The Brief

A nonprofit at the center of an LAist investigation of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do has missed another deadline to account for over $3 million in taxpayer dollars Do gave the group to feed needy seniors during the pandemic.

Viet America Society has faced scrutiny since LAist reporting found numerous records listing Supervisor Do’s then-22-year-old daughter as a top leader. Do did not disclose the family relationship publicly or to at least three of his four fellow county supervisors.

It’s unclear what exactly happened with the money. The nonprofit was required to submit audits to the county each year confirming it was spent appropriately and that financial records were accurate.

The first was due two years ago. It still hasn’t been turned in.

For the past year, county staff have been asking the nonprofit for a copy of the required audit, according to public records.

In February, the county warned the nonprofit that it could be required to pay millions back to the county if it didn’t provide the audit and other required records about how the money was spent.

The audit deadline ultimately was extended to this past Sunday, June 30.

As of Wednesday — three days after it was due — the audit hasn’t been turned in, according to a county spokesperson and the nonprofit’s lawyer. It’s supposed to cover the first two years of the meal contracts: 2021 and 2022.

“The County has not received the single audits,” wrote Alexa Pratt, a spokesperson for the county department that oversaw the contract.

What their lawyer says

Sterling Scott Winchell, the nonprofit’s lawyer, told LAist in an interview Wednesday that the audit will be completed within the next few days. He said the nonprofit has had to create documents to show the auditors what happened with the money.

“There’s still some things, some documents that need to be located. But basically, it’s almost done. So it’s probably going to go over a few days or so,” Winchell said, speaking by phone. “The meals were delivered. The issue has been they haven’t kept the normal accounting for what they’ve done. So they’ve had to basically create the…documentation in the form that an accountant would want to watch and see for an audit.”

Winchell said that the nonprofit also has needed to obtain invoices from the vendors it was paying with the county meals money.

“So they have all the raw materials, but they’ve basically got to assemble it all in a way an accountant can read. But the meals have been delivered.”

“A lot of what’s left is obtaining invoices from the vendors they used, that they don’t have copies [of],” Winchell said.

Winchell, who was hired as Viet America Society’s attorney earlier this year, previously served as Supervisor Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023.

Over $13 million in county funding

At Supervisor Do’s direction, Viet America Society has received more than $9 million from the county to feed needy residents, plus $1 million to build a Vietnam War memorial. He also joined votes to fund up to $3.1 million in mental health subcontracts for the group, all without disclosing his close family connection.

Supervisor Do awarded most of the money to the group after it failed to submit the first required audit, according to county records.

Supervisor Do has not responded to multiple interview requests from LAist over the past six months, including this week. In a November interview with another news outlet, he defended his decisions to award money to his daughter’s group without public disclosure, saying he wasn’t required to disclose his family connection.

While current law bars elected officials from awarding contracts that financially benefit their spouse or minor children, there is no prohibition on benefitting an adult child or other close relatives. Since LAist began reporting on Supervisor Do, two bills, spurred by the investigation, have been introduced in the state legislature by lawmakers who say it’s a loophole that needs to be closed. One bill was approved unanimously in the Senate, the other in the Assembly.

Auditors flagged ‘significant’ risks

Viet America Society eventually hired the accounting firm The Pun Group in early April for the audit, according to a copy of the audit contract, which LAist obtained from the county. The contract states that the audit was expected to be completed by June 30.

The auditors wrote in the contract that while planning for the audit, they found “significant” risks of inaccurate information in the nonprofit’s own records.

“We have identified the following significant risk(s) of material misstatement as part of our audit planning,” the auditors wrote.

Those misstatement risks were listed as “Management override of controls” and “Revenue recognition.”

Pun Group representatives did not return phone calls and emails from LAist this week asking about their work on the audit.

What happened with money paid to subcontractors?

Records show Viet America Society passed on most of the county money for meals to subcontractors in 2021 and 2022. The nonprofit submitted “incomplete” documentation of what happened with those funds, according to a public records response to LAist from the county department that oversees the contracts.

The county had asked for the details as part of its fiscal monitoring of contractors the county paid with federal coronavirus dollars.

County officials, in response to LAist’s public records response, wrote that Viet America Society “rescinded” — or took back — financial documents it had provided the county on May 8 because they were "incomplete” and did not document the performance of all of Viet America Society's subcontractors.

Do’s daughter was listed in leading roles

LAist has obtained nine different public records listing Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s top leaders, including instances of her signatures as VAS’s president on county-funded subcontracts.

Rhiannon Do told LAist in April that she’s no longer affiliated with the group, and had no involvement in the county meals funding Viet America Society received. She said her role was limited to mental health services and a different meals program. She said she was not connected to the millions in coronavirus relief dollars that her father directed to the group.

