The Brief

Wendy Powitzky thought she’d finally found a way off the street in Orange County.

The former hairdresser had spent years sleeping in her car and parks around Anaheim, near the suburban salons where she used to work. One day a social worker told Powitzky about an old piano shop recently converted into a shelter.

She just had to clear security to reach her new twin bed.

That’s where guards at the taxpayer-funded shelter groped and strip-searched her and several of her neighbors, and left them in constant fear of eviction, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of eight former Orange County shelter residents.

“It was going to be my saving grace,” Powitzky said of the Anaheim shelter. “It was more unsafe.”

As California’s homeless population spiked nearly 40% in the past five years, the growth has been accompanied by a boom in private security. Governments, nonprofits and businesses are increasingly turning to hired guards to triage homelessness, opening a new front in the state’s housing crisis — one ripe for violence and civil rights issues, but thin on accountability and state oversight.

More than a dozen recent legal proceedings and public contract disputes reviewed by CalMatters suggest that, rather than ensuring safety, guards can compound already dangerous and chaotic situations.

Shelter residents in multiple Southern California cities have alleged in lawsuits that they were raped or sexually assaulted by shelter guards, including a Los Angeles case where a guard was sentenced to prison after a homeless woman complained of repeated abuse. In Sausalito, people living at a publicly funded tent city said in court that contract workers dealt drugs and harassed women. After a homeless woman in L.A. was stabbed to death by a fellow shelter resident, her family sued a guard for negligence in an ongoing lawsuit, alleging that he remained at an onsite office despite loud screams during a long attack.

No state agency publicly tracks how many guards work with homeless people, let alone what happens when things go wrong. The California agency that regulates guards — the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services — denied a CalMatters public records request for complaints and reports of violence involving guards and homeless people.

Several lawsuits, meanwhile, allege that security companies, shelter operators and government regulators have failed to properly train and oversee guards, who in some cases are paid just over minimum wage and struggling to stay housed themselves.

“Private security is a lot cheaper than cops,” said Paul Boden, executive director of activist group the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “And a lot less regulated.”

Around the world, economic researchers have found that private security reliance tends to rise along with income inequality and fear of crime. The industry grew nearly 20% in California from 2010 to 2022, the most recent state data shows, to more than 301,000 licensed guards — a force that outnumbered sworn law enforcement officers roughly 4 to 1.

In recent decades, court rulings have put some limits on local governments’ and police’s ability to clear encampments and interact with homeless people. Private guards are bound by different rules.

The legal complaints against security guards underscore bigger flaws in the state’s approach to homelessness. Guards and other front-line workers often aren’t trained to handle complex social issues. And despite public officials who criticize homeless people for rejecting shelter, some unhoused people say shelters and city-run encampments can be worse than the street.

More political pressure is on the horizon. This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on whether clearing encampments when there is no shelter available violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign includes a plan to “relocate” homeless people from cities, arresting those who refuse and sending others to large tent cities. In California, a bipartisan statewide bill would make it easier to sweep encampments and ticket or move people off the street.

As crackdowns loom, homeless advocates argue that pouring money into stopgaps such as private security and temporary shelters — rather than permanent housing — will breed more problems.

“You put people in power over incredibly vulnerable people who are dependent for their very place to live,” said Minouche Kandel, a staff attorney for American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “It’s a setup for abuse of power.”

The O Lot Safe Sleeping site at Balboa Park in San Diego on March 22, 2024. Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters

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The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services said it has received 20,475 total private security complaints since 2019, but that it has no way to search for how many involved unhoused people.

“The Bureau looks into every complaint it receives, and when determining if a violation has occurred, the Bureau relies on facts and information obtained during the course of an investigation,” the agency said in a statement.

Former shelter residents like Powitzky are the first to note that there can be very real security concerns associated with homelessness. It isn’t easy, she said, for people who have struggled with trauma, constant stress and sometimes addiction or mental illness to live in close quarters with limited privacy.

That’s why she was initially reassured by the uniformed guards at the front door of Anaheim’s La Mesa shelter in 2019.

One night when Powitzky attempted to enter the shelter with her adult son, a guard approached after she cleared the metal detector and told her to put her arms up. The guard proceeded to “rub her hands all over” Powitzky’s breasts, she said in the lawsuit, making her son “uncomfortable watching his mother get touched in this manner.” Powitzky didn’t complain for fear of eviction.

