The Brief

On a recent spring Saturday, about 20 people gathered in a parking lot of a building off of Florence Avenue in South L.A. They each stood by a brand new, bright orange electric bike.

“How often do we get to experience electric bikes in South L.A.?” said Adé Neff, founder of Ride On Bike Shop in Leimert Park. “Electric bikes are all over the city. But they're not within South L.A.”

Until now. Neff is part of a coalition of community-based groups that helped launch a new e-bike rental program called South Central Power Up.

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The program brings 250 e-bikes to South L.A., where, after a safety training, residents will be able to get an e-bike to take home for at least a month, and then they will be able to renew the bike for free, for the first six months of the program. After that, they’ll be able to rent them for a small fee that will be determined later.

It’s part of a growing trend to make e-bikes more widely accessible — e-bikes run at least a few hundred bucks, and more often are more than $1,000. And, most car trips we take are relatively short, so e-bikes can help replace those miles and have a significant impact on climate pollution as well as help folks save money on gas. The South L.A. program is modeled after similar programs in Pacoima and Wilmington.

Adé Neff, owner of a bike shop in Leimert Park and long-time L.A. bicyclist, is part of a coalition of community-based groups that helped launch the new e-bike rental program.

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The goal is to bring a climate friendly and money-saving mode of transportation to an area that lacks dependable public transportation, has disproportionate levels of air and climate pollution, and where high gas prices are particularly burdensome.

“We're offering opportunities to folks that will allow them to have more autonomy and agency over their travel and commute,” said Lena Williams, program director for People for Mobility Justice, one of the community-based groups spearheading the program.

Williams said they aim to serve street vendors and other entrepreneurs such as delivery drivers, and people who frequently use public transportation or walk or bike to get around, as well as folks who want to save on gas money, or just have some fun on a bike without the physical exertion of a traditional bike.

“There’s a place for e-bikes within our society and our communities,” said Neff. “I was on a bike for 10 years in L.A. — I didn't have an electric bike. And I was going from South L.A. to Santa Monica to Long Beach to Pasadena, downtown and by the time I got to my destination, I'm winded, I'm sweaty. Whereas, I can get on the e-bike and get to my destination and I'm not exerting that much energy.”

Lena Williams, program director for People for Mobility Justice, one of the community-based groups spearheading the South Central Power Up e-bike program.

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An e-bike tour of South L.A. 

But on this particular Saturday, the group is going for a ride on the new e-bikes to have some fun and learn about South L.A. and the long fight for environmental and social justice.

South L.A. resident Patrena Shankling, 62, came out to try the bikes with her 32-year-old son Lonnie, who joined from Bellflower.

“I want to get out of my car and get some exercise in,” said Shankling. “It's good for the environment, good for me, health-wise.”

She said she also wants to save money on gas.

South L.A. resident Patrena Shankling, left, and her son Lonnie, came out to try the e-bikes and have some mother-son time together.

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South L.A. resident and community advocate Blanca Lucio said she’s long used regular bikes to get around but this is her first time on an electric one.

“Tengo muchos años este usando bicicleta,” she said. “En mi comunidad, la gente siempre anda caminando, anda en el bus, entonces cuando yo llegué a vivir en sur centro, yo era la mamá que siempre llevaba a los hijos en la bicicleta, la dejarlos a la escuela.”

“I have for many years used a bicycle,” she said. “In my community, people are always walking, taking the bus, so when I came to South Central I was the mother who always took the children on the bicycle to drop them off at school."

She said e-bikes are one way to get around more easily and address air pollution, an issue that’s particularly important to her.

Community advocates Blanca Lucio, left, and Guadalupe Rivas hanging out before the e-bike tour on a recent Saturday.

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Zaakiyah Brisker grew up in South L.A. and only uses a bike to get around. She got rid of her car because of the financial stress of paying the car off, the registration, and maintaining the vehicle, but also because it’s better for the environment.

“When I started riding my bike, it was easier because I used to live in mid-city and all of the shopping that I would do would be in Culver City, which is a totally walkable neighborhood,” Brisker said. “Since moving back to South Central, it's been a challenge because this is not a walkable area. But I love riding my bike so much and I believe in the values of not harming the planet and not adding to climate change as much as possible, especially as it relates to hood areas like South Central.”

