The Brief

Orange County is still tallying votes, but overall, the results are clear — O.C. is more purple (purple-er?) than ever. LAist talked to political scientists and analyzed trends to come up with five big takeaways from the November election results in this political middle-ground. Here goes:

O.C. is the purplest of purple

In some of the biggest races, ballots are nearly evenly split between the Democrat and Republican candidate. It appears some voters also "split tickets." For example, as of last count, a slim majority wanted Democrat Kamala Harris to represent them in the White House and Republican Steve Garvey to rep the state in the Senate. Garvey has also gotten more votes than President-elect Donald Trump.

This kind of ticket-splitting, among other factors, makes O.C. one the purplest counties in the U.S., said Jon Gould, the dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. Gould said O.C., with its shifting demographics, and especially its large population of non-white, college-educated voters, is a glimpse of where the nation is headed.

“What you're seeing here that I think we will all be looking at is a harbinger for the future of the rest of America,” he said.

Little Saigon upset?

The congressional district that includes the largest Vietnamese diaspora community outside of Vietnam could have its first Vietnamese American representative — and a Democrat, at that. Derek Tran has been steadily widening his still-miniscule lead against Republican incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel.

As of Saturday night, Tran was ahead by 545 votes. The lead is especially notable because O.C.’s Vietnamese community has, until recently, been considered reliably Republican, and because Steel won against her previous Democratic challenger, in 2022, by more than 10,000 votes.

If Tran’s lead holds, it could be an indication that Asian American voters in O.C. are moving toward the political center or even left, Gould said. Several other factors could be at play in Tran’s lead, Gould said, including that Tran is Vietnamese American (Steel is Korean American) and has roots in the community — his parents, like most of their generation in Little Saigon, fled the Communist regime and settled in O.C.

Political consultant Mike Madrid noted that Tran is getting a large percentage of votes even in some previously “hardcore” GOP strongholds in Little Saigon. “That's, like, crazy,” he said.

Madrid said it shows that ethnicity and corresponding political leanings are not static.

“Ethnicity changes generationally,” he said.

Non-U.S. citizen voting bombed in Santa Ana

Among the closest watched ballot initiatives in O.C. was Measure DD, which would have allowed non-U.S. citizens in Santa Ana to vote in city elections. Had it passed, Santa Ana would have become the first city in California to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in its municipal elections. (Non-U.S. citizens in San Francisco and Oakland can vote in school board elections.)

It was, in part, a test case of the Santa Ana City Council’s increasingly liberal agenda, and of Latino voters’ willingness to extend voting rights to their non-citizen neighbors (the city’s population is nearly 80% Latino/Latina, according to census data).

The measure was defeated, with nearly 60% of the votes. Madrid said the results were simultaneously “jaw-dropping” and not all that surprising.

“Latino voter attitudes on immigration are profoundly, profoundly different than they were a generation ago,” he said.

Whereas previous generations of Latino voters were made up of many more foreign-born, naturalized citizens, today, most Latino voters in O.C. were born in the U.S. and have different concerns. “They're not animated at all by the immigration issue, they're residents,” he said.

Local tax hikes won big

All of the school bonds and the majority of local tax hikes on the November ballot passed with comfortable margins. Gould said the results show the county today is a far cry from the tax-allergic Republican stronghold of old.

“Orange County is not the county you all think it is,” he said, sounding a bit exasperated. Plus, he said approving of taxes at the local level is different than at the state or federal level.

“These are things that matter to people in their day-to-day lives here in the county and it shows that people are willing to spend money to improve the quality of life where they live,” he said.

Madrid called O.C.’s anti-tax reputation “a relic of Reagan country, of Orange County in the 80s,” he said. Plus, he noted, President-elect Donald Trump “ran on the largest tariff, meaning tax, increase in the history of the country,” referring to Trump’s promise to tax Chinese imports. “And he won overwhelmingly with Republicans,” Madrid said. “So the idea that Republicans won't vote for taxes … those days are gone.”

Republicans solidified their grip on Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach voters appear to have ousted three incumbents in favor of a staunchly conservative slate of newcomers. Candidates Chad Williams, Butch Twining, and Don Kennedy — self-dubbed the “HB3” — will replace the city council’s left-leaning, minority block: Dan Kalmick, Natalie Moser and Rhonda Bolton.

