The Brief

Four years clean from methamphetamine and with five associate degrees in hand from a community college in California’s Central Coast, Cheech Raygoza began his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley in 2022 feeling like he was in prison — again.

Away from his fiancé, kids and grandchildren, and plucked from his community in Santa Maria, he was alone — like all those years he served behind bars.

“Something that came natural to me when I moved to Berkeley was isolating,” Raygoza, 55, said. “I was in a cell for 13 years, so I know how to do time by myself.” For the first year at one of the nation’s top public universities, “I didn’t go out anywhere, I didn’t go to the libraries, I didn’t utilize the resources at Berkeley.”

But over time that began to change as he met more friends — themselves students in drug recovery — through a small program at UC Berkeley that’s also at half of the University of California’s 10 campuses. These collegiate recovery programs hold regular weekly meetings for students in some stage of battling drug and alcohol addiction or some other form of self-harm.

Cheech Raygoza, 55, founder of Beyond Incarceration Greater Education club (B.I.G.E.), helps formerly incarcerated students navigate higher education through the program he created at Allan Hancock Community College.

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The University of California Student Association, which represents the system’s 233,000 undergraduates, is mounting a campaign to bring the program and university funding to every campus. After almost a year of advocacy, the student organization brought the program to UC’s largest stage, the UC Regents meeting, in July. Student advocates want a full-time coordinator at every campus, ongoing funding for each program and a private, dedicated meeting space at every UC.

The University Office of the President maintains that every campus has some kind of drug prevention, intervention and treatment program. But student advocates say the collegiate recovery programs are unique and provide an important outlet for students who need a nuanced approach to vanquishing their drug dependencies. The first was founded at Brown University in 1977. Today, scores exist on campuses across the country.

The need for drug recovery centers

Though he was sober coming into the program, Raygoza said that “recovery isn’t something I take for granted.” The addiction is always there. From rock climbing and kayaking events to dinner with participants in the recovery program, “It’s just so awesome to be part of this community,” he said. “It helps me live.”

It took nearly a year for him to emerge from his shell, Raygoza said, and now he’s leading meetings himself as a part-time student facilitator, a paid job he’s had for a year. This most recent semester, he earned straight A’s, he said.

After leaving prison in 2014 and enrolling at Allan Hancock College two years later, he continued using and dealing, even as he got on the dean’s list for good grades. In 2018, his fiancé told him to “get right or get left,” as he put it.

Raygoza put himself in detox for 14 days. His clean date is Aug. 3, 2018. He’s been drug- and alcohol-free ever since.

The university system estimates that the existing programs served 4,000 students last year. A 2023 national survey indicates that 1.6% of UC undergraduates are in some form of drug or alcohol recovery.

But likely many more could benefit from a drug recovery program. The same 2023 survey showed that, depending on the campus, around 50% to 70% of undergraduates reported drinking at least once and a third to half have tried cannabis. Smaller, but still notable, shares of students have used other drugs at least once: roughly 3% to 10% used cocaine; as much as 2% tried meth. Among UC Berkeley students, nearly 1% had tried heroin.

“I cannot emphasize enough that this is literally a life-saving initiative,” said Johnny Smith, who graduated from UC Berkeley this spring and is about to begin his doctoral studies at Harvard. Smith, himself formerly incarcerated and a one-time middle school dropout, spoke at the UC Regents meeting last month, detailing how the program helped him and others who were in drug recovery.

What the program does

Often with few dollars and not even a single full-time staffer, these programs foster a community of peers who together navigate their sobriety through the thicket of tempting or illicit substances that are often rife on their college campuses.

The programs serve multiple purposes: group meetings, more targeted support from a campus coordinator who may also refer the students to mental or medical help on or off campus, and if there’s money, a slew of social events. Some, like the one at UC Davis, distribute fentanyl test strips and Narcan, an overdose-reversing nasal spray, for free.

