The Brief

WASHINGTON — Tears cascaded down Caleb Williams' face. The then-9 year old couldn't believe the mistake he made.

Williams was starting his first game at quarterback for the Bowie Bulldogs in Maryland. He'd previously played running back and linebacker in the three years leading up to this moment.

But after Mark McCain saw Williams throw a 40-yard pass on the dot ... as his team's third-string quarterback the season before, McCain, Russell Thomas and Carl Williams, Caleb's father, agreed to try the fourth grader at signal caller.

So here was Williams, in his first contest — a 7-v-7 game — and his first throw was an interception.

He attempted a 15-yard pass but made the wrong read. He disregarded what he saw the defense had set-up, and paid for it immediately.

"Since I was 4, when I lost, I cried," Williams told The Pivot Podcast. "One thing about me is my guys know I care ... and winning is the most important thing to me. ... There is a time and a place for it and understanding, even if it's raw emotion, and it comes out then and there, but being able to control it and hold it in until you get home."

His tears, the frustration with himself and that initial failure weren't for naught, though. In fact, those mistakes proved to be invaluable. This was the first pivotal moment in Williams' development at quarterback.

Southern California quarterback Caleb Williams throws a pass during the second half of the team's college football game against UCLA on Nov. 18, 2023, in Los Angeles.

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The legend begins

The second happened three years later. He was then playing for Bowie Elite, a youth football program. McCain, his new coach, benched Williams during the team's playoff game after he went the wrong direction on a handoff, fumbled a snap and didn't throw to the right places.

It was after that game when Williams, the presumptive No. 1-overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, flipped the switch and altered the trajectory of his career. It's also where Williams' legend actually begins.

"That really kind of started that; when he realized that it was deeper than just going out running routes and seeing who was open," McCain, who co-owns the Athletic Republic with Thomas and Carl Williams, told NPR. "It changed his vision of the game."

"There was a switch [between seventh and eighth grade] where that energy that he was taking – when he was upset with losing – the switch kind of made him, somehow [take] away the uncontrollable emotion. All of a sudden he didn't feel pressure anymore. He just kind of seized the moment."

Williams' path to the NFL Draft

The start of Williams' ascent doesn't begin with winning the starting job as a freshman at Gonzaga College High School in 2017.

Nor when he helped the Eagles erase a 20-point deficit and tossed a 53-yard Hail Mary to cap Gonzaga's improbable win in the 2018 Washington Catholic Athletic Conference final.

Caleb Williams of the USC Trojans speaks to the media during the 2024 NFL Draft Combine on March 01, 2024 in Indianapolis.

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Or when he led the Oklahoma Sooners to an unfathomable 55-48 comeback victory over Texas Longhorns in 2021 as a true freshman and playing only half of the contest.

These moments occurred because those first two experiences taught him exactly what it would take to master the position, and Williams hasn't looked back since those initial growing pains.

"I worked with the Baltimore Ravens, Ray Lewis, Ed Reed," McCain said. "None of them have that competitive drive that [William's] has. ... It's unmatched. He simply does not compute losing. He doesn't accept failure at all.

"Going into high school, he would want to watch film of the game right after. He didn't wanna wait until Monday or Tuesday or talk. He wanted to immediately...see the things that he could have done better and figure out how to do them better. ... That's really how he developed his game. Doing something, seeing himself doing it and working on that thing until [he] couldn't do it wrong. ... And then he'd keep building on it."

These are a few of the reasons NFL experts anticipate that when the Chicago Bears put in the selection for the opening pick on Thursday, William's name is the one that'll be read off the card.

Gonzaga quarterback Caleb Williams (18) rolls out against Good Counsel linebacker Jalen Green (10) during a high school game.

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Williams, 22, has shown an uncanny ability to not only elevate his game, no matter the circumstances, but also the players around him, too.

The latter part frequently contributed to Elijah Brook's decision to award Williams the most valuable player honor all four years he participated in his camp. The former coach at powerhouse DeMatha Catholic High School met Williams in fifth grade as one of his campers.

