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  Naomi Stillitano, center, and her Rose Court react to her being chosen for the 2024 Rose Queen at the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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  Naomi Stillitano, center, and her Rose Court react to her being chosen for the 2024 Rose Queen at the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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  Tournament of Roses President Alex Aghajanian crowns the 2024 Rose Queen Naomi Stillitano at the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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  The 2024 Rose Queen Naomi Stillitano and the Rose Court pose on the steps of the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023 after her crowning. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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  Rose Queen Naomi Stillitano is crowned at the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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  The 2024 Rose Queen Naomi Stillitano and the Rose Court pose on the steps of the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023 after her crowning. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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  The 2024 Rose Queen Naomi Stillitano and the Rose Court pose on the steps of the Tournament House in Pasadena on Friday, October 27, 2023 after her crowning. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Naomi Stillitano — an Italian-American senior at Arcadia High School with a love for dance, theater and swimming — was named the 105th Rose Queen on Oct. 27.

The naming took place during a special ceremony led by 2024 Tournament of Roses President Alex Aghajanian at the Tournament House in Pasadena.

The new queen was overcome with emotion by the announcement, holding back tears as she recited the Queen’s Oath pledging to honor and celebrate the history and traditions set forth by the 104 Rose Queens who came before her.

“I’m crying, this is amazing, I have so many emotions right now,” she told the media following her coronation. “This is an incredible honor and I’m so proud to be part of this history of queens.”

Stillitano was born in Italy and moved to America at age 7. She is co-president of the Italian Culture Club at Arcadia High School, a dancer and actress with the Arcadia Stage Theater, and was a swimmer on the Rose Bowl Swim Team. She is a fluent Italian speaker and a capable Spanish communicator.

“The Rose Parade was one of the first things I saw when I moved here from Italy,” she said. “I always wanted to be a princess and now I get to be a queen!”

The Royal Court — full of accomplished teens — is now set, too. They are: Olivia Bohanec, a senior at La Salle College Preparatory; Trinity Dela Cruz, a senior at Marshall Fundamental School; Phoebe Ho, a senior at South Pasadena High School; Mia Moore-Walker, a senior at Flintridge Preparatory School; Jessica Powell, a senior at Flintridge Preparatory School; and Emmerson Tucker, a senior at Blair High School.

When asked how she plans to make her mark as queen, Stillitano said by ensuring her court maintains their close-knit bonds.

“Each and every one of us is a leader and we all show queen characteristics and this is why we are here in this court,” she said.

The court was first announced four weeks ago and since then its members have undergone a whirlwind of training in public speaking, media communication, etiquette and leadership, said Tournament of Roses President Alex Aghajanian.

“The Rose Parade was one of the first things I saw when I moved here from Italy. I always wanted to be a princess and now I get to be a queen!” – Naomi Stillitano, 105th Rose Queen in the Tournament of Roses

Their selection followed a month-long process where hundreds of students from around 30 Pasadena-area schools participated in multiple interviews while vying for a spot on the court.

As in years prior, participants in this year’s Royal Court were chosen based upon a combination of qualities, including public speaking ability, youth leadership, academic achievement, and community and school involvement.

The theme for the 2024 parade is “Celebrating a World of Music,” which plays well into Stillitano’s love for the arts.

Tournament President Aghajanian said he initially struggled to come up with the theme, until inspiration struck in the middle of the night.

“I woke up about two o’clock in the in the morning, tapped my wife to wake her up and I said the ‘theme is celebrating a world of music’ and then I said ‘please write it down,’ and thank God we did because neither one of us remember what I said in the morning,” he told amused audience members during the coronation ceremony.

Members of the Royal Court will ride Jan. 1, 2024, through the 135th Rose Parade on the Royal Court float and attend the College Football Playoffs semifinal at the 110th Rose Bowl Game on New Year’s Day.

The 2024 Royal Court will also receive a $7,500 educational scholarship and participate in nearly 100 community and media functions, serving as ambassadors of the Tournament of Roses, the Pasadena community, and the greater Los Angeles area.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct an error. Stillitano is the 105th Rose Queen and will participate in the 135th Rose Parade.

The Luna UCR avocado will soon be marketed to growers worldwide, though it will be a little longer before you can buy it at the supermarket.

RELATED: Why your avocado tree might not be producing this year

The result of decades of research, the Luna tastes similar to the popular Hass avocado, which dominates the U.S. market. But important differences — including its compact tree shape and flower type that can pollinate other avocado trees — may set it apart for growers and others in the industry.

UCR’s avocado-breeding program, which has been operating about 70 years, partnered in 2020 with Eurosemillas, a Spain-based agricultural commercialization group that has worked with the University of California since 1989, according to its website.

Eurosemillas has joined with growers in 14 other countries to grow the Luna, a UCR news release from July states.

It’s not unusual for UCR or other public institutions to create new plant varieties for the industry or general public, Eric Focht, a UC Riverside staff research associate in the Botany and Plant Sciences Department, said in Wednesday, Aug. 16 email.

Other plants created by UCR, including avocados, citrus and asparagus, are examples.

But, he said, there has been a decline in publicly funded breeding efforts in recent decades, perhaps because of the short-term cost.

It takes about two decades to release a new plant variety that was initially planted from seed, and “that’s not a fast turnaround,” Focht said.

The Luna avocado was a long time in the making.

Berthold “Bob” Orphie Bergh, who was described as UCR’s “first real long-term avocado breeder” by Mary Lu Arpaia in a UCR news release, began avocado research in the 1950s.

Arpaia is a UC Cooperative Extension professor in subtropical horticulture, and one of the researchers on the Luna UCR patent, alongside Focht, Bergh and others.

“A really important point is that when you have a breeding program, especially for tree crops, you build upon the success of your predecessors,” Arpaia said Wednesday, Aug. 9.

Bergh initially sought an alternative to the Fuerte avocado, the country’s most popular type at the time, which Arpaia said had production problems such as erratic fruit-bearing and a sprawling tree shape. There was already an alternative, the Hass, but it was unpopular with consumers because the skin turns black when it’s ripe, the UCR release states.

By 1983, Bergh had created the Gwen avocado, which stays green — but by then, consumers had grown accustomed to the Hass avocado, with the help of marketing and technology that allowed for more uniform ripening.

In search of future varieties, in the mid-1980s, Bergh planted up to 70,000 avocado seeds from Gwen mother trees, according to UCR.

Several new varieties emerged from that batch of seeds. Luna will be the last of them to be released, Arpaia said.

The Hass avocado is named after its creator, Rudolph Hass, and the Gwen avocado takes its name from Bergh’s wife. The Luna is named after Arpaia’s dog.

“We were having trouble coming up with a name,” she said.

One day, while brushing Luna, “a lightbulb went off.”

To consumers, the Luna avocado will seem similar to the Hass variety.

Hass avocados currently account for 95% of the avocados in the global market, Focht said.

While their shapes differ slightly, the Hass and Luna avocado have green skins that turn black when ripe, and Focht said the Luna’s taste is “very Hass-like.”

Apple varieties are a good analogy for the way different avocados taste, Arpaia said.

“You go to the store and you see all these varieties of apples, and they all taste like apples, but they’re subtly different,” she said.

The difference between avocado varieties is a little more subtle, she said, though they “vary quite a bit in texture.”

The Hass is creamy, she said, the Luna UCR is very smooth and the Gem is meatier.

The avocado fruit is one consideration for researchers. The tree is another.

In a sunny avocado field near UCR, Focht pointed out the different shapes that make trees more or less desirable to growers.

“We’ve traditionally been looking at something like a narrow cylinder or column as sort of the ideal tree shape,” Focht said.

More upright, compact trees, like the Luna, take up less space, meaning that more can be planted in a given field.

