The Brief

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on July 24, 2025.

By midday on a recent Monday, only a few customers had trickled into La Chispa de Oro, a once-busy Mexican eatery on Cesar Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights.

Behind the counter, owner Melchor Moreno monitored the money in his till, counting the few hundred dollars in sales — about half a typical weekday.

He glanced at his staff, counting with his fingers how much he’d owe in wages that day. The math didn’t add up.

“It doesn’t help that there’s no foot traffic, too…. The streets are empty. It’s kind of scary,” Moreno said.

Since immigration raids began sweeping through Los Angeles neighborhoods, Eastside restaurants have been scraping by, as even longtime customers are keeping themselves and their dollars at home out of fear of potential immigration enforcement. While the full economic toll is still uncertain, many business owners already feel the squeeze.

Moreno has cut staff hours. He’s stepped in to wash dishes. With fewer customers, his staff goes home with fewer tips.

“They’ve noticed it. The waitresses are taking less money home every day,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep doing this.”

Moreno, who is still paying off electricity bill debt accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates his restaurant has lost more than $7,000 since the raids began on June 6. To stay afloat, he’s now closing Tuesdays through the summer until fear stemming from the ICE raids fades, he hopes.

La Chispa de Oro sits along the popular Cesar Chavez Avenue corridor.

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Survey shows deep losses at Boyle Heights restaurants

La Chispa’s slowdown isn’t isolated. This month, Boyle Heights Beat surveyed more than a dozen local restaurants to understand how immigration enforcement is affecting them. The results paint a grim picture: several restaurants reported losing 50% or more of their customers or revenue over the last several weeks. One business owner said he lost more than $10,000 in revenue. Another estimates losses of around $15,000.

Already struggling with inflation, some business owners are working for free and others are cutting back employee hours to save on labor costs.

At Casa Fina on 1st Street, the conversation has already started about potentially laying off staff or closing down entirely. Several owners said they hadn’t fully recovered from the economic strain of the COVID-19 pandemic when the raids dealt the latest blow.

One local taqueria owner said workers who are undocumented are having to choose between earning a paycheck and risking encountering ICE agents.

Though several restaurants have no plans in place in the event agents show up, others, like Milpa Kitchen, have posted signs barring ICE from entering private property. Neighbors of Casa Fina have offered to keep a watchful eye on the block in case federal agents arrive at the popular eatery.

Leaders take notice — but support lags behind

Local elected leaders are taking note and pledging to offer support. In June, Mayor Karen Bass and Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez walked the abnormally quiet business corridor along 1st Street to speak with restaurant owners about their concerns.

Bass described the fear and economic impact as a “body blow” to the neighborhood. In another video posted on social media Wednesday, she said her office is “doubling down on support” for small businesses, although it remains unclear what that entails. Boyle Heights Beat reached out to the Mayor’s office for clarification, but did not hear back in time for publication.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights in District 14, helped facilitate the opening of the City’s Small Business Administration’s Business Recovery Center at 1780 E. 1st Street. There, small businesses and nonprofit organizations affected by the raids can access information and resources about loan programs available to those experiencing financial hardship, a CD 14 spokesperson said.

At the county level, Supervisor Hilda Solis initiated an economic impact report to assess the effects of the ICE raids on small businesses and moved to develop a fundraising plan and cash-aid fund to impacted families.

Still, Miriam Rodriguez, president of the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce, says small businesses need direct financial assistance like grants.

“Just like there was financial assistance during the pandemic or during the fires, there should be a similar financial assistance program for small businesses during these times that don’t have a lot of [red tape] like a long application process.”

While Rodriguez has seen fewer reports of ICE agents around the Eastside since a federal judge granted a temporary halt to roving immigration enforcement, she says fear still lingers. And so does financial strain.

“I know the city is feeling the burdens of the city budget, but I think financial support is crucial because if they don’t do it now, there’s a high probability that a lot of businesses will close,” Rodriguez said.

Calling for community support

A sign in support of immigrants is displayed at La Chispa de Oro in Boyle Heights.

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Rodriguez believes the solution doesn’t just lie in government action. To her, leaders working in tandem with residents supporting neighborhood restaurants may be key to persevering through this economic crisis.

