The backstory: The U.S. has been at Preparedness Level 5 since July 18, a status that means the federal government is committing the highest possible level of crews, aircraft and firefighting resources to wildfires across the country. And yet requests for help or equipment are going unanswered.
Why it matters: This dangerous fire season hit as the Trump administration has reshaped how America fights wildfire — consolidating crews from across Interior Department agencies into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The new agency and the U.S. Forest Service are pursuing “full suppression” of every new blaze.
Read on... for more on how California is bracing for wildfires.
The U.S. has been at Preparedness Level 5 since July 18, a status that means the federal government is committing the highest possible level of crews, aircraft and firefighting resources to wildfires across the country. And yet requests for help or equipment are going unanswered.
This dangerous fire season hit as the Trump administration has reshaped how America fights wildfire — consolidating crews from across Interior Department agencies into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The new agency and the U.S. Forest Service are pursuing “full suppression” of every new blaze.
How we collaborated on this story
Rachel Becker from CalMatters reported with Amy Alonzo, of The Nevada Independent; Robert Chaney, of Montana Free Press/Mountain Journal; Mike Koshmrl, of WyoFile; Brooke Larsen, of The Salt Lake Tribune; Joseph T. O'Connor, of Montana Free Press/Mountain Journal; and Olivia Prentzel, of The Colorado Sun.
Administration officials say the aggressive approach is essential to protect firefighters and communities during a hazardous summer in an abnormally hot and dry West. Critics, though, worry it could worsen a long-standing problem: Decades of extinguishing wildfires and climate change-induced drought have left Western forests full of dry fuels, contributing to conditions that can produce catastrophic fires. Making full suppression the default response, they argue, could perpetuate that problem while demanding more firefighting resources than the government has available.
People gather along Highway 78 after having been forced to evacuate Beulah, Colorado as the Aspen Acres fire raced toward the small town on June 29, 2026.
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Mike Sweeney
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The Colorado Sun
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A coalition of nonprofit newsrooms in six Western states conducted roughly two dozen interviews with federal and state officials, former agency leaders and firefighters, experts and advocates. Reporting from California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming shows how on-the-ground changes made by the Trump administration have affected our ability to fight fires amid increasingly destructive conditions.
Federal officials dispute that the reorganization played any role in the deaths of firefighters this year. And while officials in several Western states say the new fire service has so far caused few disruptions on the ground, interviews with former government officials, firefighters and researchers show there are concerns about what the administration’s broader changes could mean for how the country lives with fire over the long term.
The 10 a.m. rule
Some see the full suppression strategy as the return of a discredited 1930s-era “10 a.m. rule,” a former Forest Service directive to put out new fires by the next morning. Today, that strategy demands vast resources, critics point out, while removing the option used by the agency in more recent years to allow carefully chosen fires to burn naturally for the benefit of forests. They argue that will leave forests more vulnerable to catastrophic fires in the future.
Planned burning, or “prescribed fire is never even going to scratch the surface of the number of acres that need to burn every year,” said Johanna Nosal, a professional forester who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in California, Colorado and Montana for 15 years before accepting a federal buyout in 2025.
“We're putting these fires out, and sometimes we’re successful at it … but it’s just a year-to-year Band-Aid,” Nosal told the collaboration, “and what eventually happens is you have a lack of resources and these weather periods that will create these huge blazes that no matter what you will do will keep spreading.”
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz argues full suppression is essential for this hazardous summer. And Brian Fennessy — former fire chief for the Orange County Fire Authority, now director of the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service — defends a policy shift it’s made: Federal officials who want to promote forest health can no longer make the final call about whether to let a fire burn.
Previously at the Interior Department, “when it was a fire for resource benefit, fire [officials] may have had a say, but they did not hold the final decision,” which was made by agency land managers, he told The Colorado Sun. “Now, we hold, on the fire side, that final decision.”
At the Forest Service, underlying policies still provide the authority to manage wildfire to benefit forests. But a proposal to move the Forest Service (USDA) firefighting program into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service is stoking fears that could change.
This summer, Schultz said, the Forest Service has not revived the 10 a.m. rule: “We aren't making any commitment to that time frame.”
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz speaks during a media tour at the fire camp for the Widemouth 2 Fire in Kanosh, Utah on Aug. 6, 2026.
