The Brief

California scored another win against the Trump administration in their battle over how to address the homelessness crisis here and nationwide.

A federal judge this week shot down the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2025 attempt to divert money away from permanent housing and instead fund temporary shelters and programs that require sobriety. But the judge stopped short of banning the Trump administration from making such changes in the future.

“The federal court’s decision to reject the Trump-Vance Administration’s attempt to disrupt essential housing services for people experiencing homelessness, including families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities, is both appropriate and just,” Renee Willis, chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, wrote in a news release.

In November, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said jurisdictions applying for about $4 billion in federal Continuum of Care funding can’t spend more than 30% of it on permanent housing — a move that would result in a significant cut to the type of long-term housing that for years has been a cornerstone of the fight against homelessness.

Last year, California communities spent about 90% their share of that money on permanent housing.

A group of states, including California quickly sued. San Francisco, Santa Clara County and a group of national homelessness nonprofits filed a separate lawsuit. In December, a federal judge in Rhode Island temporarily blocked the changes. In February, Congress ordered HUD to renew grants from 2025 under the old rules.

This week, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy partially granted the plaintiffs’ request for summary judgement in both cases. She ruled that the federal agency did not try to foresee the harm its “breakneck” transition away from the country’s longstanding “housing first” model – which prioritizes getting people into housing without first forcing them to seek treatment – would have on the country’s homeless individuals.

“Overall, the actions undertaken by HUD in attempting to hastily eliminate its housing first approach serve as the hallmark of unreasoned decision making,” McElroy wrote.

HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling wraps up both cases, unless the Trump administration decides to appeal.

But the fight isn’t over. The Trump administration tried again last month, moving to shift 2026 federal funding away from permanent housing and the housing first framework. Housing advocates tried to challenge that latest shift in the prior lawsuit. The judge rejected that attempt, but welcomed the plaintiffs to file a new lawsuit.

The housing advocates said they are weighing their next steps.

For Tré Willingham, pursuing a doctorate degree at UC Irvine has felt isolating at times. Often the only Black student in his science classes, he recalls being the last one to be chosen when activities required a lab partner. He also has never had a Black professor.

“It’s very disheartening to never see anyone that looks like you,” said Willingham, who studies applied physics. “It makes it hard to believe that you can get there, and especially get there and actually be yourself.”

For Willingham and students like him, the state-funded Cal-Bridge program is helping them pursue their dreams of landing a doctorate in the sciences and joining the next generation of STEM professors. The program provides financial support, research opportunities and diverse mentors of similar backgrounds.

Such mentors make “it much easier to start to navigate these spaces and also believe that you can get to the other end,” Willingham said.

Cal-Bridge was founded in 2014 to help undergraduates at Cal State campuses pursue a doctorate in STEM in partnership with the University of California, helping to close the diversity gap in science fields. About 70% of the program’s 406 students have been admitted to doctorate programs. Three quarters of the program’s students are of color, almost half are women, and nearly two-thirds are first generation.

Studies have noted that the climate of STEM higher education programs is often unwelcoming for some minority populations. Women make up over half of the undergraduate student population at Cal State campuses, yet account for only 36% of the system’s STEM students. At UC campuses, only 24% of STEM undergraduates are Latino or Hispanic, 4% are African American and 1% are American Indian.

From Cal-Bridge’s first cohort of five undergraduate students, the program has grown to support about 60 each year. It has expanded from astronomy and physics to now include computer science and math. Students in the program can receive stipends, tuition assistance, mentorship and professional development.

But the journey to diversifying the STEM teaching field is very long.

So far, 15 Cal-Bridge participants have earned a doctorate. It takes students about eight years after joining Cal-Bridge, usually done during their junior year, to complete a doctorate — two years as an undergraduate and six years to complete their doctorate education.

“It’s only been 12 years since we started, so only this small group is getting their Ph.D. right now,” said Dr. Alexander Rudolph, Cal-Bridge’s executive director and founder. “But eventually we expect there to be more like 30 to 40 to 50 a year getting their Ph.Ds.”