At a recent Boyle Heights “Know Your Rights” workshop hosted by the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce, Council District 14, and the Independent Hospitality Coalition, business owners, managers and employees gathered to receive guidance on how to navigate potential encounters with ICE agents at work.

After the workshop’s presentation, one business owner said he had eliminated uniform requirements at his tortilleria and was even offering Lyft and Uber rides to his employees to protect them on their commutes to and from work.

“There is a lot of uncertainty about federal immigration policies, instilling fear in immigrant communities, whether or not they have legal status, and, in some cases, it is having a chilling effect on restaurants’ team members and guest traffic,” said Jot Condie, the president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association.

Condie called immigrants the lifeblood of the industry and emphasized the powerful role they play in the economy. “We would not be the 4th largest economy in the world without them.”

Rodriguez echoes the sentiment, noting that community resilience has defined Boyle Heights.

“We are a community that will always stand up for each other… I think Boyle Heights is unique in the sense that people step where it’s mostly needed.” Rodriguez said.

“Where possible, we should be reclaiming our streets, reclaiming our space, and supporting these family-owned businesses. Many have been here for such a long time, and it would be very unfortunate to see their doors close,” Rodriguez said.

Adapting to survive, but not everyone can

While some restaurants have cut hours, others fear that doing so could be worse.

At The Big Burrito on Wabash Avenue, an employee said they can’t further reduce their slow business for fear of potentially turning away hungry customers.

Un Solo Sol is a vegan restaurant located on 1st Street in Boyle Heights.

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Around Mariachi Plaza, where parking is notoriously limited, Carlos Ortez, owner of Un Solo Sol, called the financial situation devastating.

Ortez estimates losing half of his business since the raids began. While his restaurant has been a 15-year fixture in the neighborhood, he said it hasn’t turned a profit since before the pandemic. Now the raids have forced him to cut back operations to just a few days a week – and if things don’t improve soon, he fears he may have to close.

“The possibility of me closing is high. Of course, I’m not going to give up that easily,” Ortez said. “The community has been my secure source of revenue for my business. But the community has experienced this exact same thing; it hasn’t gotten better. It’s been decreasing and decreasing in income and sustainability. It’s become something we can’t hide.”

Boyle Heights Beat interns Angelo Lopez and Luis Cano contributed to this story. 

For nearly a year, people walking down Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown have passed a small patch of what used to be one of the few public park spaces in the neighborhood. It’s now locked behind a tall chain link fence.

Inside, the grass is overgrown and trash is piled up along the edges. The memorial to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — built at the site where he was assassinated in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel — has fallen into disrepair.

The Los Angeles Unified School District fenced off RFK Inspiration Park, located on Wilshire Boulevard. Nearly a year later, the district is considering reopening the space, but only to students at the adjacent RFK Community Schools.

That’s frustrating for some neighbors, who say the park used to belong to everyone.

“I remember the park being open and suddenly a few months after, it was gated,” said Vanessa Aikens, who lives a few blocks away. “I was just wondering why they gated the area because there seemed to be a lot of people interacting with it.”

There has been little information relayed to the community about why.

“We have a number of our members who live right around there and so there’s an angle of access to green space, the access to a safe space for our homeless neighbors,” said Yuval Yossefy, treasurer of Ktown for All, an all-volunteer grassroots organization serving Koreatown’s unhoused community. “This went basically unnoticed.”

Enrique Legaspi, assistant principal at RFK Community Schools, said the school and the district are discussing using the park again, including for classes and student activities. LAUSD confirmed that school leaders have expressed strong interest in using the space for outdoor learning, art programs and student wellness activities.

Officials plan to involve the school community and nearby residents as plans take shape, but they have not given a timeline or said whether the park will reopen to the public.

Koreatown lacks parks

For years, the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks operated and maintained the park under an agreement with the school district dating back to 2010. At the time, the public was allowed to use the space.

Last March, the department stepped away. By then, it had already been taking on costs outside what the 2010 agreement required.

“RAP communicated uncertainty about its ability to sustain long-term maintenance due to staffing and funding constraints,” said Deirdra Boykin, a department spokesperson.

For people who live nearby, the loss of the park has been simple and immediate: there’s nowhere else like it.

