The entrance to the planned 17,000 sq.-foot Korean American National Museum to be built in Koreatown. ; Credit: Morphosis Architects

The Korean American National Museum is on pace to break ground next year on the corner of Vermont and Sixth.

New designs unveiled this week show an airy, modern-looking building that will include elements of Korean design and house photographs and other artifacts.  

Read more on LAist.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The immersive Haus of Creep opens at ROW DTLA this weekend.; Credit: Courtesy of Just Fix It Productions

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Henry E. Huntington in 1907.; Credit: Theo C. Marceau, New York City. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

One of the most prized treasures of LA County is 100 years old this year.

The Huntington Library is beloved for its lush botanical gardens and fine art.

As KPCC's Brianna Flores reports, you can trace its origins to a pivotal moment in Southern California history.

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Money talks ... in verse.

"Money is a kind of poetry," the poet Wallace Stevens once wrote. That might be so, but poems rarely pay the poet's bills. Still, poetry reading in the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years, according to the National Endowment for the Arts' Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

The Academy of American Poets announced Thursday that it has received a $4.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Poets Laureate Fellowship program — believed to be the largest-ever from a philanthropic institution for poetry. That's enough to fund the program for the next three years.

Poetry is like "the little engine that could ... with its outsized power, with its tremendous potency," Elizabeth Alexander, who is the president of the Mellon Foundation, tells NPR. As a poet, she believes the grant will help that engine "move a little faster."

Through fellowships to individual poets laureate, "we're able to create the conditions and open up the creativity of poets, not only to make their own poems, but also to think 'how can communities use poems? How can we let poetry be a way that we can explore what it means to be American in all these different places in real time?,'" Alexander says. (The Mellon Foundation is among NPR's recent financial supporters.)

"It's a game-changer," says poet and former NEA Chair Dana Gioia. He says that while multimillion-dollar grants to performing arts institutions is commonplace, the poetry world has made do on tiny grants from small funders. "Usually it's $25,000 and you're supposed to be grateful."

The Poets Laureate project began last year and provides grants from $50,000 to $100,000 to 13 poets around the country. Molly Fisk, the poet laureate of California's Nevada County, spearheaded workshops that encouraged more than 800 schoolchildren to write poems responding to devastating wildfires in the state. Ed Madden, poet laureate of Columbia, S.C., tells NPR he believes in "poetry as public art," including poetry readings on city buses. For his fellowship, he launched a youth and community workshop and interactive map called "Telling the Stories of the City."

Claudia Castro Luna, Washington state's poet laureate, held workshops at eight stops along the Columbia River — "places where cultural programming of the kind I am providing is rare," she tells NPR. Luna says the yearlong project One River, Many Voices "brought an injection of joy and beauty, an enthusiasm for words."

Academy of American Poets Chairman Michael Jacobs says in a statement that the organization is "thrilled that this extraordinary grant from the Mellon Foundation will help us continue to fulfill our mission and enable us to meaningfully fund poets who are involved in the civic life of their communities."

The $4.5 million grant is not the largest philanthropic gift to poetry. That distinction goes to Ruth Lilly who pledged an unrestricted $200 million to Chicago's Poetry Foundation in 2002. But it is believed to be the largest grant ever made by a philanthropic institution to support poets.

Gioia says having a large foundation like Mellon put real money toward the art form "is both visionary and practical," and a reflection of poetry's growing popularity among all age levels and backgrounds.

"Thirty years ago, I was seen as an eccentric for loving poetry. Now I'm just stating the obvious," he says. As Gioia's own poem Money puts it:

It greases the palm, feathers a nest, holds heads above water, makes both ends meet.

Guidelines for the 2020 round of fellowships are posted on the Academy of American Poets' website. Poets laureate "of a state, city, county, U.S. territory, or Tribal nation after having been formally appointed" are eligible.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Hachette Book Group employees in New York City, during a Thursday walkout protesting their company's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir.; Credit: Kendra Barkoff Lamy/Twitter

On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees of the publishing imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown staged a walkout to protest Grand Central's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, next month.

Both imprints are owned by Hachette Book Group (HBG), the same house that published journalist Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. The walkout comes after Farrow announced on Tuesday that he felt he could no longer work with HBG after the Allen acquisition.

Farrow is Allen's son with actress Mia Farrow; his sister, Dylan Farrow, has accused Allen of having sexually abused her as a child. Allen has long denied her allegations.

In his statement, Farrow wrote in part that HBG "concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse."

Dylan Farrow also released a statement on Monday evening, in which she said in part: "Hachette's publishing of Woody Allen's memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men. ... This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money and notoriety affords. Hachette's complicity in this should be called out for what it is and they should have to answer for it."

Employees at both HBG's New York and Boston offices participated in the Thursday walkout. Many also sent out an auto-reply email that read in part: "We stand in solidarity with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault." Those include Little, Brown executive editor Vanessa Mobley, who was the editor of Catch and Kill.

In a statement sent to NPR Thursday afternoon, HBG CEO Michael Pietsch said: "We respect and understand the perspective of our employees who have decided to express their concern over the publication of this book. We will engage our staff in a fuller discussion about this at the earliest opportunity."

NPR reached out for comment to Allen's agent, who did not respond as of publication time.

The New York Post reported that HBG employees approached the company's human resources department on Thursday afternoon to complain about the planned publication of Allen's book. A Hachette employee told NPR that HBG's CEO, Michael Pietch, attempted to hold a town hall meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue, but the employees walked out before the meeting was held.

Farrow's agent, Lynn Nesbit, told NPR on Thursday, "I feel moved almost to tears by the walkout. It was such a brave gesture to management who, in my opinion, made such a misguided decision." Signing Allen, she said, was "a betrayal of Ronan, of the women in his book, of the issues in the book and of the staff of this publisher." She added that Farrow is "grateful for the support of his colleagues at Little, Brown."

Last year, The New York Times reported that Allen had tried to sell the memoir to several major publishing houses, "only to be met with indifference or hard passes"; one source told NPR on Thursday afternoon that the title had been considered "radioactive" in the publishing world.

Farrow also said in his Tuesday statement that HBG had not fact-checked Allen's memoir, nor did it contact Dylan Farrow for any response. "It also shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse, regardless of any personal connection or breach of trust here. ... I've also told Hachette that a publisher that would conduct itself in this way is one I can't work with in good conscience."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Marc Maron's new Netflix special is titled "End Times Fun."; Credit: Adam Rose / Netflix

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Opera singer Plácido Domingo, shown here speaking in Spain last July, said earlier this month that he tested positive for the coronavirus.; Credit: Ricardo Rubio/Europa Press via Getty Images

Plácido Domingo has been hospitalized because of COVID-19-related complications, according to multiple reports.

He is in stable condition in an Acapulco, Mexico, hospital and will receive medical attention for "as long as the doctors find it necessary until a hoped-for full recovery," a spokesperson for Domingo told Opera News over the weekend.

Domingo's reported hospitalization comes just days after he posted a March 22 message on Facebook revealing that he had tested positive for the disease caused by the coronavirus.

"I feel it is my moral duty to announce that I tested positive for COVID19, also known as the Corona Virus. My family and I are and will remain individually isolated for as long as it is medically necessary. Today we all enjoyed good health, but I presented symptoms of coughing and fever, so I decided to take the test and the result was positive," Domingo said.

Domingo has been one of opera's most reliable and bankable stars and is known for his ability to sing tenor and baritone and in multiple languages, including Italian, English, Russian and Spanish.

Recently, the 79-year-old has been embroiled in controversy as several women accused the Spanish-born singer of sexual misconduct.

On March 10, NPR reported that LA Opera, which Domingo helped establish, announced that its investigation substantiated 10 "inappropriate conduct" claims levied against him dating back to as early as 1986. Domingo resigned as the LA Opera's general director in October.

Prior to that, he withdrew from a production of the Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Macbeth" amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

He has denied the allegations.

Domingo is among a growing list of celebrities who have announced they have tested positive for the coronavirus, including actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson, actor Idris Elba, NBA star Kevin Durant, talk show host Andy Cohen and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Faced with financial issues, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater closed its Chelsea location in 2017.; Credit: Andrew Toth/Getty Images

When the Upright Citizens Brigade announced plans to permanently close its New York bases last week, comedy lost a beloved home. The scrappy, alternative comedy troupe that grew into a school and theater revolutionized improv in New York and beyond with its embrace of "Yes, and ..."

The New York institution incubated the talents of stars such as Kate McKinnon, Aziz Ansari, Chris Gethard, Donald Glover, Aubrey Plaza and many others in the comedy world. A pillar of longform improv, UCB teachings have been brought into countless comedy writers' rooms and are etched into many successful TV shows.

Four of the company's founding members, known as the "UCB4" — Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts — told staff in an email on April 21 that the organization couldn't afford to renew its leases on the group's two Manhattan locations: the UCB theater in Hell's Kitchen and a training center in the Garment District.

UCB also has two locations in Los Angeles where operations have been temporarily halted during the coronavirus outbreak, but there are currently no plans to close them.

Obits followed, marking the exit of UCB's physical presence in the city where it took off in the '90s, when the group turned a former strip club into its first theater.

"The guys that I came up with in New York at the UCB Theater — we made our bones there basically," said Rob Corddry, who went on to be a Daily Show correspondent and star in comedy films including Hot Tub Time Machine. "It's really sad. Sort of the end of an era."

The news comes a month after layoffs were announced at the group's New York and Los Angeles facilities in response to the coronavirus. A small number of staff were kept at training centers on both coasts.

But UCB was under financial strain long before the pandemic. Many UCBers cast the move as an example of an opaque, top-down decision-making that, over the years, they say has sowed distrust in UCB leadership among its members.

"The biggest issue with UCB was the lack of communication of the company and the owners to their employees," said Paris Adkins, a New York performer who was laid off from her administrative job with the company last month.

A previous round of layoffs took place at the end of 2018, mostly of New York employees. Adkins said the pandemic "is just the extenuating circumstance that put things over the edge."

As for the most recent closures, UCB's founders admitted to falling short of expectations.

"Look, we heard the community when they said, 'We're scared, too, and we want better communication,' " Amy Poehler told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview with the UCB4 after the announcement. "I think we did make mistakes, and we're trying to do better."

UCB has not responded to NPR's attempts to contact the organization.

