The Brief

Jackie Goldberg, the president of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board, announced earlier this month that she will retire in December 2024 after completing her current term.

Goldberg has worked in public service for more than four decades, starting as a teacher in the 1960s, and won her first LAUSD school board election in 1983. In 1994, she was elected to the Los Angeles City Council, and she represented District 45 in the California Assembly from 2000 to 2006. She returned to the school board in 2019.

Through it all, Goldberg says she has remained an educator at heart and that she has learned new things from her students, whom she also credits with expanding her taste in music.

“LAUSD is filled with the most astounding, remarkable, inspiring kids, and they are taught and supported by teachers and staff who fight hard every day for them,” Goldberg stated in a statement announcing her retirement.

“It’s been the honor of my life to advocate for children. I got into this work, starting with teaching, because I wanted the best educational experience for teachers and students everywhere.”

The following conversation with Goldberg about legacy and hopes for the future has been edited for length and clarity.

Inspirations and accomplishments

First, talk about a teacher/educator who inspired you as a child.

Well, I think it would probably be my mother.

In those days, (kindergarten, first and second grade classes) got out about an hour and a half earlier than (grades) three through six. And so at the end of my school day in kindergarten, I would go sit in the back of the room (her mother’s classroom) and watch her teach. And I fell in love with teaching. She was a wonderful teacher. … For a long time, I thought I was going to do elementary just like her, but then I realized I’m a history teacher.

What do you consider your greatest accomplishment and why? 

(In the Assembly) I passed, with the help of the speaker of the Assembly, a way to get a bond issue that would (help) LA Unified, Anaheim, parts of North San Diego County and a couple (districts) in Fresno … that were extremely overcrowded.

They never got any money for bond issues because you had to own all the property that you needed. And so, what would happen at the time that LA Unified was the most overcrowded — 650,000 students and seat spaces for about 425,000 — we were busing 100,000 to 150,000 kids a day to faraway places. We never got any money to build any schools.

Why? Because we had to acquire the property, one parcel at a time, and often use eminent domain, and often through trials and lawsuits. So that was a big problem. So then, I was able to get … on the joint committee between the Senate and the Assembly, what the bond issues would be, and I got a carve-out and a definition of extremely overcrowded districts.

And they all were the same. They all were urban. And so, we’ve set aside several billion dollars for building schools and those very, very most impacted school districts who never seem to get to the front of the line.

The irony … is that people in urban areas voted for it, and all the people who are getting all the money, they voted no on the bond issues. But that was very important because that led to the building that got us out of the multitrack, year-round disaster, and long, long, bus rides in each direction for many, many, many children, their whole school careers. So I’m very proud of that.

On challenges

LAUSD, of course, has many challenges, many of which you’ve tried to address. What do you feel is the greatest challenge facing the district now, and what does LAUSD need to do in order to overcome it? 

One big problem is general funding. California is still 33rd in what it spends on its kids’ K-12. OK, that’s ridiculous. We’re the fourth-richest economy in the world — not in the country — in the world. And yet we’re 33rd? Really? Why is that?

Well, it’s because you can’t tax rich people; you can’t tax property owners; you can’t really talk to anybody unless they vote that they like to be taxed. Well, what are the odds of that? We haven’t been able to do very well, have we?

So, as long as the state of California refuses to increase its tax base, our urban school districts that are 75% to 100% low-income kids … are going to never be able to succeed, because the class sizes need to be dramatically reduced, because those kids have challenges of sleeping in bathtubs to not get shot by gangs at night, to not have food security, not knowing where the next meal will come from and for being evicted from their housing, maybe two or three times a year and therefore changing schools two or three times a year.

We’re never going to overcome those obstacles completely, no matter what we do, without reducing class size and increasing the number of social-emotional folks that help our kids. But we’ll never be able to do that because our federal elementary and secondary school emergency relief funding expires in a year and a month. And then we’re back to being 33rd, and having no money, and doing the best we can with what we’ve got.

I’m thinking that unless there is some initiative, a campaign again, to separate from Prop. 13 tax savings for senior citizens and homeowners, to finally get rid of the exemption for the wealthiest property and corporate owners in the state … all that is profit off the backs of the children and youth of California.

