The Brief

LAist laid off eight employees Tuesday as it contends with ongoing financial challenges, including President Donald Trump’s recent order to eliminate federal funding for public media.

It’s the third round of staff reductions in three years at Los Angeles’ largest NPR station and amounts to a 5% staff reduction. Since 2023, LAist has slashed 61 positions through buyouts and terminations.

The multiplatform news and information organization that broadcasts at 89.3-FM receives $1.7 million — or about 4% — of its $40 million budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an independent nonprofit chartered by Congress that partially funds NPR and PBS.

Because CPB has already distributed most of this year’s funds, the Trump order would likely be felt in 2026, when a new two-year funding cycle will begin.

Since last year, however, LAist has been grappling with a projected budget shortfall of $4 million to $5 million because of declines in advertising, digital monetization issues and overall cost increases. It relies on member contributions for the lion’s share of its operating revenue, along with philanthropic and corporate support.

The organization dipped into its management reserve fund this year to stay on budget, but those reserves “have been depleted to ensure continued operations,” LAist President and Chief Executive Alejandra Santamaria said in an email to staff Tuesday. “Given the additional risk of losing another $1.7 million annually from our CPB grant, it is unfortunately time to make difficult changes.”

Trump and other Republicans have long sought to defund NPR and PBS, arguing that their programming has a liberal bias that should disqualify them from taxpayer support. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes more than $500 million in taxpayer dollars annually to more than 1,000 public radio and TV stations across the country.

Trump also said he was removing three of CPB’s five board members, which would erase the quorum necessary for the board to take any actions. Former President Joe Biden appointed two, and the third was a Trump appointee whom Biden reappointed.

CPB has sued the president, alleging he lacks the authority to make such changes.

NPR vowed to resist the Trump administration’s assault on public media, calling it “an affront to the First Amendment rights of NPR and locally owned and operated stations throughout America to produce and air programming that meets the needs of their communities.”

The LAist layoffs follow similar retrenching at other local media organizations.

Last year, KCRW — the Santa Monica-based NPR member station broadcasting at 89.9-FM — lost 12 staffers through buyouts and canceled a daily news program, “Greater L.A.” Under the Trump order, it stands to lose $1.3 million from a $24 million budget.

The Los Angeles Times has laid off 129 newsroom staffers over the past 17 months, including 14 employees who were terminated last week; another 40 staffers accepted buyouts early this year. Adweek reported that The Times lost $50 million last year along with 10% of its subscribers who canceled their subscriptions after owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision to withhold the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

It is unclear how the latest round of layoffs will affect coverage at LAist, which has intensified its focus on local news and information in recent years as The Times and other local news organizations have lost revenue and cut staff.

“We’re saddened and extremely disappointed to learn that eight of our LAist colleagues are losing their jobs today, including at least four full-time members of the SAG-AFTRA bargaining unit,” LAist reporter Cato Hernández, shop steward for journalists, producers and hosts represented by SAG-AFTRA, said in a statement.

Hernández said the employees who lost their jobs this week worked in LAist’s podcast division, social media and photography, and include journalists “who brought acclaim to the organization through multiple awards this year — some of whom were actively working to bring new stories to our audience when they learned they were being laid off today.”

Hernandez continued: “The loss is truly devastating, not just for us, but for all Southern Californians who depend on LAist to keep them informed and connected to their community.”

Megan Garvey, LAist senior vice president for news and editor in chief, said the organization’s leadership did “everything we could to protect our ability to do original journalism in our newsroom.” She added that no reporters or newscast staff were affected.

“As hard as these changes are, I feel confident in our editorial team's ability to continue our core public service mission,” Garvey said.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by freelance reporter Elaine Woo and edited by senior editors Dana Littlefield and Matt Ballinger.

Under LAist's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

A bipartisan majority in the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to end the war with Iran, the clearest rebuke yet of President Donald Trump's handling of the conflict and the subsequent economic fallout.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage. However, the extended break didn't shift GOP support to kill the measure.

Ahead of the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defended Trump's decision to attack Iran.

"Remember … Iran declared war on us 47 years ago. They chant 'death to America.' The president is trying to keep the people safe," Johnson told reporters.

The vote is mostly symbolic. Democrats, despite multiple attempts, have been unable to pass a war powers resolution through the Republican-led Senate. Even if the measure passed in Congress, it would almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, whose administration has questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.

Still, Senate Democrats have been inching closer. Last month, they won support on a procedural measure to set up a war powers vote after a handful of Republicans broke ranks to join them. A final vote has yet to be scheduled.

The administration has furiously pushed against the effort in both the House and Senate. Wednesday's vote signals his support for the war may be slipping even among some members of his own party.

Now more than 90 days into the conflict, some Republicans have expressed frustration that the war does not appear to have a clear end in sight. Talks to end the war have yet to gain clear traction, casting doubt on a fragile ceasefire. Just hours before the vote, Iran and the U.S. traded strikes in the Persian Gulf.