Chris Renfro, an LA-based performer and show producer who relied on UCB as his main source of income, said that learning in March via a mass email that his 3-year career there had come to an end struck him as a betrayal of the values the UCB4 claimed to live by.

"UCB is about a community, it's about having each other's backs," he said, referencing the improv tradition UCB students learn of literally patting each other's backs and saying "Got your back."

"It felt like they had turned their backs on this massive community they had built up around them," he said. "So now there's a weird taste in a lot of peoples' mouths because of that."

According to a letter sent to staff addressing the layoffs, Poehler said she would pay for an additional month of health care for former full-time staff.

Much of the company's operations run on part-time staff, according to Adkins. She estimated that UCB cut a total of 45 New York-based employees across the city since last month.

Despite the community's frustrations, when the indefinite shutdown of the New York outposts turned definite, the tributes rolled in online.

Stephen Colbert, who studied at the peer improv hub Second City in Chicago before moving to New York, tweeted "I'll always be grateful" for the times he was roped in to perform with UCB during the '90s in the acclaimed sketch show mainstay Asssscat.

Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper added, "When I left Chicago, the people at UCB NY welcomed me, challenged me, and embodied the NY spirit of full commitment today because tomorrow you could run out of cash and life ships you back home."

Other dispatches on social media were less endearing.

Former students, many of whom shelled out several hundred dollars for improv classes, wrote about negative experiences and wasted money. Some revived longstanding criticism of the theater's policy to not pay its performers, unlike many of its improv peers.

Despite its problems, many felt a sense of community at UCB, Adkins said.

"I think people are grieving," she said. "It's pretty much my only community in New York and I think a lot of people feel that way. You don't get the support of a community like you do at UCB."

In an effort to financially support herself and her peers following the layoffs, Adkins started a GoFundMe page to raise money for New York staff. To date, the account has raised nearly $60,000. She's splitting the funds between staff members, who will receive a month's worth of pay. The rest will be divided among teachers who are in need, Adkins said.

In the THR interview, Amy Poehler assured the UCB community, "We're not leaving New York."

At least for the short-term, the company has moved both LA and New York classes online. For the long-term in New York, leadership has floated plans to return to the old days of renting other independent spaces to hold classes and performances.

Still, even some of its youngest members see the now-shuttered hubs as a piece of history.

"But that's replaceable and people are not," said former training center staff member Maicy Jo Schwartz, who began her UCB NY career in 2014.

Schwartz sees a silver lining.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in the future some people branch off and start their own theaters or their own training centers or their own underground improv and sketch, because New York is a perfect place to do that," she said. "And I do hope that the UCB4 — Amy, Matt, Matt and Ian — can be part of that and support that when there are future endeavors that their alumni take on."

NPR's Elizabeth Blair contributed to this story.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

His expression said it all.  KPCC Director of On-Air Fundraising Rob Risko walked into my studio about 10:45 a.m. to update me on where we stood with our Fall member drive.  I knew we had a $10,000 challenge that had started first thing in the morning, but didn't have any idea how far behind we had fallen in reaching the required 1,000 member threshold.

 Rob gave it to me straight -- we had to attract well over 500 members during "AirTalk" to meet the challenge.  I knew that was nearly impossible during a full two-hour show, let alone one that would be significantly pre-empted by the President's news conference.  Regardless, I knew we had to do our best and hope our listeners would contribute in a record-setting way.  Boy, did they.

We didn't start our show until 11:25 a.m., following the news conference.  Right off the bat the phones started ringing and the KPCC website starting humming.  The volume of member contributions stayed high with only a few exceptions.  There were times we could barely keep track of how many members were coming in.  It was one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences I've had in all my years hosting "AirTalk."

I've been on a high all afternoon thinking about how commited our listeners are to the mission of KPCC.  You've made me very happy, and very proud of our audience.  Thank you for a wonderful show of support.  I will long remember this day.

By the way, we set a fundraising record for "AirTalk" with today's show.  We're still tallying it all up.  I'll have the totals for you tomorrow morning at 11.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

When "Offramp" host John Rabe's father, Bill, created the list at Lake Superior State University in Michigan he likely didn't know it would thrive nearly 40 years later.  As language evolves there should never be a shortage of words and phrases we want to "kick to the curb."

This morning on "AirTalk," I asked listeners to pick the ones they "hate on."  We got some good ones, including my overused "unpack," as in "let's unpack that idea."  Falling into word patterns can happen so subtly that we don't even know it until someone points it out.

My nomination for the list -- "it is what it is."   What are yours?

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Director Michael Apted (L) with Larry Mantle in the AirTalk studio.

This past Wednesday on "AirTalk," film director Michael Apted came in to talk with us about his eighth documentary in the series that's followed the lives of 13 people, beginning in 1964 when the kids were seven.  They've shared their stories with Apted every seven years, and he's clearly invested a lot of emotion into this project.

"56 Up" is wonderful for how it shows the mid-life evolution of the participants.  Apted includes scenes from earlier interviews, so that we see what aspects of today's 56-year-olds were present in childhood and what turns their lives have made over these years. 

"56 Up" is showing at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, and Apted will be doing Q-and-A at some of the screenings.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Virus Melt

In case you missed the March for Science, last month?  I have the report!  Not that I went, no. Science enthusiasts all, my household was planning on going—  But then my younger teen daughter got felled by "bacteria"—  Possibly brought on by a dubious "pizza day" at her science magnet.

So I spent that Saturday at home, taking care of her— But we streamed the Washington DC and other marches, live on CNN!  So here is my report!

Let's quickly review the main points.  Worldwide, there were 600-plus cities participating, with high levels of enthusiasm.  The March for Science's stated mission was to be a positive, non-partisan march for scientists and scientific principles.  That alone is such a wonderful, counterintuitive idea.  Much humor and wit was seen.

As I did not get to go, and make my own hilarious sign—?  To honor the spirit of the occasion I would like to share two favorite jokes.

First: How do you tell the difference between an introverted and an extroverted mathematician? 
For the whole time the introverted mathematician is talking to you, he looks down at his shoes.  When the extroverted mathematician talks to you, the whole time he looks down at your shoes.  Ba-dum-bum.

I know I used the pronoun "he" in that joke—  As if to imply all left-brained people are male.  But no!  So here's the saying from when I attended Caltech—  Way back in the '80s—  And the male to female ratio was 7 to 1.  "Caltech: where the odds are good, but the good are odd."

Now to some of the funny—and sometimes punny—March for Science signs:

"If you're not the solution, you're the precipitate!"

That was next to: "Protest Cosine, Protest Sine."  Get it?  Protest. . . Sine?  Puns are hard on the radio.  So let's finish with the more "meta": "What do we want?  Evidence based research!  When do we want it?  After peer review!"  

Of course, there were less than non-partisan messages, too.  Just reporting here?  There were signs with the phrases "Black Hole" and "Absolute Zero" ghosted over our president's recognizeable silhouette.  The live feed from San Francisco brought: "Trump believes there's no global warming, as nothing is hotter than Ivanka."

That one made me snort, but I had to quickly tell my daughter, "that is totally inappropriate."
We decided a good sign was: "Mitosis, Not Division."

And a cute one on a dog that everyone can agree on.  "Support Labs."  Labs. 

Next week: Science is Love!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

 
So, my 15 year old science magnet daughter and I experienced last month's exciting March for Science—!  From home, as she was temporarily felled by some bacteria.  Consuming an unscientific "cure" of chocolate pudding—?  We watched the march on CNN.

Now, the news changes so quickly you may not remember that just one month ago—?  There were shock waves due to proposed massive federal budget cuts—  Not just to climate change research, but to—surely the more non-controversial —National Institutes of Health.  I mean, health?  Who's anti-health?  Even MacDonald's is serving apple slices now, and kale!

The march was a mix of passion and fun. There were lots of great signs, including one with the classic line: If you're not the solution, you're the precipitate! Marchers came dressed as Einstein, dinosaurs, polar bears.

Then again—  And admittedly, at home, we were wearing bathrobes rather than labcoats—? A couple of humble notes.

 Some of the speakers in DC were less scientists than YouTube science explainers.  And pure research scientists—not to mention philosophers—might question some of the applause lines.  And I quote: "Science is inherently political!"  "Science is objective, but it is not neutral!"  What?  Then some of the marchers chanted back, with a decided New Age lilt: "Science is hope!"  "Science is our planet!"  "Peace, love, science!"  

I heard myself grousing to my daughter: "Sure.  It's like 'Nature.'  To some, 'Nature' is a beautiful flower.  But 'Nature' is also Stage 5 hurricanes and poison frogs who eat their own offspring.  And—and pitcher plants!  Have you seen pitcher plants?" 

The chants continued:  "Health is science!  Safety is science!  Clean water is science!  I yell at the TV: "PS: Nuclear missiles from North Korea?  SCIENCE!"

There were also heartfelt pleas from the stage for more "K-12 hands-on STEM-based learning."  I sympathize. I marched for that when my daughters were in elementary school.  Of course we want our children to be turned on to science—  To the classroom volcanos comically exploding with baking soda. To the wonders of milk carton pea plants, sunny farms of ladybugs.

But eventually, inexorably, comes The Ugly.  The multiplication tables, long division, algebra, trig, then calculus, if a career in science is really being pursued.  I just heard about a senior I know, an exceptional—and well-rounded—student.  He has a 4.5 GPA and almost-perfect SAT's, nosebleed-high!  But he has been shut out by all the UC's he applied to, including his third choice, UC San Diego.  Mwah!  SCIENCE!

Still, quibbles aside, science is the future.  We applaud all, and must forge on. Chocolate pudding recommended.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

When I was a kid, it was clear, when traveling with my family in summer—That we were cosmopolitan in attitude, but bohemian in cash.  We would criss-cross Europe, yes—  But we were car-camping, our luggage strapped to the roof of our shuddering VW fastback.  Lunch was sweaty cheese and days-old ham from an unrefrigerated metal cookie tin.  The bathrooms in our one-star hotels were. . . shared.

When I travel now with my teen daughters, I'd say we are basically middle-class—?  But due to the complexity of mom's travel points—?  We never know if we'll have a first or third world experience.

For instance, recently, using air miles, we flew United to Denver for free!  Mostly.  I splurged on the extra hundred dollars so we could actually sit together, rather than, as Basic Economy requires, being seated randomly all over the plane.  I did not allow any extra bags carried or checked, because my girls may one day go to college.

