Jacob Margolis
covers science, with a focus on environmental stories and disasters, as well as investigations and accountability.
Published August 1, 2023 7:26 AM
The Desert Museum Palo Verde doesn't provide as much shade as other trees, but it sure is beautiful.
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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Topline:
L.A.’s urban forest was established during a time when water seemed plentiful and climate change was barely a footnote in scientific journals. Now, it’s being threatened.
The experiment: There’s an experimental plot at UC Riverside where trees are being tested for their resilience to hot and dry conditions so that we have a better idea of what might do well as climate change worsens.
The results: The tests are expected to continue another decade, but so far trees including the red push pistache, the desert willow and the honey mesquite appear to be doing well.
The failures: The Texas live oak’s not looking too good in scorching hot riverside, but is apparently doing well in test plots in the more temperate coastal areas.
On a recent triple digit summer day, I made my way out to a dusty field at UC Riverside, the research center of California’s citrus universe.
The UC Riverside Citrus Research Center is lined with row after row of citrus trees. It's also home to the Climate Ready Tree test plot.
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Jacob Margolis
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Row after row of tangerines, oranges and pomelos —11,000 in total — baked under a heat dome. Off in the distance, wildfire smoke passed in front of the San Bernardino Mountains, which had been covered in thick snow just a few months ago.
The dusty field is just one of the many plots that the university uses to trial new trees, grow budwood for distribution and come up with solutions for devastating problems like Huanglongbing, a bacteria driven greening disease that’s threatening trees world wide.
However, I was there to check out a block of 48 trees sitting along a fence that look nothing like the thousands of citrus around them. Inconsequential at first glance, you could easily imagine them along any road in Los Angeles, but that’s kind of the point. The trees are being tested to see if they can survive our hellishly hot and dry future driven by climate change.
Where, how and why these trees are being tested
There are 12 different types of trees and four of each at the UC Riverside test plot.
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Jacob Margolis
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It’s a collection of 12 different species — four of each — pulled from around the world and being run through the gauntlet by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Planted seven years ago, they were given supplemental water to help them get established, but since then they’ve had to survive on their own through record-setting heatwaves and drought years.
The Texas, or escarpment, live oak was struggling and nearly dead at the UC Riverside plot. It's reportedly doing better at a plot along the coast.
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Jacob Margolis
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The trees are being assessed for a number of factors including attractiveness, whether they provide good shade, how much work it takes to maintain them (less pruning means lower maintenance costs) and whether they can survive without much water.
The experiment is expected to run for at least 20 years, but visit the plot today and it's clear which trees are thriving. Surprisingly, just because a tree comes from a hot climate doesn’t mean it’s going to do well.
“What kind of choices are we going to be able to make in the future?,” said Natalie van Doorn, U.S. Forest Service scientist and co-creator of the experiment known as Climate Ready Trees. “Are we going to have enough water to make that decision that yes we want to keep watering our trees?”
If not, we’ve got to have viable candidates that we know will thrive and provide critical tree cover, which for residents, can be a matter of life or death.
Why L.A.'s hundreds of thousands of trees matter so much
Trees are an absolutely critical part of our infrastructure. They have a marked impact on human and ecosystem health.
The red push pistache had one of the densest canopies at the test site.
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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Trees can:
Help drop temperatures in urban areas by as much as 45 degrees
Reduce energy use
Suppress noise
Improve air quality
Sequester water
Help provide homes to all sorts of creatures, all according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Which is why any sort of major threat to the more than 700,000 street trees planted across the city of L.A. is of major concern, and that's what climate change is doing.
Much of our urban forest, as it’s known, was planted over the past 100 years as the region developed. As people migrated from other parts of the country they often wanted to plant the trees that they were familiar with, though that could mean species from wetter climates.
The sweetgum tree, whose spiky seed balls you’ve likely stepped on while walking through a park, is a decent example. It’s originally from the eastern area of the country and doesn’t love drought conditions, thriving in the moist soils of the Mississippi Delta. More than 25,000 of them are planted across the city, according to a tree inventory.
A red pistache
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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The flowers of the desert willow are a beautiful pink.
