The Brief

Faced with growing reports of fraud, the U.S. Department of Education will make it harder for certain students to access financial aid, including some who could see delays of weeks or even months before cash is disbursed.

This month the department announced it would begin a new “screening process” for all financial aid applicants starting this fall. While that process is developed, the department will require colleges to do additional vetting of applicants this summer, which will place more of a burden on California's community colleges.

Unlike four-year universities, such as the University of California system, the state’s community colleges are designed to accept everyone, and they use a simple application process. But as classes moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic, fraud rings increasingly exploited that process by posing as students to steal financial aid.

Kevin Harral, financial aid director at Las Positas College in Livermore, said he’s already “bracing for what’s to come.” He said the education department could force his team to spend hours of additional work double-checking students’ identification this summer. While those students wait for verification, they may see long delays before they can access their financial aid.

Some students may decide to forego financial aid altogether, Harral said. “There’s some people who may not have the documents, may not have the ID, but there’s also the students where this is another barrier, maybe a psychological barrier, particularly if they have undocumented parents.”

In April, CalMatters reported that financial aid fraud was growing and that fake students stole more than $10 million in federal aid and more than $3 million in state aid from California’s community colleges in the prior 12 months — more than twice as much as the year before that.

In response to CalMatters’ reporting, college officials and federal and state lawmakers sprang into action this spring.

Anyone with a high school diploma or equivalent — and some without that — can apply to community college and enroll in classes, at which point they are eligible to receive federal Pell grants if they meet the income requirements. These grants, sometimes up to nearly $7,400 a year, cover tuition first, but for low-income students at a community college, whose tuition is free, the money goes directly into their pockets, covering other expenses, such as rent or food.

For scammers — who pretend to be low-income community college students — that’s a gold mine.

Many college officials are optimistic that by the fall, the education department’s new screening process, likely fraud-detection software, could stem the onslaught of financial aid abuse in California, which has burdened administrators and shut real students out of classes they need to graduate. The education department has said it will focus on screening first-time applicants but has not provided more details, such as what software it will use.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the state’s 116 community colleges, has said that fraud represents less than 1% of the billions in federal and state financial aid that go to its students each year. Asked by CalMatters about the education department’s new identity screening, Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the office, said she’s “waiting for more information.”

‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

The federal aid application process, known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, already has a number of ways to vet students. It requires applicants to submit their Social Security number, date of birth, and details about their income, which are verified by the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Scammers get through that process by submitting personal information they have stolen from other people.

A small subset of applicants are also required to prove their identity, either because they are randomly selected or because their applications are suspicious. Those applicants have to submit a notarized document or show up to the college’s aid office with an ID in hand.

“The fraudsters, they won’t show up,” said Harral, leaving the legitimate students with the burden to verify themselves.

Under the new policy many more students will need to prove their identity this summer by presenting identification to their college. Starting in the fall, the new screening process will ultimately minimize the amount of work that colleges have to do, according to the department’s announcement.

“Do we support this or do we have concerns? Yes and yes,” said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. She said she supports the federal government “taking on a stronger role in fraud detection” but is worried that the new policy will mean more work for college aid officers this summer.

For Harral, and many other financial aid directors, any changes to the federal financial aid system are nerve-wracking. In 2023 the education department created a new version of the FAFSA, which it was supposed to release on its usual October date. But it delayed the release until the end of December, sending students scrambling to submit their applications before the deadline. A glitch also prevented thousands of California students whose parents don’t have Social Security numbers from initially applying. The FAFSA was delayed once again this year to avoid “the kind of system errors that can derail millions of students,” according to a statement by the department.

Harral said he’s worried that the new screening process won’t be ready this fall, forcing his staff to continue verifying many students' identities manually.

“The recent track record of our education department is them not delivering things on schedule,” said Harral. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Has fraud really gone ‘unaddressed’?

While California’s colleges control which students they accept, they rely on the U.S. Education Department to help determine who is eligible for financial aid. Even California’s state financial aid program, Cal Grant, vets applicants using FAFSA. However, the Trump administration has cut staffing at the education department, hindering its ability to administer aid and investigate abuses.

In April, Republican Congress members wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, citing CalMatters’ reporting and asking for a federal investigation of the financial aid process for California’s community colleges. The Congress members accused the community college system of allowing fraud “to go unaddressed.”

The U.S. Education Department referred to the Republicans’ letter when justifying its new screening policy.

California’s community colleges have acknowledged the financial aid problem and spent roughly $150 million since 2021 boosting their fraud prevention and cybersecurity. Last month, the board of governors for California’s community college system agreed that it will eventually require all applicants to verify their identities.