Kayak-ing the white water rapids of cheap car rentals, I'd found a company called ACE offering a tiny car that looked like a Yugo—  But, as they used to say at IKEA, "Impossible Price"! Upon arrival, I find out why. Our instructions? Walk past the Ground Transportation counter, get into "lane four," then turn left and walk half a mile, past all the Avis, Budget and Enterprise signs and wait, literally, and I quote, "under the sign that is blank."

 "I know that we're not Platinum members of anything," I grouse to my daughters, "but standing under a blank sign?  Can ACE at least not tape their logo up there?  It's so humiliating!"

"Maybe they didn't have enough money to commission a logo," says my older daughter.  Shuttle after shuttle whooshes by.

 "We'll be lucky if the car has four wheels!" says my younger.

Forty-five minutes later, the ACE shuttle finally arrives.  I'm strangely comforted that there are other passengers, as humiliated as we are.  We are the people too cheap to get a real rental car.  None of us make eye contact.  We study our crumpled Expedia printouts as though we are important business travelers splitting the atom.

We are shuttled to the far side of town.  Though not quite a van down by the river, the rental office is in fact a trailer. 

On the upside, we are led to a vehicle that, while splattered with mud, is a giant black Ford Explorer.  Added plus: it comes loaded with Sirius 1970's Radio!  The minus —  The first song that comes on is The Captain and Tenille, "You Better Shop Around!"

Next week: Running on Dr. Pepper, dry shampoo and Special K.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

 I would like to apologize to our neighbors, block, zip code—  Really, to everyone, in Los Angeles?  For our front lawn.  True, the word "lawn" is stretching it.  It is more an ugly brown snarl.  I want to throw a sheet over it, like a corpse!  Or at least put up a sign that says, "We know, we know.  And we're sorry!"

When I bought the house many years ago, the grass was green.  Our gardener Vic was a genius at setting sprinkler timers—  I have a physics degree, and couldn't figure it out—  The lawns looked great and then we got our first—?  Well, it was less a water "bill" than a water citation.  A water tirade.  A water hazing.  Our utility company began mailing us hurtful bar graphs, showing what hogs we were compared to our water-conservant neighbors.

So in deference to Jerry Brown's drought emergency, we decided to let the lawn turn the color of the governor's name.  It was a badge of eco-honor.  But then, another problem. Every Saturday morning at 8 gardener Vic showed up with a high-pitched, shrieking machine that he would use to blow dead leaves around our dead yard for an hour.  The ear-splitting sound was no doubt meant to show us that he was busy quote unquote "gardening."

It took another two years for me to let him go—  The irony was that I would have kept paying him to stop leaf-blowing—  But he refused—  Then we go out of town for two months and it rains.  A lot.  We return to "grass" that is almost waist high.  I use the word "grass" but in fact this greenery looks sub-tropical.  There are giant tear-drop-shaped leaves and thick leathery stems and twisting vines.I struggle with the weed-whacker to take off the top foot of it— I'm startled by a swarm of exotic butterflies and insects. I hear a shuh-duh-duh-duh-duh.  I'm actually a little spooked.  What will I find in there next?  A pterodactyl?  A cow?  A baby?

The rains go away—  And the area turns Jerry Brown again—  But now, since I gave the jungle a very messy, tortured haircut, instead of just a sedate dead lawn it looks like crazy people live here.  We consider installing a drought resistant garden, but we get quotes of $10,000!  Maybe we should scatter dozens of pots of little cacti around the yard. Or maybe we should just park our cars there.  

Yes, that's the ticket.  My car is a Prius.  It's eco-fashionable.

Next week: The window treatments of your dreams.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

My 16 year old was complaining about too much light in her bedroom—   Her curtains are too gauzy—  It makes it hard for her to sleep in 'til noon, which she considers her right in summer— 

Because I know nothing, I foolishly said, "Let's get you some blinds!"

Swirling a fresh cup of coffee, a divorced mom taking care of business, I contact my virtual "husband"—  Angie—  Who has a list.

I type in "blinds"—  Do I mean "custom blinds"?  Sure!  Here's a 10% off coupon—  I'm printing money!  For a highly-rated custom blinds guy named Roger—  Within two hours he's at my house for a free estimate!  Hashtag Winning!

Roger is charming, friendly, conversational.  He oohs and aahs over our old Craftsman house, with its large, beautiful, slightly "unusually-sized" windows.  Thatshould have been the tipoff that another custom-zero was being custom-added to the price, but I thought nothing of it.  Oh no!  I offered Roger a cup of coffee—  He asked what I did for a living—I said I was a writer—  He asked what kind—

Now I know that this is called "bonding" and you should not do it when getting a quote unquote free estimate—  I realize I should have said, "I am unemployed," and burst into tears rather than trying to make my career sound so lucrative.  Roger then spends what seems like half an hour—he's thorough!—measuring two windows—  Then he goes to his truck and returns with a thick, beautifully bound binder.  Full of blinds.

Not just blinds.  And I quote: "Window treatments of your dreams"—  And I thought, "Who dreams of window treatments?"  Someone, because there were honeycomb ones, blackout ones, vertical ones—  With different kinds of pulleys, cords, and stylish valences—  In complicated colors like Banana Ice Milk and Taos Midnight Persimmon—  I start fearing that aromas will be next!
           

Bottom line?  For two bedroom windows, it will take three weeks for the custom shades to arrive.  Cost?  $1500.  "They will look amazing!" Roger enthuses.  Inwardly, I agree.  They will be the most amazing thing in my teen's messy bedroom piled with laundry, makeup, art supplies and crumpled tissues.  We just want something to block the light.  After Roger leaves—  And the air is thick with mutual disappointment—  I eye a poster board from my younger daughter's science fair project.  I contemplate simply nailing blankets over the windows.

In the end, I give my teen a nice new sleep mask.  Great solution!  Although that night I do indeed dream. . . of window treatments!

Next week: House Painting Hell!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

 If only home reno was as simple as on "Fixer Upper"—  The popular TV show featuring Chip and Joanna Gaines.  These toothsome Texans show an anxious couple three falling down houses—

 The couple picks one—  Chip and Joanna sledgehammer it, tear off the "ship lap"— Repaint it cobalt, festoon it with design elements from Joanna's handy online store— Stainless steel fixtures, antique farm lamps, throw pillows thatsay "Gather"—  Two months later, the Gainses pull apart life-sized photo panels of the old house to reveal the new, and the couple weeps with joy!

"You have to live in Texas to be on the show," says my friend Jan. "If it were LA, you'd spend a year just waiting for permits."

"I like how easy they make it," I say.  "The couple just says what they're like—She says: 'I'm a homebody.  He's outdoorsy.'  They go away.  Two months later they magically return to a landscaped backyard terrace that 'brings the outdoors in'—"

"With a throw pillow that says 'Nature,'" adds friend Mary. 

"Exactly!" exclaims Jan.  "In Eagle Rock we just wanted a drought-resistant yard!  This master gardener—  That's right, master gardener—  Her estimate included 10 hours of design at $150 an hour and we had to participate!  There was a lengthy questionnaire about our 'aesthetic goals' and 'plant preferences'—  And I'm going, 'I already went to college!  Just plant something—'"

"With a throw pillow that says 'Water,''" says Mary.

"Contractors!" I say.  "I was trying to get just the outside of our house repainted.  The same color.

From Angie's List, I got three estimates.  The first—$20,000!  Done in two weeks.  Seemed like a lot.  Second—$11,000!  One guy.  An artisan.  He estimated it would take him two months."

"Until he falls off the ladder and breaks his hip—then years could go by," says Jan.

"Third estimate?  $3500.  Done in three days."

"How is that possible?" Mary asks.  "Is the paint radioactive?"

"Oh no," I say.  "The crew shows up on time, 9 a.m. on Tuesday, they're professional, they're neat, they're focused.  They measure, cover, tape—"

"And the second day they don't show up," says Jan.

"Oh no, the second day more painters show up.  There are 12 of them, working 10 hours a day.

And then, in slow motion horror, I'm taking out a calculator, trying to figure out how much they're getting paid.  The house looks great but I feel terrible. So I brought them cookies."

"Add a throw pillow from Joanna's store that says 'Guilt,'" says Mary.

"Oh no," I say. Too expensive."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

So—  We just had our big summer family reunion at a lake in Wisconsin.

You know what they say about family gatherings—  That you should never discuss religion or politics— And we don't plan to—  But because my older daughter Maddy has already started school back in LA and she doesn't want to fall behind in her homework—?  While everyone else is fishing or swimming or prepping the barbeque— Maddy needs to works on her collage. . . for U.S. History.

The theme? What does her generation think is the biggest problem facing the U.S. Right away, we're in crisis mode. We have to find an art store to procure poster paper, a glue stick, highlighters, scissors and three current periodicals.

I remind this L.A. teen that we are deep in the woods of Wisconsin -- Yelp says the nearest "craft supply" store is a "Ben Franklin on Wachookooheesha Lake" an hour away.

So instead we drive 20 minutes to "Trig's" grocery store—  "Oh, and can you pick up tortillas and cilantro?" my partner Charlie calls out.  "Sure!" I say.  "Cilantro!  That's what we came to Wisconsin for!"

Trig's has tortillas, but no cilantro. More importantly, there are no scissors, no highlighters. There are glue sticks, and envelopes we can glue together to make poster paper. There are of course plenty of periodicals. There's Musky Hunter Magazine, Catfish Insider, Log Cabin, Gun Dog Magazine and a glossy publication called Concealed Carry.  Which aside from guns, has a surprising amount of fashion—jeans and cargo shorts with many pockets for—  You know!

For a Blue State metropolitan girl like my 16 year old, this glimpse of the magazine tastes of rural Wisconsin is a fascinating sociological journey.  She reads eagerly from her trove to her boyfriend, safely back in land-locked Northridge—  Until I tell her to get off the phone because my GPS lady is now lost and taking us in circles.  "Harris Creek, Harris Lane, Harris Creek Lane, Harris Bog?" 
"Oh, we'll find it," she says breezily, continuing to chat about Musky Hunters.

