The Brief

An Orange County nonprofit that got millions in pandemic relief funds earmarked to feed struggling seniors failed to submit federally-required yearly audits detailing how it spent that taxpayer money, according to public records obtained by LAist.

The organization has been led at various points over the last year by the 22-year-old daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do. Do voted to direct funds to the group without publicly disclosing his close family relationship. State law allows officials to knowingly award taxpayer money to their adult children — something the state Senate and two Assembly committees voted unanimously in 2016 to make a crime. But the bill never made it to a full Assembly vote.

The money was part of O.C.’s allocation from a wave of pandemic relief funding for local governments provided by Congress under the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. County supervisors each got to allocate part of that money to meal programs in their districts, and Do directed his district’s funding to a nonprofit that was new at the time, Viet America Society.

The missing audits are “a really excellent example of the failure to monitor at the county level,” said Rose Chan Loui, a longtime attorney for nonprofits who now directs UCLA Law School’s program on philanthropy and nonprofits.

“If they would have been required to comply with that, we probably would have a lot more transparency as to what is going on.”

The details of what happened

In April 2021, O.C.’s top elected officials — the Board of Supervisors — voted to devote part of the county’s ARPA funding to feed seniors and people with disabilities who lacked access to sufficient food. The supervisors divided that money equally among each district, with each supervisor then deciding how to spend their district’s funding.

Supervisor Do — who was representing communities with the highest poverty rates in the county — directed his district’s funding to Viet America Society. At Do’s request, the group’s contract was ultimately increased to $4 million in federal funds, split into monthly payments of about $167,000 to cover meal services from May 2021 through May 2023.

Viet America Society has been led at various points over the last year by Do’s 22-year-old daughter, Rhiannon Do, according to a tax filing and other records. It’s a family relationship Do did not disclose before key votes on the group’s funding, according to an LAist review of meeting videos and three county officials — two supervisors and county CEO Frank Kim.

The group was initially led by Peter Pham, an electrical contractor and restaurateur. Before founding the nonprofit in mid-2020, Pham was paid about $21,000 — largely raised by Do — for construction work on statues Do had installed in Fountain Valley in 2015 and 2016, according to a state investigation.

More recently, Pham has alternated with Rhiannon Do as president of Viet America Society since last December, according to public records.

It’s unknown how much of the $4 million in taxpayer money went to meals for those who needed them. Records obtained by LAist through a public records request show the nonprofit failed to submit federally-required audits that would detail how it spent the money.

Andrew Do, Rhiannon Do, and Pham did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment for this article. The Dos previously declined to comment on reporting by LAist on other funding Do helped direct to the nonprofit. Andrew Do denied wrongdoing in an interview with City News Service in late November.

Pham initially told LAist last month that he would be available for an interview, but has not returned multiple follow-up calls and text messages to schedule it.

The audit requirement was spelled out in a county contract with Viet America Society that Pham signed in May 2021. It states the nonprofit was required under federal law to conduct an annual audit of how the funds were spent, known as a “single audit,” once it spends more than $750,000 of the funding.

Single audits look at a nonprofit’s finances to make sure they’re using federal dollars for their intended purpose and have an accounting system to accurately document the spending, according to the federal government. They’re “the single most important way” to assess an organization’s ability to manage federal dollars, federal officials say.

Deadlines for filing two of those audits with the county and federal authorities were missed by Viet America Society, according to public records. The first was due to be filed to the county by late June 2022 and the second in June 2023, according to the county contract. And a federal spokesperson told LAist the audits were required to be uploaded to a public database within nine months of the audit period, which corresponds to a deadline of the end of September last year and this year.

But the audits do not show up in that federal database.

And weeks after first being asked by LAist in November, county officials have not answered whether the audits were submitted to the county, as required by the contract. Viet America Society also was unable to provide copies of either audit to the county in October of this year, according to email records. A consultant to the group told LAist they hadn’t been completed at that point.

Viet America Society is the county’s only private contractor for this pandemic meals program that does not have single audits on file in the federal database. The others — Meals on Wheels Orange County, 2-1-1 Orange County and AgeWell Senior Services — all have their audits in the database for the last two years.

Tax records also indicate neither audit of Viet America Society was conducted, at least as of this October. Despite its county contract requiring the single audits — “in accordance with” federal law — the nonprofit marked on its tax filings for the last two years that the audits were not required — and left blank whether they were conducted.

If any such audits exist, a county spokesperson said, they will be provided in response to a records request LAist submitted over three weeks ago.

LAist also asked county spokespeople if the county has received any accounting at all of how Viet America Society spent the $4 million the county provided for these meal services. They have not provided an answer. The contract terms require the single audits to be submitted to the county, as well as a final financial statement “detailing all program expenditures.” The financial statement was required to be submitted to the county within 30 days of the contract ending on May 31, 2023.

