The Brief

In Bloomington, a small community of some 24,000 people in unincorporated San Bernardino County, people ride horses next to big rig trucks rushing to warehouses. Solar panels adorn the roofs of homes next to truck yards — the panels sometimes paid for by warehouse developers.

Like so much of Southern California, Bloomington is a place of contrasts.

Over the last 15 years or so, this once-rural town that’s bordered by the cities of Fontana, Rialto and Jurupa Valley has been surrounded by warehouses being built to support our online shopping habits and the supply chain corridor from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. That pipeline is one of the largest sources of the Southland’s health-harming and planet-heating pollution.

A partially demolished home in Bloomington, where a 213-acre warehouse project is being developed.

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And now, 117 homes and small ranches in Bloomington are being demolished to make way for yet another warehouse — the largest one yet in the community. The project will bring more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space built by Orange County company Howard Industrial Partners. The project is expected to bring more than 1,000 additional big rig truck trips per day.

After years of debate, San Bernardino County supervisors unanimously approved the project in 2022. Today, everyone in the development’s way — the non-numbered streets of Bloomington — have been bought out and homes have already been demolished.

The project was able to happen because back in 2017, the county designated the non-numbered streets of Bloomington as a potential area for re-zoning and development to boost tax revenue to fund more services for the community.

Construction progress has now stalled due to a lawsuit against the project brought by environmental justice groups. (County Supervisor Joe Baca, who represents Bloomington, declined an interview with LAist due to the ongoing litigation).

But those who want to stay in Bloomington worry the warehouse will mean the end of their small town and rural lifestyle. Others say the project is necessary to get badly needed infrastructure improvements.

The site of the future warehouse project, which will bring more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space to Bloomington.

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A changing community

I meet Margaret Razo and her husband Rafael at a park that will be right across the street from the new warehouse project and next door to another warehouse being developed in Jurupa Valley.

The 54-year-old grew up in Bloomington and has watched the community transform.

“Bloomington was so pretty, so beautiful,” Razo said. “And, just driving over here now, it's awful. All the houses are torn down. Childhood homes of our friends. I almost want to cry thinking about how much Bloomington has changed.”

Rafael and Margaret Razo live in a house near the new warehouse development in Bloomington. They regularly receive calls from developers asking if they want to sell.

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When she was a kid, the road in front of her family’s house was dirt. Her little brother and sister played Little League at the park we’re sitting at. The park has changed too … but for the better, thanks to recent donations the county received to improve the park, with a new skate park, children’s play structure and well-kept grass. She loves seeing people ride horses around town.

The warehouse project will be across the street from a park and baseball field. Another warehouse being developed in neighboring Jurupa Valley is also being developed just west of the field.

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“We just never left Bloomington because we loved it,” Razo said. “And it's the first time in my whole entire life that I've ever thought maybe it's time to leave. Because I feel like we're being pushed out by industry.”

Though they’re not within the bounds of this project — they live in the numbered streets of Bloomington — they’re close to it, and Razo said calls from warehouse developers offering to buy the home she and her husband live in are constant.

“It just takes one person to sell,” said Rafael.

But Razo said she can’t blame others for selling.

“My cousin is a teacher at Colton High School and she said she was talking to someone and the guy told her, ‘You know, if they're offering me a million dollars for my house, and I'm going to be able to send my kids to college now, how can I say no to that?’” Razo said.

“At first I was mad at the people who were accepting the money and leaving Bloomington because I'm like, ‘Oh, they don't really love Bloomington,’” Razo continued. “How can you blame them? These big old companies are coming in and just throwing money at people and it's such a poor community. And it just keeps chipping away and chipping away more at Bloomington.”

For some people, the buyouts, which have all been at or above fair market value, were welcome. I spoke to one Bloomington resident who lives with his grandmother across from the construction site — he declined to share his name, but said they want to move to Yucaipa due to rising crime in Bloomington and his grandmother’s desire to be in a more rural area. He said they were excited to be in conversation with the developer for a generous buyout, but those discussions have now halted due to the lawsuit.

