The Brief

The Trump administration is transforming the agency known for processing green cards and citizenship requests into one of its strongest anti-immigration policing arms.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, is one of the three branches of the Homeland Security Department that deals with migration.

Traditionally, its more than 20,000 employees have focused on the various ways people can lawfully immigrate and stay in the U.S. — be that applying for asylum, a green card, citizenship, work visa, or another legal pathway.

Since January, administration officials have taken an axe to that traditional mission by encouraging early retirements, shuttering collective bargaining agreements and drastically cutting back on programs that facilitate legal migration. New job postings lean into the rhetoric of hiring "homeland defenders" and tackling fraud.

During his Senate confirmation, USCIS director Joseph Edlow proclaimed that "at its core, USCIS must be an immigration enforcement agency."

The efforts come as President Trump seeks to curb illegal immigration but also reduce legal ways to get to the U.S. and stay here, especially for certain nationalities.

It's rocking the agency from the inside, crushing morale and prompting resignations, according to current and former agency employees.

With the recent changes, at least 1,300 people took the "Fork in the Road" resignation offer for federal employees, while others have left on their own. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection employees were not allowed to take the offer.)

And it's catching immigrants and their families, lawyers and advocates off guard.

"'Am I going to get arrested?' … That's a question, regardless of their past," said Eric Welsh, an immigration attorney in California who helps his clients apply for various USCIS programs.

"There really is a lot more fear and there is a lot more concern about, should we do it at all?," Welsh said, about people applying for legal status.

Rapid changes after deadly shooting

The changes have been rapid. In recent weeks, the White House said it would re-review all approved refugee claims under the Biden administration.

After an Afghan national was charged for shooting two National Guard members in late November, the administration also halted processing green card and citizenship applications from nationals of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, and ordered retroactive reviews of already-approved applications.

"I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover," Trump wrote on social media after the shooting. "Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation."

USCIS stopped processing many immigration applications entirely, including for asylum.

"USCIS' role in the nation's immigration system has never been more critical," Edlow, its director, said in a statement last week announcing a new vetting center that will conduct interviews and re-review already approved immigration applications.

"Under President Trump, we are building more protective measures that ensure fraud, deception, and threats do not breach the integrity of our immigration system."

Recent policies come after a swath of other changes this year. Policy memos have emphasized that the priority for refugees is admitting those who can easily assimilate into the country, with the target demographic being white Afrikaners from South Africa.

The White House also capped refugee admissions for this fiscal year at 7,500, the lowest since the modern refugee program started in the 1980s.

The agency has unveiled a longer, tougher citizenship test. It has also moved forward with a rule that would allow officers to consider an immigrant's legal use of public benefits, such as food stamps and healthcare, as a reason to deny status.

Reports of arrests and detention following routine USCIS interviews and appointments have increased fear among immigrants.

"They're reaching deeper into the weeds of immigration policy, and they may be more successful in slowing legal immigration, which at least some members of the Trump administration have stated is their goal," said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. "That's a pretty different stance towards immigration than we've seen over recent decades."

In Trump's first term, the changes did not significantly curb legal migration, but that may be changing.

"Some people, if they have a green card, might just wait to naturalize and see if they can wait for a new administration," Gelatt said.

USCIS leans into enforcement and policing tactics

The new administration has prioritized the agency's law enforcement work.

For example, USCIS has promoted a new role: "homeland defenders."

It is unclear exactly what these positions are responsible for. USCIS said they will be "interviewing aliens, reviewing applications, and identifying criminal or ineligible aliens."

The posting also specifies this position is expected to provide direct support to CBP and ICE, two agencies leading the effort to arrest, detain and deport immigrants.

The roles also seem to cater to those with backgrounds in traditional law enforcement, contrary to a background in immigration law and administrative government work that is more typical for USCIS.

USCIS said it received some 35,000 applications for the role of "homeland defender" and has made "hundreds" of job offers, including to former law enforcement officials and veterans, according to a November USCIS press release.

"USCIS is cutting bureaucratic red tape to hire fiercely dedicated, America-first patriots to serve on the frontlines and hold the line against terrorists, criminal aliens, and bad actors intent on infiltrating our nation," the release stated.

It also created USCIS special agents, who have law enforcement authority to carry firearms, and investigate, arrest and prosecute immigration cases. In the past, much of this would be the work of ICE or CBP, according to the release announcing the new workforce.