It’s one reason why Brisker is a communications associate at Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education, or SCOPE for short, a long-time civil rights organization in South L.A. and another partner on the project, and the launching point for our ride today.

South L.A. resident Zaakiyah Brisker stands beside new electric bikes that will be available to rent for free for community members through the new South Central Power Up program

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Turning points for justice in South L.A.

After a safety briefing and getting comfortable on the bikes in the parking lot, it’s time to head out on our ride.

The group listens to Williams discuss safely using the e-bikes.

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We get off to a rough start. As soon as we tried to cross Florence Avenue, an aggressive driver tried to nose through our line of bikes crossing the street — evidence of the dangers bikers face every day on L.A. roads, especially here in South L.A., which has some of the least infrastructure for bikes.

But we safely make it to our first stop — the corner of Florence and Normandie, the very spot where the 1992 unrest began.

Once we got off Florence and onto quieter neighborhood streets, everyone started to relax and have some fun. Soon, the party grew.

Juan Brown, 21, and his buddy decided to join us on their own bikes. They popped wheelies and did other tricks, riding alongside us as we and people watching from outside their homes cheered.

“I ride my bike every day,” Brown said. “For fun, to get around, everything. It's bike life all day.”

21-year-old South L.A. resident Juan Brown joined us for part of our ride.

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But he said dangerous drivers and the lack of infrastructure for bikes is a major, and sometimes deadly, challenge. He says he’s lost friends who have been hit by cars. But it hasn’t stopped him. He said that’s because of the community that biking provides.

Our next stop is Exposition Park, where we talk about how gentrification and housing costs around USC are impacting the community. Next, we head to a former oil drilling site that, after a decade of organizing, the community successfully got shut down.

A map showing the "hubs" where South L.A. residents will be able to pick up e-bikes as part of the South Central Power Up program.

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We end our ride at Village Market Place off Vermont, which sells fresh, locally grown produce and other goods at an affordable price. And, by the way, it’s powered by solar panels.

The ride was 12 miles altogether, but all of us barely broke a sweat.

Our group rides towards Exposition Park.

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Each stop we made on our ride showed how the climate problem is really a justice problem, like how the racism and disinvestment that sparked the L.A. uprising is the very same disinvestment that makes south L.A. worse off when it comes to climate impacts such as extreme heat. And how the climate crisis intersects with food insecurity, and housing costs driving displacement and exacerbating financial stress.

But each stop also revealed the opportunity to turn that around — such as the former oil drilling site, which has been bought by a community trust that has the goal of turning it into a park with permanent affordable housing. Or how growing food locally is a way to boost health and resilience. And the effort to get e-bikes here and get more people out of cars and spur deeper investment in bike infrastructure and public transportation.

The threads tying it all together were the folks who have long pushed for these changes in south L.A.

Without infrastructure, too soon for e-bikes?

Throughout the ride, the lack of safe street infrastructure was glaringly obvious. It’s a problem across L.A., but more so in South L.A, where potholes are rampant, bike lanes are few and far between, and protected bike lanes are nonexistent.

So is it too soon to be pushing e-bikes?

“The streets of South Central are notoriously dangerous, whether you're walking, biking, driving,” Williams said. “But I think there is something super, super important about actually just taking up space — people being seen in this way that says, ‘This is what we're doing. The streets are intended to be multi-modal and we want to show the ways that we can coexist.’”

The slow progress on improving bike infrastructure has been a challenge that the e-bike lending program in Pacoima, Electro-Bici, which has now run for nearly three years, has also faced, said Miguel Miguel, policy director with Pacoima Beautiful, the grassroots group that is heading the project there.

“We're creating a program in a community where a program like this, the infrastructure for it, wasn't ever really thought of,” Miguel said. “It's almost like we're trying to paint the wall right before we fix the drywall. So some of the challenges have been like, we're offering this service, but how do community members now utilize the actual transportation network to be able to go from point A to point B.”

The Electro-Bici program received 100 refurbished electric bikes from the New York-based Shared Mobility Inc., which has provided "e-bike libraries" in several U.S cities.

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The huge lack of even the simplest infrastructure such as bike racks to lock bikes at destinations like grocery stores is also a major barrier, Miguel said. But that hasn’t made the program a failure — far from it actually. Miguel said one big lesson learned has been that the “need” doesn’t always have to come before the “want.”