Unlike more familiar substance recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, collegiate recovery programs don’t demand abstinence from all substances when a person pursues recovery from one in particular. Collegiate recovery programs don’t necessarily follow the 12-step process and instead pursue a playbook of helping students establish a manageable relationship with drugs and alcohol. So if a student wants to quit a drug but occasionally drink, for example, that’s OK.

“That’s something I love about (collegiate recovery programs),” Raygoza said. “They meet you where you’re at and there’s no judgment.”

He also credits a group for students who were in or had family members in prisons or jails, Berkeley Underground Scholars, for helping him feel integrated on campus. Attending church and his faith in God are vital to his recovery, too, he added. Sometimes his fiancé comes to visit and attends a meeting with him. He aspires to earn a doctorate in education and teach youth in his hometown.

The program’s “harm reduction” approach is meant to appeal to more students who aren’t ready to fully abstain from all substances, but need help quitting or dialing back from a substance that’s personally destructive.

“What I’ve seen for a lot of people is, once they get involved in the (college recovery program) and they see people that are totally sober, they’re like, ‘Oh, I can still have fun being totally sober,’” said Stephanie Lake, the current coordinator at UC Davis’s college recovery program, called Aggies for Recovery, and a full-time substance abuse therapist on the campus. “A lot of them do eventually get to total sobriety, but harm reduction at least gives them a way where they’re reducing the harm of their drugs so that they’re able to function in a better capacity.”

Lake said that harm reduction is a newer practice that became more common in the past five years, though she’s been practicing it her entire career. One of the weekly meetings uses an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous speaker format to give students a sense of how those meetings look like, she added.

Still, students hooked on certain hard drugs will struggle to moderate their consumption. Lake described one student she counseled a few years ago who wanted to continue using heroin on weekends. She told the student to see if he could limit his usage after three weeks. He couldn’t, but also didn’t want to quit. A few months later, he came back to her, ready to get sober. Lake then referred him to treatment.

“That’s why I say I meet people where they’re at, because they might not be ready,” Lake said. “And if I actually said, ‘You need to quit now,’ they’re going to get mad at me.”

One thing Lake won’t tolerate: glamorizing drugs. She’s kicked out students who boasted they’d do drugs after recovery program meetings. “It’s triggering other people,” she explained.

Collegiate recovery programs are also located on campus, another benefit, UC officials wrote in an agenda item to regents last month. That’s because not all students have the transportation means or time to seek services that are off-campus, like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, intensive outpatient services and Suboxone treatment.

Need for full-time coordinators

The UC Student Association stresses that each campus needs to employ a full-time coordinator. At UC Davis, Lake officially spends 5% of her time in that role — on top of the four to six students she sees daily for counseling. The campus intends to hire a full-time coordinator this fall, which she says couldn’t come soon enough.

She wasn’t able to apply for outside grants to fund the recovery program because she was busy with her full-time therapist job. The recovery program sponsors events on weekends — making it hard for her to attend after a full week’s work seeing other students. If she had more time, she could reach out to students in the program who’ve since graduated to request donations or ask to speak at meetings.

She also guides two student facilitators who work part-time leading the group meetings. They include Ashlyn Reed, an incoming fourth-year student. The program has been instrumental in helping her remain off the substance that she has struggled with the most — nicotine. It’s her fourth time quitting; this stint has been the longest she’s gone without smoking — six months. She said the group meetings helped her examine why she relied on nicotine as an emotional crutch. “What am I hiding from or trying to avoid?” she said.

But she also feels the limits of the program without a full-time coordinator. “We’re the best kept secret on campus, and we don’t want to be,” she said. Without a full-time coordinator, there’s no one to market the program on campus, where hundreds of student and community groups compete for attention from the campus’s 40,000 students through leaflets, live events and other outreach.

Students pushing for a recovery program on every campus insist on ongoing university funding to support them as well as dedicated space for the meetings.

