Liberals, conservatives self-sorting into red, blue states

• July 6, 2023

By Nicholas Riccardi | Associated Press

STAR, Idaho — Once he and his wife, Jennifer, moved to a Boise suburb last year, Tim Kohl could finally express himself.

Kohl did what the couple never dared at their previous house outside Los Angeles — the newly-retired Los Angeles police officer flew a U.S. flag and a Thin Blue Line banner representing law enforcement outside his house.

“We were scared to put it up,” Jennifer Kohl acknowledged. But the Kohls knew they had moved to the right place when neighbors complimented him on the display.

Leah Dean is on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but she knows how the Kohls feel. In Texas, Dean had been scared to fly an abortion rights banner outside her house. Around the time the Kohls were house-hunting in Idaho, she and her partner found a place in Denver, where their LGBTQ+ pride flag flies above the banner in front of their house that proclaims “Abortion access is a community responsibility.”

“One thing we have really found is a place to feel comfortable being ourselves,” Dean said.

Americans are segregating by their politics at a rapid clip, helping fuel the greatest divide between the states in modern history.

One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the party in control has a supermajority in at least one legislative chamber — which means the majority party has so many lawmakers that they can override a governor’s veto. Not that that would be necessary in most cases, as only 10 states have governors of different parties than the one that controls the legislature.

The split has sent states careening to the political left or right, adopting diametrically opposed laws on some of the hottest issues of the day. In Idaho, abortion is illegal once a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus — as early as five or six weeks — and a new law passed this year makes it a crime to help a minor travel out of state to obtain one. In Colorado, state law prevents any restrictions on abortion. In Idaho, a new law prevents minors from accessing gender-affirming care, while Colorado allows youths to come from other states to access the procedures.

Federalism — allowing each state to chart its own course within boundaries set by Congress and the Constitution — is at the core of the U.S. system. It lets the states, in the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, be “laboratories of democracy.”

Now, some wonder whether that’s driving Americans apart.

“Does that work as well in a time when we are so politically divided, or does it just become an accelerant for people who want to re-segregate?” asked Rob Witwer, a former Republican Colorado state lawmaker.

Colorado and Idaho represent two poles of state-level political homogenization. Both are fast-growing Rocky Mountain states that have been transformed by an influx of like-minded residents. Life in the two states can be quite similar — conversations revolve around local ski areas, mountain bike trails, and how newcomers are making things too crowded. But, politically, they increasingly occupy two separate worlds.

Witwer watched Colorado steadily swing to the left as affluent, college-educated people fled the coasts for his home state starting in the late 1990s. For two decades, it was one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, and during the Trump era it swung sharply to the left. Democrats control all statewide offices and have their largest majorities in history in the legislature, including a supermajority in the lower house.

In contrast, Idaho has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing states during the past decade without losing its reputation as a conservative haven. It has moved even more sharply to the right during that time and become a beacon to those, like the Kohls, fleeing blue states where they no longer feel welcome.

The states’ swings aren’t simply due to transplants, of course. The increasing clustering of Americans into like-minded enclaves — dubbed “The Big Sort” — has many causes. Harvard professor Ryan Enos estimates that, at least before the pandemic, only 15% of the homogeneity was due to people moving. Other causes include political parties polarizing on hot-button issues that split neatly on demographic lines, such as guns and abortion, and voters adopting their neighbors’ partisanship.

“A lot of this is driven by other sorting that is going on,” Enos said.

When Americans move, politics is not typically the explicit reason. But the lifestyle choices they make place them in communities dominated by their preferred party.

“Democrats want to live in places with artistic culture and craft breweries, and Republicans want to move to places where they can have a big yard,” said Ryan Strickler, a political scientist at Colorado State University-Pueblo.

But something may have changed as the country has become even more polarized. Businesses catering to conservatives fleeing blue states have sprouted, such as Blue Line Moving, which markets to families fleeing from blue states to Florida. In Texas, a “rainbow underground railroad” run by a Dallas realtor helps LGBTQ+ families flee the state’s increased restrictions targeting that population.

The switch might have been flipped during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which created a class of mobile workers no longer bound to the states where their companies were based. Those who are now mobile are predominantly white-collar workers and retirees, the two most politically engaged parts of the national population.

Mike McCarter, who has spearheaded a quixotic campaign to have conservative eastern Oregon become part of Idaho, said most people didn’t pay much attention to state government until the pandemic.

“Then it was like ‘Oh, they can shut down any church and they can shut down my kids’ school?’” McCarter said. “If state-level government has that much power, you’d better be sure it reflects your values, and not someone else’s values that are forced on you.”