Carl Stucky, a California Avocado Society board member and an agricultural consultant, said Tuesday, Aug. 29, that the tree’s shape has benefits for “higher-density planting.” 

There are other considerations as the industry explores new directions, such as using trellises, Focht said. While researchers don’t know yet how the Luna would behave in that situation, Focht said that “we suspect it should do well,” and trials are planned.

“There’s lots of different situations that a field can present, and so it probably is the case that not one single variety is gonna fit all of those,” Focht said, but the Luna is “the perfect fit for what we’ve been focusing on for some 50 to 60 years.”

Another potential benefit of the Luna is its flowers.

Avocado trees have one of two flower types, and will cross-pollinate with trees with the opposite flower type, Focht said.

The fruit of the avocado tree variants being planted today to cross-pollinate Hass avocado trees don’t have much market value, Focht said. That means that the 10% to 11% of a field that is taken up by those variants often goes to waste, because it could cost more to pick the fruit than a grower would make by selling it.

The Luna can both cross-pollinate with Hass avocado trees and has marketable fruit. If the two types are planted together in a field, Focht said, growers wouldn’t lose that 10% to 11% of the crop.

Arpaia said it will take a few years for Luna avocados to be sold widely, and that they’ll probably appear at farmer’s markets first, then at higher-end grocery stores such as Whole Foods, then other chains such as Ralphs.

In the meantime, the trees will go to growers. Arpaia said they’ll first be tried as pollinizers before, hopefully, more and more are planted.

The Luna isn’t expected to bring in revenue for UCR for years, Brian Suh, UCR’s director of technology commercialization, said in a Wednesday, Aug. 16, email.

Royalty revenues will follow UC’s patent policy, which designates 35% for inventors, 15% for research, and 50% to the campus for multiple uses, Suh said.

Stucky, though, sees “real problems” with how the Luna is being marketed, namely, that there will be an upfront fee and an annual royalty for the lifetime of the trees, which is “definitely unusual for avocados.” New varieties typically have a minimal, one-time, patent fee, he said. 

Stucky also noted that the California Avocado Commission helped fund UCR’s program.

In a Friday, Sept. 1, email, Suh said that, because of that contribution, California growers will receive discounts in royalty fees. Also, he said, UCR is working with Eurosemillas to propose a short-term, royalty-free option for California growers’ first five acres.

BY THE NUMBERS

86% — Percentage of U.S. avocado production done in California, 2015 to 2017.

40% — Percentage of avocados imported into the U.S. in early 2000s

90% — Percentage of avocados imported into the U.S. in 2022

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Agriculture

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct an error regarding the University of California’s patent policy. Inventors receive 35% of the royalty revenue. 

“We are children,” said Scharf, 17. “We deserve a fun high school experience.”

RELATED: Who’s behind transgender policies in Southern California schools?

This year is her last at Great Oak High School in Temecula. But rather than spend the year planning for college, prom and graduation nights, Scharf and other LGBTQ students across Southern California are worrying about their local school boards.

Scharf identifies as non-binary and bisexual. Since the 2022 election of a new Temecula Valley Unified school board, Scharf said she has “never felt more unsafe” as a Temecula Valley student. The board tried to block a social studies curriculum that mentioned LGBTQ icon Harvey Milk. On Tuesday, Aug. 22, the board approved a policy requiring school officials to tell parents if their children identify themselves as transgender, prompting a lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“We’re angry at the school board for thinking they could take advantage of us,” Scharf said. “This is our education – we’re not going to let them censor it because we deserve the best.”

The moves in Temecula Valley Unified are among a growing number of actions by school boards and others that alarm LGBTQ students and their allies:

• Chino Valley Unified and Murrieta Unified have adopted policies requiring parental notification about students not conforming to the gender they were assigned at birth, and the Orange Unified school board is considering adopting the policy in September. Three proposed 2024 ballot initiatives would make similar policies state law.

• Earlier this year, Chino Valley Unified prohibited teachers from displaying pride flags in their classrooms. Police had to break up a brawl between protesters and counterprotesters outside a Glendale Unified school board meeting where board members were scheduled to vote on a resolution expressing support for Pride Month.

• And on Tuesday, Aug. 22, parental notification backers were met by LGBTQ supporters as they rallied in Los Angeles, objecting to bills in the California Legislature they see as taking away parental rights, including the right to be notified about their children’s gender expression.

‘An awful climate’

Scharf remembers being called a “monster” at a Temecula City Council meeting. She was 15 at the time.

“The only hate I’d ever faced was from kids who don’t think for themselves yet. But here, there were adults who spoke so horribly to me,” Scharf said.

“I’m not somebody who has hate in their heart,” she added. “I don’t understand how you can hate someone just because you don’t understand what they’re going through.”

Like Scharf, many LGBTQ students and those who support them are returning to school campus environments that have changed in the past year — and not for the better, they say.

“My educator friends are fearful; they know they had better not discuss any of this,” said Mitch Rosen, a family therapist in Temecula. “Educators are told ‘you will not go there.’ … It’s an awful climate.”

Policies requiring school employees to tell parents if their child identifies themselves by a gender other than what they were assigned at birth echo Assembly Bill 1314. The bill, co-sponsored by Assemblymember Bill Essalyi, R-Riverside, died without making it to the Assembly floor for a vote. But local school boards have been trying to pass their own versions ever since.

“These policies are cruel, requiring young people to choose between the anxiety and distress of not being able to be their authentic selves at school and the fear of being outed at home before they are ready or safe to do so,” Gabriel Vidal, associate director for Youth Organizing of California for the Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network (formerly the Gay-Straight Alliance Network), wrote in an email.

Concerns about safety

Policies like AB 1314 have been framed as giving parents the information they need to raise their children.

“We have no business affirming anything without the parents’ permission or knowledge,” Chino Valley Unified school board president Sonja Shaw said in June. “We’re not denying anybody anything, or any access to any kind of programs, any kind of sports teams. (The) policy doesn’t deny access. It’s not discriminating them to any kind of access.”

But transgender teens say the policies are dangerous.

If parents don’t know that their child is transgender or gender non-conforming, there’s often good reason for that, according to Max Ibarra, a 17-year-old junior in Chino Valley Unified who uses the pronoun they.

“Being a trans kid that’s not out yet, you can get a feeling about whether or not your family will be supportive of that,” they said. “And how do we do that? We pay attention to the comments that our family members make when other trans people in our lives come out. We see them grab the remote to change the channel when trans people come on.

“Sometimes, people can assess the situation as unsafe,” Ibarra added. “To be able to stay safe, we have to stay in the closet at home. If we get outed, that can lead to abuse at home. There are people who would rather have a dead child than a trans child.”

Rosen, the family therapist in Temecula, says that’s true.

“I’ve had parents who tell their kids ‘you’re dead to me,’ which is a terrible thing to hear as a 13-year-old child,” Rosen said.

He hears from parents who want him to recommend conversion therapy for their LGBTQ children. Rosen says such treatment — which is illegal in California — doesn’t work and is unethical.

“So then the parents say ‘Well, I’m going to get a therapist with their head screwed on straight’ and they hang up. And that’s the kiss of death for those young people,” Rosen said.

‘Our lives aren’t important enough’

According a 2023 survey conducted by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to prevent suicide among LGBTQ young people, only 38% of LGBTQ kids responding to the survey said their home was gender-affirming. Of those surveyed, 41% reported they’d considered suicide in the past year. The rates were even higher among transgender, non-binary and people of color responding to the survey.

According to the same survey, about one in three respondents said their mental health was poor because of policies and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community.

The school boards “know what they’re doing is dangerous,” Ibarra said. “They’ve had students point it out to them. They’ve had human rights groups point it out to them. They’ve had statistics presented to them multiple times. The message is very clear that what they’re doing is dangerous. And by passing policies like this, it’s very clear that our lives aren’t important enough to them to be worth protecting.”

