Housing Legislation Aims to Snip Away at California’s Red Tape

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, March 28, 2025…

• The Trump Administration’s Justice Department has announced it has launched investigations into California universities, including Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine. The Department says it wants to see whether the schools are violating a 2023 US Supreme Court ruling that bans race-based affirmative action in higher education. Critics of the Trump Administration say the investigation is part of a wider assault on institutions of higher education in the United States.
• Because of the proliferation of hate speech on the Elon-Musk owned social media platform X, 58 out of 60 Democrats in California’s State Assembly say they’re leaving the platform. That means they will no longer use X, formerly known as Twitter, to post about public policy and to keep their constituents informed.

Housing Legislation Snips Away at California’s Red Tape

Some lawmakers say it takes way to much to get new housing approved in California. To change that, a bipartisan group is proposing a package of nearly two dozen bills to cut through the red tape that they say is putting the brakes on housing production.

East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks says laws introduced in the past to jumpstart housing productive haven’t yielded the results state leaders would like to see, because projects often get bogged down in the minutiae of the permitting process itself. The bill package she’s championing seeks to address many of those issues, smoothing the way for projects from the first application to the final inspection.

While most of the bills are fairly narrow in their scope, others seek more sweeping reforms. One of those, also by Wicks, would exempt housing projects within existing urban areas from the state’s landmark environmental review law. Another from Assemblymember David Alvarez would allow student and faculty housing projects at public universities to bypass Coastal Commission review.

National Institutes of Health Ends Funding for Long Covid Studies

Long COVID is the phenomenon where infected people can feel serious health effects for months, and even years. Now the National Institutes of Health has abruptly ended funding for several studies on long COVID.

The funding cut-offs also affect studies looking at long COVID’s impact on children. USC Professor David Warburton is the principal investigator for two NIH-funded long COVID studies at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

Warburton says this could not only affect the health of young people, but the overall economy.

“We’re going to have a generation of young people who can’t complete their studies, will not achieve their lifetime earning potential,” Warburton said.

The NIH has not responded to a request for comment.

Contest to Name Baby Bald Eagles

A contest is on to name two baby bald eaglets made famous because of the internet. Tens of thousands of people from around the world have been tuning into a livestream to watch the babies hatch and grow in a nest high up in a pine tree in the mountains east of Los Angeles.

The gangly, grey chicks that hatched 3 weeks ago are about eight inches tall now. They’ve stolen the spotlight from their parents,  Jackie and Shadow.

Sandy Steers, who runs the camera, says the eaglets are just getting the hang of things. Now Steers is working to get them names. She’s invited viewers to submit their ideas for five dollars a pop. The money goes to maintaining the livestream.