[Click here to read the contract and amendments.]

Group withdrew when asked for copies of audits

Two months ago, in October, the county required Viet America Society to submit its single audits for the last two years as part of an application for new county funding in a competitive bidding process. In contrast, the group’s previous county contracts were not subject to competitive bidding, according to county records LAist obtained.

A Viet America Society representative told the county that the group was unable to provide copies of those audits, according to emails LAist obtained through a public records request.

Those emails show that after obtaining a one-week extension from the county to disclose the audits in its application, the representative told the county that neither audit could be provided by the extended deadline. And the group withdrew from seeking the new funding.

“I have checked with Peter Pham at VAS and due to the deadline of Friday he could not commit to meet it,” wrote the nonprofit’s representative, Roger Faubel.

“With many thanks, we must withdraw our pursuit.”

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That representative, Roger Faubel, told LAist that Pham, the nonprofit’s founder and on-and-off president, had told him in October that the audits hadn’t been completed.

“I talked to Peter, and I said, ‘Peter, you know you can’t do this. It’s unraveling here,'” said Faubel, a high-profile county lobbyist, in an interview.

Viet America Society had only gotten part way through the audit process by that point, Faubel told LAist.

“You say that you can meet the timeframe, but it’s not occurring,” Faubel said he told Pham, recommending that he withdraw from seeking the new funding. Emails show Faubel followed up by letting the county know Viet America Society was withdrawing from consideration.

“I realized that he could not comply with all of the information that was required of him,” Faubel said.

In an email to county officials, Faubel said he was Viet America Society’s consultant. He told LAist he didn’t register as the nonprofit’s lobbyist because he wasn’t paid for helping, so he wasn’t required to register as its lobbyist under county regulations.

Faubel’s clients have included AT&T, Waste Management and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Faubel also lobbied the county on behalf of the landlord for both Viet America Society and Do’s private law office, according to lobbying disclosures by Faubel. The nonprofit and Do’s law office are on the same floor of the same building.

The October emails about audits not being available took place within days of Do’s daughter being marked as the group’s only director or trustee on its tax filing.

What happens when audits are missed

Nonprofits can face consequences for not submitting their single audits. When it comes to money given directly by the federal government, federal agencies can halt funding until a nonprofit completes their audits, or even cancel the federal dollars altogether.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department, which awarded the federal funding the county provided Viet America Society, told LAist in an email that the county is responsible for making sure the nonprofit follows the audit requirements.

“All recipients are required to provide detailed information on how funds are used,” a Treasury spokesperson said of the ARPA dollars that flowed through local governments.

“It is the recipients’ responsibility (in this case, assumably, Orange County) to ensure compliance of their subrecipients,” they added. Viet America Society was a subrecipient.

The county’s contract — pointing to federal law — obligated the nonprofit to submit annual single audits once it spent more than $750,000 in federal funding. That would require audits so far for 2021 and 2022.

County officials can take action if organizations breach their contract terms. In the past, they’ve taken steps like having contractors refund the county from money already provided.

When O.C. Supervisor Katrina Foley was told of the missing audits by LAist, she said she found the situation frustrating.

The audits, she said in an interview, are “a requirement of law so that we ensure that taxpayer dollars are being well spent and used for the purpose they were intended.”

“I’m disappointed that this is happening,” she added. “Because there are those of us that are really doing work to make sure that there’s equity in the way that grants are given out” and that audit requirements are followed.

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento has called for an investigation into Do. The other two county supervisors, Doug Chaffee and Don Wagner, didn’t return messages for comment on this story. They previously have said they see nothing wrong with Do’s actions.

Tax filings show $276,000 in taxpayer money went unspent

The nonprofit’s tax filings show it grew its cash on hand by $276,000 in 2021 by not spending all of the government funding it received that year — all of which appears to have been paid specifically by the county for the group to provide meals to vulnerable people. That year, the group billed the county monthly for providing meals to vulnerable people.

The county contract, however, required the group to return any funds that were not spent on services.

Additionally, the county meals contracts required Viet America Society to disclose how many meals were provided and the number of meal deliveries. But invoice records obtained by LAist show that for the first 15 months, the nonprofit did not do so on its regular invoices — for which the county paid $2 million during that period.

The only detail given in invoices for charges across that 15-month period was "Services for the County of Orange Nutritional Gap Program," according to records LAist obtained through its records request to the county.

Click to see the invoices

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LAist asked county spokespeople about the lack of disclosure, and why the county apparently did not enforce this contract requirement. No answers have been provided.

‘Serious concerns’ raised early on about the group’s legal status

Email records obtained by LAist also show a county contract administrator raised concerns three years ago about plans to contract with Viet America Society to provide meals — largely because of its inability to show it was legally registered as a nonprofit.

