After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade last summer, Beverly Hills officials protested by lighting up the plaza in front of City Hall in a glow of pink.

Council members had already voted 5 to 0 for a resolution backing abortion rights. “We have stood up and spoken out when we’ve seen human rights taken away,” then-Mayor Lili Bosse stated after the vote. “This is something I wholeheartedly support with all my soul.”

But little more than a year later, the affluent city has become a battleground over reproductive rights.

An abortion provider that planned to open a clinic in Beverly Hills offering procedures beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy is alleging the city “colluded and conspired” with antiabortion activists to force out the clinic. It gave formal notice Monday of damage claims against local officials.

The dispute illustrates that even in blue parts of America abortion rights face serious challenge — especially when it comes to the most controversial procedures.

Clinics that perform abortions later in pregnancy — a service that abortion advocates say is sorely needed in California — find themselves under extreme scrutiny. While 69% of Americans say abortion should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, only 22% of respondents in a recent poll said third-trimester abortions should be legal.

DuPont Clinic, a Washington, D.C.-based provider, said it has spent millions of dollars updating the medical facility on Wilshire Boulevard with the goal of expanding to the West Coast. Its letter to the city — a required precursor in California to a lawsuit — alleges four city officials, including Mayor Julian Gold, acted to withhold permits to the facility following antiabortion protests.

It claims the city pressured the landlord to back out of the lease; held “secret meetings” with members of the group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust and “promised them it would stop DuPont from opening.”

The clinic alleges city officials “bowed to the political pressure of the antiabortion community” instead of protecting “the right to abortion enshrined in the California Constitution.” DuPont is also targeting the landlord, Douglas Emmett Inc., in a separate lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

“It’s disappointing to try to return to California — after so much has been in the news about how the state is ready to help people access abortion — only to discover that the reality is different,” Dr. Matthew Reeves, DuPont’s founder, told the Los Angeles Times.

Beverly Hills officials denied DuPont’s allegations and said rescinding the lease was the landlord’s decision.

“The assertion that the city came to an agreement with protesters to force the clinic out is false,” Deputy City Manager Keith Sterling told The Times on Monday. “The permits were issued after our attorneys confirmed the services to be offered were in compliance with state law. We were anticipating the clinic would open in Beverly Hills later this year.”

California statute restricts abortions after a fetus is viable, at about 24 to 26 weeks of pregnancy, unless the patient’s life or health is in danger. That makes California abortion law more complicated than in the nation’s capital and six states — Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont — with no gestational limits on when abortion is legal.

But California’s fetal viability limit is in question, however, after voters in November overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, adding a right to abortion to the state Constitution, that did not mention the word “viability.” Legal experts say there is little consensus on whether California’s viability standard still holds.

Nationally, 13 clinics perform abortions beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy and only three go beyond 28 weeks, according to Access Reproductive Justice, a California abortion fund that offers patients financial and logistical support.

Only one clinic in the Bay Area offers abortions up to 24 weeks, according to Access Reproductive Justice, and one in Los Angeles goes to 26.6 weeks, going beyond only on a case-by-case base.

“California portrays itself as a safe haven state for all abortion, but in actuality, for people who need third-trimester abortions, there are a lot of obstacles,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at UC San Francisco.

In the last year, dozens of Californians beyond the 24th week of pregnancy have had to leave the state to access abortion care, according to Access. Some have traveled more than 2,300 miles to DuPont’s clinic in Washington.

As states across the South and Midwest curtailed abortion after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson decision, DuPont’s doctors anticipated more patients would seek later abortions.

“There was going to be a greater demand, unfortunately, for the care that we provide, which is all-trimester abortion care,” a doctor who was going to work at the Beverly Hills clinic told The Times. The doctor did not want to use her name for privacy and safety reasons. “What happens is that people are pushed later and later in their pregnancy in states that have restrictions.”

Abortions later in pregnancy are rare — fewer than 1% of abortions were performed on or after 21 weeks in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and more controversial.

Even in California, support for abortion is not absolute: A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 42% of likely voters said abortion should be legal in all cases and 33% said it should be legal in most cases.

The doctor who planned to work for DuPont in California said patients seeking later abortions typically face a change of circumstances, including the discovery of fetal anomalies or a medical problem such as cancer, lupus or preeclampsia. A few may not have been aware that they were pregnant.

Expanding to California, DuPont figured, would reduce the weeks-long backlog at DuPont’s Washington clinic and offer patients west of the Mississippi a less onerous journey. Gov. Gavin Newsom has hailed California as a haven for people from out of state, with some of the nation’s strongest protections, including a shield law that helps protect patients and providers from civil liability imposed by other states.

In September 2022, DuPont entered a lease on the Beverly Hills property with Douglas Emmett, a real estate investment trust company headquartered in Santa Monica, to open a clinic much like its site in Washington, with doulas and dedicated nurses and private rooms with aromatherapy.

“We can’t wait to bring our person-centered model of all-trimester abortion care to the West coast,” the clinic announced on Twitter in October.

A few weeks later — as Californians got ready to vote on Proposition 1 — antiabortion activists began to take note.

“This is horrifying!” Greg Burt, Capitol engagement director for the California Family Council, wrote to DuPont on Twitter. “Abortion up to the moment of birth. How barbaric.”

DuPont’s Twitter post was bombarded with a slew of angry comments, mostly from anonymous accounts:

“Absolute EVIL”

“You misspelled eugenics.”

“You absolute ghouls. You will rot in hell.”

DuPont was confident that the landlord and city officials supported abortion rights, its doctors said. There was already a clinic in the Wilshire building and another had historically provided later-trimester procedures. DuPont pressed on, according to its notice to the city, discussing permits and zoning with officials and hiring architects and a general contractor to demolish the old offices and build a new medical suite.

In April, protesters projected “MURDER MILL” on the side of the building on Wilshire. A week later, three protesters spoke against the clinic at a City Council meeting.

Tasha Barker, a paralegal and harp instructor from Sacramento, called in to argue that the clinic was different from others in California because it performed abortions months past fetal viability. “Right on their website, it says they’ll perform these abortions for no reason at all,” she told council members.

“That’s their mission — to offer abortions in the third trimester at will — and most people, whether they be pro-life or pro-choice, agree that that is abhorrent,” Barker told the City Council, urging a pause in building permits. “I’m asking you to consider how extreme this clinic is.”

A few days later, DuPont found out the city had suddenly withheld permits for the clinic.

DuPont’s clinic in Washington, D.C., is one of a handful in the nation that specialize in abortions in the third trimester, which lasts from weeks 29 to 40.

“If you are between 26 weeks and 31 weeks 6 days into your pregnancy, we can still see you, regardless of your medical history, background, or fetal indications,” DuPont’s website states. “We do not require any particular “reason” to be seen here — if you would like to terminate your pregnancy, we support you in that decision.”

But even as DuPont started promoting its Beverly Hills clinic as an all-trimester abortion clinic, its doctors were not sure if they could perform abortions as late as they do in Washington. The doctor who planned to work at the clinic said doctors had not fully worked out the limits of the law with their attorneys.

“Of course, we were going to be compliant with California law,” the doctor said. “But the question of compliance and how to do that is not a concrete, ‘Just stay below 28 weeks.’”

After protesters raised the issue of gestational age limits with the City Council, DuPont said, Beverly Hills officials began to press for more information.

On April 25, the city attorney told DuPont’s lawyer that he “had some questions” about the building permits, according to the notice letter DuPont filed Monday. Laurence Wiener said the city had concerns, based on language on DuPont’s website, that the clinic intended to “violate state laws” on abortion. He said he would release the permits, but asked for a letter stating DuPont would not break state law.

Specifically, the city wanted assurance that DuPont would “follow California law, which provides that abortions are not permitted once the fetus is viable, except to protect the health of the mother,” Sterling, the deputy city manager, told The Times.

DuPont’s doctors said they were shocked; the request, they allege in their notice to the city, was “improper” and “discriminatory.”

“We have now reached an impasse in Beverly Hills due to the city attorney refusing to release our building permits, which were approved weeks ago,” DuPont emailed the mayor and other city officials on April 27.

DuPont offered to speak with officials about their preparations for the clinic. No one from the city, DuPont alleges, responded to the email. But the permits were eventually issued — without DuPont writing a letter stating they would not break state law.

Meanwhile, DuPont alleges, the city met with representatives from the Douglas Emmett company and asked if there was any way to avoid opening the clinic. According to DuPont, the landlord’s representatives later said that when the city was told the lease had been signed and that the company couldn’t stop the opening, officials became “visibly upset.”

On May 31, Beverly Hills’ chief of police sent DuPont and the landlord a draft letter he planned to send warning the building’s tenants that protesters may “attempt to disrupt business” and there could be “violence or vandalism that requires law enforcement involvement.”

DuPont contends the draft letter was intended to “terrify” tenants and pressure DuPont to leave. The city counters it was an “information letter” warning tenants and offering police contact as protests picked up.

A Douglas Emmett lawyer cited the letter nearly two weeks later when he emailed the clinic that the company would rescind the lease. The notice, copied to the mayor and city manager, instructed DuPont to cease work on the premises.

The real estate company said DuPont had failed to disclose that the “primary focus” of its practice “would be providing abortions for abnormal and high risk pregnancies including what are commonly referred to as late term abortions” or that its Washington clinic had drawn protests. The landlord said it did not learn the “actual scope” of the clinic’s work until it saw the police chief’s draft letter.

DuPont says the company knew exactly what services it intended to offer. Its legal complaint includes a June 2022 letter of intent to Douglas Emmett describing its clinic as a “private referral center for all-trimester abortion care and ultrasound-guided procedures, primarily for management of abnormal and high-risk pregnancies.”

DuPont’s lawsuit, which includes 10 claims, maintains Douglas Emmett illegally and improperly breached the lease, without offering to compensate DuPont for millions in renovations.

Douglas Emmett declined to respond to the lawsuit Monday morning, with a spokesman stating the company has “a well-established policy of abstaining from discussing leasing matters with external entities.”

As construction on the clinic halted, protests accelerated.

Small groups of protesters — unaware that the company had tried to rescind the lease — gathered outside the Wilshire building, wielding graphic pictures of bloody aborted fetuses. They stood on highway bridges setting off smoke flares and wielding signs that said, “SHUT DOWN THE DUPONT ABORTION MURDER MILL.”

On July 18, a handful of protesters attended the City Council meeting. Tim Clement, outreach director for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, urged the mayor and City Council members to meet with him.

“Unfortunately, DuPont has come into the city and it’s an all-trimester abortion clinic that has caused the dark cloud to creep in and sweep over the city,” he told Beverly Hills officials. “I would like to have a sit-down with you and talk about maybe celebrating rather than protesting.”

More than a week later, Clement said he and his attorney met the mayor, deputy city manager, city attorney and a detective via Zoom.

“Everything is supposed to be hush — like, I can’t speak about it,” Clement told protesters at a July 29 public rally. “But we came to an agreement.”

Clement read them an email he said he’d received from Sterling, the deputy city manager: “Per our conversation yesterday morning, this email is to confirm that the attorney for the landlord … has notified the city that DuPont Clinic will no longer be taking occupancy.”

The crowd whooped and cheered.

“Victories, sometimes they’re not seen in the pro-life movement, but having a statement saying that they’re not setting up shop…” Clement told The Times. “We just saved babies. That’s our goal, because abortion is murder, and killing viable babies is horrifically wrong.”

Now, Clement said, the activists are focusing on protesting a Planned Parenthood clinic set to open this month in Murrieta.

“This is why I haven’t left California,” Clement said. “This is where the fight’s at.”

The mayor did not respond to requests for comment. Sterling, one of the officials DuPont alleges acted against the clinic, told The Times before the formal legal notice was filed that city officials met with antiabortion activists, but “there was no agreement.” They informed Clement that the city had been advised the lease was rescinded, he said.

Asked if Beverly Hills remained committed to abortion rights, Sterling said the city stood by its public positions.

“I think where the concern comes is when the line is crossed and the safety of our community is at risk,” Sterling said. “So, while the council supports all the things that they’ve stood for, including a woman’s right to choose, at the end of the day, our No. 1 responsibility is to keep our community safe.”

The doctor who would have worked at the Beverly Hills clinic said no officials voiced opposition to a third-trimester abortion provider in the city. But they showed clear discomfort — after the protests — with DuPont’s website and the services the clinic might provide.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” the doctor said. “To me, you’re pro-choice if you act on your values…,” the doctor said. “‘We support abortion rights, but not when there’s going to be a protest?’”

But the doctor has not given up hope that California might follow through on its commitment to reproductive rights — a principle that, she says, includes abortion in the third trimester.

She still wants to open a clinic in the Los Angeles area — though probably not in Beverly Hills.

“A lot of amazing things have been done in California — laws passed, funding created — but none of it means anything if people can’t open clinics and patients can’t be seen,” she said. “If we want to be a haven state and be welcoming people from across the country to come here, then we have to really do that. We have to go all the way.”

Abortion rights activists chain themselves to the “Urban Light” installation outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last summer after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Two years ago, an Anaheim City Council member was embroiled in a scandal over violent and misogynistic texts he wrote, which leaked to a local blog.

City leaders, expressing shock, denounced Jordan Brandman’s texts, and some residents called on him to resign. He stepped down in disgrace nearly two months later, in August 2021.

But what the city did not acknowledge at the time was that it had been aware Brandman had been acting erratically for some time. In fact, it had launched an investigation after fielding an accusation in December 2020 that he made racist and misogynistic comments and said he wanted to shoot up City Hall, according to interviews and city records obtained by The Times.

The police chief and city manager coordinated to keep secret a visit by police to Brandman’s apartment shortly after the allegation was received, text messages between the officials show.

Asked if he and the city manager had tried to keep secret the police visit to Brandman’s apartment, Chief Jorge Cisneros told The Times: “When we get very influential individuals, we put those under wraps.” He added that the department nonetheless complies with the state’s public records law.

The city manager, Jim Vanderpool, declined to comment.

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said it would be “extremely troubling” if city officials took steps to conceal a police visit to a council member’s apartment.

“If police are being called to the home of an elected official on allegations the elected official is acting erratically or potentially dangerously, that’s an issue of compelling public interest,” Loy said. “The public has a right to know when we’re talking about the conduct of an elected official, particularly when we’re talking about an allegation that an elected official is talking about shooting up City Hall.”

The allegations against Brandman came in a letter dated Dec. 10, 2020, to the city manager from a council aide announcing he would no longer work for Brandman. The letter alleged that a year earlier, Brandman had flown into a rage about city employees, telling another aide while yelling and sobbing that “he wanted to walk into City Hall and ‘blow people’s heads off’ because they were not complying with his directives.”

