The Brief

California law requires banks to let homeowners delay their mortgage payments for up to one year as they recover from the January fires. But that period rapidly is coming to a close, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says the timeline should be much longer.

On Tuesday, Bass asked mortgage companies to voluntarily extend relief for another three years, which would bring the total forbearance period to four years after the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed thousands of homes.

“Many impacted residents remain in temporary housing and face mounting financial strain,” Bass said in a news release. “They're piecing life together while having to negotiate with contractors and wait for insurance claims to come through.

"Asking them to shoulder mortgage payments on top of all that would force them into an impossible — and unacceptable — choice.”

How mortgage relief currently works

Under Assembly Bill 238, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, homeowners affected by the Palisades or Eaton fires can request mortgage forbearance for up to 12 months. The law extended a previous 90-day forbearance period that banks agreed to honor after the fires.

Bass’ office said she wants the banks to agree to let homeowners take another three years of deferred payments and put them on the back end of their mortgage.

The mayor also is requesting that banks refrain from charging fees or penalties and leave mortgage holders’ credit scores unaffected by the extended relief period.

‘This is not like a free lunch’

Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said he’s not sure Bass will convince banks to agree to these terms. And he said homeowners would need to closely scrutinize any relief plan.

Depending on the details around interest payments, he said, some homeowners could exit the forbearance period owing more on their mortgage than their property is worth.

“Consumers would have to understand that this is not like a free lunch,” Green said.

He compared Bass’ proposal to President Donald Trump’s recent suggestion about creating a 50-year mortgage to address nationwide housing affordability concerns. Both plans adjust financing terms without tackling the fundamental reason housing costs so much, he said.

“It's not a great deal,” Green said. “We need to be able to build more housing faster, whether it's in the aftermath of a disaster or not.”

Temporary relocation money is running out

Last month, a nonprofit group called Department of Angels released a survey of thousands of fire survivors that found about 80% of residents displaced by the Eaton Fire and about 90% of those displaced by the Palisades Fire still have not returned to their previous homes.

Many now are paying rent for temporary housing in addition to their regular mortgage payment. The survey found that within the next year, 23% of Altadena residents and 29% of Pacific Palisades residents will run out of insurance payments that cover the cost of that new rent.

The Trump administration unveiled a sweeping plan Tuesday to sidestep Congress and outsource large pieces of the U.S. Department of Education, telling lawmakers and staff that it would shift work dedicated to, among other things, elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education and Indian education to other federal agencies.

All three of those offices were originally placed at the department by Congress when it created the agency in 1979, and these moves are being made without Congress' consent.

According to two people who were briefed on the plan by the Trump administration, and who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, the administration has forged six new agreements between the Education Department and other agencies, offloading day-to-day operations of congressionally-required programs while retaining a small contingent of staff at the department.

For example, under these new agreements, much of the work of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which includes managing Title I, a key federal funding stream that helps schools support low-income students, would shift to the U.S. Department of Labor, as would much of the work of the Office of Postsecondary Education.

The U.S. Department of the Interior would take on much of the work of the department's Office of Indian Education.

The U.S. Department of State would take on international education and foreign language studies programming.

Responsibility for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program, which offers childcare on college campuses to low-income student-parents, would move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In a USA Today op-ed published Sunday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote of this kind of agreement: "We'll peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy by partnering with agencies that are better suited to manage programs and empowering states and local leaders to oversee the rest. These partnerships are commonplace across the federal government to improve service delivery and increase efficiency."

In July, the Education Department announced one such agreement with the Labor Department, in which Labor took on responsibility for adult education and family literacy programs previously administered by the Education Department, though an Education Department release insisted, "The programs will be managed alongside [Education Department] staff, with continued leadership and oversight by [the Education Department]."

Tuesday's agreements do not include a handful of the department's signature responsibilities, including special education, student civil rights enforcement and student loans.

Opponents of the administration's move say, given that Congress created these offices and explicitly located them inside the Education Department, the White House cannot legally move their work without Congress' approval.

U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., a senior member of the Senate education committee, said in a statement, "This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education, and it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened—or even completely broken—in the process."

In briefing lawmakers and staff, the department insisted that these programs' statutory responsibilities would remain at the department, even if the work would be done elsewhere. 

It's unclear if retaining a modicum of department staff, in partnership with other agencies, will be enough to convince the courts the administration is following federal law.

According to NPR's two sources, the briefing was led by Lindsey Burke, now deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the department, who also co-authored the education section of the conservative government blueprint, Project 2025, outlining how to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

"The federal Department of Education should be eliminated. When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government," Burke wrote.