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Instead, he told the collaboration, its full suppression strategy includes two approaches: Direct and indirect.
“Direct is when you go right at it. Indirect is when you look at the topography,” he said. “The tactics will be different. Firefighter safety is critical, but also looking at the values at risk. We're looking at structures. We're looking at timber. We're looking at grass. We're looking at fencing. All of those things go into how we prioritize,” he said.
Adrienne Freeman, a Forest Service spokesperson based in California, said the approach ultimately comes down to firefighter safety, the structures and people at risk, and the agency’s firefighting capacity nationwide.
With crews stretched thin on fires raging across the country, she said, there simply isn’t the bandwidth to manage a fire for ecological benefit right now.
“If something goes funny, we don't know if we're going to get the resources to manage it — and we pretty much know we aren't because that's not where houses are,” Freeman said. “No one is going to make that decision when we're at PL5” — the nation’s highest level of fire activity and response.
Even past fires that drew public criticism over the perception that the Forest Service “let them burn” often weren’t being managed for ecological benefit at all, according to a 2023 Forest Service analysis. Researchers found that concerns for firefighter safety — not nature — drove delayed suppression far more often.
“This is the thing: people think this is black and white, and nothing about land management is black and white,” Freeman said.
Utah supports the full suppression policy, “mainly because of where we're at condition-wise, the historical drought, the dry fuels, and the intensity of these fires,” to protect firefighters and communities, said Jamie Barnes, recently appointed as director of the Department of Natural Resources.
“We will never put people in an area that is unsafe for firefighters. We will always take an indirect approach from that if we have to,” she said.
With the country at its highest level of preparedness, resource allocation will vary by fire, Schultz acknowledged.
“But in terms of this time of the year, right now, we are not going to just sit back and let fire go and achieve other objectives,” Schultz said. “We're going to be aggressively suppressing.”
‘Fear of fire’
Bobbie Scopa is a 45-year firefighting veteran who worked for local, state and federal agencies, primarily in Western states. When she began in 1974, blazes were smaller, she said. “They weren’t ripping like they do now.”
The Forest Service shifted away from the 10 a.m. policy and began allowing some fires to burn for landscape health in 1971. But pressure from states has sometimes discouraged that federal policy, said Nosal, who now lives in Butte, Mont.
“Pretty much every administration I worked under,” she said, “there’s been at least one year when they're like, ‘We’re not gonna let managed fires happen, we want to get everything under control as soon as possible.’”
Hand crews continue to work on the Bonneville Fire in Salt Lake City, on June 22, 2026.
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Chris Samuels
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Nosal spent her 15 years with the Forest Service removing and thinning trees and other vegetation that would have been cleared out by smaller fires, she said. In the sagebrush ecosystems that cover the Great Basin, suppression has led to encroachment by pinyon-juniper woodlands and other trees.
“Even in those really dry forest types, you’re seeing denser forests and more continuous forests than would have been there,” she said. “That means when a fire does roll through … you just get these really intense fires that burn everything, which historically isn’t the natural fire regime.”
In other areas, such as the Sierra Nevada, the forests are just too dense, she said.
“Historically, California state agencies have funded wildfire safety projects on federal lands in response to a lack of federal investment,” California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said in a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in May.
Since the start of the Newsom administration alone, Crowfoot said, the state has invested nearly half a billion dollars in projects on federal lands.
The spread of homes and other development into the wildland-urban interface (WUI) also has changed firefighting, Scopa said. “If a fire starts before there are houses, and firefighters show up, the Hot Shots cut lines, firefighters lay lines along the edge of the fire, they have a simple fire,” she said. “They’re going to come up with a strategy to anchor and flank the fire while it’s small.”
Add just a few houses, and “some of the firefighters are going to go to the houses and start prepping to protect the properties,” she said. “Now, you have fewer firefighters on the fire. It totally complicates work for the firefighters. And it requires more people.”
Scopa estimated federal agencies would need another 30,000 to 40,000 firefighters to be able to implement full suppression, “and you still wouldn’t be successful.”
Multiple requests for hand crews and engines went unfilled on the Widemouth 2 Fire, Tony DeMasters, incident commander of Great Basin Team 2, told The Tribune. The fire has burned nearly 130,000 acres in western Utah.