That same morning, Vanderpool exchanged a series of texts with Cisneros, the police chief, according to records obtained under the Public Records Act. In one text, the city manager provided Brandman’s address. In another, Vanderpool said he was at the site.

“Help please! Still no one here,” he wrote.

The police chief responded that “the watch commander is on the call and was going to the scene.”

Brandman told The Times that Vanderpool never spoke to him while he was there. But Brandman said he spent several hours with a lobbyist, Todd Priest, a friend, who showed up at his apartment complex.

The morning after the police visit, Vanderpool wrote in a text to Cisneros that a lieutenant had assured him the police visit would be “put into the system as unnamed person welfare check.” He added that officers “were directed to keep the interaction extremely confidential.”

In a text response, Cisneros said: “we put the call in with no info.”

Asked about his comments in the texts, Cisneros said he had forgotten what his intentions were and couldn’t speculate about what he said.

Earlier this year, The Times filed two separate requests under the state’s Public Records Act for information about police visits since Jan. 1, 2020, to Brandman’s apartment. The requests included the ex-councilman’s address, not his name. One gave the address to Brandman’s apartment complex, the other his specific apartment number. In both instances, the department said that after an “exhaustive” search, the city had found no record of a police visit.

When a Times reporter informed the department that several sources had confirmed the visit, a spokesperson responded by providing a brief dispatch log showing that five units had been sent to Brandman’s apartment Dec. 10, 2020. There were no notes describing what had happened, and no police report was taken, the log said.

A police spokesperson said the department looked into how it initially failed to find the log and concluded it was the result of an “unintentional error.” He did not elaborate.

“Once the mistake was discovered, we provided those records immediately,” Sgt. Jonathan McClintock wrote in an email. “The Anaheim Police Department does not have a specific policy regarding shielding information related to interactions with high-profile persons.”

Soon after the aide sent his letter to Vanderpool in 2020, city officials commissioned an outside law firm to investigate Brandman, invoices show. City officials declined to release other records related to the investigation, citing attorney-client confidentiality.

The letter also alleged that Brandman made racist and misogynistic comments, including blaming an employee’s COVID-19 diagnosis on her “family’s ethnic heritage.”

In interviews with The Times, he initially said he didn’t recall making a comment about shooting people at City Hall, but it was “something I would have said at the time.” In a later interview, he denied making it, claiming the employee would have reported it earlier. He denied making the misogynistic and racist comments alleged in the letter.

Brandman said he was upset when Vanderpool told him the investigation would be proceeding with interviews. He said he responded with a veiled threat that he could have the city manager fired, telling Vanderpool that he “knows how to count to four” about “this and other matters.” Replacing a city manager in Anaheim requires the support of majority of the seven-member council.

Brandman said he complained to another lobbyist, Jeff Flint, about the investigation, and Flint said he’d speak to Vanderpool. Brandman said Flint later called him to say Vanderpool told him Brandman had nothing to worry about. Flint has represented the Angels and Disneyland. Flint declined to comment for this story.

Jose Moreno, who was a council member at the time, said the council was never informed about the allegations made against Brandman.

Six months after the aide’s complaint was made, text messages Brandman sent to a local activist were published on a local blog showing that he used misogynistic and violent language to describe a city councilwoman, calling her a derogatory term for women and saying he wanted to “rip her f— tits off.”

The disclosure resulted in a public uproar and helped to ramp up a recall campaign launched against Brandman. He resigned several weeks later.

A Mediterranean-style mansion in the hills of Irvine just sold for $25 million, making it the priciest property ever sold in the city.

The record-breaking sale redefines the top of the market in Irvine, which until now hasn’t quite reached the dizzying heights of luxury homes closer to the water in Laguna Beach or Newport Coast.

In fact, the home doesn’t even have an ocean view. It’s found in Shady Canyon, a hilly golf course community about five miles from the coast.

If an Irvine home fetches more than $10 million, it’s likely located in Shady Canyon. The master-planned community has attracted celebrities such as baseball stars Albert Pujols and Mark McGwire, and the previous record holder, which sold for $17 million in January, sits a few houses down from the one that just sold.

The seller is Joni Rogers-Kante, founder of the multilevel marketing skin care company SeneGence. She doubled her money on the sale after buying it from sports radio host Jim Rome for $12.5 million in 2017.

Rogers-Kante gave the place a face lift during her stay and shot for the stars with the original listing, asking $50 million for the property in 2021. With no takers, she trimmed the price to $40 million, then $30 million before finding a buyer, whose identity remains unclear.

Spanning nearly an acre, the estate centers on a 13,000-square-foot mansion built in 2007. In addition to seven bedrooms and 10.5 bathrooms, the house is loaded with coffered ceilings, hand-painted murals and amenities such as a theater, gym, spa, wine room, elevator and six-car garage.

Arched doorways open out back, where an infinity pool overlooks the golf course below.

Ariana Gaffoglio of Official handled both ends of the deal.

Living in Orange County isn’t cheap, but there is plenty to see and do there. Whether you already live there or are thinking of moving there, there are a few ways to live on a budget and make it more affordable. The trick is to plan to survive the additional financial burden.

Save on Loan Repayments

If you have debt, repayments likely take up a large chunk of your budget each month. While the only way to eliminate this expense in your budget is to pay the money back, you can still save by refinancing your debt. A student loan refinance is a great way to lower expenses because it involves taking out a new loan at potentially more favorable terms to pay back the old debt.

Check Your Grocery Spending

Going grocery shopping might seem simple in theory, but it is very easy to overpay for your items when you live in Orange County. It might be easy to go to the nearest store and grab some items for dinner, but it’s important to take the time to compare what you are getting. If you get salads, take some time to see what each store is offering on sale. Many stores also have electronic ads you can sign up for. A little savings each week can add up over time.

Avoid Getting Cable and Satellite

You might be used to spending your free time watching TV, but there is so much to do in Orange County and Los Angeles that you don’t need to spend your time inside. If you are moving to the area from a colder place, you won’t have to worry about cold weather keeping you at home during the winter. The weather is warm year-round, and there are many opportunities to find new hobbies that will keep you occupied. Avoiding cable or satellite can save you several hundred dollars each month, and if you really want to watch a few of your favorite shows, you can always get one or two streaming services at a time.

Save on Parking

Parking is in high demand in the Orange County area, and you can expect to pay a premium. You also must contend with variables like special hours, street sweepings, crowded with cars, and regulations in the area. It can be hard to know where you should and should not park, and when the laws apply. You can avoid these fees by using ride-sharing services or carpooling with your friends. This also saves you money on gas, which is another expensive commodity in this part of California.

Try to Shop Used

You might be used to going to retail stores when you need clothing or household goods but consider avoiding these stores in Orange County since they can be more expensive. When you move to a new space, consider furnishing your home with pieces from thrift stores or flea markets. You never know what you will find at a flea market or thrift store, and you can save plenty of money on household goods and articles of clothing.

Get Free Things When You Can

Shopping for used items can save you money, but so will finding items and activities for free as much as possible. One of the nice things about living in the city is that there are so many adventures and activities to find in your own backyard. Consider going to a Los Angeles County beach, which is free to visit. You can also join local social media groups where many give away their unwanted items. With so many living in one area, you are likely to find some great things. However, since there are so many, there is also likely to be plenty of competition, so check back often so you can be one of the first to score an item.

Take Advantage of Campuses

One of the nice things about the Orange County and Los Angeles area is that there many campuses around, and you may be able to take advantage of some of the thing’s students are offered. Of course, you can’t claim to be a student yourself, but you can certainly research what’s available. Some schools allow you to use their internet and libraries to check out books. There are also dental schools and cosmetic schools, where you may be able to receive discounted services or even free ones.

Find Local Rewards Programs

It might seem like rewards programs are frustrating because they constantly send out promotional messages, but they can still save you money. When you need to make sure you save as much money as possible, it can be worthwhile to sign up for a few in the area. Doing so can ensure your purchases save you money. Grocery stores and pharmacies often have programs where you can find cashback offers and receive money back on purchases you make in store. Others offer discounts on gasoline purchases. Some shopping centers have a rewards program where you can receive free parking in the garage associated with the building the store is in. You can set up a secondary email address to use for these promotional programs, so your main inbox does not get flooded.

Reduce Spending on Bills

You might be able to negotiate your phone or cable bill, but others such as water and electricity are usually not negotiable. Still, you could speak with your providers to see if they offer any discounts for individuals below a certain income. However, even if your income does not meet those thresholds, you can still find ways of reducing your bills. Because Southern California often has mild weather, you may not need to run the HVAC system as frequently as you would in other parts of the country. Consider having the windows open on nice days instead. You might want to start tracking the amount of electricity you use each month to see if you can cut back once you are getting close to the amount your monthly budget will allow.

By Anna Helhoski | NerdWallet

Nearly 68 million people in the U.S. were facing extreme weather alerts as of Aug. 7 — that’s about one-fifth of the U.S. population. Due to climate change, more people experience hazardous weather conditions like extreme heat, wildfires, storms and floods, and they experience them more often. Some places are more vulnerable to climate change’s impact than others, but that doesn’t stop people from moving to those spots.

A new analysis by NerdWallet finds that the majority of the fastest-growing places in the U.S. are also high-risk areas for natural hazards.

“Extreme heat and humidity is going to be a reality pretty much no matter where you move,” says Alex De Sherbinin, senior research scientist, deputy director and adjunct professor of climate at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University in New York. “But life-threatening damages from those kinds of things are going to be more restricted to some locales than others.”

You’re more likely to experience extreme weather right now than at any other time of year. That’s because the U.S. is in its “danger season,” the period between May and October when North America experiences its worst climate impacts, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

The summer, so far, has been brutal. June was the hottest month on record for the entire planet until July broke that record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a program organized and funded by the European Union, member states and related agencies.

In the U.S., the South baked from oppressive heat; the surface water temperature off the coast of Florida reached 101 degrees Fahrenheit; and Death Valley sweltered at 128 degrees Fahrenheit — the hottest day on record. In addition, floods drowned parts of New England, and Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season is still expected to choke the northern half of the U.S with smoke periodically until the first snowfall.

These are just the immediate effects of our climate emergency. Predicted long-term effects include sea-level rise by as much as 10 to 12 inches in the 30-year period between 2020 and 2050, the same rise that was measured over a 100-year period from 1920 to 2020, according to a 2022 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fast-growing places are at high risk for worsening climate conditions

Among the 10 fastest-growing counties, two are considered at very high risk for natural hazards and eight are considered at relatively high risk for natural hazards. None of the fastest-growing counties are considered at relatively moderate risk or low risk.

A person waiting for the subway wears a filtered mask as smoky haze from wildfires in Canada blankets a neighborhood on June 7 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

For context, of the 3,231 counties the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) risk index covers, 15 are considered at very high risk (0.46%); 129 are considered at relatively high risk (3.99%); and 397 are considered at relatively moderate risk (12.29%).

All of the fastest-growing counties are located in the western or southern parts of the U.S., including six counties in Texas, three in Florida and one in Arizona.

Each of the counties carries its own potential hazards: hurricanes in all three counties in Florida; heat waves in Maricopa County, Arizona; and a near-biblical assortment of risks in the Texas counties, including cold waves, heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and more.

There have been 4,762 federally declared disasters in the U.S. since 1953, according to FEMA data. Each of the fastest-growing counties has had its fair share of federally declared disasters in the last 70 years. Hillsborough County, Florida, had the most events (39), followed closely by Lee County, Florida (37), and Montgomery County, Texas (36). In each of these counties, tropical storms were the cause of the disasters.

Warming sea surface temperatures due to climate change cause hurricanes that are larger, have more intense wind speeds and greater precipitation, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an environmental policy think tank.

What happens when you move to a high-risk area

In general, moving from one place to another is heavily age-dependent, says De Sherbinin. Younger people tend to be more mobile as they establish their careers, and tend to settle down when they have a family. Older people migrate at the end of their careers because they want to retire somewhere near family or have amenities they value most.

“These classical motivations have been relatively impervious to the sense that there is a growing risk that we face as a society,” says De Sherbinin.

Prioritizing your lifestyle and career preferences over avoiding extreme ecological risks is simply human nature, says De Sherbinin. Why? People don’t necessarily think catastrophe will happen to them.

De Sherbinin says when you move to an area that’s highly vulnerable to climate change effects, the rationalization usually goes something like this: “‘I’m not going to be the one to lose my house over the cliff into the Pacific Ocean, because I’m just lucky.’”

The U.S. tends to be an outlier when it comes to people moving into areas where risks are really high, says De Sherbinin, who studies the human aspects of global environmental change. But the higher the risk of natural hazards, the more vulnerable the population is to direct and secondary impacts of weather events. Direct impacts are more immediate bodily harm and property harm, while secondary impacts are typically longer-term, such as economic loss, social unrest and potentially a retreat from the area.

As stated earlier, climate change is worsening the likelihood and the extreme nature of weather events, which means those high risks may manifest in a real way and more often.

Andrea Washington weeps after pouring water on herself in the Hungry Hill neighborhood on July 11 in Austin, Texas. Washington began to cry as she spoke about the heat and her health. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

For example, the extreme heat conditions in Texas recently were made significantly more likely by climate change, according to the U.S. Climate Shift Index (CSI) Map. Intense heat in Houston, the county seat for Harris County — the second fastest-growing county according to the Census Bureau — is now five times more common due to climate change, according to the CSI Map. Without climate change, extreme heat would otherwise be rare for that area, according to the CSI scale.

About 80% of the U.S. population lives in cities where “heat island” effects exacerbate extreme heat conditions. Among the 44 major cities analyzed by Climate Central, a nonprofit science and news organization, nine have more than 1 million people who feel at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter due to the urban environment. Among those nine cities, three are in the fastest-growing counties listed in this analysis. Houston is on the list, as well as Phoenix in Maricopa County, Arizona, and San Antonio in Bexar County, Texas.

Weather-battered places may become uninsurable

Moving to an area that’s at high risk for natural hazards may cost you more than you bargained for, in more ways than one, beginning with property insurance.

Insurance giants State Farm and Allstate recently announced that they’re no longer issuing new homeowner policies in California. State Farm cites “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure” among its reasons for pulling back.

Loretta Worters, vice president of media relations for the Insurance Information Institute, says the industry is at a pivotal point as a whole. Insurers are developing strategies to better understand the risks of extreme weather events, but it’s getting more difficult to price risk, she says. It also costs consumers more to get insurance because the risks are so great, Worters says.