"Certainly the immigration enforcement side of things that are happening has sent a message that anybody who isn't a citizen in the United States could be arrested and put into ICE detention and potentially deported," Gelatt said. "That has a real chilling effect on people's willingness to interact with the government generally, and with USCIS as well."

USCIS workers defend past enforcement

The changes are having an impact inside the agency, as workers feel out of the loop about the direction and pace of changes.

Michael Knowles was an asylum officer for 34 years and currently serves as the executive vice president of the union that represents 15,000 USCIS employees. He says morale is some of the lowest he's seen in his tenure, thanks to the termination of the union contract, a haphazard back-to-office mandate that has employees working in makeshift desks, and a lack of communication from agency leadership.

"There are questions about what will be our mission, what will be our focus? And to that extent, we are alarmed by rhetoric," Knowles said. He said the agency has always enforced the nation's immigration laws when it processes applications.

One USCIS refugee officer who recently departed the agency after nearly a decade said the speed of the changes "overwhelmed" employees, and recent changes were the last straw. The person spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity out of concern of retaliation from the agency they hope to return to.

USCIS staffers say they have always worked hard to ensure people don't get benefits they do not qualify for, and also look for people who may be breaking the law.

So employees were upset by the administration's implication that they hadn't been doing their jobs properly for the last five years, after the White House announced all refugees admitted under in the Biden era must be reinterviewed.

"It's going to cause a lot of confusion. It's going to cause a lot of chaos. It's going to cost a lot of money," the employee said. "It seems impossible."

USCIS said it has paused the approvals while it "works to ensure that all aliens from these countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible," the agency said in an emailed statement.

Not "an adversarial office"

Beyond policy and rhetoric changes, there's been subtler signs of transformation.

Signs inside USCIS offices urge people to leave the country, mirroring the tone of a detention center, rather than that of an immigration office, according to Welsh and other lawyers.

"USCIS is not designed to be an adversarial office," he said. "They're not the enforcers. They're not looking to reduce."

Now, he said, his clients are concerned with needing to have proof of a good moral character by providing church attendance or charitable donation history, for example.

"It's now certainly not the kind of friendly atmosphere that we used to experience with the agency," Welsh said.

Lawyers fear all the changes would further curb legal migration of the kind the U.S. had previously welcomed.

"We have borders and we have benefits. So for people who deserve them or people who have earned them for various reasons, we provide them," Welsh said. "If we just go into a pure enforcement mindset, then there's no happy place to be."

The agency did not respond to a question about whether immigrants will be deterred from pursuing legal pathways to permanent status.

"The safety of the American people always come [sic] first," the agency said in its statement.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.

Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.

Medicare Advantage means private insurers run Medicare for older Americans who choose it over traditional Medicare, where the federal government itself administers the program. More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.

But a downside of Medicare Advantage is that companies can pick and choose where they offer plans. If a certain community is not profitable, a company can leave that market. And that has been happening on an increasingly large scale the last three years, according to research published in JAMA.

Who is affected

Big swaths of rural America are losing Medicare Advantage choices and so are some major metro areas.

Last year, 2.9 million seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans that closed up shop, according to JAMA. This year, an analysis of insurance company announcements by An Arm and A Leg podcast, shows at least 2 million people will be affected. Other preliminary estimates range from 3.2 million to 5 million seniors. About 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.

According to an analysis of federal data by the health policy research organization KFF, the 193 counties that will have zero Medicare Advantage plans are mostly rural. Last year that number was about 120 counties without a plan offered.

KFF's numbers also show that there will be far fewer plans offered in some metro areas. Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Houston and Portland all have between a quarter and a third fewer Medicare Advantage plans for seniors.

What happens next

If your plan is ending, and you don't choose another, the insurance company will assign you to another Medicare Advantage plan or the government will enroll you in traditional Medicare — but without a supplemental or drug plan.

If you want to switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare and your plan is ending, you can enroll in a Medicare supplemental plan — also known as Medigap — without the same restrictions that you would normally have. If you have a pre-existing condition that has prevented you from enrolling in Medigap before, that could be good news.

Another wrinkle this year is that insurance companies can cap enrollments on some of the Medicare Advantage plans that they do offer.

Which means: If you wait to sign up, a plan you want might already be full.

The companies are supposed to enroll people on a first-come, first-serve basis — and not cherry-pick customers based on health conditions, age, or demographics.