The board also considered charging an application fee, which could disincentivize fraud rings from submitting hundreds of fake applications at a time. Students opposed that policy, saying the harm outweighs the benefit, and the board delayed a decision on the matter.

Speaking about the new screening policy, Daisy Gonzales, the executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, which oversees the Cal Grant program, said she’s concerned that eliminating fraud might complicate the financial aid process for students. “Over-compensating for the actions of bad actors cannot be solved by penalizing low-income students who rely on financial aid to pursue higher education.”

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

There’s a new way you can track pollution in your neighborhood.

The SoCal Clean Manufacturing Coalition, a climate advocacy group, has released a map with the locations of more than 1,800 fossil fuel-burning industrial boilers across Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Many are at universities and hospitals, as well as some apartment complexes like the Park La Brea apartments in the Miracle Mile.

The map is part of an effort to push the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates our air quality, to pass rules to require these large boilers to be phased out.

Why do these boilers matter?

Industrial boilers aren’t exactly the poster child of pollution, but they do play a role in Southern California. Boilers come in different sizes, and although there are electric types, many still burn fossil fuels to generate hot water, steam and, as a byproduct, nitrogen oxide.

South Coast AQMD says that makes it a source of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide contributors are not only a problem for smog and respiratory issues but also for the agency’s effort to meet federal air quality standards.

That’s why last year the agency approved new requirements for certain buildings to use zero-emission water heaters and boilers when they need replacement.

Teresa Cheng,  California director for Industrious Labs, a coalition member focused on creating cleaner industries, says these rules were for smaller “baby boilers” and that the coalition wants to see that applied to larger ones, which are covered under the agency’s 1146 and 1146.1 rule.

The push has caused concern in the gas industry. The California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, which represents small fuel retailers and industry suppliers, says boilers are essential in a wide range of manufacturing facilities that need high heat, like food processing, fuel production and more.

“CFCA is deeply concerned that requiring industrial facilities to abandon gas-fired boilers at the end of their useful life before the market is technologically or economically ready will still have severe consequences for manufacturers, workers and consumers,” the alliance said in a statement.

The organization says many facilities already have invested in “ultra-low” nitrogen oxide technology and that requiring a switch to zero-emissions equipment could destabilize the industry because of costs.

See the map

The map includes the number of boilers in each place, including how many aging units, and their permitted heating capacity. (That metric essentially correlates with how much pollution it can release.)

Cheng says the map is being shared to make the “invisible visible” so residents can know what’s around them. Most boilers are in communities that already deal with environmental pollution problems.

Boilers are even close to K-12 schools, like Glendale’s Herbert Hoover High School, which has its own.

“ These boilers have a very long lifeline,” she said. “If the air district doesn't pass zero-emissions rules for these boilers, we actually risk locking in decades more of pollution.”

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up one of President Donald Trump's most contentious policies by reviewing the American legal principle of "birthright citizenship," potentially upending a 127-year-old understanding of who gets to be a U.S. citizen.

The Trump administration argues that citizenship has been too freely granted to the offspring of non-citizens. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order withholding citizenship from children born to non-citizens "unlawfully present" in the U.S., or non-citizens in the country on a temporary basis, such as tourists. The order would apply only to people born 30 days after the order was signed Jan. 20.

Four federal courts and two appeals courts have blocked implementation of the executive order. Courts cite the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War and grants citizenship to "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

In one of those cases, the Supreme Court earlier this year handed down an important ruling limiting the ability of lower courts to issue universal injunctions. But it did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump's executive order, or the validity of birthright citizenship in these cases.

Lawyers for the administration say parents in the country temporarily are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S., and that broad "birthright citizenship" is out of step with what's done in other countries. The administration also says current practices allow for what they deride as "birth tourism," in which parents without meaningful ties to the U.S. claim citizenship for their children by giving birth here. This practice is not tracked in government statistics, but the Center for Immigration Studies estimates there are more than 20,000 such cases per year.

Despite the administration's repeated losses in lower courts on this issue, the high court will now hear its arguments this spring.

"It does say something about how important this issue is to the president," says César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State who specializes in immigration law. He says the Trump administration is playing "the long game."

"Those skirmishes in the lower courts are skirmishes that they are willing to lose because they have their eyes set on the main prize, and that's a favorable audience in the Supreme Court," he says.

But García Hernández says that doesn't mean the Supreme Court will necessarily agree with the administration's position.

"Birthright citizenship based on the location of birth is common within our neighbors in North America and throughout the Western Hemisphere but highly unusual in other parts of the world," he says. "But what should dictate the way in which citizenship law evolves moving forward is the text of the 14th Amendment, and how that applies in the modern United States."