The new political climate also means less tolerance for school clubs that bring together and provide support for LGBTQ students, according to Vidal with the Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network.

“Clubs continue as best as they can to meet and create supportive and affirming meeting spaces for students during these times,” he said.

‘It’s not about sex’

But not every school district in the region is becoming more restrictive in the treatment of LGBTQ issues.

On Aug. 1, the Corona-Norco Unified school board passed a resolution “recognizing the plight of LGBTQ+ staff and students.”

And the brawl that happened outside a Glendale Unified school board meeting earlier this year is not reflective of what’s happening in district schools, according to Deborah Pasachoff, a mother with GUSD Parents for Public Schools.

“Nothing really has changed,” with district policy or what’s being taught in Glendale classrooms, she said. “Here, we’ve managed to keep our kids relatively safe and insulated from the hatred going on in other districts.”

Pasachoff blames the chaos at the June school board meeting on a social media misinformation campaign accusing the district of Marxist indoctrination, sexually explicit education, and protesting against LGBTQ events, including the school board expressing support for Pride Month.

Pride Month “shouldn’t be controversial,” Pasachoff said.

“It’s not about sex. It’s saying we’re going to respect a large number of Americans and people in our community,” she said.

Gris Soriano has two children enrolled in Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified schools — including a transgender son.

According to Soriano, a member of PFLAG, a national organization that provides support for families with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, the Yucaipa-Calimesa district has supported her son.

“I’m comforted that the district has guarded my son’s integrity,” Soriano said.

The district has protected her son, she said. They’ve detected and stopped bullying and offered counseling services at school. Although her children’s district is supportive, she said she knows it’s not that way for all LGBTQ children.

“I feel very nervous and worried for these young children,” Soriano said. “We hear a lot of stories where kids don’t have support at home and cutting off that support at school can be isolating.”

‘We all miss out on their gifts’

For many LGBTQ students, the start of the 2023-24 school year means more stresses than just tests and class projects.

The current climate “is creating fear, exacerbating anxiety and causing significant worry,” according to Traci Lowenthal, a Redlands-based therapist who specializes in LGTBQ issues.

“To say that our LGBTQIA+ youth are aware of the uptick in hate is an understatement,” she wrote in an email.

The changing climate has LGBTQ students feeling unsafe and isolated, and leads to feelings of self-hatred and shame, according to Lowenthal. Bullies feel emboldened. And all this has consequences for students.

“When kids feel unsafe at school, their capacity to pay attention, retain information and enjoy social engagement is negatively impacted,” Lowenthal wrote. “When young people feel the need to hide the entirety of who they are, we all miss out on their gifts.”

According to Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, hate crimes against the LGBTQ community rose 52% last year in 42 major cities. Hate crimes against gender non-conforming people, including those in drag, rose 47% during the same period and anti-transgender hate crimes rose 28% during the same period. The data is part of a report that was presented Friday, Aug. 25, at the August meeting of the California Commission on the State of Hate.

Some teens dream of leaving behind communities they feel no longer welcome them.

“For many young folks who are queer, particularly queer folks of color, if you want to be your true self, you have to leave Orange County,” said Uyen Hoang, executive director of Viet Rainbow of Orange County.

The organization was founded a decade ago, after a 2013 Tet parade excluded LGBTQ marchers. Today, the Viet Rainbow is once again finding itself unwelcome at events in Orange County, Hoang said.

“I thought it was very supportive here,” said Daniel Mora, 18, who graduated from Chino High in May. “But I was wrong. People would come to board meetings and be open about their ignorance and hate. I thought this was a supportive community, but I was wrong. I’m still really shocked about it.”

This fall, he begins studying political science across the country at Yale.

“I always knew that Chino was a bit more conservative than the entirety of California, but I really thought that people would let other people live their lives,” Mora said. “But it’s very different now; they’re very open about calling you out about something that they don’t like.”

But other LGBTQ young people say they’re not going anywhere.

“I’m planning to make SoCal my lifelong home. The (Chino Valley school board) is not going to silence me,” Ibarra said. “I’m going to stay and make sure that, at all times, there is at least one person who is calling them out for what they’re doing.”

Mora believes the pendulum will swing back the other way, in time.

“I don’t think this is the future for Chino. I think this was just the perfect time for them: A lot of people were mad about masks, a lot of people were mad about the pandemic,” he said. “I know a lot of community members in Chino that don’t agree with (the school board). I know even conservatives and Republicans who think they’re too far right and think that school boards shouldn’t be political.”

Staff writers Monserrat Solis and Allyson Vergara contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Temecula Valley Unified’s approval of its parental notification policy.

More on Southern California LGBTQ students

• Growing up gay in the 21st century: Adults, not peers, pose biggest problems
• Hesperia Unified settles for $850,000 with teacher who said district retaliated against her for siding with LGBT students
• How California students from marginalized groups are working to stop bullying
• Southern California school board meetings now political battlegrounds
• Here’s what’s in the new Temecula curriculum that concerns some board members
• Murrieta Valley school board OKs policy to tell parents if children are transgender
• Proposed transgender notification policy at Orange Unified draws divided response from parents, community
• Parental rights groups and LGBTQ supporters hold dueling protests in LA
• Temecula school board OKs policy to tell parents if students are transgender
• Who’s behind transgender policies in Southern California schools?

An Inland Empire lawmaker announced Wednesday, July 26, that he’s proposing restrictions on state legislators’ use of taxpayer-funded vehicles if they’re charged or convicted of driving under the influence.

Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli introduced Resolution 51, which would mandate that any member of the Assembly who is arrested and charged with DUI lose — until his or her case is resolved — the privilege of using a “pool vehicle” provided at no cost to lawmakers while they’re in Sacramento. The resolution would also require that an Assembly member be prohibited from access to pool cars for a minimum of three years following a conviction.

“Last year, over 1,000 Californians died as a result of drunk drivers,” Essayli said. “When I was a prosecutor, I fought to keep our roads safe by prosecuting and convicting drunk drivers. Now as a member of the Assembly, I am troubled by recent incidents of legislators and candidates drinking and driving. Public officials must be held to the highest standards given the public trust placed in us, which is why I’ve introduced Resolution 51.”

The most recent DUI arrest of a state lawmaker involved state Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, in early May. Min, who is also running for Congress, was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor DUI in Sacramento after a California Highway Patrol officer spotted him driving without headlights in a Toyota Camry.

Min apologized publicly. The case is awaiting disposition.

In July, a state Assembly candidate, Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, was arrested on suspicion of DUI. She later said she was seeking treatment for alcohol abuse after the DUI arrest, her second in less than 10 years.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is supporting Essayli’s resolution, which would expand on Rule 120 of the Standing Rules of the Assembly for the current fiscal year. Rule 120 establishes that Assembly members be barred from receiving compensation in the event of a felony conviction of any kind.

“MADD appreciates and supports your desire to hold convicted DUI offenders who are members of the state Assembly accountable by prohibiting them from operating state pool vehicles,” the organization said in a letter to Essayli. “Limiting access to state pool vehicles, in addition to requiring ignition interlocks for all drunk driving offenders, will not only hold elected officials accountable, but will lead to much-needed change in driving behavior and decision-making that endangers California residents and visitors every day.”

Resolution 51 is awaiting a hearing in the Assembly Rules Committee, which will reconvene on Aug. 14, following the Legislature’s summer recess.

Essayli’s district includes Norco, Menifee, Lake Elsinore, Canyon Lake and parts of Eastvale, Riverside and Corona.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the full quotation from Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s letter.