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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“I think in general, many of urban forests contain what I would call legacy plantings that occurred after World War II, when people were building homes and moving in and planting trees. And so those trees now, maybe 40, 50, 60 years old, they were planted when water was abundant. They've grown accustomed to having water and of course they're not necessarily as well adapted to hot dry conditions,“ said Greg McPherson, retired research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and one of the creators of the experiment.
We were long able to satisfy a broad range of moisture requirements because we imported and dumped all but unlimited gallons of water all over our landscapes, often in an effort to keep our lawns green.
That is until this past decade, when drought and water cuts became the norm.
What happens to water-stressed trees
The flowers of the maverick mesquite.
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Jacob Margolis
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The flowers of the desert museum palo verde.
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Water-stressed trees are more susceptible to pathogens and insect attacks, and are, predictably, more likely to die than healthy happy trees. One only need look to the Sierra Nevada to understand how bad things can get. More than 100 million trees have died over the past decade in part due to drought stress.
There are no clear mortality estimates for LA’s urban forest over the past decade, so we can’t say whether extreme conditions have led to more tree deaths in our area. And unless we had a widespread, granular tree tracking program, it’s going to be tough to determine why an individual tree is lost.
There are hundreds of thousands of street trees across the city, and urban trees face all sorts of challenges trees in our forests don’t. Yard tools can damage them and lead to the introduction of disease, poor pruning practices can lessen tree resilience and sometimes people just cut them down because they want to redo their yards.
That said, conditions are becoming more challenging for our urban forest and we could be on the path to greater die off as a result. Longer, more sustained droughts are becoming more common, meaning less water for irrigated landscapes, and more extreme heat days mean trees require more water to survive.
While this palo blanco, originally from northern Mexico, was looking OK, another one was struggling substantially.
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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Odds are we haven’t seen the worst of it. Even though we’ve had a handful of water cuts over the past decade, lawns are still green and trees still often getting supplemental irrigation.
Given how bad cuts got before this wet year, it’s easy to imagine a point where outdoor watering is limited to the point that lawns start to finally die off and the trees that rely on that same supplemental water start to die too.
“The roots of those trees are near the surface because turf is irrigated in frequent, but not heavy doses. So the water stays in the upper surface of the soil and that’s where the roots are,” McPherson said.
Depending on the variety, trees can take decades to become established and provide meaningful shade. If we’re planting something today with the expectation that it’ll survive in the lawn-less future we’re charging towards, it’s important to find species that can thrive on minimal supplemental inputs.
Our need for more resilient trees
McPherson’s efforts to find what the experiment is calling ‘climate-ready trees’ began about two decades ago, when he recognized what the existential threat of warming trends could mean for our urban forests.
The Desert Museum Palo Verde doesn't provide as much shade as the other trees, but it's nice to look at and likes hot weather.
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Jacob Margolis
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“I began in 1999 when I got a 18 wheeler full of desert trees from Arizona shipped up and planted them all around Sacramento and Davis, and really started evaluating their performance,” said McPherson.
Some, like the Palo Verde, even though it can thrive in hot climates, struggled.
“It just grew so fast that the top would outgrow the roots and it would blow over in our wind,” he said. “Some of them worked, some didn’t. But that led to the idea that we need to evaluate more species”
The rosewood tree had a sizable canopy that provided good shade.
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In 2015 he and van Doorn got a grant to begin trialing trees at a test site at UC Davis, and eventually along the coast in Irvine, and in the scorching hot environment of Riverside.
So which trees have been thriving?
Though the experiment still has a number of years to go, I made the trip to the Riverside plot because out of the two Southern California plots, I wanted to see which trees were doing the best in the most extreme conditions.
Many were thriving, but three stood out because they looked healthy, cast wonderful shade and were quite attractive. They’d be wonderful along any street.
The Red Push Pistache was the first to catch my eye in part because it had one of the thickest canopies and beautiful leaves. It’s originally from Arizona.
The red push pistache seemed to be thriving.
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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The canopy of the rosewood, originally from India, rivaled the pistache and the Desert Willow, native to the southwest, put out gorgeous pink flowers.
A rosewood tree.
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Jacob Margolis
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The desert willow was thriving at the test plot.