They’ll join the four-person council majority that, since elected in 2022, has banned flying the Pride flag on city property, restricted children’s access to library books about puberty, voted to require ID at the polls, and repeatedly clashed with the state over housing law.

Republicans make up 41% of registered voters in the city.

Huntington Beach is the largest city in O.C. that doesn’t have district elections, meaning members are elected through citywide votes (a practice the city is getting sued for in an effort to force it to switch to district elections). This election, voters had the option of choosing three out of eight candidates.

The crowded field meant there were multiple ways to “split” the vote — which is when usually smaller or similar candidates draw support away from major ones, making it more challenging to win. At last count, the “HB3” members had a little over half of total votes combined. Williams had the highest percentage at 19.33%.

This is the city’s first major election since the council significantly upped the campaign contribution limit in local races — from $620 to now $5,500 for individual donors. Huntington Beach already had a conservative majority on the council, but now it looks like it’ll be full-steam ahead on what Madrid described as “culture war” issues. You’ll likely see less, if any, split council votes.

Apart from housing and voter access, there’s also the yet-to-start parent-guardian review board for children’s library books (with a related lawsuit there), and another challenge to the state’s lawprohibiting schools from requiring teachers to disclose a kids’ gender identity to their parents.

Updated November 14, 2026 at 13:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON— Friday's nationwide ground stop started when a contractor updated old Federal Aviation Administration telecommunication lines, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday.

Tens of thousands of passengers across the U.S. are still stranded Saturday after the rare ground stop. Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator who joined Duffy at Saturday's media briefing, said schedule problems should be resolved by Sunday evening.

Nearly 25,000 flights were delayed, and over 9,000 were cancelled on Friday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking site. The disruption seeped into Saturday morning with more than 4,000 cancellations recorded, which is 18% of flights departing the U.S., according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

L3Harris, a long time contractor for the FAA, was doing routine maintenance in at least one remote location changing copper wire to fiber optics, Duffy said. "When I tell you that we're using old equipment, we're using old equipment," he said.

He said the FAA is still investigating the exact error that started flooding other routers in the air traffic control system, and if L3Harris was at all responsible.

"It's pretty straightforward work that we were doing yesterday at, again, a very remote location. So what we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error, installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?"

L3Harris did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

These updates have been happening in American institutions for decades, Duffy said.

"Virtually every single institution in America has gone from copper to fiber, from analog to digital," Duffy said. "Just maybe the FAA is the last one to be doing this work because the investments haven't been made, but this is not complicated."

Bedford said there was no evidence of anything nefarious happening or any AI-related issues.

Since his time in office, Duffy said he's been asking Congress for money to make more upgrades. In July 2025, Congress approved $12.5 billion to modernize the nation's aging air traffic control system.

With that money, 70% of copper communications have been replaced to high-speed fiber, Bedford said. Duffy called the innovations and the need for more a "bipartisan moment."

"This is the moment, if we don't start to switch out our systems, when, how long are we going to wait, America, and Congress?" Duffy asked.

Thousands of passengers miss flights

Passengers wait at boarding gates at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC on November 13, 2026.

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Zina Desmazes

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AFP via Getty Images

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For about four hours on Friday, thousands of flights at U.S. airports were grounded in one of the biggest disruptions of the nation's air travel system since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

The aviation system is back online and slowly returning to normal Saturday morning, but delays and cancellations will continue, Duffy said. Bedford said all passengers will be put on new flights or they'll get a full refund, but that people should reach out to their airlines directly.

Flight boards at airports across the country Saturday morning continued to be riddled with red cancelled marks. At Tampa International Airport in Florida, people in the main terminal area before security curled up in chairs to grab a wink of sleep.

On Friday night, a flight board at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in D.C. showed dozens of flights delayed into the early morning hours or cancelled.

Passengers Erin and Jake Britt spent half the day at the airport in D.C. on Friday. Their plane to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. boarded at 3 p.m. By 5:30 p.m., they were getting off the plane — but they were still in D.C.

"Overall, our plane was definitely annoyed, but reasonable," Erin Britt said, as the couple left the airport at 8 p.m. "People being upset and asking like, 'Well, how are you not prepared for this?' And it was like, 'Well, no one was prepared.'"

She said neither the pilot nor flight attendants had any more information than passengers."They seem just as in the dark," she said.

