The Brief

What do thousands of pages of newly released material reveal about the well-documented relationship between convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and President Donald Trump?

Not much of anything, according to some of the right-wing influencers who have long been clamoring for the government to release more information about Epstein and his crimes.

"To me, these are nothingburgers — if they're even real," pro-Trump podcaster Jon Herold said on his "Badlands Media Rumble" livestream Wednesday. Herold gained an audience in the wake of the 2020 election after spreading QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories.

His fellow Badlands Media personality, Brian Lupo, took a slightly different view on his own livestream this week. The emails didn't exactly say nothing, he claimed, but they show that Trump was informing on Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls. (Epstein died by suicide while in jail during the first Trump administration.)

"My take on this is Epstein and Maxwell are trying to figure out who's a mole or a rat or an informant in their circle of friends," Lupo said, referring to an email in which Epstein called Trump a "dog that didn't bark." (The White House has denied that Trump was an informant.)

Epstein looms large for many conspiracy theorists, including QAnon believers. He's seen as a prime example of the satanic cabal of pedophiles they believe are entrenched among the world's most powerful people. QAnon adherents think Donald Trump is destined to defeat that cabal.

Trump has acknowledged he and Epstein were once friendly but fell out decades ago. He's denied any knowledge of Epstein's trafficking of underage girls.

While one of the newly released emails suggests Trump did know about Epstein's behavior, some right-wing media figures say the new disclosures prove Trump did nothing wrong.

"They're claiming it's a hoax, they're claiming that the Democrats are cherry-picking the things that make Trump look the worst, and that these things prove that he didn't actually do anything wrong and that he's not a criminal and that he was actually gathering information for the FBI on Epstein," said Mike Rothschild, an independent journalist and author who has written extensively about conspiracy theories and QAnon.

He said that is "very different from the song they were singing for years before that, which is that if we just bring down the Epstein ring, all of the Democrats are going to go down with him."

Many prominent Democrats are shown communicating with Epstein in the newly released emails. Still, another common thread on the right is that the release is a distraction by Democrats.

"They think that the Epstein thing is something that is going to distract you from their failures, although the Epstein thing, all it's really doing is exposing more Democrat failures," Vince Coglianese, a radio host and the editorial director of the Daily Caller, said on his Rumble livestream on Thursday.

That echoes President Trump's Truth Social posts accusing Democrats of using Epstein to deflect from fallout over the government shutdown. On Friday, he called on the Justice Department to investigate Democrats mentioned in the emails. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she was appointing a federal prosecutor to lead a probe.

Meanwhile, some prominent influencers and conservative media outlets are essentially ignoring this week's release of documents.

"They already know that their fans are on board 100% with whatever Trump does," Rothschild said. "There's nothing for them here."

At the same time, the emails are fueling new speculation on both the right and the left as people race to interpret Epstein's often cryptic language.

To Rothschild, that is a fool's errand.

"Jeffrey Epstein was not the most trustworthy person. … You're taking him at his word because you want to believe him when he says things that are either good about Trump or bad about Trump," he said. "It's absolutely maddening circular discourse and it gets us absolutely nowhere."

NPR's Huo Jingnan contributed reporting to this story.

It’s hot out there, and it’s only going to get hotter.

National Weather Service forecasters issued a slew of alerts this week as a heat wave settles into Southern California with even hotter weather right around the corner.

A heat advisory is in effect until Tuesday for much of the region, with triple-digit temperatures expected in some places. Then, from Tuesday through Thursday, July 16, L.A. County and its neighbors to the north are under a more severe extreme heat watch.

An extreme weather warning is already in place for the Coachella Valley, where highs are expected to approach 115 degrees on Friday.

Southern Californians are no strangers to hot weather in the summer, but heat waves are getting hotter, longer and more frequent as the climate changes.

And the words forecasters use to describe these weather events has changed too. The NWS rolled out new heat alert language last year after the previous summer broke records for the hottest in U.S. history.

So, what exactly triggers these heat alerts? And what should you do about them? Here’s a guide:

Heat Advisory: Advisories are issued when temperatures are expected to be hot enough to cause discomfort and potentially lead to heat-related illnesses, especially for more vulnerable populations like young children and the elderly. During a heat advisory, consider staying in a cool place and limiting outside activity, especially during the day. For those who spend time outside, be sure to drink plenty of water and take breaks in the shade.

