The Brief

Since last week, Los Angeles college student Dominique Turner has gotten frequent dispatches from Maui, where she grew up.

Her dad works as a hotel cook in Lahaina, where wildfires have killed more than 100 people and leveled the historic town. These days, he’s spending more time outside the kitchen, delivering food to disaster volunteers as the hotel where he works prepares rooms for those in need of shelter.

All this has led Turner to make an appeal.

“It would help if tourists didn't go there at the moment just because Maui is grieving and needs time to heal,” Turner said.

Turner, who studies at Cal State LA, has joined a chorus of Hawaiians asking people to donate to relief efforts rather than visiting Maui.

Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice in Los Feliz, where Turner works, is raising funds to help employees at its shops in Lahaina, two of which have been destroyed by the fires. Patrons can give cash donations at the counter or contribute through a GoFundMe page.

Turner grew up in a Native Hawaiian family in the town of Wailuku. She used to commute about 45 minutes to work at different Ululani's locations in Lahaina. Some of her former co-workers have lost their homes and their belongings, she said. Turner worries that islanders are never going to recover from such a setback.

“The majority of these people that lost their homes, they don't have a lot of money,” Turner said. “A lot of them are working two jobs just to make ends meet. A lot of them don't have savings, with Hawaii already being a place where not even local people can afford to make rent or a mortgage.”

Ululani’s says 75% of the donations will go directly to its employees, while 25% will go to Lahaina organizations assisting families with the greatest needs. The chain said it would expand its operating hours at other locations on Maui to provide work for staff whose shops burned down.

The chain is also encouraging people to give to the larger Maui community through Maui Strong, an emergency fund created in response to the wildfires by the Hawai’i Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has offices in Maui.

Others with ties to Maui have been collecting donations to send, as groups and individuals. California has the nation's second-largest Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population after Hawaii, so it's no surprise to Okinawan-Hawaiian artist Lee Ann "Leebs" Goya that support for Maui has been so strong.

One population hub is in the South Bay, where Goya grew up in Gardena, going to school and church with other kids from Hawaii. Now in her 50s, Goya said they remain close to this day. She said all have been heartbroken by what’s happened in Lahaina, a second home to many of her friends and family.

Just last year Goya was in Lahaina, her late mother's hometown, to spread her ashes. The family home in Lahaina that was shared with her cousins burned down in last week’s fire, she said, along with the homes of many family friends.

Goya said her greatest fear now is that the burned properties will be swept up by predatory investors. 

"I don't know how Lahaina is going to rebuild," Goya said. "I think my worry is the land going into other people's hands and not so much the locals. I know already some of my friends had been approached by investors to buy their business."

Goya said she has felt helpless watching Maui's destruction from the mainland. She has tried to support GoFundMe pages and volunteer for fundraising benefits. She'll also be donating proceeds from self-designed dishcloths she's selling on her website that read “Lahaina, we will lift her up!”

Artist Lee Ann "Leebs" is designing a dishcloth to benefit Lahaina residents.

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Josie Huang/LAist

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In Torrance, piles of camping gear, diapers, bottled water and hygiene products have flooded the patio of Aunty Maile’s Hawaiian Restaurant. People have been converging on the restaurant with donations, coming from as far away as San Diego and the Central Coast. Some have ties to Hawaii, but many do not, said restaurant owner Kai Tsukiyama.

“There are literally strangers that are here literally helping sort all the donations,” Tsukiyama said in amazement.

Donated hygiene products and diapers line tables squeezed onto the patio of Aunty Maile's Hawaiian Restaurant in Torrance.

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Kai Tskuiyama

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Tsukiyama grew up splitting his time between Southern California and Hawaii. Most of his family lives in Oahu, but Tsukiyama said he feels strong ties to all the islands.

“The Hawaiian community is very close-knit,” Tsukiyama said. “Ohana (the Hawaiian term for ‘family’) and the feeling of aloha (‘fellowship" or "love") is a real thing. It's the community coming together to hold each other up and stand back up after things like this happened.”

Tsukiyama started collecting items for Maui after learning about a donation drive organized locally by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. As of Tuesday, the restaurant had sent over seven truckloads of donations to the union hall in Wilmington.

“Based on what we have here in front of us right now,” Tsukiyama said, “we’ll probably fill another 30 trucks.”

The longshoremen’s union has told the restaurant they don’t have any more container space for donations. Until he can find another way to expediently ship the items to Maui, Tsukiyama has rented five storage units nearby.

The restaurant has updated its Facebook page to say they’re now at “max capacity.”

Traffic collisions in Los Angeles killed 290 people last year, and more than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to Los Angeles Police Department data.