Public records obtained by LAist show Rhiannon Do signed as the group’s president and represented herself as its executive director, and signed another contract as its president, while the group was still receiving county meals money under one of the contracts currently under scrutiny by the county. Winchell and Rhiannon Do have both disputed that she ever was an officer or director at the nonprofit. Rhiannon has not responded to questions about why multiple records showed otherwise, while Winchell previously has said the documents were not accurate due to apparent “sloppiness” and negligence. He did not say who was responsible.

County seeks answers over six-figure ‘donation’ of taxpayer funds

There’s another set of funding for Viet America Society that the county has been calling into question.

Back in 2020, Supervisor Do provided pandemic meals money for his district to a nonprofit called Hand to Hand Relief Organization, according to county records LAist obtained.

Hand to Hand, in turn, forwarded much of that $1 million to Viet America Society, according to a county review and a financial ledger Hand to Hand submitted to the county. The ledger, which LAist obtained through a public records request, shows Hand to Hand paid Viet America Society $626,667 that year. It was labeled as “Donation” and “Program Services,” with no other description.

In February, county staff issued demand letters to Hand to Hand finding that it failed to submit a required audit and to document the services it was paid to provide. It also found Hand to Hand failed to follow requirements to document what Viet America Society was doing for the payments it received as the subcontractor.

The county demanded a plan to fix these issues by mid March, warning that the group could have to repay the money if it didn’t account for what happened with it.

Hand to Hand still has not provided any of those required documents, according to Pratt, the county department spokesperson, in an emailed response to LAist’s questions this week.

Hand to Hand’s leader, Thanh Huong Nguyen, didn’t return a voicemail message Wednesday asking about it.

After Do directed the initial $1 million to Hand to Hand in 2020, he went on to direct an additional $2 million in meals money to the group in late 2022. Both rounds of money were funded by federal coronavirus dollars that came to the county.

Asked what county officials now plan to do, given Hand to Hand’s noncompliance, Pratt said the county “is considering next steps.”

Martial arts star Chuck Norris, who fought his way to fame in such 1980s action movies as The Delta Force, Code of Silence, and a trilogy of Missing in Action films, has died. He was 86.

In a fight, Norris tended to lead with his right…foot.

He all but trademarked a roundhouse kick that villains never seemed to see coming. He'd plant a heel in someone's gut, spin once to knock him off balance with a boot to the chest, spin again to catch the guy's shoulder with his instep, maybe throw in a punch just to vary the rhythm, and finish him off with a high kick to the head.

It was art, and widely imitated, but it did not kick off his career at first. He was knocking around martial arts competitions and teaching celebrity clients in Hollywood, including Priscilla Presley, Bob Barker, and Donny and Marie Osmond, when his pal Bruce Lee gave him his break in films by inviting him to play one of many villains in 1972's The Way of the Dragon.

The film fetishized Norris' hairy chest opposite Lee's smooth one, and he gave a little smirk when he flattened Lee with a roundhouse kick early on. But it was Lee's film, and by scene's end, Norris was toast.

That could've been it, if one of Norris' celebrity students, Steve McQueen, hadn't suggested he take acting lessons. Norris did, and scored the leading role of a put-upon trucker in Breaker! Breaker!, an action flick shot in just 11 days.

It made money, and in a string of indie hits that followed, Norris established himself as America's first homegrown martial arts movie star. At which point, Hollywood studios came calling with bigger budgets, and titles like Forced Vengeance, Silent Rage, Lone Wolf McQuade, and Invasion U.S.A. In that one, Norris played a mercenary combatting a Soviet-led terrorist army that lands in Florida at Christmastime, taunting foes with lines like, "If you come back in here, I'm gonna hit you with so many rights, you're gonna beg for a left."

He karate chopped and kickboxed his way through more than a dozen action films in the '80s before leaping to TV, where he played Sergeant Cordell Walker, a decorated Vietnam veteran with Cherokee ancestry who championed the "Code of the Old West" in about 200 episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Though a mostly non-verbal tough guy was his go-to role on screen, offscreen he established philanthropies for children and veterans, became a nationally-syndicated health and fitness columnist, got active in Republican politics, and wrote about 10 books including not just martial arts manuals, but two memoirs, two novels, and a conservative activist handbook called Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America.

At his home in Texas, he continued to work out and train well into his 80s. And though mostly retired in recent years, he was amused to find himself the subject of internet memes, "Chuck Norris Facts" that celebrated his supposed toughness with hyperbole and exaggeration.

"Did you know that I got bit by a king cobra?" he asks in one video, adding with a chuckle, "and after five days of agonizing pain, the cobra died."

Digital edited by Jennifer Vanasco; audio edited by Matteen Mokalla.
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The Trump administration announced Thursday a three-phase transition that will move significant management of and responsibility for the nation's federal student loan portfolio from the U.S. Education Department to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The administration says the Treasury Department is better equipped to, among other things, help millions of borrowers who are in default return to repayment on their loans, though the move is also political: The latest sign of President Donald Trump's efforts to close the Education Department.