Like agencies across the nation, they’re the beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s 1033 program. Created in 1990, the program was intended to save the taxpayers money by handing off obsolete or excess military equipment like office furniture.

Beginning in 1997, and especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it’s also been the way that local communities — many of them initially terrified that they would be the next target of international terrorism — have been able to get weapons, armored vehicles and other equipment traditionally used in warfare for use in local communities.

Today, nearly every Inland Empire law enforcement agency, from sheriff’s to city police to school district police departments, has a stockpile of equipment originally designed for use in battle.

Among their arsenals:

• The Corona Police Department owns 18 drones, 16 of which are various models of camera drones, plus two “enterprise” drones equipped with thermal cameras, and loudspeakers, meant to help in search-and-rescue operations.
• The Riverside Police Department owns four robots, including a pair of $30,000 Aardvark Avatar tactical robots.
• The Ontario Police Department owns four armored vehicles, including three Lenoco BearCats designed to carry officers through a variety of environments.
• The Fontana Police Department owns 85 “less-lethal” launchers, including 35 shotguns designed to fire beanbags and 50 40mm launchers designed to fire foam projectiles.
• The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department owns more than 700 military-style rifles of multiple brands and styles.

All of this information is publicly available. Under a 2021 state law, Assembly Bill 481, law enforcement agencies are required to release a self-reported annual inventory that describes what military gear they possess and how it’s used. Agencies must also get annual approval from the elected body that oversees them — such as a city council, county board of supervisors or school board — in order to continue using the military equipment.

AB 481 was passed in the aftermath of widespread protests following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

“When communities saw tear gas launched from military grenade launchers and rubber bullets shot from behind armored vehicles at peaceful protesters, it really crystallized the trust challenges,” former Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, the author of AB 481, was quoted as saying in a September 2021 news release. “Our streets are not war zones, and our citizens should not be considered enemy combatants. Law enforcement should be viewed as our partners in public safety — they’re not military generals, so the weapons and equipment they carry should reflect that reality.”

Chiu, now the city attorney for San Francisco, hoped that public awareness of the kind of military hardware that California police departments had at their disposal would lead to public conversations about how communities should be policed.

There is a role for the kind of military equipment covered under AB 481, according to Christie Gardiner, a professor of criminal justice at Cal State Fullerton.

“We need police to be as well-armed as the citizenry. Even though the military equipment is more than most people have access to, there are some very well armed people in America, some intent on doing harm, others intent on protecting themselves and their loved ones from harm,” Gardiner wrote in an email.

But the equipment isn’t always limited to use by SWAT teams and even police organizations without SWAT teams, like school district police departments, seek out military equipment.

According to their most recent military equipment inventory report, the Fontana Unified School District’s police department has seven aerial drones, three robots, two armored vehicles, 85 less-lethal launchers and 105 military-style rifles, or those that are .50 caliber or greater and specialized firearms that are not standard-issue shotguns and service weapons.

According to Fontana Unified’s interim School Police Chief Steven Griffin, it’s important that the district have the equipment available and ready to go.

“These items have all been deployed during police-related incidents on or off our school campuses. Having this police safety equipment available to our police officers at a moment’s notice is just as important as using it during any deployment,” Griffin wrote in an emailed statement. For instance, “drones can be utilized for searching for missing children, searching for suspects on or near our school campuses, and can be a vital tool during large gatherings.”

Research suggests that more than 25 years of increasingly militarized police departments hasn’t made either police or the public any safer, according to experts.

“There are some cases where it might be good to have this sort of equipment,” said Zachary Powell, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Cal State San Bernardino. “But in terms of making people feel safe or increasing public safety, the evidence is pretty thin.”

Abdul Nasser Rad, the managing director of research and data of Campaign Zero, a nonprofit that advocates against police violence, agreed.

“Generally, it hasn’t been shown to improve safety or reduce crime and there have been links to increased violence and it’s been shown to reduce trust in police and government,” he said.

Rad cited a 2018 Northwestern University study that suggests militarization does not make police officers more safe or reduce crime in their community — but it does hurt the department’s reputation with the public they serve. He pointed to another 2018 study, by the University of Utah and the Western Political Science Association, which shows a correlation between how militarized police departments are and the number of people killed by that department.

But there are elements of a militarized police force that the public does support, according to Gardiner.

Some of the equipment is “quite helpful and saves jurisdictions money without damaging public relations,” she said. “Helicopters are one example. The public are also supportive of drone usage by police. I would suspect that robots, especially those that detect and disarm bombs, would also be welcomed by most members of the public.”

But militarization has eroded the public trust’s in police in some cases.

In a 2018 study conducted by Princeton professor Jonathan Mummolo, participants were shown four different photos of police officers with increasing amounts of military gear, each described as “standing guard during a local protest.” The higher the amount of police militarization in the photos, the more survey participants believed there were high crime levels in the city and the less they believed the department needed more funding, and their confidence in the highly militarized police officers decreased.

Those results come as no surprise to advocates opposed to police militarization.

“It’s pretty obvious when police are getting military-grade equipment, they are going to act like an occupying force. We have seen it over and over again, especially during protests for racial justice,” said Avalon Edwards, a policy associate with Starting Over, a Corona-based nonprofit focused on serving the homeless and formerly incarcerated that has called for defunding the police.

Edwards cited law enforcement agencies using armored vehicles, riot gear and tear gas in a June 2021 Black Lives Matter protest in Riverside.

“The issues facing our communities are often public health issues that you’re never going to resolve with military grade weapons, but with the provision of services” to fight poverty and food insecurity and to provide mental health and other medical services, Edwards said.

In contrast, any investment in militarizing police “is a complete misuse of public funding,” Edwards added.

Rad at Campaign Zero doesn’t believe the militarization of police in the United States is going to stop — but it will change as new technologies emerge.

“The evolution will be more like drones and predictive policing,” he said.

Rad pointed to products produced by companies like ShotSpotter, which sells software intended to determine where gunfire has occurred within a city; and Palantir, which uses police data to predict the locations and types of future crimes, as well as suggesting who might be responsible. Some Southern California police departments are already using license plate readers to monitor motorists in their cities. In the future, robots may be joining police on the streets. And that’s despite the fact that many of these technologies alarm privacy advocates and there are questions whether some products, like ShotSpotter, work at all.

“In every other area of government, you need to have evidence that something works,” Rad said. “But in policing, it’s just a matter of ‘Well, we want it.’”

Staff writers Nova Blanco-Rico, Jordan Darling, Sarah Hofmann, Jeff Horseman and Monserrat Solis contributed to this story.

More on California law enforcement

• Inland agencies favor military gear for police
• Timeline of Terror: How the infamous North Hollywood shootout unfolded 20 years ago
• Police push back crowd at Riverside protest over George Floyd’s death
• Inland Empire cities spent $1 billion on police, ignored poverty, study says
• Is a minimum 664 training hours enough to become a California police officer?
• For Bay Area cops, military-grade hardware is one-click shopping
• Santa Ana police unit not operating as illegal police gang, independent probe concludes

Built into Assembly Bill 122 and its counterpart, Senate Bill 122, the state budget agreement bills, the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act marks the first time California would put a permanent law into place protecting the trees.

Under the law, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has to create a conservation plan for the trees, development projects are required to avoid the trees when possible, and developers must hire a desert native plant specialist to oversee tree relocations or they must contribute to a new Western Joshua Tree Conservation Fund.

The merged budget bill was sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom on June 27. If signed, it will establish permanent protections for the trees. Temporary protections have been in place since September 2020 under the California Endangered Species Act.

Today, there are fewer than 10 million Joshua trees in California. They occupy an area of land larger than the state of Connecticut. But they reproduce slowly, and under specific conditions that are rapidly disappearing due to climate change.

