The Brief

Drug overdose deaths in California state prisons rebounded to near record levels last year even as corrections officials touted the state’s intervention methods as a model for prisons and jails across the United States.

At least 59 prisoners died of overdoses last year, according to a KFF Health News analysis of deaths in custody data the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is required to report under a new state law. That’s more than double the number who died of overdoses in each of 2020 (23) and 2021 (24).

Prison officials would not provide the number of overdose deaths in 2022, saying they are still being analyzed for a report to be released later this year. But attorneys representing prisoners said they believe there were substantially more fatal overdoses in 2022 than in the previous two years.

The new numbers are a big setback for state officials, who poured resources into overdose prevention efforts after a record 64 overdose deaths in 2019 gave California prisons the highest drug overdose death rate of any state correctional system in the United States.

With nearly 94,000 state prisoners, California is one of the nation’s largest providers of medication-assisted drug treatment. The prisoners’ attorneys still support California’s pioneering program, saying there would be even more deaths without it.

“Fentanyl. That’s I think probably the main cause from what I hear,” said Don Specter, a lead attorney in the major class-action lawsuit over poor medical care of California prisoners, referring to the synthetic opioid at the heart of the nation’s overdose crisis. “Nothing else has really changed too much. It’s very pervasive.”

With a lower prison population than in previous years, California’s 2023 numbers represent a record high overdose death rate of at least 62 per 100,000 prisoners — and the numbers are likely to rise further as the cause of death is determined in some cases.

“National data has shown an alarming increase of overdose deaths across the country, largely driven by synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl),” Ike Dodson, a spokesperson for California Correctional Health Care Services, said in an email. He added that prison officials “continue to evaluate substance use disorder treatment to improve the safety and well-being of all who live or work in a state correctional facility, including plans to broadly expand access to Narcan,” an overdose reversal device.

Until now, California’s increasingly comprehensive drug intervention program had been an apparent success story.

In January 2020, when the prison population was about 124,000, the state began using drugs like buprenorphine, naltrexone, and methadone to lessen drug users’ cravings and the crash of withdrawal symptoms while helping them stay away from dangerous opioids. The new program’s focus on medication-assisted treatment appeared to be working after deaths fell to 23 that year.

The medication-assisted treatment is one of five core components of the prison system’s approach: screening every arriving prisoner for substance abuse; use of medication where needed; therapy; supportive housing in prisons; and pre-release planning and post-release assistance. Officials say all five have now begun to varying degrees, at a cost of $270 million for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2024.

By 2021, the prisons’ reported overdose death rate fell to 25 per 100,000, less than half the rate before the program began and well below the overall national average.

There also was a nearly one-third drop in drug-related hospitalizations and emergency room visits among California prisoners receiving the medication-assisted treatment, researchers for the program said in a progress report last year.

In promoting the approach, corrections experts last year cited California’s “immediate and significant” progress in reducing deaths, emergency hospitalizations, and drug abuse-related infections. While the use of medications to help keep prisoners from using opioids is rapidly expanding, it remains underused nationally in other prison and jail systems, the report said.

But last year’s preliminary overdose death toll in the state’s prisons was close to the record numbers of 2018 and 2019. Overdoses likely caused 11 deaths in October, according to attorneys representing prisoners — the most they had seen in a month.

Drug-related hospitalizations also have seen a more recent surge, attorneys representing prisoners said, citing the state’s data in a December court filing.

Efforts to crack down on the smuggling of drugs and other contraband into prisons have had limited effect.

Corrections spokesperson Alia Cruz said the department favors a “multilayered approach” that couples prison security with deterring smuggling and disrupting gangs and other drug distributors.

There were 236 smuggling arrests last calendar year, up significantly from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 fiscal years and similar to 2019-20 but about one-third fewer than in 2018-19. “Miscellaneous” seizures, which include fentanyl and other opioids, were up about 14% through the first nine months of 2023, the last data available, over the same period a year earlier.

Prison medical staff began carrying naloxone, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses and is often sold under the Narcan brand, in 2016. Only in late September 2023 was it made centrally available in every housing unit for officers’ emergency use.

“That’s a good start, but all officers should carry the medication, which should be administered as quickly as possible to be most effective,” said Steven Fama, another attorney who represents prisoners and tracks prison treatment programs.

