The Brief

On Monday morning in Palm Springs and across the Coachella Valley, residents and visitors woke to a serene sunrise and cloudy skies, a very different picture from the weather throughout much of the night.

The storm brought more than half of an entire year’s worth of rain to the region in a single day. Flooding was significant across the valley, but there have not been reports of deaths or serious injuries at this point. Now the desert cities will have to contend with serious cleanup and damage control.

Main roads have been closed as a precaution since Saturday and some 30 miles of Interstate 10 was closed due to flooding, which made it virtually impossible to get out of or into the city of Palm Springs from the west as of now. The westbound lanes of the 10 reopened at about 12:15 p.m. Monday and the eastbound side reopened shortly before 1 p.m.

The storm brought serious impacts, including residents in a mobile home park in Mecca — in the southern part of the Coachella Valley — being evacuated due to flooding. Some of the most severe flooding has been in that area. Other big impacts included a sinkhole opening up on an Indian Wells street and a Rancho Mirage hospital needing floodwaters pumped out of its lower floors. Arcing power lines set off some small fires in Palm Springs, but the local fire department was able to put them out.

911 call line failure

There were intermittent power outages for some residents, and in the middle of the night, the 911 call line went down across the Coachella Valley. There’s still no estimate on when it may be back online. Riverside County sent an alert to residents with alternative numbers to call for their area, but it’s unclear if visitors also received that alert.

Sunrise on Monday after the worst of Tropical Storm Hilary had passed was a serene sight over the Coachella Valley.

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Shane Reichardt, Riverside County Emergency Management Department’s public information officer said so far the impacts they’ve seen and responded to have been relatively minor and expected, such as some water getting into homes. They’ve also conducted some swift water rescues, primarily of people who got stuck in their vehicles in flooded streets, he said.

“Generally speaking, we've seen impacts like these before, so it's hard to say that the tropical storm delivered more of a punch than we've seen with some other storms,” Reichardt said. “Certainly we're seeing damage, so it's not an insignificant storm by any measure.”

He said the true extent of the damage won’t be known until later today and in the coming days.

Taking precautions

Before the storm, most people I spoke with were skeptical about how bad it would be, though many were still taking precautions, with many grocery stores in the area running out of essential supplies such as water, battery and flashlights.

Unhoused folks I spoke with weren’t sure where to go for shelter — for example, there’s only one overnight shelter here in the city of Palm Springs and it only has 20 beds. Many businesses closed early on Sunday or didn’t open at all. Overall, it does seem most people heeded the message to prepare and stay home.

Reichardt said the tropical storm along with the coincidental impact of an earthquake up in Ojai in Ventura County is yet another reason to always be prepared for a disaster year-round here in Southern California. And, of course, human-caused climate change is only making our wild weather here more extreme.

“We have a very diverse state and we can have a lot of different things that happen from fires to floods, to earthquakes,” Reichardt said. “By residents having a preparedness mindset, their go bag looks the same for earthquakes as it does for fires, for floods. We want people to learn lessons from each event and make sure that they are prepared for themselves, their families, their specific situation.”

The number of unhoused Angelenos living in Hollywood, Skid Row and Venice remained relatively steady in 2025 compared to the previous year, but the population of people without any type of shelter continues to rise, according to a study released Thursday.

According to the RAND Housing Center, which conducted the study, unsheltered homelessness stayed flat in those Los Angeles neighborhoods between December 2024 and January of this year despite ongoing government efforts to clear tent encampments. In a separate study, RAND found a 15% decrease in the overall unhoused population in those three neighborhoods in 2024 compared to the previous year.

Within those populations, many more people were seen “rough sleeping” — meaning they had no tents, makeshift shelter or vehicles. According to the study, by January, 44% of the total unsheltered population in those areas was “sleeping rough,” compared to 30% in 2021-2022.

The study also found that almost 90% of all tents counted in those neighborhoods were in Skid Row near downtown L.A. compared to 60% four years ago.

RAND said the finding is particularly important because so-called rough sleepers tend to have “greater clinical need” than those who have some type of shelter, are harder to locate and are, therefore, harder to place in interim or permanent housing.

Researchers warned that “continued reliance on tent-focused homelessness resolution approaches will likely yield diminishing returns, especially in Hollywood and Venice, where these living arrangements are now uncommon.”

Other findings included:

• Hollywood and Venice were statistically flat after previous declines in 2024. Out of the three neighborhoods studied, Skid Row was the only one where the unsheltered population had grown continuously since 2021-2022.

• Rough sleeping increased (up 20%, up 250 people), tent dwelling declined ( down 23%, down 310 people), and vehicle dwelling rose ( up 11%, up 90 people) during 2025. Since 2021, the number of tents declined by half and were largely replaced by vehicles and rough sleepers.

• For every four tents removed, three vehicles or rough sleepers were added on average each day. The switch toward fewer tents and more people living in cars or without any shelter at all was “especially pronounced” in Hollywood.

As SpaceX prepares for its public offering, it's undergoing a critical test of the largest rocket ever built.

Later on Thursday, the company is set to conduct a launch of a heavily redesigned version of its Starship rocket. The new rocket will fly using dozens of new Raptor 3 engines powered by a novel fuel system in the booster. It will also carry upgraded avionics, satellites, and test ports for a future refueling system that could allow Starship to one day reach other destinations like the Moon and even Mars.

The launch comes a little under a month before investors expect SpaceX's much-anticipated initial public offering. Many analysts expect SpaceX to raise up to $75 billion, and to be valued at up to $1.5 trillion. The amount raised could make this the largest IPO ever, and make SpaceX one of the most valuable companies in the world.

