The Brief

Welcome to 2025! We hope you enjoyed lots of food and drink over the holiday season, and if you’ve resolved to get a few more steps each day in the new year, we can help with that.

Our resolution inside the LAist newsroom is to continue to serve you with hard hitting investigative coverage, drool-worthy food stories, A+ education coverage and everything in between.

Here’s a look at some of our coverage plans for the new year:

Do sentencing

Former O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do is scheduled to be sentenced March 31 on his plea to conspiracy to commit bribery. Prosecutors say Do accepted over $550,000 in bribes for directing over $10 million in COVID funds to a nonprofit that his youngest daughter helped lead. Authorities say they continue to investigate the misuse of taxpayer funds directed by the former supervisor, which was first uncovered by LAist reporter Nick Gerda.

New year, new nest

The saga of Jackie and Shadow, the bald eagle couple in Big Bear that have become internet famous over the years, continues in 2025. Last year, Jackie laid three eggs. But fans monitoring the livestream of their nest were left heart broken when none of them hatched despite the couple’s best efforts. This year, hope renews as Jackie and Shadow set up a new nest and try again — and we’ll all be watching.

Jackie and Shadow at their nest. (Friends of Big Bear Valley Facebook page)

What will rainy season bring?

Land movement in the Portuguese Bend area of Rancho Palos Verdes may have slowed from an unprecedented 1 foot a week to an average 2.7 inches, but residents are bracing themselves for the winter rain season, which could lead to even more destruction. Will the city’s underground de-watering efforts be enough? LAist's Yusra Farzan will be keeping close tabs on these developments.

Local climate action

LAist climate reporter Erin Stone is looking forward to digging into more stories that show how climate solutions intersect with other issues that affect our quality of life. Erin will be keeping track of the efforts to create a more sustainable water supply and waste system, as well as the challenge and opportunities of shifting to an electric economy. She also plans to explore how housing and affordability intersect with climate change. Erin will also be keeping an eye on what a Trump presidency may mean for local climate action.

Sustainable eats

In terms of food and drink, Gab Chabran will continue to scour the city for restaurants, chefs and trends you should know about. In particular, how chefs are working more sustainably. One emerging concept is "zero waste" restaurants and cooking — using every part of whatever you’re cooking. For example, using a diced onion for a particular dish, and using the rest of it (skin and all) to enrich a stock. Another top on his radar is is sourcing suppliers locally, which cuts down on truck emissions.

And while Los Angeles remains the strong beating heart of the SoCal culinary scene, we’re going to explore further in Orange County, too, where more and more excellent eateries have been opening up.

Executive Chef Philip, at Heritage Restaurant in Long Beach, which has been honored for its sustainability efforts.

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On the education beat

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid finally seems to be working, but, last school year, students encountered glitches and delays that put their futures in jeopardy. Now, students in mixed-status families are making tough choices about whether to apply. LAist's Julia Barajas will be closely following those developments. She'll also dig deeper into why barriers to student success come about in the first place, and why higher ed often promises more than it can deliver.

Following the money

Voters approved more than $15 billion of taxpayer funded school repairs and construction in L.A. and Orange counties this election cycle. LAist's Mariana Dale will closely follow how districts are spending the money, especially considering that there are fewer students in many Southern California classrooms than a decade ago.

What about the students?

The University of California system is set to cut a half billion dollars in spending this fiscal year. The much larger California State University is set to cut about twice as much. Some campuses are feeling the hurt more than others. The big question that LAist's Adolfo-Guzman Lopez will be asking: How will cuts affect students?

Early childhood education

Backpacks hanging outside the TK classroom at Will Rogers Elementary School.

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California is currently in the midst of rolling out an entirely new grade for 4-year-olds called transitional kindergarten, or TK, that is offered at public schools. And it’s a huge deal. LAist's Elly Yu will follow how districts are filling their teacher spots, and making classrooms appropriate for these young students. And we’re curious to hear from parents about how it’s going, and what effect it’s having on the existing preschool system.

AAPI communities

LAist's Josie Huang says that as part of her coverage of AAPI communities she’ll be closely following President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to abolish birthright citizenship. (The constitution says anyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S. citizen. This was affirmed in 1898 with the landmark case of Wong Kim Ark. The Supreme Court ruled Wong, a cook born in San Francisco to Chinese-born parents, was indeed a citizen.) Trump's pledge will no doubt be challenged in court. Trump had also proposed ending birthright citizenship during his first term in office but did not act.

