The Brief

Ever since the University of California stopped using the SAT and ACT for freshman admissions in 2020, graduation rates have inched up, and the number of students returning for their second year of studies increased.

To backers of keeping the UC test-free, these are clear signs that ditching the SAT hasn’t resulted in broad academic declines at the venerable public university system.

But this progress is likely to compete with another truth: Thousands of UC professors say their students are absolutely not ready for college and blame the decision to cut the SAT. Now UC leaders are re-examining what, if anything, the system should do about the standardized tests the UC scrapped six years ago.

When a UC task force in 2020 recommended that the UC keep the SAT, it warned that dropping the test could result in declining student retention rates. Those prognostications didn’t materialize. The task force also expressed fear that first-year GPAs would drop without it, but new systemwide data show average freshman GPAs have actually increased since 2021, the first year of new students entering under the new no-SAT regime.

But that doesn’t mean some UC students aren’t struggling. Early this summer, roughly 3,000 current and former UC professors launched a campaign via two signed open letters to reinstate standardized tests in admissions. They say more of their students demonstrate weak math and writing skills, and the SAT ban means the system is not doing all it can to screen out students who cannot handle the rigors of the UC.

Those professors, who teach science, technology, engineering and math, as well as the humanities and social sciences, are a fraction of the system’s roughly 26,000 faculty.

And while whether the SAT should return is an unsettled question for now, UC leaders have asked a committee of academics to issue a detailed report on the system’s use of the standardized tests by Feb. 12. Then the UC Academic Senate will propose recommendations by June to the UC Board of Regents, which has final say on requiring the SAT. It is not clear if the board will then pursue a vote on whether to reinstate an admissions test requirement.

Nationally, most highly selective colleges and universities have returned to using standardized tests in admissions after not requiring them in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many went the test-optional route, meaning students can submit their scores but aren’t penalized for foregoing the test. UC is among the few college systems that are completely test-blind, so they don’t even look at test scores for admissions.

Officials at those campuses restoring the SAT point to studies that say tests predict whether applicants can do well in college better than high school grades can. Some research papers come to the opposite conclusion, viewing the tests as proxies for family wealth rather than student abilities. Students from well-off homes are much more likely to score high on the SAT than low-income students. To SAT critics, high school grades are a stronger measure, in part because they capture a longer arc of student progress.

The UC Student Association sent a letter to the regents in July opposing a return to the SAT. The association, which represents 237,000 undergraduate students at the UC, “does not believe SAT/ACT will result in better prepared students.” The letter notes that racial and ethnic diversity at the UC increased after 2020.

UC ditched the SAT to counter biases

UC jettisoned the test at an inflection point in the country’s social and academic history. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 ravaged communities unevenly, with Black people — who were more likely to have in-person jobs that increased their exposure to the disease — dying at more than double the rate of whites.

When the board voted unanimously to end the use of the SAT and ACT, some members, including the UC’s then-president, Janet Napolitano, described the tests as legacies of discrimination. At least one prominent academic who wanted to keep the test agreed, but argued the test was still valuable.

“The main reason we are looking at SATs is because they are racist,” said Kum-Kum Bhavnani, chair of the Academic Senate at the time of the 2020 regents meeting when the board voted to sink the test. But “the way in which the UC uses them stops them from being racist” because admissions officers used the test results as one of 14 factors in assessing applications. The Academic Senate endorsed keeping the SAT.

The regents, including Napolitano, decided that despite the benefits the SAT offered, they did not outweigh how the test seemed to favor rich students over poor students, many of whom are students of color.

However, in a recent interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Napolitano indicated she’d be open to revisiting the use of the SAT in admissions, but cautioned that faculty overstate the test’s powers. “I don’t think the SAT is a solution to the question of whether students are adequately prepared,” said Napolitano, now a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. “It’s not a silver bullet.”

Still, she said admissions officials should use the SAT, “recognizing what it tells you and what it doesn’t tell you.”

Before dumping the test, ultra-selective UCLA admitted students with a wide range of SAT scores. The admissions office didn’t rely on a single cut-off score, said Gary Clark, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment management, during a September regents meeting.