That means L.A. is far from the goal it set more than a decade ago of reaching zero such deaths by 2025. Still, there was a 6% decrease in traffic fatalities compared to 2024. That tracks with trends that appear to suggest traffic fatalities are dropping nationwide.

“I was happy to see the decrease, but I believe we can do better,” Lonyá C. Childs, commanding officer of the South Traffic Division of the LAPD, told LAist.

Childs said prioritizing education about safe driving habits and enforcement of speeding and red light rules could further reduce traffic violence in L.A.

Traffic fatalities claimed more lives in the city last year than homicides, which, according to police data, are also on the decline. At a January rally demanding action on traffic violence, L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez pointed to this fact and said the city’s political institutions aren’t doing enough to bring traffic fatalities down.

“They don’t act with the level of urgency that they would [when] something is more sensationalist,” Soto-Martínez said. “But every single day, people are dying in our streets.”

How does L.A. compare nationally?

The early 2020s saw a sharp increase in traffic deaths nationwide, which researchers hypothesize is due to drivers adopting riskier behaviors on the road. The rate of traffic fatalities grew at a faster rate during that time period in L.A. compared to the U.S. as a whole, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Preliminary federal data show signs that traffic fatalities are decreasing nationwide.

“So changes that we're observing now are, in my mind, the transition out of the peak that happened [during] the COVID-19 pandemic,” Matthew Raifman, a transportation researcher at UC Berkeley, told LAist.

Data from the LAPD indicate that 2025 is the second consecutive year that traffic fatalities on city streets have decreased, but they remain higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Raifman said that, generally speaking, a sustained decrease over a three- to five-year window is a strong indicator of increased safety on roads.

What is the city doing about traffic violence?

In 2015, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti adopted a policy framework known as Vision Zero to zero out traffic deaths by last year.

The city has so far invested nearly $350 million as part of Vision Zero, according to data from the office of the city administrative officer.

Most of that money has supported making high-priority corridors in L.A. safer through various infrastructure projects, public outreach and speed surveys.

The city has also invested $13.5 million under the Vision Zero umbrella to fund overtime for LAPD officers to conduct speed safety enforcement along city streets that see the highest number of traffic-related injuries and collisions.

An audit released in April 2025 found that a lack of cohesion across departments, an unbalanced approach and insufficient political will ultimately hampered the city’s Vision Zero program. In response, the L.A. City Council late last year approved a suite of recommendations to revamp the program. 

In a statement, the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said it “fully supported the implementation of the City’s new recommendations to strengthen traffic safety and achieve the goals outlined in Vision Zero.”

L.A. is expected to launch speed safety cameras throughout the city later this year. The program, which five other California cities are also piloting, will cite speeding drivers on dangerous roads.

The city’s Department of Transportation released the proposed locations for those cameras on Feb. 10.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where she's expected to face questions about the Justice Department's targeting of President Donald Trump's political foes and its handling of the Epstein files.

Bondi's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee comes one year into her tenure atop the Justice Department, a tumultuous period marked by a striking departure from the traditions and norms that have guided the department for decades.

Watch the hearing, set for 10 a.m. ET Wednesday, live:

Since taking the helm, Bondi has overseen the firing of career prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on Capitol riot cases or Trump investigations, investigated and prosecuted prominent opponents of the president, and dropped prosecutions of his allies.

The changes also extend to the department's workforce. The section that prosecutes public corruption has been gutted; the Civil Rights Division, which protects the constitutional rights of all Americans, has seen a mass exodus of career attorneys; and some U.S. attorney's offices — including most recently the one in Minnesota — have been hit by resignations.

In her public appearances, Bondi, who is a former Florida attorney general, has defended the department's actions and sought to tout what she says are major accomplishments — going after cartels and violent crime and helping in the administration's immigration enforcement.

She also says she's made "tremendous progress" toward ending what she says was the department's weaponization in recent years against Trump and conservatives. Biden-era DOJ officials deny they politicized the department, and they point to the prosecutions of prominent Democratic lawmakers and even President Joe Biden's son Hunter as evidence.

Accusations of politicization at DOJ

For decades, the Justice Department has enjoyed a degree of independence from the White House, particularly in investigations and prosecutions, to insulate them from partisan politics.

Critics say that under Bondi, that independence has disappeared and the Justice Department has helped enact Trump's promised campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies.

Last year, for example, the president openly directed Bondi to go after former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — two high-profile political adversaries of the president.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," Trump said in a social media post addressed to Bondi. "They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

Days after that, a new acting U.S. attorney hand-picked by Trump secured an indictment against Comey, overruling career prosecutors who had doubts about the strength of the evidence.

