Larry sits down with two former Department of Justice officials to talk about the latest and what could be ahead. We also discuss the legalization of street vending in Los Angeles; examine the protection of the homeless population under the state's hate-crime laws; and more.
Floods, mudslides, debris flows? A check-in on fire-ravaged areas as rain drenches SoCal
A flash flood warning has been issued for the region downslope of the Holy Fire burn area.
Included are portions of southwest Riverside County and east-central Orange County. Malibu is also bracing for potential debris flows from the Woolsey burn area. The National Weather Service just issued a flash flood warning alerting those in southwest Riverside and east-central Orange County downslope from the Holy Fire.
We’ll hear the latest from first responders and local officials in the affected areas.
Guests:
Fernando Herrera, captain with CALFire Riverside and public information officer for the Holy Flood #2 incident command
Natasha Johnson, mayor of Lake Elsinore
Laura Rosenthal, Malibu City councilmember
Sharon McNary, KPCC’s infrastructure correspondent, who is at a Thousand Oaks debris basin, the area was burned over in the Woolsey Fire; she tweets
Cohen pleads guilty, Manafort’s retracted plea deal and what comes next in the Mueller investigation
It’s been a year and a half since Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel in the Russia probe.
His investigation has led to indictments against Russian intelligence officers, President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, among others.
Some, like Manafort, agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team – but in a court filing on Monday, Mueller’s office said Manafort lied repeatedly in interviews after his plea deal, voiding the agreement. But in an interview with the New York Post yesterday, President Trump said a pardon for Manafort isn’t off the table. On Wednesday, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said that if Trump pardons Manafort, it would be a "blatant and unacceptable abuse of power."
Meanwhile, Cohen is pleading guilty to lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate deal in Russia. Cohen made a surprise appearance Thursday in a New York courtroom at around 9 p.m. and began entering the plea. He admitted to making false statements in 2017 to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to other federal charges involving his taxi businesses, bank fraud and his campaign work for Trump.
So what could possibly come next in the Mueller investigation? Larry sits down with two former Department of Justice officials to talk about the latest and what could be ahead.
With files from the Associated Press
Guests:
Larry Liebert, national security editor at Bloomberg
Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney and deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department under President Clinton; professor of constitutional law at UCLA and UC San Diego; the L.A. Times recently published his op-ed “Mueller might soon bring charges that even Trump die-hards can’t trivialize”; he tweets
Justin Levitt, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under President Obama and professor of law at Loyola Law School; he tweets
What happens next now that street vending is officially legal in Los Angeles
Sidewalk vendors who sell hot dogs and churros around Los Angeles will be able to get permits after the City Council approved the idea today.
A plan to legalize and regulate sidewalk vending has been working its way through City Hall for years. In a nutshell, it will establish rules and regulations for the thousands of street vendors who work all over the city, in compliance with a new state law. The approval came on a 13-0 vote on Wednesday.
What does the new ordinance say, exactly? How will the permitting process work for street vendors who want to be licensed through the city? What are brick-and-mortar businesses saying about what this means for them? We’ll talk with a panel of stakeholders about what happens next and how it might look in your neighborhood.
For more on this story from LAist.com, click here.
Guests:
Curren Price, L.A. City Council member representing District 9, which includes most of South Los Angeles and western downtown L.A.; he first introduced the proposal to legalize street vending in 2013
Rudy Espinoza, executive director at the Leadership for Urban Renewal Network, which advocates for legal street vending, and a member of the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign
Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association
LA City Council voted to support expanding hate crime protection to the homeless
The Los Angeles City Council approved a resolution Tuesday supporting any legislation that would protect the homeless population under the state's hate-crime laws.
The California Penal Code defines a hate crime as a criminal act committed because of the perceived characteristics of the victim. LA City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who represents District 7 that covers much of the northeastern San Fernando Valley, introduced the resolution hoping to keep the homeless population safer. “The current definition of hate crime does not include housing status, even though such attacks are a persistent problem,” the resolution states.
The move was promoted by recent attacks including one in Santa Monica that left four homeless people dead and others seriously injured. In another separate incident last month, a homeless man and woman were attacked with battery acid in a Mission Hills park while they slept.
Guests:
Monica Rodriguez, Los Angeles city councilmember for the Seventh Council District, which includes the neighborhoods of Pacoima, Mission Hills, Sunland-Tujunga and Sylmar; she introduced the motion to expand the definition of hate crimes to include attacks on the homeless
David Lehrer, president of Community Advocates, Inc., a nonprofit in Los Angeles; former Los Angeles regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for 27 years; he tweets
Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino; board member of The National Coalition for the Homeless
Are in-car and consumer tech becoming too needlessly smart?
The LA Auto kicks off this week, and in-car technology is apparently the big hot thing.
Larger than ever infotainment screens, Alexa-enabled voice command systems, all kinds of internet-connected features are on offer; what’s clear is that the industry is paying as much attention to the hardware as it does to the software.
Which got the AirTalk crew thinking: are consumer and in-car technologies becoming too smart -- too uselessly smart for their own good? We lamented the fact that most of us are underusing many of the tech gadgets we have in our possession, from our smartphones to our fancy new rides with all the extra bells and whistles. One reason, we figure, is that tech has become too sophisticated and packed with way too many features for your average Joe and Jane. Most of us simply don’t have the time, or the headspace, to figure out how to maximize the capabilities of these devices. We also wonder whether there’s a need for any single tech gadget to do so much.
We open up the phones in this segment to your frustrations with your smart devices.
Guests:
Scott Evans, features editor of Motor Trend, an L.A.-based consumer magazine for the auto industry; he’s at the L.A. Auto Show in Downtown L.A.
Roger Cheng, executive editor of CNET, the tech news site; he tweets