Razo said if they left, she doesn’t know where they’d go. After all, Bloomington is home. She raised her own children here, her siblings still live here, and her parents are buried here.

“If they start chipping away at my neighborhood, I don't know,” Razo said. “We're gonna be the little 'Up' house [referring to the movie “Up”]. I don't want to leave, but I feel like they're pushing me out. There's going to be nothing left of the character of Bloomington, the place that we grew up in, it's just going to be all gone.”

A rural lifestyle coming to an end

I run into Felipe Ortiz and his daughter Fatima while he’s picking her up from Bloomington High School, which is across the street from the future warehouse project. He, his wife and three kids rent a house in the path of the warehouse. One day they were startled by a bulldozer destroying palm trees Ortiz had planted and fencing on the property. Their landlord didn’t tell them that he’d sold the house to the developer.

Felipe Ortiz shows a photo of his children, who grew up riding horses.

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Felipe Ortiz and daughter Fatima outside Bloomington High School. Ortiz and his family are currently looking for somewhere else to live after their landlord sold the house they rent to a warehouse developer.

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Like many people in the area, they own horses, goats and other livestock and thought Bloomington was a place where they could maintain their rural lifestyle and connection to their Mexican roots. Now, they don’t know what they’ll do.

“It’s hard that we can't find anywhere to go because we don't have the money to buy a house,” Ortiz said in Spanish. “I have to protect my family and my animals.”

15-year-old Fatima said the whole experience has been so stressful she’s had trouble focusing in school.

“I be seeing machines going through, passing by my house, and I be getting scared,” she said. “And then sometimes I get the feeling of not wanting to come to school. Even if I do, I be thinking about the house instead of thinking about my subjects at school.”

Across the street from where I talk with the Ortiz’s, I meet 15-year-old Jose Sanchez and 17-year-old Francisco Plascencia riding their horses, something they do every day. They grew up riding, and even in their short lives they’ve seen other warehouse projects already change the community — more big rig trucks driving the roads, and less open space to ride their horses.

“I grew up here in Bloomington so seeing everything go away … it kind of hurts me,” said Sanchez.

For now, he said, they’ll have to appreciate riding their horses around town as much as they can.

“Just enjoy what we have right now,” Sanchez said. “Until the time comes, if they do end up buying our property, it is what it is.”

Jose Sanchez, left, and Francisco Plascenscia grew up riding horses in Bloomington and have seen the community become more industrial over the years.

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A necessary project? 

Others in the community say the project is desperately needed.

Like many unincorporated areas, Bloomington has a lack of basic infrastructure, such as sidewalks, sewage lines and flood control. That’s led to persistent flooding issues and dangerous traffic conditions. Many community members also worry about public safety with little law enforcement dedicated to the area.

“The residents of Bloomington need better streets, better schools, good paying jobs and law and order,” said Irma Hansel, who's lived in Bloomington for more than 40 years, at the 2022 supervisor’s meeting when the project was approved. “We believe that the Bloomington project is a way to help to achieve prosperity and a better future for the residents of Bloomington.”

“Personally, my family and I would love to go one winter without our house flooding or having a river that builds up in my backyard, [taking] my 68-year-old mom along with it when she tried to redirect the water without success,” said resident Raquel Diaz at that same meeting.

To address the flooding issues, traffic conditions, and public safety concerns, the developer has promised to spend:

• $39 million for 2.2 miles of street improvements like sidewalks and traffic signals (some of those street improvements will also support an increase in truck traffic expected from the project).
• $30 million to build a 13-acre drainage basin and 2 miles of storm drains 
• More than $1 million in tax revenue per year will go to a fund for Bloomington to spend on public safety, code enforcement and parks. $6.4 million in one-time funding will go to a Bloomington-specific infrastructure fund. 
• $45 million for a brand new elementary school because the old one is right next to the project
• 198 apartment units will be built in another part of Bloomington to make up for the homes destroyed and comply with California's housing law. 