A county executive approved the funding anyway, emails show. That executive, Dylan Wright, and county spokespeople have not answered questions about why he decided to proceed despite the concerns, and whether Do had a role in that decision. The county went on to pay more than $3 million to the organization over the next two years before it registered with state nonprofit regulators as required by law.

The first $2 million of that money was directed by Do to Viet America Society outside public meetings, under the meal funding for his district. The rest was approved by Do and other supervisors, at Do’s request, in an April 2022 extension of the group’s contract.

“I have serious concerns about issuing a contract to this organization that appears to be a home based business and can’t verify their non-profit status,” wrote Heather Condon, a county contract administrator who was processing the group’s first county contract, in an email to other officials at her department on Dec. 23, 2020.

She then asked her colleagues if Viet America Society had been approved at the state level as a nonprofit. Follow-up emails show the concerns were raised up the chain that day directly to Wright.

State Attorney General records reviewed by LAist show no registration until two years later, in January 2023. And even then, state regulators said the group was still not in compliance.

After learning of the legal status concerns in December 2020, Wright decided later that same day to move forward, according to the emails. The emails back do not show an explanation back to Condon responding to her specific concerns.

Condon told LAist she never received an explanation addressing her concerns.

“Just a direction to proceed,” said Condon, who retired from the county earlier this year.

“I don’t know what went on in the discussions to go ahead and approve issuing the contract.”

The state charity registration is required in order for the state attorney general to ensure nonprofits are doing the work they said they’d do when they obtained their nonprofit tax exemption, said Chan Loui of UCLA Law School.

“It’s essentially your pact with the public,” she said.

“You’re getting benefits as a nonprofit from the state of California, and the attorney general is charged with making sure that those funds are in fact being used for public good,” she added.

“The attorney general can’t do their job if you’re not filing.”

Foley, the county supervisor, told LAist it’s important that the county is only paying entities that can legally receive the money. Foley said she’s worked hard to make sure that the nonprofits she directed funding to were in compliance with legal requirements.

“No matter what kind of contract we're entering into with the county, we need to be entering into these agreements with organizations that are lawfully able to partner with the county agency,” she said.

“I feel like we have to have standards. Right?” she added.

State law requires nonprofits to register with the attorney general within 30 days of receiving assets. It took Viet America Society over two years to do that, according to disclosures it later filed.

Even after it registered, the attorney general found the nonprofit still was not legally compliant because it hadn’t filed its long-overdue annual registration and financial disclosures for 2020.

This April, the group was declared delinquent by the AG’s office, which stated at the time that Viet America Society was “prohibited” from seeking or spending funds.

While the group was still declared delinquent, Do voted for another $2.5 million in county funding for his daughter’s group, without disclosing the family connection. Viet America Society resolved its status in June when the AG’s office received its overdue 2020 paperwork, according to the AG’s records.

Supervisors to vote on new policy to require family member disclosure

Supervisor Sarmiento is proposing county ethics reforms that would require supervisors to disclose any family relationships to people or groups seeking county funding approvals that come before them. It would also require more public transparency about who supervisors divvy up their districts’ discretionary funding to, by posting online a quarterly log of all agreements that have been approved.

“As elected officials, we have an obligation to be as transparent as possible with the public and disclose any potential conflicts of interest, especially when voting to spend taxpayer dollars,” Sarmiento said in a statement to LAist.

That item will be up for a vote at Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, which starts at 9:30 a.m.

After three years of unprecedented closures that devastated California’s fishing industry, commercial salmon fishing is poised to reopen this spring.

The return comes with a catch: Regulators at the interstate Pacific Fishery Management Council will strictly constrain fishing dates and impose harvest limits for both commercial and recreational fishing to protect the threatened California Coastal Chinook. The council is set to finalize the details this weekend.

It’s not the season the fleet had hoped for after years of closures. But those who survived the shutdowns fear a graver threat: state and federal decisions could reshape California’s water systems and rivers.

“Water policy in California is about to change drastically and irreversibly, and nobody has the energy to pay attention to that,” said Sarah Bates, who fishes commercially from San Francisco. “I am concerned that salmon is going to be (commercially) extinct in our lifetimes.”

For the first time since 2022, Bates was preparing her century-old boat, the Bounty, docked at Fisherman’s Wharf. She ticked off the boat’s needs: an oil change, a hydraulics check, a run-through of the steering system, the anchor. Her fading fishing permit, now four years out of date, still clings to the outside of the cabin.

“Pay no attention to my paint job,” Bates said. “Try not to make my boat look bad.”

Looking at its cracking paint and tangled ropes, Bates — who wrestles waves and weather for a living and uses a fishing float dented by a massive shark bite — seemed a little daunted by the tasks ahead.

Without income from salmon, Bates allowed critical upkeep to lag. “There's been a lot of deferred maintenance,” she said. “I'm actually a little worried about everybody charging out into the ocean in May to go fishing.”