“There are no parks around where I live,” Aikens said. “Now I just walk straight down the street.”

In a neighborhood with such limited park space, the memorial park went relatively unnoticed.

“There definitely isn’t enough green space here,” said Emere Alademir, 23, who lives nearby. “I’m originally from Toronto and everywhere they have green space.”

People who never used the park say they would visit if it reopened.

“I’ve never actually gone in but I would be open to coming here if it reopens,” said Wendy Kim, 70, who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years. “Why not? It’s good for everyone.”

Kim, who splits her time between LA and Seoul, said the parks in Seoul are much better maintained than the ones in LA, and that when she craves nature, she travels out of the city for a hike.

“But every place is different and here, the homeless issue is out of hand. That’s just the reality,” she said.

The fence goes up

Public records obtained by Yossefy and reviewed by The LA Local show that city and LAUSD officials coordinated the park’s handoff around a May 22 encampment removal and cleanup, after which LAUSD took control of the site and moved forward with fencing it off. The emails do not explicitly state that the park was fenced because unhoused people were there, but they show encampment removal was a central part of the transition plan.

Volunteers with Ktown For All, who do weekly outreach to the unhoused community in the area, said they were used to seeing people at the park every Saturday.

“It’s just like all of a sudden the fence was there,” said Nicolas Emmons, who has been doing outreach near RFK since around 2021.

Emmons and others said that while some unhoused residents stayed in the park, the majority of the park was open and available.

“At its peak, it was only a small percentage of the park that was being used by people to live in,” he said. “Some of the people that lived there even took it upon themselves to clean the area around their setup.”

Eunice Jeon, another volunteer with the organization, said they had built relationships with people there over several years.

“We regularly saw people there and had built relationships with people there,” she said. “They respected and treated the park well.”

Jeon added that despite restricting access, the closure has not visibly improved the space.

“If anything I would say the park is in worse state ever since the fence has gone up despite nobody being in there,” she said.

Jeon said many individuals she encountered were navigating complex barriers to housing and services, often caught in bureaucratic loops that made it difficult to access help.

“A lot of the time they’re limited by transportation. Some services don’t allow certain things. They need an address, but in order to get something mailed, they need their driver’s license, which they don’t have because they don’t have an address,” she said.

In email chains included in the public records, officials also discussed installing permanent wrought iron fencing at the site. When asked if that remains the plan, LAUSD said the project is still in the “planning phase” and that details, including potential site features, have not been finalized.

“If the park is fenced off, nobody can access it. It doesn’t provide you any use,” Yoseffy said. “There are a number of people that can’t access this park, whether they were sleeping in this park, or they used the park to exercise, if they liked to sit and read — none of those things can happen there anymore because it’s completely closed off.”

Public records show little evidence of public notice. One email mentions posting notices at the park ahead of the cleanup, but there was no formal announcement made to residents that the park — which had been open to the public for years — would be closed and no longer accessible.

“I think that a public space is meant to be used by the public, including the unhoused,” Jeon said. “That’s something they need to address instead of locking up the parks. That’s a failure of the city. Kicking them out won’t keep anyone safer if they have fewer and fewer places to go.”

LA Local reporter Marina Peña contributed to this report.

The online education platform Canvas went offline after a data breach on Thursday, temporarily leaving students and faculty at thousands of U.S. colleges — and K-12 schools — without access to course materials and communications during finals period.

"I'm sure somewhere in the country when the outage happened, there probably were people actually taking final exams on the platform when it crashed," says Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thirty million users — including at half of the higher education institutions in North America — rely on Canvas to manage courses, submit assignments, view grades and facilitate communication, according to its parent company, Instructure.

But when Linker and many other users tried to do so on Thursday afternoon, they met a black screen and a warning message.

"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure [again]," it read. "Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some 'security patches.'"

ShinyHunters is the same entity that took credit for a massive Ticketmaster data breach in 2024. Like many such groups, it's a cluster of young people working remotely together, "kind of like a ransomware gang," says Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security, which trains people and companies to defend themselves against hackers.