The pandemic helped push Aaron and Carrie Friesen to Idaho. When the pandemic hit, they realized they could take their marketing firm remote from its base near Hilton Head, South Carolina. They’d always planned to return to the West, but California, where Aaron, now 39, was born and raised, was disqualified because of its cost and progressive politics.

The Friesens and their three children settled on Boise. They loved the big skies, the mountains rearing up behind the town, the plethora of outdoor activities.

And they liked Idaho’s pandemic policies. When the Friesens visited, almost no one was wearing masks, which they took as a good sign — they were happy to mask up when sick, but found constant masking pointless.

“This was a place that had like-minded people,” Carrie Friesen said.

The Friesens are happy with the direction of their new state and the abortion and transgender restrictions out of the latest legislative session. But they don’t see themselves as part of what they called “the crazy right,” referring to the families displaying Trump yard signs in the less-politically-mixed Boise suburbs. They like living close to the center of Boise, one of the more liberal areas in the state.

They try not to make too many decisions based on politics — to a point.

“With the temperature of politics nowadays, if people choose to move somewhere, they are going to choose to move to a place with like-minded people,” Aaron Friesen said.

That’s apparently been happening in Idaho, said Mathew Hay, who oversees a regular survey of new arrivals for Boise State University. Historically, transplants mirrored the conservative population’s leanings, with about 45% describing themselves as “conservative,” and the rest evenly split between liberal and moderate.

But something changed last year — the share of newcomers that said they lived in Idaho for the politics jumped to 9%, compared to 5% for long-timers. The percentage describing themselves as “very conservative” also rose.

When Melissa Wintrow rode her motorcycle across the U.S. in 1996, she was captivated by Idaho.

“It was this grounded, commonsense, reasonable group,” Wintrow said. “Of course they were conservative, but they weren’t going to say openly racist and homophobic things.”

Now a Democratic state senator, Wintrow is aghast at how her adopted state has become more hardline.

“The state has just moved to a more extreme view,” she said. “It’s a certain group of people that is afraid their ‘way of life’ is diminishing in the world.”

In Colorado, the reverse may be happening.

Bret Weinstein, owner of a realty firm in Denver, said politics has become the top issue for people buying a home.

“It’s brought up in our initial conversations,” Weinstein said. “Three years ago, we didn’t have those conversations, ever.”

Now, many entering the state tell him they’re looking for a way to escape their red state — and homeowners leaving Colorado say they’re fed up with it turning blue. Even within Colorado, Weinstein said, homebuyers are picking based on politics, with some avoiding conservative areas where debates on mask mandates and curriculum has dominated school board meetings.

One of those politically motivated migrants is Kathleen Rickerson, who works in human resources for Weinstein’s firm. Rickerson, 35, lived in Minnesota for seven years, but during the pandemic grew weary of the blue state’s vocal anti-masking, anti-vaccine minority.

Rickerson’s parents and sister urged her to join them in Texas, but that was out of the question. Ready for a change, Rickerson instead zeroed in on Colorado. She moved to a Denver suburb in December 2021.

Cheered by the state’s strong stance to protect abortion rights, Rickerson wants Colorado Democrats to go further.

“Colorado isn’t as quick to take a stand on things, and I’d like to see that happen a bit more,” she said.

That was a sentiment shared by Colorado progressives, who were frustrated their party didn’t muscle through an assault weapons ban and other priorities of the left during the most recent legislative session.

“There is a point at which we need to stop acting like trying to get along with our enemies is going to preserve our institution,” progressive state Rep. Stephanie Vigil said at the end of the session, after the chamber’s Democratic leader said it was important that Republicans still feel like they have a voice.

The increasing political homogeneity in states makes it harder for both parties to feel invested, said Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

“It gives one party the ability to move a state further when they’re doing exactly what their constituency wants,” he said.

The system works as a sort of escape valve, Kousser said, letting the majority in the state feel in power regardless of what’s happening in Washington, D.C. But the local minority party gets shortchanged.

The Kohls felt shortchanged in California. They said they watched their native state deteriorate before their eyes, and no one was willing to fix the problems. Trash piled up with homeless encampments. Tax money seemed to go to immigrants who had entered the country illegally rather than U.S. citizens. Jennifer’s mother qualified for government assistance due to her low income, but was on dozens of wait lists that were seven years long. Tim’s police station, in a former hippie colony in the mountains running through West Los Angeles, was firebombed during the George Floyd protests in 2020.

The Kohls wanted to live in a red state, but Jennifer said they’re not just party-line voters. A nurse, she hasn’t registered with either party and has a wide range of beliefs, including that abortion is sometimes necessary.

“I believe so many different things,” she said.

On balance, they feel more comfortable in a more conservative place.