Later that same month, Powitzky said another shelter guard forced her to expose her breasts in front of male guards and other residents. More invasive searches where guards “inappropriately rubbed” her body followed, she said in the lawsuit, even after she did complain.

“I honestly just felt like they wanted to get people out of there — ‘You’re going to do what we want, or you’re going to get out of here,’” Powitzky told CalMatters. “It’s a horrible way to run a situation for people that are already having problems with their life.”

The shelter was built by the city of Anaheim and run by the nonprofit Illumination Foundation, which then contracted with L.A.-based security company Protection America. The foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment about how much they paid the guards, or the allegations by residents. In response to the ongoing lawsuit, the foundation and the city of Anaheim said in court filings that security searches were a city requirement at the shelter, but that neither party “can be held vicariously liable for alleged sexual battery” by guards.

The La Mesa shelter was shuttered in 2022 as part of a plan to focus on and expand another city shelter, Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster said in a statement. Protection America and Orange County declined to comment. The security company denied the allegations in a January court filing.

“We require high standards for our shelters and expect security to be done with compassion and respect,” Lyster said in the statement. “The issues raised here were taken seriously and investigated. We stand by our shelter operator’s work and procedures at La Mesa.”

In addition to the searches, Powitzky said in the lawsuit that it was impossible to work her way out of the shelter; she lost two jobs due to scheduling issues with a strict curfew. She left in early 2020 when COVID hit, not wanting to get stuck inside with shelter staff and guards who, the lawsuit alleged, appeared to lack appropriate training.

“I’m still in limbo. I sleep in my car at night,” Powitsky said in the interview. “I will never go to a shelter again.”

Encampment wars

On the first sunny morning after days of tent-thrashing rain on Skid Row, a downtown Los Angeles native and longtime activist known as General Dogon (given name Steve Richardson) is rallying the neighborhood. Between taking orders for new sleeping bags financed by an online fundraiser, the Los Angeles Community Action Network organizer points out the security guards that dot the streets around him.

Just around the corner was where, three decades earlier, Dogon saw the first of what he called “the red shirts” — uniformed, armed private guards hired by a local tax-funded business group charged with cleaning up downtown. He’s been fighting them ever since.

California’s private security industry has existed for more than a century, but in 1994 state lawmakers granted the business groups — formally known as Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs — a right to spend public money on private security. Dogon had just gotten back from serving a long prison sentence and was living in a nearby residential hotel when he started to hear stories that turned into class-action lawsuits.

“They was jacking up homeless people, taking their tents, pushing them down the street,” he recalled. “They were so bad, we was getting complaints from drug dealers that they was taking the drug dealers’ stuff.”

First: General Dogon stands behind caution tape and observes an encampment sweep along a block of Skid Row. Last: ​​An encampment sweep by the city of Los Angeles along a block of Skid Row.

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Dogon had a front-row seat for court battles in the 1990s and 2000s that added some checks to prevent BIDs and their guards from harassing people and destroying belongings.

But with California now home to a record 181,000 homeless residents, tension on public streets is hitting another high. And when it comes to private security, BIDs were just the beginning.

Guards still patrol many property-tax-funded downtown districts. Cities are also directly entering into contracts with security companies and nonprofits to patrol encampments or other public areas. Some businesses and residents hire their own guards, frustrated by property crime and what they consider a lack of police responsiveness.

For security companies, it all adds up to surging demand from clients who increasingly expect them to replicate law enforcement, complete with guns, body cams and pricey liability insurance, said Robert Simpson, owner of Fresno County Private Security. It’s a far cry from earlier eras of “observe and report” security, he said, when guards were trained to call police for social issues or more heated conflicts.

“Now if we make that phone call, they may show up two, three days later,” said Simpson, whose company was sued after a guard shot a homeless man in what the guard described as self-defense. “We’re navigating what is being presented to us.”

Some security companies advertise “transient eviction” or other services to “control and manage any homeless activity.” In LA, security company DTLA Patrol and its armed, state-licensed guards were featured in a report on a local TV station on how “Private Security Helps LAPD in Homeless Crisis.”