In 2019, 50% of admitted students had SAT scores between 1280 and 1530 out of 1600, Clark said. Individual student context is key, he said, and UCLA’s admissions office also relied on 14 factors, including test scores. One of those factors was whether students made the most of their time in high school. One student with a 4.3 GPA may be ranked lower than another student with the same grades because UCLA reviews to what extent students took advantage of the honors and advanced courses available to them. Since the SAT ban, retention and graduation rates increased at UCLA, he added.

Kim Wilcox was chancellor of UC Riverside until 2025 and supports using the SAT in admissions. All admissions indicators are biased against low-income students, he said in a phone interview. “It doesn’t matter what measure you have, GPA and SAT scores as well. They’re all higher for rich kids than they are for poor kids,” he said. “So with a set of biased measures, are you better with more of them or fewer of them? I would argue more.”

Data show struggles in math but not other subjects

It’s only in calculus-based entry-level math that freshmen across the UC are showing increasing signs of academic struggle, according to an analysis a senior official at the University of California presented to regents members last month.

Broadly, students in entry-level engineering and other science, math and technology courses have posted steady average GPAs of around 3.3 while their rates of Ds, Fs and withdrawals have been stable – around 6% to 7% – since 2021. The same is true for social science and humanities courses.

And few STEM majors leave their major after the first year, indicating strong persistence within the quantitatively demanding subjects. STEM majors graduated in four years at higher rates after the UC went test-blind than before the move.

But low grades increased among students in entry-level calculus, pre-calculus and lower-level preparatory math courses. For them, Ds, Fs and withdrawals spiked from 13% to 18% since the 2021-22 school year. Their average GPAs dropped in that time from 2.95 to 2.71. These classes account for about 5% of freshman enrollment and exclude other types of math classes, including statistics.

However, the UC Office of the President didn’t track those figures before it stopped accepting SAT or ACT scores, so there are no rates to compare them to.

A CalMatters analysis used a public UC Berkeley grading tool to compare first-year calculus performance at that campus before and after the SAT ban. The findings indicate that while GPAs stayed virtually the same between 2017 and 2025, the rate of Ds and Fs increased considerably for various entry-level calculus courses. In the years before the UC dropped the SAT, the combined D and F rates at these fall-term courses hovered at an average of 8%. But that rate of low grades jumped to an average of 11% for the years after the system went test-blind in admissions.

In 2019, around 6% of students in Calculus II courses earned a D or F. But last fall, the rate shot up to about 18%.

UC Berkeley grades can vary from year to year between instructors and course grading curves, so “some level of variation between semesters is to be expected,” wrote Janet Gilmore, a UC Berkeley spokesperson.

She pointed out that the D and F rates in Calculus I courses in fall 2025 were the same as in Fall 2018. Both were at about 11%.

What the pro-SAT faculty say

The professors who want the SAT back say they see more unprepared students, both as a percentage of the incoming class and in raw numbers given that the UC has expanded undergraduate enrollment since 2016 by roughly 27,000 students. In that time total enrollment grew slightly faster than the number of faculty at the system. They also say there is not enough support staff or tutors to help students do well in math and writing courses.

“UC has been a national leader in supporting under-resourced students to do well in mathematics. However, UC has finite resources and can help only so many students, and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach,” one of the open letters said.

High school grades aren’t as reliable a measure of how prepared students are, the STEM-focused open letter contends. It argues the SAT is an essential independent check on grade inflation and the use of AI in college essay writing.

Both test scores and high school grades can help predict whether students will do well in college, wrote Li Cai, an education scholar who researches standardized tests at UCLA and signed the open letter to restore the SAT. And while each is an imperfect tool, there are no better alternatives, he observed.

SAT supporters also point to a 2025 UC San Diego faculty report that noted the number of freshmen who needed to repeat high school and even elementary school math soared from about .5% of UCSD college freshmen in 2020 to nearly 12% by 2025. The report observed that in 2024, the students placed in remedial math maintained an A average in their high school math classes. This suggests that high school grade point averages are weak tools for determining who is ready, the report said.

But Pamela Burdman, a critic of the SAT who also advocates for math reforms as executive director of the nonprofit Just Equations, has pointed out that UCSD appears to be an outlier. At seven of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses, no students were in courses below pre-calculus. She also observed that the UCSD placement exam introduced a policy in 2024 that barred students from using calculators. And the minimum score needed to avoid being placed in remedial math at UCSD went up that year. Both changes would have increased the number of students shunted to remedial courses, she wrote.