“This is an activity that community members have been asking for, for a while, but unfortunately there's some true income inequality issues that don't allow folks to have access even just to a regular mechanical bike,” Miguel said. “If we come into this first thinking we want to repair people's relationship with their inner child, we want to repair people's relationship with what it is to have a bike – I think that's what these programs are.”

Miguel said many of the folks who regularly use the e-bikes through Pacoima’s program are either on the older side or the younger side, and rather than only using it to get to and from work or run errands, they’re often using the bikes for exercise, or to go to the park, or just ride around with friends.

“This is an opportunity to have community members step aside from the day to day of working, of living in a city, and into just being a child for a while and just enjoy playing and healing through playing.”

Williams would agree.

“Biking is medicine. If we allow the fears to keep us from getting there, it's such a detriment to our experience,” Williams said.

So e-bikes may be great for saving money on gas and getting around sustainably (they can truly help lower climate pollution), but they’re also just plain fun. And having fun — experiencing joy — well, that’s an important piece of building resilience too.

Richard Foreman's home is stranded in the middle of the beach.

The stairs were ripped away by waves years ago, so there's no way in or out anymore. The house is 20 feet into the air, on stilts that were designed to protect it from hurricane storm surge. But there haven't been any big storms recently, just the rising ocean eating away at the sand year after year.

Just six years ago, the house was still a popular vacation rental in Rodanthe, North Carolina. Like many beachfront houses, it had a nickname: Sea 'n Delight. Today, the name is gone, and the house is uninhabitable. At low tide, the Atlantic Ocean laps at what used to be the driveway. At high tide, the ocean runs beneath the entire house.

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Foreman knows it will collapse eventually. Four neighboring homes have fallen into the ocean in the last two years. And more than 100 homes on North Carolina's barrier islands are at risk from erosion and sea level rise in the next decade, according to the National Park Service, which manages the area as part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

At least half a dozen of those houses are in imminent danger. In June, a high tide coupled with large waves was enough to bring down another house.

Yet there is no plan to remove most of the threatened houses or to empty them of personal belongings, because of perverse incentives created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Bill King, the president of the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association, has traveled to Washington, D.C., to push for federal rule changes that he thinks could save homes from collapsing in coastal North Carolina.

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FEMA provides most residential flood insurance in the United States. The agency will pay homeowners after a house collapses, but not before. That means owners stand to lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars by tearing down a doomed house before the ocean takes it.

"The homeowner is incentivized to wait for collapse and get a payout," says John Ryan-Henry, a policy analyst at the Coastal States Organization, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of coastal state governments, including those along the Great Lakes.

And when homes collapse, they pollute the water and leave wreckage on the shore.

"Unfortunately, there's a lot of debris that comes with these collapses," says Lisa Sharrard, a longtime flood insurance agent in North Carolina who previously served as the chair of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, which is the trade group representing state flood-policy officials. "It leaves a legacy of hazard on the beach. It's almost impossible to get everything."

The National Park Service says it collected more than 480 tons of home debris from the area in the last 18 months alone, some of which washed miles down the North Carolina coast.

As sea level rise accelerates erosion around the U.S., there is growing alarm among waterfront homeowners, local officials and even members of Congress. Here, a damaged porch hangs precariously over the sand on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

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Foreman's stranded house hasn't been emptied out.

"It looked like we had just left for dinner. I mean, everything is still in there," says Foreman. The couches, the refrigerator, every steak knife and beach towel — it's all waiting to fall into the ocean.

"If they would settle with me for the insurance, I would have it torn down tomorrow," he says.

As sea level rise from climate change accelerates erosion around the country, there is growing alarm among waterfront homeowners, local officials and even members of Congress. More than 30 homes have fallen into the sea in coastal North Carolina alone since 2020. Neighborhoods in Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Virginia and California are facing similar threats. Just last week, erosion exacerbated by a storm caused catastrophic damage to multiple homes in Southern California.

"People should not have to wait for their home to collapse into the water before they can get help," says Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. "That is just not a smart way to deal with the reality of climate change."

FEMA says it cannot change the rules for threatened properties unless Congress amends the laws that govern the National Flood Insurance Program. Such a bill was introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in 2025, but it is stalled in the House of Representatives.

FEMA did not respond to questions from NPR about the cost to taxpayers of letting homes collapse.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides most residential flood insurance in the United States. The agency will pay homeowners after a house collapses, but not before.

