Does a teacher’s ability to mention sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom pose a threat to primary school students or further a well-rounded, inclusive educational experience? Americans are confronting the question as initiatives advance in several states that would muzzle public school teachers on LGBTQ-related topics.

In Florida, a state legislative panel recently approved the Parental Rights Education Bill, which has the backing of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. A portion of the bill that would ban discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in Florida’s public primary schools has been denounced by LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and/or queer) advocacy groups.

“The bill is cynical – political in nature, designed to help right-wing politicians rally their base before the next election,” said Brandon Wolf, spokesperson for Equality Florida, one of the groups fighting what some have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

“But these political games have real-world consequences for young people, too,” he added. “Policies like this cause social isolation among LGBTQ students and can lead to bullying and violence. LGBTQ children are four times more likely than their peers to attempt suicide before graduating high school.”

The Florida bill would have to clear several more legislative votes before DeSantis could sign it into law. Supporters say the initiative is misunderstood by some and distorted by others.

“There are so many fake claims being made,” said Jay Richards, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank. “You have people saying the bill will outlaw conversations about homosexuality in school. That’s not true. It’s a prohibition on teachers bringing up highly sexualized – borderline pornographic – topics to young kids, and that prohibition is something I would hope we could all be behind.”

Legislative language

A summary of the bill posted on the Florida House of Representatives’ website states it “prohibits classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels” with no indication that the ban is limited to highly sexualized topics.

A version of the bill before Florida’s Senate bars encouraging “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” The bill does not set forth what is or isn’t age-appropriate, but it would allow parents to sue schools if they believe teachers are violating the ban.

Primary school in the United States is broken into elementary (kindergarten through grades 4-7) and middle school (grades 4-7 though 8-9). It is unclear whether the Florida legislation would apply to all primary grade levels or only the earliest ones attended by the youngest children. A revised version of the bill that will go before the House more specifically addresses instruction in kindergarten through third grade.

But as written, House and Senate versions of the bill could conceivably prevent public school students from learning about LGBTQ topics in the classroom until high school, which most students enter around age 15.

LGBTQ activist Zack Ford at Washington’s Alliance for Justice said there is no reason to shield even the youngest students from the reality that sexual minorities exist.

“There are kindergartners who understand they are queer,” he said. “This bill could have the effect of censoring and isolating them, and that makes school less safe for them. There is no age too young to understand queer (LGBTQ) identities.”

Not only in Florida

According to the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas already have laws on the books banning or restricting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.

While recent years have seen the states of Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina and Utah repeal such statutes, Florida is among at least eight states moving in the opposite direction. Separately, some school districts in the U.S. have seen parent-led campaigns to rid school libraries of LGBTQ-themed books.

Wolf of Equality Florida says it’s not a coincidence that legislative efforts are popping up around the country at the same time.

“All of these anti-LGBTQ bills moving across the U.S. are birthed from the same bigoted place,” he said. “They’re concocted by anti-LGBTQ organizations outside of our states and then shipped to right-wing legislators in Florida and elsewhere.”

Parental rights

For Florida’s governor, it’s an issue of students being exposed to certain topics without their parents’ consent.

“To get into situations where you’re hiding things from the parent, you’re injecting these concepts about choosing your gender – that is just inappropriate for our schools,” DeSantis said earlier this month. “The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what’s going on in their schools.”

“What school doesn’t want parents involved?” Wolf countered. “But education is also a community effort. Teachers and administrators need to be able to share and lead open dialogue with their students to be most effective for them.”

President Joe Biden weighed in on Twitter, calling the Florida legislation a “hateful bill” and saying he wants LGTBQ youth to “know that you are loved and accepted just as you are.”

‘Teachers aren’t sex therapists’

Some Americans doubt the ability of teachers to properly handle sensitive topics of human sexuality at a delicate stage of students’ personal development.

“Teachers aren’t sex therapists or licensed mental healthcare workers,” Florida resident Hamlet Garcia told VOA. “I don’t want them teaching my kids about sexuality. I want them to teach English language, arts, math, science, social studies and other core courses.”

Opponents of the Florida bill argue its language is both sweeping and ambiguous.

“Can a queer teacher have a photo of their same-sex spouse on their desk?” wondered Ford of the Alliance for Justice. “Can they keep their jobs if they transition (from one gender to another)? Wouldn’t that encourage the kind of discussion that this bill would forbid?”