"As the Federal student aid portfolio soars to nearly $1.7 trillion and with nearly a quarter of student loan borrowers in default, Americans know that the Department of Education has failed to effectively manage and deliver these critical programs," said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a press release. "By leveraging Treasury's world-renowned expertise in finance and economic policy, we are confident that American students, borrowers and taxpayers will finally have functioning programs after decades of mismanagement."

More than 40 million borrowers hold federal student loans.

According to the interagency agreement obtained by NPR, the deal's first phase will see Treasury resuming control of collecting on defaulted student loans, an authority it has long held but deferred to the Education Department. A senior Education Department official told reporters that 9.2 million borrowers were in default as of the beginning of March, with another 2.4 million in late-stage delinquency on their payments.

The agreement's second phase expands Treasury's management beyond defaulted loans to include servicing much of what's left, even the Education Department's non-defaulted debts, "to the extent practicable, following Treasury's assessment of the portfolio and its operations."

The third and final phase would see Treasury take over key responsibilities beyond the handling of current loans, assuming administration of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which students are required to complete if they want to receive federal financial aid.

The Treasury Department already plays an important role in the FAFSA, using its data-retrieval tool to expedite the once-onerous income-verification process for families.

It was nearly one year ago that President Trump suggested a very different move – that the Small Business Administration (SBA) would assume responsibility for the student loan portfolio. It's unclear why the administration changed its thinking and pivoted to the Treasury Department.

This is the 10th interagency agreement the administration has reached to disperse large swaths of the work of the Education Department to other agencies.

"The Trump Administration continues to unlawfully dismantle the Education Department by moving programs and offices to other federal agencies despite clear warning from Congress that Education Secretary Linda McMahon lacks the authority to do so," said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents more than 2,000 current and former employees at the U.S. Department of Education.

In response to an NPR question, a senior Education Department official acknowledged that, as was the case with many of those previous agreements, the Treasury Department cannot fully assume all the Education Department's statutory student loan obligations. The official said the department will be wound down to the extent allowable by law and that Education Secretary Linda McMahon understands that "Congress is the only entity that can close the Department."

As for what impact this may have on borrowers, the department officials told reporters: "You should see no change. This should be seamless."

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said it had approved the merger of local television giants Nexstar Media Group and rival Tegna, the same day that two lawsuits trying to block the deal were announced.

Nexstar said last August that it would buy Tegna for $6.2 billion. The deal would create a company that owns 265 television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, most of them local affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the company had agreed to divest itself of six of those stations.

The deal needed the approval of the Republican Trump administration's FCC because the government had to waive rules that limit how many local stations that one company can own. Nexstar said it had also received approval from the Justice Department, but attempts to independently confirm that were not immediately successful Thursday.

"We are grateful to President Trump, Chairman Carr and the DOJ for recognizing the dynamic forces shaping the media landscape and allowing this transaction to move forward," said Perry Sook, Nexstar's chairman and CEO.

Attorneys general in eight states and DirecTV filed lawsuits with the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California, seeking to block the merger. The lawsuits make similar arguments that the deal will lead to higher prices for consumers and stifle local journalism.

The action was filed by the top lawyers in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia — all of them Democrats. "If this merger moves forward, cable prices will spike for consumers in New York and across the country," said Letitia James, New York attorney general, on Thursday. The state lawyers argued the merger would run afoul of federal laws designed to protect against monopolies.

Similarly, DirecTV predicted the deal would allow Nexstar to jack up the price it can extract from DirecTV and other distributors to carry their stations, "which will force them to raise prices to their subscribers."

Given Nexstar's tendency to consolidate newsrooms in communities where it owns more than one station, both lawsuits expressed concern that the merger would hurt the already struggling local news business. There are 31 markets across the country where Nexstar and Tegna own at least one station, according to the states' lawsuit.

In approving the deal, Carr said that "if you care about local news, you should care about the future of local broadcast stations." He said the deal will ensure that the broadcasters have the resources to continue investing in those operations. Sook, too, said Nexstar will be a stronger company, "better positioned to deliver exceptional journalism and local programming."

Nexstar had no direct comment on the lawsuits, a spokesman said.

The merger was endorsed in February by President Donald Trump, who wrote on social media that "we need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks."

Anna Gomez, a Democratic member of the FCC, condemned the Republican-controlled agency's decision, saying it was done behind closed doors without an actual vote.

"Local journalism is under extraordinary strain," she said. "Across the country newsrooms are being consolidated, reporters laid off and editorial decisions made far from the communities broadcast stations are licensed to serve. The Nexstar-Tegna merger will accelerate exactly that trend, concentrating broadcast power in fewer corporate hands, shrinking independent editorial voices and prioritizing national business interests over local needs."

Nexstar flexed its muscles last fall in ordering its ABC stations to yank late-night host Jimmy Kimmel following comments he made about assassinated Republican activist Charlie Kirk, briefly leading to Kimmel's suspension. But ABC brought Kimmel back following an outcry, and Nexstar backed down.

The attorneys general said they were open to having other states support their actions — even those whose chief legal officials are Republicans.

Copyright 2026 NPR