What backers of test-blind policy say

SAT skeptics argue that supporters of the test overstate its predictive value and that they champion an approach to admissions that would needlessly exclude more students from UC. Placing limits on who can enroll by relying on what they say is a flawed assessment has no place at a public university supported by taxpayer money, they contend.

Many of those views were synthesized in a lengthy report in September written by Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics at UC Berkeley and a critic of using the SAT in admissions.

SAT critics say whatever may be happening in entry-level math courses isn’t translating into overall college struggles, given the higher first-year GPAs, share of students coming back after their first year and the overall graduation rates. If students are generally ready for college but need support in specific math classes, the UC should provide that support and not prevent the student from otherwise entering, the critics say.

“If there are problems in preparation, what is UC doing about it?” asked Amanda Mangaser Savage in a phone interview. She’s a litigator with Public Counsel, the legal group that played a key role in forcing the UC to drop the SAT in admissions.

“Does imposing a barrier in the form of the SAT really address that specific problem,” Savage said, “or is it just designed to make life easier, frankly, for faculty that don’t want to be teaching students who have learning needs?”

Public Counsel’s 2019 lawsuit prompted a judge in 2020 to issue a preliminary injunction that forced the UC to drop its plan of using the SAT in a test-optional way. Then, in 2021, they settled with the UC to keep the SAT totally out of admissions through 2025. For both court outcomes, Public Counsel argued that even a test-optional approach was unfair to students with disabilities who needed accommodations during the shutdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The settlement expired last year, so the UC can legally bring back the SAT.

If the UC revives the SAT for admissions, Public Counsel may sue again, Savage said.

Critics of the SAT also say the arguments to bring back the test overlook declines in the math readiness of college students that predate the UC’s decision to stop using the SAT for admissions.

California’s high schoolers on average have yet to match pre-COVID-19 math and reading competency levels, though the gap is closing. Nationally, many eighth graders have been scoring lower in math on a highly regarded test since 2012. Fifteen-year-olds globally also struggle with math. The average test scores for dozens of relatively wealthy countries have been steadily declining since 2009, indicated Rothstein. “Changes in University of California admissions rules can’t have caused this,” he wrote in his explainer.

Why the slump in math among older students? There’s no consensus, but experts point to a slew of overlapping headwinds, such as pandemic-era disruptions, chronic school absences that haven’t yet reverted to pre-pandemic levels, teacher shortages and the reliance on uncredentialed instructors, as well as students’ use of generative artificial intelligence to problem-solve.

Rothstein also noted that graduation and retention rates at the UC since 2021 have remained steady or rose systemwide. But to Cai, the education scholar at UCLA, such broad data shouldn’t discount what math professors are seeing.

“Faculty members who teach introductory STEM courses often serve as the first observers of changes in student preparation,” Cai wrote in a response to Rothstein’s explainer. “Their responsibilities and their genuine concerns place them at the interface between admissions decisions and academic outcomes.”

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

Los Angeles has handily broken its record for most days of coastal flooding in a year. And that’s without including October in the tally and with a wet El Niño winter ahead — a worrying sign for coastal homes and infrastructure.

Researchers can’t yet project how many more days of flooding we’ll have in 2026 — but we’re already well ahead of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s models had forecast up to this point.

NOAA oceanographer Karen Kavanaugh said models had predicted three to six flood days between May 2026 and April 2027. Those models took El Niño and sea level rise into account. She said that there have already been nine flood days in that window and added that the 12 flood days so far in the calendar year are “abnormally high.”

The number of days of coastal flooding observed at NOAA’s tide gauge in San Pedro is the highest recorded since observations started being taken in 1923. The previous record was set at nine in 1983, during another El Niño event.

When might we see more flooding?

Kavanaugh couldn’t say with certainty when flooding might occur, but noted that high-risk times ahead coincide with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Around then, the moon will be at its closest point to the Earth. The stronger gravitational pull from the moon causes what are commonly known as king tides, a nonscientific term for the highest predicted tides of the year.

