s order. Democratic states promptly sued again to contest the postal service’s plans.
The postal service’s proposal, the final version of which was published in August, would create a system to track each voter’s ballot with a unique barcode and cross-reference it with a database of eligible registered voters.
While some states fear they’ll need to reprint envelopes if the postal service’s rule is upheld, the vast majority of California counties already use compliant ballot envelopes, Webber said.
The federal government does not have a comprehensive list of every eligible registered voter and would need to rely on states to submit voter information to a “federal ballot mail portal” that does not yet exist.
It seems unlikely that the postal service’s portal would even be functional in time for the 2026 midterm elections. A postal service whistleblower asserted that the process to develop and deploy the portal was “rushed,” “risky and haphazard” due to the “impossible timeframe,” according to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office, which received the whistleblower complaint.
“In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,’” wrote Blumenthal, of Connecticut, in a late August letter to Postmaster General David Steiner.
The postmaster in June told a congressional committee that the postal service would withhold ballots in states that refuse to share basic voter information, including name, address and the unique ballot barcode.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber, California’s chief elections administrator, has not said whether California would comply with the proposed voter information requirement.
“California’s elections officials will continue to do everything within our power to ensure that every eligible California voter has the right to cast a mail ballot and have that vote count.”
Last year, the U.S. Justice Department sued Weber and five other Democratic secretaries of state for refusing to turn over their unredacted voter files, which contain far more sensitive personal information than the postal service rule would require. A federal judge in Southern California dismissed that case in January.
Ironically, concerns about the postal service’s reliability could facilitate what election officials and voting advocates have struggled to do for years — get people to vote earlier.
Unlike the lead-up to the June primary, where nervous Democrats urged fellow voters to wait until the last minute to pick a candidate for governor, social media is now awash with posts urging people to vote early and use ballot drop-boxes rather than rely on the mail.
“This whole play may backfire,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “What you’re seeing now on social media in response to this court drama and this confusion are lots of people urging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly what we’ve been saying.”
Voting earlier helps county election officials tabulate results more quickly on election night, which helps race callers like The Associated Press declare winners faster. And since ballots in envelopes take the longest to process, dropping them off several days before the deadline is the best way to help election officials count faster, since they can remove ballots from envelopes and prepare them for counting before Election Day.
“Fortunately, we give voters lots of options, and that’s really going to work to California’s benefit,” Alexander said. “Other states do not have the kind of robust process that creates lots of redundancies and avenues for voters to vote.”
Topline:
The L.A. mayor’s office says it has chosen a plan for a hotly debated road safety project on Forest Lawn Drive, but it won’t say how the plan will slow speeding cars on the deadly thoroughfare.
Slim on details: The office said the plan includes adding a protected left-turn lane and protected bike lanes to the one-mile stretch of Forest Lawn Drive and maintains the roadway's four existing lanes. The mayor’s office did not respond to additional questions from LAist, including whether L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ plan will reduce speeding on the road, whether there’s a timeline for implementation and how soon the community will be informed about specifics.
What we know: A city official who spoke to LAist on the condition they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak on the record confirmed that the safety design approved by the mayor includes widening portions of the road.
Why it matters: The plan comes after years of controversy over how to make the one-mile stretch of the road near Griffith Park safer. Bass halted a plan to reduce lanes on the road earlier this year.
Read on ... for more about how the city is approaching safety on the busy road.
The Los Angeles mayor’s office says it has chosen a plan for a hotly debated road safety project on Forest Lawn Drive, but it won’t say how the plan will slow speeding cars on the deadly thoroughfare.
In a statement Friday to LAist, the mayor’s office said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ plan for the busy road near Griffith Park will “improve traffic, cycling and pedestrian safety, and keep traffic flowing."
The office said the plan includes adding a protected left-turn lane and protected bike lanes to the 1-mile stretch of Forest Lawn Drive and maintains the roadway's four existing lanes.
The mayor’s office did not respond to additional questions from LAist, including whether Bass’ plan will reduce speeding on the road, whether there’s a timeline for implementation and how soon the community will be informed about specifics.
A city official who spoke to LAist on condition they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak on the record confirmed that the safety design approved by the mayor includes widening portions of the road. Road widening was first proposed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries.
