Firefighters battle two Santa Barbara County fires, the national monument review public comment period closes, using CA income tax forms to fund rape kit testing.
Alamo Fire Update
Two massive wildfires continued to burn north of Los Angeles Monday morning: the Alamo Fire in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and another nearby called the Whitter Fire.
Santa Barbara County Fire Department faces a two-front battle as they try to contain both.
For an update Monday morning, Take Two spoke to Dave Zaniboni, public information officer for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
Helping the homeless combat the heat
Andrew Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, spoke to Take Two's Josie Huang about how the organization is helping L.A.'s homeless amid record-breaking heat.
Bales suggestion for people who want to help starts with keeping spare water in your car.
"If you see somebody out in front of your house or in your neighborhood, just think what a glass of ice cold water might mean to someone on a day like this.
We need to start looking out for each other. In a big place like L.A., it's going to take an all hands on deck approach and I think that means federal and state and local officials, churches, businesses, all of us. We need to step up because we have people in great danger right now, certainly through homelessness but the heat just adds to that."
To listen to the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Last chance to comment on fate of 6 California national monuments
Today is the final day of the public comment period for 27 national monuments under review by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
President Trump initiated the review with an executive order in April. The six monuments up for review in California are: Mojave Trails National Monument, Sand to Snow National Monument, San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, Berryessa Snow Mountain, Carrizo Plain National Monument, and Giant Sequoia National Monument.
Sean Hecht, Co-Executive Director of UCLA's Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, explained the role that public comments play in the review process.
How are national monuments initially designated?
"National monuments are created by the president under the Antiquities Act, which allows the president to decide to protect certain lands. The president can designate monuments with a stroke of a pen, and it often will allow for more preservation of resources and make it harder to do things that are destructive to the resources in these areas."
What prompted this review process?
"A lot of these areas have oil and gas underneath the ground that otherwise could be taken for private gain on these public lands. There also are ideological objections in some places, particularly in Utah, where there are people who believe the federal government shouldn't be limiting the use of these lands. It is hard to know exactly [what caused the review], but certainly if the national monument status was taken away, in most cases it would mean that it is easier to exploit the resources on those lands, and many of us believe that is really what's behind this review."
How much are these public comments weighed in the decision process?
"Unfortunately, I don't think the public comments will be weighted very heavily in the decision-making process, but I still think it is really important that people comment. It demonstrates a lot of support for these monuments, it puts political pressure on members of Congress and other representatives, and it helps to document what the level of support is."
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
In California, estimates say thousands of rape kits left unprocessed
When a person is the victim of a sexual assault, investigators collect evidence from the victim's body in something called a sexual assault evidence kit, most commonly known as a rape kit.
But there's a problem here in California. Thousands of these kits have never been analyzed.
There isn't a complete count but advocacy organizations think more than 9,000 have been shelved, never to be used.
To understand why California has such a substantial backlog of unanalyzed rape kits, Take Two's Josie Huang spoke with
. She's a contributor for Calmatters and has written about the backlog.
To hear the full interview with Samantha Young, click on the media player above.
What the future holds for those seeking refugee status
Portions of Trump’s travel ban are expected to go into effect this week and run for 120 days.
David Murphy, who runs the San Diego office of the International Rescue Committee, spoke with Take Two’s Josie Huang about what that will mean for people seeking refugee status, and for organizations who work with refugees in this country.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Why is it so hard to retrain laid off workers?
Step back in time to California in the 1930s with the ‘WPA Guide to the Golden State’
The Depression of the 1930s hit California – and the rest of the country – hard.
To help the economy moving again, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration created the Works Progress Administration, which thought the solution was to get people working again. From infrastructure to the arts, Americans could find employment through WPA projects.
These projects resulted in products are still enjoyed today, like many of the roads we drive on.
Among the musicians, painters and the like were out-of-work writer. So began the Federal Writers Project, which led the way to WPA travel guides to the then-all-48-states, putting America's great writers back to work again (although mostly anonymously).
This granted California with the "WPA Guide to the Golden State" – a travel guide crafted with exceptional literary flair that also serves as a snapshot in time, transporting its readers to Depression-era California.
That's why we've included it in Take Two's summer book series, The California Canon.
Editor and book critic
wrote the introduction to the book's re-release. He stopped by Take Two to explain why today's Angelenos would get a kick out of California in the 1930s.
On how it wasn't only writers who benefited:
"The intent ... was to get people on the road in their flivvers and jalopies so as to buy gasoline and prop up the still, rather sputtering economy. Also to create a sense of national, fellow feeling."
On how the WPA guides were crafted in a unique way, compared modern day travel books:
"They're so much better written, better edited, and funnier than anything I've seen from Frommer's. There's a kind of affection for the terrain that people are writing about because these are written by locals ... they were meant to put local writers back to work."
And if you've ever wondered what L.A. was like in 1939, this is the book for you:
"1939 is such a fascinating moment in Southern California history. There's a passage that really gets at what a turning point that may well have been. It goes ‘another Los Angeles is steadily coming to the fore. The Los Angeles is libraries, art galleries, concerts, museums, universities....’ and it goes on. It was kind of a crucible for the city and so to have a snapshot of it like this – to have a kind of trapped door into a history of how the city started to become the city it is today, is invaluable."
To hear the full segment, click on the media player above.
On the Lot: 'Spider-Man' lures young males back to the theater
Since the beginning of the "blockbuster" era in the 1970's, Hollywood could depend on great hordes of young men to fill theater seats. These fanboys were key to the success of franchises such as Star Wars and The Fast and the Furious.
But in recent years, movies have been losing out to things like mobile phones and video games when it comes to capturing the young man's entertainment dollar. Some even began calling young males "the lost generation."
"Spider-Man: Homecoming" has found them. As Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan notes, they drove the latest release in the franchise to record box office numbers. The quality of the film helps, she says, but it wasn't hurt by a $140-million ad campaign, and the fact that Sony, which released the film, also has a popular video game platform through its PlayStation consoles.
Ironically, "Spider-Man" was also a big turn-around for a woman. Amy Pascal, the former studio head of Sony, produced the film. Pascal, who worked her way up through the ranks to become among the most powerful people in Hollywood, lost her job three years ago. Her film slate had been performing poorly, and reams of her personal emails were made public in a studio hack. "Spider-Man" marks her return to the business, this time as a producer, and it's an auspicious start.