Extreme Heat Watch: Watches are essentially forecasts for upcoming periods of extreme heat. Forecasters say heat watches often cover wide areas and will be revised into more focused warnings and advisories as conditions become clearer over time. Watches are a good time to prepare for extreme heat by, for example, locating a nearby cooling centers if you don’t have access to air conditioning.

Extreme Heat Warning: Warnings are issued when heat levels are or will likely become extremely dangerous. Under extreme heat warnings, it's a good idea to avoid strenuous outdoor activity, stay hydrated and help loved ones and pets stay cool.

Not one-size-fits-all

Forecasters say it is important to keep Southern California’s diverse geography in mind when thinking about what these alerts mean.

L.A. County, for example, covers beaches, valleys, mountains and deserts. Some areas have tree cover, while others are mostly concrete and asphalt. Temperatures can vary a lot between those landscapes. It might be 80 degrees near the coast when it’s 100 degrees in the desert.

Not everywhere under a heat advisory, watch or warning will necessarily see the highest temperatures in the forecast either. But it is likely that some places within the alert area will.

Heat is also experienced differently from community to community. For someone accustomed to living in the desert, 100-degree heat may feel different than it would for someone who lives near the beach.

National Weather Service forecasters often consult with local emergency management, fire and public health authorities about the needs of their particular residents when deciding where and when to issue alerts.

When I was 16, my family moved to Madrid, where I got a crash course in Spanish culture — including a legal drinking age that happened to match my own. Lucky me. (For those wondering, it’s now 18).

In Spain, there’s a whole rhythm to drinking; it’s less about getting drunk and more about the intentionality of what you reach for and when. A vermouth before lunch to open the appetite. And after dinner, a gin tonic, (yes, that's gin tonic, the Spanish way — not gin and tonic) nursed slowly over a long conversation. And if things get loose, a kalimotxo: red wine and Coke, the drink Spanish teenagers have been mixing in plazas since before they were legally allowed to.

Over the last few years, a wave of Spanish drinking culture has been quietly making its way into L.A. Even José Andrés — the chef behind downtown's San Laurel, and probably the city’s most famous Spaniard — devotes a chapter of his new book, Spain, My Way, to how his countrymen drink, arguing it's inseparable from how they eat. It's a good match for L.A. too: like Spain, we have a Mediterranean climate — hot, dry summers made for chilled, low-ABV drinking.

You can now experience those rituals I first saw in Madrid — enjoying vermouth, kalimotxo, gin tonic — at spots around town. So why not get a taste of Spain… without booking a flight?

La hora del vermut

LAIE, a cava-based Spanish vermouth, served over ice with orange and an olive.

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Brook Olsen

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Courtesy LAIE

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Most of us will know vermouth as the splash in a good martini. But it can be so much more than that, if you know what to drink. "It's not just a mixer… it's something you can enjoy by itself," says Alex Cardona, co-founder of a Barcelona-based vermouth company, LAIE (pronounced El-ay-yeah) with California restaurateur Raj Nallapothola.

The traditional way to drink vermouth — or vermut — in Spain is the ritual known as la hora del vermut — the vermouth hour, a midday get-together to share the drink over a few snacks.

There are many different kinds of vermouth, from pale, dry blanco to sweet, dark rojo. LAIE is a rojo, light in color but finishing sweet, made by a longtime family producer just outside Barcelona. It drinks like a lighter-bodied wine, blended with more than twenty botanicals. If you've ever enjoyed an Italian amaro, you're almost there.

Serve it before lunch, over ice with an orange slice and an olive — and if you want to kick things up, a splash of gin.

Kalimotxo

Wine and Cola's five styles launched exclusively in L.A. this summer.

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Courtesy Wine and Cola

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In 1999, when I was a teenager in Madrid, I’d see young people in the evening filling the plazas in droves, corner-store box wine and two-liters of Coke in hand — and the municipal workers who'd hose it all down by morning, only for the scene to repeat the next weekend.

Yes, wine and Coke, known in Spanish as kalimotxo, apparently go very well together, and dates to the ‘70s Basque Country, where festival-goers mixed spoiled wine with Coke to save it. While my taste for wine wasn’t really developed at the time, I appreciated the ingenuity of the drink for what it was.

Now, a ready-to-drink, canned version is arriving in L.A., the straightforwardly named Wine and Cola. The brand is modernizing the kalimotxo for the U.S. market, according to CEO Dale Laflam, who works with beverage brands for a living and saw canned cocktails booming while wine sat flat. Putting a kalimotxo in a can, ready to grab from a cooler, was the obvious move.