Aditi Hariharan, a student at UC Davis who has advocated on behalf of the UC Student Association for these centers, expressed concern that some regents at the July meeting encouraged campuses to seek county health grants to fund the programs. Navigating county bureaucracy is difficult, she and other student advocates said, and even if the funding comes through, it’s not a guaranteed ongoing source.

“County grants are also temporary and need to be reapplied and reapplied, and don’t assure that permanent funding that CRPs should have,” said Hariharan, who recently was elected as the student association’s president.

Ryan King, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President wrote that each “campus sets priorities within its budget and must balance competing priorities.” He added that the system is exploring additional funding through the California Youth Behavioral Health Initiative and the recently passed Proposition 1, a state initiative to raise billions of dollars for housing and treatment facilities for mentally ill Californians. The UC maintains a $50 billion budget and about a fifth of that is for its main education mission, including student services.

Dedicated space for meetings would be nice, too, advocates of collegiate recovery programs say. Beyond ensuring privacy, a room just for the recovery program could serve as a refuge for students maintaining their sobriety who want to avoid large social events where drinking and other substance use are commonplace.

“If there was a space where they could just hang out during that day, there wouldn’t be so much temptation to relapse,” Lake, of UC Davis, said. The campus’s program relies on temporary meeting spaces, including the lobby of a student health services building.

UC Berkeley’s center just received its own space. Previously, students attending meetings in an administrative building would need to sometimes enter the police department to gain access to the building — an awkward encounter for individuals trying to confide to each other about substance abuse. Other times campus deans would cross the communal space during group meetings.

“The fentanyl crisis and everything else, it’s a scary time for me as a counselor,” Lake said. Having the collegiate recovery program “is just super, super important.”

Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:14 PM ET

President Trump said on Tuesday that the United States will be leaving Iran very soon, giving a two to three week timetable.

Trump's remarks came in response to a question about gas prices — which earlier Tuesday hit a national average of $4 a gallon. Asked what he would do about it, Trump said: "All I have to do is leave Iran, and we'll be doing that very soon, and they'll become tumbling down."

"I would say that within two weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe three," he added.

Trump also appeared to reverse previous promises about reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

"We'll be leaving very soon. And if France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they'll go up through the strait, the Hormuz Strait, they'll go right up there, and they'll be able to fend for themselves. I think it'll be very safe, actually, but we have nothing to do with that. What happens with the strait? We're not going to have anything to do with it," he said.

Just on Monday, though, Trump offered this threat on social media over the strait reopening: "If for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately 'Open for Business,' we will conclude our lovely 'stay' in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"

The White House later said Trump would speak to the nation about the war at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

Here are more updates from the war in the Middle East:

Kidnapped journalist | Troop visit | Peacekeeper deaths | Iran | Rubio on Spain | Trump slams allies | Dalai Lama

American journalist kidnapped in Iraq

Iraqi authorities reported a foreign journalist was kidnapped in Baghdad Tuesday. It turned out to be an American freelance reporter, Shelly Kittleson, according to Al-Monitor, a Middle Eastern news site for which she has written articles.

Iraqi security forces said they intercepted a vehicle that crashed and arrested one of the suspected kidnappers, but are stilling searching for the kidnapped journalist and other suspects.

U.S. officials say they're working to get her released.

"The State Department previously fulfilled our duty to warn this individual of threats against them and we will continue to coordinate with the FBI to ensure their release as quickly as possible," Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said on social media.

He said Americans, including media workers, have been advised not to travel to Iraq and should leave the country. The statement did not condemn the kidnapping or express concern.

Johnson said Iraqi authorities apprehended a suspect associated with Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah, believed to be involved in the kidnapping.

This comes as the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran enters its second month, and the fallout ricochets across the region.

Press freedom organizations expressed deep concern. The Committee to Protect Journalists called on "Iraqi authorities to do everything in their power to locate Shelley Kittleson, ensure her immediate and safe release, and hold those responsible to account."

