The Brief

It’s an appealing idea for city officials: Convince drivers to ditch their cars in favor of taking public transit, all while reducing emissions and and gridlock.

That’s how New York Gov. Kathy Hochul praised Manhattan's “congestion pricing” program before she suddenly paused it last month. It was meant to generate funding needed to revive the state’s aging transit system and ease gridlock by charging people $15 to enter the core of the city.

Yes, New York is on the other side of the country, but urban policy experts say the move could have implications here in Southern California.

Could we see something similar? 

L.A. Metro is considering a pilot project for congestion pricing, which could take years to launch.

But what happens next in New York could make or break that pilot program and the agency’s ambitions to raise at least $12 billion from it, according to Michael Manville , who teaches urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He said on LAist’s 89.3’s AirTalk that it always helps if another city like New York has gone first to try and roll something like this out.

“I don't think there's any question that if New York had introduced this, and it had went well, and people came around to liking it, that would have given a boost to L.A.'s program,” Manville said.

What do we know about it? 

L.A. is taking it slow, Manville said. Metro has been taking cues from New York before locking down its own congestion pricing model, opting instead to research it under the Traffic Reduction Study (TRS). It’s anticipated to launch in 2028 and will look at central Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, and westside cities, according to Metro.

Early designs would see drivers charged for using freeways near the Santa Monica Mountains, surface streets in downtown Los Angeles, and at various points along the 10 Freeway, as outlined in the study.

And if the stalled program in the Big Apple eventually launches and becomes a success, Manville said officials here could see it as a path toward creating a similar congestion pricing model.

What’s next?

If the project was so unpopular and even hated in New York, why try?

Manville said there are cities where congestion pricing has found success — like London and Singapore.

“It's a funny thing about congestion pricing,” he said. “In places where it has been implemented, people like it. They tend to not like it before it's implemented.”

Keep in mind, congestion pricing is not officially dead in New York — it's just been indefinitely paused. The New York City comptroller is already leading efforts to get the project back on track.

To many locals, the Los Angeles River — hugged by concrete embankments and heavy vehicle traffic — hardly seems like a river at all.

The waterway bisecting the city was converted to a giant storm drain nearly a century ago to contain flood waters. Today, it's an extension of the urban network of concrete, running beneath freeways and bridges as it collects all kinds of refuse: spent tires, scrap metal, trash thrown from car windows.

But when Doug Rosenberg came upon a shopping cart tipped over in the river's shallow waters back in 2020, he saw the potential to meet nature halfway.

"It had begun to bloom some greenery around it, and there was a great blue heron perched on the cart, hunting in this little spot," Rosenberg recalled. "That was when it clicked for me — that any 3D geometry at all in that river channel will trap sediment, will begin a micro-bloom of ecosystem."

Doug Rosenberg is trying to push the grassroots guerrilla gardening movement forward in Los Angeles.

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The 36-year-old artist saw an amusing paradox — life sprouting from the metal cart — that planted the seed for his next project: a pop-up wetland in the middle of the LA River.

In a desolate part of downtown, he pushed large rocks from the riverbanks into the water and arranged them in loose, concentric circles. The structure would trap sediment, allowing life to take root.

In other words, Rosenberg produced a patch of watery land — like a marsh or swamp — to support plants and animals.

Over the course of 10 weeks, the simple assemblage of rocks spawned a totally new 10-by-20-foot green island in the middle of the 100-foot-wide channel.

Rosenberg calls it performance art: a visual statement that carries a call to action. The wetland installation isn't quite what he'd call "impactful ecology," but rather a work of art to show environmental good can be low-tech and small-scale.

"The impetus behind this project is to show that the barrier to entry doesn't exist. To basically provide a simple format for action," he said.

Guerrilla gardeners

It's not so much that the barriers don't exist — they do — he's just flouting them, city officials say. Despite his good intentions, none of this is legal. He's a guerrilla gardener: someone who plants where they're not supposed to. The federal government deems this flood control channel "navigable water," providing protections under the Clean Water Act and making any unauthorized changes to its course illegal. That includes obstructions and modifications in the channel, such as dredging or disposal of materials like rocks.

