California bills encourage fire home-hardening with grants, tax breaks

• February 26, 2025

Southern California lawmakers have filed two bills creating incentives for homeowners to “harden” their properties against wildfires.

A measure authored by state Sen. Steven Choi, R-Irvine, would create tax credits for half the cost of installing upgrades such as fire-resistant roofs, siding, vents, decks and fences or for thinning vegetation.

“Anyone who chooses to make their home harder for the wildfire, such as fuel modification, managing the bushes around the house, or whatever, … they will get the tax credit,” Choi said. “This will be a tax incentives for them to do so.”

Another measure authored by Assemblymember Lisa Calderon, D-Whittier, authorizes the state Department of Insurance to create a grant program to reimburse property owners for installing fire-resistant roofs or creating a 5-foot noncombustible zone around their homes.

See also: California rules will require more fire resistant homes in Palisades, Altadena

Calderon’s bill, which is backed by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, also provides grants for community-wide wildfire mitigation projects.

“This legislation aims to create safer homes and communities by providing state-tax-free funds to help residents purchase fire-rated roofs and develop non-ignition zones around their properties,” the insurance department said in a recent statement.

Funding for the grants would come from a portion of “premium” taxes paid by insurance companies.

Both bills were introduced in the wake of the deadly wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles County in January, destroying more than 16,000 homes, businesses and other structures in Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

See also: Wildfire recovery costs raise questions about L.A.’s 2028 Olympic priorities 

Driven by hurricane-force winds, embers from the Palisades and Eaton fires hopscotched for miles into vulnerable neighborhoods, igniting wood fences and vegetation or flying through outdated vents and setting homes on fire.

Concrete or brick steps, walls and chimneys are practically all that remain of vast swaths of both communities, which are dominated by older homes.

Almost 80% of Altadena homes were at least 65 years old, U.S. Census figures show. More than 70% of Pacific Palisades homes were at least 45 years old.

And more than 90% of the homes in both communities were built before fire-hardening measures were added to the state building code in the late 2000s.

Homes built today in “very high fire hazard severity zones” must have fire-resistant roofs made from “Class A” asphalt shingles, cement or clay tiles or metal.

Exterior walls must be able to withstand heat and flames for up to an hour. Vents must have ember-blocking features to keep fires from igniting in attics or under foundations. And windows must have two panes, at least one of them made from shatter-proof, tempered glass.

To qualify for the tax credit or a home-hardening grant under either bill, residents would have to live in a wildfire hazard zone.

Choi’s tax credits — which can be used to offset state income tax payments — would be capped at $2,500 for an owner’s primary residence in “moderate” hazard zones; $5,000 for primary residences in “high” hazard zones; and $10,000 for primary residents in “very high” hazard zones.

Tax credits would be available for projects completed in 2026 through 2030 for homeowners earning no more than $70,000 a year for single filers, or no more than $140,000 for couples filing joint returns.

The tax credit program would be capped at $500 million per year, and homeowners must “reserve” their credit with the Franchise Tax Board to qualify.

Calderon’s home-hardening grants would only be available to low-income homeowners living in ZIP codes that include high or very high fire hazard zones.

The income limit to receive grants for a four-person household is $82,000 a year in the Inland Empire, $110,950 in L.A. County and $126,250 in Orange County.

​ Orange County Register 

Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang looks at how words inspired an immigrant revolution in new play

• February 26, 2025

With touches of magic realism, historical drama, a bilingual storyline and even a ghost, Tim Robbins’ Culver City-based The Actors’ Gang looks at the story of immigrants who rolled cigars as they were read stories from famous authors on the factory floor, leading to a revolutionary movement.

Written and directed by Brazilian-born playwright Mariana Da Silva, under the guidance of Robbins, “Ybor City” opens Saturday, March 1 and runs through April 5 at the Actor’s Gang theater in Culver City. Previews are scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 27 and Friday, Feb. 28

“This tells the story of marginalized people from another country that are making a way for themselves in the United States, and doing so with dignity. That for me is an inspiring story. It’s a story of immigrants and it’s a story that shows the intelligence and poetry and beauty of a community,” said the Oscar-winning actor, who is the company’s artistic director.

Based on real historical events, the 90-minute play was inspired by Ybor City, a Florida town that in the early 1900s became a key hub for cigar production, attracting a vibrant community of diverse immigrants, including Cubans, Italians, and Spaniards. Featuring narratives in both English and Spanish, with supertitles projected for the audience, the play marks The Actor’s Gang first bilingual production.

“There’s no denying Spanish is such a beautifully lyrical and musical language. And we have such a large community in Los Angeles of bilingual people and I’m always excited to have new people come discover us at the Actors’ Gang,” Robbins said.