Based in Rome, Kittleson has reported on Iraq, as well as Syria and Afghanistan, for years, according to Al-Monitor.

Reporters Without Borders said she is "very familiar with Iraq, where she stays for extended periods."

"RSF stands alongside her loved ones and colleagues during this painful wait," the organization said.

Al-Monitor said in a statement it is "deeply alarmed" by her kidnapping. "We stand by her vital reporting from the region and call for her swift return to continue her important work," it said.

U.S. defense secretary visits troops

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an undisclosed trip to the Middle East to visit troops over the weekend. He did not divulge the location for the troops' safety.

"I spoke to Air Force and Navy pilots on the flight line who every day both deliver bombs deep into Iran, but also shoot down drones defending their base. Many had just returned from the skies of Iran and Tehran," he told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.

He said he "witnessed an urgency to finish the job" and tried to draw a comparison with America's earlier drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the U.S. is improving bunkers and layered air defenses as a priority to protect troops and aircraft.

This comes after more than a dozen U.S. service members were injured, several severely, and U.S. aircraft were damaged in Iranian strikes on a base in Saudi Arabia last Friday. The Pentagon says 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 300 wounded in what it calls Operation Epic Fury.

He repeated the administration's assertion that the U.S. is negotiating with Iran, despite Iranian officials' denial that talks are happening.

He said the U.S. prefers negotiations, but would not rule out using ground troops.

"In the meantime, we'll negotiate with bombs," Hegseth said. "Our job is to ensure that we compel Iran to realize that this new regime, this regime in charge is in a better place if they make that deal."

President Trump told the New York Post he is in talks with Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Security Council meets after U.N. peacekeeper deaths

Countries denounced the killings of three U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon this week as they met for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

"These are sadly not the only dangerous incidents faced by UNIFIL's courageous peacekeepers," Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the head of U.N. peacekeeping, said, using the acronym for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. "There has been a worrying increase in denials of freedom of movement and aggressive behavior."

Lacroix said initial findings suggested two Indonesian peacekeepers were killed Monday in a roadside explosion in southern Lebanon. A day earlier another peacekeeper from Indonesia was killed when a projectile hit a U.N. base, Lacroix said.

Their deaths came as Israeli forces have invaded Lebanon, intensifying a second front in the war in the Middle East. Israel says it is targeting the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The U.N. has not pinned blame and is investigating the incidents.

Ahead of the Security Council meeting, Israel's ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, expressed condolences for the Indonesian peacekeepers' deaths.

Displaced people warm up around a fire outside their tent along Beirut's seafront area on March 30, 2026.

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Danon blamed Hezbollah for laying explosive devices that killed two peacekeepers on Monday.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz paid tribute to the Indonesian peacekeepers and urged Security Council members not to jump to conclusions but to allow the U.N. to investigate.

Indonesia's foreign minister called for a swift, thorough and transparent investigation.

Iran executions, Starlink arrests

Meanwhile, Iran says it has arrested 46 people who were selling Starlink internet connections — one of the few ways that people in Iran have been able to connect to the global internet while authorities block communication. Starlink allows users to connect directly to the internet via satellite, bypassing government firewalls.

Global internet monitor NetBlocks said the country's "internet blackout has entered day 32."

"Extended digital isolation is bringing new challenges for Iranians, from expired domains and accounts to unpatched servers on a degrading national intranet," it said on X.

Iran said it executed two people who had taken part in opposition activities as well as two citizens it accused of spying for the U.S. and Israel.

Rubio accuses Spain's prime minister of "bragging"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday responded to news that Spain had closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the Iran war by lashing out at the NATO partner. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Rubio answered a question about whether the EU and NATO countries had "betrayed the U.S." by focusing on Spain, a NATO member who has publicly adopted a position opposing the war in Iran.