‘A tremendous, avoidable hit’

Salmon is king in California. It’s what keeps the markets and restaurants buying, the industrial-scale ice machines running, the tourists booking charter boats and visiting the coast.

“It’s iconic,” said retired charter boat captain John Atkinson. “We have people who will fish every week for salmon. And for the other species, they come out once.”

But dams, water diversions, low flows and poor ocean conditions have driven decades of decline.

California experienced its driest three year stretch in history from 2020 through 2022 — worsening that burden and causing populations to plummet. Interstate fisheries managers cancelled commercial salmon fishing for an unprecedented three years in a row, and barred recreational fishing for all but a handful of days last year.

The financial damage was severe. California estimated the closures cost nearly $100 million in lost coastal community and state personal income during the first two years alone.

The fishing industry says these numbers vastly underestimate the economic and human costs: Boats went to the crusher, tourists took their money to other states, suppliers went out of business and fishers fled California or the industry altogether.

“This was a tremendous, avoidable hit. We have survived droughts throughout recent history, but none had impacts this drastic,” Vance Staplin, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said in an email.

First: Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Last: Sunlight pours through a window of the Bounty, a commercial fishing vessel, on March 20, 2026. Photos by Jungho Kim for CalMatters Sarah Bates, a commercial salmon fisher, stands at the wheel of her boat, Bounty, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters California has requested disaster assistance from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. But federal aid has come slowly, and fallen short. The U.S. government has released only $20.6 million, and only for the 2023 closure.

“The entire framework for fishery disasters has to be totally redone,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “We need something that is much faster, that is less political, that doesn’t depend on all the vagaries of multiple federal agencies and congressional appropriations.”

Rain, but little respite

The rains returned in 2023 — bringing the flows and cool water young salmon need to survive and complete their ocean migration.

Now, the Pacific Fishery Management Council projects that roughly 392,000 Sacramento River fall-run Chinook salmon are swimming off the coast. These are the mainstay of California’s salmon fishery — and the forecasts are better than last year’s, though still a fraction of the millions that returned historically. But the limited fishing season is not the respite that the industry had counted on.

“We're happy to get some fishing this year,” Staplin, of the Golden State Salmon Association, said, “but if we want to preserve the businesses and families that define California's coastal and inland salmon economies, we need a little compromise and balance in prioritizing water during droughts.”

A plan or a patch?

Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a plan aimed at protecting salmon from climate change.

The plan received mixed reactions.

Some scientists and members of the fishing community credited state agencies and the Newsom administration with concrete efforts like hatchery upgrades and cutting-edge genetic fish tagging. One$58 million state and federal effort — the Big Notch Project — connected salmon and other fish to prime floodplain habitat in the Yolo Bypass through seasonal gates.

“Anything that can be done is a help right now,” Atkinson said.

But others say that the strategy papers over policies that rob salmon of the cold water they need. California is built around nature-defying engineering that funnels vast amounts of water away from rivers to supply cities and the state’s $60 billion agricultural economy.

“As soon as it stops raining or snowing, we’re going to be back in the same situation with the salmon season closing,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director at The San Francisco Baykeeper. “If we don’t protect river flows and cold water storage, then we’re not protecting salmon.”

Some of the fiercest fights are over the contentious Delta tunnel and Newsom’s controversial deal with major water users, backed by $1.5 billion in state funding, to overhaul how farms and cities take water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the rivers that feed it.

Carson Jeffres, a senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, takes a more moderate view — the effect on salmon will depend on how California agencies manage these projects, but the status quo isn’t an option.

“I just don't see a world where the salmon are prioritized over human water needs — and I think we should plan for it,” he said. “Then that might be a more sustainable place.”

On top of state policies is a Trump administration that called for “Putting People over Fish” and adopted a plan in December to send more Northern California water to Central Valley farms.

State wildlife officials said at the time that President Donald Trump’s actions “run counter” to California’s efforts to improve salmon populations, “harming the California communities that rely on salmon for their livelihood."

California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot acknowledged the state’s finite water supply can’t satisfy everyone’s priorities.

“There’s no shortage of finger pointing by some groups who argue that not enough water is remaining in our rivers for salmon and aquatic habitat, and other groups that suggest that not enough water is being diverted for California communities and agriculture,” Crowfoot said.

“Water management in California,” he said, “involves balancing water across these needs.”

Last year, the Newsom administration announced that nearly 70% of the salmon strategy’s action items were underway, and more than a quarter were already complete.

That’s “crazy math … What is your outcome measure?" said Bates. "For us, our outcome measure is enough fish to go fishing.”

Adapting to survive

In the absence of enough fish, the industry has been piloting new strategies to survive.

Back at Fisherman's Wharf, a few rows over from Bates, Captain Virginia Salvador was getting ready to take a group out to troll for halibut and striped bass. Her French bulldog, Anchovy, wandered the deck between the ropes.