 And I'm going, "Hey City Girl, this isn't the Galeria. We are seriously lost. In the back country. And all we've got to defend ourselves is a package of tortillas and Concealed Carry Magazine."  (hum the Deliverance theme)

Next week: Dog Fight.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

"Sailor Moon" cosplayers at Anime Revloution 2014 in Vancouver, Canada.; Credit: GoToVan/Flickr Creative Commons

Japanese animation — anime — offers very different visions from its American counterparts, and it's extremely popular with college and high school students. They can be extremely difficult for well-meaning parents, uncles and aunts to shop for, so here, in no particular order, are some titles that can transform an adult’s image from clueless doofus to knowing friend. Plus, we have a few suggestions for younger children (who can also be a pain to shop for).

Cardcaptor Sakura: Complete Collection
NIS America: $249.99; 9 discs, Blu-ray, plus book
When cheerful fourth-grader Sakura Kinamoto opens an odd book in her father's study, strange lights fly out. Kerberos, who looks like a plushie of the lion on the book's cover, explains that she's inadvertently released a deck of magical cards. Despite her protests that’s she just an ordinary little girl, Kero insists Sakura must become a Cardcaptor and retrieve them before they work mischief on the world. Many American series talk about empowering girls — in this one, the viewer sees Sakura grow stronger and more confident as she learns to master the magical cards.

Cowboy Bebop: The Complete Series
Funimation: $59.98; Blu-ray, 4 discs
The sci-fi action series "Cowboy Bebop" redefined cool in animation when it debuted in 1998. Twenty-first-century bounty hunter Spike Spiegel is an anti-hero in the tradition of '40s film noir detectives. Spike is a tough guy; a crack shot, an ace pilot and a skilled martial artist. But his cynical exterior conceals a never-healed wound left by the woman he loved and lost. Seventeen years later, "Cowboy Bebop" is so popular that two special editions of the series for holiday gifting have already sold out (!). But it’s available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods
Funimation: $34.98; DVD/Blu-ray combo pack; 3 discs
The first new "Dragon Ball Z" animation in 17 years, "Battle of the Gods" (2013) proved how popular the franchise still is, selling over 1 million tickets in just six days in Japan. The filmmakers keep the animation flat, limited and hand-drawn, so "Battle of the Gods" looks like the classic TV series and delivers the mixture of slapstick, friendship and over-the-top battles Dragon Ball fans remember and want to see again — especially guys in their 20s who grew up watching it.

Naruto Shippuden: Road to Ninja: The Movie 6
VIZ: $29.99 DVD/Blu-ray combo; 2 discs
The title hero of the long-running "Naruto" and "Naruto Shippuden" series is a come-from-behind hero whose world centers on magical ninja techniques, outrageous fights, slapstick, friendship and ramen. "The Road to Ninja" incorporates these well-loved elements, but stresses the lonely, compelling side of the title character. Audiences would quickly weary of Naruto if he were just a knuckleheaded prankster. His dedication to overcoming his weaknesses and achieving his goals makes him heroic, as well as comic — and one of the most popular animated characters of the new millennium.

(A scene from "Ranma 1/2," an anime series about a 16-year-old boy who's transformed into a girl whenever he's splashed with water.)

Ranma 1/2: Sets 1, 2, 3 & 4
VIZ: $54.97 each, Blu-ray; $44.82, DVD: 3 discs
Because he once fell into a cursed spring, black-haired high school martial artist Ranma Saotome turns into a buxom, red-haired girl when he’s hit with cold water. (Hot water restores his proper gender.) Ranma and his father Genma are freeloaders in the home of Suon Tendo. To ensure the continuation of the family dojo, the fathers have decided that the loutish Ranma and Suon’s hot-tempered daughter Akane are engaged. "Ranma 1/2"  supplies the slapstick insanity animation can provide in abundance. The filmmakers carefully sneak in just enough grudging affection between Ranma and Akane to keep the series from feeling mean-spirited.

Pokémon: Indigo League (Season 1): Complete Collection
VIZ: $54.98  9 discs          
"Pokémon" is no longer the trend du jour it was 20 years ago, when it swept America. But the games and the animated series remain popular. Although it's product-based and sometimes cloying, "Pokémon" is an agreeable show for elementary school children that stresses friendship, perseverance, fair play and good sportsmanship. These early adventures take the main characters through the first part of the game in its original Red/Blue versions. With his friends Misty and Brock, aspiring master Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum defeats other trainers, captures wild Pokémon and outwits the inept comic villains of Team Rocket.

Princess Nine Complete Series
Bayview Entertainment: $39.99 DVD
Ryo Hayakawa inherited her late father’s talent as a pitcher, but she works as a waitress in her mother’s tiny cafe. Determined to overcome sexist opposition and create a girls’ baseball team that can compete in the national championships, Ms. Himuro, the head of prestigious Kisaragi High, gives Ryo a scholarship. She must recruit players and build an effective team. Ryo is a very likable character — she’s proud of her abilities, but surprised at where they take her. "Princess Nine" ranks among the better girls’ series of recent years, with characters who are strong, capable individuals but who exhibit human weaknesses.

Short Peace
Sentai Filmworks: $29.98 Blu-ray
For "Short Peace," Katsuhiro Otomo ("Akira") and three other directors made short films in personal styles they felt suited the stories they’d chosen, two of them evoking the look of 19th century woodblock prints. In Shuhei Morita’s Oscar-nominated "Possessions," a wandering tinkerer seeks refuge from a storm in a remote forest shrine. Inside, he  must pacify umbrellas, bowls and other household objects that resent being thrown away after years of devoted service. Otomo’s "Combustible" focuses on childhood sweethearts Owaka and Matsukichi, the son and daughter of wealthy merchants in 18th century Edo (Tokyo). The climactic blaze that brings the star-crossed lovers together — only to separate them forever — is stunningly beautiful.

(Oscar-winning Japanese animator and film director Hayao Miyazaki walks past an advertisement following the release of his film "Ponyo.")

No figure in contemporary animation is more admired than Hayao Miyazaki. Walt Disney Home Entertainment has just released to DVD/Blu-ray 2-disc sets of three of his major films at $26.95 each:

Kiki's Delivery Service
A charming coming-of-age story, "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989) follows the very human ups and downs of an adolescent witch who must leave her family for a new city where she’ll discover her special talent. Kiki copes believably with tight budgets, self-doubt and the awkward attentions of a flight-obsessed boy. The late comedian Phil Hartman gave his final performance as Gigi, the sardonic black cat who provides a running commentary on Kiki's misadventures.

Princess Mononoke
The ecologically-themed "Princess Mononoke" (1999) was the first of Miyazaki’s features to receive a major theatrical release in the U.S. The problems posed by rampant development and consumerism figure prominently in the film. “If you want to discuss any aspect of the problems we face as humans, you cannot ignore ecology,'' he said. Miyazaki juxtaposes visually and emotionally intense scenes of the characters, with quiet images of clouds, streams and forests. When rain begins to fall, he lingers on a stone that darkens as it absorbs moisture.

(A screenshot from Japanese director and animator Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke.")

The Wind Rises
In "The Wind Rises" (2013), Miyazaki carries the viewer through rapturously beautiful fantasies, hard-won pleasures and poignant sorrows in this biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the A6M Zero Fighter for Mitsubishi during World War II. "The Wind Rises" isn’t focused on speed — Miyazaki concentrates on the magic of flight. Instead of launching the viewers on a CG rollercoaster ride, he enables them to savor the magic of escaping gravity in a way that approaches visual poetry. "The Wind Rises" may be Miyazaki’s last feature, but the director is still clearly at the height of his powers; although premature, it’s a glorious exit.

Death Note: The Complete Series

Light Yagami, the hero of the dark fantasy-adventure "Death Note" (2006) is brilliant, alienated— and murderous. He found the Death Note: the notebook of a Shinigami (god of death). If anyone writes the name of a human in the book, that person dies within minutes. Light launches a vigilante campaign to rid the world of criminals and create his vision of a perfect society. But the unexplained string of deaths attracts the attention of the police, who turn the case over to the secretive master crime solver known only as L. Although it begins slowly, "Death Note" gets better with each installment, as the stakes grow higher in the macabre duel of wits between Light and L.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Actors Carla Gugino, Matthew Lillard and Sir Patrick Stewart pose at the "Match" screening during the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 3, 2015 in Palm Springs, California. ; Credit: Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images for PSIFF

Is there a happier star in Hollywood than Patrick Stewart?

Certainly no one seems to be having more fun than the onetime Star Trek captain and current (and seemingly permanent) X-Man. And why shouldn't Sir Patrick be pleased with himself? He really has got it all: a thriving stage profile in both New York and London, the unconditional love of a vast and loyal fan base, and a film career that oscillates freely between franchise blockbusters and the small, character-driven chamber pieces Stewart so clearly relishes.

"Match" is about as small a movie as Stewart has ever appeared in: a well-intentioned three-character film studded with very funny dialogue courtesy of writer/director Stephen Belber, upon whose play "Match" is based.

Stewart plays an aging gay dance instructor named Tobi Powell, who may or may not have sired a child back in the swinging 60s – an era movies now take to have been 10 years of uninterrupted orgy punctuated by Beatles records and gunshots aimed at the Kennedy brothers.

As the saying goes, "If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there." Stewart's Tobi Powell was vibrantly there at the time, so it's perhaps natural that he can't seem to recall whether or not one of his rare couplings with a female partner might have had some unintended consequences.

Mincing slightly and speaking in an accent that sounds Midwestern by way of Wales, Stewart is an absolute blast to watch. His genuine (and usually underutilized) flair for comedy is roguishly on display, allowing "Match" to shift between pathos and farce with an assurance born more of the performer's bravado than the emotional contours of Belber's somewhat overeager text.

Though allegedly a bit of a shut-in, Tobi is a minor masterpiece of a lost and exuberant art form: the exaggerated star turn. It's unsurprising Frank Langella got a Tony nomination for playing him on Broadway a decade ago, and at least a bit unexpected that Stewart has gone completely unnoticed this awards season, even by the nomination-happy Golden Globes.

Belber's best writing is mostly his comedic stuff. One aria comparing cunnilingus to knitting may just be the best scene of its type since Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in "When Harry Met Sally" a quarter century ago.

Solid and believable supporting turns from Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard add to the fun until Belber's script bogs down in the third act into the kind of paint-by-numbers epiphany shtick even TV has given up on at this point.

WATCH: The official trailer for "Match," starring Patrick Stewart

Everybody cries. Everybody changes. Everybody yawns.  Or I did anyway.

Still, go see this movie — or better yet, watch it on your phone, since it's shot almost entirely in close up — to see a grand and gracefully aging actor strut his stuff with contagious delight. You will definitely laugh, and, God, does this movie hope you'll also cry.

