The Brief

Whoever is elected this fall as governor and state superintendent of public instruction will face a new reality for California education.

The changing of the guard after the eight-year term limits for Gov. Gavin Newsom and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond will likely coincide with a belt-tightening period for the state budget, forcing tough choices for the next governor.

A consolation prize, however, could be more authority over the California Department of Education. Newsom is proposing to shift control of the department’s operations to a new education commissioner appointed by the next governor — an arrangement common among states. The shift would diminish the power of the state superintendent, who’d be relieved of managing the education bureaucracy while remaining the state’s elected advocate-in-chief of education.

Over the past six years, amid a burst of state revenue, Newsom and the Legislature enacted multibillion-dollar programs that redefined TK-12. They expanded TK-12 with transitional kindergarten for 4-year-olds and lengthened the school day through expanded learning. Money for apprenticeships and career pathways created post-high school opportunities, and community schools broadened connections with parents and neighborhood health services.

But the era of large-scale programs will be Newsom’s legacy, not his successor’s. Circumstances beyond the next governor’s control — continuing declines in enrollment and revenues, probably retreating to historical levels, forcing additional school closures, with a recession looming — will temper ambitions of what more can be done for California’s students.

And then there are sounds of frustration, growing louder from the picket line to the school boardroom to the hallways of Sacramento. Districts are complaining that the rollout of ambitious programs, with accompanying reporting requirements and regulations, has diverted their attention and strained their budgets.

David Roth, superintendent of Buckeye Union School District, which serves 4,200 TK-8 students in El Dorado County, was emphatic. “We don’t need new programs,” he said. Adding more, he said, would result in continued labor strife over pay raises that many districts argue they can’t afford, and “an inability to maintain the programs we have.”

Roth’s message, reiterated by others, is that schools should get back to basics, as in base funding — the portion of the state’s funding formula intended to cover general operating expenses. They want the Legislature and the next governor to make raising base funding the number one priority.

Roth established Raise the Base Coalition, a website that lays out the challenge of rising costs. Forty districts have signed up so far; they are primarily suburban districts with fewer-than-average high-needs students, and therefore receive less “supplemental” and “concentration” funding under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula and other programs with similar distributions.

Opposition to equity is not the issue, Roth said. “Even districts with above-median funding are struggling to keep pace with rising costs.” When there is more money to cover basic expenses, he added, all districts benefit.

Last month, school board presidents and members from 10 districts, mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area, made the same point while calling for, among other things, adjustments to the funding formula to reflect regional costs.

“As those entrusted with ensuring the long-term financial viability and educational success of our public schools, we write to sound the alarm about the profound, widespread fiscal challenges districts across the state are facing,” they wrote.

At first glance, their complaints may invoke little sympathy. From 2018-19, the year preceding Covid-19, through 2024-25, funding rose 53% through Proposition 98, the formula that sets the minimum share of state revenue for TK-12 and community colleges. Per student funding from the state will rise to more than $20,000, a record.

But several factors squeezing districts’ spending will likely escalate in the coming years, demanding the next governor’s attention.

Declining enrollment

The California Department of Finance projects the nearly decade-long statewide decline in enrollment to accelerate, with an additional 10% drop by 2033-34, bringing the total to 5.2 million students. Most districts will feel it, with enrollment losses of up to 20% in some Los Angeles County districts.

Districts receive funding based on the average number of students who attend school daily over the course of a year. Adding transitional kindergarten has propped up attendance, but now that TK is fully phased in, the average daily attendance decline will bite harder in many districts.

Special education

The percentage of students with disabilities has risen from 13% in 2018-19 to 15% in 2023-24, even as overall enrollment has declined. Newsom is proposing to add $500 million next year to equalize state special education funding among districts, but the overall trend has not favored districts. The federal share of total special education funding in California, never close to the 40% share that Congress envisioned 50 years ago when passing the federal special education mandate, has fallen steadily over the past decade, as has the state’s share of dedicated funding.

Districts will continue to be responsible for the shortfall. Districts’ share of special education costs has risen from 51% in 2014 to 63% last year, according to School Services of California, a statewide consulting company, and higher in some small districts.

Placer County Office of Education Superintendent Gayle Garbolino-Mojica said that unexpected special education costs have forced three of her districts onto the state’s financial watch list. Preschoolers are coming to school with serious special needs — autism, multiple disabilities, behavioral problems — “in numbers not seen before,” she said.

