The Brief

When the moon slips in front of the sun on April 8, many places will hold eclipse viewing parties. The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, for example, will hand out special viewing glasses shaped like the historic building.

"We encourage everyone to come to the Alamo," says Alamo Trust spokesperson Jonathan Huhn, who notes that past astronomical events have drawn thousands to the Alamo's plaza. "We're hopeful to have another 5,000 people out in front of the shrine of Texas liberty to witness this beautiful celestial event."

But the Alamo is just outside the so-called path of totality — that's the ribbon of land that stretches through 13 states, from Texas to Maine, that will see a total solar eclipse. During a total eclipse, the sun is completely obscured by the moon.

"We're not in the 100% area of totality," says Huhn, who says he thinks the sun will be around 99.9% obscured. "It's very, very close."

Close but no cigar, according to eclipse experts.

"I would never tell someone, '99% is close enough.' That's definitely not the case with a solar eclipse," says Michelle Nichols, who directs public observing programs at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

"Drive those last few miles to get into the path of totality," she urges. "People go to total eclipses to get the full experience, and 99% will not get you the full experience."

"It's 100% or nothing," agrees Fred Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist who has experienced 30 total solar eclipses. "There's such a radical, dramatic difference between a 99% partial and a 100% total. There's no comparison."

During a total eclipse, the sky darkens suddenly and dramatically. The temperature drops. Stars come out. Beautiful colors appear around the horizon. And the once-familiar sun becomes a black void in the sky surrounded by the glowing corona — that's the ghostly white ring that is the sun's atmosphere.

"It seems supernatural," says Espenak. "It is so far beyond the scope of normal, everyday existence that it seems dream-like or hallucinogenic."

A partial solar eclipse offers none of that magic, according to Rick Fienberg, the project manager for the American Astronomical Society's solar eclipse task force.

"Even at 99%, it gets no more dark than on a sort of typical overcast day," says Fienberg. "You can have a 75% or 80% partial solar eclipse, and if you didn't know it was happening, you might not notice because the environment changes so little."

That's because the sun is just so incredibly bright that even a tiny exposed sliver can light up the sky — or hurt your eyes if you're not wearing protective glasses. Only during the brief total eclipse phase when the sun is completely covered (which varies depending on your exact location but could be around four minutes) is it safe to look up toward the sun without special eye protection.

"The sun is about a million times brighter than the full moon," explains Angela Speck, an astronomer at the University of Texas at San Antonio. So if 99.9% of the sun is obscured, she says, there will still be "a thousand times more light than the full moon, and so it's still bright."

The last time parts of the United States got to see a total solar eclipse, in 2017, the path of totality went over a lot of rural areas, says Nichols. This time, the path cuts through more urban areas.

That means while around 32 million people live in the path, many more live a short distance away.

For them, the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and seeing a total one may mean going across town.

"If you get right up to the path, but don't go that last, you know, a few hundred yards into it, you're going to have a very, very deep partial eclipse," says Fienberg. "It will definitely get noticeably dark, but not near as dark as it will get at 100%. And you will not see the solar corona."

Popular places located just outside the path of totality will have to decide what kind of event to hold that day, if any.

The San Antonio Zoo is on the side of the city that won't see a total eclipse. Unlike the nearby Alamo, it will focus on having pre-eclipse activities on the day before.

"We are hosting an Eclipse Prep event on Sunday instead of an event on Monday," zoo spokesperson Hope Roth told NPR by email, adding that astronomers will attend and free solar glasses will be available. "We will encourage guests to visit the zoo, grab their glasses, and have a fun time while preparing for the Eclipse the following day."

The historic Cincinnati Observatory, which frequently holds sky gazing parties, will only see a 99.7% partial eclipse. Staffers there thought hard about whether or not to hold an eclipse celebration.

"For the longest time leading up to this eclipse, we had been committed to being closed," says executive director Anna Hehman, "because totality, if the skies are clear, is within an hour of us."

Eventually, they decided to hold an event for those members of their community who, for whatever reason, couldn't travel to the path of totality.

"While we encourage everyone to head to totality if possible, we love that people want to be at the Cincinnati Observatory for out-of-this-world events like this one. So, if you can't head to totality, please join us," the observatory's website says.

After all, a partial eclipse is still an interesting celestial event that people have observed since antiquity, even if it's not as dramatic.