Another reason not to delay is that with so many people on the hunt for new plans, it may take longer than usual to get help.

How and where to find help

Here are some tips for navigating Medicare open enrollment this year:

• Find out if your plan is still offered: First, check your mail. Medicare Advantage plans that are closing should have sent letters the first week in October. You can also log in to your account on Medicare.gov to check your plan's status for next year.
  
• Try calling your SHIP: There's a State Health Insurance Assistance Program — known as a "SHIP" — in every state to help seniors with Medicare. The name's not easy to remember or particularly descriptive, but it's free, mandated by the federal government, and the staff and volunteers are required to give you unbiased information on all available options. Find your state in the directory at shiphelp.org. Your county may have a specific number that you can find on your state's SHIP website.
  
• Look for local Medicare counseling services: Friends, family, leaders at your place of worship, and the constituent services of your local elected officials may have the scoop on where you can get one-on-one help. The nonprofit Medicare Rights Center also has a national helpline, and a well-organized library of online guides.
  
• Brokers can be helpful, but be savvy: You want a broker who's going to talk with you about all your options — including switching to traditional Medicare and a supplemental plan. Ask if they sell plans from all available insurance carriers. And ask if they answer questions about your plan year-round, because insurance never stops being confusing.
  
• Double check what you see on Medicare.gov: Medicare's Plan Finder allows you to search plans online. But lists of doctors and drugs that are covered can sometimes be wrong. To be safe, double check with your doctor's office or a SHIP counselor, broker, or other Medicare assistor.
  
• Don't share your personal information with services you find online: Be careful where you share your personal information like your phone number. Some online agencies will sell your information, leading to spam calls and potentially even scam artists.
  
• Be mindful of the deadlines: Open enrollment for Medicare runs October 15, 2026 through December 7, 2026. The coverage starts January 1, 2027. If your plan is ending, you qualify for a "special enrollment period" to give you a little more time — until February 28, 2027. (For coverage that starts January 1, 2027, enroll by December 31.)

Emily Pisacreta is the senior producer for An Arm and a Leg, a podcast about the cost of healthcare produced in partnership with KFF Health News and distributed by KUOW, Seattle's NPR member station. 

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.

Earlier this month, the federal government targeted Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State’s office in a lawsuit that aimed to block them from counting the votes of roughly 20,000 people who are “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit court of appeals to rule on the lawsuit barring a decision from the district judge assigned to the case. They set a deadline for Saturday.

Now, according to the LA County registrar’s office, at least 18 counties across the state have received similar letters. They have been given a 48 hour deadline to provide identifying information corresponding with ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizens illegally registered to vote. The letter requests that county officials also sequester any ballots where citizenship cannot be verified.

“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.

The Justice Department is asking counties to send information about the voters it suspects are noncitizens including social security numbers, ID information, a copy of their registration and more.

That information can help the government and state quickly assess each person suspected of illegally registering to vote, said the letter sent to San Bernardino County voting officials. The letter says the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters includes 1,133 people from the inland Southern California county.

California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have opposed the federal government’s demands. In legal filings, lawyers for California say the request threatens to delay the certification of the vote and undermine the legitimacy of the November midterms. They have also argued that the federal government’s data is unreliable and that their demands risk disenfranchisement of citizens.

Voting is underway in California, with the state’s more than 23 million registered voters receiving ballots in the mail earlier this month. The state said in legal filings that over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted.

The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.

The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.

This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”

If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.

The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.

In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.

The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.

It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.

And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.

Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.

Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.

To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.

At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.

“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”

Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.

What’s the big deal anyways?

William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.

“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”

Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.

“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”

Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.

The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.

“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”

A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958. 

(

Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II

)

Future of the club in question

But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.

Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”

The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.

At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.

The clubs crown a new Miss Tall International at a formal pageant held during the annual convention. The former Miss Tall Clubs International that were at the 2026 convention from left to right: Susan Hopkins, 2019, from the Tall Club of Orange County, Martine Whitford, 1959, from the Los Angeles Higher Ups, Norma Forrest, 1996, from the Tall Club of Toronto and Mary Eleman, 2022, from the Central Arizona Tall Society.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

Members of the Tall Clubs International convention committee.  From left to right: Barry Umbs from Milwaukee, William Walter Wiseman II from the California Tip Toppers, Jim Nelson from the Paramount Tall Club-Chicago and Michele Cripps from the California Tip Toppers.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”

Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.

“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”