ShinyHunters wrote on a threat intelligence website earlier this week that the initial breach on Saturday involved data — including private messages — from 275 million students, teachers and staff at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide. The group said Thursday that affected schools can prevent the release of their data by consulting with cyber advisory firms and negotiating settlements through the encrypted chat platform Tox.

"You have till the end of the day by 12 May 2026 before everything is leaked," the hackers wrote.

Instructure has confirmed a series of cybersecurity breaches this week and provided status updates on its website. It said the breach only appeared to involve identifying information like names, email addresses, student ID numbers and user messages — no passwords, birth dates, government identifiers or financial information.

Instructure confirmed on an FAQ page that it started an investigation after it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on April 29, and took Canvas offline on Thursday after that same unauthorized actor "made changes that appeared when some students and teachers were logged in." They said the actor exploited an issue with its Free-for-Teacher accounts, which it has temporarily shut down.

"This gives us the confidence to restore access to Canvas, which is now fully back online and available for use," it said in a statement to NPR. "We regret the inconvenience and concern this may have caused."

It's not clear whether Instructure paid a ransom or what the return of Canvas access could mean for the hackers' May 12 deadline.

Tobac says Canvas could be back online because of a successful negotiation, or because the hackers "didn't get super far in their attack." Either way, she says users should stay vigilant, especially for phishing messages — whether it's someone posing as Canvas prompting a password change, or pretending to be a professor sending course materials.

"I would operate under the assumption that there's going to be some knock-on effects here," she says.

Not everyone got back online immediately 

Just before midnight on Thursday, Instructure posted online that "Canvas is now available for most users," though two separate services, Canvas Beta and Canvas Test, remained in maintenance mode.

Students and faculty at at least some schools were still unable to access Canvas on Friday — either because service had not yet been restored or because administrators warned them to stay away.

Penn State University, for example, said Friday morning that while the school's Canvas access had been partially restored, it was "not yet ready for use."

"Technical teams at Penn State are actively working to prepare the system for our community," it added. "As access is restored, Canvas integrations and related services will be brought back online in phases."

Several schools have taken similar approaches, either temporarily disabling Canvas access or outright asking users to steer clear. The University of California said across its schools, "Canvas access will not be restored until we are confident the system is secure."

And it's not just higher education: The Montgomery County Public School system in Maryland alerted families on Friday morning that even as service returned, it is "continuing to test and review systems before restoring access."

Tobac says this could mean that schools think the attackers might still be within their systems, potentially stealing information like passwords and messages.

"The attackers probably got some sensitive information and … [schools] don't want this information out online," she says.

Many schools are urging users to be on high alert for any unsolicited emails or messages that appear to come from Canvas, especially those requesting login credentials, as Georgetown University warned. The University of Amsterdam — which says it's one of 44 Dutch educational institutions affected — also recommends people change their passwords on any other sites where they use the same one.

Tobac also recommends using a password manager — to generate long, random passwords for each login — and turning on multi-factor authentication for all online accounts, not just Canvas. She says any student or professor who gets a suspicious call, text or email should "use another method of communication to verify what is authentic."

"Even if there was no breach yesterday, I would say these are the things that I recommend you do," she adds, urging people to "be politely paranoid."

The breach disrupts finals, highlights vulnerabilities

Several schools affected by the breach have already postponed or outright scrapped some final exams, with others warning students and professors that they might need to do so.

The University of Illinois is postponing all final exams and assignments scheduled through Sunday. Penn State canceled certain exams scheduled for Thursday night and Friday, saying it was working with faculty to "determine next steps for final grading" and urging students to check their emails (not Canvas) regularly in the meantime. And Baylor University delayed Friday exams and asked all faculty to send students "whatever study materials they have on their local computers to students as soon as possible."

The breach has underscored how much of academia relies on a single, centralized platform.

Linker, of UPenn, told NPR that he received an influx of panicked messages from students on Thursday afternoon when they suddenly couldn't access PowerPoints, readings and previous exams as they tried to study for Monday's final.

"The problem with using a platform like Canvas is that most [students] are not going to have the readings available printed out or on their laptops," he explains. "It all lives on the online platform, and if that platform goes down, they have no way to access them."

He told students on Thursday that he would upload the course materials to another platform (like Dropbox or Google Docs) if Canvas access wasn't restored by Friday morning. Fortunately, he says, it came back online shortly before 9 a.m. ET.