The state Legislature has given $14 million over recent years to the program, which also has a sliver left over from an older National Science Foundation grant.

The program might also get a helpful boost in the Legislature as California pushes back against federal efforts targeting university equity initiatives.

Democratic Assemblymember David Alvarez of Chula Vista introduced Assembly Bill 2660 in April to codify Cal-Bridge as a coordinated partnership between community colleges, Cal State universities and University of California campuses. Rudolph hopes that will help secure annual or multi-year funding for Cal-Bridge in lieu of making requests each year.

Alvarez told CalMatters that as the federal administration cut back on student loans and grants for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, California should do more to support its students.

“The lack of representation from first-generation students in the Ph.D. level of education speaks for itself,” said Alvarez. “We need to do something in California to demonstrate that we still believe that we have strength in diversity of our Ph.Ds, of our academia, and this (Assembly bill) is one way to try.”

Financial assistance allows students to prioritize academics 

Willingham, the UC Irvine student, hadn’t considered pursuing a doctorate earlier in his life. Now 31, the first-generation scholar is pursuing his doctorate with the goal of one day becoming a professor.

“No one around me was a doctor of anything,” said Willingham about his family and friends growing up.

Willingham grew up in Littleton, Colorado where he attended Columbine High School. After high school, his father, who had served in the Air Force, and Willingham moved to Atlanta. In 2017, he moved to California where he began his higher education journey. He is now the father of two children, ages 12 and two, balancing family time with his studies.

Today, Willingham’s research focuses on creating new quantum materials and exploring how they could be used in future sensors and electronic devices.

Cal-Bridge has four programs: undergraduate, summer research, doctoral and postdoctoral. The undergraduate program is open to STEM students at Cal State campuses and community college students who plan to transfer to a Cal State. It receives up to 100 applications per year; about 60 students were accepted this past year.

Willingham attended El Camino College and Compton College simultaneously to finish his associate degree quickly, then joined Cal-Bridge’s undergraduate program after transferring to Cal Poly Pomona. There, the program gave him $10,000 during each of his junior and senior years, which helped him get a car to commute to school from Los Angeles and stay focused by working fewer hours as a tutor.

“I was able to just sort of focus my attention a little better, not having to always think about how I’m going to pay the next bill,” said Willingham.

Later in Cal-Bridge’s doctoral program, Willingham received $40,000 in financial support for his first year of graduate school at UC Irvine. He used $16,000 to pay his tuition and the rest for living expenses.

Mentorship helps students find their place in STEM 

It took Dr. Katy Rodriguez Wimberly, a Cal-Bridge alum, 13 years to become a research faculty member. She is now an astrophysics assistant professor at Cal State San Bernardino.

Wimberly researches near-field cosmology, studying neighboring galaxies that may be some of the first ever formed.

“It’s almost like galactic archaeology, like I’m looking at these little almost-fossil galaxies to learn more about the early universe and where everything came from,” said Wimberly.

She is also now the director of mentorship for Cal-Bridge. During her junior year as an undergraduate, she joined Cal-Bridge’s first cohort, helping her imagine what being an astronomer would be like.

The mentors and the program’s monthly workshops showed her that while she didn’t see many Latina women like her teaching STEM on her campus, she could do it. When she was an undergraduate at Cal State Long Beach, she said, there were only two women professors from about 20 faculty in her department, and none of them Black or Latino.

Cal-Bridge provided Latino mentors she wasn’t finding anywhere else.

“It wasn’t like they were teaching me in a classroom, but they did kind of provide that cultural and kind of identity support,” said Wimberly.

Wimberly had applied to 11 doctorate programs as a senior undergraduate and was denied by all of them. Next, she applied and was accepted to Cal State Long Beach to pursue a master’s in physics. There, she raised her GPA, reapplied to doctorate programs and was accepted to UC Irvine. She graduated in 2021 with her doctorate in physics.

At UC Irvine, Wimberly created a peer mentorship program for Cal-Bridge students as a way for alumni and graduate students of the program to support the undergraduate students. Mentors and mentees meet in small groups once a month, as well as have one-on-one meetings.

