The Brief

The Trump administration has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from next year's calendar of entrance fee-free days for national parks and added President Trump's birthday to the list, according to the National Park Service, as the administration continues to push back against a reckoning of the country's racist history on federal lands.

In addition to Trump's birthday — which coincides with Flag Day (June 14) — the updated calendar of fee-free dates includes the 110th anniversary of the NPS (August 25), Constitution Day (September 17) and President Teddy Roosevelt's birthday (October 27). The changes will take effect starting January 1.

Non-U.S. residents will still be required to pay entrance fees on those dates under the new "America-first pricing" policy. At 11 of some of the country's most popular national parks, international visitors will be charged an extra $100, on top of the standard entrance fee, and the annual pass for non-residents will go up to $250. The annual pass for residents will be $80.

The move follows a July executive order from the White House that called to increase fees applied to non-American visitors to national parks and grant citizens and residents "preferential treatment with respect to any remaining recreational access rules, including permitting or lottery rules."

The Department of the Interior, which oversees NPS, called the new fee-exempted dates "patriotic fee-free days," in an announcement that lauded the changes as "Trump's commitment to making national parks more accessible, more affordable and more efficient for the American people."

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement: "These policies ensure that U.S. taxpayers, who already support the National Park System, continue to enjoy affordable access, while international visitors contribute their fair share to maintaining and improving our parks for future generations."

The new calendar follows the Trump administration's previous moves to reshape U.S. history by asking patrons of national parks to flag any signs at sites deemed to cast a negative light on past or living Americans.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Trump administration invoked emergency powers under the Defense Production Act Friday, ordering the restart of the Santa Ynez offshore oil platform and pipeline along the Santa Barbara County coast that was shuttered after a spill released thousands of barrels of crude into the Pacific 11 years ago.

The move, which comes in response to skyrocketing fuel prices in the wake of the Iran conflict, brought an immediate threat to sue by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The order also marks the most aggressive federal intervention yet in a yearslong dispute. On one side is the Trump administration and Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston-based startup that has been trying to restart the pipeline. On the other are California officials and environmental groups who oppose the effort.

Sable, which bought the system from ExxonMobil in 2024, has told investors that production could increase from about 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to more than 50,000 if the system restarts, sending oil to refineries in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and the Bay Area. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening.

The ruptured pipeline released crude oil onto beaches north of Goleta in May 2015, killing hundreds of birds and marine mammals and triggering one of the worst California coastal oil spills in decades.

Sable was blocked from restarting operations by court orders requiring approval from California regulators — a requirement the Trump administration has tried to override.

On Friday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement that the Trump Administration “remains committed to putting all Americans and their energy security first. Today’s order will strengthen America’s oil supply and restore a pipeline system vital to our national security and defense, ensuring that West Coast military installations have the reliable energy critical to military readiness.”

Newsom said, however, that California will sue the Trump administration over the move.

“Donald Trump started a war, admitted it would spike gas prices nationwide, and told Americans it was a small price to pay,” Newsom said. “Now he's using this crisis of his own making to attempt what he’s wanted to do for years: open California’s coast for his oil industry friends so they can poison our beaches.”

“The Trump administration and Sable are defying multiple court orders, and we will see them back in court,” Newsom said.

The Energy Department did not immediately provide CalMatters with a copy of the order. A March 3 legal opinion from the Justice Department concluded that a federal order under the Defense Production Act of 1950 could preempt state law in the Sable case. It also said such an order could override a 2020 federal consent decree stemming from the 2015 Refugio spill that requires approval from the California State Fire Marshal before the pipeline can restart.

Earlier Friday, the White House issued an executive order expanding and clarifying the energy secretary’s authority to act under the Defense Production Act.

Environmental groups challenging the legality of Sable’s plans condemned the move.

“This is a revolting power grab by an extremist president,” said Talia Nimmer, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which has challenged the pipeline restart in state and federal court. “Trump is misusing this Cold War-era law just to help a Texas oil company skirt vital state laws that protect our coastline, and Californians will pay the price.”

Nimmer said forcing the pipelines to restart would not lower gasoline prices but would expose coastal wildlife to the risk of another spill. Allowing the federal government to override state law so an oil company can restart the pipelines, she said, would set a dangerous precedent. The Trump administration has long sought to expand offshore oil leasing along the West Coast, which has drawn fierce opposition in California.

In December, federal officials sought to shift authority over the pipeline from California regulators to Washington when the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration ruled that the infrastructure qualifies as an interstate pipeline. It issued an emergency permit approving a restart plan.

Environmental groups and the state of California challenged that move and are awaiting a ruling in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A representative for Attorney General Rob Bonta could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday. After the Justice Department released its memo outlining the legal basis for the move, Bonta spokesperson Christine Lee said the state was reviewing that development.

“The Trump Administration’s desire to put oil and gas interests over our communities and a clean environment continues unabated,” Lee said, on Tuesday. “We are reviewing this development and cannot comment on legal strategy.”

