The Brief

Far more people than previously known have dropped Affordable Care Act health insurance for 2026, according to data released Friday.

Five million fewer people are currently enrolled in ACA marketplace plans compared to the record high reached last year. More than 1 million fewer people picked a plan for 2026, and then 4 million more either disenrolled or failed to pay their premiums and, therefore, dropped coverage.

Prices in the market skyrocketed after President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to extend extra financial help for enrollees last year. The Department of Health and Human Services published a report about the data on its website Friday.

The report says 19.2 million people are currently enrolled in ACA insurance now.

At its high, 24.2 million people were in the ACA marketplace in 2025, according to government figures.

The steep drop in enrollment reflects what insurers, administrators and other health policy experts expected earlier this year. After initial sign ups were lower than last year, they predicted the picture would get worse as time went on and people found they could not afford to pay their premiums.

"The main takeaway is that enrollment is down 13% from last year," explains Cynthia Cox, director of KFF's Program on the ACA. "While the Trump administration attributes this drop in enrollment to their attempts to address fraud, this coverage loss happened at the same time millions of people faced double- or even triple-digit increases in their premium payments with the expiration of enhanced tax credits."

The idea that the growth in enrollment was due to massive fraud is a theory advanced by the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank influential in the Trump administration.

Many health policy experts are skeptical. They say the increase in enrollment during the pandemic is not suspicious. It was a predictable consequence of Congress's investment of billions of federal dollars in making premiums more affordable — the enhanced premium tax credits.

"The marketplace doubled in size during the period when there were enhanced subsidies because the coverage was much more affordable and much more appealing to people," Cox says.

This year's drop in enrollment is also predictable, given that premium costs doubled, on average, from 2025 to 2026. The costs went up after Republican lawmakers let the enhanced premium tax credits expire; Democrats shut down the government in October 2025 trying to negotiate an extension of the credits that would have kept prices low.

"When their costs went up, many of them dropped their coverage," Cox says.

She adds that while fraud is a real problem in the ACA marketplaces, as it is in all insurance markets, she thinks it does not account for all of the drop in enrollment.

Stacey Pogue, senior research fellow at the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms, agrees.

"I don't see data that point to that conclusion that a 5 million-person drop can be explained by allegations of fraud," she says. "There's lots of evidence pointing to people making decisions based on what they can pay each month."

The higher health insurance costs are tough for consumers in an economy still plagued by overall inflation. As congress let the prices go up, people made tough decisions about family budgets, where to work, whom to marry and more.

It's also a problem for insurance companies, several of which have announced they will not be participating in ACA markets next year, including Cigna.

"If there are fewer customers, then that makes the market less appealing to insurance companies," Cox says.

That's especially true because the people dropping their coverage tend to be healthier people. If too many healthy people drop out of the markets, there's a danger that the markets could enter a "death spiral."

Cox says she's not worried about a death spiral at this point.

"I think there are still enough people buying ACA marketplace coverage and that's going to keep these markets working," she says. "At this point, we don't see any parts of the country that are at risk of having no insurance company. If that were to happen, that would be what a death spiral might look like."

Even so, the premiums for these plans are on track to keep rising, which could continue to pummel consumers navigating high health care costs. Enrollment in the marketplaces may continue to shrink too. According to a recent analysis from Pogue at Georgetown, early insurance rate filings for 2027 show that rates will be going up again next year.

It's tick season, possibly the worst in a decade.

More and more Americans are being exposed to these parasites as climate change expands the range where they can survive. That means more people are also exposed to the bevy of health conditions they can cause, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the alpha-gal-triggered red meat allergy and, most common of all, Lyme disease.

For Lyme disease, there may be some additional protection on the horizon. Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva announced this spring that they plan to seek regulatory approval for a vaccine to protect against Lyme disease. A previous vaccine for Lyme became available in the late 1990s but was pulled only three years later due to lawsuits, public fear of side effects and a lack of interest.

It's unclear whether this latest stab at a Lyme disease vaccine will get a warmer reception if it's approved, especially in the post-COVID era of vaccine skepticism.

For a sense of how it might go over with rural populations at high risk of Lyme, KFF Health News spoke with a group of hunters.