“Here, the tax dollars naturally goes to the citizens, not the immigrants,” said Tim Kohl, who can understand why Idaho is growing so fast. “Most of the people we’ve met here are from California originally.”

In Denver, Dean has found other people who fled red states. She and her partner, Cassidy Dean, discovered that their neighbors fled Florida after the state’s hard turn to the political right.

Leah Dean was a 19-year-old cosmetology college student in San Antonio in 2008 when she had an abortion. She chafed at the obstacles she faced — the state-mandated waiting period before the procedure, having to get a sonogram before the procedure — and became a committed Democratic activist. She met her partner at the Texas state party convention in 2016, and every year since then she’s felt the Republican state legislature and governor make the state less and less hospitable to people like her.

Now in Colorado, she and her partner both work from home, telecommuting to their old Texas jobs. They have limited social outlets, but took care of that by throwing themselves into politics again, with Leah Dean becoming vice chair of Denver Democrats.

“It’s also how we meet people,” she said. “We don’t have any other way to do that.”

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

​ Orange County Register 

Swanson: Two lifelong friends tackle one amazing sports bucket list

• July 6, 2023

Sports can be more than a game. Also, just a game. And then there are the games within the games. But best might be the games we make up for ourselves, in the backyard or on the playground or over cocktails with a lifelong friend: Like, what if we conquered the world?

Not in an aggressive way, not in a Risky way, but in an epic frolic from one field of play to another.

That’s one way to look at George Ross and David Carter’s ambitious and ingenious personal pastime, their “Global Sports Bucket List.” They’ve made the world their game board, themselves the pieces, and since 2016, they’ve been moving according to rules they devised.

Here’s how it works: They’ve got to land on 25 of the world’s most iconic sporting events or experiences before they turn 75.

A few parameters: They want to get to at least one per year. They can’t hit the same sport twice, or the same country – outside of the United States. But only half of their stops can be domestic, and none of those can be in the same state.

And there’s one important overriding principle: Ditch the guidebook and the tour guide. Stick only to the itinerary that their hearts desire, whether it’s what they’re eating, drinking, watching or running away from – as much as the budget will permit, anyway. (A sponsorship to become global ambassadors for Bucket List Events, a sports tourism company, has offered a boost.)

This is no lark. In a few days, these 58-year-old pals, who have known each other since their days at Ridgecrest Intermediate School in Palos Verdes, will be leaving for London. They’ll cross the pond to cross Wimbledon off the list, with plans to be at Centre Court for the men’s final on July 16.

If you’re keeping score, that’ll be their 10th point on the board. Which is to say, since kicking this thing off on July 1, 2016, in Pamplona, Spain, they’re in the lead and on schedule despite having had to navigate the pandemic and Carter’s cancer scare.

They went big out of the gate, going running with the bulls. Learning, in the process, how exhausting a 100-yard dash is when you’re sprinting for your life. “Like running a marathon,” said Ross, who works in commercial real estate. Carter is the executive director of USC’s Sports Business Institute and an associate professor at the university. (He benefits professionally too from these excursions, he said.)

In March 2017, he and Ross were in Alaska, tracking the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in temperatures that dropped as low as minus-31 degrees.

AND THEY’RE OFF: The 2017 Iditarod race gets underway in Anchorage, Alaska https://t.co/1Hmh7EL5Hz pic.twitter.com/VTvhTjxG2x

— ABC News (@ABC) March 4, 2017

And then it was Monday Night Football at Lambeau Field in November 2017, with Carter – who was battling cancer – eschewing medical advice to make that game: “My radiologist … he was saying, ‘You can’t be flying. It’s nuts. Take a break.’”

But Carter determined that neither the flight to Milwaukee nor the drive to Green Bay was all that far, so he went anyway. And he ended up, he said, with a “raging case of blood clots” that landed him in the hospital when he returned.

Nonetheless, he insists that experience hasn’t changed his perspective on this bucket-list adventure. It didn’t give it any more heft or poignancy, and it certainly wasn’t going to make him take his eye off the ball.

“They say, ‘Well, it’s a bucket list, you’re supposed to do it before something happens to you,’” Carter said. “And I’m like, yeah, not really. It’s just part of the inconvenience of if we have to push a trip back or not … it’s not really a part of the calculus of what we’re doing.

Longtime friends George Ross, left, and David Carter have been around the world as part of their “Global Sports Bucket List” adventure, including to the 2018 World Cup final in Moscow. (Photo courtesy of David Carter)

“Going wildly over budget in Moscow?” Carter continued, a twinkle in his eye at the thought of the 2018 France-Croatia World Cup final in Russia, where he and Ross had little choice but to splurge on caviar. “Or if George had been gored (by a bull)? That would have been really on point. That would have been fantastic.