The conflict began on Feb 28 with strikes by U.S. and Israeli forces on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, the president has 60 days to end hostilities if there has been no congressional authorization – though he is able to seek a 30-day extension. The same law also gives Congress the ability to end hostilities by voting on a resolution to end military action, subject to presidential veto.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., warned ahead of the May recess when the vote was delayed that the plan was sure to pass.

"Let's be clear: Republicans pulled this vote because they knew they were going to lose it," Meeks said. "They know this war is a political and strategic disaster."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Electric vehicles offer many opportunities to save money: on gas, on oil changes, on engine maintenance. But, it turns out, insurance isn’t one of them. In fact, the latest data shows that EVs typically cost $3,159 per year to insure — nearly $1,000 more than gas-powered cars. It’s an added burden that could make the payback period on EVs significantly longer.

On average, the insurance gap between electric and internal combustion engine, or ICE, vehicles was 42%, according to a report released by the insurance-comparison marketplace Insurify. But it varies drastically by state and model. The most expensive locale was Washington, D.C., where coverage cost $6,394 versus $4,124 for ICE cars. Maine was the cheapest at $1,476, just $184 more than a conventional car. The difference was most pronounced in Rhode Island, which has a 73% spread.

Generally speaking, luxury brands like Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi are particularly expensive to insure, with premiums on many models topping $4,000. Volvo, Chevrolet, Ford, and Hyundai offer cars at the lower end of the spectrum. Insurify wouldn’t disclose which insurers had the most expensive rates, but did say Lemonade, Root, and GEICO offered the most affordable EV coverage.

“Insurers were charging those higher premiums to balance their risks,” said Julia Taliesin, an economic analyst and insurance agent at Insurify, who wrote the report. It is based on more than 235 million quotes in Insurify’s proprietary database. Seven states — Alaska, Hawai‘i, North Dakota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — are excluded due to lower quoting volume. But high insurance expenses means it can take more driving before an EV pays for itself through lower fuel and operating costs. Even if electricity were free and gas stays at $4 per gallon it translates to at least 5,800 more miles a year compared to a car that gets 25 mpg.

A primary reason for the disparity is that EVs cost more to fix.

“We do see that there is a delta in the cost of repair for electric vehicles compared to ICE,” said Ryan Mandell, a vice president of strategy and market intelligence at Mitchell, a company which provides data and software related to car repairs. He pegs the difference at about 15%, noting that batteries are relatively expensive to fix and for mechanics to work around and that EVs have complicated electronics. But there are more fundamental factors as well, like the lack of an engine.

Mandell gave the Ford F-150 as an example. From 2022 to 2025 an electric version of the pickup truck, called the Lightning, was available alongside gas-only and hybrid versions. When Mitchell subjected the gasoline and EV models to a front-end crash test the engine in the traditional model actually absorbed quite a bit of the impact. Because it doesn’t have that additional structure, Ford designed the Lightning with additional reinforcement that cost around 30% more to fix.

“The Lightning had more crash parts on the front of the vehicle,” said Mandell. He also noted that Ford requires removing the battery before doing any work, which increases labor costs. “It adds up.”

Repair costs, however, are not the only factor insurers consider. Insurify’s data showed insurance rates for the two trucks are roughly the same, which Taliesin said suggests driver demographics and behavior play a role, too. “One of the most significant is personal driving history and credit history,” she said. Given the Lightning’s much higher cost, the credit scores of owners could potentially be higher. And Insurify’s data shows that the ticket and accident rates for Lightning drivers are about half that of traditional F-150s.

“Factors like climate risk, vehicle theft rates, population density, insurance regulation, repair infrastructure, and EV adoption levels contribute to regional cost differences,” the Insurify report stated. In several states it cited climate-driven extreme weather, such as hurricanes and flooding, as drivers of high costs.

This EV insurance story isn’t unique to the United States. In 2024, BloombergNEF found about the same spread in the United Kingdom and Germany. France saw double the disparity. Overall, though, American EV owners still paid 87% more for insurance than Europeans.

“Several model-specific factors have driven the wider cost gaps in the large and SUV segments,” said Aleksandra O’Donovan, head of electrified transport at BloombergNEF, pointing to the Tesla Model Y as a particularly extreme example. “[The U.S. price] is nearly triple the insurance rate for the same vehicle in Germany.”

From 2023 to 2025, the EV insurance gap in the U.S. grew from 29% to 49%. But this year, it came down slightly, which Taliesin said is among a few good signs for EV drivers. Another is that the disparity among cars made in the last two years was only 18 percent — compared 42% across all years.

That drop is partly because auto insurance prices fell across the board in the last year. But Taliesin also said that ICE cars are catching up to EVs in terms of how complicated and expensive they are to fix. The cost of EV batteries is also trending downward, too. As EV sales have grown, there is more data for companies to base their prices on and more incentive for them to court EV owners.

”We’ve been seeing a ton of insurance-shopping behavior as insurers have been dropping their rates to compete for business,” said Taliesin, who is bullish for consumers. “That’s definitely a welcome reprieve.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/the-hidden-cost-of-owning-an-ev-expensive-insurance/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org