“We’re getting international help,” he continued. “That’s just how severe the fire season is, and we’re only in August. We got another 8, 10, maybe 12 weeks to go.”
It’s common for resources to be this scarce, DeMasters added, when the Great Basin region and nation are at Preparedness Level 5. “When we go to those planning levels, that means everything is strapped.”
To create the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service, the Trump administration combined firefighters from four Department of the Interior agencies: Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Fennessy comes to the role after nearly eight years as chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, where he built one of the country's first all-hazard incident management teams and pushed an aggressive aviation strategy that became a model for regional wildfire response.
“The goal of this is to reduce internal redundancy,” Brock Uhlig, a chief at the new service, told Nevada lawmakers at a May interim committee meeting. “Members of the public will see the exact same product.”
By July in Nevada, it was “kind of business as usual and everyone’s still collaborating and responding to fires,” said Ryan Shane, State Forester Firewarden. But, he acknowledged, it was early in the season. “Time is going to tell what improvements we are going to see … or if there are any gaps.”
Utah officials have seen the transition go “very smoothly,” said Jamie Barnes, recently appointed as the director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources. “We haven't seen any issues with firefighters on the ground or financial resources.” In California, for all the local, state and federal borders within the state, firefighters from different agencies often converge on the same wildland fires.
As the Timber Fire scoured steep, coastal national forest lands around Big Sur, Cal Fire stepped in with its own incident management team to orchestrate the firefight — the federal teams were busy on other fires, or taking mandatory rest.
Earlier this summer, the fast-moving Dove Fire took off near a Yosemite gateway town. As the fire burned, Emily Kilgore, a public information officer for Cal Fire's Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit, said she hadn’t noticed any changes to the deployment of federal resources.
“They were requested. They responded. They worked in tandem as one of our cooperators to assist us to gain containment on the Dove Fire,” Kilgore said on the phone, over the beat of a helicopter responding to another fire that had just ignited nearby.
Cal Fire headquarters agreed, saying there have been no changes to its fire suppression relationship with federal agencies.
The “field-level folks” who have spoken with Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit based in Sparks, Nevada, haven’t seen any negative impact, president Riva Duncan told the collaboration.
“But speaking to fire managers, they said it was pretty clunky for them,” Duncan said. “They’ve restructured decision-making authority, so there’s a lot of ‘Where do I go to now if I need something approved?’ There’s not as much communication as folks had hoped for.”
“Clunky” communication may be occurring at times, Fennessy said. “I mean, we’re talking about thousands of people. I’m sure that probably occurs. But that’s not the feedback I’m getting and it’s not from my people.”
Officials are still investigating whether the transition played any role in the late June deaths of three federal firefighters who were killed while battling the Knowles Fire in Colorado and a fourth who died later from his injuries. Fennessy said he finds the suggestion that there may be a connection “offensive. It is absolutely wrong. … It’s just ludicrous.”
There is “absolutely zero connection between the rollout, the unification and these fatalities,” he said. “I am close enough to the investigation that is still ongoing, to certainly say that.”
The California Firefighters Memorial on the state Capitol grounds on March 4, 2022.
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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.
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CalMatters
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The firefighters were part of a helitack crew that got trapped near the Colorado-Utah border when high winds drove small, lightning-started wildfires in Utah. Sydney Watson, 27, of Warrior, Alabama, worked for the Wildland Fire Service, as did a fourth firefighter, Nathan Matthews, 43, of Lincoln, Nebraska, who was injured in the burnover and died later.
Emily Barker, 38, of Clinton Township, Michigan, and Nick Hutcherson, 27, of Glendale, Arizona, worked for the Forest Service.
Duncan stressed that investigations remain ongoing and no conclusions are available. “But fatalities really affect the workforce,” Duncan said. “There’s a lot of fire season left and people are fearful. The investigations take a long time to come out, and it’s frustrating if there are important lessons to learn.”
Fears for the future
Rep. Andrea Salinas, an Oregon Democrat, pointed out to Schultz in July that removing fire personnel from the four Interior agencies separates them from former colleagues who are responsible for restoring forests and reducing fuels.