"The buzz about solar eclipses is usually focused on totality, and witnessing a total eclipse is worthy of the hype. But the vast majority of people won't be in the path of totality," astronomy educator Shauna Edson, at the National Air and Space Museum, told NPR in an email.

That's why the museum is holding an eclipse celebration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which will see an 89% partial eclipse.

"This eclipse falls during cherry blossom season, so a lot of people will be visiting DC, and the Museum wanted to provide a space where they could enjoy the eclipse together," Edson noted, adding that participants will be able to enjoy the crescent-shaped shadows that form under trees and try out different methods for viewing the partial eclipse.

After April 8, the contiguous United States won't see another total solar eclipse for 20 years. And the one that's coming in 2044 will only be visible from the less-populated states of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana.

Los Angeles County quietly stopped handing out syringes and pipes at the county’s flagship services hub in Skid Row in August, and has now terminated the contract of the nonprofit that ran harm reduction programs there, the Department of Health Services told LAist.

The pause — which county officials said is temporary — began in August, “in part due to concerns that community stakeholders and local businesses raised to County leadership,” according to a statement provided to LAist by Thomas Lynch, a spokesperson for the county’s Department of Health Services.

The changes come amid a growing cluster of HIV cases in Skid Row and mounting pressure from the Trump administration and neighboring businesses on L.A. programs that distribute drug paraphernalia. Critics argue the programs enable drug addiction and contribute to crime in the area.

The goal of these programs is to keep people who use drugs alive and free of infections like HIV and hepatitis, while working to connect them with services including treatment.

In late August, the county Department of Public Health identified a cluster of HIV cases among people who live in and around Skid Row. As of Sunday, 15 people had been linked to it, 11 of them women, according to Becky Schlikerman, a spokesperson for that department.

In a statement, Schlikerman said both substance use and sexual transmission are being investigated as possible factors, and that the department is working with street medicine teams and harm reduction groups to expand HIV testing and prevention in the area.

“There is an active HIV outbreak in Skid Row, so reducing safe injection supplies to people who use drugs in this moment seems particularly dangerous,” said Ricky Bluthenthal, distinguished professor of population and public health sciences at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

The Skid Row Care Campus still distributes naloxone — the opioid overdose reversal drug — wound care supplies and safe sex supplies, Lynch said, but “distribution of syringes and pipes is currently on pause.”

He also said they have not set a date for syringe services to resume, that the pause applies only at the campus, and that staff are referring people to syringe programs elsewhere.

The state lists 24 authorized syringe services programs in L.A. County, according to the California Department of Public Health. Two are based in or next to Skid Row.

Harm reduction services are provided across much of L.A. County, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

Darren Willett, director of the Center for Harm Reduction in Skid Row, in September of 2021.

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Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

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Provider layoffs 

The county has also terminated its contract with Homeless Health Care Los Angeles effective Tuesday, county officials said. The county announced the change in an Aug. 28 statement, the same month the syringe and pipe pause began.

Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, one of L.A.’s best-known harm reduction providers, notified the state in September that it would permanently lay off 134 workers — including 117 employees at the Skid Row Care Campus — effective Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to state Employment Development Department records.

“Right now, HHCLA is being forced to say goodbye to some deeply valued staff and reduce services that some of LA’s most marginalized rely on every day,” the nonprofit wrote in an Instagram post in late September.

In the same post, Homeless Health Care Los Angeles said its jobs program for people in Skid Row “no longer exists.” The nonprofit said the program offered “real income, real pathways forward for people too often shut out of opportunity.”

The county is bringing in nonprofits St. Joseph Center and LA Community Health Project instead, officials said. Meanwhile, Social Model Recovery Systems will expand its existing services and Wesley Health Centers will continue providing healthcare on site.

In statements provided to LAist, L.A. County's health services and homelessness departments described the shake-up as “contractor changes” made as part of an effort to “strengthen operations.” Officials are updating campus protocols, “strengthening on-site safety” and expanding substance use treatment and healthcare, according to those statements.

County officials said they are committed to a transition that avoids disruption for people using the campus.

“Providers are hiring from within the Skid Row community and have worked hard to retain staff who were working for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles,” Lynch told LAist.

Those providers have hired more than 80 people so far, and nearly 90% previously worked for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, according to the department.

Representatives for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles did not respond to repeated requests for interview or comment.