“But, ‘How does your philosophy of the bucket list change after you got sick?’ It only affected potential trip planning, and even that was a rounding error compared to the workarounds for COVID.”

In 2020 – after their 2019 Panamanian sport fishing trip with some buddies – Carter and Ross had to press pause on their conquest, idling for those months along with the rest of us.

But they revved right back up in 2021, doing double time with a series of U.S.-based events. That February, they made a trip with their spouses to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where they worked as volunteers for the Ironman World Championship before hopscotching to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby in May.

David Carter, left, and George Ross, friends since their days at Ridgecrest Intermediate School in Palos Verdes, are on a quest to experience 25 of the world’s best sporting events before they turn 75. Their trip to Wimbledon this month will be No. 10 on a list that also included the Kentucky Derby in 2021. (Photo courtesy of David Carter)

In April 2022, they soaked up the grandeur of the Augusta National grounds for the final round of The Masters, and then got swept along with 100,000 Southerners for the Auburn-Alabama Iron Bowl in November.

On tap now: Wimbledon, followed next year by the Olympics in Paris and then, likely, by the Tour de France (during a stage when it ventures into a bordering country – you read the instructions!)

After that? Carter votes for the Monaco Grand Prix. And curling. Ross thinks Oktoberfest and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro should count. Who’s to tell them otherwise? The rule is they make the rules!

And No. 1: “It’s all about the experience,” Ross said. “For me, travel has always been one of the most important things outside of family and health and career, and so to be able to travel places that David and I have, it’s just been fantastic.”

“We sort of bumble through some of it,” Carter said. “We’re kind of exploring, and having a good time and trying to uncover stuff that maybe you don’t really read about or that is not part of brochures …”

Then he asks: “Does this sound totally insane to you?”

Insane? No.

Insanely awesome? Yes.

Now if I could just write a column that would persuade my bosses to sponsor me in a version of this great new Global Sports Bucket List game …

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​ Orange County Register 

Hospitality workers return to work, but more walkouts possible, union says

• July 6, 2023

Hundreds of hospitality workers who walked picket lines over the holiday weekend, targeting 19 Southern California hotels, were back on the job today, but union officials warned that more work stoppages could occur at any time.

Workers represented by the Unite Here Local 11 union went on strike at 6:01 a.m. Sunday, and picketing continued through the Fourth of July holiday at hotels in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Orange County and elsewhere.

And while employees returned to work Wednesday, the union insisted that doesn’t mean the strike is over. Maria Hernandez at Unite Here said the first round of picketing targeted 19 hotel properties, but workers at 41 other properties are poised to walk off the job — something she said could happen “at any moment.”

SEE MORE: What’s behind the workers’ strike at Southern California hotels?

In a statement, union officials said the holiday walkout “marks just the first wave of strikes and disruption by hotel workers across the region. Workers will not rest until they are paid a wage that allows them to live in the communities where they work.”

The contract between the hotels and the union expired at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, although the union reached a deal last week with the largest of its employers, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown Los Angeles.

Contract agreements are unresolved with the remaining hotels.

SEE MORE: Union workers to rally in LA for better wages, benefits

Officials have said the hotels will remain open with management and other nonunion staff filling in.

There has been no word of any renewed contract talks between the union and the Coordinated Bargaining Group negotiating on behalf of the hotels. Speaking to KNX News, Hernandez said the hotels know what workers want — as reflected in the agreement reached with the Westin Bonaventure.

Representatives for the hotels accused workers of being inflexible in their demands.

The union “has not budged from its opening demand two months ago of up to a 40% wage increase and an over 28% increase in benefit costs. From the outset, the union has shown no desire to engage in productive, good faith negotiations with this group,” the reps said in a statement provided to the Los Angeles Times.

Unite Here Local 11 represents up to 15,000 workers employed at about 60 major hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

On June 8, 96% of the union’s members approved a strike authorization. Union officials said a recent survey of its members showed that 53% said they have moved in the past five years or will move in the near future because of soaring housing costs in the Los Angeles area.

The workers include thousands of cooks, room attendants, dishwashers, servers, bellhops and front desk agents.

Union officials said their members earn $20 to $25 an hour. Negotiators are asking for an immediate $5 hourly raise and an additional $3 an hour in subsequent years of the contract along with improvements in health care and retirement benefits.

The union is also seeking to create a hospitality workforce housing fund. Many union members say they’re now commuting hours from areas like Apple Valley, Palmdale, California City and Victorville.