(Corporations) may refuse to agree to be taxed and (they spent) $800 million defeating an initiative that said, “Oh, guess what. It’s time for you to pay your share. You made your wealth in California. Give some of it back to the children and stop being such greedy, soulless suckers.”

But we will take that on again. And when we win, you will begin to see real changes in low-income urban districts because there is only so much you can do with the class sizes we have. There’s only so much you can do with school sharing one psychiatric social worker two or three days a week when kids need to have access to them every day. There’s only so much you can do when you don’t have enough ways to reach families to help them stay in their housing.

I’m proud of the fact that I helped promote the idea of community schools and that there are now more community schools, and I helped get the governor to fund it. That’s good, but basically, there’s a limit to what you can accomplish on the school board when you’re 33rd in the country.

The LGBTQ+ community and advice

You’ve done a lot to help uplift the LGBTQ+ community over the years. Where do you feel the district is in terms of supporting these students and their families? What do you feel needs to happen next? 

We’re in a very good spot. I don’t think there’s a certain person on the board that wants to back away from our commitment to that, to those groups of communities.

I think what we’re about to have is an assault by right-wing groups to try to convince low-income immigrants that are Catholic and Christian evangelists that their children are being sexualized in their schools, and so they should go after the school and go after the school board. That is going to be a growing issue because the right wing has a lot of money. And their view is: ‘We don’t know what to do with it, so we’re just going to go harass every school board in America.’ So we expect trouble, but we’re prepared. We’re not going to give in, and we’re going to let them know that we’re not going to give in, and we’re not going to let them harass anybody because if they harass a school, we’ll have them arrested. This is not going to be allowed. We’re just not going to let you stand outside and terrify people by lying to them. Nope, not going to be allowed here.

If you had to teach your successor one thing about being a leader in the district, what would it be? 

The most important thing I tell everybody is: Always tell people the truth.

You know, one of the things that people couldn’t believe is how much specialized housing, either for the mentally ill, or for LGBT or for AIDS folks, that we did in my City Council district, because everybody was afraid to take it on, and people will yell that they don’t want it. They’ll scream. But here’s what we did when we did that kind of specialized housing. We held community meetings. We had the architect of the proposed plan bring the drawings. We asked the community what things they wanted, so for example, in the area just south of Sunset and Alvarado, we built a school. We built a housing project for … families with AIDS.

This was years ago, of course, but the parents were terrified because they still believed that AIDS traveled through the air, that you didn’t have to have contact. They weren’t sure how you got it. It was in the early days.

And I said, well, what would make you feel more comfortable? What if they had a full-time person there who made sure that none of our children accidentally wandered over into the area or other people accidentally did? I took them on a bus to another housing in Silver Lake that we had done for this same community and asked them which of the housing on that street was the housing. They couldn’t pick it out, which made them feel a lot safer. I had parents from other school areas that had this housing near them come and talk to them and then made a list of things that we thought were legitimate concerns and things that come from having a terrible disease around.

And the ones that were legitimate concerns: They wanted a few fewer housing units; they wanted a lot more services for the people in the housing because they didn’t want them wandering around looking for services. All those things, which made sense to us, was what we did, and we had no feedback that was negative once that project was done.

On staying hopeful

Your time as an educator goes back to the ’60s. A lot has happened and changed since then. What has kept you hopeful through it all? 

I’m hopeful that the young people that I see every day, when I visit classrooms and visit schools are there —they make me very hopeful. These are kids you’re not trying to dupe and fool too easily.

I am pushing very hard on us doing more about media literacy, however, because I don’t want them to get duped … or defrauded on a loan or something.

When I was on City Council, I hired a high school kid as an aide … and she stayed with me all the way through that and through the Assembly. But she was in debt for 15 years because of credit cards that were sent to her when she was unemployed and had no income. It ought to be illegal to give a credit card to someone with no income, particularly if they’re under 25.

I want to do more, to work more with schools on what media literacy is, and how to handle money, and when to take out a credit card, and when not to have a credit card and all of that, because kids are still getting ripped off way too much, particularly the lower-income kids, because their families don’t have credit cards and haven’t figured out the disasters that they represent.

And I intend to be hanging around the school district. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not leaving. I’ll be at the speaker’s desk saying, “Hello, Mr. Superintendent, Madam President, Mr. President, members of the board. Let me tell you what I came to talk to you about today.”