The play tells the story of workers who hand-rolled and stuffed hundreds of cigars a day, which was a tedious process. To stay entertained and informed, the workers hired readers to read them books like Miguel de Cervantes’ classic “Don Quixote” on the factory floor. But when a mysterious spiritual entity begins to influence the reader system, it leads to rising workplace tensions as the workers become more educated about their rights. Then, after a shocking death in one of the factories, Nena, a grieving employee, emerges as the first female reader and reluctant leader of a revolutionary movement.

“They began at some point reading things that would cause uprisings within the community because they were getting more educated”, said Da Silva, who also stars in the play as Nena.

The touch of magic realism comes from the ghost in the factory who starts influencing what’s being read by the reader, which includes books as well as newspaper articles.

“They’re reading news articles from 1932 that are very similar to what we are reading right now about mass deportation, all these big themes. So the play has a big conversation between our community and how it’s been treated here in America,” she said. “So I think the play is a call to action. I always tell people it’s a protest play.”

For Robbins it’s also a play about bringing people together and inspiring conversations.

“I love it when people leave the theater saying ‘I want to tell that story too,’” Robbins said.

‘Ybor City’

When: March 1-April 5 with previews Feb. 27-28

Where: The Actors’ Gang Theater, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City

Tickets: $35

Information: www.theactorsgang.com

​ Orange County Register 

Trump administration creates registry for immigrants who are in the US illegally

• February 26, 2025

By REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is creating a registry for all people who are in the United States illegally, and those who don’t self-report could face fines or prosecution, immigration officials announced Tuesday.

Everyone who is in the U.S. illegally must register, give fingerprints and provide an address, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. It cited a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act — the complex immigration law — as justification for the registration process, which would apply to anyone 14 and older.

The announcement comes as the administration seeks to make good on campaign promises to carry out mass deportations of people in the country illegally and seal the border to future asylum-seekers.

“An alien’s failure to register is a crime that could result in a fine, imprisonment, or both,” the statement said. “For decades, this law has been ignored — not anymore.”

On its website, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service said it would soon create a form and process for registration.

In one of his 10 inauguration day executive orders related to immigration, President Donald Trump initially outlined plans for creating a registry and required that Homeland Security “immediately announce and publicize information about the legal obligation of all previously unregistered aliens in the United States to comply.”

It was not immediately clear how many people living in the country illegally would voluntarily come forward and give the federal government information about who they are and where they’re living. But failure to register would be considered a crime, and the administration has said its initial priority target for deportation is people who’ve committed crimes in the U.S.

The National Immigration Law Center, an immigration advocacy group, said in a posting on its website before the Tuesday night announcement that “the Alien Registration Act of 1940 is the only time the U.S. government carried out a comprehensive campaign to require all noncitizens to register.”

The organization said under that process, people had to go to their local post office to register, and the goal was to identify “potential national security threats broadly characterized as communist or subversive.”

The group warned that the registry was meant to help find potential targets for deportation.

“Any attempt by the Trump administration to create a registration process for noncitizens previously unable to register would be used to identify and target people for detention and deportation,” the organization said.

​ Orange County Register 

US and Ukraine near an economic deal with mineral rights but no security promise, officials say

• February 26, 2025

By SUSIE BLANN, HANNA ARHIROVA and VASILISA STEPANENKO, Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine and the U.S. have reached an agreement on a framework for a broad economic deal that would include access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, three senior Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.

The officials, who were familiar with the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One of them said that Kyiv hopes that signing the agreement will ensure the continued flow of U.S. military support that Ukraine urgently needs.

The agreement could be signed as early as Friday and plans are being drawn up for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to travel to Washington to meet President Donald Trump, according to one of the Ukrainian officials.

Another official said the agreement would provide an opportunity for Zelenskyy and Trump to discuss continued military aid to Ukraine, which is why Kyiv is eager to finalize the deal.

Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he’d heard that Zelenskyy was coming and added that “it’s okay with me, if he’d like to, and he would like to sign it together with me.”

Trump called it a big deal that could be worth a trillion dollars. “It could be whatever, but it’s rare earths and other things.”

According to one Ukrainian official, some technical details are still to be determined. However, the draft does not include a contentious Trump administration proposal to give the U.S. $500 billion worth of profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv.

Instead, the U.S. and Ukraine would have joint ownership of a fund, and Ukraine would in the future contribute 50% of future proceeds from state-owned resources, including minerals, oil, and gas. One official said the deal had better terms of investments and another one said that Kyiv secured favorable amendments and viewed the outcome as “positive.”