Few people spend more time in the woods exposed to ticks. At the same time, as a collective, hunters  skew conservative, rural and male, according to a survey from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. And these are identities associated with increased hesitancy about or resistance to vaccines, according to Ashley Kirzinger, associate director for Public Opinion and Survey Research at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

Targets for ticks

Left untreated, Lyme can cause a variety of symptoms, from fevers, chills and headaches to arthritis, shooting pains and inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 476,000 people in the U.S. may be diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, the CDC says. That's at least in part because the range of places where cases have been reported has "expanded significantly" since 1995.

So would hunters get the Lyme vaccine if it became available?

"Given my proclivity for the outdoors, absolutely," said Jess Manganelli, one of seven hunters (and one hiker) who spoke with KFF Health News on a recent Saturday at the Busch Shooting Range in Weldon Spring, Mo., just outside of St. Louis.

Of the eight, Manganelli, who had been hunting turkeys the weekend before, was the most positive about the vaccine. Six others said they would consider it but would want more information about its safety and effectiveness, as well as their risk for contracting the disease.

But Manganelli was the only one who believed she may have previously contracted Lyme disease, although she was never formally diagnosed with it. Two years ago, she experienced muscle weakness, tiredness, fatigue, swelling and headaches after a tick bite, but when she went to urgent care, she was told they didn't test for Lyme.

Nearly all the hunters knew someone who had had Lyme disease — an old roommate, a family member, friends, a former student. Lyme can be difficult to diagnose and to treat and is often misdiagnosed at first. Many of the hunters witnessed their acquaintances navigating those challenges and struggling with sometimes debilitating symptoms.

An illness with lingering effects

That familiarity among the hunters in Missouri was unsurprising to author and conservationist Steven Rinella, host of the hunting show MeatEater.

"I'm a turkey hunter. In talking about turkey hunting, you talk about ticks as much as you talk about turkeys," Rinella said. "Just the nature of turkey hunting puts you into exposure. You're sitting for long periods of time, trying to use vegetation for concealment."

In fact, both Rinella and his older son contracted Lyme disease 13 years ago during a bluegill fishing trip in the Hudson Valley in New York. His son developed Bell's palsy, a sudden paralysis on one side of the face, but recovered quickly after a course of oral antibiotics. Steven Rinella's symptoms, on the other hand, lingered for months, leaving him unable to walk down stairs without a handrail or to ride a bike. He ended up receiving intravenous antibiotic treatments for a month.

"I thought my life had changed," Rinella said, "but I recovered, as far as I know."

That experience is one reason Rinella said he would absolutely consider getting a Lyme vaccine if it proved safe and provided considerable protection against the disease. Unlike with some other diseases, prior infection does not provide permanent immunity, so a person who has had Lyme could still benefit from a vaccine.

Knowledge of similar challenges influenced the thinking of the hunters in Missouri as well.

Jeremy Hollingshead said he may be less inclined to take a vaccine owing to his former roommate's experience with Lyme disease, which is not to say the experience was pleasant. In fact, Hollingshead said he thinks his old pal is still dealing with lingering effects of it 10 years later. But Hollingshead has spent his whole life in the woods, and of hundreds of people he knows who have done the same, he knows of only one of them contracting Lyme.

"I know it was a bad outcome for him," Hollingshead said, but he thinks the odds of getting Lyme himself seem pretty slim.

Meanwhile, Julian Barnes said seeing a relative struggle with Lyme makes him more open to a potential vaccine. It took a long time for doctors to come to that diagnosis, and finding a good treatment has been equally difficult.

"I would say I am vaccine-hesitant, generally speaking," Barnes said. "But Lyme, I've seen the way it affects people in my life. ... I would definitely have to really understand the vaccine, how it works."

An unclear path for a new vaccine

The new, four-dose vaccine candidate technically missed one of the bars set out in trials because not enough participants contracted Lyme. Still, the companies say it's about 75% effective in reducing cases, and they plan to submit it to regulators for approval. A Pfizer spokesperson said there were no updates on their regulatory efforts when contacted by KFF Health News in June.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a noted anti-vaccine activist before taking over as head the agency that oversees vaccine approvals, and he's remade it in ways that have prompted some vaccine makers to pull back on development.

But he's also been an advocate on Lyme disease. In May, he announced an initiative to combat Lyme disease. And during his Senate confirmation hearings, he said his family had been deeply affected by Lyme disease and that nobody would work harder than he would to find a vaccine or treatment.