Parting words

Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share?

On the council, (we did things) around protecting city workers that are on contract with the city, for example, the airport food service workers, the airport parking people. And we did a lot of legislation that protected them when the contracts changed.

And we also set up the first, I believe in the country, annual inspections of every housing unit, rental unit, in the city of Los Angeles each year for health and safety issues, like broken walls, like broken pipes, like no lighting on the outside, like steps that are broken and people falling all the time.

And we got that done over everybody’s objections because basically, what we were finding out is that the slumlords were just ripping people off with high rents and not even keeping the buildings livable. So I’m very proud of that legislation, actually. If your building was built from 1979 or earlier, your unit will be inspected, and the owners will be held accountable for making the appropriate safety and cleanliness that’s now required by city law.

I enjoyed Sacramento the least. I was there when the current speaker of the House (U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy) was there. Got to see him up close and personal and knew he was a disaster from the beginning.

You know, I learned a lot about the difference between politics where you run on a party line — as you do in the Senate and the Assembly, and in the Congress — and those that are nonpartisan, like school board and City Council. And so, even though you may be a Democrat or a Republican, you don’t join into groups that vote based on your party. So, I think that if I had my way, I’d have all politics be nonpartisan — doesn’t mean you don’t join a party and have those party’s values, which help people know more about what you believe in.

People should see it is their obligation to run for office with term limits. I don’t believe in term limits. I think term limits are what you do when you’re too lazy to get rid of bums out of office. … The Constitution says nothing about you being able to tell people that they can’t vote for somebody they want to vote for who’s qualified for them to be elected. You know, the qualifications to be a city council member are quite clear, and they don’t involve you having to stay 12 years or less.

I think it’s just wrong because the government — particularly in big cities, and big states — is complicated. And the more you take people from learning the complications of it, who are in office, the more staff and lobbyists run them. That’s not a good system to have the lobbyists writing the legislation. I’m sorry. So … there are things I learned but that I can’t do much about.

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On March 1, the day after U.S. forces bombed Iran and began a war that's now more than nine weeks long, President Donald Trump posted 30 times on Truth Social.

Just after midnight, he posted about the bombing campaign, including a threat to retaliate if Iran itself retaliated ("THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT").

But he soon had a lot more on his mind; mid-morning, he posted a video portraying Senator Mitch McConnell as the floppy, deceased Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's.

He posted a Tiktok video praising his State of the Union — a speech he had given five days prior — then reposted that video, along with a screenshot of a post on the social media site X. Just after noon, he posted an update on the war ("we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important"). Mid-afternoon, he posted a string of Trump-friendly news coverage, including a New York Post article from September 2024 about how Lady Gaga's father endorsed Trump in the presidential race. Shortly thereafter, in the span of five minutes, he posted 10 times, all of them lists of screenshots of praise from X users for his State of the Union address. He later posted a video update about the war in Iran, followed by a video marked as being from an Instagram user called @truthaboutfluoride, purporting to show San Francisco as a run-down city filled with poverty.

During his first presidential campaign, Trump's constant stream of seemingly unvetted tweets was a sideshow that quickly became inescapable — the boasts, insults, and lies at times hijacked news cycles. Once he was elected, they presented a new frontier in American politics: a real-time view into a president's mind.

Ten years, one Twitter ejection, one Twitter return, and a move to Truth Social later, Trump's posts still make news — like when he announces a war or tries to pick a fight with the pope — but for many have become the background noise of American politics.

The president of the United States is now communicating with the public sometimes dozens of times a day on a social media platform that he himself created, and most Americans (and perhaps even journalists) never see most of those posts. Of course, most of those posts are not individually newsworthy. But looking at them together provides a picture of exactly what, in the aggregate, the president of the United States is thinking about and saying to the world at all hours.

To try to grasp that, NPR analyzed the first four months of Trump's Truth Social posts this year. What emerged is a portrait of an extremely online president with scattered focus — who, even while he dealt with fallout from his policies such as war in Iran and immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, was also busy insulting his critics, posting pictures of his proposed ballroom, and continuing to insist on the lie that he won the 2020 election. The president also has unorthodox posting habits that illustrate that, even as arguably the most powerful person on earth, he remains focused on how he is seen.