“I structured it in a way to be more like, this is just your older cousin that’s telling you how to get through things,” Wimberly said.

After she finished her doctorate, she had a three-year, full-time fellowship with the National Science Foundation. She served at UC Riverside with her former mentor, Laura Sales, an astronomer from Argentina and associate professor at the university.

Learning from Sales made her feel more comfortable embracing her identity as a Latina. Sales taught her that she didn’t have to be an expert in all areas of astronomy, but that she would work alongside experts in different areas.

Now as a professor herself for the last three years at Cal State San Bernardino, Wimberly offers the same mentorship to her students. Anytime she sees a Latina student who doesn’t have support from someone with a similar background, she tries to provide that support.

“Just because I know it can be so difficult,” said Wimberly.

Claire Rogers, a student at UC Irvine pursuing a doctorate in physics, knew she wanted to attend graduate school, but she didn’t realize how isolating the experience would be as the only woman in the room. She is a Cal-Bridge doctorate scholar researching observational astrophysics, looking for planets outside of the solar system to determine if there is life on those planets. She also focuses on how stellar astrophysics affects measurements when looking for planets.

Rogers was an undergraduate at Cal Poly Humboldt and joined Cal-Bridge during the first year the program expanded to her campus.

“Cal-Bridge was really helpful for providing a network of students at the same phase of their career at different CSU campuses but still working towards similar goals,” said Rogers.

She said that since the department on her campus was small, Cal-Bridge allowed her to connect with students at other campuses who were in similar positions.

The program provided her two mentors, a professor at her campus and a professor at UC Berkeley. The program also offered her guidance in applying for graduate school.

“I’m sure it made a huge difference in my grad school essays, getting that feedback,” Rogers said.

Rogers participated in an undergraduate summer research program at the University of Wyoming through Cal-Bridge, where she dabbled in astrophysics research for the first time. Cal-Bridge’s summer program is open to community college and Cal State undergraduate students and allows students to participate in research projects at partner institutions. Out of around 200 applications, only 50 to 60 students get accepted to the summer program.

“I really like spending time at a telescope … and dealing with all of the problems that come up when you are running a telescope overnight,” she said.

She was usually the only woman in her undergraduate classes, and in graduate school there were only three women in her cohort of 22 students.

“I got very accustomed to being the only woman in a room,” said Rogers.

She mentioned feeling isolated during her first year at UC Irvine, noticing that her classmates rarely showed up when she organized study groups and that the men in her lab would change the conversation when she entered the room.

“I had a really hard time my first year with reconciling that I felt very unwelcome,” said Rogers.

She eventually found a support network outside of her original cohort, getting closer to other doctoral scholars in Cal-Bridge and having monthly movie nights together.

“Cal-Bridge has made a huge difference to my career and my, sort of, finding my space in this field,” said Rogers.

Rogers hopes to one day become a professor and be able to teach while continuing her research in observational astrophysics.

“When I was new to physics it made a big difference for me to have women professors,” said Rogers. “I think it’s important for future students to also have that resource and that support, and I would like to be able to provide that.”

Brittany Oceguera is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Topline:

Where the greatest risks are: Areas around downtown Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley, and northern Orange County may see hazardous air on the evening of July 4 due to particle pollution from fireworks, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Riverside County and San Bernardino could see hazardous air the next day as the particles from fireworks move east and combine with the region’s elevated levels of air pollution.

Other risks: The Inland Empire and most of Los Angeles and Orange counties — that is, nearly all of SoCal — may see unhealthy air at times throughout the weekend, as they do every year.

Why it’s unhealthy: Exposure to particle pollution can cause chronic coughs in healthy people and flare-ups of symptoms for people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to the American Lung Association. If you’re in an area where people set off personal fireworks, the organization said those can be even more dangerous, since they’re closer to the ground and the air we breathe.

What to do: Stay inside if you can, and avoid physical activity outside. Unlike the recent fire at the Lineage Logistics warehouse in Boyle Heights, air quality officials say running air conditioners in your home will help, as will air purifiers, though they recommend against turning on fans that bring in outside air.