"This proposal would fracture the critical communications link between land management and fire management," Salinas said at a July 22 House Agriculture Committee hearing.
The disconnect could mean that decisions once made between colleagues will have to be negotiated among agencies, said Brad Washa, an assistant professor of Wildland Fire Science at Utah State University.
“Down the road, will [fire personnel] be sitting in a different office and not next to the folks that are managing the natural resource?” asked Washa, a former BLM firefighter.
When working together, for example, a land manager could easily alert firefighters to not bulldoze lines in areas that could affect endangered species or cultural resources, he said. That may become more difficult now. “The land management agency might lose some of its ability to exert its authority in managing the natural resource,” Washa said.
These issues are why the National Association Forest Service Retirees opposes the creation of the new fire agency, president Bill Avey said.
“We don’t think wildfire should be divorced from the land — that’s been a policy failure,” he said. “We continue to stand on the fact that this national wildland fire service is the wrong solution.”
But Fennessy argues there is no disconnect.
“We’ve not moved anybody on the Interior side out of where they are stationed. Offices that hold both land managers and executive firefighters, those offices haven’t changed,” he said. “They talk to each other every day. … I question the motive or intent of those that want to make that argument.”
Fennessy said his agency recognizes that “land managers are the resource experts” and that they are “intimately involved and engaged.” Fire officials and land managers “need to be in lockstep,” he said, “when we’re doing prescribed fire or preparing for whatever treatment it may be.”
The Forest Service is undergoing its own reform right now. Its headquarters are moving west from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and regional centers will be closed, with research consolidated in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Forest Service has lost 16% of its workforce since 2024, Salinas noted.
“This sweeping reorganization creates more questions than answers and the fact that it’s being implemented right as wildfire season is upon us is alarming,” Salinas told Schultz. “Doing so threatens the Forest Service overall — the loss of staff, and the institutional knowledge they have, should not be casualties in the Trump administration’s reorganization of the Forest Service. Each is too valuable to be lost.”
Few states are better equipped to weather the federal firefighting changes than California.
California has invested billions in firefighting, a strategy that has carried through multiple administrations, with different emphases at different times. But it all amounts to this: California has its own people and equipment to rely on, including the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet.
Cal Fire — officially the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — is the largest state-run fire department. As California experienced some of its most destructive wildfires on record, Cal Fire’s staffing skyrocketed — climbing past more than 12,000 employees, according to the agency.
It now employs more wildland firefighters than any agency in the world besides the U.S. Forest Service, according to a 2025 white paper led by researchers with Stanford University’s Climate & Energy Policy Program.
CalFire firefighters carry a fire hose up a hillside during the Sandy Fire in Simi Valley on May 18, 2026.
California spends big because it has a lot at stake. Last year’s catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles alone killed 31 people, hastened the deaths of hundreds more, and cost up to $131 billion in total property and capital losses, according to one UCLA analysis.
California’s leadership is concerned about the Trump administration’s reorganization of the Forest Service, its staff cuts and its closure of research facilities.
California has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on wildfire safety projects on federal lands under Newsom — spending Crowfoot said has often compensated for a lack of federal investment.
“While I understand the intention to operate a more efficient federal agency, many of these changes could impact our state’s wildfire readiness and create added public safety risks,” Crowfoot said in his May letter to Rollins.
Crowfoot said that it’s critical to work with federal partners who have enough money and staff to get ahead of the next disaster.
“If we fail to do so, we will again be faced with disaster recovery costs that far exceed the costs of preventing disasters from happening in the first place.”
No simple answer
The Department of Agriculture’s 2027 budget proposes transferring the departments, which includes the Forest Service, wildland firefighting resources and responsibilities into the new Wildland Fire Service.
The department awarded a $1.16 million contract to study consolidating all federal wildland fire operations into the new agency, according to a statement on Aug. 4. The department expects the report to be complete by Feb. 15, 2027, which means its results won’t be available for the fiscal 2027 budgeting that begins in September.
The Forest Service extinguishes more than 95% of the fires on its forests, Scopa said, but pursuing full suppression permanently wouldn’t be realistic.
“There’s no simple answer. We’re not gonna put [out] all the fires,” she said. “We’re never going to be successful. … The environment is not conducive to that, the fuels are not conducive to that, the staffing is not conducive to that.”