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The Honey Mesquite, also native to the southwest, was covered in bright yellow flowers and teaming with so many bees that the whole tree appeared to vibrate.
The honey mesquite can be invasive in some environments.
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The ghost gum, a type of eucalyptus from Australia was also well established. However, because of their oil content eucalyptus tend to burn violently in wildfires. Maybe not the best choice for fire prone locations. And the tecate cypress is native to the region and looks like it could be trimmed into a hedge. It's struggled a bit at the plot.
The ghost gum is a type of eucalyptus from Australia.
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The Tecate Cypress is native to Southern California and could work well in a hedge.
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Then there were the ones that appeared to need more maintenance, like the Palo Verde, which I see planted in drought tolerant landscapes across the area. It can thrive in hot conditions, and with a bit of pruning it might’ve looked better. Problem is it didn’t provide much shade.
And, to me, the Texas Live Oak looked to be an outright failure, as they were close to dead. It's reportedly done better in cooler conditions at the team's other test site in Irvine.
A desert museum Palo Verde
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Jacob Margolis
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LAist
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A live oak
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Go see the trees yourself
Each tree in the private research plot has a counterpart located in parks across the region, in an effort to help determine how they do when they’re not babied.
“If you were looking at reference versus park sites, the reference sites are doing better as far as survivorship and growth. In the park sites there just is a lot of variability,” said van Doorn.
Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published August 6, 2026 1:17 PM
LAUSD's bus fleet now includes 250 electric buses. The vehicles cost about $420,000 each and are funded largely by state and federal dollars, said Daniel Kang, LAUSD's transportation director.
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Mariana Dale
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The number of Los Angeles Unified students regularly taking the bus to school has increased by about 10% over the last two years, a change prompted in part by families concerned about federal immigration enforcement. On Thursday, district leaders said buses have room for even more riders.
The backstory: During the last school year, an average of 16,800 students rode the bus each day, up from 15,300 students in the 2023-2024 school year. Federal law requires schools to provide transportation for some students with disabilities. The district also prioritizes students in specific academic programs and those with concerns about safety.
What’s new this school year? Nearly three-quarters of the district’s 1,300 buses now run on alternative fuel, including a record-high 250 electric vehicles, according to Daniel Kang, LAUSD’s transportation director. The vast majority of the fleet now has Wi-Fi and technology that allows families to track their students’ bus in real time.
“A student's ability to arrive to school safely and reliably should never depend on a family's income, where they live, or whether they have access to a car,” said Board Vice President Rocío Rivas.
Last year, the district provided rides to 1,000 students whose families worried about immigration enforcement, Kang has said.
Request a ride: Any family can request a bus ride, but the district sets routes based on demand. The Parent Portal app is the best way to request a ride, Kang said. Parents can also ask school staff, including the principal, or counselors, or call the district’s resource hotline at (213)-443-1300.
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed significant changes to Head Start, the nation's early education program for children from low-income families. The move would diminish the program's federal standards and give states and parents more control.
About Head Start: The program not only provides preschool and childcare, but also meals and support services for qualifying families. It now serves more than 700,000 kids each year from birth to age 5. Since its launch in 1965, the $12 billion HHS program has, for the most part, enjoyed bipartisan support. But in recent years, some conservatives have criticized Head Start, saying it wastes money and fails to have a lasting impact on students.
Why are changes being made?: The new proposal would limit the amount of money Head Start centers can spend on administrative overhead, from a 15% cap to 5%. This change should save the government $2.2 billion, which it plans to reinvest in the program. To get those costs down, the administration said it proposes cutting regulations and "compliance-driven activities," according to a press release. Similarly, they are shifting decisions about several standards — such as student-teacher ratios, education requirements, background checks and transportation practices — back to states.
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed significant changes to Head Start, the nation's early education program for children from low-income families. The move would diminish the program's federal standards and give states and parents more control.
"We have 1,600 Head Start providers across the country," Alex Adams, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' assistant secretary for family support, said in a call with reporters. "And one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington cannot fully account for the realities facing these 1,600 grantees."
Head Start not only provides preschool and childcare, but also meals and support services for qualifying families. It now serves more than 700,000 kids each year from birth to age 5.