In addition to these factors, the wide range of events affecting our tides this year, including storms, climate change, El Niño and related Kelvin waves, could very well cause other flooding events or cause the existing ones to become stronger.

Kavanaugh said a combination of factors — specifically Kelvin waves and astronomical high tides — was exactly what was responsible for the flooding seen this week.

“That could happen, perhaps, again in November and December if we have another pulse of a Kelvin wave,” Kavanaugh said.

Flooding inundated coastal communities around Southern California this week, including Orange County's Sunset Beach.

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Robert Gauthier

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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How high will the tides be?

Unfortunately, Kavanaugh said, there’s no way to predict the severity of upcoming king tide events at this moment in time.

“But as we move closer to an event, there are good models that the National Weather Service uses to forecast flooding,” she added. “But they need it to be within seven days, sometimes shorter timelines.”

How to prepare for high tide conditions

Kavanaugh recommended keeping an eye on National Weather Service reports for the latest information and predictions. (There are separate pages for Los Angeles and Orange counties.)

Kavanaugh stressed that, given this year's unpredictability so far, people should be as prepared as possible.

“It's an unusual type of phenomenon to plan for for some communities,” she said. “We're used to planning for a big storm, maybe, and flooding from that, but not planning for, ‘Oh, it's gonna be beautiful sunny weather, and also you might have flooding on the roads.’”

Kavanaugh also recommended paying close attention to local emergency officials’ guidance and being mindful not to park cars in low-lying areas that could end up being inundated.

“If [local officials are] asking you to get sandbags or things like that, keep those sandbags because you might need them again in a few weeks,” she said.

The federal government must pull three taxpayer-funded Trump administration ads that appear to have been made for political or propaganda purposes, including one touting the president’s claim that every American will get $5,000 if Republicans keep control of Congress in the upcoming election, a judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon in New York sided with a coalition, including the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, in ordering the government to take down the advertisements titled “$5,000 to Americans,” “Every Democrat Voted Against No Tax on Tips,” and “Cost of Socialism.” She declined to pull several other ads.

She said the three ads must be taken off official government websites, including social media sites such as YouTube, Instagram and the like. Rochon also ordered the cancellation of any plans for the airing or distribution of the ads through authorized third parties, including by President Donald Trump’s flagship super PAC, MAGA Inc.

Rochon was nominated to the court by then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and once served as a law clerk for Trump’s sister, the late Maryanne Trump Barry, a longtime federal appeals court judge.

Responding to the ruling, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said: “This Biden-appointed activist judge issued a lawless order to stop the administration from sharing patriotic videos.”

Rochon ruled during a hearing in which she considered expanding a temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago, when she banned a series of ads that glorify Trump and echo his political messaging going into the midterms.

The plaintiffs sought the removal of at least 13 ads, but Rochon only ordered that the three be pulled, at least for now. She noted that the Government Accountability Office has observed that there are instances when the president’s office is entitled to inform the public of its policies, justify its policies and respond to attacks on its policies.

Rochon said the plaintiffs were seeking to restrict the office in ways that were “broad and far reaching” and she found herself concluding that the government will ultimately prevail legally with regard to many of the ads.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements akin to what past administrations have made to promote various policies. But the recent ads differ from many past public service announcements because they don’t try to help the public benefit from specific government programs, according to the plaintiffs.

After Rochon issued the order, she noted that she was doing so on a Friday afternoon and that the government would have no excuse to delay taking them down immediately.

A government lawyer acknowledged that he would be able to immediately notify relevant individuals responsible for taking down the ads.

“Everyone is here. Everyone can hear my order. No one is at the theater,” the judge quipped in a reference to excuses offered by government lawyers when her recent order, issued over a weekend, wasn’t immediately obeyed.

Rochon said irreparable harm could result to the plaintiffs if she didn’t ban the ads while the court case proceeds, though she noted that she could reverse herself and restore the ads or ban additional ads after hearing more evidence in the coming weeks.

“This court can neither postpone an election nor turn back the clock,” Rochon said after concluding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims regarding the ads and would suffer harm if they were not taken down.

“This temporary restraining order will stop the administration’s wanton disregard for the law while the court hears the full case,” said Bradley Girard, a lawyer with Democracy Forward. “Congress has made clear that partisan ads cannot be funded with taxpayer dollars, and we are proud to work with this coalition to earn today’s result.”