Salvador started her charter boat business, Unforgettable Fishing Adventures, during the salmon shutdown — and had to quickly expand her offerings.

Now, she runs barbecue and barhopping cruises around San Francisco Bay and takes passengers to McCovey Cove during Giants games. She teams up with food influencer Rosalie Bradford Pareja to offer a chef experience. And she still holds down a second job working in a hospital pathology laboratory.

“When you rely on a natural entity for your income, you have to learn how to deviate, pivot, expand,” Salvador said.

Captain Virginia Salvador on her boat, Unforgettable, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters Where the front row of charter boats line the street like storefronts, Bates’ row at Fisherman’s Wharf has the feeling of a neighborhood. One fisherman clambered down the ladder to Bates’ boat, where they swapped great white shark stories. Bates hollered to another neighbor every time a tourist wandered down the dock, bucket in hand, looking to buy fresh crab.

This neighbor, a tattooed and lanky and exhausted fisherman named Shawn Chen Flading, had been out all night. His 12 hour mission to retrieve crab pots turned into a 26 hour ordeal when his throttle cable broke.

At the time Flading bought his boat, before the shutdowns, it looked like a pretty good living.

“A lot of people — the older generation — put their kids through college, bought their homes. And it just disappeared,” Flading said. “I lost basically half my revenue for the past three years straight.”

He tries to fill the gap by advertising on social media and selling Dungeness crab directly off his boat. But the crab season, too, he said, has been disappointing.

Now, salmon fishing is once again on the horizon.

“Whatever limited opportunity we have for salmon, at least we're getting the ball rolling,” Flading said to Bates across the water between their boats, over the San Francisco mix of cars, construction and seagulls. “Without that, we're just stuck.”

Bates, leaning on the railing of her own boat, agreed. “I really understand why people are upset,” she said. “But also, I'm so excited to catch some fish. Even though it's not enough. It’s not even close to enough.”

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

The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission are safely back on Earth after a nine-day mission took them on a trip around the moon and back, sending humans deeper into space than ever before.

To come home safely, the crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — and its capsule had to endure near-record-breaking entry speeds and temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Orion spacecraft spent 13 and a half minutes falling through the atmosphere, hitting a top speed of more than 30 times the speed of sound.

Orion performed as designed. The capsule's heat shield protected the crew, and a series of parachutes helped the capsule gently splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

With that landing, the mission came to a close, clocking more than 700,237 statute miles, said Artemis II entry flight director Rick Henfling.

Four members of the U.S. Navy Dive team pulled the crew from the capsule. Helicopters plucked them from a raft outside their spacecraft — called the porch — and within 24 hours of splashdown, they'll arrive at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We did it. We sent four amazing people to the moon and safely returned them to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years," said NASA's Lori Glaze, who leads the Artemis programs. "To the generation that now knows what we're capable of: Welcome to our moonshot."

The crew's flight path took them around the far side of the moon at around 4,000 miles above the surface.

The crew made a number of geological observations and took thousands of photos to help scientists better understand what the moon is made of – and where it might have come from.

But perhaps the most profound vantage point came from looking back at home.

"Trust me, you are special, in all of this emptiness," said Glover, "This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call The Universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together."

The Artemis II mission was a critical test flight for the Orion spacecraft, which will carry future Artemis astronauts, including those that will venture to the lunar surface.

The crew tested key systems of the spacecraft — its life support system, maneuverability, its heat shield, the toilet. What NASA learns from this flight will set future lunar missions up for success.

"Part of our ethos as a crew, and our values from the very beginning were that this is a relay race," said Koch "In fact, we have batons that we bought to symbolize physically, that we plan to hand them to the next crew, and every single thing that we do is with them in mind."

That next crew will come soon. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman accelerated the Artemis program, charging the agency with launching an Artemis mission each year.

Even before the Artemis II crew splashed down, work had begun at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare for the next mission.

NASA engineering operations manager John Giles oversees the Crawler-Transporter, the massive vehicle that moves the mobile launch pad, and the SLS rocket that launches Orion, from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch site. His team is preparing to move the launch platform for Artemis II back into the Vehicle Assembly Building next week to begin putting together the rocket for Artemis III.

"We really haven't had too much time to relax and reflect on Artemis II, other than thinking what a perfect accomplishment it was," said Giles. "Moving right into Artemis III. No rest for the weary. It's moving on."

A key part of the Artemis III SLS rocket — the core stage fuel tank — is heading to Kennedy Space Center later this month. Parts of the solid rocket motors are already there.

