The Thorn West is a state and local news roundup compiled by volunteer members of DSA-LA. Our goal is to provide a weekly update on the latest developments in state and local politics, and to track the issues that are most important to our membership. Writers and copy editors wanted! Email [email protected] if interested!

Issue No. 225 - February 7, 2025

State Politics

• Governor Newsom met with President Trump in Washington DC, amid fears that his administration will attempt to withhold federal aid from the state.

• Casey Wasserman, currently serving as president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, will also lead a private-sector wildfire recovery program, known as “LA Rises,” along with Magic Johnson and Dodgers owner Kevin Walter, as announced by Governor Newsom. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass appointed Steve Soboroff, former chair of the police commission, to lead the recovery effort in Pacific Palisades. It isn’t yet clear how the multiple city and state efforts will be coordinated.

City Politics

• At a press conference with Mayor Bass and other local leaders, President Trump demanded that Pacific Palisades residents who had lost their homes be immediately allowed to begin the process of rebuilding, before the sites could be safely cleared of toxic debris. His subsequent executive order implemented an “unprecedented” short time frame for debris removal.

Health Care

• Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles to demand that the hospital reverse its recent decision to stop offering gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The hospital’s decision was a capitulation to an executive order from President Trump threatening to derail federal funding to medical institutions that provide this form of health care.

Housing Rights

• Following a tense discussion in council, the package of wildfire-response tenant protections proposed by Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez was returned to committee. The council did pass a measure offering narrowly-tailred eviction protections to renters who take in those who lost their homes in the wildfires. At the most recent meeting of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, a pared back version of the measure was approved.

Immigration

• A week of protests at City Hall, as well as student walkouts, all in opposition to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, gained media attention after protestors briefly shut down the 101 freeway.

• A leaked document obtained by the LA Times indicates that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a “large scale” flood of “immigration enforcement actions” this February in Los Angeles.

Environmental Justice

• Video evidence appears to implicate Southern California Edison equipment as the cause of the Eaton fire. The private utility company initially said that it did not believe it did not beleive it was responsible for the fire, but have acknowledged irregularities with their equipment at the time of the fire’s ignition.

• Rain earlier in the week caused debris flows in the burn scar of the Palisades fire, triggering a weeklong shut down of a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Heavier rain is expected this week.