The deal does not, however, include security guarantees. One official said that this would be something the two presidents would discuss when they meet.

The progress in negotiating the deal comes after Trump and Zelenskyy traded sharp rhetoric last week about their differences over the matter.

Zelenskyy said he balked at signing off on a deal that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed during a visit to Kyiv earlier this month, and the Ukrainian leader objected again days later during a meeting in Munich with Vice President JD Vance because the American proposal did not include security guarantees.

Trump then called Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a dictator without elections” and claimed his support among voters was near rock-bottom.

But the two sides made significant progress during a three-day visit to Ukraine last week by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.

The idea was initially proposed last fall by Zelenskyy as part of his plan to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in future negotiations with Moscow.

​ Orange County Register 

Teachers union sues over Trump administration’s deadline to end school diversity programs

• February 26, 2025

By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new federal lawsuit in Maryland is challenging a Trump administration memo giving the nation’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate “race-based” practices of any kind or risk losing their federal money.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Sociological Association, says the Education Department’s Feb. 14 memo violates the First and Fifth Amendments. Forcing schools to teach only the views supported by the federal government amounts to a violation of free speech, the organizations say, and the directive is so vague that schools don’t know what practices cross the line.

“This letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence,” the lawsuit said. “No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.”

The memo, formally known as a Dear Colleague Letter, orders schools and universities to stop any practice that treats people differently because of their race, giving a deadline of this Friday. As a justification, it cites a Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions, saying the ruling applies more broadly to all federally funded education.

President Donald Trump’s administration is aiming to end what the memo described as widespread discrimination in education, often against white and Asian American students.

At stake is a sweeping expansion of the Supreme Court ruling, which focused on college admissions policies that considered race as a factor when admitting students. In the Feb. 14 memo, the Education Department said it interprets the ruling to apply to admissions, hiring, financial aid, graduation ceremonies and “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”

The lawsuit says the Education Department is applying the Supreme Court decision too broadly and overstepping the agency’s authority. It takes issue with a line in the memo condemning teaching about “systemic and structural racism.”

“It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome U.S. History course without teaching about slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes” and other lessons that might run afoul of the letter, the lawsuit said.

The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the memo, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, had said schools’ and colleges diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have been “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.

“But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,” Trainor wrote in the memo.

The lawsuit argues the Dear Colleague Letter is so broad that it appears to forbid voluntary student groups based on race or background, including Black student unions or Irish-American heritage groups. The memo also appears to ban college admissions practices that weren’t outlawed in the Supreme Court decision, including recruiting efforts to attract students of all races, the lawsuit said.

It asks the court to stop the department from enforcing the memo and strike it down.

The American Federation of Teachers is one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. The sociological association is a group of about 9,000 college students, scholars and teachers. Both groups say their members teach lessons and supervise student organizations that could jeopardize their schools’ federal money under the memo.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

​ Orange County Register 

Proposed CPPA rules would harm small and Black-owned businesses

• February 26, 2025

California’s Black-owned businesses are woven throughout our state’s innovative and dynamic economy, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in fiscal impact, contributing to California’s global leadership in technology and innovation. As President & CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce, I’m highly attentive to the regulatory environment these businesses face and deeply concerned about the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA)’s proposed rules on automated decision-making technology.

The proposed rules from the unelected bureaucrats at the CPPA would impose significant costs on my members and small businesses across the state without addressing any real or significant privacy concerns. The regulations wouldn’t just impact artificial intelligence or sophisticated algorithms, but also regulate basic business tools that small companies rely on every day – from simple Excel spreadsheets used to track employee performance to standard software that helps businesses offer relevant products to their customers.

The proposed regulations seem relatively unremarkable and benign – after all, who doesn’t support privacy protection? Under the hood, however, you’ll find an alarming government overreach that could devastate Black-owned small businesses already struggling to compete in California’s challenging business environment, which should greatly concern the Governor and legislative leadership who appointed the current CPPA board.

CPPA admits the proposed regulations could cost California businesses $3.5 billion – and that’s likely an underestimate. For small businesses operating on thin margins, such as neighborhood staples like restaurants, dry cleaners, and coffee shops, the financial burden of conducting extensive internal audits, filing reports, and creating new systems to handle consumer opt-outs could be the difference between survival and closure.

For example, a retail business that uses basic software to tailor promotions to regular customers would, under the proposed rules, need to build new systems letting customers opt out of receiving relevant offers, potentially hire compliance staff they can’t afford, and file complex and time-consuming reports about their use of ordinary business technology.

Consider a staffing agency that uses standard HR software to track employee attendance and performance. They’d face burdensome new auditing requirements and could be forced to publicly reveal proprietary information to their competitors about how they operate.