Across the country, as urban development replaces tree cover and natural landscapes with buildings and parking lots, guerrilla gardeners flout local ordinances to disperse seeds or otherwise alter their environment, usually with an overriding mission to reclaim underused public spaces . They seek to grow healthy produce in urban food deserts , capture greenhouse gases and beautify their neighborhoods.

The movement has taken many forms, from creating a verdant oasis for the nation's largest housing project in New York City , to planting a front-yard vegetable garden in defiance of state law in Florida , to grooming a busy bike path in Seattle .

Here in LA, Rosenberg's guerrilla tactics include trespassing and planting without permits in the publicly managed waterway. Getting to his wetland requires jumping railroad tracks and scaling down the steep side of the channel to the riverbed. But as far as he's concerned, it's open to the public.

Rosenberg (right) and a few volunteers walk past railroad tracks to get to the river.

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"I feel like it's possible to relate to a city the way we're used to relating to nature — or as we imagine we could relate to unspoiled wilderness," he said.

But officials and longtime river advocates say people can't plant wherever they want, and that guerrilla actors have the potential to do more harm than good.

"Even small changes can affect water quality, habitat, and safety downstream," said Ben Orbison, a spokesman for Friends of the LA River, an advocacy group focused on revitalization efforts, including cleanups along the waterway. "Restoration is incredibly important, but works best when guided by ecology and collaboration," with local and federal agencies to prioritize safety, he added.

Chief among the concerns is flooding.

"If you have rocks, if you have vegetation, if you have other things that slow the water down then it builds up faster. That's where you get the overtopping of the channel," said Ben Harris, an attorney with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, an environmental watchdog group.

Crews place rock on the LA River's banks during channelization in 1938.

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The whole reason the Los Angeles River became a concrete straightjacket was to prevent a repeat of the city's devastating floods in the 1930s. The Army Corps of Engineers channelized and paved the once-meandering river. The roughly 51-mile channel continues to serve as a hydro-highway shuttling stormwater runoff from the mountains to the sea.

Generally, local officials and river advocates are far ahead of Rosenberg in revitalizing the channel. In recent years, the city has built several projects under a master plan designed to resurrect some of the river's natural habitat and expand public access. But progress is slow . Legal roadblocks and budget constraints have delayed the implementation of many proposals.

Beyond the bike paths and trails lining the waterway, the efforts are most visible in parts of the river where the soil was left unpaved. Willows, egrets and frogs populate soft-bottom sections where springs and a high water table would reject a concrete casing. And, upstream from Rosenberg's wetland, there's a plan in the works to build what's essentially a larger, permanent version of the artist's project. Long before Rosenberg plunked his first rock into its waters, the city adopted a plan to turn an 11-mile section of the river into a wetland to allow the safe passage of salmon.

Still, some city staff give guerrilla artists a lot of credit for laying the groundwork.

"The biggest shift points in the river's history were made, in my opinion, not necessarily the legal way," said Kat Superfisky, an urban ecologist with the city, but from "the community advocate, artist, guerrilla kind of efforts."

'He's onto something'

On social media, Rosenberg shares his art with a wider audience than was made available to his artist-activist predecessors. People curious about his project have reached out to him, asking how they can help support it. He's invited them to join him on his visits to the wetland, where he's put them to work. Others have taken issue with Rosenberg's accommodation of an invasive plant species in his wetland. It's mostly populated by Goodding's willow, a native species, and creeping water primrose, a non-native invasive. Those non-native plants tend to crowd out native habitat, drink more water and lead to increased use of toxic pesticides.

Some people accustomed to reading the river's currents say the wetland will be gone before it can cause any lasting harm to the river. In the likely event of a heavy rain, the rising tide in the river channel could wipe out the wetland, washing it into the ocean.

Canadian geese come in for a landing near the mini-wetland, in a downtown section of the LA River.

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From an ecological standpoint, Superfisky says "he's onto something," in terms of thinking about how to recreate conditions found in a natural, sprawling river using the impractical medium he's given.

The channel functions like a straight, unobstructed tube, she said. But the placement of rocks allow sediment buildup and produce varied flow patterns — much like grooves in braiding streams — to set up stiller pockets where wildlife can thrive.

But it all falls apart if he's not accounting for flood risk, the ecologist said.