Artemis III aims to launch next year. It'll stay in Earth orbit while testing spacecraft that are designed to land humans on the moon. The following mission, Artemis IV, could bring humans to the lunar surface, for the first time since 1972.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Coachella is the spring break of the music world: a pair of long weekends in the California desert, featuring over 100 acts across eight stages spanning too many genres to count, from vintage groups mounting reunions to the biggest pop stars on the planet to rising talents with viral hits. Nearly the entire event is streamed live via YouTube, starting Friday afternoon, which makes the prospect of catching more acts easier — you don't have to sprint across the grounds of Indio's Empire Polo Club to make it from one set to the next. But even if you're watching from home, the prospect of mapping your route through the weekend in order to catch the greatest possible collection of live experiences can be overwhelming.

To help, three members of NPR Music's team have sifted through the lineup to identify a day-by-day guide. Below, you'll find must-see acts and recommendations to ensure you catch the artists you should prioritize when set times conflict. (Note: All set times listed below are Pacific.)

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FRIDAY

Plan by Dora Levite

Must see:
"Young millionaire, man, I feel like Weezy," says fakemink on his recent EP The Boy who cried Terrified ., a ramp-up to his upcoming album. The 20-year-old London prince of SoundCloud rap has racked up enough well-deserved hype through a steady stream of excellent hyperpop singles and star-studded cosigns (SZA, Drake, Frank Ocean, Ecco2K) to sustain a massive North American tour bookended by Coachella on one side and Lollapalooza on the other.

Naturally, fakemink's hype has sparked a slew of online discourse, which has seemingly had the effect of splitting his fan base in two: day-one devotees who insist the rest of the world is late, and new appreciators who feel their precious attention is what brought him to the global sphere. Regardless of where you fall, this is the must-see set of the day — a chance to hear some of his very best music and to figure out, if you even care, where you stand in his fandom.

Day plan:
The best way to prepare yourself for a day at a music festival is to establish your stage loyalties early. Start with Doom Dave's DJ set at 1 p.m. at the Sonora stage, then release all your pent-up festival anxiety with a cathartic scream when Las Vegas screamo band Febuary takes over.

At 2:10 p.m., I'd watch the Cahuilla Bird Singers and Dancers at the Gobi tent, a Coachella staple for the past few years. At 2:50 p.m., the pop star of the hour, Slayyyter, comes on for her first show with a live band since her excellent new album WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. Head back to the Sonora stage at 3:40 p.m. to catch the majority of Wednesday's set — the North Carolina band released one of the greatest rock albums of 2025 and is a guaranteed stellar live show.

After that, things get complicated. Start with Lykke Li on the Outdoor Theatre stage at 5:20 p.m.; last time she played Coachella in 2015, she was a festival highlight, and now with new music on the horizon, she's likely to feed the nostalgia the festival loves and bring some more sparkling pop. Head over to Mojave no later than 5:50 to hopefully see Central Cee close out his set with "Sprinter" (cross your fingers for a Dave cameo). Before Dijon starts at the Outdoor Theatre at 6:40 p.m., you'll have time to see the first bit of CMAT, a fresh face in country-tinged theatrical pop, on the Gobi stage.

Next, of course, is fakemink — the buzziest name of the day. 7:20 p.m. on the Gobi stage.

From there it all falls into place: Turnstile (8:05 p.m., Outdoor Theatre, bound to be a great energy boost), Sabrina Carpenter (9:05 p.m., Main stage, every person should see "Manchild" live once in their life), Ethel Cain (10:35 p.m., Mojave tent, the Coachella haunting experience), and finish the night with Blood Orange (11:55 p.m., Mojave — maybe recent collaborator Brendan Yates of Turnstile will skip over from the Outdoor Theatre to join the fun).

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Frazer Harrison

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SATURDAY

Plan by Sheldon Pearce

Must see: 
There is something thrilling about watching Alex G strap on an accordion mid-song for "June Guitar," from last year's Headlights, during a gig, and that alone might be worth the price of a Coachella ticket. (OK, probably not, but definitely worth seeing on a livestream for free.) The only thing preventing the DIY king turned major-label convert from being the can't-miss performance of Saturday is a last-minute addition: 2025 Rock Hall inductee Jack White, who joins the first weekend as a surprise set at the Mojave tent. He likely won't play "Seven Nation Army" — so what. You don't even really have to like his last few albums to appreciate him live. It's the one forum where his finicky guitar ways always pay off big — he will grab three to four axes, rotate through them across the set, and shred like he's playing to scrape together bus fare out of Indio.

Day plan:
To get the best Saturday experience, start your stream at 2:40 p.m. with the first 20 minutes of Blondshell's set at the Outdoor Theatre before flipping over to catch Jack White in the Mojave tent.

Stretch your legs, grab a bite, walk the dog, then tap in for Ecca Vandal, a South African-born, Melbourne-raised punk-rock rapper who plays the Sonora stage at 4:20 p.m. Hit Alex G (5:10 p.m., Outdoor stage) and the gripping (and polarizing) band Geese (6:15 p.m., Gobi) back to back.