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Plenty of warning, but no good option

Erosion is an inescapable problem for waterfront communities. Waves remove sand and rock from some areas and deposit them in others.

Climate change is accelerating that natural erosion unevenly. Although global warming affects the entire planet, sea levels are rising more quickly in some regions because of ocean currents and the complex dynamics of melting glaciers and ice caps. Some of the fastest sea level rise in the world is occurring on the East Coast of the United States.

Coastal areas are constantly changing. Barrier islands, like the ones that form the Outer Banks of North Carolina, are particularly prone to erosion, as the ocean removes sand from some areas and deposits it in others. Even stable-seeming dunes can disappear as the ocean shapes the land.

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In North Carolina, where thousands of homes sit on narrow, sandy barrier islands, sea levels are rising faster than the global average, and the rate is accelerating.

Rising seas exacerbate the erosion that usually happens on barrier islands, says Reide Corbett, a climate scientist at East Carolina University. In the last six years, hundreds of feet of beach have disappeared in Dare County, N.C., the current epicenter of erosion-related home collapses in the United States.

"There is no way to maintain homes where they currently are," Corbett says. He has delivered the same message directly to county residents at multiple public meetings in recent years. "The only solution is to back off that front line."

Clarke Lattimore, 8, looks out the window of his family's beach house in Buxton, N.C., in May. His great-grandfather built the house behind two rows of dunes. Now, it is threatened by the ocean.

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But removing homes from the front line is expensive. Tearing down a house costs at least $30,000, according to local contractors, and the price tag is even higher if the house is very large or difficult to access. The other option is to move homes farther away from the water, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most homeowners do not have that kind of money. Many of the at-risk properties in Dare County are vacation homes, and their owners rely on rental income to pay for the mortgage, taxes and insurance. As the ocean encroaches, many houses get damaged and become uninhabitable, saddling owners with high bills and no income at the very moment they need cash to prevent their homes from collapsing.

Michael McDaniel is in that situation with his house in Buxton, N.C., nicknamed the Sea Star. He purchased it for about $500,000 in 2011, when he retired from the Navy. He planned to eventually move there full time with his wife.

When he bought the house, about 250 feet of dune were between the front porch and the Atlantic. For years, the house seemed like a good investment. The property value rose and hit nearly $1 million just two years ago. But the beach eroded, and today the home is uninhabitable.

McDaniel says he can't afford to move the house, which would be his first choice, or to demolish it. The house has a flood insurance policy that will pay out $250,000 if it collapses, plus up to $100,000 for lost belongings.

"If it's teetering, you've got to sit and wait for it to fall in the ocean," he says.

Foreman, whose house is stranded in the middle of the Rodanthe beach, is in a similar bind.

Extra sand has bought extra time for the owners of homes damaged by waves in recent years in Dare County, but the long-term problem of beach erosion persists.

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"Environmentally, it would be far better if they would allow me to tear it down on a beautiful day where all the debris is in one spot," he says. "But by requiring the waiting game for it to fall, it's going to fall in a storm, and it's going to be scattered for miles."

Taxpayers are on the hook for increasingly expensive cleanups. Federal and county governments together estimate that they have spent more than half a million dollars cleaning up debris in coastal North Carolina since 2020. Those figures do not account for the economic costs of closed beaches and polluted ecosystems.

County officials say they are frustrated by the federal government's approach.

"If there are waves breaking under the house, that's clearly threatened," says Dare County Manager Robert Outten. "It's money they're going to spend either way. It's cheaper to tear it down."

Their frustration is even greater because they say the federal government created a solution to the problem nearly 40 years ago — and then killed it.

Homes in Buxton were originally built behind multiple rows of dunes. Today, those dunes are gone.

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The solution that Congress hated

In the mid-1980s, Congress stepped in to help homeowners with threatened homes.

The result was called the Upton-Jones Amendment to the National Flood Insurance Program. The law, named for lawmakers from the erosion hot spots of Michigan and North Carolina, allowed homeowners to access flood insurance payouts before a home fell, to pay for demolishing it or moving it.

The law took effect in 1988, and homeowners immediately started using it to get their houses out of harm's way, according to partial claims records obtained from FEMA through a public records request and analyzed by NPR. More than 400 homes in 27 states were demolished or moved under the policy.

People fish off the pier in Avon, North Carolina.

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But Congress was not happy with the results.

