The Brief

Vice President Harris sat at her ceremonial desk Thursday afternoon for a tradition that started back in the 1940s — signing the top drawer.

In her final public event before her political opponent's inauguration on January 20, Harris pulled out a Sharpie and became the first woman to sign the desk, capping off a historic four years as she broke barriers as the first woman elected to the vice presidency.

Aides and former staffers who have worked with her through the years cheered. Harris thanked them for their work, and told them that she's not done yet.

"I will tell you that everyone here has so much to be proud of, and our work is not done," Harris said. "And as you all know me — because we have spent long hours, long days and months and years together — it is not my nature to go quietly into the night, so don't worry about that."

It's a tradition for vice president to sign the inside of the top drawer of the desk before leaving office.

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Harris is going back to California

Harris' term isn't ending the way she had hoped. Had she won the election in November, Harris would be packing up to move into the West Wing.

But instead, she's spent the last few weeks packing up and attending to constitutional duties in Washington, like certifying the election on January 6. She announced the tally of Electoral College votes, formally cemented her loss to Donald Trump to cheers from Republicans in Congress, and ensured a peaceful transfer of power — something Trump himself tried to subvert four years ago.

"I do believe very strongly that America's democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it … otherwise it is very fragile and it will not be willing to withstand moments of crisis. And today, America's democracy stood," she said after certifying the results.

Vice President Harris certifies the Electoral College vote as Speaker Mike Johnson applauds during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2025, ratifying the 2024 presidential election.

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As Inauguration Day arrives, boxes of materials from her four years in office will head to the National Archives — and the vice president herself will move to Los Angeles.

Her home was evacuated last week as a precaution amid the wildfires. Harris is moving to a different location in the city where she'll remain as she figures out her next steps. Her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, will return to work at a still-to-be-announced law firm.

This VP expert sees 3 options for Harris

Harris is leaving office in a fairly unique position. Her national profile was boosted over the course of her short presidential run last year. She has a higher approval rating now than when she launched her campaign, though it is lower than when she first came into office.

Joel Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and an expert on the modern vice presidency, said Harris is well-positioned to run for office again.

"She's had experiences as vice president and as a presidential candidate that no Democratic figure under the age of 75 or so has had," he said.

Goldstein said Harris likely has three options: run for governor of California in 2026, run for president in 2028, or take what he referred to as "Door Number Three:" something else that doesn't involve running for office.

Vice President Harris speaks to her staff, former aides and friends before signing the drawer of her desk in the Vice President's Ceremonial Office at the White House on Jan. 16, 2025.

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She plans to stay in the public eye

Two Harris aides who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity to protect private conversations say she hasn't made any decisions on her options — one source said there hasn't been a full-on discussion yet. A second source said they feel running for governor would be "too low" — a step down for Harris after serving as vice president.

But Harris does intend to stay in the public eye, whether that's in the form of speeches or social media, a third source says. And she's keeping a small group of advisers with her as she decides how to weigh in over the next few months.

One of the sources close to Harris said she will likely have to make a decision by this summer if she does want to run for office again, to begin the work of fundraising and campaigning.

When she leaves office on Monday, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that Harris has not been working as a public servant, which will be a big adjustment for her, those who know Harris say.

Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Calif., went to work for Harris back in her first elected position as District Attorney of San Francisco. Now, Simon is a new member of Congress representing Oakland, where her old boss grew up — and she says Harris is nowhere close to retiring.

"I'm excited for what she's going to do," Simon said.

"There's no way - I'm going to repeat it time and time again — that I think she's done. Has she told me what she's going to do? No. But I know this woman, and I know she's just beginning, really," she said.

Topline:

Why now: HMC StratCap notified the city on Tuesday that it was pulling its proposal to build a data center in a local business park after months of pressure from residents and advocates who raised concerns about pollution, energy use and health risks. Representatives for HMC StratCap have not responded to requests for comment.

