The Brief

John Lauretig remembers the filthy bathrooms, the overflowing trash cans and the community of people who rallied to clean up Joshua Tree National Park the last time the U.S. government shut down.

For more than a month from December 2018 through January 2019, thousands of National Park Service employees were furloughed nationwide — but the Trump administration kept many national parks open.

Unsupervised, visitors drove through wilderness and historic sites, camped where they weren’t supposed to, and vandalized plants and buildings at parks across California. The trash — and the feces — piled up. In the days after the shutdown ended, park staff found at least 1,665 clumps of toilet paper littering Death Valley alone, where an estimated half-ton of human waste had been left outside the restrooms.

“It was insane to leave the gates open and tell the staff not to show up in the park — for our public lands, and all of our special places in this country, to be unprotected,” said Lauretig, a retired law enforcement park ranger and president of the Friends of Joshua Tree nonprofit.

Now, facing the prospect of another imminent shutdown, conservation groups and retired park service employees including Lauretig are calling to keep the gates locked at national parks and historic landmarks.

They’re among many Californians bracing for the shutdown, which is expected to begin Wednesday unless Democrats and Republicans can make a deal by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.

As of now, the parties appear far apart, although President Donald Trump and congressional leaders are expected to meet today. Democratic leaders in Congress are demanding that Republicans reverse Medicaid cuts made in Trump’s signature tax and spending bill earlier this year and extend Biden-era subsidies used by a majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees.

In response, the Trump administration has floated firing federal workers en masse if the shutdown occurs.

“Democrats are hoping to use the one bit of leverage that they have left in Washington at this time to make it clear what they stand for,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “And the question is: Can they hold out against the political and policy pain that Donald Trump is hoping to impose by threatening more layoffs of government employees?”

The federal government shut down three times during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Each one presents a hardship for government employees, who are either furloughed or obliged to work without pay.

About 150,000 federal employees work in California, not counting the military service members who also will go without pay during a shutdown.

In the past when facing possible federal shutdowns, the state had a contingency plan to try to avoid disruptions in certain services. In late 2023, it planned to pay one month’s worth of federal food assistance early to advance aid to families in the event of a shutdown.

But this year there’s no such commitment yet from the Department of Finance, as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration weighs the possibility of a lengthy shutdown.

“There isn’t an open-ended long-term line of credit where the state’s general fund can be assumed to make up for any federal fund shortfall,” finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer said.

Here’s a look at what Californians can expect to happen if a shutdown occurs this week.

Social Security and health care

Most Californians shouldn’t worry about a federal shutdown impacting their Social Security benefits or their health care access in the near term.

About 6.5 million Californians receive benefits through the Social Security Administration and those checks are expected to continue going out during a shutdown.

But, customer service could suffer depending on how many employees are told to stay home, according to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare.

That includes “benefit verifications, earnings record corrections and updates, overpayments processing, and replacing Medicare cards. The level of disruption will depend on how many (Social Security Administration) employees the Trump administration deems ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ during the shutdown,” Max Richtman, the organization’s president, said in a written statement.

Medicaid and Medicare, which pay for health care for low-income individuals, people with disabilities and seniors, are mandatory programs that are exempt from the annual appropriations process.

Jan Emerson-Shea, spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, said “essential services” like insurance payments to hospitals and doctors will continue.

Some discretionary programs, however, like food stamps and benefits for women, infants and children may be impacted by a shutdown.

One group that could be disproportionately affected by even a brief federal shutdown are native and indigenous populations. Many of the 723,000 American Indians living in California get health care at clinics that are funded through federal grants. The clinics are often small and may have very little reserves to weather a funding pause, said Nanette Star, policy director for the California Consortium for Urban Indian Health.

“Even a short shutdown can mean staff furloughs, service cuts, patient service delays,” Star said.

Airports and travel

You’ll be able to fly and take rides during a government shutdown, but you might experience more delays.

That’s because air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents are among the government employees who would be expected to show up for work without getting paid. The longer a shutdown drags out, the more likely it is that the system will strain and workers will call in sick.

The U.S. Travel Association, which advocates for the industry, released a statement last week that included a survey showing many people would cancel or postpone travel during a shutdown, which it argued would ripple through the economy.

“A shutdown is a wholly preventable blow to America’s travel economy—costing $1 billion every week—and affecting millions of travelers and businesses while placing unnecessary strain on an already overextended federal travel workforce,” said Geoff Freeman, the organization’s president.

Wildfires and disasters

A federal shutdown won’t ground firefighters, but could slow the money that pays for future disaster prep.