Harris, of the watchdog LA Waterkeeper, thinks flood management and ecological values can coexist in a concrete channel.

Removing the concrete would open up more possibilities, he said, adding that there are "a variety of nature-based solutions" for the channel that support flood management.

Volunteer Isaac Cohen places more rocks around the guerrilla wetland.

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But an overhaul of the existing concrete flood management system would also require big shifts in mindset.

"It's kind of a scary thought," he said. "If you imagine being a policymaker in government and you're trying to do that, you have to turn things on its head."

The Army Corps of Engineers has not responded to requests for comment. According to its website, the agency works to clear vegetation it warns can clog the channel and hamper flood control. But the agency has recently prioritized the removal of non-native species due to lack of funding, the site notes.

"They probably would just talk to him and explain rather than prosecute anything, or they might just go in and take it away," said Felicia Marcus, a fellow at Stanford University's Water in the West program and a former head of the city of Los Angeles' public works department.

Rosenberg says he understands the consequences.

"If they throw a book at me, it'll be quite a big book, but I'm at the point where that's less urgent to me than making art that obviously deserves to get made," he said.

Guerrillas lay the groundwork to rewrite the rules

Passersby who look down from nearby bridges can spot the pop-up wetland.

Artists have long exploited that legal gray area around what's considered public land.

Historically, it was the late Lewis MacAdams , a poet and activist, whose guerrilla tactics expanded public access to the LA River. In 1985, MacAdams and friends cut open a fence blocking its entry and declared the river open to the people.

Through Friends of the LA River, the advocacy group he founded, MacAdams made sure the city wouldn't forget the river that birthed it. He promoted it as a resource that people should protect, restore and enjoy .

During a meeting with the county , as MacAdams told it, whenever the head of the public works department referred to the waterway as a "flood control channel," he would shoot back with "river." In 2008, kayakers carried the baton, when writer George Wolfe led a scofflaw fleet of paddlers down the entire waterway to prove that it was "navigable waters" so it could keep its Clean Water Act protections. Two years later, the Environmental Protection Agency agreed with what MacAdams had started and designated the river as navigable.

"He didn't know jack doodle scratch about the river or river ecosystems at that time. He led with his artistic passion," Superfisky said. "But then, my golly, he is the one guy that really got us to start calling it a river again."

Superfisky says Rosenberg is having his "Lewis MacAdams moment."

Knowing his wetland experiment could wash away in an instant, Rosenberg said he feels there's some wiggle room to experiment and make mistakes.

Rosenberg acknowledges the dangers that can spring from an uneducated approach. "I wouldn't push back on someone calling it reckless, to be honest," he said.

But he's more focused on the good he says can come from "vigorous action." He says that, among his millennial peers and younger generations, "a sense of attainability and agency" is lacking when it comes to helping chip away at big-picture issues like climate change.

Rosenberg acknowledges the dangers that can spring from a freewheeling approach to ecological art. But he says there's also value in "vigorous action," adding: "There's a long history in ecological actions of perfect being an argument against the good happening at all."

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He's aware that there are legal avenues available to produce ecological art. He appreciates that artist Lauren Bon, for example, has secured more than 70 permits as part of an ongoing project to divert water from the river that could irrigate a state park nearby. But Rosenberg thinks there's room for some freewheeling.

"Maybe it's not about waiting for permits or even about waiting to feel like you've mastered the material," he said. "There's a long history in ecological actions of perfect being an argument against the good happening at all."

Nature bats last

On a recent Saturday evening, during one of his public tours, Rosenberg handed out scythes and an agenda to whack away the invasive plants.

Allie Baron, a lifelong LA resident, brought her two sons with her after reaching out to Rosenberg on Instagram.

Allie Baron brought her two sons with her to help Rosenberg tend to the guerrilla wetland.

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As she gleefully tore out a creeping primrose, the 36-year-old said, "All I can do is try to make my community better and make the river pretty. You do what you can to try to restore life to things that need help."

Caught in the wetland brush was a blue rubber bullet — just like the ones LAPD officers had deployed during the anti-ICE protests held in downtown LA this summer, over immigration raids.

"One of the cool things about a structure like this is that it's trapping that stuff," Rosenberg said. "The rubber bullet was here and not in the ocean yet."