“Essentially, we are a subscription-based law enforcement service,” the company’s founder told KNBC in 2020, emphasizing that his guards focus on private rather than public property.

State-licensed security guards must undergo background checks and complete 40 hours of required training within their first six months on the job, compared to 664 hours for law enforcement basic training.

The state also requires guards to take a series of classes offered by dozens of state-authorized private companies or colleges. Classes span citizen’s arrests, terrorism and de-escalation, plus a “public relations” course that covers diversity, mental illness and substance use. In recent years, state lawmakers moved to require new use-of-force training and reporting standards, after which incident reports more than doubled from 2019 to 2023, state reports show.

Now, the security boom is poised to collide with encampment backlash.

California Sen. Brian Jones, a San Diego Republican, is leading a bipartisan effort to strengthen encampment bans in cities across the state. Senate Bill 1011 is modeled on a San Diego camping ban designed to push people into large, outdoor tent cities with 24-hour security.

Any concerns about security or other civil rights issues, Jones said, should be weighed against dire street conditions.

“Those things are happening in the encampments, too — you know, sexual assault, drug abuse, drug overdoses, murder, attacks,” Jones said. “It’s easier to keep an eye on and enforce if the locality does decide to use a safe camping site.”

Homeless people and their advocates, meanwhile, say security guards are just one of several converging threats. Police shootings of homeless people have spurred other wrongful death and excessive force lawsuits. Two serial killers recently targeted people in tents in LA and Stockton.

All told, death rates for homeless people more than tripled in the past decade, the University of Pennsylvania found. Advocates across the country increasingly worry about vigilante violence, as Kentucky weighs a measure that would decriminalize shooting people camping on private land.

“It’s a really scary time,” said Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. “When we have governments giving permission to their own law enforcement to harass and punish people, it gives an implicit green light to others.”

The new guard

Small local security companies. Bigger regional firms winning contracts across the state. Global private security behemoths that dabble in homeless shelters.

In the sea of companies vying for publicly funded homeless security work in California, one newcomer stands out: a six-year-old San Francisco nonprofit called Urban Alchemy. It insists it’s not a security company at all, but it has received public funds earmarked for security and been called a “de facto” security provider in legal complaints filed by former shelter residents.

Urban Alchemy advertises street cleaning services and “complementary strategies to conventional policing and security.” Its revenue quickly multiplied — from $36,000 in 2019 to $51 million in 2022, tax records show — after winning a slew of contracts to manage city-funded shelters and sanctioned encampments.

With a motto of “No fuckery,” the marketing revolves around de-escalation, “calming public spaces” and employing workers who have experienced homelessness, poverty and incarceration.

Some who have lived in shelters managed by Urban Alchemy tell a different story.

“They come on very friendly and sympathetically and then use drugs to take advantage of us, many of whom are struggling to stay clean,” one former resident of a Sausalito site contracted to Urban Alchemy, said in a 2022 court filing in a wide-ranging civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Outreach workers hired by Mitch O'Farrell's council district hand out food and water to unhoused people at an encampment near the Shatto Recreation Center on Nov. 2.

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Urban Alchemy won a $463,000 city contract to manage the Sausalito tent city housed at a public tennis court during the pandemic. In the civil rights suit, which the city eventually paid $540,000 to settle, encampment residents alleged that Urban Alchemy workers sexually harassed women and “used and trafficked methamphetamine.”

The city did not respond to requests for comment, but said in a legal filing that two Urban Alchemy workers were removed from the site and one was fired, and that no police reports were filed. Urban Alchemy’s contract with the city was not renewed, and the organization denied the allegations in a statement to CalMatters. The nonprofit has larger ongoing government contracts in LA, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, where another former worker is awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder after shooting a person outside the shelter where he was working.

Urban Alchemy declined to make an executive available for an interview. The organization said in a statement that its workers complete “extensive training,” including two days of paid lessons and roleplaying on conflict resolution, complex trauma and inclusivity. Workers are not required to be state-licensed as guards, and people with criminal backgrounds could be ineligible under state law.