In court papers, the coalition’s lawyers wrote that Congress did not appropriate funds to the president’s office “to run a PR shop to help the President’s allies and attack his perceived ideological opponents.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Oestericher wrote in response to the plaintiffs that there was nothing wrong with White House staff compiling advertisements to “inform the public about his policies and to rebut attacks on those policies and his Administration.”

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Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.

Thousands of military veterans with VA-backed mortgages have been hit with higher interest rates and monthly payments since last year, when the Trump administration shut down a low-interest program designed to help them.

Among veterans who had their loans modified after a financial hardship, more than 15,000 saw their monthly payments increase by at least $150, according to an NPR investigation that obtained previously unreported data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 700 veterans suffered payment increases of $1,000 or more.

Lenders offer loan modifications to enable homeowners to catch up on missed payments. It involves changing the loan terms, and for the vast majority of Americans, it either lowers their payment or keeps it the same, depending on what they can afford. But that's not the case for VA loans, since the VA abruptly ended the program.

NPR found that 63% of veterans who received a loan modification were hit with a payment increase, compared with just 2% for modifications of loans guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which cover most of the U.S. mortgage market.

"This is the height of insanity," said California Democratic Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, after NPR shared its findings.

"These are veterans that are already financially distressed — they were already in trouble," he said.

Veterans like Scott Boyd are literally paying the price.

When Boyd was a teenager, his dad died of cancer. He said he saw the military as a clear path to start helping his family.

"My mom signed paperwork when I was 16," Boyd recalled. "I'm like, 'I'm sending my checks home to take care of my mom.'"

He started out in the infantry and saw combat. Later, Boyd worked in Army intelligence in some dangerous places. When he got out in 2002, he had skills that set him up for a career in tech. In 2021, he bought a house near Columbus, Ohio, using a VA home loan. Like other buyers at the time, he got a nice low-interest rate. "I felt very blessed," he said.

But a few years later, Boyd hit a crisis: He lost his job in a mass layoff, and he said his time in combat came back to haunt him in the form of PTSD. He checked himself into the Dayton VA hospital for treatment but fell behind on his mortgage.

Boyd and thousands of other veterans were pushed into much-higher-cost modified home loans. Hundreds are paying at least $1,000 more a month.

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Maddie McGarvey for NPR

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Most Americans can get help in a situation like this. Mortgage companies don't want to foreclose because both they and the homeowner experience losses. So they have levers they can pull to help people who've fallen behind on payments.

Boyd's lender told him that he didn't have to worry because the VA had a loan forbearance program that would allow him to pause his payments and provide him with an affordable way to catch up after.

"I later found out that wasn't true," he said.

It wasn't true because the Trump administration then shut down a key part of the VA's home loan program. It was called the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase (VASP) program. Without it, vets like Boyd were stranded with no option but a much-higher-cost modified home loan at today's higher interest rates.

In Boyd's case, he is now stuck paying $1,181 more — every month.

"This is outrageous," said Boyd. "I remember just thinking to myself, 'This is just so broken.'"

Some in Congress agree.

"The VA home loan program should not be making things worse and more stressful for that veteran, a combat veteran, who's been through hell," said Takano, about Boyd's case in particular.

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., speaks on Capitol Hill in 2025.

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Rod Lamkey

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Illinois Republican Rep. Mike Bost, chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, did not respond to NPR's repeated requests for comment. NPR also reached out to Wisconsin Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a committee member who led the call to wind down the VASP program. He also did not respond to requests for comment.

The VA said in a statement that it helps thousands of veterans "retain homeownership and/or avoid foreclosure through programs like payment forbearance, loan modifications and individualized repayment plans."

The VA was warned this would happen

Before it was shut down, the VASP program was helping tens of thousands of veterans who had fallen behind on their home loan payments by rolling those missed payments into a new mortgage with a low 2.5% interest rate. That made the program a lifeline for vets in today's higher-interest-rate environment.

And Boyd said his mortgage company had been telling him that he too could use VASP when he was able to resume paying his mortgage.

" I would constantly ask them, 'OK, this is getting further and further behind,' and they were like, 'You have this last lever to pull.'"