Since its launch in 1965, the $12 billion HHS program has, for the most part, enjoyed bipartisan support. Lawmakers often cite it as a success — including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the call with reporters announcing these changes. But in recent years, some conservatives have criticized Head Start, saying it wastes money and fails to have a lasting impact on students.
Aiming to cut costs
The new proposal would limit the amount of money Head Start centers can spend on administrative overhead, from a 15% cap to 5%. This change should save the government $2.2 billion, Adams said, which it plans to reinvest in the program. The goal is to create 200,000 more spots for children, he said.
To get those costs down, the administration said it proposes cutting regulations and "compliance-driven activities," according to a press release. Similarly, they are shifting decisions about several standards — such as student-teacher ratios, education requirements, background checks and transportation practices — back to states.
Childcare providers are not sold on the proposal.
"If we look at the previous actions of the administration, what they have done is not in favor of expanding the program," said Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, senior vice president with Start Early, an Illinois-based Head Start partner.
"Is it enough to just bring kids in the door if we're not actually giving kids and families what they need?"
Sanchez Fuentes said administrative costs are not only things like payroll and day-to-day operations, but also help fill gaps in care. "If you, for example, have children with disabilities you [can use] some of those funds to pay for additional special services or staff with specialties who could come in and support kids."
The administration's proposal also says parents are children's primary teachers and seeks to bring in more parent opinions on "structure and curriculum" into the classrooms and emphasizes nutrition and exercise.
Loosening the standards
Head Start's current standards are laid out in a detailed 133-page guide. The manual is used not only by the program's centers, but also by many unaffiliated private childcare centers across the country.
These standards include safety guidelines, spell out who is eligible for Head Start and provide detailed rules — such as the requirement that kids in the program brush their teeth once daily with fluoride toothpaste.
Erica Phillips, the executive director for the National Association for Family Child Care, said about 10% of her members are Early Head Start childcare partners, while the rest are home-based providers around the country.
"The Head Start performance standards were a consistent … evidence-based set of standards," she said. "It can be helpful to have a nationally recognized benchmark."
Phillips said her organization will be on the lookout for variations across states. She said she worries "quality is now dependent on your ZIP code or on your geography."
The Trump administration sees it differently.
"Flexibility is permission. It's not a mandate," Adams said. "The opportunity for these programs to make a different decision does not necessarily mean they must make a different decision."
The changes did not come as a complete surprise: The conservative Heritage Foundation has long criticized the program, saying it "doesn't work." In Project 2025, the foundation's policy blueprint that the Trump administration has taken many cues from, the message is clear — eliminate Head Start.
Advocates see what they characterize as the erosion of quality and decrease in standards as the first step in dismantling the program.
A long runway
Thursday's announcement came in the form of a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM. It kicks off a lengthy, formalized process of public comment and talks with stakeholders. It could be six months to a year before any new standards take effect.
"I just really want folks to know Head Start is open," said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the National Head Start Association (NHSA), a nonprofit that advocates for the program. "The quality of Head Start children and families truly comes from the people that are running Head Start programs. Those folks are going to be the same. They're going to be able to do that."
The administration says the NPRM will be published in the Federal Register on Friday and be open to public comment for 60 days.
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Destiny Torres
covers all things SoCal, from breaking news to local government, with a focus on Orange County.
Published August 6, 2026 12:55 PM
A recent report from Feeding America shows that food insecurity increased year over year between 2022 and 2024.
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Hart Van Denburg
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CPR News
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Topline:
More children in Orange County experienced food insecurity in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to a new report from Feeding America.
What we know: About 1 in 8 O.C. residents experienced food insecurity in 2024 — up 6% from 2023. And 27% more children were food insecure.
Is this new? Previous reports show an upward trend in Orange County’s food insecurity.
Read on … for what experts say could be causing the increase in hunger.
A recent report from Feeding America shows food insecurity increased year over year between 2022 and 2024. Advocates say today’s reality could be much worse.
The report published last week showed that about 1 in 6 kids in Orange County experienced food insecurity in 2024 — that’s up 27% from the year before.
For some advocates, the report published last week was not surprising.
