The Brief

Top L.A. city and county leaders are promising to fix long delays in reimbursing nonprofits that provide the bulk of local homeless services after they warned of possible cuts to staff and services.

The issue was front and center at Tuesday’s meeting of L.A. County supervisors, who acknowledged the problem and convened a two-hour public discussion with officials who oversee the payments and five leaders of major nonprofit providers. They spoke of months-long delays in getting reimbursed by the city and county’s joint Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which were confirmed by officials.

“We've collectively reached the breaking point and can no longer carry the system,” said John Maceri, CEO of the nonprofit provider The People Concern, calling it “a perfect storm.”

He and other nonprofit leaders said providers are struggling to make payroll for their staff and are taking out private loans to cover the gaps. That can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just in interest payments, which are not reimbursed by the government, they said.

Maceri said it often takes three months or longer for providers to get reimbursed for their costs, which often are millions per month. At supervisors’ request, LAHSA officials presented data showing $48 million in past due reimbursements to providers as of Friday.

“The greatest impact will be felt in the next seven days, when [the nonprofit] LA Family Housing will be unable to process” $1.2 million due to landlords for over 565 households in permanent housing, said Kimberly Roberts, the group’s chief program officer.

Another $1.5 million will be needed to continue temporary housing, “placing 1,000 households — households that make up over 3,000 men, women, and children — at risk of losing shelter,” she added.

County and city leaders say they’re taking the issue seriously and working quickly to fix it.

“The time for action is now,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who convened Tuesday’s public discussion along with Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

“Our payment system is broken,” Horvath added. “Too often, we have conversations that are siloed … Today's exercise is about fixing what is broken, not about pointing fingers. Because this isn't any one person's fault, it is a system failure.”

Supervisor Holly Mitchell went so far as to call the current payment system “the devil.”

“The cost reimbursement model is the devil. Hard stop,” she said.

“There is no flexibility, it's old, it's antiquated,” she added. “It is obscene to think that government is going to expect nonprofit organizations to carry us.”

Supervisors ordered county staff to report back within three weeks with options for overhauling the payment system, and plan to discuss the options at their June 18 public meeting. One approach being explored is providing money upfront to providers before they spend it, rather than having to wait for government agencies to review the bills.

Service providers also raised concerns about LAHSA’s payment rates not keeping up with the increasing actual cost of services, which county officials also acknowledged as a problem they’re trying to fix.

LAHSA’s executive director, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, said she inherited numerous payment delay problems when she took the helm a year ago, and that she’s working to fix them.

“This issue right here is my primary focus. And I'm losing sleep, as you can imagine. And I should, because this must get addressed,” she told supervisors.

Hanging in the background is an effort to ask voters to double the county’s homelessness sales tax, known as Measure H, and extend it.

“The reality is, we are soon going to be faced with going out to our voters again. And let me tell you, there will be people listening to this discussion. And we've got to fix it. And it is doable,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis. “This [effort] is really something that should have happened probably a couple years ago.”

Several officials said the discussion was “long overdue.”

In a letter to county supervisors Monday, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said she’s trying to fix “cumbersome and inefficient payment methods” and that the city recently sped up $17 million in payments to LAHSA after service providers flagged that they face cash flow problems.

The amount still remaining for the city to reimburse LAHSA, to then reimburse providers, is estimated at $26 million, Bass wrote.

L.A. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the council’s housing and homelessness committee, told LAist she investigated the issue in recent weeks to find out what exactly is causing the delays. She brought forward a motion, approved by the city council last week, ordering staff to pay all overdue bills within 30 days and report back in that same timeframe on how to speed up payments to providers.

“I think we are reaching a point of crisis that we really need to be proactive about addressing,” Raman said. “It has been an ongoing issue for quite some time.”

But once nonprofits “started saying, ‘we will not be able to provide services anymore if this situation continues,’ [that] woke everyone up,” Raman added.

“I also think that there is something about this moment which is different from the past, which is that you have a lot of people who are in leadership, who are working on the issue of homelessness, who are interested in going beyond finger pointing, who are interested in going beyond blaming LAHSA or blaming the county for poor outcomes, and really saying, ‘What can we all do better if we work together?’” she said.

“I wish that it didn't have to get this bad before we were able to focus our energies on taking action. But I'm hopeful that we will not have to find ourselves in this situation again if we act on this moment with all the steps that we need to take, if we can use this moment of crisis to really propel ourselves into a better system.”

Two weeks from the midterm elections, Democratic Party leaders are suing in federal court to block President Donald Trump’s administration from usurping states’ authority to administer elections or trying to intimidate state and local election officials into complying with illegal demands.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Washington, seeks a court order barring the administration from purging legally registered voters from statewide voter registration lists or denying ballots to legally registered voters.

The plaintiffs, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, also ask for a ruling that the administration has illegally threatened state election officials with prosecution before the Nov. 3 election.

The lawsuit cites the Justice Department’s recent actions in California, where it sued to block state election officials from counting mail-in ballots cast by people whom the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.

“For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the suit says. “While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the President from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections, even as courts overwhelmingly reject that effort.”

The Justice Department said in a statement that election integrity is a top priority for the administration and the department’s actions on that front are grounded in law and under court litigation.