“This walkout was the first of many actions that may come this summer by workers at hotels across Southern California, and it is only one tool in our toolbox,” Unite Here Local 11 President Kurt Petersen said in a statement. “We have put the industry on notice that the workers have suffered enough.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Pace of bidding wars picks up as homebuyers compete for fewer listings

• July 6, 2023

The house was a fixer, selling for $950,000 “as is.”

In addition to needing fresh paint, the kitchen, the bathroom and some of the floors needed to be updated, listing agent Stephen Haw said.

That didn’t stop buyers from getting into a bidding war over the West Torrance house. By the time escrow closed on May 19, the one-story, three-bedroom home had sold for $1.05 million, or $100,000 over the asking price.

”Right now, the supply of houses for sale is very limited,” said Haw, a broker with Keller Williams Realty in Palos Verdes. “There are more buyers than houses for sale on the market.”

The West Torrance house is increasingly typical of Southern California’s overall housing market, with bidding wars and deals for more than the asking price becoming more commonplace this spring.

Newly released CoreLogic figures show home prices are up since the start of the year, although they dipped slightly in May and have yet to recover fully from losses in the last half of 2022.

The median price of a Southern California home — or price at the midpoint of all sales — was $715,000 in May, down 0.3% from April after three months of gains. That’s still 3.8% below the median in May 2022 and $35,000 below the all-time high of $750,000 reached in April 2022.

Nevertheless, Southern California‘s housing market remains extremely competitive for those few buyers able to afford high prices and higher loan payments — despite inflation, high mortgage rates and threats of a recession.

“We expect prices to continue to rise on a month-to-month basis for the next few months because of the shortage of homes for sale,” Jordan Levine, California Association of Realtors chief economist, said in a recent statement. “Even with reduced homebuyer demand, California still has more homebuyers than homes to put them in.”

Meanwhile, home sales remain low, falling on a year-over-year basis for the 18th month in a row, CoreLogic reported Wednesday, July 5.

The six-county region saw 16,350 homes change hands in May or 25.7% fewer than in May 2022, CoreLogic figures show.

That’s the second-lowest tally for a May in records dating back 35 years.

The lack of inventory and the drop in home sales is definitely having an impact on industry incomes.

“We’re hanging in there, but things are definitely down from last year,” said Dionne Veronin, an agent with Compass Real Estate who was minding a Huntington Beach open house last month. “I’ve lost several buyers (who) pulled out of the market, just waiting for home prices to come down or for interest rates to come down. … Anyone who doesn’t have to buy is waiting in the wings.”

With 80% of U.S. home borrowers paying 4% or less on their current mortgage, “locked-in” owners are unwilling to put their homes up for sale.

Figures from online brokerage Redfin show Southern California had fewer than 25,000 homes for sale in May, the fifth-lowest total in the past 11 years.

As a result, those who could afford a 6.4%, 30-year mortgage rate or pay cash were competing for a limited supply of homes this past spring.

According to Redfin, the time it takes for homes to sell and the number of price drops have been falling steadily since the start of the year.

An average of almost 48% of Southern California homes sold above the asking price in May, up from 25% in January, Redfin figures show.

In Mission Viejo, a small, one-story house went into escrow last month at $75,000 over the asking price after getting six offers.

In need of paint, new flooring in an upgraded kitchen, the 1,300-square-foot house originally listed for $875,000, but sold for $950,000 all cash, said listing agent Sheree Brock, of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Champions.

One reason, Brock said, is the home has high ceilings, pretty views out the back, access to Lake Mission Viejo and an elementary school within walking distance.

With inventory so low, bidding wars are typical for desirable homes like that one, she said.

“You have to get aggressive on the buying, big time,” Brock said.

A slow but steady trickle of buyers arrived at a Huntington Beach open house on June 24 to view a corner house listed for $949,000. It needed paint and new floors, but still was under contract three days later, according to Redfin.

“For entry-level homes, if you find one, you put an offer in because it won’t last long,” said Diane Van Korlaar, an agent with HomeSmart Evergreen Realty who stopped by the open house with her daughter-in-law while shopping for rental properties.

Ha, the Torrance agent, believes more buyers are willing to re-enter the market despite this year’s 6.4%-plus mortgage rates.

“It seems like everybody is used to the 6% interest rate,” Ha said. “Thirty years ago, the average interest rate was (at least) 6.75%, so 6% is going to be the new normal.”

Here’s a county-by-county breakdown of May home prices and sales, with annual percentage changes:

—Los Angeles County’s median fell 6.3% to $800,000; sales were down 24.3% to 5,154 transactions.

—Orange County’s median fell 4.8% to $1 million; sales were down 22.3% to 2,304 transactions.

—Riverside County’s median fell 3.6% to $556,500; sales were down 26.0% to 3,323 transactions.