A paper published in June 2019 by researchers at UC Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology predicts that at least 80% of the Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park will be wiped out by 2100. In the worst-case scenario, the 160,000 acres of land in Joshua Tree National Park capable of supporting the iconic trees will drop to just 37 acres.

“I’m grateful the Newsom administration and lawmakers agree that western Joshua trees are an irreplaceable part of California’s natural heritage that has to be protected,” Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, is quoted as saying in a statement issued by the organization, which had previously asked the state to list Joshua trees under California’s Endangered Species Act.

“This groundbreaking law will help ensure these wonderful trees remain part of California’s Mojave Desert landscape forever,” Cummings said.

Although environmentalists cheered the new law, officials representing Mojave Desert communities expressed frustration over what it could mean for economic development in the region.

“San Bernardino County greatly values the Western Joshua tree as an iconic symbol of the Mojave Desert and actively supports efforts to protect and preserve the species,” the county wrote in an unsigned news release issued Tuesday. But the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act “fails to properly balance protection of the species with the needs of our residents and business community, thereby threatening the quality of life in our deserts.”

The county had offered amendments that would have struck “vital balance between protecting the Western Joshua Tree and preserving a reasonable quality of life for San Bernardino County residents today and into the future,” but most were not included in the final version of the act.

“The bill still imposes very high costs on residents, businesses, and local agencies,” the statement concludes. “This will discourage the building of much-needed homes, stifle economic investment, increase development costs in the region, and significantly harm the county’s Mojave Desert communities and residents.”

On June 27, Assemblymember Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale, took to the Assembly floor to attack the act, saying desert residents had been “deserted” by it.

“There’s never been a bill that’s been more impactful to my desert community,” he said. The bill will “permanently affect development in my desert community, where many find the last vestige of affordable housing.”

According to real estate website Redfin, the median price for homes sold in the High Desert city of Hesperia between April 1 and June 29 was $426,500. In the desert city of Palmdale in the same period, it was $432,000. In contrast, according to real estate firm CoreLogic, in April, the median home price for Southern California (including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties) was $800,000.

Joshua tree sprouts are covered under the new act, Lackey said.

“Even small projects are going to be costly for my constituents, who live among a plethora of these shrubs masquerading as a tree,” he said. “Development under (the bill) will be limited to those with economic resources, which would change the culture cultivated within my communities.”

Lackey’s 34th Assembly District includes Apple Valley, Barstow, Big Bear Lake and Twentynine Palms, plus parts of Palmdale, Highland, Hesperia, Lancaster and Victorville.

The city of Hesperia — which features a western Joshua tree on its logo — opposed the new legislation. Mayor Brigit Bennington sent a letter of “regretful opposition” to the Assembly on June 5. The city requested the Legislature amend the legislation to allow local governments to permit multifamily, commercial and industrial projects and to adjust the number of trees that could be impacted for public works projects, among other proposed changes.

“Rural communities are forgotten in this institution,” Lackey said. “This will surely worsen the state’s ability to grapple with its housing shortage by depressing development and frustrate the communities’ ability to meet regional housing goals set forth by this body.”

Cody Hanford, joint executive director of the Mojave Land Trust, thinks concerns over the new law’s impact are overblown.

“The tree was a candidate species for the California endangered species act for the past two years, where it received a higher level of protection than this current bill affords, yet we saw plenty of large-scale development, new homes, business and roadwork during that time,” he wrote in an email. “Development projects must always consider a number of factors in the desert including water, health and safety, and environmental impact. Incorporating the western Joshua tree into those development assessments is the right thing to do and well within the capabilities and capacity of those project proponents.”

And not every desert politician agreed the new law is a bad one.

“The Western Joshua Tree Preservation Act represents the best possible outcome for the preservation of the western Joshua tree and the economic growth of our high desert region,” Assemblymember Juan Carrillo, D-Palmdale, is quoted as saying in a statement issued Thursday, June 29. “This bill strikes a balance between safeguarding our natural heritage and fostering sustainable development. By requiring individuals to obtain a permit from the Department of Fish and Wildlife before removing a western Joshua tree, we ensure that every effort is made to protect this iconic species.”

The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act is an alternative to listing the tree under the California Endangered Species Act, which both Lackey and Carrillo said would have greater economic impacts than the law.

“We have pursued an alternative approach that prioritizes both conservation and sustainable growth,” Carrillo’s statement concludes.

Carrillo’s 39th Assembly District includes Adelanto, Victorville, Hesperia, Lancaster and Palmdale.

Staff writer Jeff Collins contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correctly describe the Western Joshua Tree Preservation Act’s status. As of July 7, Gov. Gavin Newsom had not yet signed the bill into law.

More on Joshua trees

• Can Joshua trees survive global warming? Scientists have differing thoughts
• Why Joshua Tree National Park may be saying goodbye to most of its iconic trees in the next 81 years
• Joshua trees should be protected by state endangered species act, group says
• Illegally move a Joshua Tree, pay thousands in fines
• Are Joshua trees a threatened species? California delays decision until October

Now school board meetings in Southern California and nationwide are a major front in the culture war between conservatives and liberals.

This week alone, Temecula Valley Unified school board members sparred with Gov. Gavin Newsom, after the board president called murdered gay rights leader Harvey Milk “a pedophile.” A Placentia anatomy teacher was placed on leave after she discussed gay sex while talking about the reproductive system. And Glendale police had to separate protesters and counter-protesters outside a school board meeting as the two sides brawled over how the district teaches about gender identity.

School board meetings in Southern California were once quiet, lightly attended, affairs.

“(Board) members were mostly retired educators or active parents,” Marcia Godwin, a professor of public administration at the University of La Verne, wrote in an email. “I was the student representative for the Oxnard Union High School Board. My mother would give me a ride and was often the only one in the audience.”

No more.

In November, UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access published a report, “Educating for a Diverse Democracy: The Chilling Role of Political Conflict in Blue, Purple, and Red Communities.” The study, co-authored by UCLA professor of education John Rogers and UC Riverside professor of education policy and politics Joseph Kahne, was based on a survey of 682 U.S. public high school principals and follow-up interviews with 32 of them in the summer of 2022.

According to the principals surveyed, 45% of them reported that conflict during the 2021-22 school year was higher than it was before the pandemic. In addition:

• 50% of principals reported attempts to limit or challenge teaching about race and racism during the 2021-22 school year
• 48% of principals reported attempts to limit or challenge the teaching of LGBTQ+ student rights during the 2021-22 school year
• 33% of principals reported attempts to limit or challenge student access to books in the school library during the 2021-22 school year

Some of the backlash is due to anxieties stirred up during the pandemic, but the cultural issues around LGBT issues and race are also a response to changing societal standards in recent decades, according to Rogers.

“There are plenty of folks who find these changes frightening and who are pushing back, often in hateful ways,” he said. “Unfortunately, those dynamics lead to heightened dynamics in public schools. And that’s problematic because public schools are ideally places where diverse people are coming together to find ways to work together and find common ground and create community.”

In March, UCLA published a follow-up report, “Educating for a Diverse Democracy in California: The Growing Challenges of Political Conflict and Hostile Behavior,” based on interviews with 150 California high school principals.

For the most part, it showed nearly identical results as the national survey. Results were most pronounced in communities with a mix of politically liberal and conservative residents, as measured by how many voted for former President Donald Trump. For instance, principals in divided communities were more than twice as likely to report conflict over LGBTQ+ issues as compared to those in liberal communities — 28% versus 12%.

The survey also confirmed that this is a growing phenomenon. In California, 93% of principals reported the level of the “political division and incivility” had increased since the pandemic’s start in 2020.

“Teachers are getting threatening emails, school board members are getting threatening emails,” Kahne said. “School board meetings are being turned into circuses.”

