The Brief

The company Library Systems & Services canceled its bid to manage Huntington Beach's city library system late Monday, a day before the city council was set to vote on it.

The company did not give a reason for pulling its bid, but Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark said the proposal likely would not have gotten enough support from council members to pass at tonight's meeting.

"I was not leaning in the direction of supporting it," she told LAist. "I believe they were aware."

Van Der Mark was among the initial supporters of issuing a request for proposals to outsource library management. But she said the cost savings in the proposal from Library Systems & Services weren't clear and the transition to private management would have been cumbersome.

Carol Daus, a board member of Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, called the bid cancelation "a huge victory."

"We are all ecstatic," she said.

Library outsourcing idea provoked backlash

The idea of turning over management of the city's beloved library system to a private company had become increasingly controversial. By Tuesday morning, the city council had already received more than 250 emails from citizens on the outsourcing proposal, most of them against the idea.

Daus and other library supporters had also collected more than 1,000 signatures, in just over a week, on a petition to put the library outsourcing question on a future ballot.

And they've been holding weekly silent marches down Main Street, distributing lawn signs, and tabling outside of library branches and local businesses against the outsourcing idea and other recent city policies restricting children's access to controversial books.

"I've lived here in 28 years and I've never seen a group of citizens so angry about the library," Daus said.

Asked to speculate on why Library Systems & Services pulled its bid, Daus said: "Our library is such a beloved institution. A corporation would probably have looked at this and said, 'This is toxic, why do we want to get in involved in something like this?'"

LAist has asked the company for comment.

What we know about the proposal

The city council majority began looking into outsourcing the five-branch library system in March in order to cut costs. In late May, the city issued a request for proposals and got one bid, from the company Library Systems & Services. Former Huntington Beach Mayor Mike Posey is the company's regional sales executive.

The bid to manage the city's library system won't be made public until negotiations are over. But a staff report notes as a potential advantage that the bid proposes annual cost savings of up to $1 million and "streamlined bulk purchasing policies."

As for disadvantages, the report notes "a lengthy and challenging transition process," a potential drop in volunteers and donations, and strong public opposition to outsourcing library management.

The backstory

The proposal to privatize library management comes on top of heated debates that have taken place in Huntington Beach and elsewhere in recent years over public access to controversial books, especially about sexuality and LGBTQ+ issues. In February, per a directive from the city's conservative council majority, Huntington Beach librarians began removing books about puberty from the children's section along with other materials considered to include "sexual content."

The city council is also in the process of forming a committee of local parents and guardians that will be tasked with reviewing proposed books for the children's library which could have sexual content or sexual references and determining whether they're appropriate.

Library defenders fight back

Supporters of the city's library and its librarians had launched a passionate counter-offensive, including petitions seeking to overturn the parent/guardian review board and to prohibit outsourcing library management without approval from voters.

Daus said they will continue to collect signatures on both measures in hopes of getting them on a future ballot.

Reader Resource: How to attend tonight's city council meeting

Time: Tuesday, June 18 at 6 p.m.
In person: 2000 Main Street Huntington Beach
Remote viewing:

• Livestream on HBTV Channel 3
• On demand
• YouTube

Note: You can also download the Cablecast Screenweave App and searching for the City of Huntington Beach channel from any Roku, Fire TV or Apple device.

Public comment: You may comment in person by signing up to speak on items both on and off the agenda. Sign ups begin 30 minutes ahead of the start of meetings.

Republicans are leaning into immigration enforcement as one of their top campaign issues this midterm cycle — despite a rocky start to the year for messaging on the president's top policy.

An NPR analysis of advertisement data from the firm AdImpact shows that when it comes to immigration, Republicans are spending more money and running more ads than Democrats are. The data set includes ads purchased from January through June, before immigration enforcement officers shot and killed people in Maine and Texas this month.

These political ads offer one indication of where each party sees its momentum going with voters, as candidates across the country gear up for the general election in November. The data suggests Republicans see immigration as a winning issue: Since the start of the year, Republicans and their supporting organizations have run nearly 300 ads nationwide that either include a mention of immigration or are solely about immigration. This compares to 62 ads from Democrats and their supporting organizations.

"Republicans stood up for Americans. Democrats sat down for illegals. Thomas Massie sides with these radical-left lunatics," reads one ad funded by the MAGA KY PAC, a political action committee that was set up to defeat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in the primary. The ad cost over $831,000; Massie, a frequent critic of President Trump, went on to lose his race to Trump-endorsed candidate Ed Gallrein.