“With the SNAP benefits being reduced and the persistent inflation, particularly food inflation and energy inflation, and the lack of wages keeping up, something's got to give,” LaVal Brewer, president and CEO at South County Outreach, said.
Experts say the snapshot of food insecurity in Orange County could tell us more about today’s needs.
Who else did the report capture?
Overall, 1 in 8 O.C. residents were food insecure in 2024 — up 6% from the year before.
The problem also disproportionately affected communities of color. According to the report, 29% of Black residents and 18% of Latinos in Orange County experienced food insecurity.
Food insecurity is not knowing where your next meal will come from. A lot of factors can lead to this, like low or inconsistent income, access to nutritious foods and the cost of living.
Claudia Bonilla Keller, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, told LAist some people might not doubt that they’ll have access to food, but they might not know what they’re having for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
What does this report tell us about today?
The findings from this report were recorded in 2024, before the federal government made changes to food programs, like SNAP. Experts say food insecurity today is likely much worse and worsening.
“Since the sunsetting of the COVID-era benefits, the onset of inflation and the high price of fuel, and now changes to the safety net, what we've seen is a constant downward,” Keller said.
The report is compiled annually using data from national survey responses, local unemployment rates, and median incomes across all U.S. counties.
What to know about hunger
Keller said food insecurity ebbs and flows throughout the year, but spikes in the summer.
“But for families with children, we know that it spikes in the summer, also at the end of the year, for the long holiday breaks when students lose access to federally reimbursed meals,” Keller said. “Those meals can be two, even three, that families depend on to feed their kids.”
Bill Bracken is the founder and executive director of Bracken’s Kitchen — a nonprofit that specializes in food rescue, culinary training and feeding the community.
In the summer, he said, children suffer the most, and the same can be said for some college students.
“We just happened to walk past a student who saw our logo on our uniforms and stopped and thanked us so much because he recognized the logo from the meals he gets from the (UCI) Food Hub,” Bracken said. “He's so grateful and just happy that we're able to provide something that he can pop in the microwave and eat right away.”
Nevertheless, like hunger, food waste is also at an all-time high.
“That's the sad part,” Bracken told LAist. “With all the need, we're still wasting more food than ever before. We're going to rescue more food this year than we ever have, and we'll produce more meals than we ever have.”
When information is collected again, Brewer said, the numbers will be significantly worse, especially for those who no longer qualify for food benefits.
“Those people who were not spending money on food because they were receiving a benefit from the federal government, from our tax dollars, no longer have that support,” Brewer said. “It's not like those people just suddenly earned more money to be able to cover their food costs.”
Rent, mortgage, car notes, and child care are non-negotiables, Brewer added, “so you're going to be food insecure because that's something you can actually manage and control.”
Orange County residents can get support by dialing 211 for food resources and other services. 211 OC also has a map of all food resources in the county.
State, federal cuts could push CA's uninsured rate
By Kristen Hwang | CalMatters
Published August 6, 2026 11:49 AM
Hopeton Leahong, a family nurse practitioner, examines Ramonte Means at St. John's Community Health's Avalon Clinic in Los Angeles on Feb. 7.
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Jules Hotz
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CalMatters
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Topline:
State and federal cuts could push California's uninsured rate to nearly 15% by 2030 — hitting immigrants and low-income families hardest.
The backstory: Facing budget shortfalls and new federal restrictions, state leaders have begun rolling back the coverage system they built. Analysis at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research projects California’s uninsured rate could nearly double, to almost 15%, by 2030.
Why it matters: An estimated 2.2 million people could lose insurance over the next four years from combined state and federal cuts, the researchers found. The losses will fall hardest on undocumented immigrants and low-income Californians, with the uninsured rate more than doubling among Black and Asian Californians. The southern part of the state will bear the brunt, driven by its larger share of low-income and immigrant residents.
Read on ... for more on what this means for Californians.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Two years ago, California hit a milestone decades in the making: Nearly every person in the state qualified for health insurance, regardless of immigration status and income, pushing the state’s insured rate to a record 95%. Now that progress is unravelling.
Facing budget shortfalls and new federal restrictions, state leaders have begun rolling back the coverage system they built. Analysis at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research projects California's uninsured rate could nearly double, to almost 15%, by 2030.