Why it matters: For people pushing back on data centers in the region, Monterey Park is shaping up as a test case for how local organizing can stop them. The developer’s decision to withdraw its application comes ahead of a June 2 special election on Measure NDC. If approved at the ballot box, Monterey Park would be the first to ban data centers by public vote

The backstory: The data center proposal had been moving through the city's planning pipeline for two years before it started showing up on the City Council's agendas and coming to the attention of residents, who were outraged the plans had not been well-publicized by the city. Hundreds of people flooded City Hall during council meetings over the last several months, demanding the city heed their concerns. In response, the council approved a temporary moratorium on data center development, put the issue on the ballot and will consider a separate ordinance banning data center development altogether.

What’s next: Members of groups like No Data Center MPK and San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action are celebrating the application's withdrawal, but say they will continue to advocate for Measure NDC and the data center ordinance, which the City Council is expected to vote on in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, organizers are joining the effort to stop a proposal to build a battery energy storage system in the City of Industry, which they see as laying the groundwork for a data center.

Go deeper: How Monterey Park residents pushed back on a data center — and changed the course

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out from the top job at the Justice Department. Her departure comes amid simmering frustration over her leadership and her handling of the Epstein files.

In social media post, Trump called Bondi "a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year."

"Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900," Trump said. "We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future."

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump's former personal attorney, will step in to serve as acting attorney general, the president said.

Bondi, a longtime Trump loyalist, is the second member of the president's Cabinet to be forced out. Her departure comes almost one month after Trump fired Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security.

Bondi leaves after a tumultuous 14 months in charge that critics say damaged the Justice Department's credibility, hollowed out the career ranks and undermined the rule of law.

Under Bondi, the department jettisoned its decades-old tradition of maintaining independence from the White House, particularly in investigations and prosecutions, to insulate them from partisan politics.

Instead, she used the department's vast powers to go after the president's perceived foes. That includes the high-profile cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, which were brought after Trump publicly called on Bondi to prosecute them.

A federal judge later tossed both cases after finding the acting U.S. attorney who secured the indictments was unlawfully appointed.

Other political opponents of the president or individuals standing in the way of his agenda also have found themselves under DOJ investigation, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, and former Obama-era intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan.

Bondi also oversaw sweeping changes to the career workforce at the department. The agency fired prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on Capitol riot cases or the Trump investigations.

The elite section that prosecutes public corruption was gutted; the Civil Rights Division, which protects the Constitutional rights of all Americans, experienced a mass exodus of career attorneys who say the division is being turned into an enforcement arm of the White House.

Political firestorm over Epstein files

Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, has defended her actions. She has portrayed the firings as a necessary house cleaning of politicized career officials. She's also tried to focus on what she views as major accomplishments during her tenure: targeting drug cartels, cracking down on violent crime, and helping in immigration enforcement.

But ultimately, the department's handling of the files related to the investigations of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein played a large role in her downfall.

Early in her tenure, Bondi told Fox News that she had Epstein's client list "sitting on my desk right now to review." A few months later, the Justice Department and the FBI said there was no client list and that no additional files from the Epstein investigation would be made public.

That touched off a political firestorm and ultimately led Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all of the Epstein files in its possession.

The department failed to meet the Act's 30-day deadline to release the materials, fueling frustrations on Capitol Hill, before eventually releasing millions of pages of files. Democratic and Republican lawmakers also expressed concerns about heavy redactions that were made to many of the documents.

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Long Beach has fired the contractor that operated almost all of its homeless shelters following an audit of the $69 million the city has spent on homeless services over the last five years.

The nonprofit First to Serve ran 423 of the city’s 500 shelter beds until yesterday, but after a closed-door City Council meeting last month, Long Beach cut ties and quickly swapped in the L.A.-based nonprofit People Assisting The Homeless (PATH).

Long Beach is now investigating First to Serve, according to Deputy City Attorney Nicholas Masero. It’s unclear if that investigation could result in the city pursuing criminal or civil charges. Masero said that “we’ll make that determination as the investigations progress.”

The investigation stemmed from a broader review of Long Beach’s homelessness programs launched by City Auditor Laura Doud in 2023.