In Chino, the former leader of a group of parents opposing mask mandates is now the Chino Valley Unified School District board president, facing angry protests of her own by parents opposed to the board’s conservative positions.

A year ago, Sonja Shaw was president of Parent Advocates Chino Valley, a group of Chino Valley parents opposing mask mandates.

“God forbid we even stand up for our children,” she told the board and district officials Feb. 17, 2022. “The only thing you did was push us out (of the board room). And pushing us out there made us stronger, it brought us together, and it gave us the tools to fight for our kids.”

A year later, she’s the school board president.

Her election to the dais hasn’t dimmed her passion. At the board’s April 6 meeting, she introduced a resolution in support of Assembly Bill 1314, authored by Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona. The bill would make public schools notify parents if their child was self-identifying with a gender that did not match their sex assigned at birth. As of Friday, June 9, the bill has not come up for a vote, either at the committee level or before the Assembly as a whole.

“My love for our children is why I do what I do,” Shaw said at the packed board meeting. She had to repeatedly threaten to expel hecklers from the room. “I am grateful someone in Sacramento is doing something to repair the damage that California has allowed.”

Chino Valley Unified has had conservative school board majorities for years, and first got involved in state politics over transgender student rights in 2013.

But scenes like the ones in Chino Valley Unified are becoming more common.

Christian conservatives launched an effort in spring 2022 to win school board seats in southwest Riverside County.

Five of the seven candidates endorsed by the Inland Empire Family PAC won in November, including locking up a three-member majority on the five-member Temecula Valley Unified School District board. On the night they were sworn in, the new Temecula board majority voted to ban the teaching of critical race theory. Since then, the board has faced meetings full of angry protesters.

Critical race theory is a decades-old academic framework used in law schools and graduate schools that argues racism is embedded in government and business systems, rather than just being the result of individual people’s attitudes. Today, it’s often used as shorthand by conservatives for any discussion of race or racism in America that can be seen as criticizing traditional institutions or the country as a whole.

“Cultural controversies used to be mostly about sex education and evolution,” Godwin said. “The curricular battles are now disproportionately on critical race theory and LGBTQ+ concerns.”

The battles appear to be hurting the students caught in the middle.

“It would be imaginable you could have lots of fights at school boards but in the classroom nothing changes,” Kahne said. “(But) what was happening in school board meetings was having a big effect on what teachers do and what students are learning.”

According to the national survey, 23% of principals in politically divided communities reported that their school board or district leadership limited students being taught about race and racism. Fewer such restrictions were reported by principals in districts with less political division, however.

In communities where voters backed Trump in 2020, for example, 17% of principals said they were told to cut back on teaching about race and racism. Similar restrictions were reported by 8% of principals in communities where voters picked Biden.

Facing angry parents and community members, districts nationally have tended to pull back from even discussing how best to teach these issues.

“In areas where there was a good deal of community conflict — efforts to attack or restrict LGBT rights, efforts to attack or restrict teaching of race or inequality — it was likely that schools were less likely to have professional development on things like teaching professional issues,” Rogers said.

Public schools in divided communities were 20% less likely to train teachers on how to better teach issues related to race or culture as compared to communities that had voted against Trump.

But in California, the opposite is happening. Public schools in divided communities were 5% more likely to train teachers how to address these issues than in communities that had voted against Trump.

It’s all enough for some educators to consider throwing in the towel.

“A large number of teachers and administrators are saying ‘Why are we in this job?’ At a time when we have a huge teacher shortage, we’re driving teachers from the classroom, and young people are going to pay the cost,” Kahne said.

In Temecula, where Trump beat President Joe Biden in the 2020 election by 52% to 46%, the battle lines remain drawn.

Students walked out of school in protest of the critical race theory ban. And when a local pastor attacked a Temecula Valley High School drama teacher for assigning “Angels in America,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that explores the AIDS epidemic along with religion, race, drug use and homosexuality, students and parents rallied Friday, June 2, in support of the teacher.

The heightened tensions surrounding what and how students are taught appears to be impacting their behavior.

According to the UCLA studies:

• 71% of California principals reported that students had made demeaning or hateful comments to other students based on their political beliefs
• 78% of California principals reported students had done so to LGBTQ+ classmates
• 50% of California principals reported students had done so to Latino classmates
• 66% of California principals reported students had done so to Black classmates

“Once it seems like this is a topic that you’re allowed to speak out on, and you’re not violating social norms in challenging their fellow students, some students are going to feel free to do so,” Rogers said. “And that undermines the feeling of safety and community that’s so vital for students to learn.”

But California students tend to be more tolerant of LGBTQ classmates and issues than many of the adults attacking their school boards.

“Even in areas that are quite conservative and in areas that have had quite a bit of pushback … principals are saying that it’s becoming more and more common for students to be out, for trans students to be out,” Rogers said. “In general, there’s a movement to more acceptance and more openness in the schools even as there’s a movement toward more hate playing out outside of the schools.”

At Redlands East Valley High School, teacher Duan Kellum became a lightning rod for conservative adults this spring.

The adviser to the school’s Wildcat Pride Association, which brings together the school’s LGBT and straight students, Kellum showed a PowerPoint presentation on breast binding safety at the request of students in the club.

The process of flattening breasts with tight undergarments is centuries old. But today, it’s used by transgender men and non-binary people to flatten their breasts as an alternative to surgery. But there can be health risks involved, especially when using materials such as duct tape or elastic bandages to do the binding.

After word got out about the speaker, a social media campaign demanded Kellum be fired and lose his teaching credential.

“The negative response did not come from the parents or guardians of any of the students involved in the club,” Kellum wrote in an email. “As a matter of fact, the club president told all in attendance that if anyone was uncomfortable, they should excuse themselves.”

Students, teachers and the district supported Kellum, but after 31 years teaching, he retired at the end of the school year on Thursday, June 8. The decision is unconnected to the controversy, he said.

He’s more worried about future teachers who end up in the crosshairs of the ongoing culture war.

“My concern is that the next person they go after may not have the level of support that I did,” he wrote. “This I hope will rally young BIPOC students to go into the teaching profession because they realize they are the ones who can best tell their stories. For us to realize the tenets of America, the story of the people, all the people, has to be included.”

Staff writers Madison Hart and Jeff Horseman contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the breast binding presentation at Redlands East Valley High School. It was done through a PowerPoint presentation.

More on the culture war in Los Angeles-area schools

• Redlands school board meeting cut short as speaker refuses to wear mask
• Why conservative Christians want to take over southwest Riverside County school boards
• What voters need to know about the Chino Valley Unified election
• Temecula students walk out to protest critical race theory ban
• Ex-Jurupa teacher’s lawsuit alleges she was fired for ‘Christian beliefs’
• Fullerton parents divided over swastikas’ removal from ‘Sound of Music’ at elementary school
• Students, parents rally for Temecula Valley High drama teacher
• Gov. Gavin Newsom blasts Temecula school trustee for calling Harvey Milk ‘a pedophile’
• Placentia teacher placed on leave after video clip of anatomy lesson leaked
• LGBTQ protections and gender policy sparks Glendale school board war

That’s how Fleck, a 37-year-old U.S Air Force Reserve major, jokingly describes her job flying Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers assigned to the 452nd Air Mobility Wing at March Air Reserve Base near Riverside.

The tankers, which Fleck called “airborne Shell station(s),” refuel military aircraft in midair, extending their range and how long they can stay airborne.

In service for six decades, the Air Force’s 396 KC-135s — March has 12 of them — are being phased out and replaced by the newer, more advanced Boeing KC-46A Pegasus. The U.S. military has ordered 179 KC-46As to be delivered between now and 2029.

Twelve KC-46As, each costing $176 million, will start arriving at March as soon as late 2024 to replace KC-135s that have been at the base 29 years, said Jamil Dada, a longtime community liaison with March.