What the president is posting about

To quantitatively analyze the president's posts, NPR compiled the president's first four months of posts, using a data scraper maintained by CNN. We then classified each post based on its topic (tariffs, the war in Iran, Greenland) and the type of post it was (sharing a news story, reposting someone else, making a threat).

Trump posted 2,249 times in the first four months of 2026, an average of just under 19 posts per day.

The most common topic Trump posted about – at about 14% of his posts – was 2026 elections. These posts — more than 300 of them — consist largely of either candidate endorsements or posts touting a Trump-backed candidate's win.

However, Trump at times did not give a simple endorsement, instead adding attacks on an endorsee's opponents. For example, in endorsing Republican candidates for the Indiana state Senate, the posts became paragraph-long screeds as Trump attacked sitting senators as "RINOs" (Republicans in name only) if they voted against a Trump-backed redistricting plan.

The next most common topics after elections were Iran (247 posts) and the economy (177). He also posted dozens of times about alleged fraud in Minnesota's safety net programs, the SAVE Act, and his belief that the justice system was weaponized against him.

To the degree that his posts measure what he's thinking about, the president's social media feed suggests he is as preoccupied — or even more so — with his personal projects and vendettas than he is with pressing policy matters.

President Trump posted about the 2020 election 71 times in the first four months of 2026, more than he posted even about tariffs (57 times — all of which we coded as a subset of posts about the economy). Those 2020 election posts all promoted the lie that via massive voter fraud or other malfeasance, Joe Biden stole that election.

Trump posted 68 times about his various Washington, D.C., building projects, including his White House ballroom and a proposed massive arch across the Potomac near Arlington National Cemetery. That's slightly more than he posted about Venezuela, more than he posted about the SAVE Act he's promoting, and more than he posted about protesters and federal agents in Minneapolis, including federal agents killing two U.S. citizens.

He posted more than six times as often (105) about his various legal grievances than he did about healthcare policy (17).

Also notable are the topics that get little attention. While tariffs and the war in Iran do affect, for example, the farm economy, Trump posted just four times specifically about American farming during the first four months of the year — less than half as many times as he posted (nine times) about his anger at comedian Bill Maher.

As for the top types of posts, the largest category – at just under one-quarter of his posts – are social media reshares. These take several formats — some are screenshots of posts from X, and others are videos reposted from other social media sites, such as TikTok.

This emphasizes the technological differences between now and Trump's first term.

Near the end of his first term, the videos Trump posted were largely from Fox News or other right-leaning news outlets, or they were videos produced by the White House.

Now, there's an endless array of TikTok and Instagram videos and memes the president can repost, many of them from amateurs or generated by AI. Some have been outright offensive, as when he posted a racist video that depicted former President Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the video, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters, "Please stop the fake outrage." Trump later said he hadn't seen the full video, telling reporters, "I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine." He did not apologize, and the post was later deleted.

Other posts have promoted conspiracy theories, as with a video that baselessly proposed that Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was involved in the 2025 killing of Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman.

Occasionally, those videos have nothing to do with current events, or even Trump, but are the kind of inane posts littering many people's Facebook feeds. Around 11 p.m. one night in February, Trump posted a TikTok video of a person's pet corgi reacting to a can of Reddi-wip. A minute later, he reposted that video along with a screenshot of a supporter's X post ("Good Night Patriot Friends!"). A minute after that, he posted a 15-second video of Bruce Lee fighting, which he similarly reposted alongside another X screenshot seconds later.

Reposting material from X

This posting-then-reposting pattern is one of the more notable oddities of the president's Truth Social posts. It appears to be a makeshift way of reposting things from X. The president regularly grabs, for example, a video someone else has posted on X, posts it without attribution on Truth Social, then immediately quote-posts his own post along with a screenshot of the original X post.

Some of these reposts are about current events, but they cover many other topics as well – they include a variety of amateur-made videos praising Trump, attacking his enemies, and (incorrectly) concurring with his false claim that he in fact won the 2020 election. In recent months, Trump has reposted a video compilation of moments with his grandkids, a video about his loyalty to Michael Jackson over the years, a montage of Trump moments set to a choral arrangement of "Like a Prayer," and an apparently AI-generated video of Trump playing hockey against Canadian hockey players – and punching the bejeezus out of one of them.

