The Brief

Wednesday is gearing up to be the warmest and windiest day of the week just before Thanksgiving.

In L.A. County, temperatures along the coast will range from 70 to 78 degrees and up to 82 degrees in the valleys.

The Orange County coast will see partly cloudy skies with highs of up to 78 degrees. Inland will be slightly warmer, with highs up to 81 degrees.

For the Inland Empire, temperatures will range from 76 to 82 degrees — same for Coachella Valley.

Santa Ana wind forecast

It's going to be another breezy day, but let's take a look at some of the blusterier areas today.

We're looking at gusts up to 45 mph for the 5 Freeway corridor, and up to 40 mph for parts of the western San Gabriel Mountains.

In the Santa Clarita Valley, Agoura Hills, Calabasas and surrounding areas, wind gusts should range from 30 to 35 mph. Isolated gusts could reach up to 40 mph.

In the Inland Empire, gusts could also reach up to 30 mph.

Before he was the man expected to start as quarterback in Super Bowl LX this Sunday for the Seattle Seahawks, before he signed a $100 million contract, before he was the third overall pick in the NFL draft and before he was a standout at USC, Sam Darnold was turning heads as a football and basketball star at San Clemente High School in Orange County.

LAist recently caught up with Darnold's high school football coach, Jaime Ortiz, to find out what he was like before he made it to pro football's biggest stage.

Ortiz, who is still the coach at San Clemente High, has known the Darnold family even before Sam came to San Clemente. He says Sam was always ahead of other kids when it came to sports.

"Whether it was soccer, whether it was baseball, whether it was football, whether it was basketball, Sam was always an ultra-competitor," Ortiz said.

The coach said he first started noticing something special in Darnold during his sophomore year. However, Darnold's ascent was put on pause his junior season due to injury. But Ortiz said everything changed in Darnold's senior year.

"He was the league MVP in football. He was the league MVP in basketball. He was the Orange County Athlete of the Year," Ortiz said. "Everybody kind of recognized, whether it was on the basketball court or on the football field, that Sam was one of the best athletes to come out of Orange County."

Ortiz said he's enjoyed watching Darnold take the next step in his football journey.

"It's a blessing as his high school head coach to see a guy live out his dream and doing it the right way," Ortiz said.

Ortiz said Darnold is still a big part of the San Clemente High family. He comes back to Orange County in the off-season and works out at the high school. Ortiz still texts weekly with the quarterback and may watch the Super Bowl in person on Sunday. Ortiz said current students at San Clemente High are proud of what Darnold's done.

"There's a lot of Seahawks fans down here in San Clemente," Ortiz said. "They weren't there last year, but they are now, primarily because of Sam."

They'll be cheering Darnold on Feb. 8 when his Seattle Seahawks face the New England Patriots for Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara.

On a recent weekday morning in Los Angeles, a young mother dropped off her 2-year-old and 4-year-old at a child care center located in a neighbor’s home. It was the 2-year-old’s birthday, so she also brought a treat for the staff and kids: a “Cars”-themed red velvet cake, the child’s favorite.

Then she went off to her job as an office cleaner. The child care provider never saw her again.

“She was picked up,” said the provider, Adriana, who asked to be identified only by her first name because although she is a legal resident of the U.S. she fears wrongful deportation. She also asked not to name the mother and children. “The kids were saying, ‘Where’s mommy? Where’s mommy?’ It was hard for us providers to explain. It was heartbreaking.”

The Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants has taken a particularly high toll on the child care industry – both for families and providers. In California, almost 40% of the workforce is foreign-born and more than a million parents — immigrant and otherwise — rely on child care providers so they can go to work.

Absenteeism and empty classrooms

Several recent reports have found that since Trump beefed up immigration enforcement, child care centers have lost staff — immigrants who are afraid to come to work — as well as immigrant parents who are afraid to drop their children off for fear of being arrested and separated from their children.

One study, from the Center for Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, found the effects to be wide-ranging.

“The administration’s policies targeting immigrant populations not only harm the immigrant (early childhood education) workforce, they also have the potential to destabilize the already-fragile ECE system that immigrant and nonimmigrant children, families, and ECE professionals rely on,” the authors wrote.

The loss of staff and revenue has affected all families, not just immigrants, because it means the already-tight child care market has shrunk even further, according to New America, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.

“Aggressive immigration enforcement has already caused closures, empty classrooms, and absenteeism in day care centers in some communities,” according to a report by the American Immigration Council, a research and advocacy organization.