In an email, Urban Alchemy’s community and government affairs head Kirkpatrick Tyler said, “Urban Alchemy practitioners do life-saving work in our communities that is more difficult than most of us could imagine.” When it comes to security issues, he said workers are taught to use “emotional bank accounts” and follow a six-step process to de-escalate: “If at any point during this process, a person becomes violent or has a weapon, practitioners will call the authorities.”

Tyler said the nonprofit is “saddened by the news media’s repeated eagerness to regurgitate every one of these kinds of claims it hears about Urban Alchemy – an organization that happens to be composed of more than 90% Black formerly incarcerated long term offenders.”

Several of Urban Alchemy’s own workers have also sued the nonprofit over alleged labor and wage violations, discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe work environments. A San Francisco sexual harassment case – which Urban Alchemy has denied – is ongoing, and the organization has settled other labor lawsuits in San Francisco and LA.

Carmina Portillo heard about the job by chance. The 38-year-old LA resident and auto mechanic was homeless herself and evangelizing at a park when she got curious about a man in uniform sitting next to a Porta Potty.

“I asked the guy there how much he was getting paid, and it was $19 an hour,” Portillo said. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot for just sitting there.’”

Last year, she filed a lawsuit against Urban Alchemy over alleged unpaid wages, discrimination and wrongful termination after working for eight months at an LA “Safe Sleep” site — a temporary outdoor shelter lined with city-funded tents. It was always an unwieldy job, Portillo said, ranging from making sure no one was overdosing to cleaning bathrooms or serving food.

State records show Portillo wasn’t licensed for security work. Rather, she and colleagues were left to “take matters into our own hands,” she said in an interview, if problems arose. In one case, Portillo said in the lawsuit that a supervisor discouraged her from calling for medical help after a homeless resident told her in Spanish that he was in distress.

Urban Alchemy denied the claims in a legal response, arguing that Portillo did not complain and that its other employees “acted reasonably, in good faith, and in a manner consistent with the necessities of their business.”

Looking back today, Portillo pauses when she thinks about what to call Urban Alchemy.

“I would just say it’s a gang,” she said. “Literally that’s how I felt. There’s a lot of tension.”

Tyler of Urban Alchemy said, “Every large organization deals with some HR issues. When these issues arise, we take them seriously, and we do our best to handle them fairly.”

Portillo settled her lawsuit with Urban Alchemy; the terms are confidential.

A deadly response

Three hours inland in Fresno, a different type of reckoning over homelessness and private security is playing out — over what happens in extreme cases, when clashes with armed guards turn deadly.

In March 2021, a Fresno man with a history of mental illness named Joseph Gutierrez was shot to death after a struggle with a 21-year-old guard outside a vacant building. The guard in the case was not hired by a city or a shelter, but by nearby businesses to patrol the area.

Surveillance video shows that the guard employed by Fresno County Private Security lightly kicked a sleeping Gutierrez’s feet and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Once awakened, an unarmed Gutierrez got up and lunged for the guard’s neck. The guard shot four times at close range. A fifth shot hit a bystander in a parking lot, who survived.

No criminal charges were brought against the guard. Gutierrez’s widow recently agreed to an undisclosed settlement in a civil wrongful death lawsuit brought against the security company. The company didn’t admit responsibility in the settlement, and Simpson, the owner, emphasized that the shooting was in self-defense.

“You’re going to have the Monday quarterbacks — ‘Why didn’t he do this?’ ‘Why didn’t he do that?’” Simpson said. “Until you’re in the moment, you can’t quarterback that.”

A dentistry office off the main road of Shaw in central Fresno on Feb. 5, 2024. The business used to be a vacant building and the scene where Joseph Gutierrez was shot and killed by a security guard while seeking shelter in the entryway of the building.

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It’s not the only recent guard controversy in Fresno. Last year, another private security contractor was removed from local homeless shelters after the Fresno Bee reported on guards’ pepper “spray first, ask questions later” policy.

“I’m not surprised that this is a mounting problem with the growing number of homeless folks out there,” said Butch Wagner, the attorney who represented Gutierrez’s widow and children. “These security people have no idea what the hell they’re doing.” 

The guard in the Gutierrez case took additional courses at a local community college, and work logs filed in the case show that he came into contact with homeless people often: asking “three vagrants” to leave a Family Dollar store, removing a man from the Little Caesar’s Pizza dumpster, moving along people sleeping in bushes and alleys all along his route — “no use of force required,” he often wrote in the logs.