“Everybody wants this idyllic kind of lifestyle; we want to be on the coast or we want to be in these beautiful, serene areas where there’s lots of shrubbery and privacy,” says Worters. “But you can’t get fire trucks in — into areas that are prone to wildfires. A lot of these people’s homes are situated such that it’s hard for the trucks to get up there because they’re on winding roads.”

California isn’t the only state where insurance may be hard to come by due to chronic weather events. Flood-prone states have long felt the sting of rising rates and difficulty getting coverage. A recently rolled-out change to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is making it even more expensive. The program is often the only one available in flood-prone areas.

FEMA says the rate increases, known as “Risk Rating 2.0,” will enable the agency to distribute premiums and set rates that are more equitable than in the past. The new methodology assesses more variables than it used to like flood frequency, types of flooding, the property’s distance to a water source as well as its elevation, and costs to rebuild.

On June 1, a group of 10 states joined a suit led by Louisiana Attorney Gen. Jeff Landry against FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration in an attempt to block steep rate increases to the NFIP that went fully into effect on April 1. The states — which include Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — argue the higher rates could force policyholders to drop their coverage or end up surrendering their homes and businesses.

Insurance costs have climbed in the last few decades: Insured catastrophe losses have increased by nearly 700% since the 1980s when adjusted for inflation, according to the Insurance Information Institute. And in 2021, insured losses from natural catastrophes totaled $130 billion — 76% higher than the 21st-century average.

If more insurers pull out of areas due to chronic weather conditions like wildfires and hurricanes, areas could become astronomically expensive to insure, if not altogether uninsurable. Fewer private insurers available means homeowners will likely need to turn to Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) plans. All states have some type of a plan, which is instituted at the state level and backed by private insurers licensed to write insurance in the state. All of the companies have a proportionate share in any profits, losses and expenses of the plans.

FAIR plans usually offer only basic coverage and are used “as a last resort,” according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), a nonprofit regulatory support organization.

Worters, of the Insurance Information Institute, says FAIR plans are likely to have higher deductibles and less coverage, and they may be more difficult to obtain. Still, they’re widely used: 10% of Florida homeowners have insurance through the state’s FAIR plan, the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., as of March 2022, according to the NAIC.

People kayak up and down the flooded waters of Elm Street on July 11 in Montpelier, Vermont. (Photo by Kylie Cooper/Getty Images)

Rising rates are a source of anxiety and frustration for policyholders, says Worters, but she adds that the insurance industry isn’t the only party that must respond to worsening climate conditions. Property risks can be mitigated, she says, through policy and property safeguards such as building codes in hurricane-prone areas or defensible space requirements — buffers around property — in wildfire-prone areas.

“We’re insuring it, but if you continue to live in these areas and you don’t take any measures to safeguard your home or your business, it just makes things worse.”

Stephanie Pincetl, founding director and professor at the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, says changing how we live will be crucial to combating the impacts of climate change. “I think that we need to realize the American pattern of land use contributes 100% towards climate change and also has lots and lots of other ramifications. And we have not been dealing with that,” says Pincetl. “We have large houses, we have many bathrooms, we have private gardens and so on. And those are inherently energy-intensive, land-intensive and water-intensive.”

Will people migrate due to climate change?

If climate conditions worsen in your area, you’ll inevitably be faced with this conundrum: Should I stay, or should I go?

The answer to that question will largely depend on if you’re responding to an ongoing climate issue or you’re forced to respond to an event, says Andrew Jakabovics, vice president for policy development at Enterprise Community Partners and co-author of “Housing Markets and Climate Migration,” by the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent think tank, says climate change-fueled disasters are increasing migration worldwide. CFR finds most migration occurs within national borders, but cross-border migration is expected to rise. At the end of 2022, 8.7 million people worldwide — 675,000 in the U.S. alone — were living in internal displacement due to weather-related disasters, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). From 2008 to 2022, 11.1 million people were displaced in the U.S. due to weather-related disasters, the IDMC found.

Chronically worsening conditions — annual wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves and floods — may not necessarily destroy your property, but they’re certainly going to impact your life. Experts say extreme weather events are the ones that make it more difficult to stand your ground.

“We’re not well-evolved in terms of our reasoning to kind of take into account low-probability but very high-impact events,” says De Sherbinin. “We can react when something massive happens and decide, ‘Oh, God, that was really way too much,’ but we’re not well-evolved to address things that are kind of gradually changing over time.”

A woman drinks among sand dunes near a sign warning of extreme heat danger on the eve of a day that could set a new world heat record in Death Valley National Park on July 15 near Furnace Creek, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

And for people who already live in high-risk areas, their single biggest investment is their home, says De Sherbinin. And they’re not going to leave just “because flood risk has risen from one in 100 years to one in 10 years,” he says. “They just roll the dice and figure that out later. Or they’ll lobby to get their government to build the necessary infrastructure to protect them.”

When people do leave, they rarely go far. The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization largely written by academics and researchers, mapped out where people move following flooding disasters through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program from 1990 to 2017. It’s a buyout program that pays homeowners to purchase and demolish flood-damaged homes. The data shows that no matter where the flooding occurred, most homeowners who took a buyout stayed close by — just 7.4 miles was the median distance. Three in four people stayed within 20 miles of their original homes.

Among those who do leave, typically familial ties and communal ties drive relocation choices, says Jakabovics. “If you’re leaving the island of Puerto Rico, there was a kind of a preexisting population in parts of Florida. That was by no means the only geography that people moved to, but there was a concentration there,” says Jakabovics.

There are also people who, even in the event of a disaster, want to return to their homes because, understandably, it’s their home. At that point, habitability becomes a question of safety compliance, insurance and more. If you’re not a homeowner and you want to go back, you may face an even bigger challenge.

“If you’re a renter, right, you have very little control over the physical state of the property. And so, it depends on what the landlord has to or can do,” says Jakabovics. “We know that post-Hurricane Katrina, a lot of the rental stock was uninhabitable and some of the new insurance requirements and things like that made it very, very difficult to keep those properties habitable.”

Of course, the longer you wait to leave a high-risk area, the more challenging it might be. “Instead of a kind of orderly, thoughtful process, which Americans have a very hard time with, people will be losing their shirts,” says Pincetl.“They won’t be able to sell their properties.”

Is anywhere really safe to live?

Nowhere is entirely safe to live, but some areas will be less prone to certain disasters than others. Heat is most extreme in the southern states, and especially in the most arid locations; flooding is worse along the coasts and near large bodies of water; and tornadoes are more common in the Great Plains. The San Andreas fault stretches along the entire California coast, while other, smaller fault lines are spread throughout the west. The highest-threat volcanoes sit along the West Coast of the continental U.S., as well as Alaska and Hawaii. No place is immune.

Whether you can go somewhere “safer” will depend on your financial situation. For millions of Americans who live in poverty, the more relevant question is likely to be, “Can I afford to go?”

Populations that are more often affected by and less able to withstand the health impacts of climate change include older adults, children, low-income communities and some communities of color, according to a 2018 government report known as the “Fourth National Climate Assessment.”

Leaving one area for another will always be easier for those with the financial resources to do so. When extreme weather or a natural disaster hits, those with greater socioeconomic challenges have less ability to leave. And they’ll also bear the brunt of worsening weather conditions to come.

METHODOLOGY

NerdWallet drew the list of fastest-growing counties using 2021-2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the most recent available data set. The fastest-growing counties in this list were limited to the top 10. The fastest-growing counties are those with the highest numeric population increases over a set period. The 10 counties were then matched with their corresponding risks using the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Risk Index and FEMA’s historical data for disaster declarations from 1953 onward.

More From NerdWallet

Clarence Avant, a prominent figure in the music industry, has died at his home in Los Angeles on Sunday at the age of 92, according to media reports. No cause of death was provided.

Avant, who was called the “Godfather of Black Music,” had an influential career in sports, politics and entertainment, working with U.S. presidents and Hall of Fame athletes, in addition to music.

His family said in a statement provided to Variety, “It is with a heavy heart that the Avant/Sarandos family announce the passing of Clarence Alexander Avant,” said the statement from his children, Nicole and Alexander and son-in-law Ted Sarandos. “Through his revolutionary business leadership, Clarence became affectionately known as ‘the Black Godfather’ in the worlds of music, entertainment, politics, and sports. Clarence leaves behind a loving family and a sea of friends and associates that have changed the world and will continue to change the world for generations to come. The joy of his legacy eases the sorrow of our loss. Clarence passed away gently at home in Los Angeles on Sunday, August 13, 2023.

“Top artists and executives like Quincy Jones, JayZ, Whitney Houston, Pharell Williams, Lionel Richie, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Sean Combs, L.A. Reid, Suzanne de Passe, Kenny ‘Baby Face’ Edmonds, Jon Platt, Irving Azoff, Snoop Dogg Reginald Hudland, Benny Medina and Queen Latifah all credit Avant for his inspiration and guidance,” the family statement said.

Also see: 3 life terms for killer of Jacqueline Avant in Beverly Hills

Avant was a nightclub manager, and was the manager for Lalo Schifrin and Jimmy Smith in the 1960s. He founded two record labels, and help guide the careers of Bill Withers, Sixto Rodriguez, and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.

He became the chairman of the board of Motown Records in the 1990s and was the first African-American board member of PolyGram.

He launched the first fully Black-owned radio stations in Los Angeles and was a consultant to MGM and ABC in the 1970s.

He was an advisor and worked in official capacity for Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama.

Avant was credited with persuading Jim Brown to launch an acting career after a successful NFL career, and served as a mentor to music figures, L.A. Reid and Baby Face, Sylvia Rhone, Jheryl Busby and Jimmy Iovine.

More than half a century ago, while working as a teenage playground aide, I made my first payroll-deducted contributions to Social Security and Medicare.

Recently the federal government sent me a letter informing me that I’m about to begin collecting on my investment. That’s good news, but in a perfect world, there’d be less paperwork and bureaucracy as you get older, and fewer hard choices and confusing options.

With Social Security, you’ve got to decide whether to begin collecting at lower monthly amounts in your early to mid-60s or wait for the maximum payout at 70. It’s a roll of the dice either way. I went with the latter, which meant leaving money on the table while worrying that I’ll drop dead 10 minutes after getting my first check this October, when I turn 70.

California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.

Medicare is a more complicated consideration. It’s been a while since I looked inside a can of alphabet soup, but that’s what we’re talking about in the big bowl of Medicare options. You have to get familiar with Parts A and B, and also Parts C and D. And then you’ve got the Medigap Plans, which supplement A and B and go all the way up through Plan N.

For clarification, I visited a Medicare website that offered comparisons of Plans A, B, C, D, F, G, K, L, M and N, along with this helpful tip: “The Medigap policy will only pay your coinsurance after you’ve paid the deductible (unless the Medigap policy also covers your deductible).”

I dont’ speak gibberish, but it doesn’t sound good. And I’m struck by what you don’t get with basic Medicare coverage, known as Parts A and B.

“I’m glad it covers the catastrophic,” said Bob Yates, a Pacific Palisades resident who shares his thoughts with me on the joys of aging. “But what kind of ‘healthcare’ plan doesn’t cover teeth, ears, eyes and prostates?”

Exactly, and just when all those parts begin to fail. The basic plan doesn’t cover prescriptions, either, just as you realize you need a small village of plastic pill compartments.

But fear not, because coverage for vision, hearing, dental and prescription is available in one of the many Medicare Advantage plans, which are also known as Part C, and please don’t ask me why.

I’m not lying when I tell you that on Wednesday afternoon, while trying to wade through all of this, I began seeing waves of bright light roll across my computer screen. I assumed my head was exploding, for which Part A would probably cover hospitalization, but you’d need Part B for an aspirin.

I reached a doctor who asked me to describe the symptoms.

“Do you have a headache?” he asked.

Yes, I said.

He told me I’d had a visual aura migraine.

No doubt, and with good reason.

“Beneficiaries are confused, and they’re overwhelmed by the choices,” said Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, a Medicare expert for KFF, a healthcare policy nonprofit. “They’re also overwhelmed by the ads on TV.”

In fact, the Biden administration launched a crackdown this year on inaccurate marketing pitches for Medicare Advantage plans, which cover roughly half of all beneficiaries. And some of the biggest Advantage insurers have been accused of raking in billions by exploiting Medicare.

In a just world, those profiteers would be ordered to cover the millions of people — including children — now at risk of losing Medicaid because pandemic extensions have ended. But there is no just world, and no perfect healthcare system, including Medicare. The good news, said Fuglesten Biniek, is that “the vast majority” of beneficiaries are satisfied with Medicare, whatever their plan.

But which one is right for me? As someone with titanium knees and a pacemaker, I’d like to make sure I’ve got a fighting chance to keep cashing the Social Security checks. And I’ll probably need them, because no Medicare plan covers the biggest medical bill many of us will ever have — long-term care in nursing homes and private residences.

When I got my Social Security payment notice, the same envelope contained an updated Medicare card. I’ve had Part A (hospitalization coverage) since turning 65, and now Part B (basic medical) has been added, effective in 2024.

I reached out to Tatiana Fassieux, a training specialist with California Health Advocates, a Medicare advocacy nonprofit, and learned two things.

First, I will have to pay for Medicare when Part B kicks in next year, and the cost ($164.90) will be deducted monthly from my Social Security checks.

Second, I don’t need Part B as long as I’m still working and covered by employer-sponsored healthcare.

Don’t laugh, but I didn’t know you had to pay for basic Medicare coverage. And I don’t know how I ended up with Part B if I don’t need it. Did I make a mistake when I filed my Social Security application?

“Maybe there was a box you checked,” said Fassieux, who advised me to call Social Security immediately.

Before I cancel Part B, I need to line up my company plan against a Medicare plan and compare premiums, caps, out-of-pocket expenses and what’s covered and not. Speaking of which, it was a bit unnerving to hear Fassieux — a Medicare expert — tell me she was worn out trying to unravel a coverage dispute involving her mother, who had taken a fall and was in recovery.

If you’re frazzled by coverage options, Fassieux said, you can call 1-800-434-0222 and speak to a counselor at the state-sponsored Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program. Or you can call a private Medicare insurance broker, or several, and do some comparison shopping. I called Judy Flowers, with Williams Insurance in Fullerton, and told her I had just entered the Medicare maze.

“When people call me feeling the same way you’re feeling now,” Flowers said, “my job is to keep them calm and walk them through it.”

She gave me two sample options.

A Medicare Supplement Gx plan, along with an additional prescription plan, would cost roughly $400 a month. It would include vision, dental and hearing, and allow me to see doctors of my choosing.

The second, a Medicare Advantage Plan HMO, would cost less than half as much and cover the basics plus vision, dental, hearing and prescriptions, but limit me to a prescribed network of doctors.

It’s a lot to consider, with loads of fine print on caps, co-pays and whatnot, and there are more than 40 Advantage plans to choose from.