Williams' desire to lead, always go first – even as one of the youngest players – and penchant to absorb criticism stood out to Brooks, who now coaches running backs for Virginia Tech.

In due time, Brooks expected Williams to be a problem.

One coach's loss, another's gain

"He was a leader," Brooks said. "He was physically dominant. He was popular amongst the campers. From a very early age, he just separated himself from the pack as special. I'm a firm believer that some kids just have the 'it' factor, and it was easy to see that he had that at a very early age.

"To this day, that was probably my biggest recruiting loss."

And it worked out to be Randy Trivers' massive gain.

When his high school coach was asked how Williams got on his radar, Trivers responded with a better question.

"It's not so much as how did he get on your radar, as how could he not be on anybody's radar really?" Trivers said.

By the time Trivers met Williams, he was an advanced quarterback prospect. Williams expressed a desire to attend a high school with a strong football program and academics, but also where he would develop as an overall person.

Trivers never promised Williams the starting gig if he came to Gonzaga, but the 10-year coach of the Eagles did promise Williams would receive a fair opportunity to compete for it.

Caleb Williams (C), then a sophomore at Gonzaga College High School, stands with sports performance coach Mark McCain (L) and quarterback trainer Russell Thomas (R) at Athletic Republic in District Heights, Maryland in 2018.

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And that was all Williams ever needed – a shot.

Once Williams was finally on the team, Trivers observed how the freshman quickly bought into Gonzaga's motto of "Men for Others," and won over his new teammates with his work ethic, charisma and selflessness.

"'Men for Others,' it's like living a Christ-like life [and] doing things that are not necessarily for you and yourself, but for others," Trivers said. "So, living your best life for you, your family, your friends, your teammates, your classmates, your community."

Williams endeared himself to his new teammates, Trivers and former teammate Trey Jamison said. He was the first on the field, and the last to leave. Williams studied furiously. When a teammate made a mistake, Williams didn't shy away from him on the next play. Oftentimes, he showed his faith in them by going back to the player.

His teammates then rewarded him by lobbying for him to start.

Jamison, a linebacker for the U.S. Naval Academy, still incorporates a lesson Williams taught him when they were 14 years old. When one makes a mistake, use positive self-talk. Williams eliminated negative outbursts and emotional responses following the benching.

Instead, Jamison said, Williams was frequently heard saying, "C'mon, Caleb," after a bad play or refocusing by dribbling the football like a basketball off the turf.

"He got good at that, and it made me want to do that, too," Jamison said. "It definitely helps out. It's something I use to this day, if it's something with school, mentally, or to get through [something.]"

Even when Gonzaga faced a third-and-33, and Williams had to play the final minute of the game with an injured foot, he didn't waver.

Gonzaga College Eagles quarterback Caleb Williams looks to pass during the WCAC football game between Gonzaga and St. John's College at Paint Branch High School on November 4, 2017.

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Instead, he responded with a 50-yard completion and then an 11-yard touchdown. With just 29 seconds left, Gonzaga had its first lead. But it didn't last. Their opponent, DeMatha, scored on the ensuing kickoff.

What happened next spoke volumes to McCain about Williams' response.

"Russell was sitting right beside me, I said, 'He's about to be legendary.' I could see how cool he was," McCain said after seeing William's composure.

Remember that pass Williams threw at age 9, that was intercepted? Fool Williams once, shame on him. This time, Williams completed a 13-yard throw to set up the ensuing Hail Mary with four ticks left.

"The only thing I said to my offensive coordinator was get me in range," Williams told The Pivot Podcast. "Once I was in range, I felt like the game was over. ... It was the craziest game ever."

The rest was history. Williams heaved the ball to the back of the end zone. In between four defenders, his receiver caught the toss. On his 16th birthday, Williams threw three touchdowns, rushed for two more and even caught a touchdown – to help the Eagles win their first WCAC title since 2002.