The nonprofit has worked in Skid Row since the 1980s and ran the campus’s harm reduction and overdose response programs. It celebrated its 40th anniversary this year.

A group of Skid Row community members and laid-off campus workers calling itself the Skid Row Coalition for Community Safety has launched a campaign saying L.A. County is “playing politics with people’s lives.”

“Supervisor Hilda Solis and LA County chose to cowardly abandon the recommendations of public health experts and the Skid Row community,” the group said in a statement on its website.

County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who represents the area and authored the 2022 motion that created the Skid Row Action Plan, told LAist in a statement that the decision to end Homeless Health Care Los Angeles’ contract was made jointly by the county’s health services and homelessness departments.

“Some services have been paused to allow the incoming provider to onboard staff and establish operations,” Solis said. “This is a necessary part of coordinating the transition.”

“I am proud of the Skid Row Action Plan and its commitment to expanding low-barrier services, health care, and pathways to housing,” Solis’ statement continued. “That commitment remains unchanged.”

Solis completes her final term next month and is on Tuesday’s ballot running for California’s 38th Congressional District, which covers parts of eastern Los Angeles and Orange counties but not Skid Row.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis. Solis represents Skid Row and authored a 2022 motion that created the Skid Row Action Plan.

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Criticism of the campus 

The Skid Row Care Campus opened in spring 2025. County officials call it the first community-designed homeless services hub in the nation.

The campus logs more than 2,700 visits a day, a count that includes repeat visitors, according to the county. It costs about $26 million a year to operate. Funding is secured through June 2027. The budget for the following fiscal year has not been finalized.

The campus in the heart of Skid Row drew scrutiny this year. In May, Fox 11 aired a segment featuring Estela Lopez, executive director of the Downtown Industrial Business Improvement District, who called the campus a “meth mansion.” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass told the TV station she was concerned about problems at the campus.

LAPD responded 693 times to the two blocks around it between January and late May, and recorded four homicides there in the first four months of 2026, according to LAPD figures first reported by Fox 11.

On Oct. 8, federal agents and LAPD officers carried out a drug sweep dubbed “Operation Save Skid Row,” centered about a block from the campus. Federal prosecutors charged 28 people and arrested 23, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to stop funding “so-called ‘harm reduction’” efforts. In April, federal health officials barred grantees from using federal money for pipes and drug test strips, on top of a longstanding ban on federal funds for syringes.

L.A. County officials have not said whether federal policy played a role in the pause. The campus is funded through opioid settlement money, Medi-Cal managed care plans, the state and the county — not federal grants, according to officials.

County officials and employees have credited harm reduction programs with helping drive down overdose deaths, which fell 6% in 2025 — the third straight annual decline — according to the county Department of Public Health.

A person walks past an encampment of unhoused people in the Skid Row community. Skid Row is home to thousands of people who are either experiencing homelessness on the streets or living in shelters.

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Harm reduction’s track record

Harm reduction programs including needle and syringe exchanges started in L.A. more than three decades ago in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. L.A. County declared a local public health emergency in 2000 to authorize syringe exchange under a new state law, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report.

People who use fentanyl in L.A. have increasingly shifted from injecting it to smoking it, according to a 2025 study co-authored by Bluthenthal, with USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Bluthenthal called the recent syringe and pipe distribution pause at the Skid Row Care Campus “obviously a setback.”

“Harm reduction programs, through providing social and material support, have been one of the most consistent pathways to treatment for people who are currently using illicitly purchased drugs,” he said.

In a statement on the pause, officials at L.A. County’s Department of Health Services said people who receive syringe services are three times more likely to reduce or stop using drugs and five times more likely to enter substance use treatment.

John Raphling, an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network based in Skid Row, said his group is “extremely concerned that the county is cutting these services” and that Skid Row residents “were not at all consulted.”

“Harm reduction services, like those provided by Homeless Health Care, help save lives, prevent the spread of disease, and allow people to survive and work through their recovery,” Raphling said.

Some Skid Row residents see it differently — including Don Garza, who has lived in the neighborhood for 27 years and resides in a single-room-occupancy building there.

“It’s not helping anyone,” Garza told LAist. “It exponentially accelerates the overdose deaths.”

“The part of harm reduction that we still need is the overdose prevention, but without the pipes and the needles,” Garza said. “We still need the Narcan because Skid Row is not going anywhere, and people are still gonna OD, and they're gonna die.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a last-minute request from the Department of Justice to wade into its unprecedented feud with California over the state's voter rolls.