Forest Lawn Memorial Parks operates a chain of cemeteries, including one in the Hollywood Hills that can only be accessed along Forest Lawn Drive. The company was a longtime opponent of a prior proposal to reduce lanes on the roadway that Bass halted in May.
City transportation officials had said the lane reduction would slow cars down and make the thoroughfare safer.
Forest Lawn Memorial Parks worked to block that plan due to concerns that it would increase traffic congestion and impede access to its Hollywood Hills cemetery.
The company spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying against the lane reduction at the state and local levels between 2025 and 2026, according to an LAist review of lobbying activity.
The exact price tag for Bass’ latest plan announced Friday is unclear.
City transportation department records obtained by LAist show a proposal to widen the road developed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks would cost nearly five times more than the plan to reduce lanes on Forest Lawn Drive.
City transportation staff said in an analysis that the consultant’s road widening plan would have “low” potential to slow speeding cars, according to the public records.
The L.A. Department of Transportation said in a statement that it is “coordinating with the Bureau of Engineering on advancing the Mayor's direction.”
The proposal that almost went ahead before Bass halted it would have cut the number of lanes from four to three, transforming the road into two through-lanes and one center turn lane. The bumpy, cracked, pothole-ridden road would also have been resurfaced.
The goal was to slow cars and address the nearly 100 traffic collisions, including four deadly ones, the road has seen since 2013.
Brian Taylor, a research professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, told LAist that research on how so-called road diets improve safety is “unequivocal,” adding that there is a significant reduction in crashes and injuries when lanes are reduced.
The plan to reduce lanes came with a $618,000 price tag that would have covered the costs of repainting new lanes on the road and installing plastic posts to fortify the bike lanes. Those costs would have been covered through the city’s existing resources for road improvements, according to the city’s transportation department.
The future of Forest Lawn Drive has become a touchpoint in the L.A. mayor’s race, where Bass is facing L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose district includes this portion of Forest Lawn Drive and whose office initiated the project in 2022.
At an August campaign event about Forest Lawn Drive, following a fatal collision on the road, Raman said one reason she’s running for mayor is so “lifesaving street safety improvements are not stymied and are not politicized.”
The road is the sole point of entry to two major cemeteries, the Hollywood Hills locations of Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mount Sinai Memorial Parks.
The cemeteries, neighborhood groups and state legislators opposed the lane reduction plan, citing concerns about traffic congestion, especially during funeral processions, and ease of access.
In a joint statement to LAist in August, the cemeteries praised Bass’ decision to find a new approach for the road, saying it “demonstrated responsive leadership and a willingness to get this right.” The cemeteries did not respond to LAist’s requests for a follow-up.
State legislators representing L.A. had pressed the mayor in a letter in April about the project, saying traffic lane reductions would be “disastrous to the operation of key cemeteries” in the area and calling for more review of alternatives.
In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it more difficult to reduce lanes on Forest Lawn Drive.
If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is kharjai.61.
Streets for All, which has advocated for reducing Forest Lawn Drive from four lanes to three, said that the original plan for the road could still move forward if Raman becomes L.A.’s next mayor.
“We will get the extra bureaucratic hurdles done and get the project in the ground anyway under Mayor [Raman],” the transportation advocacy group said in September in an Instagram post, referring to the additional steps the state legislation signed by Newsom requires.
In September, Streets for All announced its political action committee is contributing $1.2 million to get Raman elected.
Topline:
The board that oversees the California High-Speed Rail Authority voted Friday to rein in Chief Executive Ian Choudri's contracting authority following a state investigation that showed consultants billed the agency $600,000 in questionable travel expenses.
Why it matters: The board on Friday voted 7-2 to strip Choudri of his sole authority to sign and manage contracts under $25 million and to require the agency’s in-house attorneys to approve or change any new or existing contracts. The board already has to vote to award any contracts over that amount.
Why now: Investigators looked at travel expenses submitted by four consulting firms over a two-year period and found that most of the trips were unauthorized, poorly justified — at times at the agency’s top executives’ request — and that agency staff failed to sufficiently vet the requests before approving them. In some cases, agency staff didn’t even know about the trips until they received invoices.
What's next: In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka.