The pattern of snagging content from X highlights two important facts about Truth Social.

One is that X appears to dwarf it in size. The Center for Campaign Innovation, a right-leaning political strategy organization, provided NPR with polling from around the 2024 election, finding that only 6% of people used Truth Social for news on even a weekly basis. That's compared to 30% who used X.

Trump may therefore go to X to get material because there are just more users there, and especially more big names like politicians, news organizations, and MAGA influencers.

Secondly, Truth Social's smaller size means it serves a different purpose for Trump than Twitter ever did, before Trump was kicked off of the platform after the January 6 riot. (His account was eventually reinstated.)

"I think really the best way to understand it is this is where you get your marching orders if you're MAGA," said Eric James Wilson, a Republican strategist and executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. "And too, it is direct communication from him, in the way that maybe a statement, an administration policy or a press release would have to go through multiple layers of, if not revisions, certainly approvals."

Leavitt told NPR in a statement that Truth Social is "the most powerful and popular social media platform in the world because it serves as President Trump's authentic voice."

One restriction has kept Trump from simply posting on X when he wants a bigger audience – according to details about a licensing agreement in a 2023 SEC filing, he is "generally obligated to make any social media post on TruthSocial and may not make the same post on another social media site for 6 hours." This gives the site "limited time to benefit from" his postings.

NPR emailed Truth Social's press team to check if this agreement is still in effect, but the email bounced back.

It's not entirely clear how many of the posts on the president's Truth Social account come directly from him. Leavitt also told NPR that some posts are made by staffers.

"President Trump posts at all hours because he is constantly working, but sometimes these posts are also published by staff who are simply catching up on the many articles and reading materials President Trump approves the day prior," she said in another statement.

It's not just news articles that the White House says Trump isn't personally posting; after backlash to the racist video depicting the Obamas the White House also said a staffer "erroneously" posted the video.

Old news

One of the most telling indicators of what's on Trump's mind can be found in the news articles he posts — more than 1 in 5 of the president's social media posts in the first four months of this year were news articles, op-eds, and videos. Those news pieces almost uniformly praise the president or promote administration-friendly storylines, including persecuting his perceived enemies.

On March 29, in a span of six minutes, his account posted 10 news pieces about criminal referrals against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump in a civil business fraud case.

A substantial number of the news stories Trump's account posts are not current. At least 1 in 4 of the news stories posted were more than 10 days old at the time he posted them (the dates of some TV news clips could not be easily verified).

In some cases, such as the article about Lady Gaga's father, the news pieces were months old. At other times, he posted several older articles in rapid succession about the same event. On March 16, Trump posted three January articles in a row about the crowd at the College Football National Championship game cheering for him.

Leavitt told NPR in a statement: "The President is extraordinarily well read, and he likes to share stories or content that he finds interesting on his account."

The problem with bluster

In the first four months of the year, President Trump made 98 posts we classified as "announcements" — which we defined as the president purporting to give the public new information.

These covered a range of topics — there was the video announcing the U.S. had bombed Iran. There was the announcement of a new DHS secretary nominee — Markwayne Mullin. There were announcements about disaster aid to states affected by a massive winter storm. There were notifications of upcoming interviews or press conferences. Not all of these announcement posts turned out to be accurate, however, as with an April 17 post declaring the Strait of Hormuz to be "COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE."

He also made 29 posts we classified as "threats." These range from the specific ("If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff") to the vague ("I wonder what would happen if we 'finished off' what's left of the Iranian Terror State"). The president hasn't followed through on all of these threats with concrete action.

Altogether, that's 127 of Trump's most newsmaking posts — around one per day. Those posts have introduced an unprecedented unpredictability into presidential policymaking. His tariff policy posts, for example, have created widespread uncertainty in the business world.

This can make life in a Trump White House particularly difficult, especially in the realm of foreign policy. John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor in Trump's first term, tells a story about Trump's chaotic posts.

"My deputy was there when [Trump] was shown — this is in 2019 — overhead pictures of a failed Iranian missile launch," Bolton says. "And he said to the intelligence briefer, can I keep this picture? And she said, 'Well, yes, but it's very sensitive, Mr. President.' He said, 'Okay.' And about 20 minutes after they left, he tweeted the picture out with some of the markings still on the picture."