Inadequate cost-of-living adjustments

A 3% decline in a district’s attendance may not appear dramatic, but losing 3% of funding will be larger than the 2.41% cost-of-living adjustment that districts are projected to receive in 2026-27. And it’s larger than the 2.30% COLA they got this year and the 1.07% COLA in 2024-25. The state’s COLA is tied to a national formula of a basket of goods that doesn’t reflect the sharp rise in health insurance and the need to raise staff pay to retain teachers.

The state cushions the impact of a steadily declining enrollment by allowing districts to claim attendance over a three-year period. Without it, “we would be toast,” said Roth. But that’s not a long-term answer, he said. “We cannot adjust costs as quickly as we will lose revenue.”

‘Declining enrollment dividend’

Because of Proposition 98’s funding guarantee, TK-12 and community colleges will continue to receive 40% of the state’s general revenue, yet districts collectively will receive fewer dollars as their enrollments drop. The unallotted difference, euphemistically called a “declining enrollment dividend,” could grow to $7.5 billion annually, providing a pot of discretionary funding for the Legislature and governor. How to spend it could prove one of the more contentious decisions in the coming years. Among the options:

• Switching from funding by attendance to funding by annual enrollment, a method favored especially by districts hardest hit by chronic absences.
• Adding a regional cost factor to the Local Control Funding Formula — a much-discussed idea over the years, but never adopted;
• Increasing the state’s share of special education expenses, benefiting all districts;
• Building in a permanent 4% annual COLA;
• Making permanent what has been sporadic among districts: funding professional development, starting with evidence-based instruction in early literacy and the new math framework.

Other issues

Plenty of important decisions won’t require more money. While it’s a fool’s errand to predict what future events will determine, what could crowd its way to the top of the list includes:

Restructuring the California Department of Education 

If the Legislature approves Newsom’s plan as part of the next state budget, the department will fall under the authority of Newsom’s successor. That will be only the first step to untangling the current fractured system of school improvement and accountability. Like it or not, the next governor will take credit or blame for implementing programs the state superintendent of instruction had managed.

Resolving Miliani Rodriguez v. State of California 

That’s the lawsuit the public interest law firm Public Advocates filed on behalf of 14 students, parents, and teachers in six school districts, challenging the first-come, first-served state formula for distributing billions of dollars to repair school facilities. If Newsom doesn’t settle what he has acknowledged favors wealthy districts, then the decision to defend or negotiate an end to an inequitable system falls to his successor.

Taking the lead on artificial intelligence 

AI is a big, amorphous subject, enticing and forbidding, that has been left to districts to decipher and deal with vendors. The next California governor can call for all students to be AI literate, said Chris Agnew, director of Generative AI for Education Hub at Stanford University, and ask fundamental questions like, “What are the core capacities we want to build in California students, and what are the research-backed learning experiences that build these capacities?”

Redesigning high schools

High schools face a challenge. Only 55% of California students report feeling connected to high school. In 2025, the Legislature budgeted $10 million for a Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program to establish 14 networks for high schools and middle schools in 57 districts. Some have been experimenting for years, while others are launching different models with team teaching, small-group learning to strengthen student relationships, and nontraditional scheduling to accommodate apprenticeships.

A seven-period day, driven by college course requirements and seat time regulations, is hard to change. But if, as State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond hopes, the results show “what it takes for students to be engaged and purposeful in a rapidly changing world,” the next governor should scale up the project, she said.

Getting serious about the achievement gap

Newsom’s big bets on improving students’ well-being and academic progress may bear fruit long term. But the California School Boards Association is demanding full attention now to narrowing persistent disparities in achievement between low-income and well-off students, and among racial and ethnic groups.

CSBA is pushing bills that would hold state agencies accountable for providing the annual metrics that they use to track how they are closing the achievement gap. A separate commission would weed out regulations and duplicate programs, and give a thumbs-down on new programs that would divert resources and energy from addressing the achievement gap.

The bills may not pass, at least as written, but the message is clear: A governor with a different agenda may be out of sync with the times.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said crews made significant progress overnight to repair a rupture in a 100-year-old water main in West Hollywood that caused a massive sink hole and severe flooding in the area on Thursday.

Repairs included cutting and removing a 25-foot-long section of the broken pipe and putting a replacement in place.