J. Clark Kelso, the federal court-appointed receiver who controls prison medical care in California, said during a court hearing in December that he is considering using his authority to obtain more naloxone. Fama said fewer than 10% of prisoners had been offered naloxone to carry for emergency use, with prison officials citing supply shortages for the delay in broader distribution.

The first group of state prisoners to be offered naloxone was at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County in August 2023. It had been averaging 35 overdoses a month, fatal and nonfatal, between October 2022 and March 2023, or more than one a day.

California “is leading the nation in this area,” prison officials said in the court filing, citing in part its policy of offering naloxone to all departing prisoners. They said the state is committed to making naloxone available to all prisoners as well. Statewide, California is partnering with a private manufacturer to produce a lower-cost generic form of naloxone nasal spray and expects to have it available by the end of 2024.

Despite the recent surge, California’s program “has and does save lives, and change lives,” Fama said. “Without this treatment the number of overdoses, we believe, would be far larger.”

Updated November 14, 2026 at 13:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON— Friday's nationwide ground stop started when a contractor updated old Federal Aviation Administration telecommunication lines, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday.

Tens of thousands of passengers across the U.S. are still stranded Saturday after the rare ground stop. Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator who joined Duffy at Saturday's media briefing, said schedule problems should be resolved by Sunday evening.

Nearly 25,000 flights were delayed, and over 9,000 were cancelled on Friday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking site. The disruption seeped into Saturday morning with more than 4,000 cancellations recorded, which is 18% of flights departing the U.S., according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

L3Harris, a long time contractor for the FAA, was doing routine maintenance in at least one remote location changing copper wire to fiber optics, Duffy said. "When I tell you that we're using old equipment, we're using old equipment," he said.

He said the FAA is still investigating the exact error that started flooding other routers in the air traffic control system, and if L3Harris was at all responsible.

"It's pretty straightforward work that we were doing yesterday at, again, a very remote location. So what we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error, installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?"

L3Harris did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

These updates have been happening in American institutions for decades, Duffy said.

"Virtually every single institution in America has gone from copper to fiber, from analog to digital," Duffy said. "Just maybe the FAA is the last one to be doing this work because the investments haven't been made, but this is not complicated."

Bedford said there was no evidence of anything nefarious happening or any AI-related issues.

Since his time in office, Duffy said he's been asking Congress for money to make more upgrades. In July 2025, Congress approved $12.5 billion to modernize the nation's aging air traffic control system.

With that money, 70% of copper communications have been replaced to high-speed fiber, Bedford said. Duffy called the innovations and the need for more a "bipartisan moment."

"This is the moment, if we don't start to switch out our systems, when, how long are we going to wait, America, and Congress?" Duffy asked.

Thousands of passengers miss flights

Passengers wait at boarding gates at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC on November 13, 2026.

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Zina Desmazes

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AFP via Getty Images

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For about four hours on Friday, thousands of flights at U.S. airports were grounded in one of the biggest disruptions of the nation's air travel system since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

The aviation system is back online and slowly returning to normal Saturday morning, but delays and cancellations will continue, Duffy said. Bedford said all passengers will be put on new flights or they'll get a full refund, but that people should reach out to their airlines directly.

Flight boards at airports across the country Saturday morning continued to be riddled with red cancelled marks. At Tampa International Airport in Florida, people in the main terminal area before security curled up in chairs to grab a wink of sleep.

On Friday night, a flight board at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in D.C. showed dozens of flights delayed into the early morning hours or cancelled.

Passengers Erin and Jake Britt spent half the day at the airport in D.C. on Friday. Their plane to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. boarded at 3 p.m. By 5:30 p.m., they were getting off the plane — but they were still in D.C.

"Overall, our plane was definitely annoyed, but reasonable," Erin Britt said, as the couple left the airport at 8 p.m. "People being upset and asking like, 'Well, how are you not prepared for this?' And it was like, 'Well, no one was prepared.'"

She said neither the pilot nor flight attendants had any more information than passengers."They seem just as in the dark," she said.