Jamison couldn't watch. Trivers was nearly brought to tears.

"Those [referee's] hands go up, and I collapsed on the field right there," Trivers recalled.

Brooks said his heart dropped.

"That was my last high school game, so thank you, Caleb," Brooks said with a laugh. "I appreciate you for that."

That experience in the WCAC championship was a building block for Williams three years later. When former Sooners coach Lincoln Riley inserted him into the game facing a 35-17 deficit, Williams didn't wilt, because he'd been through the fire before.

Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams visited his high school alma mater Gonzaga to attend a pep rally to honor the USC quarterback for his award. Williams, center strikes a Heisman pose along with members of the student body in the school's gym on May 19, 2023 in Washington, DC.

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'The Caleb era has just begun'

"When they put him in, I said, 'The Caleb era has just begun. He's never coming back out, ever,'" McCain said. "And he went on to win that game."

Going to a program like the Sooners, with not only an incumbent, but one that has preseason-Heisman hype, too, and saying, "I can do this," takes a certain confidence. And that's what makes Williams unique.

While others kept tabs of where players at their position were committing, Williams didn't, McCain said. It wasn't a factor in his decision making at all. Williams wanted to be coached by Riley. When Riley became coach at the University of Southern California, Williams knew he had to go with him. So he transferred and never looked back.

Now, Williams gets to look forward to hearing his name called Thursday at the NFL Draft in Detroit.

"I am never shocked at anything he does," Brooks said. "I'm on record, he goes and wins MVP of the league or leads Chicago to a Super Bowl or what have you, it is not going to surprise me at all.

"Some people just have it, and they were born with it. And listen, he works tirelessly on his craft, so when you can combine all of those factors, that's what you get. So whether it is him leading a comeback at Oklahoma or him winning the Heisman or him getting drafted No. 1 or winning his high school championship on the Hail Mary, I ain't surprised at all."

The Supreme Court has sided against President Trump, rejecting his efforts to enact new mail-in voting restrictions for the midterm election.

The ruling released Monday by the high court means the U.S. Postal Service is expected to continue delivering ballots as usual.

Voting by mail has already begun in states including Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with more soon to follow — including Western states such as Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, where elections are held primarily or fully with mail ballots.

Under the still-blocked USPS plan, which followed an executive order by Trump, states would have had to turn over lists of voters' names and addresses and have certain specific barcodes on ballot envelopes in order to have them delivered by the mailing agency.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Boston had issued a preliminary injunction against USPS, blocking the mailing agency from imposing those new ballot requirements on states. The judge found the requirements are likely illegal because the Postal Service has no authority to control mail-in voting.

Now, a majority of the Supreme Court decided to keep that injunction in place.

Trump said he issued the call for USPS to change its rule for ballot mail as a way to stop illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, a problem that many studies and audits show is extremely uncommon. For this legal fight over the USPS plan, the administration's lawyers have provided the courts with no evidence of mail-voting fraud.

Trump has been a vocal critic of the way around one-third of voters cast ballots in the last two federal elections. In 2024, the share of voters who reported casting ballots by mail was higher among Democrats (37%) than Republicans (24%), according to a national survey by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

In a social media post last year, Trump said he is "going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS" and claimed that "ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING."

This year, Trump himself voted by mail in Florida.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Editor's note: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey

Copyright 2026 NPR

Ray Jayawardhana, a seasoned astrophysicist and university administrator, officially took over as Caltech’s 10th president on July 1.

The newly appointed president sat down with Larry Mantle on AirTalk, LAist 89.3’s daily news program, to talk about his plans for the future of the esteemed university.

Ray Jay and Caltech — it was in the cosmos

Jayawardhana, who goes by “Ray Jay,” told Larry he was always interested in the cosmos growing up.

He shared that, as a teenager in Sri Lanka, he wrote to the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) — NASA's leading space exploration center, which is managed by Caltech — to ask for images from the Voyager space missions they were conducting during the 1980s.