The audit, Masero said, looked into documents submitted by vendors like First to Serve “seeking reimbursement or payment on contracts.”

“During our audit, we identified information that requires further review,” Doud wrote in a recent memo to the city manager. “To protect the integrity of our ongoing investigation, we cannot provide additional details regarding the matter at this time, nor can we discuss our audit in greater detail.”

What she discovered, though, was enough to compel Long Beach to cut ties with First to Serve.

By November, the city began to withhold payments and started the search for a new provider after finding enough instances of “contractual concerns that we were confident we needed to switch providers,” Masero said.

Doud has not yet released the full results of her audit, but she said contractors like First to Serve must do a better job showing they’ve performed the work they were hired to do before they’re paid, and the city needs to verify the services were actually provided before paying.

According to Homeless Services Bureau Manager Paul Duncan, Long Beach has paid First to Serve $13 to $14 million annually to operate four shelters, as well as for rapid rehousing and prevention programs.

Paul Duncan, Long Beach’s homeless services bureau manager, informed the city’s Homeless Services Advisory Committee on Wednesday, April 1, that the city had terminated contracts with its largest homeless shelter provider.

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The organization oversaw the shelter at 702 West Anaheim St., the Atlantic Farms Bridge Housing Community at 6841 Atlantic Ave., the Project Homekey site at 1725 Long Beach Blvd., and the former Luxury Inn at 5950 Long Beach Blvd.

As of Wednesday, the sites were being operated by PATH. The city plans to release bids in the next month or two to evaluate new operators for each of the four shelters, Duncan said.

In response to the audit, the city said it’s already tightening up its processes, including the launch of a new tracking system and stricter oversight standards.

There’s been no official accounting of exactly what alleged wrongdoing is being investigated. According to their agendas, the City Council met in private on March 3 to discuss the situation, and then, on March 10, approved new contracts for PATH to operate the shelters without any public discussion.

On Wednesday, Long Beach officials also appeared to try to tamp down the idea that the move to fire First to Serve was related to accusations raised last week by mayoral candidate Chris Sweeney.

In a video posted to Instagram, Sweeney toured the shelter at 5950 Long Beach Blvd. and alleged there was fraud at the nearly empty shelter, where only 12 of its 78 rooms were being used.

First to Serve’s other three shelters were 78% to 88% occupied, according to city data, though about one-third of the rooms at the 1725 Long Beach Blvd. site were under construction and are not being used.

Officials say the city and First to Serve met weekly to review inventory at each shelter, transfer existing case files, and do walkthroughs of each site to make sure everything was accounted for.

Mayor Rex Richardson, Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, and other city officials celebrated the completion of the shelter at 5950 Long Beach Blvd. on Wednesday, Oct 29, 2025. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova. In a memo, the Long Beach health director Alison King said the decision to cut ties with First to Serve was related to the city auditor’s review of “prior administrative documentation” that “is not related to shelter operations.”

Nevertheless, she wrote, “Based on the findings of that review, the City determined it is in the best interest of the community to move forward with a new service provider for shelter operations.”

The city’s investigation has been ongoing since October, according to Masero.

Nobody from First to Serve was immediately available to answer questions late Wednesday night.

For the first time in more than 50 years, astronauts are heading to the moon. The Artemis II crew launched Wednesday atop NASA's SLS rocket, which left thick trails of vapor across a clear-blue Florida sky. The four astronauts and their team on the ground are now busy preparing for the challenges that lie ahead.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ensconced in an Orion capsule attached to an SLS rocket. The historic mission — the first time in more than half a century that humans have visited the moon — will take them on a 230,000-mile journey around the lunar body and back that will serve as a critical test flight of the Orion spacecraft.

The nearly 10-day mission will not only test the spacecraft's life-support systems and maneuverability, but conduct critical science ahead of future deep space missions to the lunar surface.

The trajectory

The mission is on a flight path that keeps the spacecraft in Earth's gravitational influence past the moon, then falls back to the planet for splashdown. This path, called a free return trajectory, uses less fuel and is less risky than entering a lunar orbit.