Since 1898, the governing case has been United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which affirmed the citizenship of a man born to Chinese citizens in San Francisco.

That case has long been seen as establishing an unambiguous citizenship right for children of foreign nationals, but it has also long been criticized by some for allowing foreign-born mothers to exploit the right by visiting the U.S. expressly for the purpose of giving birth here. As President Trump began his second term in January, he made curbing that phenomenon a central part of his larger immigration enforcement plans.

By agreeing to take the case this term, the Supreme Court may end up highlighting the issue ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections.

Copyright 2025 NPR

In public, the Trump administration is on the attack against the media by launching investigations, restricting press access in government buildings and creating websites slamming critical news coverage of the president.

In court, the administration finds itself increasingly on the back foot. The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon's new press policy Thursday. By that afternoon, NPR was in court at a pivotal hearing arguing that the administration had broken the law with its treatment of public media.

At a key court hearing in Washington, D.C., NPR's lawyers accused President Trump of acting illegally on May 1 when he issued an executive order demanding an end to all federal subsidies for NPR and PBS. The president's order and materials that accompany it accuse the public broadcasters of ideological bias, in NPR's case due to its news coverage. The networks deny this.

"The executive order flagrantly violates NPR and its member stations' First Amendment rights," NPR's lead trial attorney, the noted free speech lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, argued in court. "He's not making any secret of his views."

Under the Constitution, the U.S. government cannot discriminate against people on the basis of the views they express; for news outlets, this extends to news coverage.

As Boutrous noted in court, Trump's executive order is titled: "Ending Taxpayer Subsidy of Biased Media." In it, Trump stated: "Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens."

Federal lawyers say Trump's motivation includes reasons beyond coverage

The summary judgment hearing represented an opportunity for each side to shape the contours of a trial, should the presiding judge order one. It was also a chance for the opposing legal teams to try to convince the judge he could issue a ruling granting their side victory without one.

In court filings and during Thursday's hearing, the Justice Department team representing Trump and other federal officials named as defendants did not dispute that the president acted because he believed NPR and PBS were biased.

But the lead trial attorney for the federal government, Alexander Resar, noted that Trump had also cited the desire to stop funding media outlets altogether. And he argued at the hearing that NPR had not suffered true damage as a result of the edict.

Over the summer, Trump successfully pushed Republicans in Congress to pull back all future federal funding already approved for public media on a party-line vote — $1.1 billion in all. While that money represents a small fraction of NPR's budget and a modest part of PBS' revenues, it can be critical to public broadcasting stations. Since the passage of that law, many have announced layoffs and programming cuts.

That was not as a result of Trump's executive order, Resar noted.

A skeptical judge

The presiding U.S. district court judge, Randolph D. Moss, seemed skeptical. "You'd be on much firmer ground if the president had simply said, 'We just want to get out of the news business."

The National Endowment for the Arts canceled a grant for NPR that had already been disbursed to the network, simply to make the point they were in line with Trump's decree, Moss said.

For more than a half-century, most federal money for public media has been funneled through the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has a bipartisan board whose members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. CPB has become a shadow of its former self, run by a skeleton crew since the pullback of federal funding.

The three stations that have joined NPR as plaintiffs in the suit capture the appeal and reach of the broader public radio system: the statewide Colorado Public Radio, which is based in Denver; Aspen Public Radio which broadcasts throughout the Roaring Fork Valley; and KSUT, originally founded by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and now serving four federally recognized tribes in the Four Corners region in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

CPB sued Trump last spring when he sought to fire board members. Yet evidence surfaced this fall that CPB had scrambled behind the scenes in April to appease a top White House budget official. According to sworn testimony from a CPB executive, the official spoke of her disdain for NPR and warned the corporation's chairperson not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Within a day, a senior CPB executive told NPR it would not receive a multiyear contract worth $35.9 million to provide satellite distribution of content to public radio stations. Its board had authorized the agreement just two days earlier, according to court filings.

Judge Moss had explicitly told the CPB's lawyers that he did not find their defenses for the reversal credible. And CPB ultimately settled NPR's suit over the issue for the full amount and an agreement not to enforce Trump's order banning money for the network.

Moss challenged some arguments made by the legal team for NPR and three Colorado public radio stations that joined its suit, drilling down to determine what specific remedy they were seeking.

Government deflects judge's suggestion

The judge also appeared to offer the government a way out for a major part of the case, dangling the prospect that it might enable him to avoid ruling that Trump's executive order was illegal.