LADWP officials said the pipe will be repressurized, checked for leaks, and tested for regulatory compliance. It will need to be refilled before street paving.

The department doesn't have a specific completion date for the fix.

Sunset Boulevard between Sherbourne Drive and San Vicente Boulevard is still closed to traffic. Nearby streets have limited access, including at Cynthia and San Vicente, for public safety.

A map of road closures provided by LADWP as of July 18.

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Courtesy LADWP

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Where things stand for local businesses

Dialog Cafe on Holloway Drive said on Instagram on Thursday that the cafe sustained significant damage and didn't know when it can reopen.

And Book Soup reported on social media Saturday that they remained closed. The said they hope to reopen within a few days, noting the "the neighborhood remains inaccessible except to residents."

Republicans are leaning into immigration enforcement as one of their top campaign issues this midterm cycle — despite a rocky start to the year for messaging on the president's top policy.

An NPR analysis of advertisement data from the firm AdImpact shows that when it comes to immigration, Republicans are spending more money and running more ads than Democrats are. The data set includes ads purchased from January through June, before immigration enforcement officers shot and killed people in Maine and Texas this month.

These political ads offer one indication of where each party sees its momentum going with voters, as candidates across the country gear up for the general election in November. The data suggests Republicans see immigration as a winning issue: Since the start of the year, Republicans and their supporting organizations have run nearly 300 ads nationwide that either include a mention of immigration or are solely about immigration. This compares to 62 ads from Democrats and their supporting organizations.

"Republicans stood up for Americans. Democrats sat down for illegals. Thomas Massie sides with these radical-left lunatics," reads one ad funded by the MAGA KY PAC, a political action committee that was set up to defeat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in the primary. The ad cost over $831,000; Massie, a frequent critic of President Trump, went on to lose his race to Trump-endorsed candidate Ed Gallrein.

Among the most expensive was a $928,000 ad buy in the Michigan governor's race.

"No greater example of waste, fraud, and abuse in Michigan than using our tax dollars to give benefits to illegal immigrants. As governor, I'll be incredibly supportive of ICE coming here and removing these fraudsters," says Republican candidate Perry Johnson, who calls himself a "MAGA Conservative" and has pitched his business approach to running a state.

Immigration was a winning issue for Republicans in the 2024 elections, with themes like increasing border security and reducing crime.

"Campaigns are not trying to change minds. They're trying to shape what the election's about. They're trying to energize the voters they already have," said Cameron Shelton, a professor of political economy at Claremont McKenna College. "If Republicans are investing much more heavily in immigration advertising, one interpretation is that they believe immigration is exactly that kind of [mobilizing] issue in today's electorate."

Immigration and enforcement are among the top issues for both parties

Most of the ads have run during the primary season, which is now more than half over. Since more than 90% of seats up for grabs in gubernatorial, House and Senate races are considered safe for one party or another, the primary campaign has become decisive for many candidates nationwide.

Some Democrats became more vocal on the issue of immigration at the start of 2026, particularly in states that were seeing intense waves of enforcement. Democrats in New Jersey, Illinois and Minnesota, for example, referenced the administration's tactics in their calls to "abolish ICE," or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and argued the administration had gone too far.

The Illinois Future PAC ran two ads, each worth more than $800,000, earlier this year to support Juliana Stratton's stance on abolishing ICE. The current lieutenant governor later won the Illinois Democratic primary for Senate.

But months into the year, Democrats have prioritized other topics, often to differentiate themselves from members of their own party, like on healthcare, while Republicans are keeping immigration-related themes on Americans' screens.

During the primary season, Shelton said, campaigns are testing out the issues they think might matter through the general election.

For both parties, "Donald Trump" is the top subject in TV ad buys, according to data from AdImpact. "Immigration" is the issue with the second-highest spending for Republicans; for Democrats, "ICE" is the third-highest, after "healthcare."

"It's a signal to donors, it's a signal to activists, to interest groups, to local candidates. It helps coordinate a lot of the actors that we think of as the party," Shelton said. "That's another reason why some of these early ads are interesting, because they are signals of the direction that is trying to be set out."

Republicans link top issues to immigration

Between January and June, Republicans outspent Democrats on immigration-related political advertising by about $36 million. Republican ads focused on immigration, which total $53 million in spending, have aired across the country in 88 races and 27 states. Ads for Democratic candidates, which total $17 million, have run in 20 races and 11 states, primarily those that have seen increased immigration enforcement action like California, New York and Illinois.