This graphic shows key milestones along the Artemis II astronauts' journey around the moon and back.

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About a day after launch, the spacecraft is set to perform a translunar injection, firing its engine and sending the Artemis II crew members on their lunar journey.

The path will take the crew to within about 5,000 miles above the lunar surface. Apollo missions typically orbited the moon under 100 miles (or touched down on the surface).

"When they pass by the far side of the moon, it'll look like a basketball held at arm's length," said Artemis II mission scientist Barbara Cohen. "It'll be that kind of view."

Testing, testing

After separating from the rocket that got them into space, but before heading to the moon, the crew tested the Orion spacecraft closer to home.

Just hours after entering high-Earth orbit, the crew performed what's known as a proximity operations test — taking manual control of the vehicle to see how it handles in space.

"We are essentially going to make sure that the vehicle flies the way that we think it does, that we designed it to do," Artemis II pilot Victor Glover said ahead of the launch.

Controlling the spacecraft will be important for future missions, which will need to dock with a lunar lander in orbit. And while this process is likely going to be automated, NASA wants to know how it handles should astronauts have to take manual control.

"We also want to give qualitative and quantitative feedback to the ground team, so letting them know what it feels like now that we can hear and feel the thrusters, and to just understand the human experience," said Glover.

Near the end of the maneuver, the pilot appeared to give the vehicle high marks.

"Overall guys, this flies very nicely," he told team members on the ground.

Time for science

The astronauts themselves will be the subject of science experiments: Because the crew is going farther into deep space than any human has gone before, researchers are taking this opportunity to study the impact it will have on the human body.

Medical researchers will be collecting data on physiological changes in response to space travel and increased radiation exposure. The astronauts' cells have been placed on tiny chips and distributed throughout the capsule in an effort to understand these effects in greater detail.

Crew members will also lend their eyes for geological research, since they are flying around the far side of the moon, at at altitude offering views that no human has seen before.

"They'll be able to see places on the moon that, actually, no human eyes have ever seen before," said Cohen.

Geologists on Earth trained the crew to spot unique features on the lunar surface, and snap photos of them for further study. (This follows in a time-honored tradition: Apollo astronauts who visited the moon more than a half-century ago were also trained by geologists.) These observations will help them better understand that side of the moon and possibly help plan for a human landing.

And the mission's high-altitude flyby of the moon gives them a unique perspective.

"The benefit of that to science, is that kind of like when you're traveling cross country on an airplane, what you can see is a strip of land below you. You don't see the whole globe of the Earth. That's what the Apollo astronauts did," said Cohen. "The Artemis II astronauts will be able to see it from much farther away."

The mission is also carrying stowaways in the form of CubeSats — tiny satellites bound for high-Earth orbit. The payloads are from Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Argentina and will study various impacts of space radiation on space hardware, monitor space weather, and how the environment affects electrical hardware bound for the moon.

Heading home

As the crew returns home, its capsule will be traveling close to 25,000 miles per hour as it reenters the atmosphere. The friction generated by hitting the atmosphere at that speed will cause the Orion capsule to experience temperatures of close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The capsule is equipped with a heat shield to protect the astronauts from the intense heat of reentry. During an uncrewed test flight in 2022, NASA discovered unexpected damage to the heat shield. To further protect the crew, the capsule will hit the atmosphere at a much steeper angle than Artemis I, which will limit the time it will experience those harsh conditions.

Once the spacecraft is past that danger zone, eight parachutes will slow the spacecraft down even more before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. A series of airbags will deploy to make sure the capsule is right side up. A crew at sea will scoop up the astronauts, bringing their mission to a close.

What's learned on this flight is critical to future Artemis missions. Last week, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced plans to increase the frequency of launches to the moon and a plan to establish a permanent base on the lunar surface. That effort begins with Artemis II.

"It is our strong hope," said Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch, "that this mission is the start of an era where everyone, every person on Earth, can look at the moon and think of it as also a destination."
Copyright 2026 NPR