I hope at least one of them covers visual aura migraines, but for my health, I’m trying to remain calm.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

When Carlos Salgado returned to his native Orange County from the Bay Area to open a food truck named Taco María, the computer-programmer-turned-pastry-chef immediately gave the world a sense of who he would be: visionary, unapologetically Mexican, and with a wicked sense of humor.

Taco María’s Twitter account stated the truck was named after the matriarchs in Salgado’s family and would focus on “Chicano cuisine.” As food editor for OC Weekly at the time, I found Salgado’s proclamation preposterous.

Who the hell was this newcomer with seemingly no knowledge of Orange County dining to think he could succeed in a region where people still expected their Mexican grub to come on combo plates, ordered in a drive-thru, wrapped around a tortilla, or with views of the Pacific?

I tweeted a snide remark at Taco María’s account that demanded he define what “Chicano cuisine” was. “We have issues” was the response.

I immediately burst out laughing and thought “no se dejà” — Salgado doesn’t back down. He proved me right again and again.

His Taco María quickly made its presence known in Orange County’s luxe lonchera scene with sumptuous takes on burritos, tacos, and aguas frescas. Two years later, Salgado opened a brick-and-mortar in Costa Mesa and ditched his food truck menu for something even better: a wholesale interrogation of what Mexican food and a Mexican chef could be.

I was there on opening night, and he helped to cater my wedding in 2014. My wife and I attended his wedding two years later to playwright Emilie Coulson Salgado, who serves as Taco María’s general manager. Together, we’ve all celebrated either in person or via text every time their restaurant won a new accolade — and there’s been many.

Food & Wine Best New Chef for Salgado in 2015. Best O.C. restaurant for both the Orange County Register and OC Weekly from 2014 to 2017. The Times’ Restaurant of the Year in 2018, when the late Jonathan Gold described Taco María as the place that “propelled California-Mexican cooking into the jet stream of abstracted modernist cuisine.”

Salgado won the Golden Tortilla in my KCRW Tortilla Tournament in 2019 for his incredible blue corn tortillas — the same year Taco María earned its first Michelin star, which it has maintained every year since. He and contemporaries like Ray Garcia and Wes Avila in Los Angeles showed that Mexican Americans could help elevate Mexican food on a worldwide stage just as well as their peers in Mexico like Enrique Olvera and Gabriela Cámara. But Salgado did his proselytizing in a region — Orange County — where being Mexican has far too long been a cultural crime.

That’s why I’m going to be there this Saturday at Taco María’s final night: to bid farewell to what the restaurant accomplished in its decade and also toast to whatever may come next.

The dish heard ‘round the world

Taco María’s genius was to take classic Mexican dishes and place them in the fine-dining world. Unlike too many Alta California spots, however, Salgado never rejected the working class flavors of the meals he was reimagining. He doubled down on them.

Taco María’s seasonal takes on aguachile included ingredients such as olive oil, watermelon jam and borage, highlighting new dimensions.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Take his version of aguachile, the famous Sinaloan seafood dish that traditionally sees shrimp or scallop marinated in a chilled, spicy lime juice broth. For years, Salgado offered seasonal takes that included everything from dabs of olive oil to watermelon jam. His touches brought out dimensions in aguachile — sweetness, crispness, smokiness — one never thought possible.

It became the dish heard ‘round the culinary world, as aguachile made appearances at other fine-dining restaurants in Los Angeles and beyond — I remember texting Carlos and Emilie a photo of a white-tablecloth eatery in Louisville one year that bragged about the aguachile on its menu (it wasn’t good, alas).

He never allowed himself to be weighed down by expectations, though. Once aguachile became trendy, Salgado took it off Taco María’s menu. His longtime logo was a take on Mexico’s iconic Secretariat of Economy emblem for exports — a modernist black-and-white Aztec eagle head — that read “Hecho en Orange County” instead of “Hecho en Mexico.” Taco María once offered Cortez the Killer, a triple-patty burger with Spanish cheese and date ketchup, that was both a shoutout to the Neil Young song, an homage to SoCal burger culture, and an indictment of the Spanish conquistador. Those in the know gobbled up his Christmastime strawberry tamales or chicharrones dusted in chile de árbol powder, Salgado’s wink at Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Despite all the accolades and imitators, I always felt Salgado was unappreciated by Southern California’s food world. Angelenos didn’t patronize Taco María as much as they should’ve because too many still think Orange County is on the other side of the world and a culinary wasteland save for Little Saigon and maybe Little Arabia. The restaurant’s location — an awkward sliver of a triangle in a formerly hip shopping plaza that’s now eerily desolate — didn’t lend well to the conviviality Salgado strove to create.

And then there was the fact that Salgado was a Mexican in a business that didn’t historically have a place for people like him, in a county where Latinos make up 34% of the population. “Culturally and agriculturally,” Salgado said in a 2016 Times story, “California is Mexico.” Yet still they have little power of any kind.

His liminality brought on petty critiques from all sides. Diners got angry that there were no complimentary chips and salsa, or that his guacamole could come spiked with pomegranate seeds one night, and shiso another. Conservatives didn’t appreciate that “Black Lives Matter” was stenciled on Taco María’s windows in 2020, a slogan most eaters didn’t notice until the third course in his prixe fixe menu, or closed down their dining room in the heavy days of the pandemic unlike Arc, a restaurant steps away from Taco María owned by Newport Beach mayor Noah Blom.

Loyal customers got upset that Salgado stopped lunchtime taco service when he reopened. And too many gatekeepers of mexicanidad found Salgado a fresa (snooty) for charging what they thought were excessive prices — nearly 20 bucks for sturgeon tacos? — while not bothering to realize all those costs went toward paying his employees a living wage and buying products from farmers trying to create more equitable food systems. That’s a far better exemplar of Mexican culture than, well, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

We didn’t deserve Salgado and his Taco María — and now, we’re not going to have him for the foreseeable future.

Carlos broke the news to me yesterday over the phone. I congratulated him on the move. He and Emilie are the proud parents of two beautiful kids, and have worked at a breakneck speed during an era of tumult for all of us but especially in the restaurant industry. I told him that no matter Taco María’s future, his legacy is secure.

May more follow in Carlos Salgado’s ways.

Some people seek a bar or nature hike when they feel low. I go to the supermarket.

My spirits lift as I stroll the aisles. I bop along to easy listening music. Exchanging pleasantries with cashiers lessens my loneliness. I celebrate the small wins — I procured broccoli (OK, and ice cream) — and leave with renewed purpose.

As someone with depression, I find that brick-and-mortar businesses help me avoid isolation by providing a space to be alone with others. But my happy places — supermarkets and pharmacies — say they have seen increasing theft and violence.

Locked glass cabinets safeguarding merchandise are now ubiquitous in chains like Target, Walmart and Walgreens. Asking clerks to retrieve detergent and baby formula is demoralizing enough, but businesses are implementing more severe security measures that erode customers’ spirits and our social fabric, even though it’s unclear whether shoplifting has become the national crisis that some retailers claim.

A grocery run shouldn’t feel like visiting a prison, but that’s the vibe shoppers get from extreme anti-theft measures at a Safeway in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood. Reddit users have described them as “jarring” and “hostile.”

At the Rockridge Safeway, sad lettuce sits behind 4-foot-high bars surrounding the store entrance. A guard presides over an automatic gate that opens upon approach and alarms sound if you try to exit the same way. Similar barriers at each register pen in customers. And don’t toss that receipt at self-checkout — you’ll need to scan it before you can leave.

Is this the grim future of grocery shopping? I hope not.

Safeway has since expanded these security measures to other locations in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. While tactics such as these are intended to uphold the norms against stealing, they in fact threaten community morale, trust and social cohesion.

With mental distress and loneliness on the rise, social disconnection poses health risks as deadly as smoking. To counteract this, the U.S. surgeon general urges investments in social programming, the built environment and neighborhood places such as libraries and parks. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg similarly argues, “Social infrastructure is crucially important, because local, face-to face interactions — at the school, the playground and the corner diner — are the building blocks of all public life.”

Under hospitable conditions, we transform seemingly mundane retail spaces into community “third places.” Eating areas, public restrooms and benches facilitate such “placemaking,” and research shows third places promote greater social cohesion and neighbor interaction. Ideally, they embed us in webs of supportive connections. For example, when I couldn’t reach my 94-year-old friend who lives alone and has memory problems, a supermarket pharmacy clerk passed on information picked up through the neighborhood grapevine that helped me track her down in a nursing home, where she had ended up after a fall.

Grocery stores feed our bodies but should also nourish sociability, not strip our dignity. Companies claim the new security measures make customers feel safer, but they risk molding us into more anxious, suspicious people. This psychic weight has unequal consequences — those with money and tech savvy can just shop online. Others who rely on in-person shopping face disproportionate dehumanization.

Organized retail theft and smaller-scale shoplifting are complex problems that require multipronged solutions. But it’s unclear if beefed-up security measures are actually helping to solve these problems. And without addressing socioeconomic conditions such as inflation, poverty and opportunity deficits, the help they do provide serves merely as a Band-Aid. Short- and long-term investments in our social safety net, including restoring SNAP benefits slashed for millions in March, and ensuring access to high-quality education, job training and a living wage, will alleviate economic desperation.

One powerful law enforcement tool to assist merchants is the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, currently pending in both houses of Congress, which would give federal prosecutors the authority to fight money laundering connected to large-scale theft and establish a federal coordination center to ease information sharing among investigators at all levels of government and affected businesses.

Informal observations of supermarkets I frequent, including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Cardenas, Nob Hill Grocery, Smart & Final and numerous smaller grocers near my home in East Oakland, confirm that extreme security like that at the Rockridge Safeway remains the exception for now.

Rather than create fortresses that inspire dread, many beloved grocery chains have fashioned their stores into attractive destinations where superfan customers spend significant time and money. Self-proclaimed “Wegmaniacs” wax poetic about exceptional in-store cafeterias, high-caliber customer service and the mini-village feel of different departments. Stew Leonard’s theme park-like atmosphere has received Disneyland comparisons for its petting zoos and musical, animatronic displays. During a recent Utah trip, I became a repeat customer at Harmons Grocery, charmed by its colorful dining area with couches and brimming bookcases. Such business practices lift people and profits.

Businesses can also help those in their communities by partnering with nonprofits to connect customers to SNAP and WIC benefits. They could emulate public libraries that have invested in social workers to help meet patrons’ more complex needs.

Businesses, in supplying social contact, need our support. But they also bear social responsibility. Those that make their customers pay a psychological cost every time we purchase a gallon of milk will lose money as we start shopping elsewhere.

Stacy Torres is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UC San Francisco.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, once a young apprentice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who later ran “Rainbow Coalition” campaigns for president in the 1980s, showed up before the Brea City Council on Oct. 1 at the invitation of Dwight Manley, a businessman who owns much of the city’s downtown. In the area to celebrate his 78th birthday, the subject of 1980s “Run Jesse Run!” fever gave an unscheduled invocation at the start of the meeting. 

“I’m really here as a friend of Dwight,” Jackson said. “He wanted me to see this marvelous City Council in Brea.” 

The reverend followed with brief words of prayer in the name of reconciliation everywhere. “We turn to each other, not on each other,” said Jackson. “We ask Brea to be that light in darkness.” After a quick, understated “amen,” he shuffled back to his seat. 

Later, Manley saw himself as just such a luminary in opposing Brea acquiring Birch Hills Golf Course, deeming it a toxic dumpsite, as Jackson looked on from a few rows back. “You’re basically taking on Three Mile Island in the middle of Brea,” Manley warned the council. “I used to walk that golf course [and] licked golf balls as a child. Maybe I got cancer from that. I don’t know. You should not touch it!” 

Manley left certain there wouldn’t be so much as even a vote on Birch Hills, as he had met with two council members over the issue that morning. He had already retreated to the Yard House restaurant in downtown Brea when his phone started lighting up with text messages. The council voted 4-0 with one recusal in favor of taking on the property and keeping it an executive 18-hole course.

“I didn’t even come to my office for two days after that,” Manley says as he leans back in his desk chair a couple of weeks after the vote. “I had a migraine, and it was literally like the heart was ripped out of me.” 

Raised in Brea, Manley’s return to his hometown veered through an assemblage of extraordinary life experiences. He’s an accomplished rare-coin collector, a former sports agent to NBA greats, a property owner and—as Manley found out thanks to a DNA kit given as a Christmas gift two years ago—the biological son of Mike Antonovich, who served 34 years on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors as a Republican. 

But it’s Manley’s own outsized political profile in Brea—a small city of 43,000 residents—that has the town talking, albeit in hushed tones. In the past five years, he has put his wealth into supporting City Council candidates, reshaped the balance of power at City Hall, hung giant-sized political banners from his properties, tried to start a local newspaper and taken his civic crusades to the Nextdoor private social network, from which he’s been banned multiple times. 

To Manley’s detractors, he is an oligarch involved in damn near every facet of Brea’s civic life. “City Council is beholden to him, while at the same time afraid of him,” says John Koos, a former Brea Chamber of Commerce chairman and onetime planning commissioner. “That fear permeates the entire bureaucracy.”  

Others count him as a Brea blessing beyond downtown. “He cares about Brea,” says Rick Clark, the Manley-friendly scribe behind the Brea Matters blog. “People vilify him, and it’s uncalled-for. There’s not a week that goes by that he doesn’t put sometimes several thousands of dollars into the community in donations.” 

The future of a golf course appearing to be Manley’s chosen hill to die on seems politically perplexing. But it’s a vote consequential enough to have him rethink his future in Brea, though not without also contemplating the political future of those whom he believes wronged him—and, of course, the city. 

“I’m telling you one thing: The word recall is going to be brought into the Brea landscape in the next 12 months,” Manley vows. “This is not going to wait two or four years for certain people.” 

 *     *     *     *     *

An outspoken man with famous friends, Manley recalls a shy childhood during his days at Brea’s Laurel Elementary School. Early on, he struck up a hobby that would prove fortuitous. “I found a 1909 cent in a coffee can when I was 6 and was fascinated by it,” he says. Soon, Manley befriended a fellow coin collector who hipped him to a shop downtown he hadn’t been to. There, he only became further immersed. 

“Coins were everything,” says Manley. “It was like Fantasyland.” 

When Manley graduated from Brea Olinda High School in 1984, he moved out, skipped going to college and continued life as a budding numismatist. “When I graduated, I had $5,000 to my name,” he says. “I drove cross-country for a job that paid me $20,000 a year. I didn’t inherit money. I have never been given anything.” 

Within five years, Manley became a millionaire. Self-made. At age 23. 