"Republican candidates have a large menu of issues we are on the right side of that are all very popular amongst voters," said Mike Marinella, national press secretary at the National Republican Congressional Committee. He listed the border, crime and the economy as issues that Republican candidates can connect to immigration.

"Immigration intersects with each of them," he said. "The most effective message depends on the district and how those issues are affecting that particular community," he added.

Zach Lahn, who won the GOP primary bid for Iowa governor, spent about $475,000 on an ad in May that vowed to ban H-1B visa holders from being hired by Iowa government agencies and universities, linking immigration and economic concerns.

Crossings at the border have plummeted since Trump took office. Marinella said candidates are still keeping the issue of border security top of mind for their voters.

A majority of the ads promoting Republican candidates include keywords such as "securing the border" and discuss border wall funding and crime. Some also go a step further to talk about specific proposals supported by the administration, such as limiting commercial driver's licenses and supporting the SAVE America Act, which would require stricter proof of citizenship to vote.

For example, in Florida's 19th congressional district, Jim Oberweis, one of several candidates vying for the GOP seat, spent $880,000 on seven ads that advocated for ending birthright citizenship.

Democrats lean into pro-immigration statements

Ads promoting Democratic candidates, on the other hand, shy away from specific policy proposals. Instead, they include criticism of incumbents for recent votes on bills that have provided funding to immigration officers or expanded the scope of who could be detained. Others focus on personal connections to immigration, proposals to limit enforcement and general pro-immigrant statements.

"Democrats are finding their voice on immigration after a rough few years during the Biden administration," said Frank Sharry, senior fellow at Third Way, a centrist think tank. "I don't think they'll be running a bunch of ads on it. I do think they'll be speaking to the issue and winning the argument, which is more important than whether they run ads on it or not."

A poll from Gallup released in July shows that most Americans think immigration is a good thing, and a majority support some form of pathway to citizenship rather than a blanket deportation policy — though there are sharp differences by party. A majority of Republicans favor hiring more Border Patrol agents, deporting anyone without legal status and banning sanctuary cities.

Republican ads broadcast during Senate races in Ohio, Texas and Alaska and gubernatorial contests in New York and Iowa are already starting to target Democrats. Strategists said this trend suggests how each party may lean into immigration leading up to the November election. But they also caution against reading too much into advertisements to gauge party strategy.

"Back in the day, ads were king. Now you have so many diverse streams of information arriving to people on their phones that it's just not the same," Third Way's Sharry said, noting interviews, debates, and other forms of public statements aren't captured in the ad data.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Making daylight saving time permanent moved a step closer to reality this week, when the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass a measure to eliminate the annual clock-changing ritual.

But some Orthodox Jewish organizations are fighting to prevent the bill from becoming law.

The measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, passed in a 308-117 vote in the House on Tuesday (July 14). It now heads to the Senate, where its passage is uncertain. President Donald Trump has championed the effort, describing on his Truth Social account moving the clocks forward and back as a "ridiculous, twice yearly production."

If passed, the bill would give Americans an extra hour of sunshine in the evenings during the winter. But it would also push winter sunrises one hour later. That's of concern to Orthodox Jews, who pray three times a day, beginning with the Shacharit morning prayer service, which by tradition cannot begin in the dark.

"The bottom line is, if prayers have to start an hour later that will have a direct effect on people getting to work and on when schools can start," said Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an organization representing U.S. Orthodox Jews.

A constellation of other Orthodox Jewish groups also opposes the measure, including the Orthodox Union and the Coalition for Jewish Values.

In Jewish law, some prayers, such as those in the morning service, can only be said communally, in a quorum of 10 Jewish adults, called a minyan. That requirement means going to synagogue every morning before heading out for work or school and saying prayers, such as the Shema, the central prayer of Jewish life, collectively. The morning service typically lasts 35 minutes but on some occasions can last close to an hour.

"It becomes a communal issue when, for example, a synagogue that has had a morning prayer service for 100 years suddenly does not have a quorum of 10 men who can show up at the prayer time close to 9 o'clock because they have jobs," Motzen said.

Motzen, who works in the Washington, D.C., office of Agudath Israel, said the organization already has the support of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who last year objected to fast-tracking the bill.