—San Bernardino County’s median fell 4.0% to $480,000; sales were down 29% to 2,209 transactions.

—San Diego County’s median fell 3.3% to $812,250; sales were down 26.1% to 2,717 transactions.

—Ventura County’s median rose 1.2% to $804,500; sales were down 32.0% to 643 transactions.

​ Orange County Register 

LAFC trades Kwadwo Opoku for $1.75 million in general allocation money

• July 6, 2023

The Los Angeles Football Club traded forward Kwadwo “Mahala” Opoku to Montreal on Wednesday for $1.75 million in general allocation money.

All but $100,000 of that figure applies to 2023. The remainder was slotted for 2024.

In a separate transaction with Montreal, LAFC also acquired a 2023 international roster slot for $100,000 in 2024 GAM.

The transaction marks the largest general allocation money deal in LAFC history, bringing in a half-million dollars more than the trade that sent All-Star defender Walker Zimmerman to Nashville prior to the 2020 MLS season.

As the summer transfer window opens July 5, selling Opoku, who turns 22 next week, provides significant financial flexibility for LAFC (9-6-5, 32 points).

“Mahala has been an incredible story and an important player for us over the last few years,” LAFC co-president and general manager John Thorrington said in a statement announcing the deal. “These decisions are never easy but are at times necessary. It has been great to watch him grow and develop as a player on the field and a person off the pitch. We are grateful for all of his contributions to LAFC and wish him the best of luck in his career.”

LAFC signed Opoku, then 19, from the Attram De Visser Soccer Academy in Ghana in October 2020.

He debuted during LAFC’s 2020 CONCACAF Champions League run, scoring a late game-winning goal in a quarterfinal victory over Cruz Azul.

The quick-footed Ghanian scored twice in the 2023 CCL tournament, and departs LAFC as the club’s third-leading goal scorer in the continental competition.

Opoku appeared in 60 MLS regular-season matches, starting 35. He scored nine goals and added seven assists.

He rebounded well after missing most of 2021 following surgery on his left knee.

During last year’s successful push to the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup, Opoku appeared in every regular-season match.

In 19 league appearances this season, he scored twice and registered two assists.

Mahala had requested a guarantee of regular minutes this year and was seeking a boost in his compensation. He was set to make $257,288 in guaranteed pay in 2023, according to figures released by the MLS player’s association.

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​ Orange County Register 

Beaches trashed after July 4th crowds depart

• July 6, 2023

Whoops, a few people forgot to pack up their massive pop tents. And another person left behind a big barbeque on the beach.

Revelers who packed the coast on the Fourth of July also left behind countless pieces of plastics and trash littering beaches across Southern California.

Volunteers on July 5 — considered the dirtiest beach day of the year — set out armed with bags and gloves at Venice Beach, San Pedro, Huntington Beach and Doheny State Beach in an attempt to put a dent in the debris left by the hundreds of thousands of partiers who showed up throughout the holiday weekend. More clean-ups this weekend will be held to scoop up what’s still left behind.

Surfrider Foundation held cleanups from San Diego to San Francisco and beaches in between. In Huntington Beach, hundreds of people showed up ready to work, helping the State Parks clean-up crew who started gathering trash early in the morning.

“It was a mess,” said KC Fockler, education coordinator for the North Orange County chapter. “It’s almost heart-wrenching.”

There were beer and soda cans, chip bags, fireworks and plenty of plastics. One surprise was the number of plastic bottles on the beach, which in recent years hasn’t been seen as much, he said.

Plucking trash off the beach is important, not just so the region’s pristine beaches don’t look like a dump but also to protect the wildlife that call the coast home.

“The beach is the last defense from all the trash before it hits the ocean,” he said. “It affects the environment not only in the ocean, all the birds, the nesting birds … even little kids, crawling around in the sand, picking up other people’s garbage and trash. It’s a shame it ends up like that.”

The North OC Surfrider chapter in the past six months has removed 20,000 pounds of trash. Fockler said an estimated 1,200 pounds were scooped up on July 5.

“It’s important we have clean beaches for everybody to enjoy,” he said.

Richard Busch, North OC chapter co-chair, said it was “plastic galore” out on the beach. But he was encouraged by the number of people who mobilized to help.

“It tells me people genuinely care and want to make sure the beaches are clean and enjoyable for people,” he said. “They don’t want the beaches to be trashed.”

That’s exactly why Brooke and Jake Caouette brought their three young kids to Doheny State Beach on July 5, armed with a bucket, trash pickers and metal detectors.

They rode their bikes down on the Fourth of July and saw the hoards of people, knowing their favorite beach would be trashed the following day.

“It’s just the dirtiest day,” Brooke Caouette said. “We usually try to come down after storms and big holidays.”