If the vaccine is ultimately approved by the FDA, an endorsement from Kennedy would go a long way, according to KFF's Kirzinger, particularly among supporters of his Make America Healthy Again movement, who tend to be more vaccine-skeptical.

"They trust him as much as they trust their own doctors to tell them what to do with their health and for health information," Kirzinger said. "If he comes out as a strong proponent of this vaccine and says, 'Look what my administration did, and we made this available,' I would imagine there would be less vaccine resistance among that group."

Only one of the hunters who spoke with KFF Health News said they definitely would not be interested in a Lyme vaccine if it became available.

"I kind of hand it off to God and the body he gave me. I'm pretty durable," JP Cummings said. But even though he's not interested in it for himself, he's curious to see what his fellow hunters do as more information comes out.

"Hunters care about the wildlife; hunters care about health," Cummings said. "They love the wildlife, they love their deer, and they love their fellow hunters."

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF.

Topline:

Details: The person was hospitalized with neuroinvasive illness and is currently recovering at home, Long Beach said in a statement.

Symptoms: WNV is transmitted through the bite of an infected Culex mosquito. Most people infected have no symptoms.

Less than 1% of infected patients develop neuroinvasive disease, which typically manifests as meningitis, encephalitis or acute flaccid myelitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

People over 50 or who have chronic health conditions are at higher risk. Those with severe symptoms should seek immediate medical care.

There is no vaccine or treatment for WNV.

Why now: The risk of West Nile increases during hot weather, typically between June and October. While mosquitoes have tested positive for West Nile virus in California, this is the first symptomatic case in the state this year. Long Beach said it has not detected any WNV-positive mosquitoes in the city.

How to protect yourself:

The risk of WNV and other mosquito-borne diseases increases during hot weather. Health officials recommend taking these precautions:

• Prevent mosquito bites by applying insect repellent with EPA-registered active ingredients DEET, picaridin, IR3535 or lemon eucalyptus before going outside.
• Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants if spending time outside during dawn and dusk. WNV-carrying mosquitoes are most active during those times.
• Install or repair door and window screens.
• Dump and drain standing water around home.
• Report dead birds online or call 877-WNV-BIRD (968-2473)

Twice a month, a popular night spot in Koreatown is transformed into a makeshift boot camp for a cadre of gamers to achieve mastery of old-school arcade games.

Their recent goal: training to take home the prize at the EVO esport championship in Las Vegas this weekend – where the main attraction is the latest edition of the ‘80s franchise, Street Fighter 6 – and to put SoCal on the map.

The Down Back Club (DBC) meets every other Tuesday at Mama Lion on Western Avenue, the longstanding Koreatown bar.

Down Back Club at Mama Lion in Koreatown.

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The dimly lit cocktail lounge near the Wiltern is typically more of a setting for a first date or a casual business meet-up. But gathered under its chandeliers earlier this month was a group of about 100 people, staring into screens big and small, fingers deftly working a controller stick, as they practice the “down-back” – one of the foundational maneuvers in Street Fighter where a player pushes the down and back buttons together, sending their character into a crouched blocking position.

And yes, the club is named after said move.

From arcade to the living room ...

When Street Fighter debuted in 1987, players played side by side in the arcade, then later, via home consoles in living rooms.

“You were playing IRL,” says Daniel Collette, 30, co-founder of DBC. “Because the core concept of the genre is that you are competing against the person sitting next to you.”

Inevitably, gaming moved online, making for a more isolating experience. Collette, a longtime gamer who’s worked in the gaming industry as a producer and writer, wanted to bring back that human interaction.

Down Back Club.

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Gamers gather at Down Back Club to get better at Street Fighter 6.

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... to now a Koreatown bar

The Down Back Club started in 2023 primarily for hardcore gamers at a small brewery in downtown L.A.’s Arts District. The club moved to Mama Lion last year, as participants expanded to include all levels of play.

One player training at DBC with high hopes for EVO this weekend is Gregory Wells, 26, a local high school field and track coach. He says people in the club lift each other up, but camaraderie isn’t the only reason why he goes.

“Once I started going, I've learned so much more from playing people in person, being able to get instant feedback.”