A friendship with NBA legend Dennis Rodman forged at a Las Vegas casino by a mutual acquaintance led to a seemingly unlikely career shift in 1995. “Dennis, who I was friends with for two years at the time, asked me to help him make some money one summer,” says Manley. “Dennis had black hair when I met him, and then I have him in a wedding gown on Fifth Avenue.” 

Manley managed Rodman during his infamous Bad As I Wanna Be book tour, as the “Worm” morphed his persona partly through flamboyant fashion that GQ now hails as prophetic. The following year, Manley became Rodman’s sports agent and enjoyed a clientele that grew to include such premier NBA talents as Karl Malone, Doug Christie and Vernon Maxwell. 

Through representing Rodman, Manley met Jackson. The reverend married Manley and his now-ex-wife in 1999. He and Jackson traveled to Ghana in 2007 to celebrate the African nation’s 50th anniversary of freedom from British colonial rule. “He represented the people without a voice and the oppressed,” says Manley. “In Brea, I have a voice here. I use it for the people that I feel are getting screwed.” 

But palling around with Jackson didn’t lead Manley back to Brea. 

That journey began at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolina coast with the sunken spoils of the S.S. Central America, the fabled “Ship of Gold.” It took Manley nearly two years to pull off the purchase of most of the ill-fated 1857 voyage’s recovered treasure, but once he did, an estimated value of more than $100 million made it the largest numismatic acquisition in the world. 

“It’s the greatest loss of treasure in American history,” Manley told Coin Television last year during an expo in Long Beach. “It came from the California Gold Rush.” 

The yield becoming profitable allowed Manley to get into real estate. When his mortgage broker brought three properties on Birch Street in downtown Brea to his attention, Manley originally passed. Six months later, though, he changed his mind and purchased them for $13 million. “Hometown Kid Invests Wealth in Brea,” read the headline of a glowing 2003 Los Angeles Times profile. 

“As time went on, other properties came up for sale, and I got the calls,” says Manley. “One by one, I started buying all the pieces on the Monopoly board, basically.” He owns most of downtown Brea and moved back to the city in 2012, into the northern hills compound he calls home. 

“I love Brea because it’s my roots,” says Manley, now 53. “You’re only from one place.” 

 *     *     *     *     *

A coffee table in Manley’s downtown office is covered with cards that he receives from the elderly who thank him for his monthly donations to Brea’s Senior Center. From his desk, he turns to retrieve a framed photo showing Karl “The Mailman” Malone posing with Brea police in celebration of defibrillators donated to them by his former NBA agent. Plaques commemorate feature articles in major publications about his storied life.  

But the political tale of the past five years in Brea remains largely untold. 

When returning to live and work in Brea, he counts a major mistake in not making any political waves earlier. “I didn’t speak out when Tim O’Donnell was the city manager because I was being manipulated,” says Manley. “He ruled with an iron fist. I probably would’ve never gotten the downtown turned around had I done that then.” 

A “family-friendly” downtown with a good mix of entertainment, retail and dining became ground zero for a political dispute that soon arose around its next puzzle piece: a $13 million parking structure behind the old Tower Records building. 

Mayor Brett Murdock, who won election in 2010, became Manley’s first big political target, as he called him “dishonest” and “bad” for Brea. He made it a priority to ensure voters wouldn’t return Murdock to the dais in 2014—a political ambition that put him at odds with Koos, a former acquaintance of Manley’s who helped to elect the mayor. 

“Dwight and I were actually very copasetic,” says Koos. “He wrote checks to many people but didn’t really jump in and try to affect the outcome of elections. To this day, I think it was about the parking structure. Murdock and some of the previous council members had the position that the downtown business owners should pay for some of it.” 

The late City Councilman Roy Moore called for a “clean sweep” to shake up City Hall. Aside from contributing $25,000 (mostly through the California Homeowners Association Political Action Committee) to ensure the sweep, Manley debuted a more readily visible tactic, hanging huge anti-Murdock banners from his properties.

The election results proved devastating for Murdock. While non-incumbants Cecilia Hupp, Glenn Parker and Steve Vargas easily claimed victory, the incumbent mayor placed a distant fourth, earning just 13.7 percent of the vote. 

“A sitting mayor going away?” says Manley. “That’s a phenomenon. The people spoke, and we got a clean sweep.” 

In September 2015, Brea city council approved spending up to $10.3 million on the parking structure project, a mix of 2011 bond and community benefit and economic development funds. Final financing included a $2.9 million loan from the general fund. Critics called the vote a sweetheart subsidy to downtown, a consummation of pay-to-play politics. 

Manley denies that he bought a council majority to gain a free parking structure. “I didn’t pay anybody,” he says. “Parker voted against it, and I gave him more money than anybody. If everybody that donates to somebody is guilty if something goes their way, then politics is permanently ruined.” 

But a review of campaign filings provided by Brea show Parker received the least Manley-related contributions; California Homeowners Association PAC spent no money in support of his candidacy.

In 2018, Brea voters had the opportunity to re-evaluate the clean sweep. Bill Hall, a former Brea Olinda Unified School District trustee, ran for a council seat as a self-funded candidate who’d been critical of the use of general-fund money to finance the four-story, 476-space garage. “How does the City Council give up money like that without understanding the financial-payback time and the impact to their community?” Hall asked. “The idea that it has helped can’t be proven.” 

The Brea Chamber of Commerce endorsed Hall, as it did Hupp, but only Hall’s nod came under attack by Brea Matters. Downtown business owners turned up the heat on the chamber for Hall’s supposedly anti-business stance on the parking structure. “You create a narrative, a false one,” says Hall. “You say it loud and often, and people begin to accept it. It’s better to never be questioned and be seen as the omnipotent Wizard of Oz than to actually have somebody willing to say, ‘Listen, we ought to look behind the curtain.’”

Only Hall didn’t get that chance. All won re-election, with Hall placing a distant fifth at 12.7 percent. 

 *     *     *     *     *

Heading into the 2018 elections, Manley had another mission in mind: reviving local journalism to educate Brea voters. Financial troubles caused the Orange County Register to fold the already-merged Brea/La Habra Star-Progress the previous year. Manley saw a void in Brea’s civic culture and decided to do something about it. The opinionated developer registered Brea News LLC with the California Secretary of State’s office on June 15, 2018. He readied an inaugural issue with Editor-in-Chief Daniel Langhorne, a former Register reporter. The name of the new bi-monthly community paper: Brea/king News. 

“I was becoming an investigative journalist digging into things that, in the past, newspapers would’ve been on,” says Manley of the impetus behind the project. “The council and school board are voting on things that they personally have no idea about. They’re 100 percent dependent on staffs who have their own agendas.” 

Others saw the effort as just another power play to control the narrative with an all-too-telling double entendre in “Brea King.” But they didn’t have an opportunity to flip through the paper to confirm their suspicions. A dispute between the owner and the editor halted Brea/king News’ July 4, 2018, launch, leaving it with the ironic tagline “Where journalism never dies.” 

“It was not editorial at all,” says Manley. “I did not believe Langhorne was the right person for what was happening.” 

Langhorne declined to comment when reached by the Weekly. 

The never-distributed debut featured stories about park projects, high-school sports and, of course, a front-pager on Manley as the man behind the paper. Clark penned one of the guest columns as an in-kind contribution. Years before Brea/king News, the longtime public-relations-industry veteran started the Brea Matters blog in 2011, drawing his inspiration from Moore, a 16-year councilman who passed away in 2015. In Clark’s opinion, Brea’s “old guard” is the problem. “Once they leave office, they play kingmaker,” he says, cryptically. “They know who they are.” 

Brea Matters touts that there are “two sides to every story.” Lately, it champions Manley’s various causes, owing its biggest hits to his open letter to the school board in September about its health-insurance benefits. “Manley emailed a https://www.ocweekly.com/is-dwight-manley-breas-native-son-savior-or-its-mad-monarch/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-dwight-manley-breas-native-son-savior-or-its-mad-monarch to his father,” says Clark. “Mike was proud of his son and proud of his work and shared it with people on his email list, and it exploded. That’s pretty unusual for a little blog about Brea.”

Just like his Brea/king News column, Clark says his blog runs all on his dime and that its pro-Manley bent doesn’t come with any strings attached, financial or otherwise. “Dwight and I share a common goal of making Brea a better place to live,” says Clark. “There’s been a number of times we’ve butted heads, but we work it out. It’s a good relationship.” 

 *     *     *     *     *

About two dozen teachers, parents and students gathered in front of Brea City Hall on the evening of Nov. 18. They had donned red shirts in support of public education and held signs reading, “Let Brea Vote” and, “Brea isn’t a Monarchy” before filing into the City Council meeting, where the fate of trustee health-insurance benefits and a $123 million bond being put on the ballot would be decided. Jodi Balma, a Brea resident, parent and Fullerton College political-science professor, helped to organize the rally. 

“Without board members Carrie Flanders or Paul Ruiz allowing the bond to go to a vote, they have, in essence, crowned Dwight Manley king of Brea schools,” said Balma before the meeting. “I know he doesn’t want the kingmaker title, but he has a crown on his head.”

It’s not the first school-bond battle for Balma. In 2016, she joined the Measure K campaign, a $148 million bond effort hoping to allocate funding to repair Brea classrooms, make school sites earthquake-prepared and retain teachers. “When it rains, my kids have seven or eight buckets on the desks because there’s so many leaks,” says Balma. “When my daughter was in kindergarten, one of the kindergarten rooms was shut down because of mold.” 

She didn’t anticipate an entrenched, well-organized opposition, one that included Manley prominently in its ranks. 

True to form, Manley dropped a huge anti-Measure K banner from the backside of his downtown office building during the campaign. That year, he also founded Brea First in Moore’s “clean sweep” spirit. “Brea First was intended to identify experts in areas of government and to share that knowledge with citizens so they may form intelligent decisions,” says Glenn Vodhanel, a Brea First board member. For Measure K, the group hosted a presentation by Will Swaim, the Weekly founding editor who’s now with the pro-charter schools, anti-union California Policy Center.

In reminiscing on the fight, Manley scrolls through his phone before showing a picture of Rodman holding a sign in downtown opposing the bond. “I spent $900 to oppose that measure,” says Manley. “They spent a quarter of a million, but the people spoke.” 

The anti-Measure K camp did try to overstate their case. Former California State Treasurer John Chiang sued them over a “false and misleading” partial quote plucked from a press release that year of him saying school bonds “do nothing but inflate taxpayer bills and reduce resources for students.” A judge ordered the Orange County Registrar of Voters to immediately delete the sentence from the Argument Against Measure K signed off on by Manley and others; it would’ve otherwise appeared on official voter guides and sample ballots. 

A slim majority of Breans voted against Measure K, which set the stage for the current effort to put a bond on the ballot next year, one that came with an unexpected hurdle at the board. 

At the Nov. 18 meeting, a chance to break the impasse arrived, albeit through addition by subtraction. Flanders spoke in support of nixing health benefits and linked it to the viability of the bond passing. “We need to fight for our district’s needs, which benefit the entire community, [and] not make it about a person,” she said. “I just want to give up benefits and let’s get this thing done.” Alongside Flanders and board president Gail Lyons, trustee Nicole Colon accepts health insurance from the district. Since Lyons and Colon take cheaper benefits, the annual cost to the district is less than the $120,000 maximum figure cited by Flanders. An increasingly tense exchange between Colon and Flanders took place before trustee Keri Kropke interjected.

“This is a hostage situation,” she said. “A very wealthy man has tied benefits to this bond issue. I don’t like being extorted. And yet, I want our schools to be modernized.” 

After a spell of silence, Kropke became the third swing vote to kill board-member health benefits by 2022. The moment left much of the audience shell-shocked. Soon after, the board unanimously voted to put the bond on the ballot, and a sense of relief finally washed over Flanders’ flustered face. 

 *     *     *     *     *

A Wall of Honor plaque hangs at the Brea Museum and Historical Society. Manley’s name tops all contributors as a benefactor who has donated more than $100,000. Inside its exhibitions, the tale of Babe Ruth swatting home runs during a baseball game in town on Halloween night 1924 is well-told. Manley believes Jackson’s visit and invocation before the City Council in October will be similarly regarded in time. “This, in a hundred years, will be a big thing,” he says. Only, the council apparently didn’t appreciate the moment before them. 

“I was embarrassed that the council members and staff—not one of them—said, ‘thank you,’” Manley says. “Unbelievable.” Mayor Christine Marick did give thanks moments after Jackson concluded his invocation. 

Tiff aside, the council meeting Jackson attended and the Birch Hills vote may more immediately influence Brea’s political future and Manley’s long-term commitment to downtown. He wants to revive a dormant Brea First and remains hopeful that Brea/king News will finally launch one day. “If I’m making a difference, I want to give my all,” says Manley. “If I can’t make a difference, that’s a different question, and that’s where we’re at today.” 

He counts Birch Hills alongside the downtown parking structure as the fights that turned him around politically in Brea, calling the former a “giant fraud.” Earlier this decade, traces of arsenic and other contaminants had been found on the golf-course site. Arsenic was dug up and replanted beneath a parking lot that Chevron owns on-site. Highly concentrated polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were also removed. 

Brea stands to make $300,000 to $400,000 per year by keeping Birch Hills as a golf course. And if the city ever needed a zoning change, it’s not impossible, but it would require approval from regulatory agencies and, ultimately, Chevron under the tight agreement.

Hupp did ask questions about the land’s potential value for housing development, but the council didn’t do its due diligence, Manley says as he turns visibly irate. 

“They could have sold the back nine and collected $79 million just for that,” he says. “Because it’s a toxic dumpsite and the center was kept by Chevron, and they re-dumped all the shit in the middle, it’s for all intents and purposes way too expensive to remediate to make any money off it ever! I was devastated seeing our guardians—four of them—screw Brea. They need to pay for that. They need to never be in charge again!”

Manley denies having any desire to pursue a mixed-use development there, especially with his Mercury housing project expected to go before the planning commission next year. A proposed Hampton Inn hotel is also in the works, to be built next to the downtown parking structure. Manley describes downtown Brea as the Siamese twin of City Hall, hopelessly interconnected to each other. One way to change that relationship is through divestment, if experiences such as the Birch Hills vote continue, Manley believes. 

“I’m contemplating a lot of different things,” says Manley. “I will always have my house and property here. Will I have the downtown? I don’t know.” 

Gabriel San Román is from Anacrime. He’s a journalist, subversive historian and the tallest Mexican in OC. He also once stood falsely accused of writing articles on Turkish politics in exchange for free food from DönerG’s!

DEL MAR — Sometimes even the best jockeys make mistakes. But riders who are cream of the crop learn from their mistakes, make adjustments and win graded-stakes races like Flavien Prat showed Sunday at Del Mar.