The goal was to avoid having houses fall into the water. But in a series of congressional hearings, experts told lawmakers that some property owners were purposely waiting to remove their houses.

"They have chosen to repair the building as it stands, get another season's rent and then look toward the possibility of demolition at a later date," explained Spencer Rogers, who managed Upton-Jones claims for North Carolina, at a June 1990 congressional hearing. "There is no particular incentive that I can see for any early action."

Lawmakers and FEMA officials expressed frustration that there was no penalty for such inaction. The longer the owner of a doomed home delayed, the more likely it was that the home would be damaged by waves or storms, leading to an expensive insurance claim. And if the house fell before the owner removed it, they could still collect their full flood insurance payout.

"People should not have to wait for their home to collapse into the water before they can get help," says Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. Here, homes in Buxton stand over the waves in May.

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"Policyholder benefits come at the government's expense," said then-Rep. Doug Bereuter of Nebraska at another 1990 hearing about Upton-Jones.

Lawmakers were also concerned that the policy could bankrupt the National Flood Insurance Program if every eligible home took advantage of it. After years of debate about whether Upton-Jones could be fixed, Congress repealed it altogether in 1994.

Now, Congress is considering reinstating a version of the same policy.

Under pressure from homeowners and local governments, a bipartisan group of lawmakers last year proposed resurrecting a version of the Upton-Jones law.

"For some homeowners in vulnerable coastal areas, relocation or demolition may be the safest and most practical option," says Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, one of the bill's co-sponsors. She says the bill "is about giving people that option before disaster strikes, not after everything is already lost."

The new bill attempts to address some of the problems identified in Upton-Jones back in the 1990s. If a homeowner fails to remove their threatened house before it collapses, they may not get their full insurance payout. And the process for determining whether a house is in imminent danger from erosion is simplified.

But the bill has not gotten enough support to move forward. The Trump administration's efforts to slash FEMA's workforce and budget have made it harder for popular bipartisan efforts to reform the agency to find traction in Congress.

Brian Harris runs the Buxton Civic Association in Buxton. In recent years, he has been pushing the state and federal governments to change rules that make it difficult to protect waterfront homes and to remove them before they collapse.

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FEMA never analyzed the full cost of Upton-Jones

Upton-Jones retains its reputation as a failed and expensive program three decades after it was repealed. But it's unclear how accurate that reputation is, because FEMA never conducted a full analysis of its cost-effectiveness. "There was never a really robust postmortem," says Ryan-Henry, of the Coastal States Organization.

FEMA's complete data on flood insurance claims are private, making it impossible to know how Upton-Jones ultimately compares with other federal programs for removing threatened homes.

But narrower claims data obtained by NPR through a public records request offers a clue. Adjusted for inflation, the average cost to demolish a home was roughly the same as the cost of a federal home buyout, in which the government purchases repeatedly damaged homes in flood zones at market value and pays to demolish them.

In higher-cost areas, Upton-Jones could even be cheaper. The proposed program would cap payouts at $250,000, while the separate, existing buyout program pays full market value. More than 90% of the homes that have fallen in Dare County since 2020 were assessed above $250,000.

Without long-term solutions available, many local and state governments are relying on expensive alternatives such as beach nourishment and seawalls.

Removing homes before they collapse costs tens of thousands of dollars. A bill pending in Congress would let homeowners access money through their flood insurance policies to help foot that bill.

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In Maine, a project is underway to build a jetty to slow erosion near houses in the threatened community of Camp Ellis in the town of Saco. And Dare County, N.C., has two multimillion-dollar projects underway: an $8.6 million jetty repair and a roughly $15 million beach nourishment project that will pump more than 2 million cubic yards of sand in front of the most threatened houses. The sand from the last beach nourishment in the area lasted less than three years.

"Beach nourishment is temporary," says Corbett, the climate scientist at East Carolina University. "You're buying sand to buy time. You can't simply buy time and not plan for what is next."

And not every neighborhood is getting sand or other protections. At this rate, Richard Foreman doesn't see a path to either protecting or removing his stranded house in North Carolina. "Which leads you to believe they're really just hoping [the homes] will fall instead," Foreman says. "It's nuts. It's absolutely nuts."