The court denied taking up the Justice Department's appeal on Monday evening, just hours after it was filed. Election Day is Tuesday.

The appeal was the department's latest foray into state election administration, which a federal judge referred to last week as "a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials."

After that judge, David Carter, a Clinton appointee, and a divided 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected the DOJ's request to order California to set aside and stop processing the ballots of thousands of people, the DOJ sought injunctive relief from the high court.

The DOJ says it has identified 20,000 "likely" noncitizens on California's voter roll whose ballots should not be counted until their citizenship can be verified.

Courts so far have sided with California and Los Angeles County's arguments that the federal government's list is unreliable, and that creating a novel system to segregate ballots while voting is already underway is infeasible.

"[T]here is a material risk that granting the United States its requested relief would result in disenfranchisement and could jeopardize the County's entire election," 9th Circuit Judges Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, wrote in their Friday decision rejecting the Justice Department's emergency request.

The two judges cited longstanding legal precedent, known as the Purcell principle, that election rules should not be altered on the eve of an election, as well as the fact that the Constitution gives states authority to run elections. The opinion also cited the National Voter Registration Act, which bars states from systematically removing ineligible voters within 90 days of a federal election.

The panel's third judge, Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, dissented.

The actual number of ballots in dispute is likely much smaller than 20,000, since county election officials have found that many of the people on DOJ's list did not have active voter registrations and were not mailed ballots.

Over the weekend, data scientists at University of California Los Angeles' Voting Rights Project were granted access to the DOJ's list through a court order in another lawsuit and found that 42% of the names on the list do not appear on California's current voter roll. That analysis also found naturalized citizens on the DOJ's list.

The Supreme Court's refusal to intervene comes as the Justice Department has been escalating its feud with California election officials.

In recent weeks, the Department of Justice has sent subpoenas to election officials in California, and reminded officials that they could be criminally prosecuted for allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots.

A federal judge in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order late Friday barring the Trump administration from threatening, intimidating or coercing election officials to demand they stop processing the ballots of registered voters that the federal government alleges are ineligible to vote. The federal government has appealed the order.
Copyright 2026 NPR

If Rep. Mike Levin’s proposal moves forward, the spent nuclear fuel stashed on the beach at San Onofre will be stored and processed at one of several potential campuses in other states.

Levin, a Democratic congress member representing parts of San Diego and Orange County, discussed his plan from a point above the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station last week.

“Since I've been in Congress, getting this spent nuclear fuel off our coast has been one of my top priorities,” Levin said, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the steel and concrete canisters housing nuclear fuel rods. “I have been in this fight for eight years, fighting the status quo of inaction on spent nuclear fuel.”

He’s pushing to create facilities called Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses in communities that want to recycle some of the spent fuel and store remaining waste, in exchange for economic development opportunities.

The Department of Energy said the campuses could “attract significant investment, expand domestic manufacturing, and create thousands of new high-paying jobs in their respective regions.” Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho have stepped up as potential hosts for the facilities.

Finland and Canada have embarked on similar efforts to locate nuclear waste facilities, with the consent and collaboration of local communities, according to a report by Levin’s office. Finland expects to permanently dispose of nuclear waste as soon as next year.

Levin said similar U.S. sites could begin operation by the late 2030s, and he’s pushing to make the San Onofre plant a priority for nuclear waste removal and storage.

San Onofre ceased operating in 2013, after a newly installed steam generator failed, leaving the plant inoperable. Officials began decommissioning the plant in 2020.

Since then, 700 million tons of building material have been hauled away from the site, and the spent fuel rods were moved from cooling pools to dry storage on the beach, Levin said.

But there isn’t a permanent repository for the spent nuclear fuel, following backlash to an earlier proposal to store the waste.

“The federal government still hasn't done what it pledged to do all the way back in 1998, and so communities like ours have been left holding the fuel,” Levin said.

The federal government previously designated the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada as the permanent storage site for nuclear waste. But former president Barack Obama cancelled that plan in 2010, following fierce opposition from environmentalists, local groups and tribes.

Without a permanent storage repository, spent nuclear fuel has remained on site at San Onofre, where its location on the coast, near earthquake faults and next to Camp Pendleton make the waste vulnerable to natural disaster or national security threats.