There will likely be legal challenges opposing Tuesday's moves.

Copyright 2025 NPR

California State University’s trustees will vote Wednesday on whether to increase how much the system’s 22 campus presidents and other senior executives earn, potentially paving the way for up to 15% in annual incentive-based raises paid for by philanthropic funds and base salaries that reflect how much presidents at similar universities earn.

Exact numbers aren’t available; those will be revealed during Wednesday morning’s board meeting. Committee members will discuss the matter and decide on whether to advance the idea during a scheduled vote before noon. The full board will vote on the measure in the afternoon. The plan will kick in the next year or two. No executives will receive raises under the proposed plan this year.

Several hundred unionized staff and faculty rallied outside the board of trustees meeting today, raging against the proposed executive raises at a time of budget austerity, layoffs and program cuts.

“I am mad,” said Erin Foote, a union board member for California State Employees Union, during the rally. The union represents 35,000 office and student workers. The union is in a dispute with the system over additional raises.

“We are going to knock the doors of our legislators so hard there will be holes in them until they stand with us in their budget negotiations,” she said, vowing to organize for a governor who’d replace Cal State’s chancellor and appoint more union-friendly trustees.

Average base pay for campus presidents currently is $453,000, ranging from $370,000 to more than $500,000, system data show.

Under the compensation plan, raises to executive base pay would be part of overall wage increases for Cal State workers. That’s in addition to the 15% incentive-based bump to base pay executives would be eligible for.

The criteria for receiving the 15% increases hasn’t been finalized, said the system’s interim chief financial officer, Patrick Lenz, in an interview last week. The chancellor’s office will need a year or two to work on that, he said.

The plan would depart from Cal State’s previous standard of capping base pay of presidents at a salary that’s no more than 10% above what their predecessors made. That plan, last updated 18 months ago, “inappropriately prevents the CSU from offering competitive compensation” to presidents who can lead large universities, the chancellor's office staff wrote for the board meeting agenda item.

Higher education landscape in turmoil

The overhaul comes at a time when the system is hurting for cash and also is contending with epochal challenges to higher education as the Trump administration seeks to claw back billions in funding to universities and challenge long-held academic freedoms at campuses.

Last month, Cal State pushed through initial hesitation to seek a $144 million zero-interest loan from California lawmakers, a financing deal the Legislature permitted to compensate for an equally sized cut to the system’s state support this year. System leaders say they want to use the money to offer one-time bonuses to unionized workers and other staff, including senior executives. Union members want ongoing raises that also support expanded benefits.

And Cal State is expecting smaller increases in state support than lawmakers initially signaled. The Legislature intends to increase state spending for Cal State in 2026-27 by just $101 million — far lower than previous promises from Gov. Gavin Newsom of about $250 million.

That’s upset some system trustee members, who say they OK’d raises for workers — many who went on strike for higher pay — and other spending increases based on those promises.

Cal State explains need for plan

In explaining the increased executive compensation proposal, a senior Cal State official said few individuals have the experience and skill set to run campuses with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We want people in these positions who will ensure that a campus’ fiscal condition is spot on, that they're trying to meet enrollment challenges, that they're dealing with the overwhelming fact that the state's going to be hard pressed to invest in higher education over the next couple of years, and the federal government is decimating us,” Lenz said. “These are the people that we need to come in and help us get through these really tough times.”

Cal State in the past four years increased staff and faculty pay by 17%, chief human resources officer Frank Hurtarte told CalMatters last week. He said campus presidents saw a 7% raise in that time span.

The faculty union calculates that presidential pay has grown 81% in the past two decades, even as inflation grew 63%.

While typical executive pay is several times what it is for faculty and staff, the vast majority of the system’s spending goes toward pay for workers who aren’t executives — $5.6 billion, or 73% of the system’s budget, wrote Jason Maymon, a Cal State spokesperson, in an email.

Executives — the systemwide chancellor, campus presidents and vice chancellors in the central office — collectively earn $18 million, or 0.25% of the Cal State operating budget, Maymon wrote when asked. That’s about as much as the chancellor’s office cut from its budget this year, part of a systemwide effort to slash costs, including letting go of some lecturers.

Hurtarte pointed out that nationally about 30% to 40% of campus presidents left their jobs in the past 24 months. Cal State has six campuses with president vacancies, he noted. There’s both a lot of churn in the campus presidential job market and competition to fill vacancies.