Wagner, who has also filed suit against police officers accused of shooting homeless people, is most concerned about rules governing when guards are armed.

State law requires that private guards who want to carry a gun apply for a permit and pass a test with the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services demonstrating that they are “capable of exercising appropriate judgment, restraint, and self-control.”

Simpson said it’s up to his guards whether they want to be armed, and also whether a client requests it. He estimates less than 5% of his Fresno County Private Security guards are armed.

“It is your choice. You want to be armed, you can be armed,” Simpson said of his policy. “But you will use a company firearm.”

Had he lived to tell about it, Gutierrez, 35, would have been more qualified than most to weigh in on the debate about where his home state should go from here on homelessness and security.

Before he was killed outside an empty building with 19 cents in his pocket, he’d been a guard, too.

Have you stayed at a California homeless shelter? Tell us about your experience here. 

This coverage was made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation.

Route 66 is celebrating 100 years of being the country's most famous highway, an icon of American culture.

As it passes through eight states — from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif. — its charm is all about driving on the open road, through the plains and prairies, canyons and deserts. Past big cities, cow towns and ghost towns, stopping at roadside motels, retro diners and kitschy tourist traps.

Like every good road trip, Route 66 has a soundtrack — starting with the famous anthem sung by Nat King Cole (and later, his daughter Natalie).

If you ever plan to motor West/ 
travel my way, take the highway that's the best/ 
Get your kicks on Route 66…

Bobby Troup, then an aspiring songwriter and jazz pianist, wrote that 1946 song during a road trip he took to California. Over the years, many others have recorded their own versions, including Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters.

It winds from Chicago to L.A/
More than 2,000 miles all the way/
Get your kicks on Route 66…

The famous thoroughfare was created in 1926, and three years later, the Depression hit, followed by the Dust Bowl — when drought and dust storms devastated farmland.

A family in Pittsburg County, Okla., is forced to leave their home in June 1938 due to a serious drought in the region.

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"The Dust Bowl drove thousands of families away from their farms in the Midwest and southwest states," said Jim Ross, who has written nine books about Route 66. He lives on an original section of the highway. "Most of them headed for California, because that's where the jobs were, or so they thought."

For the Farm Security Administration Project, Dorothea Lange photographed displaced families as they traveled West. The migrants drove in covered jalopies, hitchhiked and walked barefoot with their belongings along the highways.

Route 66 expert Michael Wallis says their trek was heartbreaking — "Following the scent of citrus out to California to rebuild their lives, they were hooked into that old dream, the land of milk and honey, which let them down.

Writer John Steinbeck chronicle the migration along Route 66 - which he named "The Mother Road" — in The Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck's 1939 novel won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a now classic film. It starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, an ex-con traveling from Oklahoma with his sharecropper family.

"Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can't eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad," he said in a monologue that would later inspire songwriters Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.

And legends of Route 66 shifted gears with the times.

After World War II, cars and Route 66 tourism were heavily marketed. Families began taking road trips around the country. And by the early 1960s, their spirit of adventure was captured by rock and rollers Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones.

It goes from St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri/
and Oklahoma City looks so pretty./
You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico/
Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona/ 
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino… 

Route 66 was also celebrated by a TV series with the same name, with a theme song by composer and arranger Nelson Riddle. It features two young adventurers who hit the transAmerican highways in a Corvette convertible.

Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in a scene from the 1969 film <em>Easy Rider</em>.

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Route 66 was also the scenic road in the 1969 film Easy Rider. It starred Henry Fonda's son Peter, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson as counterculture wanderers who traveled by motorcycle.

"All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut," Hopper's character says in one scene, referring to some haters.

"Oh no," Nicholson's character responds. "What you represent is Freedom.

Into the 21st century

In 1985, Route 66 was officially decommissioned as a federal highway. But its lure endured. Two years later, the English electronic band Depeche Mode made a music video about it.

Won't you get hip to this timely tip?/ 
And you'll you make that California trip/
Get your kicks on Route 66

The documentary Depeche Mode:101 followed a group of fans traveling across the country on a tour bus. It was an inspiration for reality TV shows in the 1990s: The Real World and Road Rules.