Nick Schuler, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said the agency does not expect a shutdown to affect its “ability to respond to and aggressively attack fires” and will continue to operate as normal. In past shutdowns, he said, U.S. Forest Service firefighters have still been available for emergency response and pointed to California’s “robust Master Mutual Aid System,” which ensures resources respond regardless of jurisdiction.

Delta Fire, Sept. 5, 2018.

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U.S. Forest Service

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Still, he cautioned that what keeps engines running today might not pay for the prevention work of tomorrow: “Any disruption to grant funding that supports fire prevention and wildfire resiliency could have negative impacts,” he said.

Newsom’s office said the Federal Emergency Management Agency would keep “core life-saving operations” going during a shutdown but that payments to states would stall and recovery efforts would be put on hold. That means Californians could see first responders in action but face delays in reimbursement or recovery projects.

Other science agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey could face interruptions that affect California’s disaster readiness, the governor’s spokesperson said.

National parks

National parks supporters are worried that the Trump administration again would send home workers but leave open the gates.

That’s “a recipe for even more disaster,” said Kate Groetzinger, communications manager at the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental advocacy group. “It will be worse this time than it was last time around, simply because the parks are already struggling.”

She was referring to federal staffing cuts the Trump administration carried out earlier this year. The National Parks Conservation Association estimates that the National Park Service has lost 24% of its permanent staff since Trump’s second term began, and left thousands of seasonal positions unfilled.

If a shutdown does occur, the association projects daily losses of $1 million in fee revenue for the parks, and $77 million for the gateway communities that surround them.

Morale among National Park workers is bad already — and a shutdown would make it worse, said Bernadette Johnson, a former superintendent of Manzanar National Historic Site, where during World War II the U.S. Government incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans.

“The attack has just been so furious. And I think that federal employees are being demonized, as these lazy bureaucrats that we are not … It breaks my heart to watch,” Johnson said. “The people left behind are holding all of that work now, because the work didn't go away.”

A spokesperson for the The National Park Service said the agency is reviewing and updating plans for a lapse in funding.

However a shutdown may play out, Lauretig over at Joshua Tree said he’s ready.

“I still have a loft (full) of toilet paper, trash bags, bleach, cleaning materials, gloves waiting for the next event — which, you know, could be imminent.”

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

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”

Many Southern California cities and institutions are dropping big, grabby news today. Before you go "what the what" — remember, it's the first day of April.

Here's a roundup of some of the April Fools' news dump items.

Irvine, the 'pickleball-only' city

Irvine announced that it'll be converting all tennis courts into pickleball courts by 2027. That's one notch for Team Pickleball in the ongoing turf war between tennis lovers and pickleball players over the fight for court space to engage in their beloved sport.

"Starting today, April 1, all tennis courts are being converted to pickleball courts as part of a citywide effort to make Irvine a pickleball-only City by 2027," the post stated. "We don’t just think this is a good idea … we dink it’s a great one."

Catch that? They "dink" it's a great idea.

All hail Queen Latifah in Long Beach

Over in Long Beach, Mayor Rex Richardson announced the city's reigning royalty, the Queen Mary, will be renamed after another queen.

"After careful consideration, I am proud to announce that the Queen Mary will officially be renamed the RMS Queen Latifah," he said. "Long Beach is stepping into a new era as a major music destination — with a new amphitheater, a deep cultural legacy, and a future built on sound. It’s only right that our most iconic Queen reflects that energy."

In real-real news, LBC native and everyone's favorite Olympics commenter Snoop Dogg is headlining the grand opening show of the Long Beach Amphitheater in June. That's the new waterfront venue near the RMS Queen Latifah.

Prolific author gets his own library branch

Suspense writer James Patterson has more than 200 novels to his name, selling more than 450 million copies. If anyone deserves his own namesake branch, it would be Patterson, no?

The Los Angeles Public Library certainly dinks so, announcing today the James Patterson Canoga Park branch, "with wall to wall Patterson books and programming centered around this prolific author."

Eau de corpse flower

The opening of the corpse flower has become an annual event at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. The event brings legions hoping to get a whiff of the famed flower's "pungent aroma."

The San Marino institution announced that it's bottling the scent, as part of its new "The Huntington's Stank Collection."

"A musky gym sock note opens this unique fragrance, with a sweet, rotten-egg base to ground it. Smells like you – but smellier," the post explained.

Adopt something you can just leave at home, always

Pasadena Humane got in on the fun with a special event — today only — where you can adopt a rock.

"Adoption ROCKS! And today only, you can adopt a friend you won't take for granite," the message said.