The project is also expected to generate more than 3,200 permanent local jobs and some 5,450 union construction jobs, as well as $500 million in tax revenue for the county over 30 years.

A FedEx truck drives past a trucking terminal in Bloomington. The new "Bloomington Business Park" isn't the first warehouse development to come to Bloomington, but it's the largest.

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A spokesperson for the developer said in a statement to LAist that the property will be landscaped with mature trees and drought-tolerant plants and that electric charging infrastructure will be installed to power electric forklifts and other heavy duty electric equipment onsite.

“If you're going to get infrastructure improvements, it's going to come out of one of two sets of hands — it's either going to come out of the business and development community," said Gary Grossich, a 45-year Bloomington resident, "or it's going to come from the residents. The residents don’t have that kind of money."

Meaning, taxes. Unincorporated areas often lack basic infrastructure because they have less tax revenue, and the revenue that does exist is stretched across an entire county.

Truck yards like this one are common in Bloomington.

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“So unfortunately — you can maybe call it a trade-off — for these types of infrastructure improvements that the community needs, we have to rely on the development community to bring in these types of projects because that's the only thing that's going to pencil out for that type of a huge, tens of millions of dollars of investment in a community,” Grossich said.

Grossich owns a pizza restaurant in neighboring Colton and has lived in Bloomington for 45 years. His home is near the development.

Grossich said he’s been against past warehouse projects in the community, but he thinks this one is the gold standard and will bring more benefit than harm.

Bloomington resident Gary Grossich stands outside his restaurant in Colton. He believes the warehouse project will bring more benefit than harm to Bloomington.

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A dream of becoming a city that can keep warehouses out

Grossich serves on the Bloomington Municipal Advisory Committee, or MAC, a non-voting group of community members that liaison between the community and county supervisors.

Gary Grossich owns a pizza shop in Colton, where he grew up, and moved to Bloomington 45 years ago after purchasing his dream home with his wife.

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He says that’s part of the problem — because Bloomington is unincorporated it has too little political representation. He worries that if Fontana and Rialto continue to build warehouses on Bloomington’s borders — multiple projects are planned, with land already leveled to make way for them — those cities will be able to annex Bloomington and turn all of it into warehousing space.

“The idea is that we want people that live in Bloomington to make these decisions, not people from outside,” Grossich said. “For Bloomington to ever get to the point where we can make our own decisions, it is going to be necessary to find funding. It was never the intention of the MAC to make Bloomington into any type of a warehouse central or anything like that. As a matter of fact, we wanted to preclude that from happening.”

Ultimately, he sees this project as a necessary step for Bloomington to generate enough revenue to become its own city, so it can ideally elect people from the community who will keep further warehouse development out.

He envisions a city that has some warehouses, but also has a thriving downtown corridor full of local businesses, restaurants and homes.

“Each individual project, you gotta weigh the pros and cons,” Grossich said. “All projects have impacts, no matter what it is. You can build a church, it's gonna have impacts. The question really is, can you mitigate the impacts to beyond a significant level.”

The foundation of a home demolished where the future warehouse project is planned.

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A dangerous precedent?  

Joaquin Castillejos, an organizer with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, worries that relying on warehouse development for necessary infrastructure improvements in unincorporated areas sets a dangerous precedent, and that there are not enough protections in place now to prevent future warehouse expansion into the numbered streets of Bloomington.

He said it’s up to the county to find the needed funding for building safe infrastructure without approving a project that brings more heavy truck traffic and pollution near residential areas, schools and a park.

People walk along a residential street. The green fencing on the right is where part of the warehouse development will be. The developer purchased a palm tree nursery.

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“The county has a responsibility to the residents of Bloomington to keep up with the infrastructure, to fix our streets and to make sure that it's a livable area,” he said.