Making sense of LA

For LA Explained, LAist's Cato Hernandez will continue to focus on aspects of SoCal that spark curiosity, those fascinating tidbits of history that you maybe didn’t know about yet. We’ll definitely give you stories that make for great table conversations. (Check out our story about SoCal area codes!)

And since navigating such a diverse and complex city can be tricky at times, we’ll be offering practical guides to make your life easier, from dealing with local governments to living with wild animals to an insider’s guide to places to explore.

Criminal justice, mass deportations

Crime statistics will be closely watched under the new District Attorney.

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LAist's Frank Stoltze will be watching how the new Los Angeles County district attorney’s policies will play out. Nathan Hochman, who beat incumbent George Gascón in the November election, has promised his policies will reduce crime. Although it's difficult to hang the crime rate on any district attorney, Hochman blamed Gascon for the county’s crime rate and now will likely be judged by the same measure. Stoltze will also watch how Trump’s promises of mass deportations will play out in Southern California.

How we treat mental health issues

LAist's Robert Garrova will keep an eye on various investments on the state and local levels that are designed to assist people with mental illness get the help they need. One program in particular, California’s CARE Court, appears to be off to a slow start. The program allows family members, first responders and others to ask a court to step in with a voluntary care plan for someone living with serious, untreated mental illness, like schizophrenia.

Housing and homelessness

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — better known as LAHSA — was the subject of a scathing audit this year that found serious accounting problems. County supervisors and some L.A. City Council members responded with proposals to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. This year, we’ll see how serious elected leaders are about setting up an alternative to LAHSA. LAist's David Wagner will be closely following it all.

What about Tustin's 'twin'?

The city of Tustin will soon start holding a series of community meetings to discuss what to do with the remaining World War II blimp hangar after its twin burned down just over a year ago. The city has been paying for extra security to keep the hangar — one of the largest wooden structures ever built — from suffering the same fate. LAist's Jill Replogle will follow the fate of the beloved remaining hangar.

Recommended reading

Replogle will also continue to follow developments in Huntington Beach, including two potential ballot measures regarding the city's pride and joy — its libraries. One measure sees to ban the city from ever privatizing the libraries. The other seeks to upend a review board that would decide what books are, and are not, appropriate children’s books for the library. (Critics of the review board want to leave that power to the professional librarians.)

Thousands of students from schools across Los Angeles walked out Wednesday in peaceful protest of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The Los Angeles Unified School District estimated 4,400 students from about two dozen schools participated.

“ I think it's really empowering that we aren't being discouraged to [protest], but it's also really discouraging to have to live through this,” said Roybal Learning Center senior Melisa. 

“The reason I came out is 'cause we're so young and I feel like people always think that like young people don't have a voice and in reality we have one of the strongest voices,” said Jazlyn Garcia, a senior at  Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School. “I want people to go out and vote for midterms, pre-register to vote.”

Leonna, a senior at Downtown Magnets High School and daughter of immigrants from Cambodia, said she was thinking of her neighbors.  “We need to protect the people that make sure that the economy is running and make sure that our lives are the way that they are every day.”

Students said the Trump administration's immigration raids threaten their families, communities and education.

LAUSD estimated that several thousand students walked out.

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Students said they were concerned for family and neighbors.

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Alexis, a senior at Brío College Prep, said administrators locked down his campus after agents detained a nearby fruit vendor. “He was a part of our community,” Alexis said. “He would always be out there selling fruits to us after school.”

San Fernando Valley students at more than 40 schools plan to walk out Friday.

“Los Angeles Unified supports the rights of our students to advocate for causes important to them,” a district spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist. “However, we are concerned for student safety at off-campus demonstrations as schools are the safest place for students.”

The district encouraged students to exercise their rights in on-campus discussions and demonstrations.

The University of Southern California board of trustees has appointed interim president Beong-Soo Kim to be its 13th full president.

Kim was named as the interim leader in February 2025 and began the role this summer. He most recently served as USC’s senior vice president and general counsel, and as a lecturer at the law school. Prior to joining USC, he worked at Kaiser Permanente and was a federal prosecutor for the Central District of California.