It's a deliberate 50-50 wine-and-cola blend, built cola-forward so it lands even if you're not a wine drinker. The cola leads, with a dry wine hum underneath. It comes in five styles — Original, Diet, Cherry, Rosé, and a citrusy one that drinks like white wine and Sprite.

Most lean sweet, thanks to that cola-forward base; I'd have taken more cherry in the Cherry, but that's me. I found the citrus the most balanced.

If you need more convincing, the drink's got famous fans. Lady Gaga has said her go-to is red wine and Diet Coke — a kalimotxo by any other name — and soccer's GOAT, Lionel Messi, recently copped to loving red wine with Sprite, the lighter cousin behind the citrus can.

As Laflam puts it, the whole thing "sounds wrong, tastes right."

Gin tonic — and the art of the sobremesa

Bar manager Gerard Belmonte builds Telefèric's gin tonics, including the color-changing Ibiza.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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After a lovely Spanish dinner — a paella, maybe, or a chuletón with patatas and piquillo peppers — the meal doesn't really end. It eases into sobremesa, the long stretch of table time after the plates are cleared, and that's when the gin tonic arrives.

Yes, that’s right. Spain loves their gin tonics. It isn't Spanish by birth (it was actually started by British officers in India drinking quinine-laden tonic to beat malaria), but Spain adopted it and made it a national obsession, where the drink is poured over ice in big balloon glasses and loaded with botanicals.

At the Telefèric Barcelona resturant in Long Beach, at 2nd & PCH, with locations in California and Arizona, drinking gin tonics is a nightly ritual. It's owned by the Padrosa family, and the lineage traces back to their original location in Barcelona.

"We always do a gin tonic after dinner," bar manager Gerard Belmonte told me. "We keep it on the table for three, four hours, talk with people. It's a good digestive, too — that's in our culture."

Belmonte walked me through three of the house pours, each of which pays homage to a different corner of Spain. The Catalan is the driest — mostly gin and tonic, garnished with juniper, rosemary, grapefruit, and a touch of lemon for a clean, refreshing finish. The Galicia gets a blue stripe of Bombay Sapphire's edible paint brushed inside the glass, then builds on Nordés, a Galician gin with Atlantic notes, with cardamom and bay leaf. And the Ibiza — named, Belmonte says, for the island's party-and-good-vibes energy — starts with Bombay Premier Cru infused with butterfly pea tea and a touch of edible silver dust. As it's built, the drink shifts from blue to purple, shimmering like a magic potion out of Harry Potter.

The private immigration detention company GEO Group has settled a landmark case over conditions in one of its Central Valley detention facilities. It has agreed to pay more than $100,000 over allegations the company failed to keep detained immigrants safe when they worked inside the facility.

The settlement, signed in May and announced Tuesday, is a victory for immigrants’ rights groups that have pushed California lawmakers to attempt to regulate conditions inside the federal government’s privately-operated detention facilities.

Eight such facilities now operate across the state and the number of detained immigrants has spiked during the second Trump presidency.

During the pandemic, lawmakers passed a measure allowing state inspectors into the facilities. In 2022, after receiving complaints from advocates and detained immigrants at the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland, state workplace safety inspectors from Cal/OSHA opened a case at the center and cited the GEO Group with workplace violations, alleging the company failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among detainees who work there, and ensure other safety measures.

It was the first known time the state has treated immigrant detainees as workers and their detention facility operators as employers subject to state labor laws.

Immigrants held in ICE custody are detained on civil violations, not imprisoned for crimes. But in detention, where they can participate in a “voluntary work program” cleaning the facility, preparing food or cutting other detainees’ hair, they are only paid $1 a day. Detainees often participate in order to afford food at the centers’ commissaries or calls to their families.

As part of the settlement between GEO Group and Cal/OSHA, the company has agreed to improve its disease control plans for detainees and stopped fighting a ruling by state regulators last year that said the company was subject to state labor laws. GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.

“Individuals who perform work in these facilities are entitled to workplace safety protections, and this settlement reinforces Cal/OSHA’s commitment to enforcing those protections and safeguarding vulnerable workers,” agency spokesperson Denisse Gomez wrote in a statement.

Detention facility operators and federal immigration officials have continued to clash with state and local regulators over conditions. Last month, a federal judge sided with San Diego County health officials and ordered the Department of Homeland Security and its contractor CoreCivic to allow a county inspector into the 1,400-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center near the Mexico border. That company last week sold the facility and another one in Kern County to the federal government, CalMatters reported.