Among the debris was a lot of plastics like little straw wrappers from juice boxes and utensils.

“A lot of people come from far and set up their picnics and just leave at the end of the night when it’s dark and they can’t see what they left behind,” she said.

For those who want to help, it’s not too late. There are upcoming clean-ups scheduled for this weekend.

Orange County Coastkeeper will host volunteers on July 8 for a beach cleanup at Huntington State Beach.

Coastkeeper staff predicts over 300 pounds will be removed from the beach during the two-hour event that kicks off at 9 a.m. at Huntington State Beach. Meet at tower 9.

Stand Up to Trash will be hosting a beach clean-up starting at 9 a.m. on Sunday, July 9, in the Dana Point Harbor. Meet near the Ocean Institute for the “Plastic Free July” event, with a guest speaker at 10:30 a.m. from Eco Now Refill Store in Laguna Beach.

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​ Orange County Register 

They’re called ‘100-year floods.’ But they’re likely becoming more frequent, study says.

• July 5, 2023

A new study released last week shows that some “100-year flood” estimates may not reflect a changing climate.

First Street Foundation, a research and technology nonprofit that studies and collects data on climate risks, released its eighth National Risk Assessment: “The Precipitation Problem.”

Many climate and weather groups gauge extreme rain events as a “100-year flood” or a “1-in-100-year-flood.” Also known as a “100-year recurrence interval,” this means that a flood of that magnitude has a 1% chance of happening in any year.

According to the new study, roughly 21% of the country can now expect their “1-in-100 year flood” to happen every 25 years. In the most extreme cases, over 20 counties are expected to experience the current “1-in-100 year flood” severe event at least once every 8-10 years.

The study says many Americans, more than half, live in an area that is twice as likely to experience such a rain event than is predicted by Atlas 14 — is a peer-reviewed record of precipitation frequency estimates for the United States produced by the National Weather Service. Every few years, the program gets updated, and the Atlas 15 is expected to be complete by 2027.

“Atlases were developed based on the temporal stationarity of precipitation, which assumes that the occurrence probability of extreme precipitations is not expected to change over time,” a portion of the study reads. “However, climate change has altered the intensity and frequency of extreme precipitation over time, and most climate models project that the features of extreme precipitation will continue to grow throughout the 21st century.”

Data from the study will be integrated into Risk Factor’s platform by the end of the month. Risk Factor’s data tools allow users to search for their home or ZIP code to view environmental changes and risks of major natural events, such as floods or fire. For example, if a 100-year flood occurred today in Norfolk’s 23507 ZIP code, it could affect 669 properties. This type of event has a 26% chance of occurring at least once over the life of a 30-year mortgage. About 30 years from now, an event of this same likelihood would affect 1,178 properties, due to a changing environment. According to the study, the change in return period for Hampton Roads is closer to 1 in 20 years.

“The magnitude of the changes in expected rainfall intensity are startling for many areas in the United States, and it is important that Americans are fully aware of this consequence of climate change that can impact their lives and homes,” Jungho Kim, First Street Foundation’s senior hydrologist and lead author of the peer-reviewed study, said in a statement.

Researchers said that because a lot of federal funding programs use Atlas 14 data to distribute money, there could be issues with getting the most accurate assessments on damage costs. According to Atlas 14, a 100-year flood in Norfolk would be a rain event during which 9.2 inches fall within a 24-hour period.

“The fact that the nation will not have the most accurate estimates of extreme precipitation likelihoods available at the time of the design of (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) projects means that many of them will be out of date on the day they are opened to the public,” Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of First Street Foundation, said.

Eliza Noe, [email protected]

​ Orange County Register 

A new law is supposed to protect pregnant workers — but what if we don’t know how?

• July 5, 2023

Gina Jiménez | Kaiser Health News (TNS)

Vanessa Langness had always been a bit worried about the chemicals she worked with as a biomedical researcher, but when she got pregnant in October, her concerns grew. The 34-year-old based in Santa Maria, California, suspected the ethidium bromide she was using in the lab for molecular cloning could put her and her baby at risk.

She wasn’t sure what to do; she was only a few weeks into her pregnancy and didn’t know how it would affect her career.

“Women are taught: You aren’t supposed to tell people until after the first trimester,” she said. “But that’s actually a really delicate stage for the formation of the baby.”

Langness did some research online but couldn’t find much information on what kind of extra precautions she should take because of her pregnancy. Without realizing it, she had stumbled upon an often overlooked area of science and medicine: the occupational health of pregnant workers. Those who are pregnant often face hazardous circumstances doing jobs in which they must lift heavy objects, stand for long periods, or, like Langness, work with chemicals.