Inglewood city leaders broke ground on a new shuttle bus network, planting ceremonial brass shovels in the dirt outside a Market Street shopping center on Wednesday morning.
Topline:
Inglewood city leaders broke ground on a new shuttle bus network, planting ceremonial brass shovels in the dirt outside a Market Street shopping center on Wednesday morning. They took turns at a microphone praising the $287.5 million Inglewood Transit Connector, which will ferry visitors between the Downtown Inglewood Metro K Line Station and the city’s stadium district. Officials hope the project will jump-start the struggling Market Street shopping corridor.
Why now: Inglewood has transformed into a global entertainment magnet over the last decade, pulling in Super Bowls, World Cup matches and megastar musicians. Locals, though, have protested the costs of the rapid development — traffic jams, rising living costs, old haunts demolished — and asked for more ways to tap into the economic benefits. City officials say the shuttle bus network will help with some of those issues by alleviating traffic jams and driving visitors to spend their dollars at local businesses. Not everyone is convinced.
What's next: Actual construction is set to start in the first week of November, planners say, and the first buses are scheduled to roll out down dedicated lanes just ahead of the 2028 Olympics.
Inglewood city leaders broke ground on a new shuttle bus network, planting ceremonial brass shovels in the dirt outside a Market Street shopping center on Wednesday morning.
They took turns at a microphone praising the $287.5 million Inglewood Transit Connector, which will ferry visitors between the Downtown Inglewood Metro K Line Station and the city’s stadium district. Officials hope the project will jump-start the struggling Market Street shopping corridor.
“We always said that we were going to make Inglewood the city to drive to and not through, and we’re doing that today,” Councilmember Alex Padilla said.
Inglewood has transformed into a global entertainment magnet over the last decade, pulling in Super Bowls, World Cup matches and megastar musicians. Locals, though, have protested the costs of the rapid development — traffic jams, rising living costs, old haunts demolished — and asked for more ways to tap into the economic benefits.
City officials say the shuttle bus network will help with some of those issues by alleviating traffic jams and driving visitors to spend their dollars at local businesses. Not everyone is convinced.
Just a few hundred yards from the ceremony, Amelia Hernandez and her team were packing boxes at Selwyn Jewelers, one of the two dozen businesses at the corner of Market Street and Florence Avenue the city took over through eminent domain earlier this year. The city plans to demolish the shopping center to make way for a 1,000-space parking garage, a bus plaza and a pedestrian bridge crossing Florence to the Downtown Inglewood K Line station.
The jeweler said she’s skeptical the new shuttle system will actually mean more business for local shops, especially those like hers that are more targeted to residents than visitors.
“Everybody comes, parks and leaves,” she said. “What do they expect? [Stadium visitors] are going to the notary public? They’re going to a hair salon?”
Construction is expected to begin in November, planners say
Actual construction is set to start in the first week of November, planners say, and the first buses are scheduled to roll out down dedicated lanes just ahead of the 2028 Olympics. City officials say they hope to bring back automated rail line plans in the future.
Mayor James Butts said the shuttles are only planned to run on event days — Inglewood’s three major venues have hundreds of events between them — and that the city hasn’t yet picked a vendor to run the actual shuttles. The mayor said the city expects to move 10,000 people through the hub on event days.
Eli Lipmen, executive director of the nonprofit Move LA, is one of the transportation activists pushing for the region to tighten up its transportation network ahead of the Olympics. He said that while the city still has a lot of work to do, he is excited to see the shuttle system roll out to provide an alternative to vehicle traffic.
“This station, this area, has needed a transit hub for a very long time,” he said.
City officials say they’re working to relocate displaced businesses
A few shops were still open in the shopping center on Wednesday, but most of the windows were dark or papered over.
Businesses like Red’s Flavor Table and Randy’s Donuts & Chinese Food will be relocating to new digs on Market Street, according to project planners. CVS Pharmacy opened a new store across the street. Selwyn Jewelers is moving to a space a few blocks away.
Hernandez, the owner of Selwyn Jewelers, said the relocation process has been horrific and was poorly planned.
“I’m just left with a whole bunch of ill feelings,” she said.
Other business owners praised the city’s work in a series of short videos.