The pair decided to cancel their weekend trip, but the night didn't end there. They spent over nine hours overnight waiting on the JetBlue customer service call line to be reimbursed. "I was setting alarms in 20 minute intervals in case I fell asleep," Erin Britt said.

For people who had events or plans over the weekend – the delay added an extra layer of stress. Joe Romano and Maddie Cabana had a cruise leaving Orlando, Fla. Saturday afternoon.

"It was a big eye roll. I mean, I travel a lot for work already, so I'm constantly dealing with flight delays," Romano said. "When this happened, I was just like, 'Of course, it always happens to me.'"

"Just rather inconvenient and frustrating," Cabana added, as the pair contemplated checking their bags or going home. They even thought about driving to Florida. "Hopefully, everything will be fine. It'll all work out. It always does."

And it did— eventually. After their JetBlue flight was ultimately cancelled, they quickly booked another one on Southwest Airlines and made it early Saturday morning.

Others, like Suze DiPietro decided flying wasn't worth it anymore. Her husband drove about four hours down from Ocean City, New Jersey to pick her up in D.C. Luckily, they had friends in the area where they spent the night.

"My husband, my hero, is driving down from New Jersey to come get me," DiPietro said.

Other alternatives included people switching to Amtrak trains as they struggled to get to their destination. Although, even Amtrak's system had a brief outage Friday night.

This was only the second nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001. The U.S. last issued a ground stop of this scale in 2023, when all U.S. airports were shut down due to an outage in the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which alerts pilots and airports of real-time hazards.

That outage prompted fears of a cyberattack, but the FAA later determined the issue was caused when contract workers inadvertently deleted critical files.

The FAA has recently begun rolling out an AI-enhanced software tool known as the SMART system as part of its ambitious overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system. But Air Space Intelligence, the company that makes the tool, quickly dismissed speculation that its product could be connected to the flight disruptions.

"The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC," the company said on social media.

Ava Pukatch contributed to reporting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Eggs from the first confirmed sea turtle nests found on the U.S. West Coast have hatched.

"We are excited to share that some of the olive ridley sea turtle eggs from Seal Beach successfully hatched after a 58-day incubation period," said the Aquarium of the Pacific in a social media post.

The Long Beach-based aquarium has been keeping watch over 204 olive ridley sea turtle eggs, laid on Seal Beach and Huntington Beach in September. A second set of eggs found on Huntington Beach is still incubating

The aquarium said the hatchlings were released early Saturday morning in a coastal area with little light and human disturbances.

Baby turtles, the aquarium said, go through a “frenzy period” after hatching, where they swim nonstop for up to two days

The eggs came from the first confirmed sea turtle nests found on the U.S. West Coast. Scientists say unusually warming water tied to El Niño likely drew the rare turtles to the Southern California coast.

If you happen to see 600 people snaking down 14.3 miles of Santa Monica Boulevard (and then some) on Saturday, Nov. 21 — their sole purpose is just to … walk.

“For years people were asking us, ‘What are you doing?’” said Michael Schneider, founder of the Great Los Angeles Walk.

These strolls are maximalist in nature, usually covering the entire length of a given thoroughfare. Sunset Boulevard. Melrose Avenue. Ventura Boulevard.

The inaugural Great L.A. Walk in 2006 along Wilshire Boulevard.

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How the walk began 

The pre-Thanksgiving tradition started in 2006 with Wilshire Boulevard. Schneider, who had reached the milestone of living in L.A. for a decade, was inspired by a book about the street’s history to walk its entire 15.8 miles on foot. He asked others to join on his blog Franklin Avenue.

About two dozen people showed up. That day, they popped into storefronts, stopped by restaurants, sneaked into the Park Plaza Hotel near MacArthur Park and shot up to the roof. “That kind of unearthed a whole new side of Los Angeles as we walked down Wilshire,” he said.

By the time the trek reached the ocean, folks were asking Schneider about next year. Now, it's always on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

“I inadvertently turned it into an annual tradition,” he said.

The 2016 edition of Great L.A. Walk along Pico Boulevard.

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Courtesy Great Los Angeles Walk

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The 2007 installment was Pico Boulevard — with restaurant recommendations along the route handpicked by the late Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold.