While personal connection is the goal, the night is structured around tournaments where players pay $20 to compete. First place comes with about $100 in cash prize, Collette says, depending on the bracket size. Spectator attend for free. Besides Street Fighter 6, other standard games at DBC include Tekken 8, 2XKO, Guilty Gear Strive.

While large cash prizes and big prestige are on the line tournaments like EVO, regulars say it’s also about upping the profile of L.A. players in the international scene.

Bragging rights

Gamers at Down Back Club.

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“The goal is that everybody gets really good. So when we all go to a tournament, SoCal f**ks everybody up,” says Paul DeCuir, 42, a kitchen worker and Street Fighter veteran who plays as DeeJay — the happy-go-lucky Jamaican kickboxer.

Historically, Japanese players have dominated. A main reason, DeCuir says, is because videogames occupy a higher cultural perch in Japan than in the U.S.

The idea of someone pouring hours into upskilling at a single videogame may seem baffling to most folks outside the community, but for some players, that discipline has seeped into other areas of life.

Like Daniel Chong, 34, another veteran player and a chef who worked at Nobu and other noted restaurants.

“You need to go! You need to just trust yourself, and any hesitation will get you killed,” he says, kind of like working in a busy and high-stress kitchen. “So it's very in the moment. Nothing else matters – that's kind of what it feels like playing in a tournament.”

In April 2023, the FBI discovered that Rafael Silva, an officer with the Delano Police Department in California’s Central Valley, had made violent threats against transgender people on TikTok.

Under a pseudonym, Silva posted several comments that the FBI found imminently dangerous. One read, “You ain’t safe. We finna change your pronouns soon. Was/were.” Another said that Silva’s “AR will track y’all down.” And yet another read, “The only power you’ll see is the one from a barrel and a 9mm,” according to investigative documents.

Silva is one of the 148 California law enforcement officers who engaged in explicitly biased conduct between 2014 and 2024, according to an investigation by The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program. Records show the officers used racist, sexist and homophobic slurs; mocked transgender people; made violent comments about Black people; and demeaned members of the public, co-workers and incarcerated people, records show.

Yet only about 12% were fired because of their conduct. Silva was not one of them. After leaving Delano, he went on to work for police departments in Avenal and Wasco.

The news organizations reviewed thousands of pages of internal affairs investigations, disciplinary records and court filings obtained from nearly 500 law enforcement and oversight agencies. The records show that some officers accused of overtly biased behavior often faced limited consequences, such as a letter of reprimand or training.

The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, determines whether to decertify officers, barring them from working in law enforcement in the state. However, the responsibility to investigate misconduct and impose discipline generally falls to individual agencies and local oversight boards, according to POST.

An investigation of California law enforcement records found officers accused of racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ conduct often remained employed.

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Despite that system, more than 40% of officers identified by the news organizations still work in California law enforcement, excluding corrections officers.

Silva did not respond to requests for comment. The Delano Police Department confirmed that Silva worked there until 2023, but declined further comment.

Attorneys, law enforcement officials and academics said the behavior erodes public trust, raises questions about officers’ credibility in court and undermines efforts to recruit and retain diverse police forces.

Law enforcement officers stand guard during a protest on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. 

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Law enforcement officers should be held to a high standard, said Vida Johnson, a Georgetown University law professor who has testified before Congress on white supremacy and policing.

Johnson said people who express explicit bias have no place in law enforcement.

“With such an important job, if someone is exhibiting any type of bias against a member of their community, I just don’t think they should have that job,” she said.

How biased conduct can undermine public trust and the courts

When officers exhibit explicit bias, it erodes trust between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect.

“It undermines our cohesion as a country when you have different perceptions of who our institutions work on behalf of,” Johnson said.

Experts said bias against protected groups — including Black people, LGBTQ people and immigrants — sends a clear message to those communities: We are not here to serve you.

A billboard put up by the Orange County District Attorney’s office that reads, “crime doesn’t pay in Orange County. If you steal, we prosecute,” stands on the southbound 710 Freeway near Del Amo Boulevard in Long Beach, California, on March 11, 2024.

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In a 2022 case, Orange County District Attorney’s Office investigator Eric Franke called a security guard who had asked him to leave a building an “angry Black lady.” In a separate incident, he remarked that Mexican people drink excessively. He received a letter of reprimand and still works for the DA’s office.