As NPR later reported, the photo was revealed to be classified. Experts told NPR that tweeting the picture potentially helped America's adversaries, including Iran and Russia, because it revealed U.S. satellite capabilities.

Since his time in the first Trump administration, Bolton has been willing to sharply criticize the president. In October, the Trump Department of Justice obtained indictments against Bolton on 18 charges alleging that he unlawfully retained and transmitted classified documents. Bolton pleaded not guilty.

Bolton sees Trump tweeting the picture as part of a larger pattern: to attempt maximum bluster and in the process reveal more than he intends to. Trump's recent posts about the war in Iran are another example.

"The very ferocity of his tweets or the outrage you can hear just tell the Iranians 'If we just stay, if we just be patient a little while longer, he's just going to flip right out entirely, and he wants out. So we're going to drag it out and get every concession we can from him,'" Bolton said. "I don't understand why he can't see that."

Pundits have theorized that with his threatening posts about Iran, President Trump is practicing the "madman theory" of foreign relations. H.R. Haldeman, who served as chief of staff to President Nixon wrote that Nixon's strategy was to make the U.S.S.R. and the government in North Vietnam think that the fervently anticommunist president was willing to go to even extreme lengths, such as dropping a nuclear bomb, to end the Vietnam War.

"Nixon had credibility. He was strongly anti-communist," Bolton said, adding that communist adversaries might have thought, "Good God, that guy is crazy enough that he would drop a nuclear weapon."

"Just being generically crazy does not give you an advantage," Bolton added.

A president's id on display

To some degree, the president's posting can be seen as an extension of his communications strategy of simply communicating a lot. Trump regularly does lengthy press gaggles in the Oval Office, and he also has the unprecedented habit of fielding calls directly from reporters who have his phone number.

However, with posts, unlike interviews, the president is not having a conversation. Rather than being prompted by a reporter, the president in his posts seemingly reveals what is on his mind at any given time. On April 2, the day he announced that Pam Bondi would be leaving her post as attorney general, President Trump was also thinking about Bruce Springsteen. He insulted the singer in two posts shared at 7:58 a.m. and 9:21 p.m. that day.

Indeed, the president's insults and tirades have become so commonplace that they at times don't get much notice. Some of these posts go on at length. On April 9, he wrote a more than 2,700-character post that insulted a series of right-wing commentators but also veered into the topics of Iran, election results, media outlets he dislikes, and his approval rating.

This kind of naked fury from the president of the United States toward his perceived opponents ("NUT JOBS," "TROUBLEMAKERS," "low IQs," "nasty") might once have made headlines.

In 2026, it's a Thursday.

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Truth Social

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Screenshot by NPR

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NPR also analyzed the length of Trump's posts this year through the end of April. He wrote 93 posts of 1,500 characters or more in that time period, accounting for around 4% of all his posts. About half of those are endorsements, in which the president praises his chosen candidates and at times rails against the opponent ("DEFEAT Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO"). Many of these endorsements appear to be variations on boilerplate language as Trump endorses a string of candidates in a short timeframe.

The rest of these long posts are anything but boilerplate – they are often attacks ("Pope Leo is WEAK ON CRIME") and occasionally announcements ("I am nominating Kevin Warsh to be the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM").

Trump had more of those ultra-long posts in April than in any other month. And if you take out endorsements, it's even more stark. In April, Trump posted 22 extra-long posts about things other than endorsements — slamming Supreme Court justices, repeatedly promoting his ballroom, and railing against particular media outlets. That's twice as many such posts, or more, as he had in any other month.

To the degree, then, that the length of his posts correlates to Trump's anger, or perhaps enthusiasm, April was a particularly enthusiastic month for the president.

The president's Truth Social account primarily gets wide attention when the president either makes an announcement or writes something particularly coarse or offensive.

That was the case on Easter morning this year, at around 8:00 a.m., when President Trump threatened Iran.

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah," he wrote.

A threat of massive violence — and potentially war crimes — along with an obscenity and a tongue-in-cheek praise to Allah, all on one of Christianity's holiest days, together were stunning choices for a president whose core supporters are white evangelical Christians.

In a recent NPR focus group of Georgia swing voters — people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024 — no one reacted positively to that post. Participants were identified by their first names as a condition of their participation. One voter named Joe said that posts like that one inspire fear.