The board that oversees the California High-Speed Rail Authority voted Friday to rein in Chief Executive Ian Choudri's contracting authority following a state investigation that showed consultants billed the agency $600,000 in questionable travel expenses.
The investigation by the office of inspector general for the high-speed rail project found that some consultants flew first class, hailed luxury rides and traveled to a night club, a cigar lounge and numerous restaurants, bars and residences, sometimes after hours, on taxpayers’ dime.
Investigators looked at travel expenses submitted by four consulting firms over a two-year period and found that most of the trips were unauthorized, poorly justified — at times at the agency’s top executives’ request — and that agency staff failed to sufficiently vet the requests before approving them. In some cases, agency staff didn’t even know about the trips until they received invoices.
The board on Friday voted 7-2 to strip Choudri of his sole authority to sign and manage contracts under $25 million and to require the agency’s in-house attorneys to approve or change any new or existing contracts. The board already has to vote to award any contracts over that amount.
Board chair Steve Kawa told reporters afterward that the decision “adds additional eyes and ears and authority” over issues exposed by the investigation.
“We are not just gonna sit back and ignore that we had this travel issue,” he said. “Not one dollar of California taxpayer dollars should be misused.”
“I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank for these kinds of expenditures.”
Several board members slammed the consultants for the travel expenses. Lynn Schenk, who has served on the board since 2003, said the spending suggests a troubling pattern and deserves a deeper dive.
“I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank for these kinds of expenditures,” she said during the board meeting. “And it says to me that there are other expenditures that are being treated this way.”
Board member Henry Perea suggested the travel payments are so egregious that the state should end its contract with the firms right away, something Gov. Gavin Newsom has also floated. However, Perea said he worried that doing so could set back the long-delayed rail project even further.
“I’d terminate these four [contracts] tomorrow or today, but I understand there’s a question of operational needs that we have with these folks,” he said.
But the board did not grill the authority’s top executives for failing to catch the behavior, even though the probe revealed that consultants told agency staff many times that they were traveling at the request of the agency’s top officers, including Choudri.
In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka.
One legal consultant was paid $40,800 in travel reimbursements and an additional $86,500 in “travel time” for 30 trips between Denver and Sacramento in a year. When questioned about whether he needed to attend the meetings in person, he said Choudri had requested his presence so he did not need to justify it and that it would not be appropriate for him to question Choudri’s direction, “as other consultants in other Authority offices are learning the hard way.”
In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka. The firms are: KPMG LLP, a global financial consulting firm; Nossaman LLP, a national law firm; AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, which manages and coordinates the authority’s projects, and SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture, which provides tracks and systems design.
The agency is seeking to recoup all questionable travel payments, he said Friday.
“We remain committed [and] we take full responsibility and accountability to fix if there was something broken in the system,” Choudri told the board.
Choudri also told board members that the agency has taken “disciplinary actions” against some consultants but did not clarify what they were. Choudri did not speak to reporters following the meeting.
Assembly Minority Leader Alexandra Macedo, a Visilia Republican, called for Choudri’s firing in a Thursday letter to the board. She accused him of demonstrating a “pattern of misuse of taxpayer dollars and abuse of public trust.”
“At a time when California families face unbearable financial pressures to cover essential household needs including rent, utilities and transportation, the routine approval of improper consultant expenses represents a severe breach of fiduciary responsibility,” she wrote.
Of the four consulting firms investigated, only one sent representatives Friday.
Veronica Siranosian, an executive at AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, told the board the company reviewed its travel invoices and found “no substantive departures from the established public processes.”
The inspector general’s investigation found nearly $380,000 in travel expenses by the company’s consultants that were not allowed under state regulations or the company’s contract with the state.
Nevertheless, another AECOM executive, Mike Burns, said the company has identified only about $1,000 in expenses it overbilled the state, including for an Uber ride, parking in a garage that charged a higher rate than surrounding buildings and a flight that was on an international carrier instead of an American airline.
In some cases, Burns stressed, the dollar difference was small. He said the company’s consultants once took an $86 Uber ride in an electric vehicle whereas the standard policy would require an $84 Uber X instead. “It was a $2 differentiation,” he said. “There’s some nominal incidences like that.”
Schenk gasped.