“I waited impatiently for a response, and one day, this large envelope with an oversized wheel of books arrived with a set of images of the outer planets and their moons,” he said. “That just delighted me to no end.”

Saturn and its satellites Tethys (outer left), Enceladus (inner left) and Mimas (right of rings) are seen in this mosaic of images taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on Oct. 30, 1980 from a distance of 18 million kilometers (11 million miles).

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This view of Jupiter was taken by Voyager 1. This image was taken through color filters and recombined to produce the color image. This photo was assembled from three black and white negatives by the Image Processing Lab at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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This picture of Neptune was produced from images taken by NASA’s Voyager 2 in the summer of 1989 as it became the first spacecraft to fly by the planet.

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Today, he’s the first South Asian American to lead Caltech, overseeing the operations of the same Jet Propulsion Lab he wrote to in the '80s.

How he came to the U.S.

After attending St. John’s College in Sri Lanka, he decided to pursue higher education in the United States. He earned an undergraduate degree from Yale and subsequently his doctorate in astronomy from Harvard, quickly establishing himself as one of the world’s most renowned astrophysicists.

He previously held positions at Cornell University and Johns Hopkins.

Exoplanetary president

Aside from his main focus as the school’s head of administration, Ray Jay continues his own research exploring the formation of planets and stars, saying it keeps him intellectually engaged.

He's part of a team that works with the James Webb Space Telescope to observe and characterize so-called exoplanets — planets around other stars — with an eye toward the potential for life beyond Earth.

He’s confident in Caltech’s future with JPL

Universities like Caltech are on rocky terrain amid sweeping federal government cuts of public funding for scientific research.

Additionally, JPL's future is uncertain. NASA — which now owns and sponsors JPL — is opening its contracting to other research institutions for the first time, which could mean a bidding war.

The entrance to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

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Losing the contract for Caltech would mean losing a stream of federal funding valued at $3 billion per year.

Jayawardhana said he’s confident Caltech and JPL’s partnership will continue, saying that the university's value proposition is unrivaled.

“It’s not only about the self-interest in continuing to ensure there's federal and public funding for research, it's also about enriching humanity,” he said.

NASA’s current contract with Caltech expires in September 2028.

The little girl stared up at Norma Gómez from the doorway of her neighbor’s apartment, her sad, brown eyes suddenly flashing with hope.

“Are you the person who’s going to bring my mom back?” she asked.

Gómez struggled to find an answer. It was a December morning, and she’d brought food, diapers, baby wipes, and clothes — items she hoped would help the 6-year-old girl, her baby brother and the neighbor who had stepped in to care for them. The children were left alone after federal immigration agents arrested their parents outside their apartment in Oxnard, a mostly Latino agricultural community on the Southern California coast. But Gómez had no power to bring the parents back.

“We’re working on that,” Gómez recalled telling the girl. In reality, she was at a loss for how to answer truthfully without upsetting her.

As a project manager for a nonprofit that provides food assistance to immigrant families affected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, Gómez has witnessed the tumult and pain that have roiled the lives of millions of immigrant families since President Donald Trump returned to office, with devastating consequences for children’s health. They include an estimated 205,000 children with at least one parent detained by immigration authorities through April, a number that has undoubtedly climbed since. Separation from parents harms children psychologically. It destabilizes families, often leaving the remaining parent or caregiver scrambling to stay housed, buy food, and fulfill kids’ medical needs. Some kids are left alone to care for themselves.

Many kids whose parents aren’t detained are experiencing threats to their health and well-being too. Two children in the South died by suicide in February 2025 after reportedly being bullied over their family’s alleged immigration status.

Millions of children live in families losing access to medical care, food, tax credits, and other supports as federal and state governments roll back eligibility for immigrants with and without legal status. Fear of federal enforcement has pushed parents to avoid taking kids to school, going to the doctor and engaging in social activities. Some have disenrolled from or avoided signing kids up for health and nutrition programs.