Wolf of Equality Florida echoed the concern.

“What if a school asks students to present about their families during a career day and a child has same-sex parents? Isn’t that encouraging classroom discussion?” he asked. “What I fear we will ultimately see happen is what we always see happen: schools will become more cautious for fear of being sued by a parent who feels any discussion is too far.”

Firsthand experience

For some, the issue is personal.

“I was the only openly gay student in my school in the 1990s,” recalled Marcus Hopkins, a health policy consultant who grew up in socially conservative West Virginia. “I was always on the defensive and felt like I had to develop a hard and combative exterior. But for students today, school has become a much safer environment. … I’m worried the policies now being debated will reverse those gains.”

Some researchers echo the concern.

“LGBTQ young people face the unique mental health risks of forming a stigmatized identity in near-isolation,” explained John Pachankis, director of the LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative at the Yale School of Public Health. “Laws that make this isolation and lack of acceptance more likely will almost certainly also make LGBTQ youths’ odds of depression, anxiety and suicidality more likely.”

Backers of the Florida bill dispute any draconian intent or consequences arising from the legislation.

“These are complicated issues, and we aren’t trying to tell different communities where to draw the line on what is and isn’t appropriate,” said Richards of the Heritage Foundation. “We just want parents involved.”
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A major initiative to strengthen and cement America’s ties with Asia and counterbalance China’s expanding influence lacks robust trade incentives that are viewed as politically perilous in the United States, where protectionist sentiment runs high, experts told VOA.

The United States needs to intensify its focus on the Indo-Pacific region because of the “mounting challenges” posed by the rise of China, according to a strategy document released by the Biden administration last week.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] is combining its economic, diplomatic, military and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power,” the strategy document said.

That description of China largely mirrors the view taken by the former Trump administration, which often took a bluntly adversarial stance toward Beijing. Beyond rhetoric, however, Biden’s strategy seeks to shore up regional alliances and partnerships that many see as critical to U.S. strategy in Asia.

It responds to the desire of many countries in the region for the United States to play a galvanizing role in addressing common challenges such as public health, climate change and anti-corruption, Ryan Hass, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA.

“It is a welcome departure from the America-first mindset during the Trump era,” Hass said.

No economic framework, leadership

The new strategy calls for advancing freedom and openness, building collective defense capacity within and beyond the region, and building regional resilience. It also embraces what the administration calls “promoting shared prosperity.”

But Hass and other observers say the Indo-Pacific strategy lacks a coherent trade framework that gives countries in the region a good economic reason to deepen relations with the U.S. They say Washington’s international economic agenda should match the leadership role the United States seeks for itself in the region.

Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, told VOA the strategy suffers from a fundamental contradiction in that it implies that the U.S. will engage in a high degree of global activism, following years of far more isolationist foreign policy under the Trump administration. At the same time, the Biden administration has not primed the American public to shift away from the Trumpian critique of globalization.

“They’ve put themselves in a box where they, for political reasons, seem to accept the Trump view that globalization is the playground of self-indulgent coastal American elites who don’t care about the heartland [of America],” Daly said. “What was needed was a better form of globalization that serves American interests — the Biden administration has chosen not to take that on.

Preceding Trump, the former Obama administration championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade agreement with 11 other countries designed to be the cornerstone of U.S. economic policy in the region. The Trump administration withdrew from the TPP in 2017, leaving the other members to sign a revised deal, called Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

With no public support for multilateral trade agreements, the Biden administration has said it has no plans to join the CPTPP and has made clear it intends to continue its predecessor’s protectionist trade policies.

The White House has not yet shared details of its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a component of the larger Indo-Pacific Strategy. The framework, which they billed as a “multilateral partnership for the 21st century,” was scheduled for launch early this year.

“As we consult with the Indo-Pacific partners, Congress and other stakeholders, we will have more to share as the process is ongoing,” deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told VOA on Thursday. “It’s underway.”

The administration said the framework would “promote and facilitate high-standards trade, govern the digital economy, improve supply-chain resiliency and security, catalyze investment in transparent, high-standards infrastructure, and build digital connectivity — doubling down on our economic ties to the region while contributing to broadly shared Indo-Pacific opportunity.”

But officials have acknowledged the framework will not include opening up American markets, the economic carrot that analysts say is missing from the strategy.