The county said in a statement to LAist that it's made "significant investments" in Bloomington in recent years, including street improvements, an affordable housing project, a sewer installation on Valley Boulevard, a new park and additional dedicated sheriff's deputies to the area, among other things.

"There are challenges throughout the County, as with any government agency, to meet all the needs with funding not being unlimited," the statement to LAist read. "However the County has done well toward investing in Bloomington."

Castillejos said this new warehouse project is different from others for its scale and because the county rezoned a residential area to industrial to make way for the warehouse project. Unincorporated areas in the Inland Empire such as Bloomington have been some of the few places left in a state with rising housing costs where people, like Castillejos’ family, can still afford to buy their own homes.

Castillejos grew up in Bloomington after his family moved there from an apartment in south L.A. to achieve their dream of buying a house in the early 2000s. He lives in Pomona now, but his parents still live in Bloomington, two blocks from another large warehouse project that was built in neighboring Fontana.

Warehouses dominate the Inland Empire

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“There's nothing that they can say to justify creating an industrial zone in the middle of a residential area, but that's exactly what they did,” he said. “This project will just be the beginning of more types of developments like this, where they target residential areas in other unincorporated areas in the county.”

Though homes have already been demolished, Castillejos hopes the current lawsuit against the project at least sends a message to future warehouse developers.

“I'm hoping that this lawsuit shows all other developers that if you want to do a project like this,” he said, “there's going to be consequences.”

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Nov. 21, 2025.

Rocío Jimenez of East Los Angeles beamed with pride watching her 13-year-old daughter perform at one of LA’s most iconic venues, the Hollywood Bowl.

With fellow members of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, or YOLA, she sang “Hasta la Raíz,” alongside Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“It was incredible to see this blend of cultures, classical music and Latino composers,” Jimenez said of the 2024 performance. “It’s great to see us in those spaces.” Seeing an artist like Lafourcade work with YOLA students is proof, she said, “that there are ways and paths to achieve greatness.”

Now, the YOLA program at Esteban E. Torres High School, which was part of the performance, is facing cuts.

This week, parents and students learned that the LA Phil is reducing programming at YOLA’s Torres site, according to an email sent to parents. Programming will take place through Dec. 12, the email notes, adding that orchestra rehearsals for currently enrolled YOLA students will take place twice per week in January. “We will help place interested students at other YOLA programs,” the email reads. Parents say cuts at Torres involve beginner programs.

“This decision comes as we assess how to best serve the Los Angeles community with recent economic challenges and shifts in funding for the organization,” the LA Phil said in a statement to Boyle Heights Beat on Thursday. “The LA Phil is committed to continuing YOLA programs in East LA and expanding the program into other parts of Los Angeles.”

YOLA, which was founded by the LA Phil, provides free instruments and ensemble training for thousands of young musicians who are 5 through 18 years old. The after-school program operates at sites across LA, including in Inglewood, Rampart District and Rampart/MacArthur Park. YOLA at Torres serves 165 students who attend East LA area schools, such as James A. Garfield High School and KIPP charter schools.

Families and community members call the announcement abrupt and urged the LA Phil to “clearly and publicly address whether internal organizational pressures played any role in the decision to reduce programming at the Torres site,” according to a press release with statements from parents.

“Parents report being told that all instructors at the Torres site would be removed except for the conductors. Families fear that this is not simply a reduction — but the beginning of a dismantling of YOLA at Torres,” according to the release.

In the release, parents noted that cuts come at a time when communities like East LA are grappling with fear and instability due to immigration raids that began over the summer. YOLA, they said, has been a safe space. They emphasized that no other YOLA site in LA “is being cut or reduced due to ‘funding.’”

“Only Torres — the site serving East LA’s predominantly Latino community — is affected,” they said in the release.

The programming reduction comes as staff at all YOLA sites filed for union representation with the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, according to the YOLA United Teaching Artists Instagram page.