Orthodox Jews make up only 9% of the estimated 5.8 million Jewish adults in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center. Larger Jewish groups have not publicly taken a position.

Congress has grappled with turning back the clocks many times. In 1974, it tried to abandon clock-switching, but repealed the law a few months later following public outcry. In 2022, the Senate unanimously passed a measure making daylight savings time permanent, but the bill died in the House.

Orthodox Jews are not the only constituencies opposed to the change. Some medical and health advocates argue that the human body's internal clock is better aligned with the sun during standard time rather than daylight saving time. School boards and parents are also concerned about children walking to school in pitch-black conditions during winter mornings.

That latter concern, which Motzen described as a safety issue, is one Orthodox Jews share as well.

Making daylight saving time permanent would make sunrise after 8 a.m. in most parts of the country, and after 9 a.m. in a few select places. For example, according to a list compiled by Agudath Israel, sunrise would take place after 9 a.m., (and as late as 9:13 a.m.) for 55 days a year in South Bend, Indiana. In Detroit, Michigan, sunrise would take place after 9 a.m. for 23 days a year.

Hawaii and most of Arizona abide by standard time year round, as do Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and Religion News Service.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated July 18, 2026 at 14:11 PM ET

After Medicaid officials improperly shared data about millions of people in January with immigration officials, ICE then shared that data with the data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court filings. Palantir operates an app called ELITE that is used by ICE agents to show the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation.

That revelation was made public in a motion filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration last year over its data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE.

Palantir said in a statement to NPR that the dataset in question had been purged.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in California ruled in December that health officials could share with ICE certain details from Medicaid data about immigrants without lawful status from the states that had sued, such as home addresses, dates of birth and immigration status.

Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, then temporarily paused data sharing between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement purposes in late May after federal officials admitted CMS had shared data with ICE in January that went beyond what the court order allowed. One dataset of refugees in Minnesota included U.S. citizens, and another that was transferred on Jan. 7 contained data of millions of people, including those in the country legally.

ICE was supposed to delete the improperly shared data. Chhabria set a hearing for August to further clarify his order and clear up ambiguity regarding which categories of noncitizens' data could be lawfully shared with ICE.

But in recent days, federal officials have admitted to additional instances of improper data sharing.

In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said that CMS again inadvertently reshared with ICE the dataset with millions of names that CMS had first improperly shared with ICE in January. The government said the error occurred during an effort to share data from states not involved in the lawsuit.

Alberto Briseno, a section chief for ICE's Homeland Security Investigations, wrote in a declaration that ICE personnel deleted the file after it was discovered and it was not used for law enforcement purposes.

Then Briseno revealed that a day later, the agency had done a broader search and discovered that half a dozen users still had a copy of the Jan. 7 dataset.

In that most recent declaration, Briseno said he was not aware of any additional copies of the dataset, but said the recent searches have "highlighted technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located." He added, "ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future."

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is asking the judge to expand his order to allow ICE to receive data on a broader category of noncitizens – to potentially include all immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, citizens or have another form of permanent status.

"ICE's inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undercuts any claim that the agency should be entitled to more access to that data," the Democratic attorneys generals wrote in their motion filed late Thursday.

Their motion continued, "Each successive revelation of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants' ability to maintain and secure this data in compliance with the Order, and more difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their counsel), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their healthcare data."

Palantir provided the following statement to NPR: "Our customers control their own data and manage access to that data. When Palantir employees are granted access to a customer's dataset, it is solely to help integrate and analyze that data — which is what our software does — not to store it or use it for our own purposes. Palantir can confirm that the dataset in question was purged pursuant to government instruction."

DHS didn't immediately return a request for comment about its transfer of data to Palantir.

According to a declaration filed by California deputy attorney general Anna Rich, when plaintiffs asked what federal officials did to ensure Palantir and other contractors had purged the data, defendants responded that the data had been shared over a Microsoft Teams chat and the shared data was deleted from the chat. Rich shared in her declaration a document turned over in discovery from federal officials that shows a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel asking Palantir to delete the file.

In an April 30 hearing, Chhabria had warned the federal government would not be able to continue using Medicaid data for deportation efforts if it continued improperly sharing the data of citizens and legal immigrants.

"If the federal government cannot be sufficiently careful then it can't use the information, ok?" Chhabria had said.

Copyright 2026 NPR