“Why would regional states agree to serious concessions on climate or labor standards if the United States is unwilling to discuss trade or investment liberalization?” asked Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “It appears that Washington is content to remain on the sidelines as Beijing integrates more deeply into the region’s economic order.”

In a briefing to reporters this month, a senior administration official acknowledged that regional countries want more but are “very realistic” about the constraints and challenges that shape the Biden trade policy.

Build Back Better World

Some analysts see the potential for incentives beyond market access.

“The promise of this [Indo-Pacific] initiative is that it will offer some other things that aren’t market access,” said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Goodman told VOA those may include improving international trade regulations or investing in infrastructure as promised in the Build Back Better World initiative.

Biden launched his Build Back Better World plan (B3W) during the June 2021 Group of Seven summit, with the goal of creating “a values-driven, high-standard and transparent infrastructure partnership” to help finance projects in developing countries.

U.S. officials led by Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics, have scouted several countries in Latin America and Africa to identify potential infrastructure projects, particularly those that focus on climate, health, digital technology and gender equality.

“There’s been enormous enthusiasm in every country we visited, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Ghana, Senegal, DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], parts of the Middle East, Indonesia, Thailand, and other parts of the world,” Singh told VOA Friday.

B3W has been framed as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s international development program that has financed infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America and has made inroads in Europe. China’s BRI investments have been criticized by outside groups for not assessing environmental and social impacts, lacking financial transparency and leaving some governments struggling to pay for costly infrastructure.

“The reason there’s so much enthusiasm is that countries do want a choice,” Singh said. “For a long time. China has been the only game in town for many of these countries, and in many cases, they have buyers regret.”

Last year the administration promised to include details of some initial projects during the formal launch of the initiative, originally scheduled for early 2022.

“We will have more details to come in the coming months on how to continue to implement this initiative, and the projects the U.S. government is investing in with allies and partners,” Jean-Pierre said to VOA Thursday. “This is something that the president is committed to.”

Allies and partners

Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy promises steps to deepen America’s existing treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. It also aims to strengthen relationships with regional partners such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Pacific Islands.

Continuing Trump’s approach, the administration is putting strong emphasis on the Quad – a regional grouping among the U.S., India, Japan and Australia.

Much of the strategy rests on the presumption of what the other actors will do, according to Aparna Pande, director of the Hudson Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia.

“Japan and South Korea should get along, ASEAN should remain central, India should play a bigger role,” she told VOA, pointing out that with India’s plummeting economic growth, New Delhi may not be able to accept that challenge.

The strategy also aims to strengthen deterrence of military threats, with Japan and South Korea to pursue denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang has taken a series of provocative steps while ignoring Washington’s offer of talks without preconditions.

North Korea conducted 11 missile launches in January, a record in a single month, including a new type of “hypersonic missile” able to maneuver at high speed. It has also raised the possibility of restarting nuclear or intercontinental ballistic missile tests.

Military deals

While the Biden administration is not offering greater access to American markets, it has been handing out military deals.

Earlier this month, the administration approved a possible $100 million sale of equipment and services to Taiwan to “sustain, maintain and improve” its Patriot missile defense system.

The sale is in line with the Indo-Pacific Strategy goal of supporting Taipei’s self-defense capabilities in hopes of promoting peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. However, it has triggered an angry threat of retaliation from Beijing, which claims the democratically self-governed Taiwan as its breakaway province.

Earlier this month, the administration also approved the potential sale of F-15ID aircraft and related equipment to Indonesia in a deal valued at up to $13.9 billion, despite human rights concerns that have delayed previous arms sales to the country. The last arms deal made by Washington and Jakarta was in 2011.

Other deals include AUKUS, the September trilateral security pact with Australia and the United Kingdom to provide Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines.

More deals are expected and sharper contours of the Indo-Pacific Strategy may take shape as Biden hosts ASEAN leaders in Washington in the coming months and travels to the region for summits later in the year.
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A former White House national security adviser said the Biden administration should call on China to act to show that it is serious about denuclearizing North Korea and that Washington’s options for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are running out fast.

“For too many years, we have let China get away with responsibility for North Korea,” said John Bolton, the national security adviser to former President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019. “As part of the realignment of American policy toward Beijing … China’s responsibility for North Korea has to be put at the center.”

Bolton said during an interview with VOA’s Korean Service on Friday that the Biden administration’s options for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs are “small and decreasing rapidly” as the regime’s “immediate threat” of intermediate-range ballistic missiles is “present right now.”