Prat, who flew in from New York to ride Prince of Monaco, one of trainer Bob Baffert’s top 2-year-olds, won the $200,000 Grade III Best Pal Stakes aboard the son of Speightstown. He won like he’ll enjoy going longer and he figures to be tough to beat in the Grade I Del Mar Futurity on Sept. 10 if Baffert chooses to run him.

The 31-year-old Prat rode the Baffert-trained first-time starter, Elegant, in the race before the Best Pal and apologized to Baffert after the race for going too fast early. Elegant faded and finished fifth. Baffert told him to make sure he didn’t make the same mistake in the Best Pal.

Like the excellent rider he is, Prat didn’t make the same mistake. He came from fourth in the field of five to win for fun, outrunning stablemate and 1-2 favorite Muth by 4 1/4 lengths as the 9-5 second choice.

“He rode that filly (Elegant) really fast and he goes, ‘Oh boy.’ I said, ‘It’s OK. Just don’t do that on this one,’” Baffert said. “‘Just break.’ We knew the other horse (Tranche) was really quick and I was hoping he (Juan Hernandez) would lay off the pace (with Muth), but he engaged early. I saw when Prat knew what was going on, he just took back. But I liked the way the horse responded to him … he just sat there, and you put good riders on good horses. But it was really key that he rode that filly for me in the third race.”

Prat knew Prince of Monaco was a good one because Baffert phoned his agent, Brad Pegram, and told him about the colt. Like E.F. Hutton, when Baffert talks, people listen.

“I told Prat’s agent I got a really nice 2-year-old, I’ve got a pretty good group of 2-year-olds, and I think this is a (good) horse for the future,” Baffert said. “The thing is, I’ve got a good understanding with the agents. When I tell ’em I have a really good one, they’ll come ride ’em. These are two really good horses.”

Prince of Monaco ran the 6 furlongs in 1:09.19, the fastest time at the distance during the first 15 days of the 31-day meet. He’s 2 for 2 after winning his debut by eight lengths at Los Alamitos on July 9 and has earned $147,000 after picking up the winner’s share of $120,000 Sunday.

“He’s bred really well,” Baffert said. “He’s a beautiful horse, so is the other one, and they ran really fast. I hate to run those two together, but you gotta learn about them, whether to take the blinkers off and get them to relax a little bit.”

Said Prat: “Mr. Baffert called me and asked me to come out and ride a horse for him. And so here I am. He was very comfortable out there, felt good all the way. I saw the pace was hot and I just waited my turn. He’s a nice colt. And yes, I think he can run farther.”

Maybe the mile-and-a-quarter distance of the Kentucky Derby?

There’s pressure with any horse. We have a lot of responsibility, not only caring for the horses, but caring for the people who work for us. They work so hard to prepare these horses. We have a great team. We work really hard to get in this position. It’s nice when it works out.

They are very valuable horses and you want the best riders and the best people working for you.

DEL MAR — Sometimes even the best jockeys make mistakes. But riders who are cream of the crop learn from their mistakes, make adjustments and win graded-stakes races like Flavien Prat showed Sunday at Del Mar.

Prat, who flew in from New York to ride Prince of Monaco, one of trainer Bob Baffert’s top 2-year-olds, won the $200,000 Grade III Best Pal Stakes aboard the son of Speightstown. He won like he’ll enjoy going longer and he figures to be tough to beat in the Grade I Del Mar Futurity on Sept. 10 if Baffert chooses to run him.

The 31-year-old Prat rode the Baffert-trained first-time starter, Elegant, in the race before the Best Pal and apologized to Baffert after the race for going too fast early. Elegant faded and finished fifth. Baffert told him to make sure he didn’t make the same mistake in the Best Pal.

Like the excellent rider he is, Prat didn’t make the same mistake. He came from fourth in the field of five to win for fun, outrunning stablemate and 1-2 favorite Muth by 4 1/4 lengths as the 9-5 second choice.

“He rode that filly (Elegant) really fast and he goes, ‘Oh boy.’ I said, ‘It’s OK. Just don’t do that on this one,’” Baffert said. “‘Just break.’ We knew the other horse (Tranche) was really quick and I was hoping he (Juan Hernandez) would lay off the pace (with Muth), but he engaged early. I saw when Prat knew what was going on, he just took back. But I liked the way the horse responded to him … he just sat there, and you put good riders on good horses. But it was really key that he rode that filly for me in the third race.”

Prat knew Prince of Monaco was a good one because Baffert phoned his agent, Brad Pegram, and told him about the colt. Like E.F. Hutton, when Baffert talks, people listen.

“I told Prat’s agent I got a really nice 2-year-old, I’ve got a pretty good group of 2-year-olds, and I think this is a (good) horse for the future,” Baffert said. “The thing is, I’ve got a good understanding with the agents. When I tell ’em I have a really good one, they’ll come ride ’em. These are two really good horses.”

Prince of Monaco ran the 6 furlongs in 1:09.19, the fastest time at the distance during the first 15 days of the 31-day meet. He’s 2 for 2 after winning his debut by eight lengths at Los Alamitos on July 9 and has earned $147,000 after picking up the winner’s share of $120,000 Sunday.

“He’s bred really well,” Baffert said. “He’s a beautiful horse, so is the other one, and they ran really fast. I hate to run those two together, but you gotta learn about them, whether to take the blinkers off and get them to relax a little bit.”

Said Prat: “Mr. Baffert called me and asked me to come out and ride a horse for him. And so here I am. He was very comfortable out there, felt good all the way. I saw the pace was hot and I just waited my turn. He’s a nice colt. And yes, I think he can run farther.”

Maybe the mile-and-a-quarter distance of the Kentucky Derby?

There’s pressure with any horse. We have a lot of responsibility, not only caring for the horses, but caring for the people who work for us. They work so hard to prepare these horses. We have a great team. We work really hard to get in this position. It’s nice when it works out.

They are very valuable horses and you want the best riders and the best people working for you.

After an exhausting day battling to protect his family’s home in Lahaina against hurricane-like wind — it felled trees, tore apart roofs and knocked down power lines — Bryce Baraoidan figured things couldn’t get much worse.

Then he saw dense black smoke blowing his way.

Like so many others in Lahaina, who had lost electricity and internet service hours before the flames arrived Tuesday, Baraoidan and his family were completely cut off from 21st century information sources.

They had nothing to rely on but their five senses and what he called the “coconut telegraph”: friends and neighbors running up and down the street warning, “the fire’s a mile away,” “half a mile,” “a few blocks.”

When they finally made the decision to flee, they drove straight into the nightmare of what surely will go down as the deadliest traffic jam in U.S. history.

Bre Cummins, left, and Bryce Baraoidan recount their horrific experiences of surviving the raging wildfire that raced through Lahaina.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

There’s only one main road running along the coast of West Maui. To the north, it winds through steep mountains and narrows to one lane around harrowing turns perched high above the ocean. Almost nobody running for their life would choose that.

So the road south quickly became an inferno. And a graveyard.

As officials begin the grim task of sifting through the rubble and searching for the dead, arguably the easiest to spot and count are those whose lives ended

in their cars. There are stories of a couple found in each other’s arms. The bones of one man were found in the back seat on top of the bones of his beloved golden retriever.

“It was bumper to bumper, and I felt like the fire was moving a lot faster than the traffic,” Baraoidan said. “I can’t even imagine all the cars behind me that were stuck. There were so many cars behind me.”

Bryce Baraoidan captured video as he waited in a traffic jam while fire consumed the town he grew up in.

Stories of panicked people jumping into the ocean in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves are all too familiar by now, the images will probably be among the most enduring of what has become the nation’s deadliest wildfire in the last century.

“All of those people were in the traffic jam,” Baraoidan said. “All of those people jumping in the water, they were escaping their cars, escaping the heat.”

His own trip out began in haste. He and his father were originally determined to stay and fight, go down “like captains on a sinking ship,” he said, until they heard a nearby gas station explode.

They knew it was time to run. But being 26 and a product of the Instagram age, just before they left, Baraoidan strapped on a diving mask to protect his eyes, covered his nose and mouth with a bandana, and climbed on his roof to document the moment.

The resulting video is loud, chaotic and bone-chilling — his house and the entire neighborhood behind him were about to turn to ash.

It was obviously time to run.

Baraoidan grabbed his favorite jacket, a memory disk with cherished photos, and his pitbull, Dash.

The family has four vehicles, so they split up, with his mom and his dad each driving one. They abandoned the other to the flames.

In his light brown Toyota Tacoma, with his usually fearless dog turned backward in the passenger’s seat — ears down, tail between his legs and face buried in the upholstery – Baraoidan tried to steer them both to safety.

An aerial view of Lahaina days after a wind-fueled wildfire gutted the area.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

For a moment, they cruised in silence and Baraoidan felt confident they were going to be OK. “Me and my dog were just chilling,” he said. “I wasn’t too panicked, I wasn’t really shook.”

But that screaming wind, which had awakened him at 10 a.m. by slamming a piece of wood into his bedroom window and served as a relentless soundtrack all day long, soon blasted him out of his moment of peace.

Before he even reached the main road, wind-driven branches started crashing into his truck with astonishing force. “I thought my windshield was going to break at one point,” Baraoidan said.

Then he hit the traffic jam.

In another brief video he shot from the driver’s seat, brake lights block his way forward and an enormous column of rising black smoke fills his rearview mirror.

But the oncoming lane, northbound, is clear. Asked why he didn’t swing out into that lane and stomp on the accelerator, the soft-spoken Baraoidan seemed surprised.

“I feel like it was just so chaotic,” he said. If he had caused an accident, making things worse for his neighbors, “I could never forgive myself.”

And, so, like everybody else, he sat there, sandwiched between the towering West Maui mountains on his left and the sparkling Pacific Ocean on his right.

“I just did my best to, like, stay put and stay calm,” Baraoidan said.

As is so often the case in natural disasters, the survivors can’t really explain how or why luck spared them and not others. But luck was on Baradoidan’s side. The flames didn’t reach his vehicle. His whole family survived.

Their house, however, is nothing but dirt and ashes, he said. So are almost all the houses in their neighborhood.

Police urged the public to stay out of the areas where search and rescue efforts were underway, cautioning that many families who had lost loved ones had not yet been notified and that the devastated areas could have toxic particles from still-smoldering areas.

Roadblocks set up by the police are still keeping thousands of residents away from their destroyed town, but Baraoidan managed to get back in. He’ll never forget what he saw, many of those things too gruesome to describe in print.

But one indelible image he might spend the rest of his life trying to forget is of the police pulling a body out of a house and loading it into a van. “They weren’t using a body bag, they were using trash bags, because I think they don’t have any more body bags.”

As of Saturday evening, the official death toll had reached 89.

“It’s going to go way, way higher” than that, Baraoidan said.

By Sunday, the number was up to 93. So far, few have been identified. Many more remain unaccounted for — perhaps as many as 1,000 people, according to some accounts.

More than 2,200 structures have been damaged or destroyed, most of them homes. Rebuilding is expected to cost more than $5.5 billion, according to the Pacific Disaster Center and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Days after the fire broke out, firefighting crews are still working to extinguish flare-ups in the Lahaina and Upcountry Maui fires, according to Maui County officials.

Like so many others on the island, the seemingly glacial pace of the government’s response and the slow trickle of information has left Baraoidan feeling like he has to take matters into his own hands. He has joined in convoys of other locals and former neighbors to deliver all manner of supplies to Lahaina.

The way he sees it, he and his community were on their own as soon as the wind knocked the power out Tuesday morning. And they’re on their own again now.

“I don’t know what the government is doing behind the scenes, so I don’t want to assume they’re not doing anything,” Baraoidan said. “But through my eyes, and through a lot of other locals’ eyes, we are all we got right now.”

Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.

Police are searching for an unknown number of suspects who fled after robbing a bank in Brea on Friday morning, authorities said.

Officers from both Brea and Anaheim set up a perimeter near Angel Stadium around Gene Autry Way, State College Boulevard and Union Street, an area with some apartment complexes. The city of Anaheim warned nearby residents to be prepared for a “large police presence,” including SWAT officers and a helicopter.

Those in the immediate vicinity are being asked to stay inside, while visitors are being directed to avoid the immediate area.

The Anaheim Police Department said the robbers are armed and “believed to be in the area.”

Brea police initially received a call at 8:45 a.m. reporting a potential armed bank robbery at a Wells Fargo on South State College Boulevard.

When officers arrived at the scene, the suspects began to flee, according to the Brea Police Department. Police gave chase, and the suspects eventually entered the southbound 57 Freeway in Anaheim.

They exited by Angel Stadium, abandoned their car near State College Boulevard and Gene Autry Way and fled into nearby buildings, authorities said.

Anaheim police are searching buildings in the area for the suspects. Helicopters from both the Anaheim Police Department and Orange County Sheriff’s Department are assisting with the search.

Nobody was injured during the bank robbery, according to authorities.

This is the second robbery near or at a Brea bank within the last 24 hours.

On Thursday afternoon, three assailants shot a woman in the arm with a pellet gun and stole her purse after she withdrew money from a Chase bank ATM. The suspects were apprehended later that afternoon.

Back in May, the Legislature and governor of Idaho conceived of a new crime, which they called “abortion trafficking.”

The supposedly trafficked victims were pregnant minors who don’t want their parents to know they’re seeking an abortion. The state made it illegal for anyone to help them obtain an abortion, including by medical means, as well as “recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor” within the state. The law calls for jail terms of two to five years.

The law also empowers many members of the minor’s extended family — parents, siblings, the minor’s other children — and the father of the unborn child — to sue even out-of-state abortion providers for damages of $20,000 or more.

The law is a companion piece to Idaho’s almost total abortion ban. One of the harshest anti-abortion bans in the country, the law criminalizes abortions under almost all circumstances.

It was passed in 2020, to be “triggered” once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the abortion protections established by its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. That happened with the court’s infamous June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Not long after the ban was triggered, neighboring states and other abortion-rights states noticed a surge in patients from Idaho. In Washington, clinics saw a 75% increase in Idaho patients; in some clinics near the Idaho border, 4 out of 5 patients are Idahoans. Oregon providers saw a surge of as many as 300 new patients a month.

So it may be unsurprising that the anti-abortion crusaders in Idaho’s state government have moved to restrict even traveling out of state for an abortion.

Blue states, however, are fighting back. Nineteen attorneys general of blue states (including Rob Bonta of California) have signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit filed in July by abortion advocates in Boise federal court seeking to overturn the law as an unconstitutional infringement on the right to interstate travel. (The attorney general of Washington, D.C., has also signed on.)