Gas prices are displayed at a Mobil gas station on March 30, 2026 in Pasadena, California. The average price of one gallon of regular self-service gasoline rose to $5.99 today in Los Angeles County, climbing from $4.69 one month ago, amid the ongoing war with Iran.

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"We have countries like Spain, a NATO member that we are pledged to defend, denying us the use of their airspace and bragging about it, denying us the use of our – of their bases," Rubio said.

Earlier on Monday, Spain Defense Minister Margarita Robles said the country had closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the Iran war. It is unclear when the closure started — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had hinted at the measure during a parliamentary debate on March 25.

The weekend the U.S. and Israel launched the attack on Iran, flight records showed at least 15 in-flight refueling planes leaving two jointly operated military bases in the south of Spain after not being allowed to provide support for the military action in Iran. Robles later confirmed the decision by the Spanish Government. That triggered a spat between President Trump and Spain's leadership the week after the war started. Trump said from the Oval Office that he would cut off all trade with Spain if the Spanish government did not allow U.S. forces to use the jointly operated bases. In response, Sánchez doubled down on his stance on the war in the Middle East.

Sánchez has relied on his opposition to the war, making it his main platform at the domestic level. Sánchez's Socialist Party has struggled to keep a government coalition from breaking apart, as he faces pressure to keep his party's hopes alive ahead of a parliamentary election due in 2027.

Trump slams allies

President Trump criticized France and the United Kingdom, among others, on his social media platform.

"All of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump had asked allies for help after Iran largely blockaded the vital waterway, sending up oil and gas prices. But they have been hesitant to join in the war, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer repeating again this week that Britain would not get involved.

"You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!" Trump's post concluded.

He also said France "wouldn't let planes headed to Israel, loaded up with military supplies, fly over French territory." and called the country "VERY UNHELPFUL."

Dalai Lama calls for peace

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday posted an appeal for an end to war in the Middle East.

"History has shown us time and again that violence only begets more violence and is never a lasting foundation for peace," he said on his official account on X.

"An enduring resolution to conflict, including the ones we see in the Middle East or between Russia and Ukraine, must be rooted in dialogue, diplomacy and mutual respect — approached with the understanding that, at the deepest level, we are all brothers and sisters," he said.

He said he was adding his plea to one made at the Vatican by Pope Leo during his Palm Sunday Mass, adding: "His call for the laying down of arms and the renunciation of violence resonated profoundly with me, as it speaks to the very essence of what all major religions teach."

Carrie Kahn in Tel Aviv, Israel, Lauren Frayer in Beirut, Jennifer Pak in Shanghai, Emily Feng in Van, Turkey, Miguel Macias in Seville, Spain, Kate Bartlett in Johannesburg, Jane Arraf in Amman, Jordan, Quil Lawrence in New York, Giles Snyder, Michele Kelemen and Alex Leff in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency will miss a Tuesday deadline for submitting its federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.

LAHSA executives blamed the delay on a “perfect storm” of leadership changes and competing priorities within LAHSA’s finance department, including an L.A. County review of LAHSA’s delayed payments to contractors.

“Our staff made a good-faith effort to meet the deadline,” interim CEO Gita O’Neill said at a LAHSA Commission meeting Tuesday. “However, over the past year, we've experienced several transitions. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”

Each year, LAHSA, like all non-federal agencies and organizations that get substantial federal dollars, is required to hire an outside auditor to determine whether it’s properly tracking and reporting the taxpayer funds it manages.

LAHSA’s single audit report for last fiscal year was due March 31, nine months after fiscal year 2024-2025 ended. Earlier this month, LAHSA officials said they were on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

Justin Measley, lead auditor for the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, had warned that LAHSA was months behind schedule turning over records.

At a meeting Tuesday, Measley explained that because of LAHSA’s earlier delays, the firm would need at least an additional week to complete a quality-control review process.

“We’re moving at the fastest pace we possibly can,” Measley said.

On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit will be filed “at the earliest possible opportunity,” within the next few weeks.