The pair decided to cancel their weekend trip, but the night didn't end there. They spent over nine hours overnight waiting on the JetBlue customer service call line to be reimbursed. "I was setting alarms in 20 minute intervals in case I fell asleep," Erin Britt said.

For people who had events or plans over the weekend – the delay added an extra layer of stress. Joe Romano and Maddie Cabana had a cruise leaving Orlando, Fla. Saturday afternoon.

"It was a big eye roll. I mean, I travel a lot for work already, so I'm constantly dealing with flight delays," Romano said. "When this happened, I was just like, 'Of course, it always happens to me.'"

"Just rather inconvenient and frustrating," Cabana added, as the pair contemplated checking their bags or going home. They even thought about driving to Florida. "Hopefully, everything will be fine. It'll all work out. It always does."

And it did— eventually. After their JetBlue flight was ultimately cancelled, they quickly booked another one on Southwest Airlines and made it early Saturday morning.

Others, like Suze DiPietro decided flying wasn't worth it anymore. Her husband drove about four hours down from Ocean City, New Jersey to pick her up in D.C. Luckily, they had friends in the area where they spent the night.

"My husband, my hero, is driving down from New Jersey to come get me," DiPietro said.

Other alternatives included people switching to Amtrak trains as they struggled to get to their destination. Although, even Amtrak's system had a brief outage Friday night.

This was only the second nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001. The U.S. last issued a ground stop of this scale in 2023, when all U.S. airports were shut down due to an outage in the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which alerts pilots and airports of real-time hazards.

That outage prompted fears of a cyberattack, but the FAA later determined the issue was caused when contract workers inadvertently deleted critical files.

The FAA has recently begun rolling out an AI-enhanced software tool known as the SMART system as part of its ambitious overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system. But Air Space Intelligence, the company that makes the tool, quickly dismissed speculation that its product could be connected to the flight disruptions.

"The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC," the company said on social media.

Ava Pukatch contributed to reporting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Eggs from the first confirmed sea turtle nests found on the U.S. West Coast have hatched.

"We are excited to share that some of the olive ridley sea turtle eggs from Seal Beach successfully hatched after a 58-day incubation period," said the Aquarium of the Pacific in a social media post.

The Long Beach-based aquarium has been keeping watch over 204 olive ridley sea turtle eggs, laid on Seal Beach and Huntington Beach in September. A second set of eggs found on Huntington Beach is still incubating

The aquarium said the hatchlings were released early Saturday morning in a coastal area with little light and human disturbances.

Baby turtles, the aquarium said, go through a “frenzy period” after hatching, where they swim nonstop for up to two days

The eggs came from the first confirmed sea turtle nests found on the U.S. West Coast. Scientists say unusually warming water tied to El Niño likely drew the rare turtles to the Southern California coast.

If you happen to see 600 people snaking down 14.3 miles of Santa Monica Boulevard (and then some) on Saturday, Nov. 21 — their sole purpose is just to … walk.

“For years people were asking us, ‘What are you doing?’” said Michael Schneider, founder of the Great Los Angeles Walk.

These strolls are maximalist in nature, usually covering the entire length of a given thoroughfare. Sunset Boulevard. Melrose Avenue. Ventura Boulevard.

The inaugural Great L.A. Walk in 2006 along Wilshire Boulevard.

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How the walk began 

The pre-Thanksgiving tradition started in 2006 with Wilshire Boulevard. Schneider, who had reached the milestone of living in L.A. for a decade, was inspired by a book about the street’s history to walk its entire 15.8 miles on foot. He asked others to join on his blog Franklin Avenue.

About two dozen people showed up. That day, they popped into storefronts, stopped by restaurants, sneaked into the Park Plaza Hotel near MacArthur Park and shot up to the roof. “That kind of unearthed a whole new side of Los Angeles as we walked down Wilshire,” he said.

By the time the trek reached the ocean, folks were asking Schneider about next year. Now, it's always on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

“I inadvertently turned it into an annual tradition,” he said.

The 2016 edition of Great L.A. Walk along Pico Boulevard.

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Courtesy Great Los Angeles Walk

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The 2007 installment was Pico Boulevard — with restaurant recommendations along the route handpicked by the late Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold.

Eventually, Schneider included themed walks. March of Los Pobladores — which retraces the final leg of the 1781 journey taken by the original founders of L.A. — from the San Gabriel Mission to downtown. And USC to UCLA when the rivals faced off on game day.