‘Bigger than we can imagine’

California is home to about 1.7 million babies and toddlers, the vast majority of whom spend at least some time in child care while their parents work. Some are enrolled in licensed day care centers, some have nannies, and others have informal arrangements with neighbors or family members.

The tightening of the child care industry has been an extra burden on families who are already juggling the demands of work and home life. Child care is expensive and hard to find in California — the immigration crackdown has made it even harder.

“The impact, especially on women, is bigger than we can imagine,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education.

But it’s the children who might suffer the most, she said. Not only are some missing their regular child care providers, but those with immigrant parents may be experiencing stress at home and a disruption of their routine.

“Kids benefit from going to child care. That’s a healthy, safe place for them to be,” Lozano said.

Lozano’s group encourages immigrant families to make a plan for their children in case a parent is arrested, and inform the child care provider. The group also reminds child care providers they shouldn’t allow immigration enforcement officers into a child care center unless the agents have a signed judicial warrant. Early Edge California and other groups have published a website, All in for Safe Schools, that offers guidance to schools and child care centers on how to help immigrant families and LGBTQ students. In addition, the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 30,000 chid care providers in California, also provides resources for immigrants.

“Know your rights, have a plan, be prepared,” Lozano said. “And talk to your kids about it in a way they can understand.”

Locked doors, pulled shades

In Alameda County, where 34% of the population is foreign-born, the immigration crackdown has had a noticeable effect on families and child care providers, even though the county has not seen significant immigration enforcement compared to other regions, said Kym Johnson, chief executive officer of BANANAS, a nonprofit child care referral and family resource service in Oakland.

Some child care providers are avoiding public places, such as parks and playgrounds, while some immigrant families have dropped out of playgroups or kept their children home from day care when immigration agents are spotted in the neighborhood, Johnson said.

At one playgroup in East Oakland, organizers started locking the door and closing the blinds to make families feel safe. At another playgroup, located at a library, staff helped families create safety plans in case immigration agents arrived.

Bananas used to hold monthly diaper give-aways in a parking lot that would regularly attract 200 families. Fewer people started showing up after Trump took office, Johnson said, so now the group holds the giveaways several times a month, attracting smaller crowds, and moved the event indoors, so families can’t be seen from the street.

“People have been trying to stay under the radar when they can,” Johnson said. “We do what we can to help people, because so many of these families don’t have a voice. And the kiddos especially don’t have a voice.”

‘They’re targeting everyone’

Adriana, the child care provider in Los Angeles, has been in the child care business for 23 years. She tends to a dozen or so children in her home and is also raising her own four children. The day of the 2-year-old’s “Cars”-themed birthday, Adriana called the children’s grandmother after the mother didn’t arrive to pick them up.

Alarmed, the grandmother tried unsuccessfully to reach the children’s mother and then brought the children to her house. Eventually the family learned what happened: Both the children’s parents plus their uncle were arrested and deported to Colombia. After a few weeks, the grandmother and children moved to Colombia, as well, so the family could be united.

Meanwhile, Adriana started bringing her passport everywhere she went. She also started locking both gates at her house, not opening the front door unless she knows who’s ringing the bell, and working with parents — even those with legal status — to create back-up plans in case they’re arrested.

“I’m here legally, but they’re targeting everyone,” she said. “I’m just scared. What if my kids are in school and I can’t call? I try not to let it affect me, but it’s always in the back of my mind.”

She often feels frustrated and helpless, but tries to create a safe, welcoming environment for the children in her care so they can focus on having fun — and find some relief from the anxiety they may be feeling at home.

“It’s sad. (Immigration agents) are targeting hard-working people, not criminals,” she said. “People who are just trying to make ends meet for their families. But my job is to take care of children. So we try not to put that fear onto the kids.”

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

At the beginning of the year, it seemed like a bipartisan deal to extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies was within reach. A three-year extension passed in the House, but talks have sputtered in the Senate.

Many Republicans in Congress assert the reason for those stalled talks goes all the way back to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010.

"You gotta remember, Democrats created Obamacare," Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told reporters on Thursday. "It's been an abject failure in terms of lowering costs."

Moreno helped lead bipartisan talks in the Senate to come up with a solution to the sudden absence of enhanced subsidies that caused many people's premiums to double or triple. Most people affected by this live in states that Trump won, and Moreno is among the Republicans who have tried to come up with a deal to cushion the blow of these high premiums.

But even as the parties tried to work together to solve a present-day problem, anger over the original passage of the ACA keeps coming up.