In separate cases in 2015 and 2018, Los Angeles Police Officer Armando Magana and San Diego Police Officer Alan Dyemartin ridiculed people for not speaking English. Both received letters of reprimand and kept their jobs.

The LAPD declined to comment on the incident for this story. Spokespersons for the Orange County DA’s office and the San Diego Police Department said the agencies take prejudiced behavior seriously and noted that both employees were disciplined. Franke did not comment. Magana declined to comment, and Dyemartin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The distrust created by explicitly biased behavior can have real-world consequences, experts said.

When people believe police are prejudiced against them, they are less likely to call 911 or seek help from law enforcement, according to Stefan Vogler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Vogler and other experts refer to this as the “overpolicing, underprotection paradox,” a phenomenon they say is common in communities of color and LGBTQ communities.

“They’re not getting the services that they’re promised by the state,” Vogler said.

Explicit bias can also undermine trust in the courtroom.

“You become concerned about using their testimony without corroboration,” said Richard Drooyan, former Los Angeles police commissioner. Drooyan recalled the O.J. Simpson case, when defense attorneys used audio recordings and witnesses to discredit an officer who had been a key witness.

Under the Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, defense attorneys have a right to any information that impacts the credibility of officers who are called to testify.

For justice to be served, it’s imperative that information affecting an officer’s credibility makes its way before the court, said Joseph Trigilio, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and executive director of the Loyola Project for the Innocent.

“A fact finder should look at all that and consider it,” he said. “A jury should hear all of that and ask that question.”

Reporters requested lists of officers whose records must be disclosed to the defense if they’re called to testify, commonly called Brady lists, from every district attorney’s office in counties where the investigation found cases of biased behavior. One office — the Madera County District Attorney’s Office — said it does not maintain such a list. Several district attorneys said they could not locate Brady material on the officers in question, while most declined to say whether the officers appeared on their lists.

Bias extended beyond the public to incarcerated people and fellow officers

The investigation also revealed dozens of instances of biased behavior against Black people, including 23 officers who were disciplined for using the n-word.

“In our profession, there’s no room for us to be able to do that,” said Sheryl Victorian, the chief of police in Waco, Texas, who advocates for strong relationships between police and the communities they serve.

The cases include a number of officers who made comments or shared images mocking George Floyd in the wake of his murder by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Two weeks after Floyd’s death, an officer shared a meme congratulating Floyd on being “2 weeks drug free.” Another shared a photo of Floyd being held on his stomach with a photoshopped image of a naked man sitting on him.

Two children view a mural of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Friday, as a Hennepin County court weighed the sentence to impose on former police officer Derek Chauvin. 

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Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University, said negative bias is especially troubling because of the vast power given to police officers. He described officers as “street-level bureaucrats” with the capacity to use force, arrest people and put them in jail.

“The idea that these decisions that are really high stakes might be influenced by things like racism, sexism, homophobia — those should raise really serious concerns for everyone,” he said.

More than half of the 61 correctional officers identified by the investigation were still employed at the end of 2024, according to state controller data. CDCR, which employs more law enforcement officers than any other state agency, would not confirm whether they remain employed today.

In two cases at Pelican Bay State Prison, officers made casual comments about killing or shooting at Black people, and both received reprimands. At the California Men’s Colony, an officer taunted a transgender inmate to put lipstick on before going out to the yard, and the officer’s salary was temporarily reduced.

In response to questions from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, a CDCR spokesperson said the agency takes corrective and disciplinary action when appropriate and that it has “implemented new staff misconduct regulations, designed with the goals of eliminating bias, increasing transparency and improving staff accountability.”

Correctional officers wield immense power over incarcerated people, who depend on them for their basic needs and access to programs that can help them successfully reenter society, said James King, program director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a criminal justice reform organization.

“It becomes much deeper than mere words because there’s so much power and authority behind those words,” King said.

Witnessing prejudiced behavior, even when it happens between officers, undermines rehabilitation, he said.

James King stands for a portrait outside the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, on June 9, 2026. King, who is formerly incarcerated, is now Director of Programs at the Ella Baker Center, where he oversees and works on legislation that provides opportunity for communities that have historically been left out of policy considerations. 

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“If we are really committed to creating a safer world for all of us, then it starts with how we treat people, even as they are incarcerated and preparing to return to society,” he said.