Other issues: Visibility in Orange County and the Inland Empire may be low Saturday night due to a soupy blend of high humidity and particle pollution.

How long the advisory lasts: It’s in place from 5 p.m. July 4 until 3 p.m. July 5.

The U.S. telecasts of this summer's World Cup games are drawing a record number of viewers. Fox Sports, which broadcasts the games in English, reports an average of 5 million viewers per match across 72 group stage matches. And Telemundo says nearly half of all World Cup viewers in the country are watching its Spanish language coverage.

Wednesday night, fans celebrated as the U.S. men's national soccer team knocked out Bosnia Herzegovina's team two-nil during the latest round of the Copa Mundial, as it's known in Spanish.

At Café Brasil in Culver City, California, Giselle Rosas and her mother Graciela Reyes, who were both born in Mexico, cheered for the U.S. team, along with Telemundo's famously exuberant announcer Andrés Cantor.

"That's the best part for everybody," Reyes said, imitating Cantor's long "Goooooool" calls.

Rosas noted the growing popularity of soccer in the U.S. "thanks to immigrants," and she said it's more fun to watch the World Cup in Spanish.

"A million percent. We like the excitement," said Rosas, "the feeling, the sentiment, the ambience, it's a night and day difference."

Giselle Rosas and her mother Graciela Reyes cheered for the U.S. men's national soccer team on Wednesday at Cafe Brasil in Culver City.

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Mandalit del Barco

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NPR

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That kind of passion, to date, has translated to an average of 4.6 million World Cup viewers of Spanish-language sportscasts on Telemundo and Peacock streaming services per match, according to NBCUniversal.

"This is the most watched World Cup ever in Spanish language in this country. The numbers are just mind blowing, really," says Miguel Lorenzo, a senior vice president at Telemundo Deportes.

"Basically, half of the country of the United States is watching the World Cup in Spanish on Telemundo. But we also know that only 20% of the U.S. population is Hispanic," says Lorenzo. "We're seeing audiences that are bilingual, that are Spanish dominant, that speak English enjoying World Cup coverage."

According to Nielsen ratings, 20% of Telemundo's World Cup viewers speak English as their primary language. And overall, Lorenzo says the viewership on its telecasts has increased by 122% since the 2022 World Cup Games.

He says excitement has been highest for the winning matches by Mexico and the U.S., and the network's social media platforms have surpassed a record-breaking one billion views.

"I can't tell you how many comments I've seen where people are saying, 'I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but I want to watch it on Telemundo because it just sounds more exciting. And maybe by the end of the World Cup, I'll learn Spanish,'" Lorenzo says. "Joy and excitement and drama: it's language agnostic, it's universal."

Unlike Fox, which runs commercials during hydration breaks for the players, Telemundo keeps its cameras on the field. That's something very much appreciated by fans like comedian Trevor Noah.

"We're seeing the players on the pitch discussing what's happening. You see which coach is more stressed…This is part of the game," Noah said during one of the World Cup parties he hosts on his YouTube channel. "When you cut to ads, you lose the stress, you lose the joy, the anticipation. So shout out again, Telemundo: Really, really amazing coverage."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Drivers are heading into the Fourth of July weekend with national gas prices at their highest level for the holiday in four years. In California, where prices remain well above the national average, the state’s petroleum watchdog has flagged a separate problem — one that goes beyond the state’s shrinking refinery capacity and isolated fuel market.

The last week of May was the Memorial Day holiday, when the Iran-war price spike was near its peak. Chevron stations in California charged an average of $6.34 a gallon that week — the highest of any brand tracked in the state, and 44 cents above the average unbranded station, those that sell gas without a major oil-company logo.

The finding came from California’s gasoline watchdog, a unit inside the state Energy Commission called the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight, which delivered a presentation to a state Senate committee on June 3.

The presentation showed branded stations charged more than unbranded ones in California — a bigger gap than in the rest of the country — and identified major brands’ grip on the retail market as a driver.

California can now see into its gasoline market as never before. But its laws may be fighting the wrong problem.