“Although we are sad to be leaving our current location, we’re happy to continue to stay in Inglewood,” said Sylvia Hollins, manager of Red’s Flavor Table. “We’re going to be on Market Street at a bigger and better location.”
A federal judge in California is putting limits on pre-election field operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security that the agency says is aimed at trying to find noncitizens who have illegally voted in nine states.
Why it matters: In recent weeks, armed Homeland Security Investigations officers have carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalized. In a 19-page order late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the federal government was using "flawed" data in the initiative and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.
Why now: HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents produced in the case and CNN reporting. In a declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell had told the judge his team manually reviews records before referring them to HSI, but acknowledged the "low possibility" citizens could be "erroneously identified as potential aliens" in federal records. He wrote the risks were mitigated by safeguards his office takes "and any remaining risks were outweighed by the need to support the agency's law-enforcement and election-integrity mission."
A federal judge in California is putting limits on pre-election field operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security that the agency says is aimed at trying to find noncitizens who have illegally voted in nine states.
In a 19-page order late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the federal government was using "flawed" data in the initiative and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.
Martínez-Olguín referenced a disclosure last month from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services whistleblower that alleged rushed efforts to match data to create a target list of potential noncitizens on voter rolls, and that the list includes U.S. citizens. She also pointed to HSI's social media posts, including one that showed agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote.
The judge wrote that the government's use of unreliable and incomplete data along with highly publicized arrests "lead to an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote."
HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents produced in the case and CNN reporting.
Martínez-Olguín barred DHS officers in those states from conducting field operations targeting people they "know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens," or that are based "wholly" on USCIS matching data without further investigation.
In a declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell had told the judge his team manually reviews records before referring them to HSI, but acknowledged the "low possibility" citizens could be "erroneously identified as potential aliens" in federal records. He wrote the risks were mitigated by safeguards his office takes "and any remaining risks were outweighed by the need to support the agency's law-enforcement and election-integrity mission."
It's unclear how much of an effect the judge's order will have on the federal government's highly publicized campaign to find noncitizen voters.
States reviews and audits have consistently found voting by noncitizens to be extremely rare.
"DHS is laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders," the agency wrote in a statement. "We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens."
The order is set to take effect on Friday and would be in effect through election night, though the federal government could appeal.
The judge's ruling came in a lawsuit filed last month by a coalition that includes San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, the city of San Francisco, nursing unions and Voto Latino Foundation. Protect Democracy and the National Immigration Law Center are litigating the case against the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
"Today, the courts affirmed a vital principle of our democracy: Voting is a fundamental right that citizens — whether born here or naturalized — should be able to exercise without armed government agents harassing them," Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, said in a statement.
"It was clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people's homes weeks before an election," he added.
A court filing by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United described naturalized citizen members who no longer wanted to attend political rallies, sign up to be election poll workers, or vote in person because of the federal operations.
The order comes as the Department of Justice is suing California and demanding the state segregate 20,000 ballots from people federal officials say they believe are "likely" noncitizens.
A preliminary review of a sample of that list by Los Angeles County election officials found many of the registrations were canceled, inactive or had no voting history, and some pertained to people who indicated they were born in the U.S.
The DOJ announced charges against 28 green card holders across the state on Monday who are accused of illegally voting or registering to vote.
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Healthcare costs are rising fast in the U.S., and even workers with solid healthcare benefits through work are feeling it, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers about their health benefits. The report was published Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.
Why it matters: "The average health insurance premium for a family of four is now $28,000, which is just a ton of money," says Matthew Rae, associate director for the Health Care Marketplace Program at KFF. "It's basically the cost of a new car every year just to keep a family of four insured." Of that total for family premiums, workers pay about $7,000 per year on average and employers pay the rest.
Why now: Another report published Thursday demonstrates the way these high costs affect people's health. The survey, conducted every two years by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports independent research, is entitled "The State of Health Insurance Coverage in 2026." Even for workers fortunate enough to have health benefits, "about 43% of them said that they didn't get healthcare because of cost over the past year, and about 31% reported that they had medical debt," says Sara Collins, lead author of the report.