This was in the spring of 2025, just months into the second Trump administration. Key Republicans on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee vocally opposed VASP, which the Biden administration created after its own VA home loan disaster. Republicans warned that VASP was putting taxpayers on the hook for thousands of loans to vets who had trouble paying.

"If the Biden version of VASP was allowed to continue, I fear that the home loan will not exist in the future for my fellow veterans," said Van Orden during a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing on March 11, 2025.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., speaks in Eau Claire, Wis., on Oct. 20. He is currently in a tight race for reelection.

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Ellen Schmidt

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But at the same hearing, as well as in letters to Congress and press releases, the mortgage industry and housing groups explicitly warned the Trump administration not to kill the program without first creating another viable option for vets. They said if the VA shut down the program before standing up a replacement, vets would be left with far worse options than other American homeowners. With interest rates up around 7%, they warned that the only option left would be a modified loan at the current higher rates, which would result in foreclosures for those who couldn't afford the higher payments. And that's exactly what has been happening.

" I was doing the math in my head as they were telling me, you know?" Boyd said about the loan modification he was presented with. "If I'm going from 2.75 to 6.75 … it seemed ridiculous," he said. Not only would that jump in his interest rate boost his payment by nearly $1,200 every month, but his loan term was extended to 40 years. So he went from about half of his monthly payment going toward principal to now more than 90% of his payment going to cover just the interest.

"This was a foreseeable outcome of abruptly ending a program without a replacement in place," said Matthew Douglas, of the Housing Policy Council. He represents the largest mortgage companies in the U.S. and was among those warning the VA not to kill VASP. Asked about NPR's findings, he said, "It's a mathematical certainty that borrowers are going to have those kind of shocking payment increases." 

Despite the warnings, the Trump administration ended the VASP program on May 1, 2025 — apparently in coordination with House Republicans, who announced the move before the Department of Veterans Affairs did, even though VASP was ended administratively, with no vote from Congress.

"We — along with many of our colleagues — had serious concerns about the impact VASP would have on not only the future of VA's home loan program, but the mortgage lending business as a whole. Today, the Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA's VASP program," Bost and Van Orden said in a joint press release at the time.

In his statement to NPR, VA press secretary Quinn Slaven wrote: "many leading voices in Congress supported the termination of VASP, which put the entire VA home loan program at risk."

The VA's new program slowly rolls out

Boyd lives with his partner and her four children, whom they are raising together.

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Maddie McGarvey for NPR

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At the same time Van Orden was calling for VASP to be scuttled, he had written a bill to replace it with a new VA Partial Claim Program (PCP). Congress quickly passed that bill with broad bipartisan support in the wake of the VA scuttling VASP. It directed the VA to create an option for vets behind on payments, enabling them to move their missed payments to the back of their loan term. That way, vets could keep their original mortgage and not be forced into a higher-cost loan.

But after ending VASP, it took the VA more than 13 months to design and announce the details of the new program, which it did in June of this year. And the industry was then given another 180 days to implement it. Most mortgage companies still do not offer it.

In that gap, thousands of veterans got modified loans with higher interest rates and payments. The VA's new PCP program won't do anything to help those vets — they'll remain stuck in those modified loans.

Congress could help

Boyd holds a challenge coin from the Department of Defense that was given to him during his military service.

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Maddie McGarvey for NPR

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NPR asked the VA about the vets who fell into the gap between the two programs. Slaven, the VA spokesman, said in his statement that the VA home loan program "is based on the premise that while Veterans may need some assistance, they must generally be able to make their mortgage payments."

Industry groups say raising a struggling homeowner's payment makes it more likely for them to redefault and face foreclosure. Foreclosures on VA loans rose to a 10-year high after VASP was killed, according to industry data. Experts warned in a congressional roundtable in September that time is running out for the government to help these vets or a wave of foreclosures is still to come.

Rep. Takano told NPR that the VA, if it chose to, could put these vets back into lower-cost mortgages or that Congress could pass a law to do it.

"We could do something for those veterans who saw a jump in their interest rates," Takano said.

Hanging on to home 

Boyd says he feels defeated after receiving worse loan options from the VA.