Among the most expensive was a $928,000 ad buy in the Michigan governor's race.

"No greater example of waste, fraud, and abuse in Michigan than using our tax dollars to give benefits to illegal immigrants. As governor, I'll be incredibly supportive of ICE coming here and removing these fraudsters," says Republican candidate Perry Johnson, who calls himself a "MAGA Conservative" and has pitched his business approach to running a state.

Immigration was a winning issue for Republicans in the 2024 elections, with themes like increasing border security and reducing crime.

"Campaigns are not trying to change minds. They're trying to shape what the election's about. They're trying to energize the voters they already have," said Cameron Shelton, a professor of political economy at Claremont McKenna College. "If Republicans are investing much more heavily in immigration advertising, one interpretation is that they believe immigration is exactly that kind of [mobilizing] issue in today's electorate."

Immigration and enforcement are among the top issues for both parties

Most of the ads have run during the primary season, which is now more than half over. Since more than 90% of seats up for grabs in gubernatorial, House and Senate races are considered safe for one party or another, the primary campaign has become decisive for many candidates nationwide.

Some Democrats became more vocal on the issue of immigration at the start of 2026, particularly in states that were seeing intense waves of enforcement. Democrats in New Jersey, Illinois and Minnesota, for example, referenced the administration's tactics in their calls to "abolish ICE," or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and argued the administration had gone too far.

The Illinois Future PAC ran two ads, each worth more than $800,000, earlier this year to support Juliana Stratton's stance on abolishing ICE. The current lieutenant governor later won the Illinois Democratic primary for Senate.

But months into the year, Democrats have prioritized other topics, often to differentiate themselves from members of their own party, like on healthcare, while Republicans are keeping immigration-related themes on Americans' screens.

During the primary season, Shelton said, campaigns are testing out the issues they think might matter through the general election.

For both parties, "Donald Trump" is the top subject in TV ad buys, according to data from AdImpact. "Immigration" is the issue with the second-highest spending for Republicans; for Democrats, "ICE" is the third-highest, after "healthcare."

"It's a signal to donors, it's a signal to activists, to interest groups, to local candidates. It helps coordinate a lot of the actors that we think of as the party," Shelton said. "That's another reason why some of these early ads are interesting, because they are signals of the direction that is trying to be set out."

Republicans link top issues to immigration

Between January and June, Republicans outspent Democrats on immigration-related political advertising by about $36 million. Republican ads focused on immigration, which total $53 million in spending, have aired across the country in 88 races and 27 states. Ads for Democratic candidates, which total $17 million, have run in 20 races and 11 states, primarily those that have seen increased immigration enforcement action like California, New York and Illinois.

"Republican candidates have a large menu of issues we are on the right side of that are all very popular amongst voters," said Mike Marinella, national press secretary at the National Republican Congressional Committee. He listed the border, crime and the economy as issues that Republican candidates can connect to immigration.

"Immigration intersects with each of them," he said. "The most effective message depends on the district and how those issues are affecting that particular community," he added.

Zach Lahn, who won the GOP primary bid for Iowa governor, spent about $475,000 on an ad in May that vowed to ban H-1B visa holders from being hired by Iowa government agencies and universities, linking immigration and economic concerns.

Crossings at the border have plummeted since Trump took office. Marinella said candidates are still keeping the issue of border security top of mind for their voters.

A majority of the ads promoting Republican candidates include keywords such as "securing the border" and discuss border wall funding and crime. Some also go a step further to talk about specific proposals supported by the administration, such as limiting commercial driver's licenses and supporting the SAVE America Act, which would require stricter proof of citizenship to vote.

For example, in Florida's 19th congressional district, Jim Oberweis, one of several candidates vying for the GOP seat, spent $880,000 on seven ads that advocated for ending birthright citizenship.

Democrats lean into pro-immigration statements

Ads promoting Democratic candidates, on the other hand, shy away from specific policy proposals. Instead, they include criticism of incumbents for recent votes on bills that have provided funding to immigration officers or expanded the scope of who could be detained. Others focus on personal connections to immigration, proposals to limit enforcement and general pro-immigrant statements.

"Democrats are finding their voice on immigration after a rough few years during the Biden administration," said Frank Sharry, senior fellow at Third Way, a centrist think tank. "I don't think they'll be running a bunch of ads on it. I do think they'll be speaking to the issue and winning the argument, which is more important than whether they run ads on it or not."