Additional editing by Neela Banerjee. Molly Enking of Maine Public, along with Sarah Knight and Katie Daugert of NPR, contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The brown bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, famous for embiggening themselves by feasting on salmon in the park's scenic Brooks River, are ready for their annual closeup. The 2026 Fat Bear Week bracket came out on Friday, kicking off a competition to determine which bear has worked hardest to pack on pounds for hibernation.

Officials say fans should look out for signs of a generational shift, reflecting the vitality of Katmai's ecosystem. And this year's bracket features 16 bears, up from 12 in recent years.

"There are more cubs at Brooks Camp this year than have been seen in a long time," Park Superintendent Mark Sturm said in a news release.

"A new generation of fat bears is taking shape, and they're off to a strong start," Sturm added, saying his team is eager to see how the young bears develop and fit in.

New contenders this year include Bear 89, a male known as "Backpack." His nickname originated after an injury he had as a cub forced him to ride around on his mother's back, according to the park's website. Another male competitor is 151 Walker, one of the most dominant bears on the river.

This year's single-elimination tournament begins on Tuesday, Sept. 22, when public voting starts. Voting pauses over the weekend, before a new champion is crowned on Sept. 29.

Viewers can follow the Katmai bears' exploits on webcams from Brooks River on Explore.org. The brown bears and cubs fill TV screens and computer monitors with fishing, eating and inter-ursine drama, giving humans a much-needed break from thinking about AI, midterm elections and the economy.

Instead, they can ponder the chances that last year's winner, the immense Bear 32 nicknamed "Chunk," might again be dubbed the fattest bear of them all. Weighing in at over 1,200 pounds, Chunk won over voters last year by chowing down despite suffering a broken jaw and even finding time to play with younger bears. It was a redemption story of sorts, coming a year after Chunk was villainized by some after killing a cub belonging to Grazer, the 2024 champion.

Individual bears have differing priorities, Katmai National Park Ranger Sarah Bruce said in an online chat unveiling the bracket. For example, she noted that many single adult females must help their cubs get enough calories.

"When you're voting, consider the challenges of a bear's life," Bruce said. "Trust your gut and go with whatever you think the fattest bear is."

This has been a record-setting year for cubs, said former Katmai ranger Mike Fitz, resident naturalist at webcam company Explore.org. He says 37 cubs were counted at Brooks River. Several cubs are included with their mothers in this year's bracket, such as Bear 806, which adopted an older cub along with raising her own cub from this spring. Bruce also noted the importance of resilience, describing how Bear 909 has prepared for hibernation after losing both of her cubs this year.

Before-and-after photos of the bears highlight the stunning transformation they undergo each year, after emerging gaunt and bony in the spring and bulking up from as little as 600 pounds for an adult male in the summer up to more than 1,000 pounds in the fall.

The bears endure a condition called hyperphagia, feeding a relentless hunger so they can pack on fat they'll need to survive the coming winter. The park uses Fat Bear Week to teach the public and students about brown bears, sockeye salmon and their ecosystem. Some 2,200 bears are estimated to live in Katmai National Park and Preserve's 4.2 million acres.

Interest in Fat Bear Week, which began in 2014, is international: For last year's contest, people cast more than 1.7 million votes from more than 100 countries, according to the park.
Copyright 2026 NPR

When President Trump talks about accomplishments of his second term, he often mentions the deals he's struck with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices.

"We went from the highest prescription drug prices, by far, anywhere in the world, to the lowest prescription drug prices anywhere in the world," Trump said during his remarks at the midterm Republican National Convention in Dallas on Sept 10. "And that alone should get us a big victory in our midterms that are coming up."

Last year on Sept. 30, the president and his health officials gathered in the Oval Office to announce a major agreement with Pfizer — the first of what he said would be a series of deals with pharmaceutical companies. Eventually, the White House said 26 companies signed agreements, but they have not been made public.

Trump refers to these agreements as "most favored nation" deals, meant to bring U.S. drug prices in line with what other wealthy countries pay for drugs.

The most buzzed-about part of the first announcement was the creation of TrumpRx, a website for consumers to find discounts on some drugs if they choose not to use their health insurance. But, as NPR has reported, the drugs available are limited, and most consumers will get a better price if they just use their insurance and pay the copay.

But Trump's announcement also included another promise, for the low-income and disabled Americans who are covered by Medicaid:

"Today Pfizer is committing to offer all of their prescription medications to Medicaid," he said on Sept. 30, 2025. "And it will be at the most favored nation prices. It's gonna have a huge impact on bringing Medicaid costs down like nothing else."