Route 66 was also celebrated in Pixar's 2006 animated movie Cars. With John Meyer's version of the old classic as its theme song, Cars was set in a fictional town along Route 66: Radiator Springs. The popularity of the movie and a sequel led to a theme park attraction, at Disneyland's California Adventure.

A 2012 handout photo provided by Disney Parks shows the Radiator Springs Racers attraction.

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Author Michael Wallis consulted for the Disney Imagineers and the Pixar filmmakers. And he was the voice of the animated sheriff in the movie — a 1949 Mercury Club Coupe police car.

A vintage postcard-style map traces Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles with landmark illustrations along the border, marking the road's 100th anniversary.

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Wallis co-founded the Route 66 Alliance, and is on the highway's Congressional Centennial Commission. The 81-year-old says the road has stirred his imagination ever since he was a child.

"There's a sense of adventure," he said. "If you've not been in a pie palace or greasy spoon on the Mother Road, you don't know what to expect."

Wallis' bestselling 1990 book The Mother Road is credited with sparking a revival of interest in Route 66.

"It's the path connecting two big cities across two thirds of the continent," he said. "People renting you a room, selling you a cheeseburger, a peek at the snake pit. A dream. An illusion. That's what it's all about."
Copyright 2026 NPR

A cat walks past a Route 66 signs at the El Rancho Motel, once a major Route 66 landmark, on June 15, 2007 in Barstow, Calif.

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California voters faced big questions about money in this election, and the results sent mixed signals about how the electorate feels about taxation.

They want to tax the rich — but only sometimes. They want the money counters at the Franchise Tax Board to stay far away from personal assets, but are leaving the door open for future taxes or taxes on other people.

On Election Day, voters:

• Rejected Proposition 40, an effort to levy a first-of-its-kind wealth tax on billionaires
• Rejected Proposition 41, a taxation transparency measure 
• Approved Proposition 42, a ban on wealth taxes and retroactive taxes 
• Rejected Proposition 43, an attempt to make it more difficult for local governments to raise taxes
• Approved Proposition 3, a proposal to make permanent a tax on high-income earners

Voters also approved several high-profile local taxes, including two measures to fund the Bay Area’s regional transit systems, including Muni and BART, and a half-cent sales tax to fund firefighting in the city of Los Angeles.

The mixed outcome, experts say, shows that California voters are embracing tax hikes — but only when they can ensure the money is funding tangible services they support.

“Voters are willing to open up their wallet if they believe it’s for a good cause … and that it’s actually going to that place,” said Brandon Castillo, a prominent ballot measure strategist in California.

It also demonstrates voters’ willingness to support taxes that likely won’t affect their own pocketbook, said Mark Baldassare, survey director of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

“We are a very progressive state where voters, particularly today when affordability weighs on them, have a tendency to say somebody else will be paying taxes, not me.”

Still, that “not me” attitude didn’t stretch as far as the state’s contentious billionaire tax, which faced opposition from business interests, Democrats and deep-pocketed Silicon Valley executives alike.

Why did the billionaire tax fail?

The failure of the billionaire tax represents the most stunning defeat of Election Day for progressive Democrats who tried unsuccessfully to capitalize on souring sentiment toward the ultra-wealthy amid high gas prices and worsening inflation for average Californians. How could the most progressive measure in the most progressive state fail during a “blue wave” election?

“California voters are sometimes more conservative on ballot propositions than they are on voting for candidates,” said Christian Grose, a political science and public policy professor at USC.

In recent years, voters through ballot measures got tougher on crime, shot down a minimum wage increase and rejected efforts to make it easier to pass local bonds. In fact, voters upheld the death penalty the last time it appeared on the ballot even though the state has not executed anyone since 2006. In a historic decision, Gov. Gavin Newsom also earlier this month commuted all death row sentences to life without parole.

Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant, said this trend likely holds true because ballot initiatives — including taxation questions — generally ask voters to consider one issue at a time and are presented in a nonpartisan manner. In contrast, voting for a liberal or conservative candidate requires voters to weigh multiple aspects of a person’s record, character or values.

“They just have the policy question, and voters sort it out for themselves,” Stutzman said.