To address those risks, Levin introduced the Spent Fuel Prioritization Act with co-authors including Rep. Darrell Issa, a San Diego Republican, and Rep.Young Kim, an Orange County Republican. It would move nuclear sites with high seismic hazards, large populations and national security risk, such as San Onofre, up the list for fuel removal and storage. The bill is waiting for consideration in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to Levin’s 2026 report on San Onofre.

Another challenge concerns transport of spent nuclear fuel. Levin said next year a specially designed train called the Atlas Railcar System will complete testing and move the first spent fuel rods from Virginia to Idaho. The Atlas is a 12-axle railcar equipped with sensors and monitoring systems, which can transport nearly half a million pounds of spent nuclear fuel, according to the Department of Energy. It took ten years and cost $33 million dollars to build.

Levin has also introduced bills to create a nuclear waste administration, to require nuclear waste canisters to last 100 years instead of the current 40 years, and to increase public engagement and improve safety inspection at decommissioning power plants.

“I will not declare victory on this until the last canister has left San Onofre,” he said.

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

Election officials in both Los Angeles and Orange counties report the early vote is trending higher than the last midterm election in 2022 — on trend with expectations across the U.S.

Nationally, Democrats have outpaced Republicans returning early ballots by more than 10 points, according to tracking by the University of Florida Election Lab.

Here's what you should know about the local vote totals currently released:

• In Los Angeles County, about 24% of registered voters had cast ballot as of Monday.
• In Orange County, the current tally represents about 35% of registered voters.

Keep in mind that Nov. 10 will be the final day for votes postmarked by Nov. 3 to arrive at county elections offices, so the total number of votes cast won't be known until then.

How vote counts will be released

I thought it was election night?

That hasn't been true in quite some time. It takes a while to get results because after the initial tallies on election night, there are still many, many votes to count, and more mail-in ballots are usually arriving.

Here’s what we know so far.

L.A. County turnout

Los Angeles County has more than 5.9 million registered voters. As of Monday, Nov. 2:

• More than 1.42 million ballots have been processed.
• 90% voted by mail.
• 10% voted in person.

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night — and in the following days — about how many ballots remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Observe live counting

Orange County turnout

Orange County has more than 1.9 million registered voters. As of Monday evening, Nov. 2:

• 667,758 ballots have been processed.
• 89.4% voted by mail.
• 10.4% voted in person.

How turnout is trending

Early voting in Orange County is surpassing the last midterm election so far.

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Orange County Registrar

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What's next:

• We'll know more on election night — and in the following days — about how many ballots remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Expected total turnout

Political Data Inc. is tracking ballot returns across California and in some high-profile races.

As of Monday, Nov. 2, statewide turnout is 25%. Note: That is already higher than this time in the primary. Democrats outnumber Republicans statewide by almost double, and have returned more ballots so far (3 million compared to 1.6 million — representing 29% and 28% of each party's registered voters.

See the latest totals ▶

Why Election Day has turned into ballot-counting month

Because of the increasing use of vote-by-mail ballots, the tally has gotten longer, according to the California Voter Foundation. In an analysis, the organization found:

• In November 2004, more than 80% of votes were counted within two days of Election Day, with 32.6% voting by mail. 
• In June 2022, about 50% of ballots were counted within two days of Election Day, with more than 90% of people voting by mail. 
• In November 2024, 66% of votes were counted within the first two days of Election Day, with 81% of the vote by mail.
• In June 2026, 61% of votes were counted within the first two days of Election Day, with 89% of the vote by mail.

A closer look at ballot counting times in California, where an increasing number of vote-by-mail ballots has slowed ballot counts.

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Courtesy California Voter Foundation

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Election officials must physically open mail-in ballots and verify signatures.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, recently wrote about the ripple effect of turning in mail-in ballots by hand or in drop boxes on Election Day. She wrote, for our partner newsroom CalMatters:

"We turn in ballots in envelopes on Election Day that take time and care to process and cannot be processed until after Election Day. Processing these ballots — which account for as much as a quarter of all ballots cast — creates a bottleneck I like to call 'the pig in the python effect.' It prevents counties from doing other tasks they need to do to certify the results."

That said, counting has been speeding up considerably. According to Alexander's organization, the overall share of ballots counted within seven days of the election jumped from 72% in 2022 to 93% in the June primary. L.A. County is moving to around-the-clock counting this cycle, in a move election officials say will help increase voter confidence in the results.