"It's not presidential. They're supposed to be doing diplomatic negotiations. You know, he's the agent of chaos when it comes to this kind of thing. It just – it scares me," he said. "He's a loose cannon, in my opinion, when it comes to this kind of stuff."

Brent Jones contributed to this report.

Copyright 2026 NPR

A swarm of earthquakes has hit the Imperial Valley city of Brawley, ranging in magnitude from 2 to 4.6.

No injuries or significant damage have been reported.

At least 40 quakes have struck in the last 24 hours, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The first, a magnitude 3.4, struck around 4 p.m. Saturday. The latest was a magnitude 2.9 that hit at 4 a.m. Sunday.

The biggest was a magnitude 4.6 that struck shortly after midnight Sunday.

The jolts are concentrated around the Brawley Fault Zone, an area known for earthquake swarms connecting the Imperial and San Andreas faults.

Brawley sits about 115 miles east of San Diego.

Listen to our podcast to get ready:

A Frontier Airlines plane bound for Los Angeles on Friday night struck and killed a pedestrian who was crossing the runway, according to Denver International Airport.

The collision happened around 11:19 p.m. local time as the aircraft prepared to take off to California.

"Smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff," Frontier said in a statement.

"Passengers were then safely evacuated via slides as a matter of precaution."

The airline said it was "deeply saddened" by the event.

ABC News reported that the person struck was "at least partially consumed" by one of the craft's engines, leading to a brief fire.

Denver International said the person was not believed to have been an onsite worker.

"DEN can confirm the pedestrian jumped the perimeter fence and was hit just two minutes later while crossing the runway," the airport said in a statement.

"The pedestrian is deceased, and is not believed to be an employee of the airport nor have they been identified. The airport has examined the fenceline and found it to be intact."

The airport said 12 people reported minor injuries, with five of those individuals taken to local hospitals for treatment.

The Airbus A321 was at the time carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members. Airport authorities said the majority of those passengers have since taken off for Los Angeles on a new Frontier flight.
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They would walk every Friday evening from one public housing project to another, chanting, “Paz, queremos paz y libertad en nuestro barrio!” — peace, we want peace and freedom in our neighborhood — inviting their neighbors to join them along the way. 

For the mothers of Pico Gardens and Aliso Village, a pair of housing projects in Boyle Heights, the peace walks in the 1980s and 1990s were an act of protest and survival. 

Violence had become a fact of daily life. Middle school students were joining gangs. Shootings happened in the morning and at night. Father Greg Boyle of Dolores Mission Catholic Church later recalled burying eight kids in a three-week period in 1988. About nine gangs were active near the parish.

The women decided there was no other choice but to face the violence head-on. 

“We wanted peace,” Leticia Galvan, now 74, told Boyle Heights Beat. “We wanted to spread a message to the youngsters to be united, to not fight, to respect themselves and the people.”

They would walk every Friday evening from one public housing project to another, chanting, “Paz, queremos paz y libertad en nuestro barrio!” — peace, we want peace and freedom in our neighborhood — inviting their neighbors to join them along the way.

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Courtesy Proyecto Pastoral

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Reproduced by Laura Anaya-Morga/Boyle Heights Beat

)

Rooted in Dolores Mission’s Christian Base Communities, the women organized weekly peace walks at the height of gang violence in Boyle Heights. They held candles and prayed their rosaries as they walked with each other and their children. Formally, they were known as Comité Pro Paz en el Barrio (Committee for Peace in the Neighborhood). They sought to end the violence and demand respect for one another. 

Their activism helped shape the foundation for Boyle’s anti-gang work, which later developed into Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program in the world. Four decades later, these mothers find it crucial to continue talking about those violent years in Boyle Heights as a reminder of how far they’ve come and how hard they fought to get here. 

Some of the women from Aliso Village affectionately called themselves La UVA, or Union de Viejas Arguenderas — the Old Gossips Union. 

“Éramos la pandilla de La UVA,” Galvan joked. “Nuestros hijos decían, ‘Vámonos, llegó La UVA.” 

Though years have passed, many of the women remember the violence of those days as if it were yesterday. 

They would walk every Friday evening from one public housing project to another, chanting, “Paz, queremos paz y libertad en nuestro barrio!” — peace, we want peace and freedom in our neighborhood — inviting their neighbors to join them along the way.