North Korea tested 11 missiles in January, concluding the month with an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. territory of Guam.

Denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang have been stalled since October 2019.

Washington has been expressing its openness to meet with Pyongyang without preconditions, but North Korea has largely dismissed the calls for talks.

Ken Gause, director of the Adversary Analytics Program at the research and analysis organization CNA, said one option Washington has right now is to “try to freeze” North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

“Denuclearization is a bridge too far right now,” Gause said. “A wiser thing to do is to try to put things on the table in return for a freeze — no provocations, no proliferation, and no tests.”

China key to denuclearization

Bolton said the threat of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons proliferation “is increasing day by day” and suggested the Biden administration needs to ensure China takes action to back up statements that it does not want a nuclear North Korea.

“China has masqueraded for 30 years as just another disinterested party that says it doesn’t want North Korea to have nuclear weapons. Well, if it were serious, it could make that happen,” Bolton said.

“I think it’s important to the world that we put China to the proof on this – either you do what you alone have the capability of doing, which is changing the regime behavior in North Korea, or we draw the conclusion, the legitimate conclusion, that you’re fine with North Korea having a nuclear weapon,” he added.

China, North Korea’s top trading partner, has often been accused of helping Pyongyang evade U.N. sanctions placed on North Korea in 2016 to curb its nuclear and missile programs.

China and Russia, permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, have long called for sanctions relief on North Korea. Most recently, on Jan. 20, Beijing and Moscow delayed Washington’s effort to impose U.N. sanctions on North Korea after the regime’s fourth missile test of the month.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA’s Korean Service on Friday evening that “China’s position on the Korean Peninsula issue is consistent and clear. We hope relevant sides will resolve respective concerns through dialogue and consultation.”

He continued, saying “China has always been seriously implementing U.N. Security Council resolutions concerning DPRK. As long as the resolutions are still effective, we will earnestly fulfill our international responsibilities and deal with relevant matters according to the resolutions.”

Bolton said North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons and missile programs through negotiations, adding that the U.S. should not rule out considering the possibility of a regime change or the use of force as an option.

“The U.S. should not be held hostage by a regime like this,” Bolton said. “That’s why possibilities for regime change or if necessary, use of force against the North Korean nuclear program cannot be ruled out.”

VOA’s Korean Service contacted North Korea’s U.N. Mission for comment on Bolton’s remarks but did not receive a reply.

Other options

Other experts believe the U.S. should pursue a diplomatic solution.

Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said Washington should seek a deal with Pyongyang through negotiations, although he admits “denuclearization is not possible for the foreseeable future.”

“I expect the U.S. will seek to limit North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in exchange for political and economic steps, such as sanctions relief,” he said.

The Biden administration says it remains committed to diplomacy with North Korea.

“The United States holds no hostile intent towards the DPRK and we are open to meeting the DPRK without preconditions,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Thursday. DPRK represents North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Liu, the Chinese Embassy spokesperson, said “If the U.S. truly cares about the well-being of the DPRK people, it should not keep pressuring the DPRK with sanctions. Instead, it should face up to the denuclearization measures already taken by the DPRK, respond to its legitimate and reasonable concerns and take measures to ease sanctions on the DPRK.”

Bolton expressed skepticism about an idea floated by some North Korea watchers that the Biden administration should try Trump-style personal diplomacy or high-level engagement to reengage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into denuclearization talks.

Bolton was present at the two summits that Trump held with Kim, first in Singapore in June 2018 and then in Hanoi in February 2019.

“They gave cover for North Korea systemically to make additional progress on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs under the appearance that they were trying to work out an arrangement with President Trump,” he said. 
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President Joe Biden says he is “convinced” that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, but that diplomacy is still on the table until that happens.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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Classified information was found in the 15 boxes of White House records that were stored at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the National Archives and Records Administration said Friday in a letter that confirmed the matter had been sent to the Justice Department. 

The letter from the agency followed numerous reports about Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. The revelation could also interest federal investigators responsible for policing the handling of government secrets, though the Justice Department and FBI have not indicated they will pursue the case. 

Federal law bars the removal of classified documents to unauthorized locations, though it is possible that Trump could try to argue that, as president, he was the ultimate declassification authority.  

No matter the legal risk, it exposes him to charges of hypocrisy given his relentless attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. The FBI investigated but ultimately did not recommend charges.  