Children from immigrant backgrounds are also living in fear. They’re experiencing more emotional distress, increased bullying in school and anxiety about racial profiling by ICE, even when they or their family members are citizens or legal residents.

Most of these children are American citizens. About 1 in 4 U.S.-born kids have an immigrant parent, including around 4.6 million with a parent who lacks legal status.

“I'm really concerned about how long it's going to take for us as a country to address all of the harm that's happening to this generation of kids,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “This type of stress can have long-term developmental harm and can really inhibit their ability to do well in school, to have good health outcomes, and to grow into thriving, stable adults.”

Curbing public benefits

Trump has made cracking down on immigrants — including the children of immigrants — a priority since his second term began last year. On Inauguration Day, he issued an executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for kids born to parents without legal status or in the country on temporary visas, an attempt ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court.

His administration, with the approval of Republicans in Congress, has poured billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, detaining the parents of an estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen children as of April, and, according to an analysis by nonprofit newsroom The Marshall Project, over 6,200 children. It’s sought to rescind temporary protected status, or TPS, for over 1 million immigrants, tens of thousands of whom have U.S. citizen children, and stalled renewals in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which includes the parents of about 300,000 citizen children.

White House officials say the immigration crackdown benefits American citizens by freeing up resources such as jobs and housing, reducing pressure on public coffers, expelling criminals, and restoring integrity to the immigration system. (Studies have shown that mass deportations harm U.S. workers.) Trump and other Republican leaders have argued that birthright citizenship encourages unauthorized immigration and “birth tourism,” and that TPS has allowed immigrants from “dangerous, third-world countries” to remain in the United States indefinitely under what is supposed to be a temporary program.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis did not directly address whether the administration is concerned about long-term harm to children and increased healthcare costs because of its immigration policies. Instead, she repeated past White House criticisms that President Joe Biden’s immigration policies allowed children to be trafficked across the U.S. border.

“The real story is the psychiatric impact on the tens of thousands of children who were smuggled across the border — many by human and sex traffickers,” she wrote in an email.

Gómez at a monthly food distribution organized by the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project in Santa Paula. She says she has delivered food to families caring for children with one or both parents detained by immigration authorities.

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Only 39% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s immigration policies, has accused the children of immigrants of draining public resources and perpetuating problems from their parents’ home countries. Research, however, shows that immigrants earn more and do better the longer they live in the United States and that they and their children assimilate rapidly. Data also shows they rely less on welfare than native-born Americans.

“This is the great lie of mass migration,” Miller wrote on the social platform X in November. “You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

The Republican tax-and-spending law enacted last summer curbs immigrant eligibility for health and food assistance programs. And this July, the administration issued new “public charge” rules that give immigration officers broad discretion to deny green cards to lawfully present immigrants if they or family members have used public benefit programs, a move that could result in over a million U.S. citizen children disenrolling from safety net healthcare programs.

Together but afraid

Separation from parents is traumatic for children and can lead to lifelong health problems, including anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, and learning difficulties. Children separated from their parents at the border during the first Trump administration were found to exhibit lasting trauma. Researchers have also tied deportations and detentions of immigrant parents — as well as the threat of them — to widespread emotional trauma, higher school dropout rates, housing instability, and hunger among both immigrant and U.S.-born children.

It’s also costly to society. A 2024 study by federal researchers estimated that health conditions related to childhood trauma accounted for $292 billion in healthcare spending in 2021 alone, including by taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.

Emmanuel, a 13-year-old in Oxnard, gets anxious every time his dad goes to work as a farm laborer, his mother, Ana, said. He asks her for reassurance that his father will return, and about what would happen to him if his parents got detained. He tries to hurry Ana up when they’re out in public, worried that ICE could suddenly appear. KFF Health News is not using their full names because they fear deportation.