Margarita Berta-Ávila, president of the California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 members, said in an interview that the executives have mismanaged state and tuition money and don’t deserve raises anyway. Some faculty don’t earn enough to afford rent in expensive cities, she said.

“It's unconscionable that they're even talking about [the raises] when you got people living in cars,” she said.

She’s also upset that leadership at Cal State Los Angeles shared faculty names and other personal information with the federal government as part of an investigation into alleged antisemitism. The union has sued the Cal State board of trustees.

Pay plan details

Executive compensation under the proposed plan would have four components: base pay, standard executive health and retirement benefits plus housing and car perks for presidents, a new deferred compensation plan and the possibility of the annual pay rising by as much as 15% after a performance review.

While the base pay, like much of Cal State’s budget, would be paid with tuition and state revenue, the extra 15% would be funded with campus philanthropic efforts. The universities each have fundraising arms, and they’d be expected to raise the money to supplement presidents’ pay, Lenz said.

That fundraising money also will go toward the new deferred compensation program, basically an additional retirement account for executives at nonprofit or governmental organizations, such as universities.

Cal State wouldn’t be alone in paying campus leaders with private funds. At the University of California, several campus heads, called chancellors, have a portion of their salaries paid with outside funds.

“Compensation decisions must also be fiscally prudent, align with the CSU’s public mission and be made within the constraints of available funding and budget priorities,” the agenda item says.

Under this plan, the systemwide chancellor will propose raises each November for board approval.

The new compensation plan seeks to better attract and retain campus presidents by offering new presidents and other executives a base salary that reflects what peer universities pay and the skills the candidate brings. Those peer institutions include the public college and university systems in New York, Texas State University and the UC, Maymon wrote.

Under the current policy, raises for incumbents are no higher than 10%. They kick in only after a satisfactory employee review and an analysis of whether the executive was underpaid relative to other presidents across the country. This approach “constrains competitiveness and adds administrative burden,” the agenda item says. The 10% cap for incumbents would also sunset in favor of the eligibility for annual 15% incentive pay.

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

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services wants to expand a Biden-era policy known as public charge that could further curtail immigrants' use of public benefits.

That means that migrants' use of safety net programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicare, could be considered when determining whether they should be granted further legal status, such as a green card.

Homeland Security Department officials released a new proposed regulation this week that's set to be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday. It would rescind a Biden-era version of the public charge rule, and expand the scope of what public benefits may be considered by immigration officers, to any social or health services people may use.

"Rescission would restore broader discretion to evaluate all pertinent facts and align with long-standing policy that aliens in the United States should be self-reliant and government benefits should not incentivize immigration," the proposal states.

Advocates were quick to criticize the proposal, arguing its new broad scope is too vague and could disincentivize the use of the benefits by immigrants who need them and qualify for them.

"This dangerous proposal puts the nation's health and economic wellbeing at risk," said Adriana Cadenas, executive director of the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition. "By creating chaos and confusion, it deters lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizens from seeking health care and help they need and qualify for under federal law."

Politics of social safety net programs

The proposed regulation from DHS comes as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are making false statements of rampant fraud in immigrants' use of social safety net programs.

People without legal status do not have access to SNAP, the healthcare marketplace, Medicaid and other public benefits.

Still, Congress recently applied further restrictions stripping health coverage and SNAP access from a range of lawfully present immigrants including refugees, asylum seekers and those with other humanitarian protections. It also cut funding from states that use their own funds to provide health care regardless of citizenship status.

The new rule proposed this week takes a broad approach that would also consider state-funded benefits in the review of immigrants' applications.

U.S. citizen children of noncitizens are still eligible for these programs.

Executive order targeted benefits

In February, Trump issued an executive order to end "all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens."

Trump's order is part of the administration's broader political messaging about Democrats and immigration. It came despite the lack of data to support the idea.

Only about 1% of over- or underpayments for SNAP were related to eligibility for citizenship. This data also does not indicate those without legal status were fraudulently using the program.

Trump in his first term had expanded the scope of benefits that could count as a "public charge" on someone's immigration record, and therefore make it harder for them to receive permanent status.

Public health providers said the regulation at the time created a chilling effect on immigrants being afraid to seek benefits they might have access to. The effect was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when advocates said immigrants feared seeking health resources, such as getting medical care or using a food bank, out of concern that they would be considered a public charge for doing so.

In 2022, the Biden administration unveiled a new rule affecting immigrants and benefits that was similar to the regulation before Trump's 2019 revision. It meant that using benefits such as the SNAP, housing aid or transportation vouchers would not count against green card applicants.

Copyright 2025 NPR