"Congressional Republicans can't seem to quit the Obamacare repeal fight, even though the politics of the Affordable Care Act have changed a lot over the past 15 years," says Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist focused on health care at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It is, on balance, now a very popular program. Its main coverage policies, including the enhanced subsidies, have been in place for many years and helped tens of millions of Americans."

That makes letting the enhanced subsidies expire politically hazardous, he says.

"It is a terrible political look for congressional Republicans, and it's a terrible reality for many of their constituents who are going to face these skyrocketing premium payments," Oberlander says.

Republicans are "likely to pay a price" in the upcoming midterm elections, he adds.

That view is supported by a poll published Thursday by the nonpartisan health research organization KFF, which found two-thirds of Americans think that Congress did the "wrong thing" by failing to extend the enhanced subsidies.

The survey, which was fielded in mid-January and included 1,400 people, also found that health care costs were Americans' top affordability concern, more than the cost of groceries or utilities.

"What our poll is showing is that health care costs are something that voters want to see candidates address," says Ashley Kirzinger, KFF's director of survey methodology. "A significant share of them say that health care costs are going to play a major role in their decisions to vote in the midterms and in which candidates they vote for."

Even before open enrollment on Healthcare.gov and the state marketplaces began in November, the intense political debate about the future of the enhanced subsidies has hung over the normal sign up process. Some enrollees didn't know if they would end up with a premium that was $400 a month or $2,000 a month. Although the chances for a bipartisan deal seem slim, there is still some negotiating happening in the Senate.

"All of this uncertainty is leading to a lot of understandable stress among patients who have relied on the marketplace and saw real gains in affordability at a time when we're also seeing downward economic trends," says Miranda Yaver, professor of health policy at the University of Pittsburgh.

If Congress did manage to revive the enhanced subsidies, marketplace directors said in a press call last month that they would be ready to move quickly to implement the change and reopen enrollment, but that some consumers may be lost from the market for good. Hilary Schneider, the director of the Maine marketplace coverME, says her team would try to win people back, but adds: "When you lose consumers, getting them back is twice as hard as retaining them and it's really costly."

So far, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, 23 million people signed up for an ACA plan. That's down more than a million from last year, and health policy experts predict that more people will drop coverage over the coming months if they can't afford the premiums.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people could ultimately become uninsured due to the expiration of the enhanced subsidies, and that number could ultimately grow to 15 million because of people losing Medicaid coverage due to cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill, which kick in next year.

"That is the largest increase in the uninsured population we have ever had in a short period of time, and it would wipe out about two-thirds of the gains of Obamacare," says Oberlander.

"One of the larger frames here is in 2017, President Trump and congressional Republicans tried to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and they failed, and, of course, it cost them politically in the 2018 midterm elections," Oberlander says "This time around, they did not launch a frontal assault on Obamacare. They did not try to repeal and replace the law. But what they are doing, in effect, is rolling back many of its core provisions."

Yaver agrees that, this time around, Republicans are "finding more subtle ways to undermine [the ACA's] effectiveness" than launching another repeal effort.

Oberlander thinks even if they're more subtle, these moves are still going to prove unpopular with voters.

"I think they've probably bought some thin political insulation by rolling back instead of repealing, but ultimately, I still think it's going to be very unpopular to do these things," he says. "A lot of Americans are not going to welcome the news that Congress is making their health insurance less affordable."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Another Grammy Awards telecast is in the books, and it was a night of historic wins, chaotic performances and viral moments, as well as speeches that frequently addressed this moment in American history. Here's a rundown of some of Sunday's highlights.

1. The season of Bad Bunny is playing out as planned. The Puerto Rican superstar had long appeared primed for a big night at this year's Grammys. After all, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS was a blockbuster, and Bad Bunny himself is headlining next weekend's Super Bowl halftime show. In the end, he ended up sort of headlining this show, too: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS picked up album of the year and best música urbana album during Sunday's telecast, while "EoO" won best global music performance earlier in the day.

In the process, Bad Bunny made history — this was the first time a Spanish-language album has won album of the year — while also giving speeches that addressed both ICE raids in American cities and the humanity of the people affected. ("We're not savage," he said during his speech for best música urbana album. "We're not animals, we're not aliens, we are humans and we are Americans.")

The parallels between Bad Bunny's wins and Kendrick Lamar's wins last year felt undeniable: Both won major Grammys right before they were scheduled to perform the Super Bowl halftime show, and both seized on moments bigger than themselves. For Lamar, it was the wildfires that had recently devastated the Los Angeles area. For Bad Bunny, whose Super Bowl booking helped place him at the center of the culture wars (and, more specifically, national conversations about immigration policy), this was an even timelier win.