Federal funds at risk

LAHSA manages hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year, through grants from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

O’Neill said the agency has been communicating with HUD officials regularly about the missed audit deadline and is “hoping for understanding.”

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said she’s also been talking with HUD.

“They seem amenable to our situation and to our stated timelines,” Lim said. “So, we are hopeful that this will be a good outcome, despite having missed the deadline.”

HUD did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment Tuesday.

What went wrong 

Measley said LAHSA’s financial statements should have been turned over around last December, but LAHSA only submitted them this month, after blowing through multiple extended deadlines.

Measley said he contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents March 3.

He said he also previewed his firm’s findings, noting one “significant deficiency” in its draft report, related to LAHSA’s timeliness in detecting accounting errors.

LAHSA could contest those findings, officials said. That would add additional back-and-forth between the homelessness agency and accounting firm before the audit report is ready to file.

Justin Szlasa, a LAHSA commissioner who chairs the audit subcommittee, told LAHSA’s CEO he’s concerned that there was no time provided for LAHSA’s governing body to review the audit report.

“Next year, we will absolutely do that,” O’Neill responded. “I think this year, we were under the gun, and so we felt it was the most important thing was to get it uploaded on time.”

O’Neill said the agency hired accounting firm KPMG to help modernize LAHSA’s financial systems, with a focus on its contractor payments.

“We have an outside, trusted voice to help us create a system that works going forward because the system we have is not working at all, in finance,” O’Neill said.

Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:44 PM ET

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he believes the order is legally "foolproof." But election experts said the order was unconstitutional, and voting rights advocates and Democratic state officials quickly pledged to sue to block the order from going into effect.

A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy.

The Constitution says the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections are determined by individual states, with Congress able to enact changes.

"This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration," Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday. "We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court," he added.

Arizona is among more than two dozen states Trump's Department of Justice has sued over access to sensitive voter data.

The Trump administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. Federal judges in three states have dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuits in those states.

In another case, a DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens.

NPR has reported that some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE.

How the executive order seeks to change voting

Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and fraud associated with mail ballots.

The new executive order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — takes aim at both.

It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to "compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State."

The order then "requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots," according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump's executive order claims that "additional measures are necessary" to secure voting by mail, a form of voting he has used himself — including last week — but also falsely maligned for years. In the 2024 general election, nearly a third of all voters cast mail ballots.

The Postal Service should also review the design of mail ballot envelopes to protect "the integrity of Federal elections," the order says.

Collectively, the provisions would be a significant change to how mail ballot programs are currently administered in American elections, which are largely carried out by state and local officials.

"Our government's citizenship lists are incomplete and inaccurate. The United States Postal Service is overburdened and inadequate. This combines a car crash with a train wreck," the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access and sued to block Trump's 2025 election executive order, said in a statement.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional. And regardless, he added, "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections. … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."

The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements.

That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.

The Supreme Court is also expected to rule this year on whether Mississippi should be allowed to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by election officials after Election Day.

The legal challenge, which could have sweeping implications for mail voting nationwide, was filed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.

The data project, an initiative between UCLA and UC Berkeley, publishes federal data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges, and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.

In a December news release, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 10,000 people in the L.A. area since immigration raids began in June of last year, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but did not publish details of the number of people who had criminal records.

The data from the Deportation Data Project shows that arrests in L.A. spiked in June, and about two-thirds of people arrested that month had no criminal convictions.

More than 313,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide in 2025, according to an LAist analysis.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency has not “verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results” and said “this only reveals how data is manipulated to peddle the false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst.” The spokesperson said 61% of people ICE arrested across the country either had criminal convictions or pending charges.

The agency has regularly published press releases identifying people they have arrested and who they have called “the worst of the worst,” including from the raids in L.A. in June. But an LAist investigation and reporting from other outlets has found that some of the people on those lists already has been in custody and were serving lengthy sentences.