And Trump said he expected other drug companies would do the same.

Medicaid covers 66 million Americans, and its net spending on prescription drugs grew by 46% between 2019 and 2024, costing taxpayers $46 billion dollars that year, according to the nonpartisan health policy research group KFF.

But turning Trump's promises into an operational program has been difficult. A year later, that effort has been plagued by uncertainties, delays and a general lack of transparency.

The pilot program relies on voluntary participation, by both drug companies and individual states, which means the number of drugs that will be discounted, and the number of patients who will have access to those prices, could be lower than what Trump originally promised.

Companies might not offer all of their drugs

Because the administration has refused to release the actual pharmaceutical agreements, it's not clear if participating companies have to offer Medicaid most-favored nation discounts for all their drugs.

NPR reached out to Pfizer and 16 other major drug companies that struck pricing deals with the Trump Administration over the past year. None would confirm to NPR that all of their drugs would be discounted in Medicaid, or say exactly which ones would be discounted.

Gilead told NPR it is working with states to make "selected covered products available," including drugs that treat hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV.

Sanofi said it would make the discounted pricing available for "certain wholly owned medicines that treat diabetes, cardiovascular and neurological conditions, and cancer."

Eli Lilly said it didn't have a final list but expected "many" of its medicines to be part of the pilot program at a discount. It said "any" of its "eligible covered outpatient drugs " could be selected — except for its GLP-1 medicines that are part of another pilot program in Medicare. 

Genentech would only say that "certain medicines" would be a part of the Medicaid program.

Two companies told NPR the terms of the Medicaid agreements were confidential.

The federal regulatory agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, wouldn't tell NPR how many of each company's drugs would get Medicaid discounts either.

This fact that companies aren't discounting all of their drugs as part of this pilot program is worrisome, said Dr. Thomas Hwang of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. It makes it easier for companies to game the system, he said

"Companies have every incentive to cherry-pick [for this program] the products for which they already give Medicaid the best discounts and for which the international price may not be that much lower," Hwang said. In other words, the companies might publicly get credit for discounts that are actually negligible.

"So there would be an incentive for companies to try to limit their liability and pay less to Medicaid," Hwang explained. "That gaming is what worries me about this backsliding over the past months — from the initial messaging that all drugs will be offered from participating manufacturers, and now to maybe only certain drugs will be offered."

The discounts will be offered through the states

Even if pharmaceutical companies do end up offering lower prices on a wide range of products, those new prices won't simply take effect nationwide. Instead, the discount program is being set up as a voluntary pilot. That means every state has to decide whether to opt-in, and then agree to certain conditions.

The pilot is called the Generous model. And the ramp-up has been slow. Deadlines for drug companies and states to sign up were originally set for the spring and summer, but they've been pushed back.

"It's always a bad sign when you keep pushing back your deadline," said Ameet Sarpatwari, a professor of population medicine at Harvard, and a drug policy researcher.

Why states might hesitate to commit

Even though the aim of the Generous pilot program is lower drug prices, a state that signs up could be exposing itself to some financial risks.

The federal government splits the cost of Medicaid with the states. In most states, Medicaid is the biggest part of the state budget, after education.

But unlike the federal government, states have to balance their budgets every year, according to Jack Rollins, who directs federal policy at the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

Even if a prescription drug is expected to save money on projected health care costs over many years, a state Medicaid program might not have enough budgeted to pay for every patient who needs the drug in a given year.

"Everything in Medicaid is going to be a trade-off," he said. "There's no silver bullet to the drug costs that we're navigating."

State budget managers already try to control Medicaid costs using various coverage rules for drugs with high price tags.

For example, some drugs might require a doctor to submit a "prior authorization" request to the state Medicaid program. Another rule is to require patients to try cheaper drugs first, to manage their condition, before trying a more expensive brand.

But in the Generous pilot program, states would have to toss out their own coverage criteria and accept a standardized system, if they want the negotiated price.

That would mean states that previously had some coverage limitations on certain drugs might be forced to offer unfettered access, says Sarpatwari.

"Then all of a sudden your state Medicaid plans might be spending a whole lot more because a whole lot more people might be getting the drugs," he says.