You can opt in or out of best new artist Grammy shortlister Sombr's 7:05 p.m. set at the Outdoor theatre — maybe you want to see what all the hype is about or maybe you need to step away from the screen for a spell — before embracing the exuberant Afropop pioneer Davido (7:50 p.m., Gobi).

In the first major conflict of the day, catch PinkPantheress at 8:55 p.m. in the Mojave tent instead of The Strokes over on the main stage; sure, she's nostalgic for the era the band got famous in, but her time is now, post-Fancy That? and her Alysa Liu cosign. If you're really yearning for post-punk revivalists from NYC's aughts indie scene, have no fear: Interpol is on at Mojave right after. Then stay up late for whatever Swag hijinks Saturday headliner Justin Bieber has planned for the main stage.

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Matt Winkelmeyer

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Getty Images

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SUNDAY

Plan by Anamaria Sayre

Must see: 

My friends: Little Simz. This something-for-everyone artist who retains her own unmistakable flair has graced the desert stage before, appearing in tiny print on the 2019 poster and making a guest appearance with Gorillaz in 2023. On Sunday, the U.K. rapper is back with space to release the full Simz flow on a much larger stage.

Simz has always had a gift for taking a live opportunity to hit you over the head with her rapid-fire flow. She unleashes venom with impressive control and is always certain to mix equal parts slam and R&B. In this late afternoon solo slot, she could have an opportunity to fill out her set with a tight live band or maybe sneak in some strings, all the better to represent a sound that gets bigger and brighter with each new record.

Day plan:

The desert is a marathon, not a sprint. You've made it to Sunday (whether on the ground or virtual) so you're well-versed in pacing. We have to start out slow and maybe a little sad, so first stop is Samia (playing the Mojave tent at 3:15 p.m.), leading directly into Little Simz on the same stage.

From there, keep the energy up by hopping over to Clipse (5:15 p.m., Outdoor Theatre) for what's sure to be a performance as gripping as their off-kilter beats. Do a quick flip halfway through to make it over to the Sonora stage by 5:50 p.m. for the last half of Los Retros. It's sure to be sonic whiplash, given that these young romantic crooners bring living room vibes, but it's worth the sprint, and anyway, by this point in the weekend you're a pro at juggling disparate sounds. When that's over, if you wanna lean into the mood shifts and go for one more heart-rate spike via hardcore cleanse, you can just make the last 15 minutes of Suicidal Tendencies back at the Mojave tent.

Take a little breather, get some sustenance, and hop back to it for some straight-from-Norway dance floor flair with Röyksopp. If you're watching the live stream, you may have to skip the Norwegian gathering (Yuma stage isn't currently included on the YouTube schedule) and trade it for a bumping party closer to home — Georgia-bred rapper Young Thug on the main stage.

Now we're sprinting to the finish: You'll split time at a pair of worthwhile overlapping sets by starting with avant-garde English singer FKA twigs (innovation is twigs' most tried and true mode of being, so there's certain to be something we've never seen before), and (if you can tear yourself away before the end) moving on to catch the end of Chicago's own French Police. Close out the night on the main stage, starting at 9:55 p.m. with the first Latina to ever headline Coachella, la bichota herself, Karol G.

Copyright 2026 NPR

It was the end of an era for a sign of the times.

On a rainy March day in 1999, a 70-foot billboard perched at the doorstep of the Sunset Strip was taken down and trucked away. That spot on Sunset Boulevard and Marmont Lane had long been the home of the rough-hewn, lasso-toting Marlboro Man — so much a fixture it became part of the glitz and glam of L.A.

"It was such an iconic ad — such a tall billboard with this very handsome image up there," said John Heilman, current and then-mayor of West Hollywood. "Right there by the Chateau Marmont and near a lot of music venues that we have up on Sunset."

Billboards along the Sunset Strip, including one for Marlboro, in December 1985.

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Paul Chinn

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That's how I came to know about these larger-than-life Marlboro billboards, going to the Roxy and the Whiskey to see shows, and to the Sunset Tower Records for music in the 1990s. I didn't know it at the time, the image apparently changed every couple of years, but the vibe was so consistent it felt like one, long seamless spell.

 "When you came in on Sunset, that is what you saw," said Neil Ford, head of sales for central U.S. and the West Coast at Big Happy, a digital and mobile ad agency based in Chicago. "It really captured what out-of-home [advertisement] was at that moment, what it meant."

The Marlboro billboard on Sunset Boulevard.

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Elisa Leonelli

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Ford said the campaign was groundbreaking — advertising at its most effective.

"You think about that image of the Marlboro Man. It was a different size, it had presence and it captured your attention," Ford said.

It was a gamechanger for Philip Morris. Sales for Marlboro hit $5 million in 1955, a more than 3,000%  increase a year after its debut.