Eventually, Schneider included themed walks. March of Los Pobladores — which retraces the final leg of the 1781 journey taken by the original founders of L.A. — from the San Gabriel Mission to downtown. And USC to UCLA when the rivals faced off on game day.

This year’s route: Route 66 

This year's theme is Route 66.

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Google map screengrab

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This year’s focus is Route 66, marking the centennial of the iconic road. Saturday's walk will start in Echo Park, then go the whole way down Santa Monica Boulevard and end at the pier, totaling about 16 miles.

“You see so many different versions of Los Angeles,” he said.

Michael Schneider, founder of the Great L.A. Walk, at last year's trot along Wilshire Boulevard.

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Courtesy Great Los Angeles Walk

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Celebrity sightings and a marquee shout-out 

One year, he said, the group walked by Magic Johnson.

“He waved at us," Schneider said. "Probably was wondering why [there were] hundreds of people walking past where he was."

As many as 600 people now join the walk, he said. As the number grows, so too has its legend.

“Now we find a lot of people who know who we are,” he said. “You hear people say, ‘Hey, it's the Great L.A. Walk.”

A couple of decades ago, a friend in New York told me about something happening that was kinda underground and just getting traction. It was called “The Moth.” People took turns telling a true, personal story, with no notes, named after the Southern tradition of sitting on front porches and sharing spellbinding tales — with moths flying mesmerized around the porchlight.

It sounded amazing. And terrifying. I filed it under the same list as bungee jumping — no doubt exhilarating but something I’d never do — and got on with my life. Over the years, as it grew bigger and bigger, I went to several Moth events in different cities, and was always so impressed with the storytellers — and equally adamant I’d never do it.

Cut to this September, when a message went out to all the staff at LAist. We’re a media sponsor of The Moth, and an event, a open mike StorySLAM, was coming up in Silver Lake. There were a few tickets available. Did anyone want one? The theme was "Divas." Sure, I thought. I’d go watch. It's always fun.

Nagging thought

As the days went by, the same thought kept nagging at me. How about getting on stage yourself? No, I thought. Too risky. But this time there was another thought, even more vehement. Why are you being held hostage by fear? Life is too short. If you want to do something, you just have to do it. And this opportunity has just fallen into your lap.

So when the day came, I went to the event, and put my name in the hat. Would I be picked? I sat there with sweaty palms as the show started and people came up tell their own funny, moving, poignant stories.

Finally, near the end of the show, my name was called out. Gulp. I walked on stage to the mic, and began telling my story.

“Some years ago I was a BBC radio producer. A show host and I were at Albuquerque airport, on our way to Los Alamos to do interviews about the Manhattan project. But when we got to the gate, it was closed. They’d boarded the plane 15 minutes early. We couldn't believe it. There was only one plane per day and we'd flown in from London and were on a tight schedule. What should we do?”

Holding their breath

It was a strange experience, simultaneously storytelling while looking at the audience and scanning for their reactions. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.... and were holding their breath, waiting to see what came next.

“I could see the plane on the tarmac, one of those regional planes with propellers, on the other side of an alarmed emergency exit door. So I decided, in the heat of the moment, to push it open, and started dashing across the tarmac, yelling for the host to follow me. Security men began running towards me from every direction as the alarm blared loudly.”

The audience was laughing with delight and disbelief, and I was laughing, too, at the recollection. What on earth had made me do that? Ah, my young, impulsive, determined self. Just as well it wasn’t today, post 9/11. I’d be dead.

“As I reached the plane, the security men were shouting 'What are you doing? You can’t run onto the tarmac!' That’s when the diva part came in. I drew myself up to my full 5’ 2” and said, determinedly, 'No, YOU were the ones who boarded the plane early. We did everything right! We have our tickets, we have interviews to do and we are going to get on this plane.'"

The security men looked at each other, unsure what to do. Maybe it was the British accent, or not being used to a woman giving them a dressing down. But one of them shrugged, moved out of the way, and they let us get on the plane. "Hurray! And we made it to Los Alamos, in time to do our interviews. Thank you.”

The audience went crazy, clapping and whooping. I was standing there grinning stupidly. I couldn’t believe I’d done it.

Yes, the story went down well. And the audience hadn't eaten me alive. But there was something bigger, something even more satisfying in my reaction. I’d had made myself do something I was scared of. I'd faced my demons.... and survived.

A lesson for us all.