“I knew it was going to be bad, but seeing that doubling was shocking to me,” said Miranda Dietz, director of the labor center’s healthcare program.
An estimated 2.2 million people could lose insurance over the next four years from combined state and federal cuts, the researchers found. The losses will fall hardest on undocumented immigrants and low-income Californians, with the uninsured rate more than doubling among Black and Asian Californians. The southern part of the state will bear the brunt, driven by its larger share of low-income and immigrant residents.
Many Californians remember how difficult it was to get healthcare before the state expanded and improved insurance options.
In 2008, Kandi Hill had just given birth to her third child. When she started throwing up and experiencing irregular menstrual cycles with heavy bleeding, she struggled to find a doctor who would run any tests other than an STD panel. In a matter of months, she died from stage four cervical cancer. She was 31.
Cervical cancer has a 91% five-year survival rate if caught and treated early, according to the National Cancer Institute, but back then the Medi-Cal system was bare bones, and doctors didn’t seem to take poor Black patients seriously, said her husband, Ramonte Means.
Means was left to raise two small children and an infant alone. He has been the sole provider for his family ever since, often working part-time and frequently without insurance, stitching together multiple jobs — janitorial work, customer service, job coaching — to make ends meet. Usually, Means said, his employers won’t give him full-time hours so that they don’t have to provide benefits. With multiple part-time jobs, he tries to keep his income low enough to qualify for Medi-Cal and ensure his kids stay covered too. He'd rather get insurance through an employer, but he can't afford a plan out-of-pocket.
“None of us want anything for free. I work two jobs. My kids go to school,” Means said. “We’re just asking for some dignity.”
Today’s Medi-Cal isn’t perfect, Means says, but it’s much better than when his wife died — patients have more benefits and can see specialists.
“I truly believe if all this happened now, she’d have been fine,” Means said. “The system failed my kids more than anything — failed the whole family.”
Millions gain coverage
When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, California quickly expanded its Medicaid program. Previously, the program was reserved for women and children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Low-income adults were excluded unless they had dependent children. The law allowed California to open enrollment to childless adults and raised the income limit to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $22,000 for an individual today.
More than 5 million Californians gained coverage, including Means, who had occasionally earned too much money before the change.
“So 138% poverty is not a lot of money in terms of increasing income, but when you talk about how many people actually become eligible, it has a significant impact,” said Nadereh Pourat, associate director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
An additional 1.7 million middle-income Californians bought insurance through the commercial Affordable Care Act marketplace known as Covered California.
“That’s a huge policy change,” said Rachel Linn Gish, spokesperson for Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group. “Millions and millions and millions of Californians covered in 10 years. No other state can say that.”
Still, one major group remained uninsured: undocumented immigrants. They account for about 2.3 million residents, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Newsom: The healthcare governor
Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on a promise to bring single-payer healthcare to the state. He pivoted to expanding access within the existing system — transforming Medi-Cal with new benefits and a focus on high-quality primary care.
The Democratic governor’s administration also launched the state’s second-largest coverage expansion, phasing in Medi-Cal eligibility for low-income undocumented adults until all adults and children qualified in 2024.
“We’re making sure that universal access to healthcare coverage becomes a reality here in California,” Newsom said in 2022 when the state allowed undocumented seniors to enroll in Medi-Cal.
Gov. Gavin Newsom listens as former state Sen. Richard Pan speaks about the need to make insulin available to everyone for $30 during the Tour of the State of California at Kaiser Permanente’s Central Refill Pharmacy in Downey on March 18, 2023.
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Keith Birmingham
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At its peak, the state-funded expansion covered 1.4 million adults and 217,000 children and cost more than $10 billion a year.
Republican lawmakers have sharply criticized that price tag, and increasingly, so have moderate Democrats.
Total Medi-Cal spending has more than doubled since Newsom took office in 2019, growing from about $96 billion to $217 billion this year. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office attributes most of that growth to higher spending per recipient — added benefits, higher drug prices and some demographic changes — rather than enrollment alone. People are seeing doctors more, and each visit is more expensive.
Medi-Cal cuts loom
Orlando and Lourdes are immigrants from El Salvador. CalMatters is using only their middle names because they fear being identified by immigration officials. Orlando has lived in Los Angeles for more than 20 years and works in construction with a work permit. Lourdes manages a store and is undocumented.