Last month, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge ordered the pipeline to remain shut down, ruling that the Trump administration’s earlier intervention was not enough to override an injunction requiring Sable to obtain state approvals before restarting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The Academy Awards were Sunday night in Hollywood, hosted by Conan O'Brien.

One Battle After Another took home best picture, in addition to awards for Paul Thomas Anderson for best director and best adapted screenplay. Sinners star Michael B. Jordan won best actor, and Hamnet's Jessie Buckley won best actress.

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Copyright 2026 NPR

As Sunday's Oscars ceremony approached, it seemed to be shaping up to be a showdown between the vampires and the revolutionaries, between Sinners and One Battle After Another. In the end, One Battle After Another won both best picture and best director, but it was a very good night for Sinners, too, including an original screenplay award for writer and director Ryan Coogler.

There were some surprises over the course of the evening, including a rare tie in the live action short category, a remembrance of Robert Redford that included Barbra Streisand singing a bit of "The Way We Were," and Jimmy Kimmel stepping in just long enough to make some pointed comments about media censorship. But let's go over some of the major takeaways.

A celebrated director gets his Oscar.

Paul Thomas Anderson won best director for One Battle After Another after three previous nominations for There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza. Anderson had already won several major Oscar precursor awards this year, including top directing prizes at the BAFTAs and from the Directors Guild of America, so he was the odds-on favorite. The other nominees in the category were relative newcomers: Ryan Coogler, Josh Safdie and Joachim Trier were all first-time directing nominees; Chloé Zhao was nominated (and won) for Nomadland at the ceremony in 2021.

Michael B. Jordan won a rare acting award for a genre movie.

Michael B. Jordan won best actor for his portrayal of twin brothers in "Sinners."

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Sinners is a drama, but it's also very much a genre film. It's horror. It's vampires. Those are not the kinds of films that most often win Oscars for actors. But Jordan, with his first nomination, won over performers from much more traditionally awards-friendly films. Three of those actors (Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet and Ethan Hawke) already had multiple acting nominations before this year.

The last actor to win for a genre film might have been Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, since that was technically a comic-book movie, but that one did away with most of its genre trappings and pressed itself into a dramatic mold, which Sinners emphatically does not. Before that, while definitions of genre aren't bright lines, you might have to go all the way back to ... Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, if you consider that horror? Maybe even further? At any rate, it's a great win for an actor who has been beloved at least since The Wire almost 25 years ago, who's been doing rich and varied work ever since. His victory is also a win for his lengthy and fruitful collaboration with Ryan Coogler in Sinners, but also in Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther.

Amy Madigan, the award-winning straight-up monster.

Amy Madigan won best supporting actress for her performance in "Weapons."

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(We don't mean Amy Madigan the person, of course.) Madigan won best supporting actress for her deeply unsettling and entirely singular performance as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, which is even more fully a horror movie than Sinners. While the nominated cast members from Sinners — Jordan, Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku — play regular people who are swept into an unreal situation, Madigan is playing, essentially, the boogeyman (boogeywoman?). It's thrilling to see the Academy recognize a performance that is as weird and funny and scary as just the last few minutes of what Madigan does in Zach Cregger's terrifying story of a town that sees a whole classroom full of its children disappear.

The casting Oscar makes its debut.

Cassandra Kulukundis won the Academy's first award for achievement in casting for her work on "One Battle After Another".

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This was the first year that there was an Oscar for casting, which is very much overdue — there have been casting Emmys for ages. It was easy to argue for any of the nominated casting directors. Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent both deploy nontraditional actors in some roles, Sinners and One Battle both use a wide variety of well-known and well-regarded stars in interesting ways, and Hamnet places most of the weight of an enormously heavy story on the shoulders of just a couple of performers, including best actress winner Jessie Buckley.

Cassandra Kulukundis, who won for One Battle After Another, not only has been working with Paul Thomas Anderson for ages, but she also worked on casting (get this) for both The Brutalist and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. But all the nominees have tremendous resumes. Francine Maisler, who was nominated for Sinners, was the credited casting director for Arrival, Creed, Baby Driver, Widows, and Challengers! Honestly, the biggest problem in the category was that everybody couldn't win.

A first in the cinematography category.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw accepts the award for best cinematography for "Sinners."

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Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who won best cinematography for her work on Sinners, was only the fourth woman, and the first woman of color, to be nominated in the category. She becomes the first woman to win. Sinners is a sumptuously, inventively, beautifully shot film, and the cinematography is one of the core crafts that makes it so effective.
Copyright 2026 NPR

When Alberto Román was a boy growing up in the Mexican state of Durango, his father was often far from home. Most times, he’d be gone for months.

Román’s father, Javier, had a third-grade education. And when work was scarce in Mexico, he’d venture north to the United Sates and take whatever job he could find.

Javier washed cars. He worked in factories. He picked crops. He built houses.

“He was a guy you would find at Home Depot,” Román told LAist. “He did whatever it took to put food on the table and provide [his family] with shelter.”

Román missed his father terribly, and he relished the time alone with him. When his father would return to Mexico, they'd hike to a majestic statue of the revolutionary Pancho Villa, where Román and his father could also look out at their city.

Román did not know it then but, soon, that view would become a memory. When he was eight, his father returned; but, this time, Javier took his son, his daughter, and his wife with him back to the U.S. The family settled in Rialto, in California's Inland Empire. Suddenly, Román had a new home and new challenges to contend with.

A young Alberto Román (right) with his sister, mother and father in Durango, Mexico.

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The move to Rialto unfurled a series of labels and experiences. Román became undocumented; an “English language learner”; a teenage father; a parenting student. With time, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and, then, a first-generation college graduate who would one day earn a doctorate.

Today, Román serves as chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, which includes nine campuses and more than 200,000 students.

A lot of these students are parents like he was, Román said, and the vast majority of them have to work to help put themselves through school.

And many of them are also immigrants.

Leading LACCD's response to immigration policy

Román was appointed chancellor last May. Soon after, the Trump administration unleashed its militarized mass deportation effort, which included raids and a show of force throughout L.A. County.

One of the chancellor’s responsibilities is managing LACCD’s response to the Trump administration.

Undocumented college students in the U.S. are racially and ethnically diverse. California has an estimated 100,000 undocumented students, who make up a small percentage of the overall higher ed population. The majority of those undocumented students are enrolled in community colleges.

In conversation with LAist, Román referred to the ongoing raids and immigration detentions as “inhumane.” He also described the experience of a student whose father didn’t come home one night. After being detained by immigration agents, Román said, the student’s family “didn't know where he was for two months.”

The student was 20 years old when her father was taken. Overnight, she became the head of her household. Now, on top of fulfilling her responsibilities at school, she has to figure out how to keep herself and her younger siblings housed and fed.

To support students in mixed-status families, the district’s Dream Resource Centers provide them with legal support, temporary housing options, additional mental health services and food vouchers.

Alouette Cervantes-Salazar coordinates East Los Angeles College’s Dream Resource Center, which provides support and services for undocumented students; DACA and TPS recipients; and students in mixed-status families.

According to Cervantes-Salazar, the Trump administration’s deportation effort has transformed campus life. When the raids began last summer, she said, “quite a bit” of students who used to take classes in person moved to complete the semester online.

For some, Cervantes-Salazar added, online coursework has become preferable because it enables students to better juggle school and work. For others, the fear of getting to and from campus amid roving immigration patrols has become a decisive factor.

Whether the Dream Resource Centers' support will be enough to meet student needs remains to be seen, but Román takes their stories to heart.

“These are the stories of our community,” he said. “These are the stories of our students. These are the stories of their parents. And they are our stories, because they come to us for an education.”

From 'English language learner' to college graduate  

Román’s story in the U.S. began in the 1980s. After moving to California, it took Román about two years to learn enough English to communicate with his classmates. Until then, his time in school was lonely.

Back then, dual language immersion programs — an educational model that teaches students in English and another language (such as Spanish or Mandarin) to achieve biliteracy — were rare in the U.S. At Román’s elementary school, he said, they were nonexistent.

To help him learn English, Román’s educators placed him in a separate room for about three hours a day. He was given a stack of books. His job was to put on headphones, listen to audio recordings of the texts and do his best to follow along.

When Román tried speaking English, some students made fun of his accent. A bilingual child who struggled with Spanish was tasked with serving as his interpreter.

Román said he cried to his parents. “I'm not happy here,” he told them. "Let's go back.”

His parents made it clear that returning to Mexico was not an option. They’d been poor and had limited schooling, and they wanted something different for their children. Though neither of Román’s parents got to finish high school, he said, they were determined to send their children to college.

Román’s older sister graduated at the top of her class and went on to UCLA. Román aimed to follow in her footsteps.

But, when he was a high school senior, Román learned his girlfriend was pregnant. He was 17, and he wasn’t sure how fatherhood would square with pursuing higher education.

When Román told his parents there was a baby on the way, they remained steadfast. "Now you have all the more reason to go to college," his father told him. That fall, Román enrolled at UC Riverside.

To help provide for his son, Román got a job at Payless ShoeSource, where he worked up to 40 hours a week. When possible, Román stacked his classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to keep the rest of the week open for work.

“It was tough,” Román said. “I was getting home at 10, 10:30 at night, trying to read, trying to do essays, trying to be a father.”

“In moments of weakness,” he added, he contemplated quitting school. But, like his parents, Román wanted a better life for his son.

Román and his son in the 1990s, when the now-LACCD chancellor was an undergrad at UC Riverside.

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Román graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1999. When he crossed the stage at his commencement ceremony, his child, his parents and his sister beamed from the audience.

Today, Román connects his lived experience to that of students at the district, 70% of whom study part-time. “That’s because they're working, because they have families,” he said.

Last spring, Román watched thousands of new graduates embrace their loved ones after receiving their diplomas at a commencement ceremony at the Greek Theatre.

“When I see my students on stage waving their degrees — despite all the challenges they face — that award is so much more meaningful,” he said. “I know what they went through.”