The deadline for states to apply was Sept. 10, and all 50 states applied, according to the White House. California officials previously told NPR they would apply, but as a means to see more details before committing. States have until September 30 to finalize and sign binding agreements, and according to CMS, 40 of them and Puerto Rico have done that.

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In the '90s, Guadalupe Rosales was a teenager in Los Angeles, part of the party crew scene. She remembers it as beautiful and empowering — but that’s not what she saw years later when she searched for stories about the scene online.

“I noticed that anything that was about Latino culture, '90s culture in L.A. specifically, [focused on] gang violence, everything that was mostly criminalizing,” Rosales said.

Rosales’ new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood, is her effort to correct the absence of personal histories of people who were a key part of that scene.

The book is part historical archive, and part personal narrative. It’s also a log of her efforts to bring the scene to life for people in the 21st century, using her training as an artist and a scholar, three decades after the scene’s heyday.

Street Beat magazine documented the California party crew scene in the '90s.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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Rosales's artistic work today is in demand. Her most recent solo show was "Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo" in 2025 at the Palm Springs Art Museum. The Broad acquired a piece by Rosales that it's including in a group show titled "Has the myth been shattered" opening in November.

Her pieces are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Hammer, LACMA and others. Rosales has taught at UCLA and UC Riverside.

She brings that sensibility to the book. “I really wanted to think about something that could live on hundreds of years from now, something that could be studied, something that could feel empowering, especially for women,” she said.

A recent photo of artist and scholar Guadalupe Rosales.

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Fabian Guerrero

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is about the 1990s party crew scene in L.A.

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The party crew scene in a nutshell

The ‘90s party crew scene was a multi-faceted movement that involved mostly Latino youth in Southern California. The center of the phenomenon was the party, which could take place in small backyards or large empty warehouses.

Photos from the scene.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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The music was variations of underground techno far from the pop mainstream. DJs played and mixed records on analog turntables, from people like DJ Irene and DJ Attack.

The scene also generated a lot of business activity. Partygoers paid entrance fees, and for alcohol, party organizers paid venues to hold the party and for the DJs to keep people dancing.

It was common to go out with the same group of people. The groups came up with names for their crews, such as Chicanos With Pride, Firme Hinas, Aztek Nation, Frek Show Tribe, Hispanics Causing Panic, and Playerz Cauzin’ Pleazure, among many, many others.

It was all covered by Street Beat, an independent publication loaded with photos of party crews and parties, while individuals honed graphic design styles for the fliers used to promote each party.

Fashion was another essential component of the scene.

Photos from Street Beat magazine in 1992 show the party crew scene in Southern California.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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In the book, Rosales describes the mesmerized feeling she had when she saw her first house party. She was about 13 years old and watched the young women show off their style through the window of her house in East L.A.

“They wore tank tops and baggy pants with puffed-out front pockets or overalls. Their sneakers — Adidas or Converse Chuck Taylors,” she said. “Two of the girls wore oversized shirts that hung loosely on their frames, and they had short hair like Demi Moore in the movie Ghost. The others wore their hair longer, styled in that wet, wavy look that was so popular, half pulled up with a clip. One took out a travel-size Aqua Net hairspray and mousse, then scrunched up her hair with one hand while spraying her hair with the other.”

The style and dance moves wowed her, she said, but what captivated her then, and to this day, was these young women’s confidence in who they were. It was magnetic, pointed her in a direction she wanted to go.

A photo of Guadalupe Rosales on her 15th birthday, her quinceañera.

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Guadalupe Rosales collection

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The stories

For photos, Rosales drew on her online archive Veteranas and Rucas, (which roughly translates as “experienced ladies and broads“) which she’d kept going through the years, a repository of her own photos from the scene, and other photos from the time, largely from women. She began the project while earning an MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A photo from Guadalupe Rosales' collection of 1990s ephemera.

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Credit: Guadalupe Rosales collection

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The book includes CD covers from popular bands at the time, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, as well as photos of youth at protests against Prop. 187, the anti-immigrant California ballot measure.

“Youth culture exists for everyone. It might look different depending on where you live and who you are. And for us, as teenagers, we're living in that moment,” she said.

In the book Rosales connects a student walkout at her high school in Montebello with memories of her mother taking her and her sister to protests years before.

“Being an adult, working on this book, being an artist is also about reflecting back and also learning a lot of things that I wasn't aware of,” she said.

East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is published by One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House and is available Sept. 8.