A few weeks later, that same prosecutor secured an indictment against James.

Both cases have since been tossed by a federal judge, who found that the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department is appealing that decision.

Other perceived opponents of the president or individuals standing in the way of his agenda have also found themselves under DOJ investigation, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former Obama-era intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan.

Despite the uproar from DOJ veterans and many legal experts, Bondi still enjoys Trump's support — publicly, at least — as well as the backing of Republican lawmakers.

She has faced criticism from some Republicans, however, over her handling of the files of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The criticism has been focused on the department's failure to meet the deadline to release all of the Epstein files, as required by law, as well as the heavy redactions to many of the documents.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Law enforcement raided the illegal cannabis operation in Shasta-Trinity National Forest months before, but rotting potatoes still sat on the growers’ makeshift kitchen worktop, waiting to be cooked.

Ecologist Greta Wengert stared down the pockmarked hillside at a pile of pesticide sprayers left behind, long after the raid. Wild animals had gnawed through the pressurized canisters, releasing the chemicals inside.

“They’re just these little death bombs, waiting for any wildlife that is going to investigate,” said Wengert, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, a nonprofit that studies the harms caused by cannabis grows on public lands. For all her stoic professionalism, she sounded a little sad.

For over a decade, Wengert and her colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows like this one dangerously pollute California’s public lands and pristine watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems, water and wildlife.

Now, they’re sounding another alarm — that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal level are leaving thousands of grow sites — and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more — to foul California’s forests.

Dozens of fertilizer bags wept blue fluid onto the forest floor. Irrigation tubes snaked across the craters of empty plant holes. The cold stillness felt temporary — as if the growers would return at any moment to prop up the crumpled tents, replant their crop and fling more beer cans and dirty underwear into the woods.

Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California’s public lands.

Greta Wengert, co-founder and co-director of the Integral Ecology Research Center, leads a team documenting the chemicals and environmental damage caused by an illegal cannabis site in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

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Fred Greaves

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It’s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up.

No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert’s nonprofit for an unofficial tally.

Most of the sites Wengert’s team identified are in national forests, where “limited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials” is driving a backlog in clean ups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email.

The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it’s leaving a mess in California.

A new playbook  

The federal government owns nearly half of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it’s California’s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows — even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say.

Staff assist with clean ups on federal lands “when asked,” said cannabis program director Amelia Wright — typically on California’s dime. But, she said, “That’s not our mandate.”

Fees and taxes on California’s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts — supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover clean-ups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts like fish conservation.

The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade.

An aerial view of Post Mountain, where cannabis is grown on private land near the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

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But former Assemblymember Jim Wood, a North Coast Democrat, said that as he prepared to leave office in 2024, progress on cleanups was still too slow.

“It doesn't reflect what I see is the urgency to watersheds, and the water and the people that are served by them,” he said.

In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood’s bill directing the Fish and Wildlife department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private.

To Wright, that’s a path forward, however prospective it may be.

“It just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,” Wright said. “It's a one of a kind program. So we didn't have a playbook — we're still creating it.”

But the study, which Wengert’s organization is conducting on the state’s behalf, isn’t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land has been demanding California's attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016.

“It's like whack-a-mole. They pop up in a new location, and then we have to go there — but the impacts are occurring across the landscape,” said Scott Bauer, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis office.

The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a “substantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.” Of the 605 sites where a multi-agency state and federal task force ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands — up from an average of 3 to 4%.

“Everybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,” said Wood, the former assembly member.

But, he added, the sites remain. “It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.”

And the contamination, new research confirms, lingers.

‘This site will sit on this landscape’

On a cold November morning, down one dirt road and up another, ecologist Mourad Gabriel led a safety briefing at the grow site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Gabriel, who previously spearheaded a U.S. Forest Service effort tackling trespass grows on public lands, co-founded the research center with Wengert and now co-directs it with her. He’s also her spouse and a foil to her calm watchfulness — dismayed by the state of the forest one moment and bounding off to investigate an interesting mushroom or animal scat the next.

“Please don't push the red shiny buttons, or lick the big pink things,” Gabriel joked at the mouth of a well-worn path growers had carved into the woods. (Carbofuran, a dangerous and illegal pesticide often found on grow sites, is bright pink.)

The team, Gabriel explained, wasn’t there to clean up the grow. They didn’t have the money for that. Instead, he said, shouldering his backpack and strapping on a first aid kit, they were there to document the contaminants as part of a U.S. Forest Service-funded investigation into wildlife around cultivation sites.

“This site will sit on this landscape until someone acquires some level of funding,” Gabriel said. “And no one can really push it, until we actually get that data.”