This year’s route: Route 66 

This year's theme is Route 66.

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Google map screengrab

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This year’s focus is Route 66, marking the centennial of the iconic road. Saturday's walk will start in Echo Park, then go the whole way down Santa Monica Boulevard and end at the pier, totaling about 16 miles.

“You see so many different versions of Los Angeles,” he said.

Michael Schneider, founder of the Great L.A. Walk, at last year's trot along Wilshire Boulevard.

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Celebrity sightings and a marquee shout-out 

One year, he said, the group walked by Magic Johnson.

“He waved at us," Schneider said. "Probably was wondering why [there were] hundreds of people walking past where he was."

As many as 600 people now join the walk, he said. As the number grows, so too has its legend.

“Now we find a lot of people who know who we are,” he said. “You hear people say, ‘Hey, it's the Great L.A. Walk.”

A couple of decades ago, a friend in New York told me about something happening that was kinda underground and just getting traction. It was called “The Moth.” People took turns telling a true, personal story, with no notes, named after the Southern tradition of sitting on front porches and sharing spellbinding tales — with moths flying mesmerized around the porchlight.

It sounded amazing. And terrifying. I filed it under the same list as bungee jumping — no doubt exhilarating but something I’d never do — and got on with my life. Over the years, as it grew bigger and bigger, I went to several Moth events in different cities, and was always so impressed with the storytellers — and equally adamant I’d never do it.

Cut to this September, when a message went out to all the staff at LAist. We’re a media sponsor of The Moth, and an event, a open mike StorySLAM, was coming up in Silver Lake. There were a few tickets available. Did anyone want one? The theme was "Divas." Sure, I thought. I’d go watch. It's always fun.

Nagging thought

As the days went by, the same thought kept nagging at me. How about getting on stage yourself? No, I thought. Too risky. But this time there was another thought, even more vehement. Why are you being held hostage by fear? Life is too short. If you want to do something, you just have to do it. And this opportunity has just fallen into your lap.

So when the day came, I went to the event, and put my name in the hat. Would I be picked? I sat there with sweaty palms as the show started and people came up tell their own funny, moving, poignant stories.

Finally, near the end of the show, my name was called out. Gulp. I walked on stage to the mic, and began telling my story.

“Some years ago I was a BBC radio producer. A show host and I were at Albuquerque airport, on our way to Los Alamos to do interviews about the Manhattan project. But when we got to the gate, it was closed. They’d boarded the plane 15 minutes early. We couldn't believe it. There was only one plane per day and we'd flown in from London and were on a tight schedule. What should we do?”

Holding their breath

It was a strange experience, simultaneously storytelling while looking at the audience and scanning for their reactions. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.... and were holding their breath, waiting to see what came next.

“I could see the plane on the tarmac, one of those regional planes with propellers, on the other side of an alarmed emergency exit door. So I decided, in the heat of the moment, to push it open, and started dashing across the tarmac, yelling for the host to follow me. Security men began running towards me from every direction as the alarm blared loudly.”

The audience was laughing with delight and disbelief, and I was laughing, too, at the recollection. What on earth had made me do that? Ah, my young, impulsive, determined self. Just as well it wasn’t today, post 9/11. I’d be dead.

“As I reached the plane, the security men were shouting 'What are you doing? You can’t run onto the tarmac!' That’s when the diva part came in. I drew myself up to my full 5’ 2” and said, determinedly, 'No, YOU were the ones who boarded the plane early. We did everything right! We have our tickets, we have interviews to do and we are going to get on this plane.'"

The security men looked at each other, unsure what to do. Maybe it was the British accent, or not being used to a woman giving them a dressing down. But one of them shrugged, moved out of the way, and they let us get on the plane. "Hurray! And we made it to Los Alamos, in time to do our interviews. Thank you.”

The audience went crazy, clapping and whooping. I was standing there grinning stupidly. I couldn’t believe I’d done it.

Yes, the story went down well. And the audience hadn't eaten me alive. But there was something bigger, something even more satisfying in my reaction. I’d had made myself do something I was scared of. I'd faced my demons.... and survived.

A lesson for us all.