Joseph Babbitt of Springfield, Mo. has a pretty good deal when it comes to health insurance. He works as a senior financial controller for West Plains Veterinary Supply, which employs about 50 people and distributes pet food, toys and vet supplies across the region.
Like about 157 million Americans, Babbitt gets insurance through his job. Unlike most Americans, his job has exceptionally generous benefits. "Our owners are very nice — they give all of our employees healthcare and they pay for it," he says. The company offers several different plan options and covers most or all of the monthly premium cost.
For stories on the science of healthy living, subscribe to NPR's Health newsletter.
So why, even with free premiums, does it still feel like health costs are way too expensive? "Everybody talks about healthcare and how much it's costing them," says Babbitt. He explains that even without monthly premiums, a high deductible can be brutal — that's the amount the patient has to spend out-of-pocket before the insurance company starts paying for doctors visits and procedures, etc.
Now age 60, he remembers a time when it wasn't so bad. "Back in the '90s, our deductibles were $250 [or] $500 — now they're $5,000," he says. "That seems like a lot."
"We are the only country on our planet that forces people into bankruptcy because they get sick," he adds.
The cost of a new car, every year
Healthcare costs are rising fast in the U.S., and even workers with solid healthcare benefits through work are feeling it, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers about their health benefits. The report was published Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.
"The average health insurance premium for a family of four is now $28,000, which is just a ton of money," says Matthew Rae, associate director for the Health Care Marketplace Program at KFF. "It's basically the cost of a new car every year just to keep a family of four insured." Of that total for family premiums, workers pay about $7,000 per year on average and employers pay the rest.
A glimmer of positivity is that the costs for plans isn't growing as fast as it has in years past, he explains. "We're seeing a 5% increase in family health insurance premiums, which continues a period of modest growth," he says. That increase is roughly on par with worker wages and inflation.
However, "a 5% increase on a big number is still a lot of money," Rae points out. Plus, the growth for the portion of the premium costs that workers pay was 9%. "If this is the beginning of a shift of costs onto workers, that would be a big deal in terms of affordability," he says.
"We are asking people to chip in a lot of money," Rae adds. "Many people are committing a big chunk of their income to health insurance."
The uninsured rate is rising
Another report published Thursday demonstrates the way these high costs affect people's health. The survey, conducted every two years by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports independent research, is entitled "The State of Health Insurance Coverage in 2026."
Even for workers fortunate enough to have health benefits, "about 43% of them said that they didn't get healthcare because of cost over the past year, and about 31% reported that they had medical debt," says Sara Collins, lead author of the report.
Another key finding was that the overall uninsured rate rose in the last two years. Collins says that's significant but not surprising, because of federal policy decisions like letting extra federal subsidies for people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans expire, and people losing Medicaid after the pandemic emergency ended.
Federal data shows millions of people have lost health coverage already from either Medicaid or the ACA marketplaces. When work requirements take effect next year, millions more people are projected to lose Medicaid.
"There is a, I think, a strong feeling across the country that something probably does need to be done to the situation that people are facing in their health and health insurance — both on the cost side and then also on these coverage losses," Collins says.
"We asked people whether the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans have coverage and nearly three quarters said yes to that — that included about 45% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats and 76% of independents."
Gab Chabrán
covers what's happening in food and culture for LAist.
Published October 22, 2026 4:24 PM
Crispy cheese, fried lumpia wrapper and jalapeños: Mike Obedoza’s Lumpia Smash Burger packs it all in.
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Courtesy Banger Lumpia
)
Topline:
Mike Obedoza, who grew up in Carson and now lives in Orange County, has struck a chord with his lumpia-style smash burgers, which blend American and Pinoy flavors and textures.
Why it matters: For many children of immigrants, food bridges their cultural heritage and American upbringing. Obedoza uses the smash burger as his canvas.
Why now: Obedoza is coming off back-to-back Best Burger wins at the Old Towne Burger Fest and a residency at Grand Central Market, the latest sign that Southern California’s new wave of Filipino food is still having its moment.
Mike Obedoza’s Lumpia Smash Burger begins with the flavorful marinade his mother uses for making lumpia, a crispy Filipino spring roll. He folds it into a beef patty, then tops it with a fried lumpia wrapper, creamy avocado slices and fresh jalapeño.