Those centrist tendencies helped push Prop. 42, one of two measures put on the ballot by billionaires trying to protect their wealth, across the finish line. That measure bans taxes on personal property, business interests and financial investments. The Associated Press confirmed its passage by 51.3% Friday.

Anti-tax and union supporters touted it as a way to protect retirement savings and pensions potentially targeted by the billionaire tax, though billionaire tax proponents countered that their measure never targeted ordinary retirement accounts in the first place.

Experts say voter confusion and a $378 million opposition warchest donated primarily by Silicon Valley tech billionaires doomed the billionaire tax.

Props. 41 and 42 were designed specifically to kill Prop. 40 if it had passed, creating a chaotic array of choices. The billionaire tax also amassed a coalition of diverse and vocal opponents, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Planned Parenthood, medical clinics and the state’s largest teachers union, despite the California Democratic Party and California Labor Federation supporting it.

Polling showed support for the measure dropped 6 points in the last two months before the election, taking it from a narrow lead to a crushing defeat.

“The campaign against the billionaire tax was a success,” Grose said.

Other taxes succeeded

But few view the results on Prop. 40 as a referendum on the state’s progressive tax system. Instead, many analysts said it was simply bad policy that splintered California’s Democratic base.

Prop. 40 aimed to focus almost all the revenue in healthcare while cutting out other areas of state spending, which would lose funding if billionaires left the state and stopped paying income taxes, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. That, he said, was “an unforced error.”

“It made it a David and Goliath fight, but it didn’t need to be,” he said. “You don’t pass a landmark progressive tax increase that is sort of a change to how America has historically done anything by dividing up the progressive coalition.”

At the same time, Prop. 42’s anti-taxation sentiment was also somewhat tempered by the defeat of Prop. 43, which would have made increasing taxes for local public services more difficult, and the success of Prop. 3, which sticks a higher tax bracket on high-income earners to help fund schools.

Prop. 43 would have required a two-thirds vote to pass any local tax dedicated to specific services. Kousser said voters are concerned the measure would allow for “minority rule,” where just a third of voters would be able to block essential funding for local services.

“Voters don’t like to put in place these rules that seem to be tilted in one direction,” he said.

David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, said Prop. 3’s passage sent a “resounding message of support for taxing the wealthy.” That measure passed with nearly 59% of the vote and sets a higher tax bracket on individually earned income above $360,000.

People in that income bracket have been paying that extra tax since 2012 as a temporary state budget fix; Prop. 3 made it permanent.

Why could voters distinguish between the income tax Prop. 3 and the wealth tax in Prop. 40? Partly because Prop. 3 had no opposition among Democrats, Kousser noted. It also extended an existing tax, whereas Prop. 40 opponents ran ads claiming that state lawmakers could come after average Californians’ personal savings.

Ballot box tempting for revenue seekers

Dustin Corcoran, chief executive of the California Medical Association, which opposed the billionaire tax, said he also does not view its defeat “as an endorsement of wealth inequality or the status quo.”

The state still needs to find a way to securely finance healthcare, education and other core services, Corcoran said, and the medical association is exploring future ballot initiative options to generate revenue.

Not even Prop. 40’s supporters view its defeat as a reason to stop trying to tax the ultra-wealthy in California. Dave Regan, president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the primary proponents of the billionaire tax, vowed to come back in 2028 with another billionaire tax initiative.

Regan also pushed back on the notion that Democrats were divided on wealth taxes, arguing that polling showed between 60% to 70% of Democrats supported the measure and only Democratic leaders such as Newsom and Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra opposed it.

“At the very highest levels of state officials there’s actually, you know, a different point of view, but that’s out of step with where regular people are at,” Regan said.

Still, fiscal conservatives, the state’s non-partisan budget analyst, and even some moderate Democrats say taxation cannot be the only solution to California’s budget woes. The state has faced four consecutive deficit years and spending that outpaces revenue despite the budget as a whole growing. The current state budget calls for $351.7 billion in total spending — a 64% increase over the $214.8 billion Newsom signed in his first year as governor seven years ago.

“California’s budget is structurally overextended despite booming and near-record revenues,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote in a new budget assessment. “This overextended budget reflects a higher ongoing spending base; diminished reserves; an already accumulated wall of debt; and annual, out-year operating deficits of $8 billion to $10 billion.”

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.