On Instagram, Yola United Teaching Artists said that AFM Local 47 reached out to LA Phil management to notify them “of our majority support for unionization at all YOLA facilities and asking them to voluntarily recognize and bargain with the union.”

“We have reason to believe they learned about the organizing efforts through other channels,” the Instagram post read. “Unfortunately, we believe that, in response to our unionization efforts, they took the punitive step of letting the TAs at the YOLA [at] Torres go,” the post continued.

The group said it filed for representation with the National Labor Relations Board as well as filing unfair labor practice charges against the LA Phil. “This is unlawful, and we will fight it together,” they said.

Carolyn McKnight, a former principal at Torres East LA Performing Arts Magnet, told the Boyle Heights Beat that she worked on bringing the program to the school. Losing it, she said, “will be a huge loss for arts education in our community.”

She added that because of the program, students received access to tutoring, college application guidance and opportunities to travel to places like Seoul, Mexico City and London.

“Having free music instruction for kids from third grade through high school for any kid willing to show up with the full support of their parents – it is priceless,” McKnight said via email.

LA Phil Chief People Officer Emanuel Maxwell met with parents and students at Torres High on Wednesday. Students held signs, declaring “LA Phil: Don’t Silence Us!” and “Músicos Si Capitalismo No.”

“Kids love YOLA, and they can’t stop us from going to our dreams,” a young boy shouted into a microphone as he faced Maxwell.

“Our teachers aren’t only our support musically and educationally, but they’re there to help us mentally,” another student said. “You taking that away from us, is taking away a support that some of us don’t have at home.”

Luisa Rios, a Garfield High parent whose son is involved in YOLA at Torres, was inspired to see youth “fighting for something that they’re passionate about.”

“They felt disrespected. You could see the emotion,” she said. “A lot of these students are pursuing higher education based on [wanting] to become a professional orchestra player.”

As for Jimenez, she is looking for solutions. “We were not given the chance to even fundraise,” she said.

“We would love to just find a solution, to find a way where everyone wins, and honor the LA Phil’s mission,” she said. “We love the program. It’s devastating.”

At a time when the federal government is dismantling civil rights protections in K-12 schools, California is expanding them — although some wonder how far the state will go to combat discrimination in schools.

A new law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, creates an Office of Civil Rights within the California Department of Education. The office will have a staff of at least six, including an antisemitism coordinator, who will educate school districts about the harms of bias and investigate discrimination complaints.

“I think it’s a good idea and the state of California will pull it off. The risks are small and the possibility for good is large,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “But for it to be successful, it has to have real responsibility and real power.”

The new law stems from a surge in antisemitic incidents in California last year following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and the ensuing violence in Gaza. Authored by Assemblyman Rick Zbur and Assemblywoman Dawn Addis, the law is intended to eliminate anti-Jewish and other bias in the classroom and ensure that students of all ethnicities and religions feel protected.

But the road to Newsom’s desk was not smooth. The bill faced tough opposition from the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, which argued that the law would limit teachers’ right to free speech by curbing their ability to discuss the conflict in Gaza or other topical issues. The union declined to comment for this article.

Zbur, a Democrat from Los Angeles who was among the law’s authors, said the new Office of Civil Rights and the antisemitism coordinator are not intended to punish teachers. The idea, he said, is to help schools stamp out bullying, discrimination and other acts targeting specific groups of students.

“The idea that this law is about policing is hogwash,” Zbur said. “It’s intended to be productive, to provide districts with resources so they can prevent students from being harmed in school.”

Federal layoffs and closures

Discrimination has long been illegal in California schools. Individuals who feel they’ve been discriminated against can file complaints with the state’s Civil Rights Department or with their local school district. But much K-12 anti-discrimination enforcement has fallen on the federal government’s Office of Civil Rights. Created in the mid-1960s, the office investigates complaints about a range of issues, such as school segregation, unfair discipline practices and whether students with disabilities or English learners are receiving the services they’re entitled to.