2. Kendrick Lamar's momentum from last year carried over. Lamar won five Grammys last year, including song and record of the year for "Not Like Us." This year, he picked up five more trophies — and leapfrogged Jay-Z to become the winningest rapper in Grammys history. Jay-Z has 25 wins; with Sunday's awards, Lamar now has 27.

Lamar's wins this year included biggies in the rap categories — best rap album for GNX and best rap song for "tv off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)" — and one of the biggest of all: record of the year, for "Luther (feat. SZA)." It's Lamar's second year in a row winning in that category.

The win for "Luther" even came bundled with a surreal moment: Tasked with giving a speech for a lifetime achievement award, Cher was then supposed to hand out the Grammy for record of the year. So she gave a speech, began to wander offstage and had to be summoned back, at which point she announced that the winner was "Luther Vandross" — referring to the singer, who died in 2005.

Fortunately, it quickly became clear that the winner was "Luther," which was inspired by Vandross and samples his song "If This World Were Mine." The gaffe helped compel the winners to pay tribute to Vandross, which is never a bad idea under any circumstances.

3. The category of best new artist spawned an impressive field — and an obvious winner. Give the Grammys credit for pulling together a solid assortment of best new artist nominees in The Marías, Addison Rae, KATSEYE, Leon Thomas, Alex Warren, Lola Young, Olivia Dean and sombr. And give the telecast bonus points for smooshing all eight nominees into a medley that gave each enough room to breathe.

But there could never be much doubt that this was Dean's category to lose: She's got the most commercial momentum of them all — The Art of Loving is still in the top 5 on the charts — and she might as well have been bred in a laboratory to win Grammys. Listen to "Man I Need" and you'll hear a song that would have won Grammys in 1976, 1986, 1996, 2006 …

In fact, Dean will likely be a player in next year's Grammys, as well: The Art of Loving came out shortly after the cutoff for 2026 Grammy eligibility, and it's already yielded other chart hits. In 2027, it wouldn't be a shock to see her compete for album of the year, among other categories.

4. No one hoarded all the trophies this year. Some years, a single artist ends up sweeping the major categories — as Billie Eilish did in 2020, when she won album, record and song of the year, plus best new artist. That's a flashy outcome that's often richly deserved, but it can be deadening to watch after a while.

This year, the prizes were spread to a nice assortment of acts. In fact, the first seven trophies given out during the telecast went to seven different artists: Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Dean, Bad Bunny, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Lola Young and Eilish, who picked up song of the year for the third time in seven years. That helped preserve a sense that the night's two biggest awards — record and album of the year — were still in play until the moment they were handed out.

5. "Messy" was the word of the night. From Cher giving record of the year to "Luther Vandross" — see above — to a chaotic In Memoriam segment headlined by Ms. Lauryn Hill's first Grammys performance since 1999, it was a messy, chaotic night. The performances could be overstuffed-but-heartfelt (In Memoriam), strobe-lit and retrofitted to rock (Lady Gaga's "Abracadabra," ROSÉ and Bruno Mars' "APT."), theatrical and funny (Sabrina Carpenter's "Manchild") or theatrical and arty (Tyler, the Creator's audacious medley), with many points in between.

For the most part, it was the right kind of mess, and if nothing else, you never quite knew what might happen next. When Lola Young picked up a Grammy for best pop solo performance — for "Messy," natch — her speech was a fireball of unregulated emotion. Messy, sure, but it fit on a night ruled by big, fervent feelings.

6. The speeches weren't just heartfelt — they were often political, too. Sometimes, awards shows can feel hermetically sealed off from the world around them; that, in turn, can make their participants feel self-infatuated and out-of-touch, especially when the country is suffering from the effects of national disasters, political strife or both.

Even in milder times, it can be a tough balance to pull off. At the Grammys Sunday, many winners leaned in to address ICE actions and U.S. immigration policy. Olivia Dean described being the granddaughter of an immigrant. Bad Bunny opened his speech by saying, "Before I say thanks to God, I'm gonna say, 'ICE OUT.'" And Billie Eilish gave the fieriest speech of all, as calmly delivered pronouncements ("No one is illegal on stolen land") gave way to a phrase that was dropped from the telecast's audio feed but soon revealed to be the words, "F*** ICE."