Doctors and therapists interviewed by KFF Health News said they have observed a notable increase in mental health problems, especially anxiety, in children from immigrant families. Kimberly McNally, a pediatrician at Venice Family Clinic's Inglewood South La Brea Health Center, said she’s regularly referring children of all ages for mental health services related to fears that their parents will be taken away. At daycares, kids have been showing up with an extra bag in case their parents don’t pick them up, said Liza Davis, advocacy director for Children in Immigrant Families at The Children’s Partnership, which works with a coalition of early childhood educators.

Sometimes, the distress leads young people to take extreme actions. In June, 19-year-old Eliel José took his own life after his father was deported from the Atlanta area to Mexico, according to Univision.

Rosie Harrison, executive director of Grow Initiative GA, a community organization that serves low-income families, said she’s received calls over the past year from immigrant parents seeking help for suicidal and depressed kids. Their situations are often made worse because many lack health insurance and can’t afford to pay for therapy. That’s often because parents have lost jobs that came with health insurance due to worksite raids or because of eligibility changes imposed by the Trump administration.

“I’m concerned about the families that are going to be burying their child,” Harrison said. “I’m concerned that we are going to miss out on having an amazing person do amazing things for our community, for our country, because they took their life.”

Strength under pressure

Many children are showing resilience, though.

In a role reversal, some children have become their parents’ protectors. They go grocery shopping and take their younger siblings to school so that their parents don’t have to leave the house.

Staff with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project distribute school supplies and food to people in Santa Paula, where many families are feeling the impacts of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

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Giselle Gonzalez, a university student and volunteer with the immigrant protection network VC Defensa in Ventura County, said she’ll never forget the morning last summer when she woke up to the sound of kids on bicycles pedaling through her immigrant-heavy neighborhood in Thousand Oaks, yelling “La migra! La migra! Don’t come out!” They’d spotted ICE agents grabbing factory workers and gardeners on their way to work, she said.

Neighbors, community groups, health providers, and others have also stepped up in a variety of ways to support children and families affected by immigration enforcement. They deliver groceries, provide free therapy, walk kids to school, and help parents create emergency childcare plans in case they get detained or deported.

Ultimately, more humane immigration policies and enforcement tactics will be required to end the harm being done to children, academic experts and advocates said.

Researchers at Arizona State University point to a pilot called the Family Case Management Program as a model for keeping families together while also enforcing immigration laws. Launched in January 2016 under President Barack Obama, the program allowed families seeking asylum to remain in the community while awaiting resolution of their cases. Through a case manager, they received support in meeting the obligations of their immigration cases and preparing for deportation if needed. The program, which proved successful and cost-effective, was terminated by the first Trump administration.

At Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles, case manager Mabel Alavez sees the pressures facing families who are still together but worried they could be separated. Many of the people are parents or grandparents who have been in the U.S. for decades. Some are afraid to take their children to school, the park, or the beach. They ask whether it’s safe to enroll their U.S.-born kids in Medicaid. She helps families who are facing eviction because they’re afraid to go to work and can no longer afford rent. She often helps them create plans for who will look after their children if they get detained.

Raised in an immigrant family herself, Alavez knows how challenging it can be for kids who are first-generation Americans to navigate growing up, going to school, and finding a sense of belonging in a country their parents aren’t from.

“It’s hard for me to imagine how they could possibly do that in addition to what’s going on now,” she said. “I do feel like there will be a big impact on them. What that might look like, I’m not exactly sure.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

"Two or more races" or "other": These are the types of boxes that a lot of multiracial people default to checking off on forms and applications. But it paints a narrow picture of the often complicated identities of multiracial people.

So: How do multiracial people identify themselves? What terms do they actually use when talking about their own, often unique and individual identity? On a recent episode of AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news program, host Larry Mantle encouraged mixed-race listeners to call in and share the terms they prefer to use when identifying themselves ... and, on the flip side, the ones they take issue with.

Some things they said:

• Many rejected labels they felt were imposed on them by others.
• Many callers said their identity was primarily informed by how they were raised and their lived experiences.
• Some shared the hybridized terms they coined for themselves.

Listen to the full episode above: to hear from one listener who dubs himself a "Filexican."