“Surely you are not saying that we are sitting here for these hours going through this … for a $2 difference,” she said. “And surely you will at least acknowledge that these instances show a disregard at the very least for state and high-speed rail requirements.”
“It’s gonna take a lot of $2 differences in Uber rides to get to the $380,000 that you guys billed the state of California,” said Vice Chair Anthony Williams.
Board member Emily Cohen slammed the consulting firms that did not appear Friday.
“They should all be here. Unbelievable.”
Matalka said the authority would implement all the fixes the inspector general’s office recommended. He said the authority would, by the end of the year, create a new travel approval form requiring more details.
By the end of March, he said, it would establish a “consistent, uniform process” for advance travel approvals, ramp up training, create a list of approved office locations for consultants, recoup misspent state funding and use AI to flag travel requests that potentially violate policies.
But much of the steps seems like “basic oversight,” Schenk said. “Why weren’t we doing this at the outset?” she asked. “What is the root cause?”
Matalka said some questionable travel requests slipped through the cracks because staff did not review them deep enough.
“Training needs to be done so that we make sure you are not just looking at the labor hours, you are not just looking at the lodging rate,” he said. “You need to actually Google the address, look at the timestamp, look at some of the very small print on the fare class.”
The authority frequently approved expenses with vague justifications, such as “typical M-F week” trips, and approved travel at the request of executives without asking why. One consultant flew to California from Denver 20 times during the two-year period to “meet with the executive team” or attend executive meetings, without explaining why the meetings couldn’t have been remote, the investigation says.
The high-speed rail project is already long delayed and over its projected budget: In 2008, voters approved a $10 billion bond to build a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020 for an estimated $45 billion. The project is now estimated to cost between $126 billion and $231 billion, with a full buildout expected by 2040, according to the authority’s latest business plan. Current plans call for building a first leg linking Merced to Bakersfield.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
Southern California is in for a dose of rain this weekend from Tropical Storm Rachel, plus a cooldown, right on the heels of the latest sweltering heat wave. The storm is also driving elevated sea levels, coastal erosion and dangerous surf.
Rain: Forecasters say the rain will start late Saturday. The chance of showers will be highest on Sunday and Monday, but will continue through Tuesday. Most of L.A. and Ventura counties could get up to a half inch of rain. Orange County and the region’s mountains could get up to an inch. The rain is being driven by Tropical Storm Rachel, which will pass over the San Diego area and northern Baja California late Saturday night and early Sunday.
Coastal impacts: Waves are already battering the Southern California coast as surging surf from Rachel combines with elevated sea levels from an El Niño-driven Kelvin wave. Newport Beach and Laguna Beach saw flooding Friday, according to news reports. Coastal flood warnings and advisories are in place through Tuesday for L.A., Orange and Ventura county coastlines. The flood risk will remain high throughout the weekend and early next week, but will be worse on Sunday and during high tides. Beaches will also see dangerous waves and rip currents.
On the Long Beach Peninsula: LAist correspondent Jill Replogle reported from the boardwalk on Friday that workers were piling sand to try to keep the waves from coming through and causing further damage. But tides were high earlier in the day and are expected to be over 7 feet this weekend. All the recent erosion, flooding and other damage raises questions about the long-term future of the peninsula.
The cooldown: Temperatures are expected to drop significantly over the weekend. By Monday, highs across L.A. and Orange counties will range from the mid-60s to the low 70s.
Topline:
With state resources having been cut, a former state biologist launches her own bear coexistence business.
Why it matters: It’s the time of year when black bears are beefing up — often on trash — in Southern California’s foothill communities. In recent years, these areas have seen a rise in conflicts with bears.
Read on ... for more on why one biologist who lost her job with the state is starting her own business to help communities live with bears.
It’s that time of year when black bears are beefing up, often on trash, in Southern California’s foothill communities.
From fall to early winter, bears quadruple their food intake in preparation for the cooler months — bears here don’t really hibernate given our mild weather and plethora of resources, but they do slow down during the winter (as we all should). And right now, mother bears are looking to find a safe place to den and have their cubs.
Bears aren’t just roaming the roads of mountain towns either. They’re in suburban neighborhood streets along the 210 Freeway corridor — including Altadena, Sierra Madre and Monrovia — and even in Encino and Tarzana.