The blue states assert that the Idaho law’s reach extends far beyond the state’s borders. The law, their brief says, “threatens to punish, and will chill, the ability of healthcare providers, counselors, and trusted adults” to provide their Idaho patients with “vital information and support about lawful healthcare” in their states.

They raise an important point. The Idaho law is an example of how anti-abortion fanatics aren’t inclined to stop at merely throwing the healthcare systems of their own states into chaos. They want to create the same anarchy nationwide. Travel restrictions are a tool in their arsenal.

Idaho’s law is the only such statute now, says Mary Ziegler, an expert on the law and politics of reproduction and healthcare at the UC Davis School of Law. “It’s worth emphasizing that it’s not likely to remain the only one. We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

The disruption is not imaginary. In March, Bonner General Hospital in Idaho’s northern panhandle announced that it would end labor and delivery services because “bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care” had driven its OB/GYN and pediatrician doctors away. Pregnant women would henceforth have to travel 46 miles for the nearest hospital obstetric services.

One device the drafters of the Idaho trafficking law employed to sow confusion is ambiguity. The law doesn’t define “recruiting” or “harboring,” or clearly set forth where liability ends and immunity to its provisions starts. If a woman in Pullman, Wash., tells her pregnant niece in Idaho where she can find a clinic in Washington, the blue states ask in their brief, “is that ‘recruitment’”? If the aunt pays for her niece’s bus ticket, “is that ‘transportation’ — or, as the Idaho law would have it, ‘trafficking’?”

The threat of civil liability poses “pretty formidable practical concerns,” Ziegler says. “If you’re a doctor in California, the chilling effect means that every time you see a patient, you have to wonder what state are they from, and are they telling you the truth?”

The Idaho law fulfills the grim prediction of the Dobbs dissent of Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen G. Breyer that interstate restrictions will “soon be in the offing…. Some States may block women from traveling out of State to obtain abortions, or even from receiving abortion medications from out of State. Some may criminalize efforts, including the provision of information or funding, to help women gain access to other States’ abortion services.”

The Idaho law makes a mockery of the assurance by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, in his Dobbs concurrence, that no state would be able to bar a resident from traveling to another state for an abortion, due to “the constitutional right to interstate travel.”

One indication of the chaos is that the red states can’t get even their own story straight. In June, 19 red-state attorneys general wrote the Department of Health and Human Services by letter to protest a proposed HHS rule prohibiting the disclosure of personal healthcare information to authorities in non-abortion states investigating abortions performed for their residents in states where they’re legal.

The proposed rule would block the disclosure of information sought for a “non-health care purpose,” such as “a criminal, civil, or administrative investigation” of any person connected with out-of-state reproductive healthcare that is legal in the state where it was provided. That sounds as though it would cover people, including out-of-state residents, who might be prosecuted in Idaho for “recruiting,” “harboring” or “transporting” minors subject to the law.

According to the letter, which was instigated by Mississippi Atty. Gen. Lynn Fitch, the Biden administration was pushing “a false narrative that States are seeking to treat pregnant women as criminals or punish medical personnel who provide lifesaving care.” The letter called that narrative a “lie.”

Is that so? Not a few cases in which pregnant women are treated as criminals or threatened with prosecution have arisen in anti-abortion states.

In South Carolina in March, a woman was arrested and charged with having induced her own abortion with medication. South Carolina Atty. Gen. Alan Wilson signed the red states’ letter. Last month in Nebraska, a 19-year-old woman was sentenced to jail for the crime of disposing of her fetus after an abortion, a transparent effort to prosecute her for the abortion itself. Nebraska Atty. Gen. Mike Hilgers signed the letter.

In Alabama, as the indefatigable abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti reports, the office of Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall has let it be known that the state’s chemical endangerment law, which purportedly protects unborn fetuses, could be wielded against women who undergo medication abortions. Marshall signed the letter.

In Texas last year, a 26-year-old woman was charged with murder after a “self-induced” abortion. The charge was ultimately dropped. Texas’ acting attorney general, John Scott, signed the letter.

As for seeking to “punish medical personnel,” the Idaho law, thanks to its manifold ambiguities, raises exactly such a prospect. Idaho Atty. Gen. Raúl Labrador signed the letter.

One open question is why the conservative states are so determined to maintain their access to out-of-state medical records.

The fact that the conservative attorneys general are fighting the HHS rule “suggests that there’s interest in using out-of-state medical records, even if we haven’t seen that happen yet,” Ziegler says.

Their letter doesn’t make much of a case for the records’ importance. It offers an example in which “state officials had reason to believe that an abortion provider deliberately performed an abortion in violation of state law … and referred the woman to an out-of-state provider to cover it up.”

State officials would have grounds to investigate the provider, the letter says. The purportedly illicit activities, however, would have occurred in-state, not outside their state lines.

The states also suggest that blocking them from obtaining out-of-state medical records might prevent them from investigating child abuse. But the HHS rule protects information related to activities that are illegal inside a state but lawful in another state. “There are no states that I’m aware of where child abuse is legal,” Ziegler says.

The red states also say the proposed HHS rule would hamper their efforts to block gender-affirming care for adolescents. That might seem a positive outcome (unless you’re a red-state anti-transgender fanatic).

As Ziegler says, this is only the start of what the Dobbs ruling, abetted by fanatical legislators, has unleashed. California and other blue states have taken steps to cement abortion rights into their laws and constitutions and to protect their healthcare providers from harassment from out of state, but their task is not going to get any easier.

HOUSTON — After acknowledging that some of his issues over the past couple weeks were the result of fatigue, Shohei Ohtani has asked Manager Phil Nevin to skip his next turn in the rotation.

The Angels’ two-way star was scheduled to start on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers. His next start will now be the following week, in one of the games at home against the Cincinnati Reds.

“He knows his body better than anybody,” Nevin said. “I trust him when he talks about it. He’s assured me that there’s no pain. There’s no injury. It’s just he’s got some regular arm fatigue that some go through at times. I trust him when he tells me this and he’ll be ready for his next time out.”

Nevin said Ohtani will continue to DH. He also said he doesn’t think Ohtani’s recent dip at the plate is related to fatigue. Ohtani hasn’t hit a homer since Aug. 3. His double on Saturday was hit at 118.3 mph, the hardest he has hit a ball this season.

“He feels good at the plate, feels healthy swinging the bat,” Nevin said. “He’s just got some normal arm fatigue that happens sometimes.”

Ohtani said he wasn’t satisfied with how he pitched on Wednesday against the San Francisco Giants, even though he did not allow an earned run in six innings.

“I think everyone’s going through the peak of their fatigue right now around this time of the year,” Ohtani said through his interpreter after Wednesday’s game. “I’m not the only one. Going into the off day tomorrow. See how I feel the next day. If I feel like I need a day or two, I’ll talk to him about it.”

His start on Aug. 3 was cut short by cramping, and he also came out of the lineup with cramping issues on July 27 and July 28.

Ohtani has pitched 130-2/3 innings over 22 starts so far this season, with a 3.17 ERA. Even skipping his next start, he could still take the ball seven more times, which would surpass last year’s total of 28 starts. He is also likely to pitch more than the 166 innings he worked in 2022.

“If you told me he’d miss one start all year at the beginning of the year, I’ll take that,” Nevin said, “because I know that means he’s healthy all season long.”

Patrick Sandoval will start on Monday in Texas, with Lucas Giolito starting on Tuesday. The Angels have not decided who will pitch on Wednesday. It could be Griffin Canning, who was just activated from the injured list on Sunday. Canning was listed in the bullpen for Sunday’s game, because the Angels needed a reliever who could provide multiple innings of coverage.

ANOTHER TURN FOR DETMERS?

Nevin said the Angels haven’t decided for certain if struggling left-hander Reid Detmers will start in the coming turn through the rotation, but he hasn’t ruled it out.

In fact, Nevin said they could bring Detmers back on Wednesday, which would be four days rest instead of the five that the Angels prefer for their starters. Detmers threw 48 pitches on Friday night, getting knocked out in the third inning with seven runs allowed.

Detmers has a 10.30 ERA in his last six starts.

“I know the struggles and what he’s been through,” Nevin said. “But this guy is very valuable for our organization. This is a growing pain for him. He’s got to go through it. I have been on record saying this point in the year we can’t afford to let guys play through some struggles. But with Reid, I just think that there’s things that need to be fixed. There’s things that he’s gonna get better at. And I anticipate that coming soon. Maybe it’s getting out there quicker than he normally is because of the low pitch count the other day.”

NOTES

Left-hander Kenny Rosenberg was optioned to create a spot for Canning. Rosenberg pitched five innings of relief on Friday, so he would not have been able to pitch again for a few days. …

First baseman C.J. Cron was out of the lineup because of stiffness in his lower back. Cron said he’s been dealing with it all season. He said he’s hoping he can be back in the lineup on Monday.

UP NEXT

Angels (LHP Patrick Sandoval, 6-8, 3.86) vs. Rangers (RHP Max Scherzer, 11-4, 3.88), Monday, 5:05 p.m., Globe Life Field, Bally Sports West, 830 AM.

Ever since the United States adopted a public school system that is run by local elected school boards, we’ve witnessed disputes about curriculum. There’s no avoiding such problems given the importance of education and vast differences of opinion about how it should be accomplished. The political nature of the system assures contention. State involvement exacerbates the conflicts.

Currently, Americans are engaged in the latest grudge matches centering on local educational matters. The highest-profile fights are in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis implemented a rule banning curriculum that deals with sexual orientation or gender identity. In California, the state has mandated “sexual health curriculum” since 2016 and more recently approved a social-studies curriculum with a gay-rights element.

While critics have overstated the significance of both laws, it’s clear state politicians with partisan agendas have imposed their visions on the classroom. At the local level, school boards typically have been dominated by left-leaning teachers’ unions, but conservatives have been electing their own candidates to office to push back against gender and racial policies.

The latest California fracas involves efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to stop right-leaning Southern California school boards from implementing their agenda. Before we get into the details, remember this is nothing new.

“In the first place, God made idiots,” quipped author Mark Twain in 1897. “That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” The Scopes “monkey trial” was in 1925. The state of Tennessee prosecuted a local teacher for violating a law that forbid the teaching of evolution in public schools. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected such bans.

This month, Bonta announced an investigation of the Chino Valley Unified School District’s policy adopted last month that requires school officials to notify parents if their child identifies as transgender. Thurmond, who had little to say when his union allies were delaying post-COVID school re-openings, spoke at the July board meeting and was ejected from the meeting as parents yelled “kick him out.”

For his part, Newsom had threatened the Temecula Valley Unified School district with a $1.5-million fine after it rejected that above-mentioned social-studies curriculum because it included materials that mentioned Harvey Milk, the state’s first openly gay elected official. After bitter words between the board president and the governor, the board approved the curriculum last month to avoid a legal battle.

We believe that Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond are overstepping their bounds, whatever the merits of the local boards’ decisions. The latest state test scores show dramatic declines in academic achievement. These officials have more important education-related matters to address. The only people who benefit from these battles are politicians, not students.

California Democrats are engaging in a transparent attempt to score political points with their progressive base. But conservatives are relishing these battles, also. Politico found that Bonta’s investigation is “is exactly the kind of thing the conservative board (in Chino) wanted.” Republican lawmakers have taken up the issue in the state Capitol.

Such hot-button cultural grandstanding is not improving education. The best approach is to reduce politics in the school systems by expanding public school choice and private options so that parents can decide where to send their kids — rather than fighting endless political battles over policies and curriculum.

Hawaii’s attorney general announced Friday the launch of a probe that will examine the overall response to the devastating wildfire in Maui, where 80 people have died and another 1,000 remain missing.

In a statement, Atty. Gen. Anne Lopez indicated her office would examine the policies and key decisions this week that influenced the response to the deadly inferno.

“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” Lopez said in a statement. “As we continue to support all aspects of the ongoing relief effort, now is the time to begin this process of understanding.”

A brush fire broke out Tuesday morning, prompting evacuations in Lahaina, a historic town of about 13,000 people in West Maui. Although officials declared it “100% contained” around 10 a.m. that day, the blaze flared up around 3:30 p.m.

Fanned by strong winds on account of Hurricane Dora, the blaze engulfed homes in the upper area and moved toward the coast.

As Lahaina burned, the two ways of exiting the area were closed or blocked off.

Some residents appeared to have received warnings to evacuate, while others did not. Hawaii has a network of outdoor sirens, but neither the state nor the county activated them on Tuesday, said Adam Weintraub, a spokesperson for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. Instead, officials issued wireless emergency alerts to mobile phones, alerts via a local emergency notification system, and radio and television alerts.

With power outages and other damage to the telecommunications infrastructure, however, many residents were left in the dark or moved too late to successfully evacuate.

The high risk of wildfires was well known by officials in the days leading up to the outbreak on Maui.

The National Weather Service warned of “high fire danger” last Friday, given the dry weather and “strong and gusty trade winds.”

Times staff writers Rong-Gong Lin II, Alexandra E. Petri and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

After gently placing the rockfish onto the table, Dwight Hwang paints the top layer of fish with a light layer of onyx Japanese sumi ink. Next, he carefully presses a delicate sheet of washi (mulberry paper) over the fish’s scaly surface to make a print in a video for Positively Groundfish, a nonprofit educating consumers about West Coast fisheries.

“It’s essentially the Japanese version of taxidermy,” says Hwang, a Korean American artist and fluent Japanese speaker, about the Japanese art form of gyotaku — “fish rubbing” in Japanese — a way that local fishermen would commemorate their catches before eating the fish. “Photography was limited, and this 19th-century practice is a faithfully recorded document.”

The art form is simple but difficult to master. First, paint one side of the fish with sumi ink, place washi paper atop, then use your fingers to press over the surface to make a print. Hwang sticks to three traditional ingredients to remain faithful to the classical technique he’s lovingly borrowed from another culture: “the ink, the paper, and the fish.” He restricts himself from fixing mistakes or adding embellishments besides painting in the eye. His deceased fish models are mostly sourced from fishmongers and commercial captains such as Rex Ito at Primetime Seafood and Tommy Gomes.

Dwight Hwang, helped by his wife, Hazel, lowers a piece of calligraphy paper onto a sheephead that has been painted with ink.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

Dwight Hwang paints a sheephead with ink.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

His marine-focused art has gained fans among restaurateurs, art collectors and hotels such as the Four Seasons Sensei Lanai in Hawaii and Wynn Las Vegas. Through his work, he shares his passion for the sea and highlights the Japanese cultural love and admiration for simple, fleeting pleasures while sparking conversations about the vulnerability of marine life due to human interference and our changing oceans.