Moss suggested that the U.S. government could formally agree that the CPB settlement with NPR was binding on the federal government too — that it would never seek to prevent CPB from sending money to the radio network if federal subsidies were to be somehow restored. In the absence of such a binding promise, Moss suggested, the president could easily undo the settlement someday, given his assertion that he can fire the board of the CPB. Moss repeatedly pointed to the claims of Trump's advisers that the powers of the executive branch reside in the president, often called the "unitary executive" theory.

Resar, the U.S. Justice Department attorney representing Trump and the government, said he was not prepared to accept such a resolution. Given the opportunity, he did not contest that the government was arguing Trump does have the power to force the overturning of CPB's deal. Similarly, the federal lawyer did not challenge the idea that the government was defending Trump's ability to order the cancellation of an institution's federal funding because he does not like what it has to say.

Judge Moss is expected to issue a ruling in the case soon.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. It was edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Vickie Walton-James and Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Copyright 2025 NPR

The Los Angeles Metro’s Board of Directors voted Thursday to re-approve the Dodger Stadium gondola, clearing the path for state agencies and the city of L.A. to provide necessary sign-offs before shovels hit the ground.

The decision came after protesters showed up en masse, forced officials to retreat to an earlier-than-scheduled closed session meeting, and won their demand for a dedicated period of public comment on the project before the vote.

The gondola is not a Metro project. Rather, the transportation agency was tasked with preparing environmental studies and approving the project under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Following Thursday’s vote, Zero Emissions Transit, the nonprofit developing the gondola, said the California State Parks Commission will consider amending the L.A. Historic State Park general plan and the city of L.A. will “evaluate land use permits.”

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn was the sole “no” vote on the gondola Thursday. At a Metro committee meeting in November, when the gondola was last discussed, Hahn said she wanted to “lean into” expanding, electrifying and making more efficient the Dodger Stadium Express, the existing Metro bus system that shuttles baseball fans to games.

If built, Metro projects the gondola will carry a maximum of 5,000 visitors every hour from Union Station in downtown L.A. to Dodger Stadium. The proposed route has an intermediate stop at L.A. Historic State Park.

The one-mile, one-way trip would last 7 minutes, according to Metro.

Wasn’t this already approved?

Yes. For the most part, Thursday’s vote was not materially different from last February, when the Metro Board of Directors initially approved the gondola.

Then, in May, following two separate lawsuits alleging inadequacies in Metro’s environmental documents for the gondola, the California Court of Appeal directed the countywide transportation agency to review ways the project’s construction noise could be mitigated.

The vote Thursday was to re-certify the project and its environmental documents with the added evaluation, which Metro released for public comment in September.

Developer faces an uphill battle with the city

L.A. City Council last month voted 12-1 on a resolution opposing the gondola.

“People from Solano Canyon, Chinatown [and] Lincoln Heights have asked me to step up and help preserve green space and help preserve their privacy and to not acquiesce to a billionaire,” L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who authored the resolution, said to LAist at the Metro meeting on Thursday. “I hope the mayor can hear us and see us.”

Mayor Karen Bass did not sign the resolution.

As a member of Metro’s Board, Bass voted in favor of moving forward with the gondola.

Red versus Blue in the Metro Board room

After Metro accepted the unsolicited proposal for the gondola in 2018, community members formed a formidable opposition campaign known as Stop the Gondola.

At Thursday’s meeting, they were dressed in red, equipped with a megaphone, banners and signs and supported by anti-gondola L.A. City Council members, including Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martinez.

Local residents and activists used the one hour-long public comment period to highlight the effects construction and operations will have on nearby neighborhoods and L.A. Historic Park. They rejected Metro and the project developer’s claims that the gondola is a viable transportation option, instead calling it a “boondoggle.”

During public comment, Phyllis Chu asked the Metro Board of Directors whether they serve a “billionaire developer” or their constituents.

The “billionaire developer" refers to Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Dodgers. McCourt still owns some parking lot real estate near the stadium, and some critics believe the aerial tram is part of McCourt’s vision to develop the area.

Zero Emissions Transit, along with its allies from organized labor and business groups, say the gondola would provide an environmentally friendly transportation option for baseball fans, local residents and park-goers.

Dodger Blue-clad supporters also showed up at Thursday’s meeting and responded to the opposition with chants of their own. They walked in a procession around the Metro Board room holding up signs with a blunt message: “Build the Gondola.”

Zero Emissions Transit said in its news release that “nearly 18,000 individuals and more than 400 businesses in Chinatown, El Pueblo, and Lincoln Heights have signed up to support the project, and a recent poll found 72% of Los Angeles County residents support the project.”