Kim succeeds Carol Folt, who was brought on to stabilize the university following a series of scandals under the administration before hers. She formally stepped down from her role in July, following criticism of her ability to handle student protests and concerns over fiscal stewardship.

Soon after his term began, Kim oversaw the university’s effort to manage a $200 million deficit, which also led to hundreds of layoffs.

“We did have to make some difficult decisions last year with respect to our budget and layoffs,” Kim told LAist. “And I'm really pleased that as a result of those difficult decisions, we're now in a much stronger financial position and really for a number of months have been really focusing on the opportunities that we see on the horizon.”

In a call with LAist, and joined by USC board chair Suzanne Nora Johnson, Kim touched on bright spots and some of his priorities. He also touched on the relationship between USC and the Trump administration before a sudden ending to the call.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

LAist: You've talked about addressing the mass layoffs and budget challenges. What do you see as the way forward?

Beong-Soo Kim: Our research expenditures have actually been going up over the last year, over the last couple of years. We're focusing on: How do we provide the best possible educational value to our students? We're focusing on how to maintain and strengthen our academic culture of excellence, open dialogue and engagement with different viewpoints.

And we're also really kind of leaning into artificial intelligence and asking questions as a community about how we incorporate AI responsibly into our education, into our operations, into our research. And there are obviously a lot of important ethical questions that we're working on, and it's really an quite an exciting time to be in the position that I'm in.

What are you excited for?

Well, a couple things that we're really looking forward to are, as part of the anniversary of the United States, we're going to be hosting a National Archives exhibition [of] founding documents in late April. We're also looking forward to helping host the L.A. Olympics in 2028. We have our 150th anniversary coming up in 2030 as a university.

So there's a lot that's on the horizon. We also have the Lucas Museum opening up across the street later this year and, of course, George Lucas is one of our most beloved Trojan alumni. So there's so much vitality, so much energy on the campus right now.

USC has, for the most part, avoided the sort of conflicts that the University of California system and elite private institutions across the country have had with the Trump administration. What can you share about how you plan to manage USC’s relationship with the federal government?

Well, we really make an effort to engage with all levels of government, as well as foundations, the private sector, community groups. That kind of engagement is really more important nowadays. Universities can't just go off on their own. It's important for us to partner and find opportunities to work with others. And that's what we've been doing.

And that's part of the reason why I think that our research has continued to go strongly. And I give a lot of the credit to our faculty and researchers who can continue submitting grant applications and continue to do research in areas that are critically important to the benefit of our community, our nation, and our world. And I think that we -—

Suzanne Nora Johnson: —Actually I'm so sorry, but we have to complete the board meeting, and we've got to run. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We'll be in touch. Bye. Thanks. Bye.

Huntington Beach will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision striking down the city’s controversial voter ID law.

What’s the backstory?

Huntington Beach voters approved a measure in 2024 allowing the city to require people to show ID when casting a ballot. That contradicts state law — voters in California are asked to provide ID when they register to vote but generally not at polling places.

The ensuing court battle

The state and a Huntington Beach resident promptly sued the city over the voter ID law and won an appeals court ruling striking down the law. The California Supreme Court declined to review the decision earlier this month. The state also passed a law prohibiting cities from implementing their own voter ID laws.

Then, the City Council voted unanimously this week to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.

Does the city have a shot?

The Supreme Court gets 7,000 to 8,000 requests to review cases each year. The Court grants about 80 of these requests, so the city’s chances of getting the court’s attention are statistically slim.

There’s also a question of whether or not the city’s voter ID case meets the Court’s criteria for review — SCOTUS addresses questions of federal law. Mayor Casey McKeon said it does, in a news release, noting a 2008 Supreme Court decision that upheld a state’s voter ID law — in Indiana. But Huntington Beach is a city, and the question in its voter ID case is whether or not a city can implement its own requirements for voting, even if it clashes with state law.

Go deeper

• Huntington Beach's controversial voter ID law is illegal
• Huntington Beach clashes with California over voter ID requirement in court
• HB Mayor defends Voter ID measure as Gov. Newsom seeks to ban it
• Listen 26:32

  The Trump Administration wants your confidential voter data. What’s behind their battle with CA and other states?