But if you do weep, don't be surprised if, like Tobi himself, you hate yourself in the morning.

Off-Ramp contributor R. H. Greene is covering the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, where he recently saw the new comedy "Match" starring Patrick Stewart. "Match" comes to theaters and video-on-demand on Jan. 14.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

At the corner of Glendale and Glenfeliz, Jeff Harmes created an art garden completely from scratch. ; Credit: Alana Rinicella

On the median on the Atwater Village side of the Hyperion bridge, Jeff Harmes built a garden. It's an act he calls "taking nothing and making it into something that everyone can get something out of, that can inspire everyone."

Having lived on the streets for 30 years, Jeff says grew to hate litter. He used to sweep street gutters with a piece of cardboard and remove trash packed into the forks of trees. He thought of them as small acts that would go mostly unnoticed.

On a whim last spring, he started tilling the median — or "the island," as he likes to call it ... although "oasis" is more like it, now. He made rock sculptures from stones he scrounged out of the L.A. River. In celebration of spring, he made a peace sign out of flowers. 

He says he doesn't know much about gardening or landscaping. He learns as he goes and looks to commuters for suggestions. In the absence of running water, he relies on rainfall.

Vibrant succulents sit next to kitschy items like gnomes and plastic flamingos. Intricate formations of seashells and stones contrast starkly against the neatly patted dirt. A young girl even donated her seashell collection for the peace sign. 

Recently, though, a vandal smashed the peace sign and wrecked Jeff's plants, including his squash crop. With help from the neighborhood, Jeff has been able to rebuild the garden. New plants have sprouted and the stonework has been repaired.

Jeff says his new goal with the garden is for people to draw something positive from it. "I want hate to be transferred into something beautiful," he said. Moving forward, he hopes to expand it down the island. 

(Note: This post has been edited. The original called it a "meridian," which is an invisible geographic line. "Median" is correct.)

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks to the press in the spin room after the sixth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by PBS NewsHour & Politico at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California on December 19, 2019. ; Credit: AGUSTIN PAULLIER/AFP via Getty Images

After nearly two months of “safer at home” during the COVID-19 outbreak, the state of California appears to be taking its first steps towards reopening businesses and restarting the economy.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Monday during the daily press briefing he has held since the start of the outbreak that California will be entering the first phase of its four-stage plan and allowing certain retail businesses like bookstores, music stores, sporting goods stores and florists to reopen for pickup as early as Friday. Manufacturing and logistics can start in the retail supply chain again as well. There are also local control measures in effect that allow certain municipalities to decide themselves whether to move farther ahead in the process and reopen certain things like restaurant dining rooms, though anyone deciding to do so would have to submit “containment plans” to the state. Two cities in Orange County, which has been involved in a back-and-forth with Sacramento over his order last week closing all state and local beaches in OC, have been cleared to reopen their beaches after they submitted plans to the state last week for how they’d reopen the beaches while safely controlling crowds.

Guests:

Erika Ritchie, reporter for the Orange County Register covering South Orange County Coastal Communities; she tweets @lagunaini

Donald Wagner, Orange County Supervisor, 3rd District, which includes Anaheim Hills, Irvine, Orange, Tustin, and the unincorporated canyons; former Mayor of Irvine (2016-2019); tweets @DonWagnerCA 

Bob Whalen, mayor of Laguna Beach

Karen Farrer, mayor of the City of Malibu

Robert Garcia, mayor of Long Beach; he tweets @LongBeachMayor

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police and lifeguards patrol as people walk on the beach south of Newport Pier on May 3, 2020 in Newport Beach, California. ; Credit: Michael Heiman/Getty Images

After the cities of San Clemente and Laguna Beach were given the OK by state officials on Monday to reopen beaches with limited conditions, the California Natural Resources Agency gave Dana Point, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach the green light on Tuesday after approving the plans they submitted for safe reopening.

The plans vary as far as when the beach can be used, but the common thread through each is that leisure activities like sunbathing or large gatherings of people would not be allowed, and that beachgoers will be required to remain active while on the sand. 

The news comes as Orange County Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to submit a plan to submit to Sacramento that would create a set of uniform rules for reopening beaches countywide. Supervisor Lisa Bartlett spearheaded the proposal, which received pushback from Supervisors Don Wagner and Michelle Steel who argue that after being singled out by Governor Gavin Newsom last week when he ordered a “hard close” on all state and local beaches in Orange County, taking issue with the idea of the county bowing to pressure from the state.

Today on AirTalk, we’ll check back in with Supervisor Bartlett, who joined us Monday on AirTalk, to find out more about the specifics of the county’s plan to reopen its beaches.

Guest:

Lisa Bartlett, Orange County Supervisor representing the Fifth County District, which encompasses South County cities like Aliso Viejo, San Clemente, Laguna Beach, Dana Point and more; she tweets @OCSupBartlett

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

People wait in line to receive food at a food bank on April 28, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.; Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

United States unemployment has reached record numbers with more than 30 million Americans applying for benefits in just six weeks, according to the Guardian. Economists expect the labor market to take another unprecedented blow for the month of April. 

Roughly one in five people in California's workforce have applied for initial unemployment insurance benefits, including a "staggering" 37% of workers with no more than a high school diploma. That's the estimate of a  study from the California Policy Lab that analyzed unemployment insurance claims from March 15-April 11. According to the California Economic Development Department (EDD), L.A. County's unemployment rate jumped from 4.3% in February to 6.3% in March. The state of California launched its Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program last week, giving many independent contractors their first chance to apply for benefits.But applicants have had a tough time getting through the system because of technical difficulties with the state's website.

Today on AirTalk we check in on unemployment in the state. Plus, some people are making more money through unemployment benefits than when they were working. We talk to the writer of a recent Wall Street Journal piece that looks at the challenges that presents for businesses as states look to slowly reopen. Do you have questions about unemployment across the state or the application process? Join the conversation by calling 866-893-5722. 

With files from LAist. Read more from David Wagner here. 

Guests:

Eric Morath, labor economics and policy reporter for the Wall Street Journal, he’s based in Washington D.C.; he tweets @EricMorath

George Warner, attorney in the Wage Protection Program at Legal Aid at Work, a San Francisco based nonprofit law firm that assists low-income, working families throughout California; he tweets @readerznriderz

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The temperature of a Bolivian child is measured in front of Bolivian embassy during a demonstration requesting repatriation on April 28, 2020 in Santiago, Chile. ; Credit: Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images

As of Wednesday afternoon, L.A. County has at least 1,367 deaths and 28,646 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Meanwhile, parts of the state are slowly reopening some industries. 

Certain businesses and recreational spaces in Los Angeles County will be allowed to reopen beginning Friday, county officials announced at a media briefing. Those include hiking trails, golf courses, florists, car dealerships and certain retail stores. School districts continue to work through challenges as they consider how to reopen. Kids and teens are coming down with an inflammatory syndrome that experts believe could be linked to COVID-19, NPR News reports. Today on AirTalk, we get the latest on the pandemic with a noted physician, plus we’ll look at the expanding list of symptoms associated with the coronavirus. Are you a parent who has questions about the virus and kids? We want to hear from you. Join the conversation by calling 866-893-5722. 

With files from LAist

Guest:

Richard Jackson, M.D., pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, he’s served in many leadership positions with the California Health Department, including as the State Health Officer, for nine years he served as director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Shoreline/Flickr

We’ve all done it. Gone to the beach. Hunkered up against the cliffs to get out of the sun. And not thought about what’s right above us.

“Even though you’re sitting amongst store fronts, large communities, private residences, it still is a wild place,” said Brian Ketterer, Coastal Division Chief for California State parks. 

It’s normal for cliffs to erode as water, wind and human contact all work to break them down.

“If you’re going to be that close that you can see cracks and fissures in the soil content itself, that probably means that you’re sitting or standing too close to that bluff area,” said Ketterer 

Look out for posted signs and ask life guards if it’s safe, but know that this isn’t going to get better over time. Sea level rise – part of our climate crisis –could mean more erosion, which could mean even more cliff collapses.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Opah fish are hauled onto a dock for sale last week in San Diego. Fishermen coming home to California after weeks at sea are finding strict anti-coronavirus measures, and nowhere to sell their catch.; Credit: Gregory Bull/AP

Commercial fishermen in the U.S. who have already faced challenges in recent years to make it in an increasingly globalized and regulated industry, are now struggling to find customers during the coronavirus crisis.

"This is totally unprecedented. This is the biggest crisis to hit the fishing industry ever, no question about that," Noah Oppenheim, executive director of The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations told NPR in a phone interview. The federation is a trade association representing commercial fishermen along the West Coast.

On Tuesday, seafood industry leaders, processors and fishermen sent a letter to House and Senate leaders requesting $4 billion in aid for the industry.

The closings of restaurants due to the coronavirus pandemic has hit commercial fishermen particularly hard.

An estimated 50% to 60% of wild seafood caught in the U.S. is exported, says Oppenheim. Those international markets have dried up. He says, of the seafood that's not exported, around 80% of that is sold to restaurants.

"Both of those sectors of the seafood economy are largely nonfunctional at the moment, so we're going to have to make up for approximately 90% of our markets ... through either new supply pipelines or new sets of customers."

Jerid Rold, a fishermen in Moss Landing, Calif., tells NPR, he's been out of work for a month, since South Korea stopped taking imports of hagfish. Further damaging profits, Dungeness crab prices on the West Coast have fallen from up to $7 dollars a pound to $2, says Oppenheim.

In Eureka, Calif., "there are no buyers purchasing products at the harbor there. You can't move the Dungeness crab out of the Humboldt bay," Oppenheim said. "It's actually extraordinary how similar these impacts are playing out across the country. They are palpable, they are profound and they are severe."

On the North Atlantic coast, Sam Rosen, a 30-year-old lobsterman based in Vinalhaven, Maine, said he and others are "selling lobster for amounts they shouldn't be sold for."

That's been close to $2.50 a pound, compared to a usual $10 a pound this time of year, Rosen said.

"It's definitely a shock to the system," Rosen said. "This is uncharted territory right now. I don't think anyone thought it was going to be as bad as it's getting."