But Linker says he has concerns about relying fully on Canvas in the future.

"Given what this has exposed, the vulnerability involved and also the concern with the data breaches, I'm starting to rethink whether this is really a wise way to proceed," he says.

One example of that is grading. Linker says Canvas makes it so easy to calculate and weigh students' scores — on individual assessments and overall — that it's come to function as a digital grade book. Going forward, he says he may start keeping an analog record of students' grades just in case.

While Canvas does have competitors like Blackboard, Linker says he doesn't think any would be less vulnerable to a future breach. And Tobac agrees.

"The problem is not that this one website had this cyber event, right? Because nothing in this world is unhackable," she says. "The thing that we have to think about is disaster recovery: How do we continue doing business when there is a cyber event, and how do we do our very best to keep the bad actors out?"

Tobac says this week has shown that many institutions did not have a clear plan for how students and professors can be in touch and access course materials without Canvas. She said those plans should vary based on schools' different circumstances and schedules — which might explain why some are proceeding with finals as usual while others are scrapping exams altogether. But she'd like them to approach the immediate aftermath with one common goal.

"We have to treat people with dignity and respect," Tobac says. "And I hope that that is something that the institutions do, within their timelines and constraints."
Copyright 2026 NPR

An international team of disease detectives is now racing to connect with the more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the MV Honius cruise ship on the Atlantic island of St. Helena before the hantavirus outbreak was identified.

These individuals have flown across the world, including to the United States.

The risk of further spread of this virus is low since it requires close and prolonged contact with an infected individual — and those infected seem to transmit the virus for only a brief period of time. But public health officials want to make sure the outbreak is contained.

Here's how authorities are using the practice of contact tracing to contain the outbreak and keep the hantavirus from spreading.

Contact tracing 101

The concept of modern contact tracing dates to the 1930s and was part of an effort to stop the spread of syphilis. It involves locating the close contacts of anyone who may have been infected. "By identifying people who are at risk of infection," says Preeti Malani, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan, "you try to get ahead when people don't have symptoms yet with the goal of preventing the infection from continuing to propagate."

This is a well-tested approach for containing an infectious disease. "It's the oldest tool in the epidemiologic toolbox," explains Malani. "We thought about this a lot early in the pandemic with COVID. But we also do contact tracing for sexually transmitted infections, for things like meningitis and even measles."

Malani likens contact tracing to monitoring ripples in a pond, "trying to prevent those outer rings from propagating by isolating individuals and by identifying individuals who might be at risk of infection."

The idea that "there's a time period where people don't have symptoms but could be harboring the virus, that's what contact tracing helps identify," says Malani.

It starts by pinpointing someone with an infection or suspected infection of the disease in question — in this case, hantavirus. Epidemiologists then look to see with whom they've recently had close contact since these individuals are more likely to have been infected.

This hunt for those with the greatest probability of infection is important. "Otherwise, it becomes an impossible web to contain because everyone is connected to everyone," says Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases doctor at Emory University. "So you have to stratify by high, intermediate and low-risk contacts."

The next step involves public health agencies ordering precautions for those who are infected or who may be infected but aren't showing symptoms yet. Such measures may include quarantine, so that an individual doesn't come into contact with even more people — who may then become infected.

One challenge that hantavirus presents is that its incubation period can last up to several weeks. In other words, "people take a long time to become symptomatic after they've been exposed," says Titanji. "Some of these primary contacts would have to be monitoring themselves for symptoms for up to 45 days to be at the tail end of that very long incubation period."

Aboard and ashore

The work isn't high-tech but it is painstaking, requiring officials to reconstruct the many interactions someone may have had over days or weeks.

Onboard the cruise ship, "you might have an individual who is a source of an infection," says Titanji, laying out a hypothetical example. "And then they were sitting at a dinner table with one individual who then goes back to their cabin and shares a bed with their partner who has a conversation with someone else on the deck."

Once someone disembarks the ship, the number of potential interactions can grow quite quickly. This is why officials were concerned when a KLM flight attendant fell ill after being aboard a flight with one of the infected cruise ship passengers. Fortunately, the flight attendant ultimately tested negative for hantavirus.