That and some oily sheen on the watery patch of willows were another reminder of the intensely urban environment.

Later, the guerrilla group witnessed a hawk snatch its dinner from the water.

A few days after that, the forecast from river pundits proved accurate. It rained, filling the channel with a fast-moving current.

"The garden is gone," Rosenberg said.

He says he'll start gardening again in the spring.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Allie Baron's son Robert carries a bunch of invasive water primrose pruned from the guerrilla wetland.

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Recent operations under the Trump administration have raised eyebrows and drawn criticism, not only because of their missions but also because of their names and the intent behind them.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announced Operation Southern Spear, aimed at what he calls "narco-terrorists" who are allegedly bringing illegal drugs into the country. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Saturday also announced it was launching Operation Charlotte's Web — matching the name of the classic children's book — in Charlotte, N.C., to target undocumented immigrants.

"There is no parent who has read Charlotte's Web to a child who cannot be outraged by this," Dan Shapiro, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017, wrote on X .

Asked about the inspiration for the operation name and the message the agency wants to send by using it, DHS responded to NPR with a press release about the operation that included a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

"We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed," McLaughlin said in the statement. "There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and Secretary Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won't."

NPR also reached out to the Defense Department for comment but has not received a response.

Here is what to know about military operation names.

Naming military operations is not new. Neither is criticism of names

Code names for U.S. military operations date back to the World War II era and began for security reasons, according to Lt. Col. Gregory C. Sieminski in the article " The Art of Naming Operations ," in The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters. The names were based on colors at first, such as Operation Indigo, but as World War II spread, military officials switched to a name-based system that included projects and locations.

After the Vietnam War, military officials started using a computer system to reconcile nicknames and code words, called the Code Word, Nickname, and Exercise Term System, or NICKA.

Routine military exercises use the NICKA system for naming operations, according to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Highly visible operations generally get two-word names chosen outside the system, such as operations Just Cause in Panama, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Cancian told NPR.

"The ones that are chosen are chosen for a reason to project a message," Cancian told NPR. "So, going back to Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, the message is freedom. With the recent ones, Midnight Hammer and Southern Spear, the message is lethality."

Although DHS is not considered part of the U.S. military, using the name "Charlotte's Web" could also have been chosen because "you've got the spider's web that catches people," but it could also be the administration trying to be "tongue in cheek," he continued.

And other military operations have received backlash and criticism in the past, including what is now known as Operation Enduring Freedom. It was first called Operation Infinite Justice, but was changed after backlash that it was offensive to Muslims.

"The fact that these names get scrutiny is not unusual," Cancian said. "Now, I think in this case, given the administration's aggressive rhetoric, I think that inspires maybe pushback, but it's not unusual that names get a lot of scrutiny."
Copyright 2025 NPR

Pasadena Unified School District will vote Thursday on $25 million in budget cuts that would include layoffs across athletics, arts, libraries and landscaping, among other areas.

The cuts are part of a proposed $30.5 million total reduction that represents about 16% of the district's $189 million projected general fund budget next school year.

“We have been very rich in resources,” Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco said. “It is always hard to lose things, and these are all great value [adds] to our students and families, but they're still gonna get a very high-quality education with what we're going to have left.”

District staff presented their recommendations for reducing the budget at a Thursday board meeting . Parents, educators and students who spoke up at the meeting said the cuts will decimate programs that have helped improve literacy , attract families to the district and provide a meaningful educational experience to students.

 ”Art is my entire life and doing it in school is the reason I wake up to go there,” said Lyric Mims, a junior in Marshall Fundamental’s Academy for Creative Industries.

Pasadena Unified’s financial deficit is years in the making. The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) has warned that without significant reductions in spending, the district will not be able to meet its financial obligations and risks losing the ability to govern itself.

At the end of Thursday’s nearly five-hour meeting, LACOE Director of Business Advisory Services Octavio Castelo told district leadership it was going in the right direction.

“But keep in mind, we look at the totality of your budget,” Castelo said. “We can't sit here and arbitrarily just tell you, ‘Yeah, everything's fine.’"

What are PUSD's proposed cuts?

District staff said the proposed cuts are based on months of meetings with staff, parents, students and labor partners.