In March, the Trump administration announced it was laying off nearly half of the U.S. Department of Education workforce and closing numerous branches of the Office of Civil Rights, including the one in California. That’s meant a steep decline in the number of cases and long delays for those the office investigates. In the three months after the Department of Education cuts, for example, the office received nearly 5,000 complaints but investigated only 309.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education went even further, spinning off some of the agency’s largest responsibilities to other federal departments — including much of the administration of elementary and high school funding. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative vision for the country that so far Trump has followed, calls for the Office of Civil Rights to become part of the Department of Justice and for it to “reject gender ideology and critical race theory.”

The U.S. Department of Education didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Cutting off funding, that’s what works’

California’s new Office of Civil Rights will have a director and several coordinators who will oversee anti-discrimination cases based on race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion. The director and anti-discrimination coordinators will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature, likely after Jan. 1.

The office will provide schools with materials about preventing discrimination, and work with districts that have been the subject of complaints from students, families or the public. In serious cases, the office will recommend more intensive assistance to the state Department of Education to correct problems. For districts that persistently flout anti-discrimination laws, “the department may use any means necessary to effect compliance,” according to laws already in place. That may include cutting funding for textbooks or other materials found to be discriminatory.

The office will also submit an annual report to the Legislature on the overall picture of discrimination in schools, including the number of complaints, how they were resolved, and their outcomes.

But to be successful, the office will have to be nonpartisan, transparent and fair, Orfield said. Cases against a school should include strong evidence, and schools should have the opportunity to defend themselves and appeal a verdict if they believe it was wrongly issued.

And the office should not shy away from cutting funds to schools that don’t comply, he said. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the federal Office of Civil Rights cut funds to more than 100 schools in the South that refused to desegregate — a move that may have been the only way to force compliance, Orfield said.

“Cutting off funding, that’s what works,” he said. “Although if you’re going to have sanctions, there must be due process.”

Photo ops and reports?

Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation for the public interest law firm Public Counsel, agreed that enforcement will be the key to whether the new office is effective.

“If the office just issues reports and does photo ops, we don’t need another one of those,” Rosenbaum said. “The issue is whether or not they can enforce these rights across the board.”

He’d also like to see the office take a more proactive approach instead of only responding to individuals’ complaints. Education itself, he said, is a civil right, and too many students are not receiving the high-quality lessons in safe, well-equipped schools that they’re entitled to. Rosenbaum’s firm recently sued the state over substandard school facilities.

Still, he’s happy to see the office get off the ground, particularly in light of the federal cuts to civil rights enforcement.

“There’s an urgency for California to fill a void,” Rosenbaum said. “It should have happened decades ago, but it’s a good start.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The U.S. government on Thursday released a new crash test dummy design that advocates believe will help make cars safer for women.

The Department of Transportation will consider using the dummy in the government's vehicle crash test five star-ratings once a final rule is adopted, the agency said in a news release.

Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a head-on crash, and they are 17% more likely to be killed in a car crash, than men.

The standard crash test dummy used in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration five-star vehicle testing was developed in 1978 and was modeled after a 5-foot-9 (175-centimeter), 171-pound (78-kilogram) man. The female dummy is smaller and has a rubber jacket to represent breasts. It's routinely tested in the passenger or back seat but seldom in the driver's seat, even though the majority of licensed drivers are women.

The new female dummy endorsed by the department more accurately reflects differences between men and women, including the shape of the neck, collarbone, pelvis, and legs. It's outfitted with more than 150 sensors, the department said.

Some American automakers have been skeptical, arguing the new model may exaggerate injury risks and undercut the value of some safety features such as seat belts and airbags.

Lawmakers and transportation secretaries from the past two presidential administrations have expressed support for new crash test rules and safety requirements but developments have been slow.