The state’s existing gas-price oversight laws, pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier in his term, centered on emergency price hikes, refinery outages and California-specific supply disruptions. Newsom backed away from some of the most aggressive measures last year after two California refineries announced closures. Economists say the harder target is a retail market where prices can be shaped by algorithms, supplier contracts and the buying power of the biggest brands.

As another holiday weekend approaches, and the worst of the Iran-war price spike appears to be subsiding, the debate has moved into court and the Legislature.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed last week in Sacramento accuses Kalibrate, a fuel-pricing software company, and several major gasoline retailers of using algorithms and competitor data to keep California pump prices artificially high, citing a state law that took effect this year barring algorithmic price coordination. Kalibrate has denied the allegations.

The lawsuit names several major retailers, including Marathon, which operates ARCO stations; 7-Eleven; WalMart, including Sam’s Club; Circle K and Albertson’s.

The complaint alleges that even small increases in California’s gas market can make huge differences, with every one cent increase costing drivers $134 million a year. It also cites research that using the software can increase prices by 6 cents per gallon, and up to 30 cents per gallon when many stations in an area are using the software.

The suit taps into a longstanding theory: Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at UC Berkeley, has pointed to what he calls a “mystery gasoline surcharge” — the part of California’s high prices left unexplained after taxes, environmental programs and production costs are accounted for — that shows up after gas leaves the refinery.

“The real question is, do they have evidence that the company or the gas stations are using the company to coordinate their activities?” Borenstein said of the suit. “That would be a major antitrust problem.”

On Monday, two Democratic state senators promoted new legislation that would let California’s attorney general investigate gas price gouging during wartime.

“This is not natural market forces at play,” said Senator Ben Allen, of El Segundo, a co-author of the bill. “That’s what we’re here to correct.”

New evidence points to the retail market

Even if the Iran war explains much of the statewide spike, it doesn’t explain why some California stations charge far more than nearby competitors. At a June 3 hearing, Tai Milder, head of the state’s petroleum watchdog, told senators the spike had exposed a separate problem.

“This is a global supply shock, and so it’s affecting the whole country,” Milder told senators. “As prices go up, it’s revealing what we already know, which is we have a branded gasoline pricing problem.”

His division’s data showed that the highest-price stations it examined were all major brands, not unbranded or hypermart stations, even though all gasoline sold in California meets the same fuel standards.

Chevron also charged the highest premium over nearby competitors, the watchdog showed. Milder’s division has traced that gap to how the fuel is bought and sold.

California has an unusually high share of sales through contracts in which a refiner sells fuel directly to a branded retailer at a price the refiner sets, the division’s analysis found. Those contracts can lock branded operators into paying more than unbranded operators for the same fuel.

Jeremy Martin, director of fuels policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, put it more simply: branded stations don’t get to shop around for the best price; they’re locked into buying from whichever refiner supplies their brand.

Chevron spokesperson Ross Allen said the company’s branded stations “compete in a highly competitive marketplace where consumers have many choices” and that most are independently owned, setting their own prices based on local competition and costs. He blamed California’s energy policies, not Chevron’s pricing, for the state’s high gasoline prices.

The Western States Petroleum Association, the state’s industry lobby, said California has fewer gas stations per capita than the rest of the country and fewer unbranded stations.

“Can you name any consumer good where the branded version does not sell at a premium to a generic alternative?” WSPA spokesman Jim Stanley said. “That’s true whether you’re talking about cereal, snack foods, jeans, you name it.”

The governor has made the wartime framing personal. Newsom singled out Chevron by name, accusing the company on social media of using its brand name to overcharge drivers amid wartime oil profits.

The tools California did not use

While California’s gasoline watchdog is finding weak points in the fuel market, the rest of the state’s price tools remain largely unfinished or unused.

After price spikes, Newsom called two special legislative sessions in 2022 and 2024 and pushed through new powers meant to prevent future shocks. The laws created the state’s petroleum watchdog, which has since found an unexplained gasoline premium of about 41 cents per gallon between 2015 and 2024, costing California drivers an estimated $59 billion.