The Democratic leaders’ lawsuit was assigned to Chief Judge James Boasberg, who has been vilified by the White House for rulings against the Trump administration since the start of the Republican president’s second term.

The suit’s other plaintiffs are the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association. Its named defendants are Trump, the Justice Department, Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Tom Cruise is being celebrated with a life achievement award from the American Film Institute, AFI’s board of trustees said Wednesday. The award will be handed out at a gala tribute in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theatre on April 24 next year.

“Tom Cruise is a global icon,” said Kathleen Kennedy, chair of AFI’s board of trustees, in a statement. She praised Cruise’s commitment as an actor and producer and his belief in movies’ ability to bring people together.

Cruise, 64, has worked in film for more than four decades, starring in movies including “Risky Business,” “A Few Good Men,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Minority Report” and the “Mission: Impossible” series. He has received three Academy Award nominations for acting: best actor in “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Jerry Maguire” and supporting actor for “Magnolia.”

As a producer, Cruise was nominated when “Top Gun: Maverick” received a best picture nomination.

Last year, he received an honorary Oscar at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards.

The AFI Life Achievement Award, established in 1973, recognizes a person whose work has advanced film and stood the test of time. Cruise will join a roster that includes John Ford, Bette Davis, Sidney Poitier, Steven Spielberg, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Eddie Murphy, who received the honor earlier this year.

Proceeds from the tribute gala support AFI’s education and arts initiatives.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must continue providing gender-affirming care to transgender inmates in federal prisons.

The decision, in an emergency appeal, maintains a lower court's injunction on a federal Bureau of Prisons' policy that would terminate hormone therapy and other treatments for trans inmates.

The unsigned order offered no explanation behind the decision. It simply read, "The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied."

It also said Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would side with the Trump administration and would grant the application for stay.

As the federal judge's injunction remains in place, the legal battle over the policy continues.

In January 2025, upon assuming office, Trump issued an executive order banning the use of federal funds that "promote" gender ideology. And prisoners brought a class action seeking reinstatement of the decades-long health policy. It contends that the Trump policy violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

A federal district judge barred the BOP from implementing its policy this summer.

A second court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, also rejected the administration's request to pause U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth's order.

That's when U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

As the federal judge's injunction remains in place, the legal battle over the policy continues.

Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer involved in this case, said the organization believes there are more than 2,000 people in BOP custody who identify as transgender. (The BOP stopped publishing data reflecting transgender inmates after Trump took office in 2025. It only records male or female individuals incarcerated in the federal system.)

Kingdom v. Trump represents 1,000 inmates who have a gender dysphoria diagnosis, Nowlin-Sohl explained. Of those, the ACLU believes there are about 800 who have been prescribed hormone therapy and many who are also receiving social transition accommodations, Nowlin-Sohl said.

In its request for an emergency stay on the earlier rulings, the Trump administration argued that providing this care poses several risks, including for recipients of this specialized care, who it argued would become "targets for attacks." They also said that it raises "fairness concerns" as it would "breed resentment" with other inmates.

Access to gender-affirming care is considered medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria, a medical term used to describe the deep discomfort caused by a mismatch between a person's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity. Without it, individuals can struggle severely with mental health issues such as heightened anxiety and depression, with some turning to self-harm and suicide.

Gender-affirming care can include "...hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries among others," according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. (In its filings, the Trump administration questioned WPATH's standards of care, which were developed by experts in transgender health and used by organizations across the world.)

Some people who are transgender may require hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries; others may not require any of these interventions.

The BOP has treated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria since at least 1992, the ACLU said in response to the government's filings to the Supreme Court.

"Had BOP's doctors found this treatment unhelpful or harmful to patients or had the agency found that the treatment compromised security, surely BOP would have mentioned it in the administrative record," the ACLU wrote.

This is a "glaring omission" and appears to indicate that the government's arguments now are simply "contrived," the ACLU continued.

NPR previously covered the impact of the loss of hormone treatments on people who are incarcerated. One woman said she experienced severe physical and mental anguish when she lost access to hormone treatments.

The Supreme Court's decision is at odds with other rulings that support the Trump administration's anti-trans policy agenda.

Last June, the court ruled that states can ban transgender girls from participating in sports at publicly funded schools. And in 2025, the court upheld state laws that make it illegal for doctors and other health professionals to provide gender-affirming care for minors.

In one of his first executive orders of his second term, President Trump targeted the trans community with a declaration that his administration recognizes just two sexes, male and female. This order has been the basis for a host of anti-trans policies throughout the administration.

But at least for now, the emergency request on the prison policy was to no avail.

Waiting in the wings at the Supreme Court are other cases on transgender rights. Most prominently, the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-trans group, has filed an emergency petition at the court on behalf of a mother and her teenage daughter who contend that the daughter was "unknowingly" forced to face a transgender opponent in girl's high school wrestling. Later this year, the court will hear oral arguments in a case testing whether a religious preschool can receive state funding while excluding LGBTQ families. In a separate case, the justices will examine whether parents have the right to challenge a state law that allows runaway teens to receive gender-affirming care without parental consent.

NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg contributed reporting.

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