In other words, it attracted more smokers.

 "It was obvious that the image of the rugged Marlboro Man encouraged generations of men to smoke," said Paul Koretz, a former West Hollywood council member who was at the sign on that March day to celebrate its fall.

The total pivot

Hypermasculinity aside, Marlboro was originally marketed to women as a luxury brand peddling a mild flavor when it was introduced in the 1920s.

The pivot came three decades later, when the company was looking for a way to sell men on filtered cigarettes, long considered effeminate and less flavorful.

Enter Chicago ad man Leo Burnett, who engineered what many consider one of the greatest brand reinventions of all time by creating a new series of mascots — not just butch cowboys, but tough-as-nail sailors, hunters, businessmen, sportsmen, writers.

At the end, the cowboy won out, becoming the brand's reigning Marlboro Man.

" They brought this masculine symbol — image, visual — and really re-created what Marlboro as a brand meant," Ford said. "And it just was one image, there was very little copy. It had the logo on it. It was its own creation at the time."

The campaign propelled Marlboro to the top of the domestic industry by the 1970s, even as the toll on public health from the use of tobacco products racked up.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that some 480,000 people in the U.S. die every year from cigarette smoking, including exposure to second-hand smoke. At least four actors who portrayed Marlboro Man died from smoking-related diseases.

In 1971, the U.S. banned cigarette advertising on television and radio. Brands then shifted to other mediums, in particular billboards.

The Sunset Strip

A street view looking west from the northern side of Sunset Boulevard near Chateau Marmont at night. In the background is the billboard for Marlboro.

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Carol Westwood

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The 1.7-mile stretch of Sunset Strip in West Hollywood has never been a stranger to grabby billboards. In fact, it was where the medium became art.

"It's always been known for very creative advertising," Heilman, West Hollywood’s mayor, said.

Its golden era was arguably the 1970s, when giant, hand-painted rock ‘n’ roll signs lined the Strip, a veritable checklist of who’s who in the music world.

Various billboards on the Sunset Strip and Horn Avenue during a full moon in June 1980.

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Roy Hankey

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The phenomenon started in 1967, with Elektra Records taking out a billboard to promote the debut album of a little-known local band called The Doors.

Two years later, The Beatles’ "Abbey Road" appeared, followed by Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen.

The era came to a close in the 1980s with the advent of MTV, which changed the playbook of music marketing, says photographer Robert Landau in his book, Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip.

"Other types of billboards focusing on the entertainment industry were very popular," Heilman said. "A lot of the new movie releases, new album releases, new product releases."

And the Marlboro Man stood amid this hit parade in one of the most commanding spots on The Strip since at least the late 1970s.

"As I recall, at one point they actually had steam coming out of it to simulate smoke," said Heilman, who has lived in West Hollywood for more than four decades.

Night view of large billboards along Sunset Strip circa 1980.

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Roy Hankey

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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Billboard ads along Sunset Strip in November 1985.

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Paul Chinn

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Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection / LAPL

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The billboard predates the incorporation of West Hollywood as a city in 1984. Helping to lead the cityhood efforts was Koretz, who went on to become a City Council member for West Hollywood before serving on the state Assembly and the Los Angeles City Council.

"I actually lived near the Sunset Strip, so I thought about it every time I drove by," he said of the Marlboro Man ad. "It was one of the most effective symbols of tobacco marketing."

Both his parents, Koretz said, were heavy lifelong smokers who died from the addiction.  As a lawmaker, Koretz led a number of anti-smoking efforts, including a smoking ban in restaurants in West Hollywood — as well as a near total ban on tobacco advertising in the city.

Large billboard of the Marlboro Man, located on the Sunset Strip at Marmont Lane in West Hollywood, circa 1985.

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Carol Westwood

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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That ban was passed in the final months of 1998, just before a settlement agreement between the nation's biggest tobacco companies, including Philip Morris, and dozens of state attorneys general. The $206 billion deal settled lawsuits filed by the states to recoup health care costs for smoking-related illnesses. It also banned youth marketing, as well as outdoor advertising.

As a result, Los Angeles's most famous Marlboro Man stepped down on March 10, 1999 — about a month before the official removal deadline.

That day, Koretz held a news conference to send the sign off. He said not everyone was happy to see the landmark go. But the ban, among a slew of other anti-smoking policies, have made an impact.

Last year, the American Cancer Society reported cigarette smoking among U.S. adults dropped from  42% in 1965 to 11% in 2023.

" It was always controversial. There are always people that didn't like it," Koretz said of the billboard ban. "This is largely a success story."

Shortly after, a new billboard went up in the place of the Marlboro Man on Sunset.

It was still a cowboy, looking eerily similar to its fallen predecessor, but with a limp cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Instead of Marlboro, it read, "Impotent."