If aid isn't provided to fishermen soon, "I think we could see hundreds to thousands of fishermen leave the industry nationwide," Oppenheim said.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, seen here in 2017, says his office has reached a settlement with a company that had been selling at-home tests for the coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration says it has not authorized any at-home tests.; Credit: Christopher Weber/AP

Mike Feuer, the city attorney of Los Angeles, announced on Monday that his office had "filed a civil law enforcement action against, and achieved an immediate settlement with," a company that had been "illegally selling" an at-home test for the coronavirus.

The Food and Drug Administration has stated that the agency "has not authorized any test that is available to purchase for testing yourself at home for COVID-19."

But in March, Yikon Genomics Inc. offered a coronavirus test for sale online, claiming that the test could be performed "using a simple at-home finger stick blood sample." The company offered tests for $39 each and, in a since-deleted tweet, stated, "Our COVID-19 Test Kit is now FDA APPROVED!"

Yikon's "unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business acts or practices," the LA city attorney alleged in the lawsuit against the company, "present a continuing threat to members of the public."

At a news conference, Feuer said that FDA validation of tests is crucial because an inaccurate result could lead someone infected with the coronavirus to "unknowingly expose others."

Under the settlement between Yikon and LA authorities, the company agreed to stop marketing or selling home test kits unless they receive FDA approval. Yikon also agreed to provide refunds to anyone who purchased its test kits, though Feuer said it's unclear how many tests were sold.

Yikon Genomics released a statement saying it "is committed to complying with all state & federal laws and regulations regarding the marketing & sale of medical devices. We intend to pursue FDA approval for the market & sale of COVID-19 test kits, which we hope will aid in mitigating this global health crisis."

The Trump administration has said it will "aggressively" prosecute cases of fraud related to the pandemic, and state attorneys general have also pledged to take legal action against scams around the country.

In LA, Feuer said his office continues to investigate other companies' sales of unapproved test kits.

"This is not an isolated incident," Feuer said, noting that his office separately sent a cease-and-desist letter to the California-based Wellness Matrix Group, which, as NPR first reported, had also been offering "at-home" test kits for sale.

"Whenever consumers are motivated in part by fears," the city attorney's office stated in its lawsuit against Yikon, "they are particularly vulnerable to fraudsters, scammers, and 'snake oil' hucksters and charlatans."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

What does the right to a unanimous jury verdict have to do with abortion, or school prayer, or federal environmental regulations? Stay tuned.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday struck down state laws in Louisiana and Oregon that allowed people accused of serious crimes to be convicted by a non-unanimous jury vote. The 6-to-3 decision overturned a longstanding prior ruling from 1972, which had upheld such non-unanimous verdicts in state courts.

And these days, any decision to overturn a longstanding precedent rings the alarm bells in the Supreme Court.

In the short run, Monday's decision was a victory for Evangelisto Ramos, who in 2016 was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury vote of 10-to-2 in Louisiana.

Only two states--Louisiana and Oregon--had provisions allowing non-unanimous verdicts, and Louisiana just recently changed its law to be like those in 48 other states and the federal government.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, laid out the history behind the laws in both states. Gorsuch noted that the measure was first added to the Louisiana state constitution in 1898, after the Supreme Court ruled that racial minorities could not be barred from juries; that same year, Louisiana added the non-unanimous jury provision to its state constitution as part of a package of amendments that deliberately made it difficult for black citizens to vote or otherwise participate meaningfully in the state's governance. Specifically, Gorsuch said, the non-unanimous jury provision was a way to ensure that even if one or two African Americans made it on to a jury, their participation would be "meaningless."

The adoption of the non-unanimous jury rule in Oregon, Gorsuch wrote, "can similarly be traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the influence of racial and ethnic and religious minorities on Oregon juries."

Despite these state provisions, there has never been any dispute that the unanimous jury requirement applies to the federal government. The question in this case was whether that aspect of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applied to the states as well.

Over the last 75 years or so, the court has applied just about every other provision of the Bill of Rights to the states, but in 1972 it deviated from that practice, declining to apply the unanimous jury requirement in a similar fashion.

On Monday, however, the 1972 decision came tumbling down. The six-justice court majority — composed of conservatives and liberals — said the earlier ruling was a mistake.

The decision, written by the conservative Gorsuch, was joined in whole or in part by liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Clarence Thomas, another conservative, agreed with the result, but on entirely different grounds.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Samuel Alito — joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and for the most part, Justice Elena Kagan — maintained that the principle of adhering to precedent should be followed in this case because to do otherwise would require "a potentially crushing" number of new trials for people currently imprisoned under the old rule.

"Where is the justice in that?" replied Justice Gorsuch. "Not a single member of this court" is prepared to say that the 1972 decision was correct, he noted. "Every judge must learn to live with the fact that he or she will make mistakes ... But it is something else entirely to perpetuate" a wrong "only because we fear the consequences of being right."

The consequences of Monday's decision will likely be felt more in Louisiana, which allowed non-unanimous verdicts for more serious crimes than Oregon. The court's decision will require retrials for any prisoner who still has appeals pending.

There are about 100 of those cases in Louisiana, says Jamila Johnson, the managing attorney at the Promise of Justice Initiative, which represented Ramos. But there are also at least 1,700 prisoners in the state who might qualify for a new trial if the court eventually holds that Monday's decision is retroactive.

The high court left that question open for another day.

Altogether the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions totaled a whopping 86 pages and reflected an important subtext--divergent views about when the court should follow its usual rule of adhering to precedent and when it should not.

It's important because, the new ultra-conservative court majority has very different views than the courts of the last 75 years on topics as diverse as abortion, voting rights, federal regulation, and the clash between religious views and generally applicable laws.

"The court's views about when it's OK to overrule prior precedent have always been more about the eye of the beholder than they have been about a rule that is easy or straightforward to apply," says Deborah Pearlstein, professor and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law. Ultimately, she said, "all of these major questions that are coming before the court are going to be fought along these lines."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court is no stranger to controversy, but it still gets higher marks in public opinion polls than the other branches of government. Now though, for the first time in memory, the court is not just split along ideological lines, but along political lines as well: All the conservatives are Republican appointees, all the liberals Democratic appointees. That division could put the court in the crosshairs of public opinion if it is forced to make decisions that affect the 2020 election.

Chief Justice John Roberts has worked hard to persuade the public that the justices are fair-minded legal umpires--not politicians in robes. That image got pretty scuffed up earlier this month when the conservative court majority shot down accommodations for the coronavirus that would have allowed six more days for absentee ballots to be received in Wisconsin's election for 500 school board seats, over 100 judicial seats, and thousands of other state and local positions.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the COVID-19 pandemic had become a public health crisis. Encouraged by local officials, about a million more voters than usual requested absentee ballots, and local officials were unable to keep up with the surge. To mitigate that problem, the lower courts allowed an extra six days for election officials to receive completed absentee ballots.

But the day before the election, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court ruling by a 5-to-4 vote. The result was that tens of thousands of people who had not yet even received their absentee ballots were forced to, as the dissenters put it, choose between their health and their right to vote.

The TV footage of people wearing masks waiting for hours to vote at the very few precincts that were open amid the pandemic was, to say the least, not a good look. Health officials in Milwaukee have since identified six voters and one poll worker who appear to have contracted the virus during the election.

The majority opinion was unsigned, so no one knows who the principal author was. But we do know some things.

First, the emergency appeal in the case came through the justice assigned to that region of the country, Brett Kavanaugh. Typically, when a justice refers a case to the full court, he or she writes a memo about the issues, likely with a recommendation. Kavanaugh almost certainly did that. But other justices would then chime in. And in a voting case, Chief Justice Roberts assuredly would have played a pivotal role.

"John Roberts' fingerprints are on this as chief justice and as someone who has owned this area of the law," says Joan Biskupic, a Supreme Court biographer and CNN legal analyst who is the author of a critically acclaimed biography about Roberts.

Indeed, Roberts was invested in voting-rights law as far back as 1982 when he was a staffer in the Reagan administration. Back then, he led the effort to narrow the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. When that failed, President Reagan signed the broad extension of the law, rejecting advice to veto it. But years later, on the Supreme Court, Roberts wrote the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting a key provision of that law.

So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, called the language "callous," "cynical," and "unfortunate."

In fact, the word "pandemic" appears not once in the court's unsigned opinion. Rather, the majority sought to portray the issue before the court as a "narrow, technical question." The majority said the lower court had overstepped the Supreme Court's established rule that courts should "ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election."

The dissenters replied that the court's treatment of the current situation as ordinary "boggles the mind." Writing for the dissenters, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined that "a voter cannot deliver...a ballot she has not yet received. Yet tens of thousands of voters who timely requested absentee ballots" are being asked to do just that.

"I do think there's something to this idea that we need to stick with the rules even in the context of an emergency," says law professor Rick Hasen, an election expert at the University of California, Irvine.

He and others see the legal question before the court as a close call, but say the decision was, at the very least, tone deaf in light of the reality of a pandemic.

Hasen says that the court could have recognized "the inhumanity of making people vote in this way," but that instead the tone of the opinion was "really dismissive of the entire threat facing these voters."

Chief Justice Roberts has, on some occasions tried to bridge the two wings of the court, in a couple of big cases siding with the court's liberals, or sometimes trying to fashion a compromise. But as Hasen observes, "there really is not any case I can think of involving elections where Roberts has forged a larger consensus."

Roberts must have anticipated at least some of the outcry over the Wisconsin decision. He is, after all, an astute political observer.

But as any student of the court knows, Roberts is a reliable, and often leading member of the conservative majority when it comes to a whole host of issues involving campaigns, voting and elections. That includes decisions he has written striking down laws aimed at limiting the role of big money in campaigns and decisions upholding partisan gerrymanders. Moreover voting rights in particular "is an area of the law where John Roberts has not been deterred by anticipated public criticism," says Biskupic, his biographer.

For the chief, says Biskupic, "It's not just voting rights. It's a broader overlay of representation" in his decisions, a pattern that "often will favor Republicans, but more fundamentally, it seems to favor entrenched powers, the status quo in many states, against ordinary citizens. And we certainly saw that in Wisconsin."

Uncertainties around COVID-19 remain, with states facing decisions about when to reopen and what size of public gatherings are safe. As November inches closer, those decisions could affect the 2020 election. Who gets to vote, when, and how, are unanswered questions and states are surely exploring different plans to keep voters safe. But Roberts' Supreme Court may be the ultimate arbiter of what changes and accommodations to voting are allowed.