A poll from Gallup released in July shows that most Americans think immigration is a good thing, and a majority support some form of pathway to citizenship rather than a blanket deportation policy — though there are sharp differences by party. A majority of Republicans favor hiring more Border Patrol agents, deporting anyone without legal status and banning sanctuary cities.

Republican ads broadcast during Senate races in Ohio, Texas and Alaska and gubernatorial contests in New York and Iowa are already starting to target Democrats. Strategists said this trend suggests how each party may lean into immigration leading up to the November election. But they also caution against reading too much into advertisements to gauge party strategy.

"Back in the day, ads were king. Now you have so many diverse streams of information arriving to people on their phones that it's just not the same," Third Way's Sharry said, noting interviews, debates, and other forms of public statements aren't captured in the ad data.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Making daylight saving time permanent moved a step closer to reality this week, when the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass a measure to eliminate the annual clock-changing ritual.

But some Orthodox Jewish organizations are fighting to prevent the bill from becoming law.

The measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, passed in a 308-117 vote in the House on Tuesday (July 14). It now heads to the Senate, where its passage is uncertain. President Donald Trump has championed the effort, describing on his Truth Social account moving the clocks forward and back as a "ridiculous, twice yearly production."

If passed, the bill would give Americans an extra hour of sunshine in the evenings during the winter. But it would also push winter sunrises one hour later. That's of concern to Orthodox Jews, who pray three times a day, beginning with the Shacharit morning prayer service, which by tradition cannot begin in the dark.

"The bottom line is, if prayers have to start an hour later that will have a direct effect on people getting to work and on when schools can start," said Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an organization representing U.S. Orthodox Jews.

A constellation of other Orthodox Jewish groups also opposes the measure, including the Orthodox Union and the Coalition for Jewish Values.

In Jewish law, some prayers, such as those in the morning service, can only be said communally, in a quorum of 10 Jewish adults, called a minyan. That requirement means going to synagogue every morning before heading out for work or school and saying prayers, such as the Shema, the central prayer of Jewish life, collectively. The morning service typically lasts 35 minutes but on some occasions can last close to an hour.

"It becomes a communal issue when, for example, a synagogue that has had a morning prayer service for 100 years suddenly does not have a quorum of 10 men who can show up at the prayer time close to 9 o'clock because they have jobs," Motzen said.

Motzen, who works in the Washington, D.C., office of Agudath Israel, said the organization already has the support of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who last year objected to fast-tracking the bill.

Orthodox Jews make up only 9% of the estimated 5.8 million Jewish adults in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center. Larger Jewish groups have not publicly taken a position.

Congress has grappled with turning back the clocks many times. In 1974, it tried to abandon clock-switching, but repealed the law a few months later following public outcry. In 2022, the Senate unanimously passed a measure making daylight savings time permanent, but the bill died in the House.

Orthodox Jews are not the only constituencies opposed to the change. Some medical and health advocates argue that the human body's internal clock is better aligned with the sun during standard time rather than daylight saving time. School boards and parents are also concerned about children walking to school in pitch-black conditions during winter mornings.

That latter concern, which Motzen described as a safety issue, is one Orthodox Jews share as well.

Making daylight saving time permanent would make sunrise after 8 a.m. in most parts of the country, and after 9 a.m. in a few select places. For example, according to a list compiled by Agudath Israel, sunrise would take place after 9 a.m., (and as late as 9:13 a.m.) for 55 days a year in South Bend, Indiana. In Detroit, Michigan, sunrise would take place after 9 a.m. for 23 days a year.

Hawaii and most of Arizona abide by standard time year round, as do Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and Religion News Service.
Copyright 2026 NPR

After Medicaid officials improperly shared data about millions of people in January with immigration officials, ICE then shared that data with the data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court filings. Palantir operates an app called ELITE that is used by ICE agents to show the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation.

That revelation was made public in a motion filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration last year over its data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in California ruled in December that health officials could share with ICE certain details from Medicaid data about immigrants without lawful status from the states that had sued, such as home addresses, dates of birth and immigration status.

Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, then temporarily paused data sharing between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement purposes in late May after federal officials admitted CMS had shared data with ICE in January that went beyond what the court order allowed. One dataset of refugees in Minnesota included U.S. citizens, and another that was transferred on Jan. 7 contained data of millions of people, including those in the country legally.

ICE was supposed to delete the improperly shared data. Chhabria set a hearing for August to further clarify his order and clear up ambiguity regarding which categories of noncitizens' data could be lawfully shared with ICE.

