Since President Trump took office, ICE has committed $157.7 million to G4S, the Allied Universal company that transports people in immigration custody, including under a Los Angeles task order “to process aliens.” Allied, based in Irvine, is still under contract to guard city property in Los Angeles, and the city paid it $7.6 million over the last two years for guards at Runyon Canyon, DWP, sanitation yards and the old Lincoln Heights Jail.
The county has lost 301,576 residents since 2020, the worst five years of any of the twenty-five largest counties in America. California’s official projection has it down another 1.4 million by 2070. Our cohort-component model ends 2070 about 808,000 below the state’s. Migration accounts for roughly 40 percent of that gap, and a higher starting count and more optimistic birth and death assumptions account for the rest.
Both candidates for mayor were handed a hypothetical: Sue and Tom, thirty years in their single-family home, a transit stop within half a mile on Ventura Boulevard, a developer who can now build next door over their objection. Neither questioned the premise, which holds for 1,651 of Sherman Oaks’s 11,890 houses. They all qualify because of a bus, and none is near a train.
From 2014 through 2019, 0.85 percent of Los Angeles City Council roll calls drew even one no vote. So far in 2025 and 2026 the share is 6.45 percent, a 7.6-fold rise and the highest in the 23 years of record, and with every no cast by the council’s four left bloc members removed it would still be 3.33 percent, roughly four times the old baseline.