Most of the cases we analyzed — 79% — involved comments or actions between police officers and other members of the criminal justice system, including fellow officers, court clerks, civilian employees and even a judge while court was in session.

In the case files, officers described how explicit bias in the workplace impacted them.

In the Southern California city of Orange, a Black officer reported applying to a different law enforcement agency due to Orange Police Sgt. Darrin Hall’s use of racist jokes and homophobic slurs in the workplace between 2020 and 2022. Hall received a letter stating that he would be demoted and retired later that month.

The Orange Police Department declined to comment on the incident, as it was a personnel matter.

A Los Angeles police officer wears an AXON body camera.

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Drooyan, the former L.A. police commissioner, said prejudiced behavior can create difficult working relationships between officers, leading to a morale problem, and even physical danger in high-risk or volatile environments.

“When they get into a tough situation, if they can’t trust each other, I think it becomes problematic,” he said.

Grunwald said fraught relations among law enforcement officers pose an existential problem as law enforcement leaders are trying to diversify their ranks.

“At a time when police departments are really struggling to retain good officers, and especially at a time when [departments] are struggling to attain officers of color, you’d think that this could be an important area of policy,” he said.

Uneven discipline allowed many officers to remain on the job

Despite the seriousness of explicitly biased behavior — and the fact that it can get an officer decertified — discipline varied across the 148 officers in the investigation.

Of these officers, 39% were demoted, suspended or had their pay reduced. About 20% received a letter of reprimand or were ordered to undergo training — discipline that may not permanently remain in their personnel files.

Experts said the cases uncovered by the investigation likely represent only a fraction of incidents involving explicit bias.

“We have every reason to believe that most of these types of incidents go unreported,” Johnson, the Georgetown law professor, said. “The Blue Wall of Silence. The fact that people are fearful of police. Making a police complaint isn’t easy.”

Even with those barriers, people filed more than 19,600 complaints alleging prejudiced behavior by California law enforcement officers between 2016 and 2024, according to data submitted to the state. Agencies sustained just 349 of those complaints. The figures do not include racially biased traffic stops.

Reporters were only able to examine cases that fell within a narrow band of misconduct dictated by California’s public records laws.

King said officers like Silva, the Delano police officer who threatened to shoot and kill transgender people, are not simply just “a few bad apples.”

“Law enforcement [officers] develop deep-seated cultures that you cannot train away, you cannot address through the hiring process or through the selection process,” he said.

Swift, appropriate action — via verbal reprimand, retraining or more severe discipline — is key to creating a culture of service to the community, according to Victorian, the Waco police chief.

“If nobody actually addresses the behavior when it occurs, then they continue to talk that way, and that behavior becomes acceptable,” she said.

Some officers appealed discipline and succeeded in having penalties reduced at least 38 times. Others resigned before agencies completed disciplinary proceedings.

Silva was allowed to resign rather than be terminated. The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training declined to decertify him.

The city of Wasco confirmed that Silva was still one of its police officers as of June 24, 2026.

Nicole Nguyen of Stanford’s Big Local News and Marquis Mahone-Chambers, Katey Rusch, Elizabeth Santos and Julian Wray of UC Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program contributed to this story. A grant from the Google News Initiative supported the project.

About the data analysis

The Police Records Access Project obtains records from law enforcement and oversight agencies across California involving cases in which agencies determined that officers violated certain policies, including policies prohibiting prejudice against members of protected groups. Project staff compile those files and use algorithms to identify cases in which agencies found policy violations. Staff then review the records to confirm that an agency sustained the allegation.

Reporters from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program searched the text of the files and AI-generated summaries of misconduct cases using slurs and terms such as “racist” and “prejudice” to identify cases for further review. Reporters consulted academics, attorneys and law enforcement officials to develop a definition of explicit bias. Three journalists analyzed the cases to determine whether officers exhibited explicit bias against members of a protected group. Experts also reviewed a subset of cases.

To determine whether officers challenged discipline or sought to seal misconduct records, reporters searched local courts for civil lawsuits. Staff also obtained certification and employment records from POST and the state controller’s office to determine whether officers remained employed in law enforcement, including those working for CDCR.

Reporters reached out to district attorneys in the counties where we identified officers who were disciplined for biased conduct to determine if they were on Brady lists. While a few offices confirmed that the officers did not appear in their Brady materials, most said those records are exempt from public disclosure and declined to provide the information.