It’s a big deal for a base that dates to World War I and shed thousands of jobs during a 1990s downsizing. Getting the new planes shields March from closure “for 30 to 40 years,” Dada said.

March already injects $800 million into the local economy through everything from gas purchases and hotel stays to hiring civilian contractors, Dada said. The KC-46As represent another $3 billion investment, he said.

While technically a reserve base, March, which is sandwiched between Riverside, Moreno Valley and Perris in western Riverside County, is as busy as many active-duty bases, Dada said.

Besides the tankers, March also is home to F-16 fighter jets, C-17 cargo planes, Reaper drones, the 4th Air Force’s headquarters and Defense Media Activity, which runs the Armed Forces Network.

With looming threats from North Korea and China, the Pentagon “is starting to pay more attention” to March and the base could become valuable in the event of a Pacific conflict, Dada said.

March’s KC-135s can be sent anywhere in the world. Fleck, who’s been flying KC-135s for 13 years — almost five of them at March — said she’s been deployed to refuel aircraft in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts “several times.”

“I don’t think that there’s anything that can be refueled that I haven’t refueled,” she said.

The list includes C-5 cargo planes, B-1 bombers, F-22 fighters and foreign warplanes like European-built Tornadoes and French Mirages.

Planes easier to fly, harder to ride

The first thing one notices on board a KC-135 is that it’s not built for comfort. Cushionless jump seats line both sides of a spartan interior with slick gray floors.

It’s not much better in the cockpit.

“I’m not sure that the word or concept of ergonomics existed in the fifties” when the KC-135 entered service, Fleck said.

“You’re kind of always uncomfortable. And so the longer the flight, the more your back and stuff hurts. You have to get up a lot and go do some pushups or whatever just to get your body moving again.”

On the plus side, flying the KC-135 is “pretty systematically straightforward because it was designed and built in the late (1940s) and the early (1950s),” Fleck said. “So if you imagine where we were technologically at that point in time, things were a lot simpler.”

A tube runs the length of the plane’s left side to the rear, where the boom operator — the person responsible for connecting the plane’s refueling boom, or extendable refueling pipe, to other airplanes — lies down stomach-first.

“Literally they lay down on the job,” Fleck said. “We like to kind of make fun of them (for that). But in all fairness, there’s a lot of technical knowledge with what they do … the boom operators really take over and they get on the radio because they’re the ones that actually have the visual on the (refueling plane).”

While the boom operator uses a joystick to connect the 48-foot-long boom with a plane needing a fill-up, Fleck and a co-pilot keep the KC-135 steady, avoiding any jerking movements or airspeed changes as the tanker and its customer try to hook up.

s U.S. Air Force Reserve Major Marlo Fleck flies KC-135 tanker planes out of March Air Reserve Base near Riverside. (Courtesy of U.S. Air Force)“It’s a very choreographed standardized process,” Fleck said. “There are certain procedures and certain airspeeds and certain emergency protocols that we have if things don’t go quite as we expected them to go.”

Refueling relies on everyone being on the same page to avoid midair collisions.

“Everyone knows exactly (what to do)” if they hear “‘break away, break away, break away,’” Fleck said.

Fighters are easier to refuel than slower and less maneuverable cargo planes, said Fleck, who spent about 20 months learning to fly the KC-135 after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Flying brings long, odd hours

Every phase of the KC-135’s flight has a checklist, Fleck said.

“That’s basically why the military is good at what we do,” she said. “You could fly with somebody different every single day. But what goes on in the aircraft should be exactly the same because everything is very checklist oriented.”

Flying the KC-135 means committing to an unconventional schedule.

Fleck’s recent mission in Germany started with a flight from March to an East Coast base before a flight that took off the following night at midnight East Coast time.

“(We) flew all night, got to Germany, spent about a day on the ground … It was night for our normal body clocks,” she said. “Just in the span of like four days we flew (during the) day, then we flew two nights, then we woke up and flew (in the) morning.”

Fleck, who has been in the air as long as 17 hours straight, added: “It’s not easy flip-flopping back and forth like that. But it’s really kind of what we signed up for  … So we try to do our due diligence just to make sure we’re staying safe and getting enough rest.”

Finding things to talk about during long flights can be challenging, Fleck said. But as a flight instructor, she has a secret weapon.

“I like to get my crew engaged,” she said. “We’ll … go back through the books and I might ask them some questions on what we call general knowledge of the aircraft. And if they don’t know the answer, I’ll say ’Well, let’s get the book out and let’s look it up.’”

New planes are bigger and bulletproof

Modeled after the Boeing 767 airliner, the new KC-46A has a larger wingspan and two fewer engines than the KC-135.

It carries more fuel than its predecessor and can refuel up to three planes at once — the KC-135 can only refuel one plane at a time. Compared to the KC-135, the KC-46A can carry more cargo, passengers and patients needing to be medevaced.

The KC-46A also has defensive measures the KC-135 lacks, such as lasers that can ward off heat-seeking missiles.

To handle the KC-46As, March will need “new equipment and new infrastructure,” Dada said. New on-base housing must be built for pilots on alert status who need to be airborne in three minutes, he added.

Last year, the Air Force announced March was the “preferred destination” for 12 KC-46As.

“I can’t guarantee it on paper but … I’m 90% certain that we’re on track,” Dada said.

March is still the preferred destination for the KC-46s “as far as we know,” Wendy Day, the base’s chief of media engagement, said via email.

As for Fleck, she’ll learn to fly the KC-46As in the next couple years.

“Certainly (the new planes will have) all the creature comforts and certainly upgraded engines and avionics and cockpit,” she said. “It’s probably night and day, light years different.”

She added: “I’m excited. I think it’s time for just an update.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct an error. F-16 fighter jets and Reaper drones are among the aircraft stationed at March Air Reserve Base. 

The proposal was in the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, which reviews the fiscal impacts of bills, but was quietly killed Thursday, May 18, through a process called the “suspense file.” It’s a mysterious process through which lawmakers decide — with no explanation — which bills get a chance to become law later this year and which ones should not move forward.

It was one of hundreds of bills that didn’t survive the legislature’s suspense file.

AB 595, dubbed Bowie’s Law, is inspired by a puppy named Bowie that was euthanized in December in Los Angeles County after a rescue group offered to adopt him. The bill would have required animal shelters to provide a public notice 72 hours before euthanizing a dog, cat or rabbit.

“I am disappointed that the Assembly Appropriations Committee killed Bowie’s Law today, hiding behind the closed-door Suspense File process,” Inland Empire Republican Assemblymember and bill author Bill Essayli said in a Thursday evening news release.

Under the bill, the California Department of Food and Agriculture would have conducted a study on animal shelter crowding and explore the idea of a statewide database for dogs and cats.

Essayli, who represents Norco, the Temescal Valley, Lake Elsinore, Menifee and parts of Corona, Eastvale and Riverside, introduced the legislation in February.

However, he is not giving up.

Essayli is determined to bring the bill to the Assembly Floor for a vote next week, the release states.

He plans to “give every Assemblymember the chance to vote up or down on Bowie’s Law,” the release states.

Shawn Lewis, Essayli’s chief of staff, could not be reached Friday afternoon, May 19.

Bills that were held in the Senate and Assembly appropriations committees are not likely to pass this year, with a June 2 deadline looming for legislation to advance from one chamber.

According to Shelter Animals Count, a database for shelter data, about 11% of animals held in California shelters were euthanized in 2022.

About 100 California shelters, rescues and organizations opposed Essayli’s bill, including the nonprofit California Animal Welfare Association. The group’s CEO Jill Tucker has called the bill well intended, but said it wouldn’t solve shelter crowding.