U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, and Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, both released statements welcoming the female crash test dummy announcement.

"Any progress here is good because there's simply no good reason why women are more likely to be injured or die in car crashes," Duckworth said.

Fischer introduced legislation, the She Drives Act, that would require the most advanced testing devices available, including a female crash test dummy. Duckworth is a co-sponsor.

"It's far past time to make these testing standards permanent, which will help save thousands of lives and make America's roads safer for all drivers," Fischer said.

The department said the new specifications will be available for manufacturers to build models and for the automotive industry to begin testing them in vehicles.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Less than a year from the midterm elections, state and local voting officials from both major political parties are actively preparing for the possibility of interference by a federal government helmed by President Donald Trump.

The problem is, no one knows what might be coming.

Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state of Minnesota, likened it to planning for natural disasters.

"You have to use your imagination to consider and plan for the most extreme scenario," Simon said.

Carly Koppes, the Republican clerk of Weld County in Colorado, said officials in her state are shoring up their relationships with local law enforcement and county and state attorney's offices, to make sure any effort to interfere with voting is "met with a pretty good force of resistance."

"We have to plan for the worst and hope we get the best," Koppes said. "I think we're all kind of conditioned at this point to expect anything and everything, and our bingo cards keep getting bigger and bigger with things that we would have never have had on them."

Trump, who continues to spread false claims about voting in America, issued an executive order in the spring that sought to mandate major changes to the elections system. That order has so far mostly been blocked by the courts, but he's teased other executive action as well. And his administration is still investigating his loss five years ago, while pardoning people associated with his efforts to try to overturn that defeat.

All of that has made it clear to those in the elections community that Trump plans to have a heavy hand in their processes next year. Here are a few things voting officials are watching for.

More executive action to take control of voting

The Constitution is clear: States control their own election processes, with Congress able to set guidelines for federal races. The president has virtually no authority when it comes to voting.

But Trump is testing that, and those in his circle have pushed fringe theories for how he can change how ballots are cast and counted.

Earlier this month, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House is working on a new executive order that will seemingly target mail voting. Trump also said earlier this year that he wanted to ban some voting machines, though it's unclear exactly what he was referring to.

Election officials agree he does not have the legal authority to do either of those things. But recently, Trump ally and attorney Cleta Mitchell, who advised Trump in 2020, broached a bolder strategy to enact election changes: declaring a national emergency.

"The president's authority is limited in his role with regard to elections except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States — as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have," Mitchell said on a podcast appearance in September.

It would be keeping with one of Trump's broader policy strategies: This year he's invoked presidential emergency powers more frequently than any other modern president.

Election experts say there's no legal basis for Mitchell's theory, but numerous voting officials told NPR it's something that's come up in conversations about next year.

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who previously oversaw voting in California as secretary of state, also brought up the scenario recently on the Senate floor.

"If the Trump White House tried to declare some fake national emergency to create a pretense for federal intervention, I will force a vote here in the Senate to stop it," Padilla said.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi listens as President Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 15.

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Troops on the ground

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, says six months ago he wouldn't have taken the premise of federal troops at polling places seriously.

But seeing how the National Guard was deployed — and justified — this summer changed his thinking.

"You have National Guard deploying to cities to supposedly quell these 'demonstrations' — basically people in frog suits and riding their bikes naked is the biggest threat," Hobbs said. "And yeah, I start thinking that maybe it could be possible."

Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump spoke of a desire to have federal law enforcement patrol voting locations, and this year, his former adviser Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast that he hopes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are patrolling polling places in the midterms.

Legal experts say such intervention is clearly illegal, but until the federal government disavows such actions clearly, Simon said voting officials have to game out how to respond.

"One thing that would help is if someone at the federal government would come out and categorically say, 'No, no, no, stop the presses, stop everything. You'll never have to worry about that. That's not something we would ever consider doing,'" Simon said. "That would go a long way."