The board will vote on three categories of cuts :

• $18.5 million of school-based staff
• $3.6 million in central office/administrative positions
• $2.8 million in contracts for outside services, i.e. professional development and consultants 

The Superintendent's Budget Advisory Committee is a group of parents, educators, students and community members that met throughout the fall to review the district's programs and score them from 0, “easiest,” to 4, “most difficult” to reduce.

Though committee member and parent Warren Bleeker said “easy” is a misnomer.

“ There's really nothing easy to be cut,” Bleeker said. “The thing that was most difficult is that most of these categories are direct services to students and so in an ideal world, you would not want to cut any of them.”

Proposed cuts were divided up into more than three-dozen groups (“packages”) and then ranked . District staff reviewed the rankings and suggested eliminating about two dozen of those packages while preserving several positions , including school clerks and assistant principals.

PUSD created summaries of how the cuts would affect elementary , middle and high schools and the district at large .

Cuts to athletics would be spread across high schools.

“There would be no sports that would completely leave the school district,” Blanco said. However, not every school may offer every sport. Students will have the option to transfer to a school to pursue a specific team. District staff said the goal is to have a final list of sports at each school by January, should the cuts be approved as presented.

There are also five other categories (PUSD calls them “workstreams”) where there could be funding changes — grants , special education , transportation , property management and staffing/vacancies — but those actions do not require a board vote. They account for $3.5 million.

Why not consolidate?

Some parents have asked why the district is not considering school closures to save money.

In a virtual town hall, Superintendent Blanco said she served on three consolidation committees in her tenure where recommendations to close schools were ultimately turned down.

“We want to be sure that if we embark upon that kind of a process, that we're really going to take it seriously and follow the recommendations that come forward,” Blanco said. “And that's not been our history.”

The district’s decision to close three elementary schools in 2019 is currently being challenged by a lawsuit .

In a follow-up interview, Blanco told LAist the board has not directed staff to begin working on a plan to consolidate schools.

How did the district get here?

For the last several years, PUSD has spent more money than it brings in and is projected to have a $29 million budget deficit next school year. One factor is that PUSD, like many districts in the region, is enrolling fewer students, which equates to less funding from the state.

Blanco said the district cut $13.8 million from the 2024-2025 budget and another $5 million from this year’s budget largely from reductions in non-school site positions.

 ”It has felt like year over year the pressure on parents to fill the gap, the funding gaps has gotten larger,” said Sandy Hoffman, the parent of an alum and seventh-grader at Octavia E. Butler Magnet, and a member of the PTA and the Northwest Parent Coalition.

Over the last decade, the district has lost thousands of students amid declining birth rates. The district has also lost families after the January fires. Preliminary enrollment numbers show 13,228 students were enrolled this school year, Blanco said — the biggest year-over-year drop since 2021.

Nancy Rose Dufford, executive director of the Pasadena Education Network, said she hopes families stay in the district despite the cuts.

“Hopefully parents will continue to support their schools and students will stay in the district and that it won't perpetuate a further decline in enrollment because that's ultimately what the problem is now,” she said.

Another factor is the district is now contending with the expiration of tens of millions dollars it received in federal COVID-19 relief funding.

District officials have also said that state funding to help with the rising cost of living hasn’t kept up with inflation and the true expense of operating schools.

What’s next?

The district’s board of education is scheduled to vote on the proposed cuts Thursday, November 20 .

The board could choose to approve the cuts as presented or propose changes that would require an amendment and agreement from the majority of their fellow members.

The Superintendent cautioned against mixing and matching cuts from different categories. For example, keeping a music teacher and then cutting more from central office positions.

The $30.5 million recommendation is on the low end of the $30-35 million of cuts envisioned earlier this year.

“As painful as this process is, I want to restate my concern that I don't want to have to go through this again later on because we didn't make enough cuts,” said Board Member Yarma Velázquez.

How to weigh in

Contact your board member

One of seven PUSD board members represents each person who lives within the district, which includes Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre. Identify yours on this map and contact them by phone or email .

Speak up at a board meeting

Each board meeting includes an opportunity to give public comment during a specific 30-minute window. Comments may also be emailed to publiccomment@pusd.us.

Fill out our survey

We'd like to know how these possible cuts affect your family: