The Brief

Jets are blazing across the sky in and around Huntington Beach on the first day of the Pacific Airshow that starts Friday and continues over this weekend.

In recent years, more than half a million visitors have come out to watch eye-and-ear popping aerial demonstrations from the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and other renowned daredevils.

The event has also become a political lightning rod in the increasingly fractious beach city.

Why opinions are divided

Some say the airshow promoter got a suspiciously sweet deal in a recent legal settlement with the city. Others say Huntington Beach should support the airshow, and its hometown promoter, in any way it can.

At issue are questions of political quid pro quo, transparency and how cities determine whether and how much to support special events put on by private companies.

The backstory

Fans watch the 2021 Pacific Airshow in Huntington Beach.

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Here’s a guide to what happened, why this matters for residents and what’s to come.

First the shorthand timeline:

• In October 2021, the city canceled the final day of the three-day airshow after oil began gushing from an underwater pipeline and moving toward the Huntington Beach shoreline. 

• A year later, in October 2022, airshow organizer Kevin Elliott sued the city, saying the previous year's cancellation amounted to a breach of contract. Elliott also supported the election of new city council members who promised to support the airshow. 

• Then, earlier this year, that new city council majority approved a minimum $5.4 million settlement with Elliott plus a potential additional $2 million if the city recoups money from the companies responsible for the oil spill. 

About Huntington Beach politics

The strong and distinct reactions to the deal from residents and officials in this city of 200,000 residents illustrate intensifying political divisions. While Huntington Beach is traditionally conservative, the electorate had been trending more purple in recent years. Then, in November, voters handed a solid victory to four ardently conservative candidates.

Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland, a Republican former state legislator who ran Larry Elder's 2020 presidential campaign, said the settlement was good for the city.

"Anything that brings in $70 million to our local economy, that's worth it," Strickland said, referring to an economic impact report on the 2022 airshow.

On the other side, City Councilmember Dan Kalmick, one of three Democrats on the council, said Huntington Beach taxpayers got a "horrible deal." He and the other two Democrats on the council voted against the airshow settlement.

"The settlement, as publicized, goes well beyond any exposure the city had for cancellation of one day of an airshow, which it didn't even do," Kalmick said. He said multiple authorities — state, federal and local — agreed the airshow had to be canceled so that monitoring and clean-up crews could get to work.

Kevin Elliott, organizer of the Pacific Airshow and CEO of event company Code Four.

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What the airshow organizer says

Elliott, for his part, says he regrets that the airshow has gotten wrapped up in local politics. (We should note that after we published this story, it was announced that former President Donald Trump would do a flyover as part of Friday’s airshow lineup. Trump is on his way to the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim.)

Elliot told us that, at heart, he's a "plane brain" who's especially excited this year to watch the F-22 Raptor do "things that an airplane shouldn't do, including flying backwards and all kinds of really cool stuff."

"I just want to put on a great event and I want to go back to running my business and having a good time," he told LAist. "And staying out of the newspaper. That would be my goal."

The start of the problems: The oil spill

On Friday, Oct. 1, 2021 coastal authorities got a call reporting an oil sheen off the coast of Huntington Beach. Amplify Energy, ultimately responsible for the spill, later said it found out Saturday morning about the pipeline leak from one of its offshore oil platforms.

A worker with Patriot Environmental Services stands near bags of oil collected throughout Sunday morning near the mouth of the Santa Ana River and Talbert Marsh.

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That same Saturday, the Pacific Airshow went on, as planned as local officials tried to understand the extent of the oil spill and whether and when it might reach shore. By afternoon, boaters watching the airshow from the ocean began reporting oil in the water.

City and state parks authorities closed the water at many of the area beaches to swimming and surfing.

That evening, then-Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr appeared at a news conference with the city's marine safety chief, Eric McCoy, and several other officials. Carr said a decision about whether to cancel the third and final day of the airshow would be made the following morning.

At the time, the leak was estimated to be around 126,000 gallons of oil, which McCoy said was considered a major spill by the U.S. Coast Guard. Later estimates revised that down to a much smaller amount, around 25,000 gallons.

On Sunday morning, Oct. 3, 2021, the city announced that the airshow was canceled "in order to facilitate clean-up coordination efforts, and given the potential health impacts from the ongoing situation."

Beaches were closed and remediation workers were dispatched to mop up the oil that had already washed up on the shore and into several sensitive wetland areas. The coast reeked of petroleum.

A sign keeps beachgoers off the sand.

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Impact of the 2021 cancellation

The airshow cancellation was devastating for Elliott. "It was probably one of the worst days of my professional life," Elliott said. "What we had put together in 2021 was essentially the Super Bowl of air shows."

Plus, the previous year, 2020, the entire airshow had been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Elliott, who also runs an event company called Code Four, said he lost "in the multi-millions" the day of the oil spill. "We put over $750,000 worth of catering in the trash," he said.

It was also upsetting for patrons, some of whom had spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on premium tickets for the last day of the show.

The airshow is free to watch from part of the city beach and nearby state beaches. But Elliott also sells tickets, for example, for seating on the Huntington Beach pier or for a private cabana on the beach. This year, prices range from $25 to more than $5,000 for a group.

Elliott said he eventually reimbursed everyone who had bought tickets "out of my own pocket."

The legal battle that followed

The following year, 2022, Elliott asked the city to give him a break on some of the fees and other expenses involved with putting on the airshow — as the city had in previous years. Specifically, the city had previously credited Elliott up to $110,000 in parking revenue generated over the airshow weekend toward his bill for permits, reserved parking, and extra public safety staff needed for the event.

Elliott's city bill for the 2022 airshow, according to a presentation at the time, was expected to be around $257,000.

This time, though, Elliott made a last-minute request that all of the city's parking revenue generated by the airshow be credited toward his bill, with no cap.

The city council at the time denied his request by a vote of 6 to 1 and decided to revoke the parking credit completely. City officials and staff at the time noted that Huntington Beach didn't grant this kind of credit to the organizers of any other big events in the city, including the U.S. Open of Surfing, which has drawn crowds similar in size to the airshow, although over a longer period of time.

Former Councilmember Mike Posey told LAist the parking "subsidy … was always supposed to be temporary" until Elliott could attract a corporate sponsor for the airshow. A smaller, previous iteration of the airshow, before Elliott took it over, was sponsored by Swiss watchmaker Breitling.

But Elliott saw the city's decision to revoke the parking subsidy as the latest in a series of efforts, starting with the 2021 post-oil spill cancellation, to shut the airshow down.

The following month, Elliott sued the city and then-Mayor Carr.

In his complaint, he alleged the 2021 cancellation amounted to a breach of contract and damaged the airshow's reputation. He also claimed that subsequent actions taken by Carr and the city, including removing the parking subsidy, were retaliation for Elliott raising concerns about the cancellation.

Elliott told LAist he felt slighted after investing heavily in the airshow to try and make it profitable and to bring tourism benefits to the city.

"I wish that the city had come forth and said, 'Hey, you've been a great partner to the city, you're a local kid … we understand that you've been damaged by this and we want to try to do the right thing.' But instead they basically told me to pound sand and left me with no choice but to protect my interests."

Initially, the city tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, claiming it had no factual basis. But then it seemed to do an abrupt about-face, settling with Elliott for at least $5.4 million, to be paid out incrementally through January 2029. What changed?

How the air show became a hot-button campaign issue

A seat on the Huntington Beach city council is generally considered a non-partisan position — a candidate's political party is not listed on the ballot. But Huntington Beach had traditionally had a conservative-leaning council. That changed after the 2020 election, but not the way you might think.

Tito Ortiz, a mixed martial arts fighter and staunch conservative, won a seat on the council in 2020 and then resigned six months later. In his place, the council appointed left-leaning attorney Rhonda Bolton, giving Huntington Beach's city government a majority Democrat block.

They passed pro-housing measures and voted to fly the Pride flag outside city hall every June — with the support of the council's moderate Republicans. A backlash ensued.

A group of residents attempted to recall six of the seven council members in 2021. But the effort failed to make it to the ballot. They set their sights on the 2022 general election.

The Lincoln Club and several other conservative political action committees coalesced around a slate of four conservative council candidates — Strickland, Casey McKeon, Pat Burns and Gracey Van Der Mark — dubbed by supporters the "Fab 4," plus city attorney Michael Gates, who was running for re-election. (Huntington Beach is one of the few cities in California where voters elect their city attorney.)

They paid for mailers and signs saying the candidates would "save" Huntington Beach — and "save" the airshow.

On Oct. 27, 2022, the candidates held a "victory rally" at the Huntington Beach pier. Elliott's company, Code Four, provided the sound and some of the signage for the rally, he said.

Elliott said the work was "pretty simple" and cost him less than the $1,089 that the four city council candidates claimed as in-kind contributions in campaign finance disclosures.

Elliott did not donate money directly to any of the four council candidates or city attorney Gates. (His company Code Four did give money, the maximum $4,900 allowed, to the 2022 winning campaigns of state Republican state legislators Diane Dixon and Janet Nguyen.)

"Franky, I supported them as much as I could without creating any kind of a conflict of interest for them," Elliott said of the council candidates. "Because, you know, they campaigned on saving the air show and I've invested millions and millions of dollars in saving this air show for the city, so our interests were pretty aligned in that regard."

But looking back — post-election and post-airshow settlement — some political opponents and civic watchdogs see the rally and Elliott's work on it as part of a suspicious pattern.

"I have substantial questions about the relationship between the four newly elected council members, the city attorney and Elliott," said Kalmick, one of the liberal council members.

Kalmick also pointed to several photos from the 2022 airshow posted to Facebook showing Elliott and his wife posing on the beach with the "Fab 4" candidates. (Elliott said he regularly invites candidates, council members and many others to the show, "Democrats, Republicans, my mom's friends, you know, my friends that were my teachers in the first grade.")

All four council candidates and city attorney Gates won their election in November.

The settlement and concerns about quid pro quo

In March 2023, Gates, the city attorney, filed a request in Orange County Superior Court to have Elliott's airshow cancellation lawsuit dismissed. Gates and deputy city attorney Lauren Rose argued that the city was "legally permitted to cancel the Airshow due to unforeseen circumstances rendering performance impossible due to health and safety reasons."

They also said this about Elliott's claim that revoking the parking subsidy was retaliation: "it is speculative and unsubstantiated how this was in any way connected to [Elliott's] negative comments regarding the City's reaction to the unexpected and disastrous oil spill."

But less than two months later, Gates, Elliott, Strickland and two of the other conservative council members held a news conference announcing a settlement. "Ladies and gentlemen, we saved the airshow," Strickland said to applause.

"The previous city council was not business-friendly and not airshow-friendly," he went on. "The Fab 4 …saved the airshow by putting the hard work and leadership required to solve this conflict."

In dollars, what they put in is $4,999,999 of city funds spread out over seven years, with the first payment of $1,999,000 due before July 31.

The city also agreed to:

• Forfeit $194,945 in fees still owed by Elliott for the 2021 airshow.
• Refund him $149,200 from the 2022 airshow, when the city council declined to give him the parking subsidy. 
• Reinstate the parking subsidy, starting at a minimum, rather than maximum, of $110,000. Plus, waive parking fees for up to 600 spaces for airshow setup and takedown.
• Pay Elliott up to an additional $2 million of any money the city recovers from the oil companies responsible for the 2021 spill. 

Those are the details in the settlement summary released to the public. Gates has declined to make the full settlement public, raising questions about what else the city may have agreed to.

A legal push for more transparency

Gina Clayton-Tarvin, a local school board member and former city council candidate, has sued Gates under state public records law in an effort to get the full settlement released.

Gates told LAist earlier this year that he hasn't released the full settlement agreement because there's still pending litigation in the airshow saga and doing so could compromise the city's position in that litigation. "But if a judge were to order the release of [the settlement], I'm happy to release it," Gates said.

Both sides of the settlement say it was a tough negotiation and neither side got everything they wanted. "We get a lot more as a city than we're giving out," Strickland said. "It's not even a close call."

Earlier this year, a former Huntington Beach mayor and a former planning commissioner tried to intervene to halt the settlement agreement. Thus far, they haven't been successful, although Lee Fink, a lawyer working with them, has said they haven't given up.

At the same time, Elliott hasn't dropped his lawsuit against former Mayor Carr for her role in canceling the 2021 airshow. In his complaint, he said Carr "unilaterally" canceled the airshow because of her personal feelings towards Elliott, and in order to garner media attention to “further her own political career.”

Carr told LAist earlier this year that the claim was bogus. "He's created a completely fantastic tale of somehow I unilaterally canceled the air show," she said. "As the mayor of Huntington Beach, you do not have the authority to issue permits, consequently, you don't have the authority to cancel permits."

She said she didn't understand why the city would offer millions to settle what she called "an easily dismissible lawsuit." Then she corrected herself.

"Well, I do understand why the new council majority would settle. I mean, [Elliott] is their friend, their ally," Carr said. "To me, it smacks of corruption, definitely feels like a pay to play."

What about the oil company responsible for the spill that caused the 2021 airshow to be canceled? Amplify Energy recently settled a $45 million class action lawsuit with impacted businesses and property owners.

Elliott's company was not part of that settlement, but he said he's been "in very intensive pre-litigation settlement discussions" with the company.

The city of Huntington Beach also plans to pursue money from Amplify. How much could come back to city coffers after the Pacific Airshow gets its $2 million cut is unknown.

Fink, the lawyer, said his clients would likely be enjoying the airshow this weekend. "No one’s against the Airshow," he wrote in an email. "The Airshow will go on regardless of the litigation. But people are against a $7 Million giveaway to a political supporter under the guise of a settlement agreement in a frivolous case."

Los Angeles has handily broken its record for most days of coastal flooding in a year. And that’s without including October in the tally and with a wet El Niño winter ahead — a worrying sign for coastal homes and infrastructure.

Researchers can’t yet project how many more days of flooding we’ll have in 2026 — but we’re already well ahead of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s models had forecast up to this point.

NOAA oceanographer Karen Kavanaugh said models had predicted three to six flood days between May 2026 and April 2027. Those models took El Niño and sea level rise into account. She said that there have already been nine flood days in that window and added that the 12 flood days so far in the calendar year are “abnormally high.”

The number of days of coastal flooding observed at NOAA’s tide gauge in San Pedro is the highest recorded since observations started being taken in 1923. The previous record was set at nine in 1983, during another El Niño event.

When might we see more flooding?

Kavanaugh couldn’t say with certainty when flooding might occur, but noted that high-risk times ahead coincide with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Around then, the moon will be at its closest point to the Earth. The stronger gravitational pull from the moon causes what are commonly known as king tides, a nonscientific term for the highest predicted tides of the year.

In addition to these factors, the wide range of events affecting our tides this year, including storms, climate change, El Niño and related Kelvin waves, could very well cause other flooding events or cause the existing ones to become stronger.

Kavanaugh said a combination of factors — specifically Kelvin waves and astronomical high tides — was exactly what was responsible for the flooding seen this week.

“That could happen, perhaps, again in November and December if we have another pulse of a Kelvin wave,” Kavanaugh said.

Flooding inundated coastal communities around Southern California this week, including Orange County's Sunset Beach.

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Robert Gauthier

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How high will the tides be?

Unfortunately, Kavanaugh said, there’s no way to predict the severity of upcoming king tide events at this moment in time.

“But as we move closer to an event, there are good models that the National Weather Service uses to forecast flooding,” she added. “But they need it to be within seven days, sometimes shorter timelines.”

How to prepare for high tide conditions

Kavanaugh recommended keeping an eye on National Weather Service reports for the latest information and predictions. (There are separate pages for Los Angeles and Orange counties.)

Kavanaugh stressed that, given this year's unpredictability so far, people should be as prepared as possible.

“It's an unusual type of phenomenon to plan for for some communities,” she said. “We're used to planning for a big storm, maybe, and flooding from that, but not planning for, ‘Oh, it's gonna be beautiful sunny weather, and also you might have flooding on the roads.’”

Kavanaugh also recommended paying close attention to local emergency officials’ guidance and being mindful not to park cars in low-lying areas that could end up being inundated.

“If [local officials are] asking you to get sandbags or things like that, keep those sandbags because you might need them again in a few weeks,” she said.

The federal government must pull three taxpayer-funded Trump administration ads that appear to have been made for political or propaganda purposes, including one touting the president’s claim that every American will get $5,000 if Republicans keep control of Congress in the upcoming election, a judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon in New York sided with a coalition, including the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, in ordering the government to take down the advertisements titled “$5,000 to Americans,” “Every Democrat Voted Against No Tax on Tips,” and “Cost of Socialism.” She declined to pull several other ads.

She said the three ads must be taken off official government websites, including social media sites such as YouTube, Instagram and the like. Rochon also ordered the cancellation of any plans for the airing or distribution of the ads through authorized third parties, including by President Donald Trump’s flagship super PAC, MAGA Inc.

Rochon was nominated to the court by then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and once served as a law clerk for Trump’s sister, the late Maryanne Trump Barry, a longtime federal appeals court judge.

Responding to the ruling, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said: “This Biden-appointed activist judge issued a lawless order to stop the administration from sharing patriotic videos.”

Rochon ruled during a hearing in which she considered expanding a temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago, when she banned a series of ads that glorify Trump and echo his political messaging going into the midterms.

The plaintiffs sought the removal of at least 13 ads, but Rochon only ordered that the three be pulled, at least for now. She noted that the Government Accountability Office has observed that there are instances when the president’s office is entitled to inform the public of its policies, justify its policies and respond to attacks on its policies.

Rochon said the plaintiffs were seeking to restrict the office in ways that were “broad and far reaching” and she found herself concluding that the government will ultimately prevail legally with regard to many of the ads.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements akin to what past administrations have made to promote various policies. But the recent ads differ from many past public service announcements because they don’t try to help the public benefit from specific government programs, according to the plaintiffs.

After Rochon issued the order, she noted that she was doing so on a Friday afternoon and that the government would have no excuse to delay taking them down immediately.

A government lawyer acknowledged that he would be able to immediately notify relevant individuals responsible for taking down the ads.

“Everyone is here. Everyone can hear my order. No one is at the theater,” the judge quipped in a reference to excuses offered by government lawyers when her recent order, issued over a weekend, wasn’t immediately obeyed.

Rochon said irreparable harm could result to the plaintiffs if she didn’t ban the ads while the court case proceeds, though she noted that she could reverse herself and restore the ads or ban additional ads after hearing more evidence in the coming weeks.

“This court can neither postpone an election nor turn back the clock,” Rochon said after concluding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims regarding the ads and would suffer harm if they were not taken down.

“This temporary restraining order will stop the administration’s wanton disregard for the law while the court hears the full case,” said Bradley Girard, a lawyer with Democracy Forward. “Congress has made clear that partisan ads cannot be funded with taxpayer dollars, and we are proud to work with this coalition to earn today’s result.”

In court papers, the coalition’s lawyers wrote that Congress did not appropriate funds to the president’s office “to run a PR shop to help the President’s allies and attack his perceived ideological opponents.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Oestericher wrote in response to the plaintiffs that there was nothing wrong with White House staff compiling advertisements to “inform the public about his policies and to rebut attacks on those policies and his Administration.”

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Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.

Thousands of military veterans with VA-backed mortgages have been hit with higher interest rates and monthly payments since last year, when the Trump administration shut down a low-interest program designed to help them.

Among veterans who had their loans modified after a financial hardship, more than 15,000 saw their monthly payments increase by at least $150, according to an NPR investigation that obtained previously unreported data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 700 veterans suffered payment increases of $1,000 or more.

Lenders offer loan modifications to enable homeowners to catch up on missed payments. It involves changing the loan terms, and for the vast majority of Americans, it either lowers their payment or keeps it the same, depending on what they can afford. But that's not the case for VA loans, since the VA abruptly ended the program.

NPR found that 63% of veterans who received a loan modification were hit with a payment increase, compared with just 2% for modifications of loans guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which cover most of the U.S. mortgage market.

"This is the height of insanity," said California Democratic Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, after NPR shared its findings.

"These are veterans that are already financially distressed — they were already in trouble," he said.

Veterans like Scott Boyd are literally paying the price.

When Boyd was a teenager, his dad died of cancer. He said he saw the military as a clear path to start helping his family.

"My mom signed paperwork when I was 16," Boyd recalled. "I'm like, 'I'm sending my checks home to take care of my mom.'"

He started out in the infantry and saw combat. Later, Boyd worked in Army intelligence in some dangerous places. When he got out in 2002, he had skills that set him up for a career in tech. In 2021, he bought a house near Columbus, Ohio, using a VA home loan. Like other buyers at the time, he got a nice low-interest rate. "I felt very blessed," he said.

But a few years later, Boyd hit a crisis: He lost his job in a mass layoff, and he said his time in combat came back to haunt him in the form of PTSD. He checked himself into the Dayton VA hospital for treatment but fell behind on his mortgage.

Boyd and thousands of other veterans were pushed into much-higher-cost modified home loans. Hundreds are paying at least $1,000 more a month.

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Most Americans can get help in a situation like this. Mortgage companies don't want to foreclose because both they and the homeowner experience losses. So they have levers they can pull to help people who've fallen behind on payments.

Boyd's lender told him that he didn't have to worry because the VA had a loan forbearance program that would allow him to pause his payments and provide him with an affordable way to catch up after.

"I later found out that wasn't true," he said.

It wasn't true because the Trump administration then shut down a key part of the VA's home loan program. It was called the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase (VASP) program. Without it, vets like Boyd were stranded with no option but a much-higher-cost modified home loan at today's higher interest rates.

In Boyd's case, he is now stuck paying $1,181 more — every month.

"This is outrageous," said Boyd. "I remember just thinking to myself, 'This is just so broken.'"

Some in Congress agree.

"The VA home loan program should not be making things worse and more stressful for that veteran, a combat veteran, who's been through hell," said Takano, about Boyd's case in particular.

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., speaks on Capitol Hill in 2025.

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Illinois Republican Rep. Mike Bost, chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, did not respond to NPR's repeated requests for comment. NPR also reached out to Wisconsin Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a committee member who led the call to wind down the VASP program. He also did not respond to requests for comment.

The VA said in a statement that it helps thousands of veterans "retain homeownership and/or avoid foreclosure through programs like payment forbearance, loan modifications and individualized repayment plans."

The VA was warned this would happen

Before it was shut down, the VASP program was helping tens of thousands of veterans who had fallen behind on their home loan payments by rolling those missed payments into a new mortgage with a low 2.5% interest rate. That made the program a lifeline for vets in today's higher-interest-rate environment.

And Boyd said his mortgage company had been telling him that he too could use VASP when he was able to resume paying his mortgage.

" I would constantly ask them, 'OK, this is getting further and further behind,' and they were like, 'You have this last lever to pull.'"

This was in the spring of 2025, just months into the second Trump administration. Key Republicans on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee vocally opposed VASP, which the Biden administration created after its own VA home loan disaster. Republicans warned that VASP was putting taxpayers on the hook for thousands of loans to vets who had trouble paying.

"If the Biden version of VASP was allowed to continue, I fear that the home loan will not exist in the future for my fellow veterans," said Van Orden during a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing on March 11, 2025.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., speaks in Eau Claire, Wis., on Oct. 20. He is currently in a tight race for reelection.

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But at the same hearing, as well as in letters to Congress and press releases, the mortgage industry and housing groups explicitly warned the Trump administration not to kill the program without first creating another viable option for vets. They said if the VA shut down the program before standing up a replacement, vets would be left with far worse options than other American homeowners. With interest rates up around 7%, they warned that the only option left would be a modified loan at the current higher rates, which would result in foreclosures for those who couldn't afford the higher payments. And that's exactly what has been happening.

" I was doing the math in my head as they were telling me, you know?" Boyd said about the loan modification he was presented with. "If I'm going from 2.75 to 6.75 … it seemed ridiculous," he said. Not only would that jump in his interest rate boost his payment by nearly $1,200 every month, but his loan term was extended to 40 years. So he went from about half of his monthly payment going toward principal to now more than 90% of his payment going to cover just the interest.

"This was a foreseeable outcome of abruptly ending a program without a replacement in place," said Matthew Douglas, of the Housing Policy Council. He represents the largest mortgage companies in the U.S. and was among those warning the VA not to kill VASP. Asked about NPR's findings, he said, "It's a mathematical certainty that borrowers are going to have those kind of shocking payment increases." 

Despite the warnings, the Trump administration ended the VASP program on May 1, 2025 — apparently in coordination with House Republicans, who announced the move before the Department of Veterans Affairs did, even though VASP was ended administratively, with no vote from Congress.

"We — along with many of our colleagues — had serious concerns about the impact VASP would have on not only the future of VA's home loan program, but the mortgage lending business as a whole. Today, the Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA's VASP program," Bost and Van Orden said in a joint press release at the time.

In his statement to NPR, VA press secretary Quinn Slaven wrote: "many leading voices in Congress supported the termination of VASP, which put the entire VA home loan program at risk."

The VA's new program slowly rolls out

Boyd lives with his partner and her four children, whom they are raising together.

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At the same time Van Orden was calling for VASP to be scuttled, he had written a bill to replace it with a new VA Partial Claim Program (PCP). Congress quickly passed that bill with broad bipartisan support in the wake of the VA scuttling VASP. It directed the VA to create an option for vets behind on payments, enabling them to move their missed payments to the back of their loan term. That way, vets could keep their original mortgage and not be forced into a higher-cost loan.

But after ending VASP, it took the VA more than 13 months to design and announce the details of the new program, which it did in June of this year. And the industry was then given another 180 days to implement it. Most mortgage companies still do not offer it.

In that gap, thousands of veterans got modified loans with higher interest rates and payments. The VA's new PCP program won't do anything to help those vets — they'll remain stuck in those modified loans.

Congress could help

Boyd holds a challenge coin from the Department of Defense that was given to him during his military service.

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NPR asked the VA about the vets who fell into the gap between the two programs. Slaven, the VA spokesman, said in his statement that the VA home loan program "is based on the premise that while Veterans may need some assistance, they must generally be able to make their mortgage payments."

Industry groups say raising a struggling homeowner's payment makes it more likely for them to redefault and face foreclosure. Foreclosures on VA loans rose to a 10-year high after VASP was killed, according to industry data. Experts warned in a congressional roundtable in September that time is running out for the government to help these vets or a wave of foreclosures is still to come.

Rep. Takano told NPR that the VA, if it chose to, could put these vets back into lower-cost mortgages or that Congress could pass a law to do it.

"We could do something for those veterans who saw a jump in their interest rates," Takano said.

Hanging on to home 

Boyd says he feels defeated after receiving worse loan options from the VA.

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Maddie McGarvey for NPR

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Outside Columbus, Ohio, Scott Boyd is still managing to make those higher mortgage payments.

When he bought the home, he said, it felt like a guarantee of shelter and stability for him, his partner and the four kids they are raising together.

" I made a commitment, saying no matter what, I want to build a home that is big enough. …  I wanted to get them in better schools and things like that," he said.

He was even able to help when his father-in-law became ill recently; they moved him into the finished basement, where he got home hospice care.

So when he was presented with the terms of that loan modification, he had not only kids in the house but his dying father-in-law too. He'd just gotten back on his feet financially and was being told his options were the loan modification or foreclosure.

"My job was still new, and that still felt shaky. … My PTSD was shaky. … It seemed like the right thing to do was just to take the modification," he said.

Two weeks after Boyd signed the loan modification, the VA launched the new Partial Claim Program that would have allowed him to keep his original loan terms with the same monthly payment and low 2.75% interest rate. It took two more months before the first mortgage company offered vets access to the PCP, and most of the industry is still working to stand up the program before the deadline that the VA gave it of Nov. 28.

Boyd said that he doesn't often talk about his service and that he doesn't feel entitled to be treated better than any other American. But he did not expect the VA to give him worse options than those of people who never served.

" I really felt hurt more than anything. I wasn't angry. I was just like, I felt so defeated," Boyd said.

"Everything that I've done for this country and the things that I've been through, the things that I've seen, the things I've had to deal with … it's come down to, 'Yeah, I'm sorry — it's not in our systems yet. … There's nothing we can do about it.'"
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Very early on Wednesday morning, Dover, N.J., Councilwoman Sandra Wittner started getting messages about immigration agents. A dozen or more were gathering outside a Walgreens, according to the messages she was getting. Throughout the day, neighbors in north New Jersey saw a spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

And New Jersey is not alone. In the weeks ahead of the midterms, various cities and states across the country are reporting a notable rise in ICE activity, according to reports gathered by NPR and its member stations.

"The tactics that the administration has been deploying in communities really appear to be designed to try to intimidate voters," says Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. Despite that, early turnout is surging.

"There was definitely a lot of apprehension and fear," Wittner recalls. "We just really weren't sure if something huge was about to happen. People were not feeling very comfortable or safe."

Wittner is not sure who was detained or where, which is unsurprising: these days it's difficult to report on ICE crackdowns as they happen, because the Department of Homeland Security no longer publicly shares timely information on its operations.

NPR wrote to the agency to ask if there has been a recent surge. It responded: "ICE agents uphold our nation's immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day."

And yet NPR and its member stations have received tips from rural Illinois, Oregon, Detroit and California about surges in ICE enforcement throughout October.

An official within New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that they have noted a surge in ICE activity in the city.

"We're certainly witnessing an uptick in activity, and have been since the summer," says a member of a volunteer group of neighbors in New York. She asked that NPR not use her name, as she is worried about retaliation. Her group goes to the scene where an ICE operation is happening, documents it, reminds those being detained of their rights, and alerts neighbors.

"In the past few weeks we've seen numerous large operations, or what we call cluster raids, multiple agents going to one spot and then the next," she said.

On the other side of the country, Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Troy Brynelson has reported on a similar trend. "What we were seeing in early October and what we've seen continue, at least anecdotally throughout this month, is that ICE activity has really picked up in Portland." Brynelson says it seems to be concentrated in commercial areas. "I'd say it's a noticeable uptick compared to what we've seen over the summer."

Juan Proaño of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights organization, says he's concerned because this is happening so close to the midterm elections. "It's not about ICE at the actual polling station, it's ICE at the perimeter of the polling station," he says.

"Mass enforcement actions could be away from the polls, but with social media and the news, it could be enough to dissuade somebody from actually going out to vote."

Weiser of the Brennan Center says there's no indication the raids are affecting turnout. On the contrary, she says there has been a surge in early voting in minority communities across the country. "The good news is: it isn't working. Americans are tuning this out and we are not seeing a significant impact on participation. And we are actually seeing huge surges in participation in communities of color, and in Latino communities, and in all the communities that have been targeted by ICE and DHS."

Even so, she says that intimidation at the polls is illegal, and should be reported.
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