And amid several federal lawsuits challenging the practice of paying just $1 a day for detainee work, GEO Group succeeded last month in getting ICE to update its standards for detention contractors, the Washington Post reported. The new standards state detainees “are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.”

California’s public colleges and universities emerged as winners in the latest state budget after lawmakers sent them hundreds of millions of dollars in new public spending. However, that largesse was tempered by decisions by Democrats in Sacramento to reject bond measures that could have awarded campuses billions more.

The changes were enshrined in the state budget for 2026-27 that the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom approved last week.

Students were also major beneficiaries, as lawmakers continued to support one of the nation’s most generous state financial aid programs. The Cal Grant, which generally covers tuition at the University of California and California State University and partial tuition at private colleges, remains fully funded as part of an ongoing commitment by lawmakers and Newsom to keep student costs down.

UC and Cal State students receiving the Cal Grants will have their tuition charges waived, even as schools continue to raise tuition. And more affordable student housing may be built soon if voters approve a bond that lawmakers and Newsom put on the ballot for November.

Prioritizing higher education spending will be “a strong part of Gov. Newsom’s legacy,” said Jessica L. Thompson, a senior vice president at The Institute for College Access & Success. The organization is a think tank that advocates for increased financial aid for low-income students.

“We’ve never had to work to convince the executive branch that public higher education was incredibly important and central to a lot of the ambitions for the state and for the future, and that’s not something to take for granted,” she told CalMatters.

Still, the smaller Middle Class Scholarship, which last year awarded recipients an average of $3,000 in aid to cover school expenses, will decrease to an average of $2,000 this year.

Here’s a breakdown of higher education’s wins and losses in California.

More money for UC, Cal State

The UC and Cal State systems each received more than $500 million in ongoing taxpayer support that can be used to hire faculty as they enroll more students and keep up with other expenses, such as rising energy, insurance and staff health costs.

That public generosity isn’t guaranteed. Public K-12 schools and community colleges are constitutionally guaranteed around 40% of the state’s general fund. But public universities have no such ironclad dibs on state money.

The Legislature’s top budget and policy adviser, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, recommended smaller increases for the universities in February. The office cited projected multibillion-dollar state deficits. And it argued that both systems can still rely on new revenue from their annual tuition hikes.

Newsom’s eight-year tenure coincided with dramatic spikes in state spending for each system. The year before he took office, the UC and Cal State each received about $3.7 billion in state support. The latest budget act sends more than $5 billion to each system from the state’s general fund.

That’s a growth of 50% — but less than the 80% in overall state spending increase Sacramento approved from the general fund during that span.

The latest university increases are a combination of new ongoing money for the two university systems and the restoration of more than $100 million in funding cuts that lawmakers applied to both the UC and Cal State in last year’s budget.

That drop in money prompted an ongoing impasse between Cal State and unionized workers. Cal State argued the funding cut prevented the system from honoring full raises for thousands of its staff; some unions disagreed by pointing to the loan the state offered Cal State to make up for last year’s cut. Cal State said that doesn’t count since it has to repay that loan.

One large union of 36,000 administrative and groundskeeping workers, CSUEU, filed an unfair labor practice charge against Cal State last July. The union contends that last year’s budget triggered a union contract clause to put workers on higher experience levels. Each “step” increase comes with a 2% raise. Cal State advanced workers one step, but the union says some were supposed to climb five or more steps.

CSUEU expects to come to a deal with Cal State on the grievance in the next month — before the state California Public Employment Relations Board is set to issue a decision in August.

The union also seeks 11% raises annually for the next three years. It hasn’t sought approval from its members to strike, but the union has threatened work stoppages.

Students mostly benefit

The budget deal continues to fully fund the Cal Grant, a politically popular program that has no guaranteed stream of funding like public K-12 schools and community colleges do.

Since 2015, the number of Cal Grant recipients has grown from around 330,000 to more than 450,000. State spending also leaped from about $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

A major reason for the expansion of students receiving the grant is a set of relaxed rules lawmakers approved in 2021. Those permitted more than 100,000 community college students older than 28 to qualify for the Cal Grant each year. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that Cal Grant’s costs grew by $167 million last year just from those rule changes alone.

The annual tuition hikes at UC, starting in 2022, and Cal State, beginning in 2024, have also pushed the price tag on the Cal Grant higher. About a quarter of the increased costs of Cal Grants for UC and CSU in the last decade is due to tuition increases, the analyst’s office wrote in February.