Jenna Hatfield, a member of Wengert’s team, takes notes at the grow site.

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Fred Greaves

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Wengert and Gabriel have spent years collecting data at grow sites like this one. They’ve found carcasses of creatures so poisoned even the flies feeding on them died, and detected dangerous pesticides in nearby creeks more than a year after raids.

In recent work they published with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the team found that illegal grows pulsed pollutants from plastic, painkillers, personal care products, pot and pesticides into the soil that could be detected months or even years later. Some contaminants also showed up in nearby streams.

The pollutants diminished over time — absorbed into the landscape and washed into waterways. By the time the researchers tested for them, the concentrations had declined to levels lower than those found in agricultural soils.

But, they point out, remote habitats and sensitive headwaters are not where these chemicals are supposed to be. Past a marshy flat cratered with holes and piled with poison-green insecticide bags, Gabriel, Wengert and ecologist Ivan Medel trailed an armed U.S. Forest Service officer to a massive trash heap cordoned off by barbed wire.

Medel wedged himself through the strands and handed empty fertilizer bags dripping blue liquid out to Gabriel.

Force-feeding waterways the excess nutrients in fertilizer can upend entire ecosystems and spur algae blooms. The site is in the greater South Fork Trinity River watershed — vital, undammed habitat for protected salmon and other fish species.

“That was pretty nasty,” Gabriel said, as one bag spilled liquid over his gloved hands. He counted up the haul. “Twelve bags right there.”

By day’s end, the team discovered enough empty bags and bottles to have held 2,150 pounds of fertilizer and more than 29 gallons of liquid concentrate. All of that, the growers had poured into the land.

A scientist walks through empty planting holes at the illegal cannabis site, where growers chopped away brush and laid irrigation lines.

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Fred Greaves

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A federal void

In 2018, a federal audit lambasted the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up — or even document — trespass grows in national forests.

The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put “the public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination” and could allow growers to return more easily.

Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service “prioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.”

But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn’t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request.

The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.

“We have tried just about everything,” said Huffman. “It’s clearly not enough.”

Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing “has remained steady,” roughly 5,000 non-fire employees “have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so” through “multiple voluntary separation programs.”

Huffman put it more starkly. “They’ve been gutted,” he said. “The Forest Service right now has a sign on the door that says, ‘We're out of the office. We're not sure when we'll ever be back.’”

Mourad Gabriel, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, looks at a bottle found in the abandoned camp.

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Fred Greaves

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Cleaning it up

The Shasta-Trinity grow stretched for more than 6 acres through national forest land. Trash, and the smell of pot, were everywhere.

Law enforcement officers had removed the mouth of the irrigation tube diverting water from a nearby creek, but all the piping remained. It slithered over downed trees, past the craters of another abandoned grow to a waterfall where leaves and black tubing snarled in the rocks.

Gabriel clambered up the waterfall, where he discovered a sock and a plastic bottle with the top sliced off — a makeshift filter the growers used to keep the line clear of debris. He hung the bottle on a tree branch, like a ghoulish Christmas ornament.

Few organizations are qualified to do science-informed cleanups, and none work as widely as Wengert and Gabriel’s.

California’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program is paying the team more than $5.3 million to conduct the legislatively mandated study on cleaning up grow sites, and also to train and support tribal teams and other organizations to do this work.

The study, and the training, include best practices for handling and disposing of hazardous waste, Gabriel said. More teams means more competition for the pot of state-allocated money, but he wants more allies in the fight.

“Until someone cleans it up, it stays out here,” Gabriel said from his perch in the waterfall, surrounded by a tangle of black irrigation pipes. He expected it could take years.

Wengert and Gabriel follow an irrigation pipe that leads to the water source growers used to water their cannabis crop.

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Fred Greaves

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But that’s not what happened.

Two weeks later, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife choppered away nearly 1,500 pounds of trash, 4,000 feet of irrigation pipe and 7 pesticide containers — restoring the rugged, remote forest.

The department had offered to help out the U.S. Forest Service and take the lead on the clean up, with its own helicopter, on its own budget, according to spokesperson Sarah Sol.

Months later, when Gabriel learned about it, he was shocked — and concerned. Sol said that Fish and Wildlife staff did not encounter any banned or restricted pesticides, and all had masks and nitrile gloves available to them.

But Gabriel’s team found residue in the pesticide sprayers on the hillside from a class of chemicals that includes banned and dangerous carbofuran. He worried that the cleanup team could have unknowingly put themselves and others at risk.

“There is a proper way to do it, and there is a cowboy way to do it,” Gabriel said.

It’s one site down — one patch of forest cleared. But thousands like it remain, littering California’s landscape.