“I love anything fish related; it’s how I’m wired,” says Hwang. During a seven-year stint in Tokyo as a film storyboard artist, he was excited to discover gyotaku prints displayed in sushi restaurants and tackle shops. He became obsessed with the art form, learning techniques in his free time from YouTube videos. “It took about three years for me to finally get something that looked like a fish,” he said. “That’s when it started to get exciting.”

Finding this new passion made him realize that, after working for more than 20 years in the movie industry, he was burned out and rarely saw his kid. After his wife, Hazel Hwang, persuaded him to pursue gyotaku as a career, his first client was Patagonia, which purchased his “Trout Leaping Towards Dragonfly” piece for the book cover of “Simple Fly Fishing” in 2018.

Hwang’s naturalistic artwork reminds the fly-fishing reader to be more “mindful that fishing isn’t possible without a healthy river system,” says Karla Olson, books publisher at Patagonia. “We want readers to recognize the need to protect the places where they play — many of which are under threat.”

That first piece led to a multicity tour teaching gyotaku workshops at Patagonia stores, exposing new audiences to the art form. In Toronto, Hwang collaborated with local marine biologists and activists to highlight an epidemic of “salmon milking,” in which migrating female salmon are killed for their eggs. “I saw pictures of salmon carcasses with bellies ripped open, littering local riverbanks, parks and trails. Patagonia wanted us to print one of these desecrated salmon in front of an audience,” says Hwang.

That salmon was tough to print, with bloody exposed wounds and guts. With the help of his wife, he printed the fish from a bottom-angled perspective to highlight the cut belly, which is more complex than the traditional technique of printing the flattest side of the fish. The resulting piece is haunting, the delicate black and white fish deformed with jarring splotches of dangling brown guts.

Dwight Hwang, lifts the dorsal fin of a sheephead as he applies the inked marking.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

Other times, his art is more uplifting, as with a print of California’s critically endangered giant sea bass.

“The artwork starts a wonderful dialogue, not only because of its endangered status but for the excellent conservation work,” says Hwang.

That conservation work has helped giant sea bass numbers rebound so much since 2004, when they were first listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, that some marine researchers have recommended reevaluating their status.

Although obscure in the United States, gyotaku, a form of taxidermy originally practiced by fishermen to commemorate their catches, is common in Japan. Here are two of Dwight Hwang’s gyotaku works.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

“I try to work with artists like Dwight who can translate our data in a way that’s accessible,” says Sarah L. Mesnick, ecologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries division Fisheries, who collaborates with artists to create educational and outreach materials. “Scientists can tell you about sardines, anchovy and mackerel, but it’s just a long list of names and data. By coupling our scientific work with artists, we can transmit messages in a format the public finds fun and fascinating, so I see art as a bridge between science and the public.”

Hwang made a particularly visceral piece in collaboration with scientists in 2022 after a rare and monstrous angler fish washed up in Newport Beach. There are only about 30 specimens in collections worldwide, but this was the third time one had appeared on a beach in California in a couple of years.

“The fish is bizarre, both cute and demonic, and the texture feels like you’re dipping your hands into jello covered in cactus spines. It’s really weird, and printing it is particularly challenging; it’s as if the fish doesn’t want to be printed,” says Hwang.

His work was displayed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, inspiring discussion about why the anglerfish keeps washing up in California. “It also brings up the vast mysteries of the ocean and the world, reminding us that there is a larger world of organisms besides us,” says Hwang.

Besides the riddles of the ocean, Hwang’s work often hits closer to the heart, as when he and his wife went to La Jolla to print the eye of a deceased dolphin calf, which looks similar to a human eye.

Dwight Hwang stamps his signature on one of his art pieces.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

Dwight Hwang poses with some of his gyotaku art.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

At a Santa Barbara Maritime Museum exhibit featuring the eye print in 2019, Hwang observed visitors discussing the calf’s death. “Some mourned the baby dolphin, but plenty of folks related to the mother, who has to live with the memory of her baby’s death,” says Hwang.

Although his work is meant to remind viewers to value life’s fleeting moments, it’s also reoriented his own priorities.

“I’m my own boss and spend 24-7 with my wife and kid, a huge contrast from being on sets from 12 to 16 hours per day,” Hwang says.

His 10-year-old son Weston is also well-versed in gyotaku. “During public demos and workshops, he’s right next to me, helping out and advising,” Hwang says. “I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

The city of Los Angeles has agreed to pay millions of dollars in refunds for six years’ worth of allegedly inflated sewer charges. And if you’re still a customer of the city’s sewer services, here’s the good news: If you qualify, your refund will come to you automatically.

If you’re a former customer who qualifies for the refund, you’ll have to apply for the money. How large a refund you receive will depend on how much water you used during the falls and winters from May 2016 to June 2022.

How do you know if you qualify?

The money — which comes from a settlement to a class-action lawsuit that Superior Court Judge Stuart M. Rice has preliminarily approved — is solely for current or former residential customers whose homes have or had one meter tracking all their water use, rather than separate meters for indoors and outdoors. And within that group, the settlement applies just to people with four or fewer units not classified by L.A. Sanitation as “multiple dwellings.”

At issue is how the city estimates its customers’ use of the city sewers. With no meters on houses directly measuring sewer use, L.A. Sanitation has to estimate that amount. That estimate is based on how much water a customer receives from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and it relies on a crucial assumption: that the sewers receive all the DWP-delivered water a customer uses indoors and none of the water used outdoors.

For homes that rely on a single meter for their water use, however, the city has to come up with a second estimate, this time for how much water these customers use indoors versus outdoors. The outdoor amount is then excluded from the sewer charge. In a winter with a lot of rain, the city assumes that none of its customers use DWP water on their lawns or outdoor plants — all of it is used indoors, and all of it winds up in the sewers.

Most winters don’t have a lot of rain, though, so that’s when the city relies on something called the Dry Winter Compensation Factor to ratchet up the amount of estimated outdoor use. That, in turn, lowers sewer bills.

According to the lawsuit, the Los Angeles municipal code says the compensation factor is supposed to kick in when too little rain falls in the winter to eliminate the need for outdoor watering. But L.A. Sanitation based the multiplier not on rainfall data and the amount of water needed for outdoor use, but on financial projections and the amount of revenue needed by the city, the lawsuit alleges.

As a consequence, the lawsuit alleges, the city underestimated outdoor water use, overcharging customers whose outdoor use wasn’t metered separately.

In agreeing to settle the case, the city didn’t admit to any of the plaintiffs’ accusations. Instead, it established a $57.5-million fund to cover the settlement. When attorney fees, court costs and taxes are paid, the rest of the fund will be divided among L.A. Sanitation customers after the settlement receives final approval. A hearing before Rice is set for Dec. 20 in Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles.

If you want to object to all or a portion of the pending settlement, you must do so in writing, and the claims administrator must receive your objection by Nov. 29. For more information on how to file an objection, see the notice on the settlement site.

If you are an L.A. Sanitation customer eligible for a refund, how much you receive will depend on two variables: how many people qualify for refunds (only people who were overcharged by a total of $10 or more are eligible), and how much you were overcharged. The fund will be divided among the qualified claimants on a pro rata basis, depending on how much they were overcharged. In other words, a customer whose overpayments amounted to 0.01% of the total overpayments would receive 0.01% of the settlement fund.

If you’re a current customer and want to accept the settlement amount, you don’t have to apply for your refund. According to the settlement website, the settlement’s claims administrator will send a check to the address the city has on file after the court gives the settlement its final approval and any appeals are resolved.

If you are a former customer, you’ll have to submit a claim form. You can do that online through the settlement website, or you can have a form mailed to you by calling the claims administrator at (877) 390-3368.

And if you would like to opt out of the settlement — which you would have to do if you want to file your own lawsuit against the city over this issue — you must do so in writing, and the claims administrator must receive your request by Nov. 29. Instructions on how to do so can also be found in the notice on the settlement website.

INGLEWOOD — Here are some takeaways from the Rams’ 34-17 preseason loss to the Chargers.

Tomlinson shines

With the few defensive backs with actual experience — Jordan Fuller, Cobie Durant, John Johnson III — in street clothes and Derion Kendrick still nursing his hamstring, the Rams instead tested out Tre Tomlinson and Robert Rochell at outside corner, Quentin Lake and Russ Yeast at safety and Jordan Jones at the star spot.

Tomlinson — a sixth-round pick — was the clear standout.

He made a physical play on the receiver to break up a third-down pass on the opening drive, then made a good tackle in the run game the next time on the field. He was physical on a deep pass to former TCU teammate and first-round pick Quentin Johnston, then denied Terrell Bynum on his attempt to run to the corner of the end zone at the end of the second quarter.

Rochell was more inconsistent on the opposite side of the field, but made a good tackle at the point of the catch in the red zone in the second quarter.

The undrafted rookie Jones likewise had an up and down evening. He was beat by tight end Donald Parham on the second drive across the middle of the field, then lost Keelan Doss downfield on the next play. But he had a good open-field tackle of Parham to hold him to a two-yard gain later in the first half and led the Rams with five tackles at halftime.

O-line dud

For all the talk of competition along the offensive front, it was a bit anticlimactic on Saturday.

Joseph Noteboom — competing at both left tackle and right guard — did not play, nor did either of the Rams’ top-two centers, Brian Allen and Coleman Shelton. Alaric Jackson started at left tackle, but left the game after two series.

With starting right tackle Rob Havenstein sitting out the game, backup Logan Bruss struggled in pass protection in his absence. He was beat badly on a third-down passing play, and his man flattened quarterback Brett Rypien. He also was called for a false start in the second half that turned third-and-manageable into 10 yards to gain.

Bennett up and down

Speaking of quarterbacks, Rypien started at quarterback as the Rams searched for Matthew Stafford’s backup. He completed all three of his passes for 11 yards on the first drive, then was sacked on third down and missed his last three attempts.

When he came in for the fourth series, rookie Stetson Bennett IV flirted with disaster. His first pass to Ben Skowronek took too long to get out of his hands and was nearly intercepted with no one between Deane Leonard and the end zone. Bennett nearly threw the ball to the Chargers again on his third pass as he tried to get rid of it rather than take a sack at the end of a scramble.

But Bennett shook off those mistakes, much like he did for much of training camp. He found fellow rookie Nacua on a slant for 17 yards to steady his nerves, then hit Skowronek on an out route for a first down. After a wonky stay in the red zone, Bennett stepped up in the pocket to find Nacua in traffic at the goal line for a touchdown.

Bennett’s fluctuations continued into the third quarter. One play he threw behind Tyler Johnson, then the next drive he hit the same receiver in stride for a 34-yard gain. Bennett finished the game completing 17 of 29 passes for 191 yards and a touchdown.

Not quiet on the defensive front

The defensive line was without the resting Aaron Donald on Saturday, but still gave the Rams reason for pause.

The Chargers were able to run with ease, at one point carrying the ball seven times to start a drive with no resistance from the Rams. The Chargers averaged 5.8 yards per carry in the first half, the longest coming in at 13 yards.

As for a bright spot, it was the play of third-round pick Kobie Turner. Working mostly inside, he created good third-down press to force an incompletion in the first half, then forced a holding call that negated a long touchdown run in the third.

Kicker watch

Rookie placekicker Tanner Brown was good on both his PAT attempts, but sailed the ball wide left on a 46-yard field goal in the second half. He recovered to drill a 39-yarder down the middle in the fourth quarter.

Living on the edge

Rookie outside linebacker Byron Young did a nice job shedding his blocker for a third-down sack in the first half, though his overzealousness led to it being overturned by a facemask penalty. Second-year OLB Keir Thomas II bull rushed through the right tackle on a third-quarter play for a sack. Likewise, Daniel Hardy blew past the left tackle for a third-down sack on the next drive.

Thomas was beat badly around the edge to open the fourth quarter as Elijah Dotson ran 37 yards for a touchdown.

HOUSTON — The Angels still have a long way to go to catch up to the Houston Astros.

Tyler Anderson was torched for seven runs in the Angels’ 11-3 loss to the Astros on Saturday, their ninth loss in 12 games against Houston so far this season.

The Angels have scored 4.6 runs per game against Astros, which is around their overall average. The problem has been their 6.84 ERA against the defending World Series champions.

“They’re good,” Manager Phil Nevin said. “They’ve certainly had our number. Absolutely. It’s no fun coming into one place and getting beat, but we’ve got a big one tomorrow. The last time we were here (in June) we got it handed to us the first few days and came out and played a good ballgame and won 2-1 on Sunday.”

The Angels did salvage the final game of that four-game series, and they’ll look to right-hander Chase Silseth to get them out of Houston with a win this time. Silseth has pitched well lately, but Anderson had pitched well coming into this game.

And he pitched well this time at the start. For the first three innings, he faced the minimum nine hitters.

“The first three innings was as good of stuff as he’s had all year,” Nevin said. “The changeup was a difference maker in those three innings. Just the location with it in the fourth and fifth, he just lost command of it.”

In the fourth, Anderson walked José Altuve. Alex Bregman lined a double into left center. Yordan Alvarez singled up the middle, driving in a run. Anderson then threw a changeup over the inside corner to left-handed hitting Kyle Tucker, who pulled it over the right field fence for a three-run homer.

Anderson retired the next five hitters, but the top four in the order got him again in the fifth, all after there were two outs and nobody on base.

Altuve doubled. Bregman and Alvarez walked. Tucker singled.

“It’s a good part of the lineup, obviously, and they’ve been swinging the bat well,” Anderson said. “They hit some good pitches and then I made a couple mistakes and didn’t get away with either one of them in that situation.”

Two final runs were tacked on to Anderson’s line when Yainer Diaz singled against Dominic Leone, putting the Angels in a 7-1 hole.

Anderson, who is in the first year of a three-year, $39-million deal, has a 5.28 ERA through 21 games.

The Astros completed the blowout with four runs in the eighth against Jaime Barria. The Angels are now likely to make a roster move before Sunday’s game because neither Barria nor Kenny Rosenberg — who worked five innings in Friday’s blowout — will be available for long relief.

The Angels also will need to re-evaluate first baseman C.J. Cron, who came out of Saturday’s game with back tightness. Nevin said Cron had been dealing with the issue, and he didn’t like the way he looked when he was moving in the box during his sixth-inning at-bat, so he took him out. Cron is likely to get Sunday off, at least.

If the Angels are going to get out of town with a victory, it would help to not fall behind by so much. Anderson gave up four runs in the fourth on Saturday, after Reid Detmers gave up five in the second on Friday.

“Playing from behind like this, it’s different at-bats,” Nevin said. “The pitcher on the other side has a different mindset. It’s tough to go up there and take at-bats. All in all, it just wasn’t a good game for us at all.”