In response to questions about forces outside polling places, and other scenarios mentioned in this story, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson characterized them as "baseless conspiracy theories and Democrat talking points" but did not directly answer whether the White House would commit not to send agents to voting locations. She reiterated that the president is permitted to send federal personnel to localities to help quell violent crime.

Who is a trusted source?

For the last decade, as voting officials have fought to dam up a tsunami of false information about their work, they've begged people in their communities to go to "trusted sources" for election information.

In 2026, figuring out who is a trusted source may be more difficult than ever.

Along with Trump himself, his administration has elevated to prominent government roles numerous people who have a history of spreading false information about elections, and local officials worry their message may be drowned out by those with much bigger megaphones.

One of the hires alarming voting officials interviewed by NPR works at the Department of Homeland Security. Heather Honey, who's now deputy assistant secretary for elections integrity, worked alongside Mitchell for the past few years to help spread election conspiracy theories, including one about votes in Pennsylvania that Trump mentioned in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before a mob stormed the Capitol.

"I equate this to having a moon landing conspiracy theorist and flat earther being offered a job at NASA," Hobbs said.

DHS did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Numerous officials at the Department of Justice also have a history of election denial.

A poll worker holds "I Voted" stickers as people cast ballots on Nov. 4 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

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Unprecedented demands

The insistence to relitigate 2020 also has voting officials worried about what sort of actions administration officials plan to take. Already this year, DOJ has made unprecedented requests to investigate voting machines, access old ballots, and accumulate mass amounts of voter data.

This summer, a consultant in Colorado contacted Koppes and other clerks in that state, in some cases saying he was associated with the White House and asking about accessing their voting machines.

The White House denied to CNN and other outlets authorizing the requests, but separately, in Missouri, a Department of Justice official reached out to clerks there asking basically the same thing.

In each instance, they were told no.

"Since 2020, people in the elections world have become even more knowledgeable of the responsibilities of the different levels of government [when it comes to voting equipment]," Koppes said.

A similar push and pull is playing out with elections data. The Trump administration has quickly built what is essentially a searchable national citizenship database, and is trying to entice states to run their voting records through it to root out noncitizens on voter rolls. While many Republican election officials have eagerly embraced the system, other GOP officials and their Democratic counterparts have been hesitant to engage with the tool, as there are questions about how well it works, what happens to the voting data once it's been run through the system and, in many states, whether even using the tool is legal under state law.

Still, the administration is intent to investigate voter rolls as it continues to push false narratives about widespread noncitizen voting. The DOJ recently sued eight states (all states Trump lost in 2020) in an effort to compel them to turn over their rolls.

"It's really not a red state or blue state thing," said Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of state of Pennsylvania, in an interview with PBS News Hour about the data demands. "It is a — in my view, a concerning attempt, a concerning effort to consolidate and overreach at the federal level. In the United States of America, it's the states who run elections, not the federal government."

Vulnerable targets

Since Trump took office, the federal government has pulled back on virtually all of its work related to cybersecurity and elections. The Department of Homeland Security laid off employees focused on election security, and stopped funding a partnership that helped local elections offices share threat information.

Wesley Wilcox, a Republican election supervisor in Marion County, Fla., said smaller counties especially will be more vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the cuts, and Russia, China or any other U.S. adversary may see an opportunity.

"That's what I would do," Wilcox said. "I mean, if I were on that side of the fence, I'm like, 'OK, they're cutting this stuff out. Let's go get them.' You know, 'cause the defenses are down."

Secretary Hobbs, of Washington, told NPR that two years ago he was notified by DHS about a hack in one of his counties. The state responded immediately to make sure the breach wouldn't impact the voter registration database.

Now, Hobbs said, "I don't even know if I would have gotten that phone call, to tell you the truth."

In Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said he didn't even contact DHS' cyber agency after an online candidate portal was hacked this summer because he didn't have confidence in the agency's "capacity to collaborate in good faith or to prioritize national security over political theater."
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