But in recent days, federal officials have admitted to additional instances of improper data sharing.

In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said that CMS again inadvertently reshared with ICE the dataset with millions of names that CMS had first improperly shared with ICE in January. The government said the error occurred during an effort to share data from states not involved in the lawsuit.

Alberto Briseno, a section chief for ICE's Homeland Security Investigations, wrote in a declaration that ICE personnel deleted the file after it was discovered and it was not used for law enforcement purposes.

Then Briseno revealed that a day later, the agency had done a broader search and discovered that half a dozen users still had a copy of the Jan. 7 dataset.

In that most recent declaration, Briseno said he was not aware of any additional copies of the dataset, but said the recent searches have "highlighted technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located." He added, "ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future."

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is asking the judge to expand his order to allow ICE to receive data on a broader category of noncitizens – to potentially include all immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, citizens or have another form of permanent status.

"ICE's inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undercuts any claim that the agency should be entitled to more access to that data," the Democratic attorneys generals wrote in their motion filed late Thursday.

Their motion continued, "Each successive revelation of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants' ability to maintain and secure this data in compliance with the Order, and more difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their counsel), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their healthcare data."

Palantir did not immediately return a request for comment about whether the company had deleted the Jan. 7 dataset that ICE had shared after improperly receiving it from CMS. DHS also didn't immediately return a request for comment about its transfer of data to Palantir.

According to a declaration filed by California deputy attorney general Anna Rich, when plaintiffs asked what federal officials did to ensure Palantir and other contractors had purged the data, defendants responded that the data had been shared over a Microsoft Teams chat and the shared data was deleted from the chat. Rich shared in her declaration a document turned over in discovery from federal officials that shows a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel asking Palantir to delete the file.

In an April 30 hearing, Chhabria had warned the federal government would not be able to continue using Medicaid data for deportation efforts if it continued improperly sharing the data of citizens and legal immigrants.

"If the federal government cannot be sufficiently careful then it can't use the information, ok?" Chhabria had said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

For the first time, the World Cup final will include a halftime show – featuring celebrities from six continents to celebrate the "beautiful game." The show, which will begin somewhere around 3:45 PM ET, will air in the U.S. on Fox, Fox One and in Spanish on Telemundo, as well as on the Fox Sports app and streaming in Spanish on Peacock. It's expected to run for about 11 minutes.

With the artists selected by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, it's a powerhouse lineup with big mass appeal: Justin Bieber, Madonna (whose new album just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200), Shakira (the undisputed World Cup queen), Burna Boy (who duetted with Shakira on this year's official World Cup song – and who is one of the most popular African artists of all time), the global sensation BTS, Coldplay (who brought an inspiring backup choir to their Tiny Desk), the eternally lovable Muppets Kermit and Miss Piggy, conductor Gustavo Dudamel with musicians from the New York Philharmonic and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, the viral dance troupe Ghetto Kids from Kampala, Uganda, the Iraq-born Australian singer Emmanuel Kelly, and – whew! – the kids from Staten Island's PS22 Chorus. (How will they all be crammed into an 11-minute spectacle? A fair guess would be lots of arm-in-arm singalongs and Grammy Awards-style mashups aspiring to virality.)

In its press materials, FIFA says that the halftime show will support its charity arm, the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, whose goal is to raise $100 million to expand education and soccer access to children worldwide. FIFA says that it's already raised half that money, including $1 from every ticket sold by FIFA for this Cup – not much of a percentage, considering that FIFA originally put final game tickets on sale for nearly $3,000 for the cheapest seat, and prices have only skyrocketed since.

Soccer is, of course, already the most popular sport in the world; according to the Library of Congress, "estimates suggest that there are over 240 million registered players worldwide with fan participation in the billions." FIFA has already been boasting about record viewership during the 2026 World Cup. Earlier this month – even before the quarter-final matches had taken place – FIFA had already logged an eye-popping 20 billion video views worldwide across all digital platforms. By contrast, the last Super Bowl attracted some 125.6 million viewers. And it's worth noting that soccer is gaining in popularity in the U.S.: per a recent survey published by The Economist, Americans now rank it as their third favorite sport, having edged out the all-American pastime of baseball.

Still, FIFA may well have taken a (literally) very valuable page out of the NFL playbook, whether or not they specifically have a U.S. audience in mind: Don't like or care about (real) football? Here's an unmissable diversion midway through the match to keep you buzzing about – and your eyeballs focused on – what's happening on the pitch.

Copyright 2026 NPR