But a lot of that may rest on how Starship performs.

The launch is "super important for the IPO," said Franco Granda, a senior researcher who covers SpaceX for the data firm, PitchBook. He believes that if Starship's launch goes badly, it could cause investors' excitement for the IPO "to diminish quite dramatically."

"Even though tests are inherently tests, and failure typically doesn't dictate what happens later on, I think SpaceX will want to get this one right," he said.

Financial disclosures released on Wednesday show just how critical the test is. SpaceX is spending billions of dollars per year developing Starship. The development is eating up the profits from its launch business, which operated at a $662 million loss in the first quarter of this year.

Cheap, frequent launches key to the business model

Starship is unlike any rocket ever built. Standing at around 400 feet in height, it's made of durable, but heavy, stainless steel. To overcome its bulk, the spacecraft sits atop an enormous booster called "Super Heavy" that shoots it skyward with 33 Raptor engines. After Starship separates from the booster, it can ignite its six engines to get to space, while the booster is capable of flying back to earth and landing at its launchpad.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that the ultimate goal is to make Starship return to the pad, allowing the entire system to be reused almost instantaneously. If it works, it would radically lower the cost of launches.

That's key to SpaceX's short-term and long-term vision. The rocket is expected to carry larger, more capable satellites for the company's Starlink internet service. It's also being developed into a lunar lander for NASA and as a possible rocket to Mars. Most recently, Musk proposed that Starship could be used to launch data centers into space, where they could use solar power to run AI chips.

"Starship is a critical piece of the puzzle," Musk said during an event in March to unveil a new chip fabrication facility. To achieve SpaceX's goals, "you need massive payload to space, and Starship will enable that."

The new financial disclosure document reveals just how much of SpaceX's future relies on Starship's development. 

"Any failure or delay in the development of Starship at scale or in achieving the required launch cadence, reusability and capabilities thereafter would delay or limit our ability to execute our growth strategy," the document says. 

It also puts real numbers on how much money SpaceX is spending to develop the giant rocket. In 2025, the company spent a little over $3 billion dollars. In the first quarter of 2026, it spent another $930 million on Starship development.

SpaceX's new Raptor 3 engines deliver more thrust and contain numerous technological improvements, but they have yet to be tested in flight.

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Success is far from assured. The first version of Starship launched in April of 2023, but failed to separate from its booster and tumbled out of control before exploding. It took three tries before the rocket eventually reached space. The second version of the spacecraft was plagued by multiple failed attempts throughout 2025, though its final two launches went as expected.

This third version is an ambitious redesign, said Scott Manley, an engineer and YouTuber who closely tracks Starship's development. Manley said that the latest version of Starship is more refined. Heat tiles appear more carefully placed, and clunky, temporary fixes, like a "hot staging ring" that was bolted onto the booster after the first accident, have been integrated into the design.

"It looks more like a rocket and less like a bunch of grain silos welded together," he said.

Manly said he's particularly interested in how the rocket's new Raptor 3 engines perform. The engines have been heavily redesigned to increase thrust and eliminate the need for bulky shielding on the bottom of the rocket. The engines have been extensively tested, but they haven't been to space before. "We don't know how they're going to perform under flight circumstances."

Even if the newest version of Starship flies as expected, the space launch company faces a long path towards making the behemoth rocket work as a business proposition. Starship's heat shield has not yet proven durable enough to survive multiple trips through the atmosphere and the spacecraft itself has yet to attempt a landing at the pad in Brownsville, Texas.

Getting all the parts of Starship to work as planned is far more complex than what SpaceX has done with its existing rocket, the Falcon 9, said Tim Farrar, the president of TMF associates, which analyzes mobile satellite services. Starship is "a multidimensional problem that they haven't actually solved yet," he said.

"You can't justify a valuation well in excess of a trillion dollars based on what SpaceX is doing today," Farrar said. "You've got to believe that Musk will come up with something much bigger than that."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Amid tech layoffs, anxiety around artificial intelligence and a forthcoming run for president, Gov. Gavin Newsom today signed an executive order that calls for state agencies to explore ways to mitigate job losses stemming from AI.

The order, among other things, tells state agencies to explore severance policies, subsidized employment and other ways to help displaced workers. It also calls for a report on the impact of AI on the California labor market.

In addition, it calls for the study of increased job training , stock compensation, cooperative business ownership for workers and how unions are negotiating over AI.

Newsom signed executive orders last month and in 2023 simultaneously putting in place AI protections and encouraging state agencies to use the technology.

The latest order comes a day after Facebook owner Meta laid off 8,000 workers, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg citing AI in a memo to staff after the cuts. Tech companies Cisco and Block also recently cited AI after laying off thousands of workers. The order also comes two days after the California Senate passed the No Robo Bosses Act, which prevents businesses from using decisions made by AI and other automated systems as the sole reason a person gets fired or disciplined. Newsom vetoed a similar bill last fall.

In February, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, members of the California Labor Federation and labor leaders in Democratic primary states pledged to pull support for a Newsom 2028 presidential campaign if he didn’t take steps to protect workers from artificial intelligence. Newsom’s veto of the predecessor of the No Robo Bosses Act was named as a reason for that pledge.

In a statement shared with CalMatters, California Labor Federation president Lorena Gonzalez said the executive order is welcome but not enough.

"We are glad that Governor Newsom is acknowledging the potential harm of AI on workers, but it's not enough to just study the issue, we have to take action now. Catastrophic job loss from AI is not inevitable, it's a political choice,” she said.

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