The majority opinion "tried to tell the public that this was a very small decision," says Biskupic. "But as the dissent pointed out, it laid down a very serious marker about how voters will be accommodated in the middle of the coronavirus crisis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Attorney General William Barris pictured at a coronavirus task force meeting at the White House on March 23. The Justice Department is looking to crack down on coronavirus-related fraud.; Credit: Alex Brandon/AP

The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the good side of many Americans, but certainly not all Americans. Officials say that fraud related to COVID-19 — like hoarding equipment, price gouging and hawking fake treatments — are spreading as the country wrestles with the outbreak.

"It's a perfect ecosystem for somebody like a fraudster to operate in," said Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and the head of the Justice Department's COVID-19 price gouging and hoarding task force.

"People want to believe that there's a magic pill that they can take or that if they buy a certain kind of mask or a certain kind of protective gear that it's going to protect them and their families," he said. "That creates opportunities for the types of people that prey upon scared people. They prey upon their fear."

A month ago, Attorney General William Barr instructed federal prosecutors around the country to aggressively investigate and prosecute scams and other crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also created the price gouging and hoarding task force and put Carpenito in charge of it.

From that perch, Carpenito has one of the best views of virus-related crime nationwide.

"Instead of seeing that tremendous support from all aspects of society, we're still seeing that sliver, that that dark underbelly, that small percentage of folks who instead of putting the interests of the country and support for those medical professionals that are putting themselves at risk in the forefront, they're finding ways to try and take advantage of this situation and illegally profiteer from it," he said. "And it's despicable."

The most prevalent kind of fraud that federal authorities are seeing at this point, he and others say, is tied to personal protective equipment like N95 masks, gloves or face shields.

In one notable case, prosecutors brought charges against a Georgia man, Christopher Parris, for allegedly trying to sell $750 million worth of masks and other protective equipment to the Department of Veterans Affairs but with a sizable advance payment.

The problem, prosecutors say, is the masks and other items didn't exist, at least not in the quantities Parris was offering.

Steven Merrill, the head of the FBI's financial crimes section, says the bureau refers to these sorts of operations as advance-fee schemes.

"We're getting many complaints that different entities are entering into these agreements, paying money upfront, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, and may or may not get any masks or other PPE ordered at all," Merrill said. "So our guidance to the public is to please be wary of these frauds and solicitations."

Other problems, such as hoarding and price gouging, can arise even when the medical gear does exist.

The FBI is trying to identify individuals who are stockpiling protective equipment and trying to sell it at exorbitant markups, sometimes 40 to 70 times the value, Merrill said.

A few weeks ago, the FBI seized nearly 1 million respirator masks, gloves and other medical gear from a Brooklyn man who was allegedly stockpiling them and selling them to nurses and doctors at what officials say was around a 700% markup.

The man, Baruch Feldheim, has been charged with lying to the FBI about price gouging. He's also been charged with allegedly assaulting a federal officer after he coughed on agents and claimed he had COVID-19.

The confiscated items, meanwhile, have been distributed to medical workers in the New York area.

Carpenito said the Justice Department has more than 100 investigations open into price gouging. It has hundreds more, he said, into other crimes tied to the pandemic, including fake treatments and cures.

In one case out of California, prosecutors charged a man who was allegedly soliciting large investments for what he claimed was a cure for COVID-19.

"He was doing so by broadcasting this scheme via, notably, YouTube, where had thousands of hits and views," Merrill said.

In a separate case out of Florida last week, the Justice Department got a court order to stop a Florida church from selling on its website an industrial bleach that was being marketed as a miracle treatment for the virus.

To be clear, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no cure at this point for the virus.

More than a month into this crisis, there's no sense COVID-related crime is going to slow down.

In fact, Carpenito and Merrill say that with the massive $2 trillion economic relief package beginning to be doled out, they expect to see even more fraud in the weeks and months ahead.

"What we're worried about is that not only do we have these existing conditions, but we are awaiting — like everybody in the country — the arrival of $2 trillion to hit the streets," Merrill said. "And anytime there's that much money out there, you can just multiply the amount of frauds that are going to take place. So we're preparing for many more complaints to come in and new schemes to arrive on a daily basis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court has once again punted on the question of gun rights, throwing out as moot a challenge to New York City's strict gun regulations on transporting licensed guns outside the home.

New York City, in the name of public safety, has very strict gun regulations. It allows people to have a permit for guns in their homes, but those regulations originally barred people from transporting their guns anywhere except shooting ranges within the city. The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association challenged the regulation as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms and lost in the lower courts.

But, after the Supreme Court agreed to review the case, New York state and New York City changed their laws to allow gun owners to transport their guns outside the city to shooting ranges, to competitions, and to second homes. That gave the challengers exactly what they asked for in their lawsuit, and so on Monday, the court, by a 6-to-3 vote, dismissed the case as moot--in short, it no longer presented a live controversy.

The unsigned opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court's four liberals, and Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh.

But Kavanaugh wrote separately to stress that while he agreed with the majority on procedural grounds, he agreed with the dissenters--Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch--on one key issue.

Those three said that the lower courts were using the wrong test to evaluate gun laws, a test that is far too deferential to gun regulators. The dissenters mainly argued however, that the court essentially had been gamed on the mootness question, and that the justices should have decided the case, and decided it for the gun owners.

Gun-safety advocates breathed a sigh of relief that there was no decision adverse to gun regulations. But they worry that gains they are making in some state legislatures may be taken away by a conservative court majority.

"The reality is that the gun-safety movement is winning in state houses and at the ballot box, so the NRA is turning to the court to try to change the tide," says Eric Tirschwell, managing mirector of Everytown for Gun Safety.

Monday's decision was the first in a major gun case in 10 years, the first since a landmark set of decisions in 2008 and 2010. In those cases, a sharply divided court ruled that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual right, not a right associated with the militia, as the court had previously implied. Those decisions marked a huge victory for the NRA and other gun-rights organizations.

In the decade following that decision, however, the court did not agree to hear any of the dozens of challenges to gun restrictions in cases appealed to the court. In part because the composition of the court made outcomes uncertain.

The previous big gun cases were decided by 5-to-4 votes, with Justice Anthony Kennedy casting the fifth and decisive vote. Kennedy, according to court sources, insisted, as the price of his vote, on adding limiting language that likely would have resulted in some, maybe even most, gun restrictions being upheld. With neither side of the court sure how Kennedy would vote on most regulations, neither the pro-gun, nor the pro-gun-control side wanted to risk an adverse ruling.

That changed when Kennedy retired in 2018 to be replaced by Justice Kavanaugh, who has a much more gun-friendly record than Kennedy did.

Nothing Kavanaugh said in his concurring opinion Monday would dissuade anyone from thinking he has changed his mind.

Bottom line here is that when it comes to gun control, there look to be four pretty solid votes against a lot of the measures enacted in recent years after mass shootings. Specifically, laws that bar carrying weapons in public places, and bans on assault weapons and large ammo magazines. All these, plus so called red-flag laws and other measures could be in jeopardy.

The question is where Chief Justice Roberts will be on these and other gun-control questions. To date, he has never been much of a supporter of gun-control laws, but he hasn't been an outspoken opponent, either. All we really know is that he was part of the 2008 and 2010 majority that for the first time declared that the Second Amendment is an individual right, not, as the court had previously implied, a collective right that was attached to the colonial militia.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling, said the federal government must pay health insurers $12 billion under a provision of the Affordable Care Act.; Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court has told the federal government that it has to pay $12 billion to insurance companies, money that was promised in the Affordable Care Act as part of the start-up costs of Obamacare in the first three years of its existence.

The law, as enacted, promised to limit profits and losses for insurance companies in the first three years of the Obamacare program. Some companies made more money than allowed by the formula, and had to pay some back to the government, and other companies lost money and were owed money by the government under the formula.

But in 2014, the first year that the ACA's plan was in place, the Republican-controlled Congress reneged on the promise to appropriate money for the companies that had lost money. It did the same for the next two years as well, adding to appropriation bills a rider that barred the government from fulfilling the promise in the statute. After President Trump was elected, his administration supported the GOP-led refusal to pay.

The insurance companies sued, and on Monday the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government has to pay up.

The vote was 8-to-1, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing for the majority that the decision reflects a principle "as old as the nation itself. The government should honor its obligations."

She noted that the language of the ACA was "rare" in that it permitted lawsuits to enforce the provisions at issue here, provisions that declare the government"shall pay" the losses suffered by insurance companies that participated over the first three years.

The lone dissenter was Justice Samuel Alito, who called the decision "a massive bailout" for the insurance industry, which "took a calculated risk and lost."

Monday's decision was the third involving Obamacare at the Supreme Court. Conservative groups, and now the Trump administration, have consistently sought to invalidate or undermine the law — so far, with limited or no success. But next year, the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider once again whether the law is unconstitutional.

Despite repeated efforts by Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration to either undermine or entirely do away with the program, Obamacare has remained popular, likely because it has enabled millions of Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions, to obtain medical insurance and medical coverage for the first time.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Supreme Court; Credit: Mark Sherman/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court begins an extraordinary two weeks of oral arguments Monday. It will be the first time in history that the court has allowed live streaming of its audio, and the first time that the court is hearing arguments via telephone hookup, instead of in the flesh.

The justices are trying to simulate their normal arguments as much as possible, beginning with Chief Marshal Pamela Talkin calling the court to order with a slightly modified version of her usual "Oyez, oyez, oyez...."

After that, very little will be as usual.

Because the arguments are conducted over the phone, the justices and the lawyers cannot see one another, and listeners will all try to imagine where the justices and lawyers are sitting or standing in their homes to hear or present arguments.

While most of the lawyers will be in their homes, the government's lawyers will be making their arguments from the office of the Solicitor General, and in a bow to formality, they plan to wear their usual formal morning coat attire.

The lawyers we sampled, to a person, said they are more comfortable standing, or even standing at a lectern, as they usually do during oral arguments, even though nobody can see them. The arguments are limited to a half hour on each side. And, as usual, each side will get to make an opening argument for two minutes uninterrupted.

After that, under normal circumstances, the justices engage in rapid-fire questioning of the lawyers, interrupting counsel frequently, and even, on occasion, each other.

But starting Monday, the justices will ask questions in order of seniority, for two or three minutes each, with Chief Justice John Roberts starting off, followed by Justice Clarence Thomas — if he has any questions, which he rarely does. (If Thomas asks a question, it will be the first time he has spoken from the bench in over a year, when he broke a three-year silence, which was preceded by a whopping 10-year silence from the bench.)