At the end of last year, Congress approved the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a law that requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” to those who are pregnant. But the new law, which took effect June 27, has a big hole in it: Public health experts say not nearly enough is known about which work circumstances are dangerous for pregnancies, especially when chemical exposures are involved. That’s because occupational health studies overwhelmingly have been centered on men, and so have the health and safety standards based on those studies.

“A pregnant person’s physiology is very different from a nonpregnant person,” said Carissa Rocheleau, an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “A lot of our existing permissible exposure limits date back to 1970. In the studies they based the limits on, there were very few women in general and even fewer pregnant women, if any.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ guidance for employment considerations during pregnancy says that very few chemical compounds “have been sufficiently studied to draw conclusions about potential reproductive harms.”

Even though the data is sparse, several physiological factors suggest pregnant workers face higher health risks from chemical exposures than other adults, said Julia Varshavsky, a Northeastern University environmental health scientist focused on maternal and child health. And chemical exposures during pregnancy can be dangerous not just for the prospective parent, but also for the fetus, which can absorb toxins through the placenta.

For one thing, blood volume increases during pregnancy because the body is working overtime to supply the fetus with the oxygen and nutrients it needs to develop. Such blood-flow expansion can make those who are pregnant susceptible to developing high blood pressure. Some studies also suggest a link between exposure to lead during pregnancy and high blood pressure.

Pregnancy also considerably alters a person’s metabolism; the body prioritizes breaking down fats instead of sugars to preserve the sugar for the developing fetus. Especially after the first trimester, those who are pregnant have high blood sugar and must double their insulin production to keep it under control. It’s risky for them to be exposed to chemicals such as PFAS that have been linked to insulin resistance, a condition in which cells don’t respond to insulin anymore.

Finally, those who are pregnant are also especially susceptible to a category of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors. Estrogen is the hormone responsible for promoting the body’s changes during pregnancy. When endocrine disruptors enter the body, they mimic those hormones and can increase the risk of certain pregnancy-related health conditions, such as preeclampsia.

But despite these known risks, the occupational health of pregnant women has often been understudied, especially as women have entered more diverse areas of work.

“Occupational health really assumes a neutral body worker,” said Swati Rayasam, a public health scientist at the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California-San Francisco. By concentrating on this “neutral body worker,” occupational health as a field has overlooked the other stressors workers can face, either internal stressors, such as pregnancy, or external stressors, such as psychosocial stress due to racism or food insecurity, Rayasam said.

It also is tough to study those who are pregnant. It is unethical to expose them to even the slightest amount of chemicals, so research protocols are highly restricted. And very few occupational health surveys include enough pregnant workers to draw reliable conclusions about the unique risks they face.

Langness, the biomedical researcher in California, had a miscarriage while working in the lab. She later decided to change jobs, although she doesn’t know if the chemicals had anything to do with the loss of the baby.

The lack of research doesn’t affect only current pregnancies but also leaves women who have already been exposed with lots of questions. They include Leticia Mendoza, a 38-year-old woman who lives in Oakland, California. She said she was exposed to pesticides when she worked pruning strawberries while pregnant. When her baby was born, he did not crawl until he was 1 year old and started walking after he turned 2.

“I thought he was going to start talking when he was 3, but he still doesn’t, and he is 5,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza’s child has been diagnosed with autism.

Although researchers have studied potential links between pesticide exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders, the evidence is not conclusive, which complicates proving in a court what caused the harm, said Sharon Sagiv, an associate adjunct professor in environmental epidemiology at the University of California-Berkeley.

Advocates hope the new federal law will give workers a little more leverage when they raise concerns about risks on the job. “We really just want them to be able to have a conversation with their employer without facing retaliation or being forced on unpaid leave,” said Kameron Dawson, a senior staff attorney for A Better Balance, a workers’ advocacy organization that pushed for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act for over a decade.

But although some of the regulations might lead to better accommodations for pregnant workers, that depends partly on the employer or a union knowing what can represent a risk. “It’s not rocket science, but it does take effort on the employer’s side to understand what in their workplace could be hazardous,” said Gillian Thomas, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the past, women have sometimes been forbidden from working while pregnant, so a delicate balance must be struck between protecting them and their pregnancies and not removing them from the workforce. “It’s tricky because, for many women, this is their livelihood,” said Sagiv.

Some researchers believe studying the enhanced risks faced in pregnancy may result in more protective regulations that would help the wider public.

“If we really try to protect the most vulnerable workers in the workplace, we’re protecting everybody,” Rocheleau said.

This article was produced by KFF Health News , which publishes California Healthline , an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation .

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

©2023 Kaiser Health News. Visit khn.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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