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Maddie McGarvey for NPR

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Outside Columbus, Ohio, Scott Boyd is still managing to make those higher mortgage payments.

When he bought the home, he said, it felt like a guarantee of shelter and stability for him, his partner and the four kids they are raising together.

" I made a commitment, saying no matter what, I want to build a home that is big enough. …  I wanted to get them in better schools and things like that," he said.

He was even able to help when his father-in-law became ill recently; they moved him into the finished basement, where he got home hospice care.

So when he was presented with the terms of that loan modification, he had not only kids in the house but his dying father-in-law too. He'd just gotten back on his feet financially and was being told his options were the loan modification or foreclosure.

"My job was still new, and that still felt shaky. … My PTSD was shaky. … It seemed like the right thing to do was just to take the modification," he said.

Two weeks after Boyd signed the loan modification, the VA launched the new Partial Claim Program that would have allowed him to keep his original loan terms with the same monthly payment and low 2.75% interest rate. It took two more months before the first mortgage company offered vets access to the PCP, and most of the industry is still working to stand up the program before the deadline that the VA gave it of Nov. 28.

Boyd said that he doesn't often talk about his service and that he doesn't feel entitled to be treated better than any other American. But he did not expect the VA to give him worse options than those of people who never served.

" I really felt hurt more than anything. I wasn't angry. I was just like, I felt so defeated," Boyd said.

"Everything that I've done for this country and the things that I've been through, the things that I've seen, the things I've had to deal with … it's come down to, 'Yeah, I'm sorry — it's not in our systems yet. … There's nothing we can do about it.'"
Copyright 2026 NPR

Very early on Wednesday morning, Dover, N.J., Councilwoman Sandra Wittner started getting messages about immigration agents. A dozen or more were gathering outside a Walgreens, according to the messages she was getting. Throughout the day, neighbors in north New Jersey saw a spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

And New Jersey is not alone. In the weeks ahead of the midterms, various cities and states across the country are reporting a notable rise in ICE activity, according to reports gathered by NPR and its member stations.

"The tactics that the administration has been deploying in communities really appear to be designed to try to intimidate voters," says Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. Despite that, early turnout is surging.

"There was definitely a lot of apprehension and fear," Wittner recalls. "We just really weren't sure if something huge was about to happen. People were not feeling very comfortable or safe."

Wittner is not sure who was detained or where, which is unsurprising: these days it's difficult to report on ICE crackdowns as they happen, because the Department of Homeland Security no longer publicly shares timely information on its operations.

NPR wrote to the agency to ask if there has been a recent surge. It responded: "ICE agents uphold our nation's immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day."

And yet NPR and its member stations have received tips from rural Illinois, Oregon, Detroit and California about surges in ICE enforcement throughout October.

An official within New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that they have noted a surge in ICE activity in the city.

"We're certainly witnessing an uptick in activity, and have been since the summer," says a member of a volunteer group of neighbors in New York. She asked that NPR not use her name, as she is worried about retaliation. Her group goes to the scene where an ICE operation is happening, documents it, reminds those being detained of their rights, and alerts neighbors.

"In the past few weeks we've seen numerous large operations, or what we call cluster raids, multiple agents going to one spot and then the next," she said.

On the other side of the country, Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Troy Brynelson has reported on a similar trend. "What we were seeing in early October and what we've seen continue, at least anecdotally throughout this month, is that ICE activity has really picked up in Portland." Brynelson says it seems to be concentrated in commercial areas. "I'd say it's a noticeable uptick compared to what we've seen over the summer."

Juan Proaño of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights organization, says he's concerned because this is happening so close to the midterm elections. "It's not about ICE at the actual polling station, it's ICE at the perimeter of the polling station," he says.

"Mass enforcement actions could be away from the polls, but with social media and the news, it could be enough to dissuade somebody from actually going out to vote."

Weiser of the Brennan Center says there's no indication the raids are affecting turnout. On the contrary, she says there has been a surge in early voting in minority communities across the country. "The good news is: it isn't working. Americans are tuning this out and we are not seeing a significant impact on participation. And we are actually seeing huge surges in participation in communities of color, and in Latino communities, and in all the communities that have been targeted by ICE and DHS."

Even so, she says that intimidation at the polls is illegal, and should be reported.
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