But the laws also authorized more aggressive steps that have not taken effect: a possible penalty on excessive refinery margins, a requirement that refiners keep more gasoline in storage, and a rule requiring them to line up replacement fuel before shutting down for maintenance.

A key reason: two refineries have shut down over the past year. This spring, average gas prices climbed above $6 a gallon as the Iran-Israel war roiled oil markets, and the administration has been working closely with refineries to ensure supply.

The oil and gas sector, always a major lobbyist in California, spent $10.3 million lobbying Sacramento in the first three months of the year, according to California Secretary of State filings. The Western States Petroleum Association and Chevron made up the most of that spending total, respectively spending $4.3 million and $3.7 million.

The most aggressive of the special session tools — the penalty — would have capped the gap between what refineries paid for crude oil and what they charged wholesalers for gasoline. In August 2025, a majority of Energy Commission members voted to shelve the idea for five years, saying they could not conclude that the benefits to consumers clearly outweighed the costs.

That decision has drawn new criticism as refinery margins climb — from 49 cents per gallon in January to $1.24 per gallon in April, according to Energy Commission data cited by Consumer Watchdog. “The problem is we’ve sat on our hands and didn’t develop the tools — so they weren’t there when we needed them,” Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court said. “That was a big mistake, and it cost consumers a lot of money.”

The Newsom administration argues the unfinished tools wouldn’t have shielded consumers from this year’s spike. In written responses to CalMatters, Energy Commission spokesperson Niki Woodard said no state-level policy could protect against a global oil shock the size of the Iran war, and that California’s price increases this year have tracked national trends.

The Energy Commission said it is actively advancing the resupply rule, but has not moved forward with the reserve requirement. Last year, Newsom pushed a major priority of the oil industry through the state Legislature: a measure aimed at boosting domestic oil production in Kern County.

California mulls different gasoline strategies

The spring spike has revived a more basic question: if California will still need gasoline for years, how does it keep a shrinking fuel system stable, competitive and affordable?

One answer is more supply. The Newsom administration is tracking import infrastructure proposals for signs they could boost supply, including a proposed Phillips 66-Kinder Morgan project called the Western Gateway pipeline, which would move refined gasoline from central U.S. refineries into California and Arizona.

Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Newsom, called Western Gateway “a promising opportunity to bring additional gasoline supply into the state and bolster resilience.”

Other proposals look at the structure of the retail market. A bill by Sen. Henry Stern, SB 1245, could give California more authority to change its unique gasoline blend, a cleaner-burning formula that is difficult to produce out of state, to make it easier to bring in fuel from elsewhere.

Martin, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the blend made sense at its creation. He said its benefits are smaller now because federal fuel standards and cleaner cars have caught up, and its costs are higher because California has less refining capacity and depends more on imports.

The Western States Petroleum Association opposes the idea, saying refiners already spent heavily to produce the cleaner fuel California required, and should not now be punished for making those investments.

The bill, SB 493, authored by Allen and Senator Josh Becker of Menlo Park, would expand California’s price-gouging law by adding war to the list of emergencies that can trigger the state’s 10% cap on raising prices for gasoline and other essential goods, unless the increase is justified by higher costs.

Becker and Stern have not taken any contributions from WSPA or Chevron, according to campaign filings compiled by CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database. Allen received a donation from Chevron in 2015, and none from WSPA, the database shows.

The oil industry sees that as a return to an old fight. Zach Leary, a lobbyist with the Western States Petroleum Association, said California already debated price-gouging penalties during the 2023 special session, and that the Energy Commission decided the refinery-margin penalty could hurt supply, maintenance and consumers.

Becker rejected that comparison, saying SB 493 targets a wartime emergency, not the regulation of refinery margins.

But even Becker, who is proposing a new way to crack down on the industry, stopped short of calling for California to revisit the most powerful tool it has already set aside. Asked whether the Energy Commission should revisit its decision to delay the refinery-margin penalty, Becker called that “a separate process,” and “a separate decision,” one that is in the hands of the Newsom Administration.