Recent federal immigration raids have already upended their lives. They’ve had to counsel their 6-year-old daughter that there are “good police” and “bad police.” Now Lourdes, who needs radiation therapy for cancer, worries about losing her Medi-Cal insurance.
To slow Medi-Cal’s growth, the state froze enrollment for undocumented adults starting in January; roughly 86,000 fewer undocumented immigrants are covered.
Starting next summer, immigrants without legal status will lose dental benefits and face new monthly premiums. These and cuts to coverage for some legal immigrants are expected to push about 800,000 people off insurance, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
“We pay taxes every year. We deserve to have health insurance,” Orlando said.
Services have also been curtailed more broadly. Last year, the state dropped coverage of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic for people who are simply overweight, keeping them only for more serious diagnoses like diabetes. This year, lawmakers scaled back wraparound services, including case management and medical meal-delivery services for low-income patients. They also reinstated a wealth test that caps how much savings an enrollee can have, regardless of their income, which advocates say punishes people for building a financial cushion.
The cuts have stirred outcry from lawmakers on the left, some of whom want the state to raise revenue through corporate taxes or other means rather than shrink Medi-Cal.
Left to right, Vanesa Duran, lead care manager at St. John’s Community Health, talks with Patient Maria Gomez, at a group home in Compton on Feb. 6, 2026.
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Jules Hotz
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CalMatters
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Grace Calderon, HIV testing counselor and community health worker for St. John’s Community Health, takes a blood sample from a patient at a St. John’s Community Health mobile clinic in Los Angeles on Feb. 6, 2026.
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Jules Hotz
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CalMatters
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Bukola Olusanya, regional medical director for St. John’s Community Health, inside a mobile clinic van parked in Los Angeles on Feb. 6, 2026.
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CalMatters
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Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach and chair of the Latino Caucus, said she pressed Newsom and his team twice to save benefits for undocumented people.
“I said this is legacy work for you, and I don’t want you to ever forget that,” Gonzalez said. “For this to happen was just really surprising.”
Linn Gish credited Newsom with supporting healthcare access "from day one" but called the recent rollbacks disappointing: “We hoped he would be a champion until the end.”
Newsom’s office declined an interview request. In a statement, the Department of Health Care Services emphasized that the Legislature voted to approve the budget that included the cuts and said Newsom remains committed to “responsibly” supporting universal coverage.
“Gov. Newsom has consistently highlighted California’s coverage gains as central to his broader commitment to universal healthcare coverage and a more inclusive safety net,” the statement said.
Federal challenges
Many Democrats, Newsom chief among them, blame President Donald Trump, whose One Big Beautiful Bill tax reform law rewrote Medi-Cal rules and cut federal funding to California. The law also let enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire, contributing to a 140,000-person drop in Covered California enrollment. State officials estimate the Medi-Cal program could lose more than $30 billion annually once federal changes fully take effect in 2027.
“All it takes is one piece of lost mail and all of a sudden you lose coverage … and things can snowball,” said Dylan Roby, a health policy researcher and professor at UC Irvine.
Those losses won’t be spread evenly. Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California could see the steepest declines, according to the Labor Center, which also projects that Latino Californians will lose coverage faster than other groups.
Linnea Koopmans, CEO of Local Health Plans of California, which represents Medi-Cal insurers, said the combined cuts will create a two-tiered system of haves and have-nots.
“There’s a lot at stake and a lot to be lost,” Koopmans said.
But some Republican lawmakers counter that blaming Washington, D.C. is disingenuous. California has run deficits for four straight years, predating most federal restrictions, which haven’t even taken effect yet.
Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican from Roseville and vice chair of the budget committee, put the current impact of federal healthcare restrictions at $3 billion out of a $351 billion state budget.
“It’s difficult (to argue) that the woes are being caused by the federal government,” Niello said, calling the state’s spending problem structural. Revenues have grown, but spending has grown faster.
The current budget leaves the toughest healthcare decisions to the next governor.
“Gov. Newsom says he solved the deficit for the next governor. He hasn’t,” Niello said.