One of two groups that favored the bill included Social Compassion in Legislation, a Laguna Beach-based nonprofit organization that works to protect animals through legislation. The founder of the Laguna Beach organization, Judie Mancuso, has said more animals need to be rescued from euthanasia.

Once bills are voted on in the Senate or Assembly, those that pass will move on to the other chamber. The Legislature has until mid-September to pass bills, then Gov. Gavin Newsom has about a month to reject them or sign them into law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct errors. The name of Judie Mancuso, founder of the Laguna Beach-based nonprofit organization Social Compassion in Legislation, is now correctly spelled. In addition, about 11% of animals held in California shelters were euthanized in 2022, according to the database Shelter Animals Count.

In Southern California, the disease has hit Orange and Los Angeles counties the hardest, but infections have also been found in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. 

The higher number of cases in Orange and Los Angeles counties may result, in part, from the presence of ports, where insects may arrive with shipments, said David Morgan, environmental program manager for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Other factors include the higher density of people and backyard citrus trees and the climate.

Portions of all five counties are under quarantine and the boundaries are expanded as new infections are found outside those areas. Citrus plants can’t be moved off properties inside quarantine areas, though washed fruit without stems and leaves can be shared in small amounts within the quarantine area.

Roughly half of Orange County and smaller regions of the other four are under quarantine, a California Department of Agriculture map shows.

Huanglongbing, or citrus greening disease, is caused by a bacterium transmitted between citrus trees by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. Symptoms of the disease include yellow-mottled leaves, stunted growth and fruit production, and deformed, bitter fruit. Most infected trees die within a few years.

The disease was discovered in the U.S. in Florida in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since then, it has reduced the state’s citrus production by 75%.

Asian citrus psyllids were found in California in 2008. Four years later, the disease was found on a tree in Hacienda Heights in Los Angeles County.

The disease’s spread in California has not risen to levels seen in Florida, and so far there have been no infections in commercial groves, according to the California Department of Agriculture’s Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Division — only in residential citrus trees. 

The infection numbers are increasing, though.

As of Monday, May 8, there were 5,007 confirmed cases of the disease statewide, department data shows.

In 2022, 1,342 infections were confirmed across California — hundreds more than in any previous year — and 825 infections have been confirmed in approximately the first third of 2023.

“Fortunately, it’s not spreading as fast as we thought it might when it first appeared, but it’s still spreading, which is a negative,” Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner spokesperson Ken Pellman said.

“We were very lucky that we’d seen what had happened over in Florida, and we were able to start a really good control strategy in California before it got away form us,” said Morgan, who is based in Riverside and runs three biological control facilities, in Riverside, at Cal Poly Pomona and in Arvin.

Florida had additional factors helping spread the disease, including hurricanes that “blow insects everywhere” and the presence of a landscaping plant that carries the disease, Morgan said.

Victoria Hornbaker, director of the department’s Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Division, also credits the community with helping slow the disease.

“If we weren’t getting the cooperation that we are from residents — we really do get overwhelming cooperation from residents — we wouldn’t be in such a good spot as we are today,” Hornbaker said.

Greening is worst in Orange County

Of the 5,007 Huanglongbing cases in the state, about 69% of them, 3,457, have been in Orange County.

Jose Arriaga, Orange County agricultural commissioner/sealer of weights and measures, said in an email that the office assists the California Department of Food and Agriculture with maintaining regulations inside quarantine boundaries, which currently include about 470 square miles of the county.

Arriaga wrote that the office’s efforts include taking part in monthly outreach events, providing translation services for the public and industry, and offering guidance to nurseries and growers on the regulations.

Los Angeles County has had 1,106 infected citrus plants.

Pellman said that, for three years after the first LA County infection was discovered in 2012, “things were blissfully quiet — and then it started popping up everywhere.”

The disease has maintained a “steady march” since then, Pellman said.

Of the remaining infections, San Bernardino County has had 246; Riverside County 168; and San Diego County has logged 30.

At the state’s Mount Rubidoux Field Station in Riverside, Morgan and other researchers work to control the number of Asian citrus psyllids in California. 

They do that by raising and releasing tamarixia radiata, a type of wasp that attacks Asian citrus psyllids.

“What we really have here is a wasp factory,” Morgan said. 

People don’t notice the tiny insects, over 28 million of which have now been released, Morgan said.

“They’re about the size of a period on the end of a sentence,” he said.

The wasps, he said, lay their eggs in or on the Asian citrus psyllids. When the eggs develop, they eat the psyllid.

The process was initially developed by UC Riverside, which first released the wasps in 2011 — before the first confirmed case of the disease in California. Later, the project was transferred to state officials.

“We do the research, we do the groundwork, we prove the concept works, and then we do what’s called a technology transfer,” said Georgios Vidalakis, a UCR professor and UC extension specialist in plant pathology who also directs the Citrus Clonal Protection Program.

In order to raise the wasps, they must also raise Asian citrus psyllids, and plants to host them.

The field station grows curry leaf plants rather than citrus trees, which Morgan said are related to citrus but grow more quickly and don’t carry the disease. The plant is used in South Asian cuisine. 

The psyllids are placed on a curry leaf plant in a cage, and left to mature and lay eggs, which hatch into nymphs. Wasps are then added to the enclosure and lay eggs on the nymphs. The new wasps are then collected, and strategically released in urban areas to seek out the Asian citrus psyllid.

“We’re reaching a point where the number of diseased plants is getting difficult to handle,” Morgan said.

Scientists battling the disease

At UCR, research into citrus greening disease continues.

Scientists are working on all three elements involved: the bacterium, the insect and the citrus tree, Vidalakis said.

“If we manage to disrupt any of those three elements, then what we call the ‘disease triangle’ doesn’t come together,” Vidalakis said.

A collaboration between UCR and UC Davis is using computer modeling to simulate the disease’s bacterium, which Vidalakis said cannot be cultured in a lab.

“We can train computers to think they’re the bacteria,” he said, and researchers can then see how the bacteria reacts to different conditions.

In another case, scientists are crossing citrus species in hopes of producing hybrids more tolerant to disease, which Vidalakis said appears to be working, though the fruit produced by the current hybrids is “more of a lemon type.”

Several years ago, Hailing Jin, a UCR professor, discovered an antimicrobial peptide — a molecule involved in the plant’s immune response — in Australian finger limes that kills the Huanglongbing bacterium.

Jin said that the peptide can both make trees resistant to infections, like a vaccine, as well as control the disease in trees that are already positive for the disease.

The peptide is also more resistant to California’s heat than antibiotic treatments currently in use, which Jin said can lose their activity within hours due to high temperatures.

“It would be nice to use an eco-friendly method or natural product,” Jin said.

“People have been eating the peptide from the finger lime fruit for years.”

The peptide is currently being developed for commercial use by Invaio Sciences, which Jin said UCR agreed to give exclusive license to.

Residents’ cooperation is helping

As research continues, experts ask that everyone continue doing their part to prevent the disease from spreading. 

“We ask this with all our heart, and all the scientific information we have,” Vidalakis said.

He asks that people avoid moving citrus plants around the state, and don’t bring plants into California from another state, which is prohibited for citrus plants.

Residents with citrus plants may share the fruit in small quantities, once it’s washed and free of any other plant material, inside quarantine areas.

Vidalakis suggested that anyone looking for a specific kind of citrus tree first check UCR’s Citrus Variety Collection, where it may be available.

Anyone who suspects a tree is infected with the disease can contact the California Department of Food and Agriculture Pest Hotline: 800-491-1899.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct several photo captions. Scientists at the California Department of Food and Agriculture in Riverside are displaying Tamarixia radiata, tiny wasps that kill Asian citrus psyllid insects that spread citrus greening disease.