A smaller financial aid program is dropping in value, however. The Middle Class Scholarship will receive $680 million, enough for an average of about $2,000 for its roughly 350,000 UC and Cal State student recipients. Last year Sacramento funded the program at nearly $1 billion, and the average award was $3,000. The drop in spending was a way to balance the state budget, which cannot run deficits.
The decrease may mean students work more hours or take out loans, though most UC and Cal State undergraduates complete their degrees with no debt.

Bond money is a mixed record

Still, higher education fell short in legislator-backed bonds.

One measure that appears to be dead for now is a $12 billion bond that would award science grants to universities and other research organizations. The UC and the union of graduate student workers, whose wages often rely on grant research money, advocated fiercely for it.

Proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, the measure was viewed as a backstop against the Trump administration’s aggressive attempts to terminate existing and new research funding for the University of California and other campuses.

Trump alleged the affected grants violated his prohibitions on research into diversity issues and climate change; many of the grants sought to better understand diseases, new pharmaceuticals, cancer and dementia. The UC system alone collected $3 billion in federal research grant money in 2024-25 — nearly half of its research funding.

At one point last year the Trump administration froze or terminated more than 1,000 California science grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Public tracking site Grant Witness indicates that most of those have been restored through various court orders after professors sued last year. But tens of millions of dollars in grants remain on pause in California from those research agencies, while nearly $900 million is frozen from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a legislative analysis for Wiener’s measure.

Wiener told CalMatters in January that the bond funding would protect California from an unpredictable Washington, D.C. While Trump sought major cuts to science research agencies in his proposed budget, Congress rebuffed him. Still, experts believe fewer grants will be awarded to researchers under new Trump administration funding rules.

Wiener’s bond measure sailed through the Senate but stalled in the Assembly, never getting out of a key committee in time to beat the deadline to appear on the November ballot.

Nick Miller, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat from Salinas, said in an email that “Trump’s full-scale assault on California touches nearly every public service and program.

“Legislators face real, painful choices,” he added.

Several legislative and political insiders told CalMatters that another reason the science research bond didn’t advance was because some lawmakers worried it would lower the chances that voters in November approve an $11 billion affordable housing bond. That housing measure was a priority for the Assembly.

Another proposed bond would have allowed the UC and Cal State to reduce their backlog of aging structures and build new ones. An effort by Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, to put a measure on the November ballot fizzled by late June. It had no price tag. His office said that Newsom’s Department of Finance determined that the state lacked the money in future budgets to repay the debt owed on such a bond.

Cal State reports that more than half of its academic buildings are at least 50 years old. The system’s five-year construction plan includes $24 billion in projects. UC’s campuses and hospitals say they’re short $46 billion in funding for infrastructure projects.

Students and faculty in recent years complained of broken air conditioners during heat waves and downed heaters when the mercury drops. The temperature swings affect expensive laboratory equipment and campuses have also endured floods.

The last time voters approved a facilities bond for the public universities was 2006. Both systems can issue bonds for construction, but their borrowing ability is limited because those debt payments come out of their annual budgets. Voters rejected a $15 billion facilities bond for schools in 2020 that would have provided the two systems $2 billion each. A subsequent bond that voters approved excluded UC and Cal State entirely.

“It’s too soon to plan for 2028 ballot measures but a facilities bond will remain within Alvarez’s priorities for sure,” spokesperson Chris Jonsmyr wrote in an email.

A silver construction lining is student dormitory money included in the $11 billion affordable housing bond measure on the ballot this November. If voters approve, Cal State and UC would each get $175 million to continue a state program to build housing that campuses would rent to low-income students at below market rates.

For UC, $175 million may be enough to construct around 1,700 beds for low-income students. Housing plans approved by the UC Board of Regents in the past four years that CalMatters reviewed range from $200,000 to $300,000 per bed — high costs fueled by ever-rising construction expenses and stratospheric land prices where the mostly coastal campuses are located.

Last fall 9,900 UC students were on waitlists for campus housing, according to data CalMatters requested from the UC Office of the President. The potential addition of affordable beds would complement UC’s ongoing housing construction blitz. It intends to add some 15,000 additional student housing slots by 2030.

The system needs it: The average occupancy rate is 104% across the system’s student housing network, UC data shows. That means rooms designed as doubles become triples to absorb the inflow.