Trump recently denied reports about his administration’s tenuous relationship with the National Archives, and his lawyers said that “they are continuing to search for additional presidential records that belong to the National Archives.”

Social media records not preserved 

The letter from the archivists in response to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is investigating, also details how certain social media records were not captured and preserved by the Trump administration. And it also says that the agency learned that White House staff frequently conducted official business using unofficial messaging accounts and personal phones.  

Those staff did not copy or forward their official messaging accounts, as required by the Presidential Records Act, the letter said.

The letter also reveals that additional paper records that had been torn up by the former president were among those transferred to the National Archives.  

“Although White House staff during the Trump administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House,” the letter said.  

Lawmakers are also seeking information about the contents of the boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago, but the agency cited the records act as holding them back from divulging.

Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said in a statement Friday that “these new revelations deepen my concern about former President Trump’s flagrant disregard for federal records law and the potential impact on our historical record.” 

She added, “I am committed to uncovering the full depth of the Presidential Records Act violations by former President Trump and his top advisers and using those findings to advance critical reforms and prevent future abuses.” 

House investigators will be looking to see if Trump’s actions, both during his presidency and after, violated the Presidential Records Act, which was enacted in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon wanted to destroy documents related to the Watergate scandal. 

The law mandates that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government, rather than the president himself. A statute, punishable by up to three years in prison, makes it a crime to conceal or intentionally destroy government records. 
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The Wall Street Journal Friday, citing sources close to the decision, reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week delayed its review of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for under-5-year-olds because initial testing showed its two-dose series was not working well against the omicron variant.

The sources told the Journal early data showed the vaccine to be effective against the delta variant during testing, while that was the dominant strain, but some vaccinated children developed COVID-19 after omicron emerged.

The report quotes the sources as saying so few study subjects, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, developed the disease during testing so far, that the sample size of omicron cases made the vaccine appear less effective in an early statistical analysis.

The Journal sources said FDA officials think the Pfizer-BioNTech shot might wind up providing stronger protection against omicron once more cases emerge, if the bulk of infections are in unvaccinated subjects. So both the FDA and Pfizer agreed it would be better to wait for additional cases, with the extra time allowing the agency to assess the vaccine’s effectiveness as either a two-dose or three-dose regimen.

The FDA was going to make its decision by looking at whether the shot generated immune responses comparable to those seen in older people. The agency was originally scheduled to assess the shot for children 6 months through 4 years of age on February 15.

In Hong Kong

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong Friday, the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, announced elections for its next leader will be postponed for six weeks, as the city grapples with a worsening coronavirus outbreak with thousands of daily infections.

At a news conference, Lam said the vote, scheduled for March 27, would be moved to May 8, because holding the elections sooner could pose “public health risks,” even if a committee of only 1,462 voters were involved. She said the city “is currently facing the most serious pandemic situation since the past two years. The situation is critical.”

Lam also said the city is considering mandatory testing of “everyone in Hong Kong” but added that did not necessarily mean that the city would be put under strict lockdown.

She pointed to cities like Macao, which has tested its entire population twice for the coronavirus.

Health authorities said Thursday that the city’s hospitals were at 90% capacity and that its isolation facilities were full.

In Africa

Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia are the first African countries to receive technology needed to produce mRNA vaccines from the World Health Organization. Two of the vaccines used in the fight against COVID-19 are mRNA vaccines.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the award Friday in Brussels at the European Union-African Union summit.

“No other event like the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous,” Tedros said. “In the mid- to long-term, the best way to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage is to significantly increase the capacity of all regions to manufacture the health products they need, with equitable access as their primary endpoint.”

More than 80% of the population of the African continent has yet to receive a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. “Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally, vaccine production is concentrated in a few mostly high-income countries,” Tedros said.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that it has received a document that says the Biden administration will “surge” more than $250 million to 11 African countries for coronavirus vaccine campaigns. The countries slated to receive the “intensive support” are Angola, Ivory Coast, Eswatini – formerly known as Swaziland – Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday that it has recorded more than 420 million global COVID-19 cases and 5.8 million deaths. The center said 10.3 billion vaccine doses have been administered.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The Los Angeles City Council is opening a ‘Tiny House Village’ in its Westlake neighborhood in an effort to combat the city’s homelessness problem with low-cost housing. Genia Dulot has the story. Video editor – Anna Rice.
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