For Obedoza, who grew up in Carson as the son of Filipino immigrants and now resides in Tustin, the burger is more than a winning recipe. “This is me on a plate,” he said.
Fresh off back-to-back Best Burger wins at the Old Towne Burger Fest in Orange County, Obedoza has landed a residency at Grand Central Market in downtown L.A. as Banger Lumpia.
He attributes his current success to the broader Filipino American food moment happening in Southern California, from Lord Maynard Llera of Kuya Lord winning Best Chef: California at the 2024 James Beard Awards to other Filipino food business upstarts' local success, including San & Wolves in Long Beach.
Mike Obedoza works the griddle, making Filipino-American Smashburger dreams come true.
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Courtesy Banger Lumpia
)
“I’m one component of a whole movement that’s happening right now,” he said.
His residency closes this weekend as part of Filipino American History Month, capping off a whirlwind couple of months Obedoza doesn’t take for granted, especially the love he's received from his own community.
“We get a lot of Filipinos that pass by us glowing. … They’re stoked that there’s some Filipino representation,” he said.
Building the burger
Before Banger Lumpia, Obedoza’s pop-up was called Banger, and he folded Filipino flavors like sisig into tacos. Once customers learned the food was Filipino, they kept asking for the classics. “Where’s the lumpia? Where’s the pancit?” he recalled.
Since lumpia filling is marinated ground meat, a burger felt like the natural next step. Obedoza took the marinade from his mother’s lumpia recipe (onions, carrots, soy sauce and fish sauce) and worked it into an all-beef smash patty.
Back-to-back wins: Obedoza’s Lumpia Smashburger took home Best Burger at the Old Towne Burger Fest in 2025 and 2026.
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Courtesy Banger Lumpia
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Jalapeño and avocado add a California finish. “It’s like this perfect blend of being Filipino and Californian,” Obedoza said.
The idea has deep roots in Southern California. Obedoza points to Kogi, the Korean taco truck Roy Choi launched in L.A., which Choi said drew on a kind of local terroir. “I don’t see mustard plants and sheep grazing,” Choi said in a 2014 CNN segment with Anthony Bourdain. “I see barbed wire and telephone poles.”
“It’s a representation of the soil we were raised in," Obedoza said. “I think the Lumpia Smash burger is just my version of that.”
From skater to chef
Growing up in Carson, Obedoza found his creative outlet in rollerblading, competing and filming for sponsors. His favorite skater was Jon Julio, a Filipino American legend of the sport. “That was big for someone, a Filipino growing up in America,” Obedoza said. “I can’t think of anyone else at that time that was a representation of that.”
Obedoza studied hotel and restaurant management at Cal Poly Pomona, where a broken ankle from a skate competition pushed him to get serious about cooking. After graduating in 2007, he completed an accelerated program at the Culinary Institute of America in Greystone in St. Helena. Then, in 2008, he took a trip to the Philippines with his dad that reshaped how he saw himself.
From the skate park to the griddle, Banger Lumpia’s Mike Obedoza puts his whole self on the plate.
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Courtesy Banger Lumpia
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“In the States, I’m Filipino. But when I go there, I’m American,” he said.
Back home, he cooked at hotels including Hyatt and Terranea Resort before moving into marketing and e-commerce. In 2022, he started serving tacos at skate parks under the name Banger. He went full-time in 2023 and has been popping up in L.A. and O.C. ever since.
That same cultural tension carries over into his food. While his Lumpia Smash burger has won praise, Obedoza says some Filipino customers pick apart the more traditional dishes on his menu: the lumpia isn’t made right, they say, the dipping sauce and adobo need more sugar, the adobo isn’t dark enough or has no bone.
“I guess I win on the burgers, but I’ll never win on being Filipino enough,” he said.
He said his cooking reflects his parents’ style and their home region of Central Luzon, north of Manila on the Philippines’ largest island. If it doesn’t match what someone grew up with, he says to get it from their own family.
Despite those differences, Obedoza says that lumpia is “the gateway drug to Filipino food” and hopes that his customers will feel emboldened to try the rest of the menu. He sees the Grand Central Market residency as a test run for an eventual brick-and-mortar. Whatever comes next, he credits one choice: “I went all in on being unique.”