(

Raquel Norris

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Boyle Heights Beat

)

Amada Holguin, now 86, a mother of seven, recalled being caught in the middle of gunfire between two rival gangs after stepping out of the bus on 4th Street more than 30 years ago. “No había dado ni cuatro pasos cuando empezó la balacera,” Holguin said. I hadn’t even taken four steps when the shootout began.

Holguin, who took part in the peace walks, said a young man shielded her face with his jacket and rushed her into a nearby house as gunshots flew past her from all sides. Inside, she stood in shock in a stranger’s living room, eating bread to calm her nerves.

Although traumatic, Holguin now laughs about the shooting, remembering how Dolores Mission parishioners prayed for her that night, mistakenly believing she had been killed. 

“Por la gracia de Dios a mi no me pasó nada,” she said. 

Galvan, a mother of two daughters, also faced violent encounters herself.

On one occasion, she remembered fighting back when she was being robbed. Galvan said she kicked the perpetrator and yelled at him until he left her alone.

“Tenias que estar a la defensiva,” Galvan said. “Nunca pensé yo en (que me mataran).” (You had to be on the defense. I never thought I would be killed.)

Galvan said much of their courage was inspired by Father Boyle. “El Padre Gregorio nos enseñó mucho valor,” Galvan said. (He taught us great courage.)

In an interview with Boyle Heights Beat, Boyle recalled the Thanksgiving dinners the women would host for gang members in the neighborhood. 

“They didn’t want to demonize gang members,” Boyle said. 

“The dinner said, ‘You’re not the enemy. You’re our sons, whether we brought you into the world or not.’ It was very beautiful,” Boyle said.

They would walk every Friday evening from one public housing project to another, chanting, “Paz, queremos paz y libertad en nuestro barrio!” — peace, we want peace and freedom in our neighborhood — inviting their neighbors to join them along the way.

(

Courtesy Proyecto Pastoral

/

Reproduced by Laura Anaya-Morga/Boyle Heights Beat

)

Life may have been chaotic outside, but the mothers said enforcing household rules went a long way. 

That meant forbidding their kids from wearing Nikes because “the cholos wore them,” or barring their children from being outside past a certain time, even if others their age were out past midnight.

“We raised our children here, but there were rules,” said Maria Flores, now 73, a mother of three, who enforced a strict curfew and participated in the peace walks. 

Flores and her husband required their children to eat meals together as a family. They also ensured their daughter and two sons kept up with household chores. Each had to take turns washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

“These chores were important because it taught them to be self-reliant,” Flores said. 

To Flores, running a strict household is what helped steer her children away from gangs. 

“They would have become cholos if I allowed them to come home at all hours of the night,” she said.

In 1986, Boyle and parishioners at Dolores Mission founded Proyecto Pastoral in response to the poverty and gang violence around them. Now, the organization focuses on community-building and social justice.

They would walk every Friday evening from one public housing project to another, chanting, “Paz, queremos paz y libertad en nuestro barrio!” — peace, we want peace and freedom in our neighborhood — inviting their neighbors to join them along the way.

(

Laura Anaya-Morga

/

Boyle Heights Beat

)

Angela Gutierrez, 58, a community organizing coordinator at Proyecto Pastoral, was part of the peace walks as a young mother living in Boyle Heights. She continues to find strength and inspiration from the activism of the women she saw as motherly figures. 

“Many people don’t know everything we endured. But we lived here. We know,” Gutierrez said. “… As I always say, the women fought and continue to fight against these injustices.”

That fighting spirit remains alive even if gang violence is not what it was before, Gutierrez said. While quality of life in Boyle Heights may have improved, Gutierrez said there is still a lot to do when it comes to pedestrian safety, street cleanliness and homelessness. 

Now, it’s about advocating through forums with community members and local politicians, Gutierrez said. 

Mothers and grandmothers continue to help lead those efforts.

Just recently, Proyecto Pastoral hosted a community meeting informing residents and business owners about a proposed Business Improvement District in Boyle Heights. They also held a forum for candidates seeking to replace Sen. Maria Elena Durazo in California’s 26th Senate District.

“This is the work we need to continue doing,” Gutierrez said.