Titanji is heartened by what she's seen playing out so far. "It seems like the international collaborative effort has been really robust and the mechanisms for containment are in place and underway," she says.

Public health officials argue that contact tracing is a powerful approach that will reduce further spread. "We can break this chain of transmission," said Abdi Mahmoud, the director of the World Health Organization's health emergency alert and response efforts, at a press conference on Thursday.

He has good reason to be confident. Contact tracing was vital during the fight against COVID-19 and helped end the Ebola crisis in Liberia, containing the epidemic there more than a decade ago. Some of the contact tracing even involved hours-long hikes through the jungle to a remote village.

Authorities are hoping for similar success with this hantavirus outbreak.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he has requested a yearlong extension of FEMA funding for L.A. fire survivors. Without the extension, the money will run out July 9.

Now the decision on FEMA support lies with the federal government.

The funds have allowed many survivors to afford temporary housing and other daily needs. Most have yet to return home — 2 in 3 survivors who were living in Altadena or Pacific Palisades at the time of the fires are still displaced, according to the latest survey of more than 2,100 survivors by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Nearly 40% of respondents reported they will either soon run out of temporary housing insurance coverage or have already.

The situation is particularly dire for low-income households: Nearly 80% of respondents making $50,000 or less said they didn’t think they could afford housing for three months once coverage ended.

“The data is clear: This recovery is not over,” said Angela Giacchetti of the Department of Angels at a news conference organized by the Eaton Fire Collaborative in Altadena on Thursday. “If you are a survivor, you know this in your bones. For many families, it has barely begun. People have just begun to stabilize. We need federal support that reflects the scale of this disaster and systems that survivors can actually navigate and access over time.”

FEMA assistance isn’t reaching most survivors

The FEMA Individuals and Households Program can provide funding for survivors of disasters to pay for temporary housing, repair their homes, and respond to other challenges that insurance may not cover. It can also help cover costs if a survivor has no insurance.

Gil Barel has been relying on FEMA funds to pay rent on a small back house for herself and her son for the last year. She said they still haven’t been able to return to their rent-controlled Pasadena apartment because of smoke damage, though she still has to pay the rent for it.

Gil Barel is paying rent on a smoke-damaged apartment in Pasadena while FEMA funds have helped her cut the cost of temporary housing.

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Barel doesn’t know what they’ll do if the FEMA funding runs out.

“ I'm really stressed out,” she said. “I think I'm just kind of trying to put that thought aside and hope for the best.”

But in the 15 months since the fires, most survivors have not accessed FEMA funding. About 60% have received no FEMA assistance beyond the initial $770 payments dispersed in the immediate aftermath of the fires, according to the Department of Angels survey.

Many have faced denials, according to disaster case manager workers with Catholic Charities of L.A. and lawyers with Legal Aid Foundation of L.A.

That’s the situation for Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, who lost their Altadena home of 15 years in the Eaton Fire. They’ve relied on their insurance to pay for a rental in Montrose, but that’s rapidly running out. And because they have that insurance, FEMA has denied further support.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, lost their home in the Eaton Fire. They plan to rebuild, but the cost is a major hurdle.

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“A lot of our ALE [Additional Living Expenses insurance] is going to run out before we even are able to get into a house,” Nicholls-Ali said.

Without FEMA or insurance support, they’ll have to find a way to pay rent on top of a mortgage. They also face a big gap in the cost of their rebuild versus how much their insurance covers. Nicholls-Ali said without the help of FEMA and other sources of funding, recovering feels further out of reach.

Funds for long-term recovery still in limbo

FEMA funding extensions have been routine in past disasters, including the 2023 wildfires in Hawaii and after devastating flooding in North Carolina in 2024.

But the agency has faced significant cuts during the second Trump administration, and there are indications that disaster aid is becoming increasingly political. For example, President Donald Trump has approved aid for just 23% of requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, compared to 89% for states that with Republican governors and senators, according to an analysis by Politico.

The state has also not received more than $33 billion for long-term recovery, which can help pay for infrastructure upgrades and repairs, as well as help rebuild schools, parks and homes. That money was requested by state and local leaders shortly after the January 2025 fires and hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.