Other notes of protest were more muted; Carole King was one of many attendees who wore "ICE OUT" pins, for example. But you couldn't watch these Grammys without knowing that there's a world of conflict beyond the music industry.

7. In the performances (if not the awards themselves), rock staged a comeback. As noted, both Lady Gaga's "Abracadabra" and ROSÉ and Bruno Mars' "APT." were enlivened by grand signifiers of rock and roll: strobe lights, guitars and a generalized sense of mayhem. But they weren't the only ones.

As part of the lengthy In Memoriam segment, Post Malone presided over a tribute to Ozzy Osbourne that also featured Chad Smith, Duff McKagan, Slash and Andrew Watt. And even Justin Bieber stripped "YUKON" down to the singer and an electric guitar, which he used to create a looped riff.

With rock still largely relegated to the margins of the awards themselves — though Turnstile did win best rock album and best metal performance, giving the Baltimore band its first two Grammys — it seemed unusually prominent in the night's many live sets.

8. As always, records were set and milestones were reached. Yes, Kendrick Lamar became the Grammys' most decorated rapper, while Bad Bunny notched the first-ever win for a Spanish-language album. But there were also notable firsts and record-setting wins in some of the less widely discussed categories.

In the category of best children's music album, the father-daughter duo Fyütch & Aura V set a new record, as Aura V became the youngest-ever individually named Grammy winner. (She's 8; the previous record-holder, Blue Ivy Carter, was 9 when she won in 2021.) Their speech was a highlight of the Grammys' Premiere Ceremony on Sunday.

Then there's the latest EGOT winner: Thanks to his role as a producer of the 2024 documentary Music by John Williams, Steven Spielberg has added a Grammy to his previous wins at the Emmys, Oscars and Tonys. It's about time that kid caught a break.

And, speaking of kids catching a break, the 14th Dalai Lama finally snagged the Grammy that had eluded him for more than 90 years. In the process, he's become the first-ever recipient of the coveted GWHRT: Grammy Award, Wallenberg Medal, Holder of the White Lotus, Ramon Magsaysay Award, Templeton Prize. In your face, Spielberg!

KATSEYE, a girl group styled after K-pop (but not technically K-pop), lost in its bid for both best new artist and best pop duo/group performance.

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9. K-pop scored a Grammy breakthrough, but not in a big way. For the first time ever, a K-pop song has won a Grammy Award, as HUNTR/X's inescapable "Golden" picked up a trophy for best song written for visual media. That's a significant milestone for the genre, which had been shut out in spite of five nominations in the past for the boy-band juggernaut BTS.

But Sunday was still a bit of letdown for those hoping for a major K-pop win at the Grammys. HUNTR/X didn't win anything else — it was up for song of the year, among others — while ROSÉ of BLACKPINK went 0-for-3 with her Bruno Mars duet "APT.," which was nominated for record and song of the year. And KATSEYE, a girl group styled after K-pop (but not technically K-pop), lost in its bid for both best new artist and best pop duo/group performance.

Still, those nominations are significant — especially in the major categories — as the Grammys look to be growing more hospitable to K-pop music going forward. Among other things, that's good news for BTS, whose new album is due in March.

10. The Tiny Desk is a Grammy-winner … sort of. Okay, so technically the Tiny Desk has never been up for a Grammy, seeing as how it's a venue and not a performer. But it's already racked up a bit of history with the Grammys.

First, two different winners of NPR's Tiny Desk Contest have won Grammys: Inaugural winner Fantastic Negrito has won three, while former best new artist nominee Tank and the Bangas picked up a prize in spoken word just last year.

This year, the milestones came in the form of the first-ever Tiny Desk performances to be directly nominated for Grammys. The more visible nomination, in the category of best R&B performance, went to Leon Thomas for "Mutt (Live From NPR's Tiny Desk)." But, though he won twice Sunday — for best R&B album and best traditional R&B performance — he lost best R&B performance to Kehlani's "Folded."

The Tiny Desk's less-noticeable nomination came in the category of best Latin rock or alternative album. CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso, a duo from Argentina who won five Latin Grammys last fall, put out an album last year called Papota. Of its nine songs, five were recorded at its viral 2024 Tiny Desk concert, which has racked up more than 48 million views on YouTube.

On Sunday, Papota won best Latin rock or alternative album, making the Tiny Desk a (sort of) Grammy winner. But again, because the Tiny Desk is a venue and not a performing artist, we don't get a cool li'l gramophone statue. Life is monstrously cruel that way.

Copyright 2026 NPR