This time of year is when humans and bears might come into conflict more frequently, says a former biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“You're going to see those bears just eating ravenously, foraging all day for food, and then also they're going to start looking for these potential denning sites under our crawl spaces, unfortunately,” said Jessica West, a human-wildlife conflict specialist who over the last five years worked for the state on bear coexistence efforts from Santa Barbara to San Diego.
Nearly 60,000 black bears are estimated to live in California. Here in Southern California, the estimate is around 2,000, according to the latest count by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Though they may appear brown or blond, black bears are the only species of bear in California.
For thousands of years, brown bears, also called grizzly bears, were the main bear of the California landscape, including here in Southern California. But European and American settlers killed them all off by the early 1900s.
Evidence of black bears in Southern California dates to about 25,000 years ago. The theory is they headed farther north in the middle of the Ice Age as the landscape here got a lot drier and the ancient forest disappeared.
So how did black bears come back? They were brought here by the government from Yosemite as a tourist attraction. (Wild right? If you want to dig deeper, listen to our podcast about black bears in Southern California.)
Black bears are omnivores and opportunists. They primarily eat plants and bugs, but they’ll also eat animal carcasses, small mammals and, of course, whatever’s in your trash.
State resources to help communities coexist with bears have been cut. That includes West, who was the sole wildlife conflict biologist serving Southern California counties. Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed a bill into law that aims to bring some of those resources back, but in the meantime, the need remains.
“More than ever, people and bears are sharing space,” West said. "The fact is that they're here and they're not going anywhere, and we're here as humans and we're not going anywhere.”
Neither did West’s passion for wildlife coexistence when she was laid off. That’s why she just launched her own business to help fill the resource gap: Wild Neighbor.
She offers detailed property assessments and recommendations for $150. She focuses primarily on prevention, such as strategically placing electric wiring and “unwelcome” mats to secure crawl spaces, trash and other vulnerable areas, which can cost $350 to around $900 depending on the home. She also rents such equipment if residents prefer. West works with manufacturers of electric bear-resistant tools that have been vetted for fire safety and bear conflict.
“What the science shows is that the most effective deterrent that we have at this point in time in our tool belt for bears is electricity,” West said. “There's really nothing like that in the wild for bears. It's a very novel stimulus for them.”Get a bear-resistant trash can if your city offers it and it fits your budget. If you can’t, take your trash out as close to trash pickup as possible. (GPS collar data has shown that bears actually learn trash day schedules.) Or keep your trash inside a secure structure, like a closed garage.
Get rid of bird seed and hummingbird nectar feeders.
Bears have extremely powerful noses and can squeeze through even small opened windows to get to a refrigerator. So if bears are present in your neighborhood, keep accessible windows closed and locked as much as possible.
“We really want to avoid potentially orphaning those cubs,” she said.
It’s best to avoid allowing a bear to get into your crawl space or trash in the first place, West said. When bears become too accustomed to humans and eating human food, the risk of injury to people and pets rises. And the bears themselves are more likely to be euthanized.
In 2023, California hit a tragic milestone: It was the state’s first documented killing of a human by a black bear, in Northern California. In Southern California, foothill communities such as Sierra Madre have seen several bear-related injuries in recent years (more on that in our 2024 podcast on this topic). Several bears, including a well-known one in La Cañada Flintridge, have also been euthanized in recent years.
In the vast majority of cases, this is preventable, West said, if residents take a little responsibility for securing their own properties. That can also save thousands of dollars in damage caused by a bear.
Since West is no longer with the state, she can’t trap bears that have risen to the point of becoming a problem — for example, those that learn how to regularly get into homes or cars, or have lost their fear of humans. She does encourage her clients to share sightings and any concerning conflicts with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, but she doesn’t share anything herself without clients’ permission. (Learn how to report bear sightings or human-bear conflict here.)
West said that in lieu of state resources, companies like hers may become more common.
“What [clients] can expect is someone who is going to listen to them, and someone who is passionate about their job and really wants to help them,” West said. “Because at the end of the day, I'm a bear biologist by training. I love bears, but my whole goal in all of this is to help people. Because if we help people, we're also helping bears.”