Next Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who often asks the first question in oral arguments, will be at bat, and so on, ending with the court's newest appointee, Brett Kavanauagh. More questions will be permitted if there is time left at the end of the first round of questioning.

Lawyers say there will be big challenges with the new format.

"You lose the ability to read body language. That's No. 1," says Jay Sekulow, who will be representing President Trump in cases testing whether the president can be subpoenaed for his pre-presidential financial records either by Congress or by a state grand jury subpoena in a criminal case.

As Sekulow observes, oral argument is typically a "pretty intimate event when you're actually arguing in the courtroom. You see them. You can see their reactions. You see if they nod to each other. Here you're doing this literally over a telephone line. So you lose the intimacy."

Stanford Law professor Jeff Fisher, who will be arguing a religion case a week from Monday, agrees. "I just feel that not being able to see their faces and body language is going to be a real challenge. It's just a cost for how effective and useful the arguments are going to be."

The audio argument format presents another interesting twist for the court: For the first time ever, oral arguments will be available via livestream. Typically, Supreme Court arguments are followed by a narrow group of lawyers, law students and court watchers. But with millions of Americans stuck at home, and arguments carried live online and on C-Span, the justices will likely have a larger audience than usual.

Monday's case presents a trademark question — not exactly the kind of thing to rivet public attention. And it is the only case of the day. Clearly, the court is using this relatively unimportant case to see how the system is working, and whether it needs to be adjusted in any way — in short, to work out the bugs.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

It was a new day at the Supreme Court, which for the first time ever live-streamed oral arguments.; Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court made history Monday. The coronavirus lockdown forced the typically cautious court to hear arguments for the first time via telephone, and to stream the arguments live for the public to hear.

Chief Justice John Roberts was at the court as the telephone session began, one or two other justices were in their offices at the court, and the rest of the justices dialed in from home.

The first and only case heard Monday involved an arcane trademark question only a lawyer could love. Online travel search engine Booking.com is appealing a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refusal to grant a trademark to the company.

With the justices asking questions in order of seniority, the first big surprise was that Justice Clarence Thomas, who in the past has gone years without asking a question, did ask one, several in fact, when it came his turn.

"Could Booking acquire an 800 number ... that's a vanity number, 1-800-BOOKING, for example?" Thomas asked Assistant Solicitor General Erica Ross.

Yes, replied Ross, but domain names pose a different problem than phone numbers. Ultimately, she argued "the core problem with Booking.com is that it allows [Booking.com] to monopolize booking on the internet" to the exclusion of other sites like hotelbooking.com.

Justice Stephen Breyer followed up when his turn came: "Same question as Justice Thomas ... good morning, anyway ... You can have a trademark that's an address. You can have a trademark that's a telephone number. So why can't you have a trademark that's a dot-com?"

Justice Samuel Alito noted that the court's prior decision in this area of the law was more than 100 years old, and the statute dealing with trademarks was similarly enacted decades ago.

"How can a rule that makes sense in the internet age be reconciled with the language" in these "pre-Internet era" laws? asked Alito.

Next up to her lectern from her home was lawyer Lisa Blatt. This was her 40th Supreme Court argument and despite being a veteran, she said later that she was, as usual, sick to her stomach beforehand.

But once at the lectern "it's always a rush of excitement," she said, and this time it was a special rush.

"I loved getting a question from Justice Thomas ... I would go to the phone for the foreseeable future if I could get Justice Thomas to ask questions. That was wonderful," she said.

Indeed, despite the new format Blatt and Ross seemed to have had a good time.

"Your client would not object to the registration of any trademark that simply made a slight variation in Booking.com?" asked Alito.

"There's a million booking registrations already," parried Blatt.

Alito: "Would you just answer the question."

Blatt: "They don't and have not and would not."

Not, she added, unless another company ripped off the trademark with no variation. That would be theft, she said.

So, when when the argument was over, what was her reaction?

"After I hung up, I screamed, 'That was hard!' Because you're saying enough to answer, but not too much. And you don't have any like visual feedback, so it was hard."

In the end, she said, the argument felt more like an oral exam than an oral argument.

Tom Goldstein, publisher of Scotusblog, had a similar reaction. Goldstein, who has argued 43 cases before the court, said he thought the argument was probably more useful to the public than usual.

"But I bet it was less useful for the justices," he said. "Because there was less opportunity to follow up on lines of questions and less opportunity to influence someone ... so there's much less engagement in the oral argument."

Still there were no major hitches on this first day. Justice Sonia Sotomayor briefly forget to unmute her phone at one point, prompting a "Sorry, chief." Justice Breyer's voice broke up in static for a second or two. But as Goldstein observes, this was a big change for the court.

"Culturally a change, technologically a change. And it could have been a big embarrassment if it didn't go well, but it went fine," he said. "I think they're happy."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Supreme Court's second day of arguments by phone was devoted to a new version of a case it decided seven years ago involving federal money to fight AIDS around the world.; Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP

The Supreme Court kicked off a second day of telephone arguments Tuesday with a case that mingles sex, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and free speech.

At issue is whether the government can require private nonprofits to denounce prostitution in order to qualify for U.S foreign aid grants aimed at fighting the worldwide AIDS epidemic. This is the second time the court has faced this issue, but this time it comes with a twist.

In 2003, Congress, at the urging of President George W. Bush, enacted a major foreign aid program to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic and prevent new infections worldwide. In appropriating the money, Congress included a provision requiring any private organization that received funding through the program to adopt an explicit policy denouncing prostitution and sex trafficking.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down that provision, declaring it unconstitutional because it compelled U.S. nonprofits to adopt an explicit policy as a condition for receiving grant money. By a 6-2 vote, the high court said such a requirement interfered with the free speech rights of private U.S. organizations engaged in the fight against AIDS.

The case was back Tuesday, but this time, the question was whether foreign organizations closely affiliated with those same U.S. nonprofits can be required to adopt the policy denouncing prostitution.

Defending the provision was Assistant to the Solicitor General Christopher Michel. He argued that foreign affiliates of U.S. organizations like Save The Children, CARE and WorldVision are separate legal entities from their parent U.S. organizations, and that as foreign entities, they have no rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the 2013 decision, seemed unpersuaded.

"Is it reasonable to insist on formal corporate ties in this context?" he asked. "It's undisputed that to be effective in many of the foreign countries involved here, you have to operate through a foreign entity."

Michel responded that if the U.S. nonprofits "make the choice to operate through a foreign entity because they decide that is more convenient or more effective, they have to accept the bitter with the sweet."

Roberts still seemed doubtful, noting that the U.S. nonprofits and their foreign affiliates "have the same name, the same logo, the same brand. And I wonder if it makes more sense to think of the foreign entity as simply another channel for the domestic entity's speech."

Representing the nonprofits was lawyer David Bowker. He maintained that for all practical purposes, there is no difference between the U.S. nonprofits and their foreign affiliates, so making the affiliate adopt an anti-prostitution message effectively puts words in the mouth of the U.S. nonprofit.

Questioned by Justice Clarence Thomas, Bowker said that the harm suffered by the U.S. nongovernmental organizations is that their foreign affiliates must either lose their funding by refusing to comply with the anti-prostitution policy or undermine their mission by denouncing the very people they need to work with — namely prostitutes. And if the foreign affiliates make the pledge needed to get funding, he said, the U.S. parent organizations have to disavow their own affiliates' anti-prostitution pledge, thus harming the entire anti-AIDS fight.

"It's a Catch-22 for these U.S. organizations," said Bowker.

Justice Stephen Breyer followed up: "So why don't you simply write a grant to get all the money yourself and then you give it to CARE India? Why doesn't that work?"

Because, replied Bowker, under the statute, CARE USA, in subcontracting a grant to CARE India, would be required to impose the anti-prostitution pledge on its own affiliate on behalf of the government.

Justice Samuel Alito, who signed on to the court's 2013 decision, said he had more concerns in this case — mainly "that it will force Congress to either withhold foreign aid entirely or allow foreign aid to be used in ways that are contrary to the interests of the people of this country."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh followed up: "Suppose the U.S. government wants to fund foreign NGOs that support peace in the Middle East but only if the NGOs explicitly recognize Israel as a legitimate state. Are you saying the U.S. can't impose that kind of speech restriction on foreign NGOs that are affiliated with U.S. organizations?"

Bowker said that kind of a restriction would likely be acceptable because the aid in that case would be tied to the U.S. relationship with Israel.

Kavanaugh moved on to another question, noting, "The government says your position would unleash foreign affiliates of U.S. corporations to pump money" into U.S. election campaigns, something that is explicitly barred under current law.

Bowker replied that U.S. campaign laws, as ruled on by the Supreme Court in prior cases, allow the ban on foreign contributions because they do not come from U.S. entities at all.

A decision in the case is expected some time this summer. While the court usually concludes its work by the end of June, it is expected that this term will extend into July because the arguments in this and nine other cases were postponed for more than a month because of the coronavirus.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. in 2018.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent non-surgical treatment Tuesday for a benign gallbladder condition, according to a press release from the Supreme Court. She plans to participate in oral arguments from the hospital on Wednesday, according to the release.

In pain on Monday, Ginsburg went to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington after hearing the first-ever Supreme Court teleconference of oral arguments. At Sibley, she was diagnosed with acute cholecystitis, a condition in which a gallstone migrates to the cystic duct. She nonetheless participated in arguments from home on Tuesday, but was in enough pain that she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment of the infected duct later Tuesday.

Doctors not involved in Ginsburg's care said non-surgical treatment typically involves antibiotics and insertion of a tube to drain the infected duct.

Friends said the justice was in good spirits on Tuesday night, and watching the Metropolitan Opera on her iPad.

Ginsburg's emergency treatment coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court's historic live-streaming of its oral arguments in which the justices are participating by telephone because of the coronavirus. According to the court statement, Ginsburg, 87, is "resting comfortably" and plans to participate in oral arguments again on Wednesday when the court considers an important birth control case.

She is expected to remain in the hospital for another day or two.

Last year, Ginsburg completed three weeks of radiation treatment after a cancerous tumor was discovered on her pancreas. It was the fourth time in 20 years that she had been treated for cancer, and the second time in a year. In December 2019, she was operated on for lung cancer.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.