This is not what voters intended when they supported privacy protections in 2020. That ballot measure focused on preventing the sharing of personal data and limiting how businesses can use particularly sensitive information. The unelected CPPA board has misconstrued it as a sweeping regulation of everyday business operations that goes far beyond privacy concerns.

The CPPA’s proposed rules are so broad that they would consider even basic Excel spreadsheet analysis as “automated decision-making” requiring extensive oversight. The proposed rules are extreme regulatory overreach ignoring both the intended scope of the agency and shows a complete disconnection from the realities of running a small business.

While I urge the CPPA’s current board to reconsider and significantly amend the rules, the responsibility to stop this ultimately falls on Governor Newsom and legislative leadership, who control appointments to the CPPA board. They must rein in this runaway agency before it imposes billions in unnecessary costs on innovative California businesses, potentially driving them to other states.

California’s Black-owned businesses already face enough challenges – from the state’s notoriously high costs of living to retaining skilled workers and access to capital – without having to navigate unnecessary regulations that restrict basic functions of running small businesses. Our state’s privacy regulators need to go back to the drawing board and craft rules that protect small businesses and genuinely address real privacy risks – not burden businesses with solving problems that don’t exist.

Ahmad Holmes is the President & CEO of the California African American Chamber of Commerce, the largest statewide African American Chamber organization driving economic opportunity and wealth creation for African American businesses.

​ Orange County Register 

Apple to fix iPhone dictation glitch that suggests replacing the word ‘racist’ with ‘Trump’

• February 26, 2025

LONDON (AP) — Apple is fixing a bug within the dictation feature on some iPhones that briefly suggests the word “Trump” when a word with an R consonant is spoken, including “racist.”

The company is responding to the controversy after some iPhone owners posted videos on social media this week to detail how the glitch works.

When users activated the dictation feature and said the word “racist,” the word “Trump” appears in the text window before quickly being replaced by the correct word, according to various videos posted online.

“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today,” Apple said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The company said that the speech recognition models that power the voice-to-text feature might show words with some phonetic overlap.

It also said that other words that have an “r” consonant were also erroneously triggering the bug. The Associated Press could not duplicate the problem on Wednesday, a day after it emerged.

This week the company announced a plan to invest more than $500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the United States over the next four years as well as build a new factory in Texas, amid Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on imports. Separately, Apple shareholders rebuffed an attempt to pressure the company into joining Trump’s push to scrub corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce.

​ Orange County Register 

20,000 workers at UC system plan 3-day strike beginning Wednesday

• February 26, 2025

More than 20,000 University of California employees plan to strike at research labs and medical facilities across the 10-campus system beginning Wednesday, Feb. 26, and continuing through Friday.

Dan Russell, president of the University Professional and Technical Employees-CWA Local 9119, said Tuesday that staffing shortages amounting to “thousands of workers” are eroding patient care and hurting California research operations. Those facilities include UC campuses, hospitals, laboratories and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“We started this process over two years ago,” Russell said. “Our members are pretty insulted that UC has just refused to even have this conversation.”

Also see: UC campus and hospital worker strike continues across university system

In Southern California, the union plans strikes at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, UC Riverside and UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange.

Some non-life threatening surgeries could be affected at those facilities, Russell said.

“We’re working with the university to make sure that there are staff on site if any emergencies happen, and nobody has any permanent repercussions,” he said. Outpatient surgeries may be rescheduled.

In Washington: Unions sue over federal worker firings, citing misuse of probationary periods

The unionized workers include physician assistants, optometrists, pharmacists, RN case managers, rehabilitation specialists, mental health clinicians, clinical lab scientists, staff research associates and IT analysts.

“The university [system] will do everything possible to ensure strike impacts on patients, students, faculty and staff are mitigated,” UC spokeswoman Heather Hansen said in a statement.

Hansen, who said that the union walked away from the negotiation table in the most recent bargaining session and declared an impasse, denied that a staffing crisis exists within the UC system.

The university is “disappointed” that the union took the route of striking instead of responding to its wage and benefit proposals since May 2024.

She wrote in an email that the university proposed a 5% across-the-board pay increase beginning July 1 and a 3% wage increase in the second and third years of the contract. The university also offered to raise all lower-paid employees to a wage of at least $25 an hour by July 1.

More on unions: Costco, Teamsters avoid strike with tentative contract agreement

Russell said that negotiations began in earnest in June but collapsed in the fall when university negotiators walked away from the bargaining table.

Nearly all, or 98%, of union members voted in favor of the strike authorization on Feb. 14, he said.

​ Orange County Register