The Brief

A B-52 bomber crashed Monday and burst into flames, killing all eight people aboard, shortly after takeoff at a U.S. Air Force base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, military officials said.

Aerial footage showed virtually nothing left of the aircraft that went down around 11:20 a.m. during a routine test mission at the base, which is north of Los Angeles. Black smoke rose from a large swath of charred desert near what appeared to be a runway on the base, with emergency vehicles nearby.

After reviewing footage of the crash, it was determined that no one could have survived, Col. James Hayes, the Deputy Commander at Edwards Air Force Base, said at a news conference.

“We lost eight great Americans,” Hayes said, adding that officials were working to notify their families.

On board was a mix of military service members and government and civilian contractors, Hayes said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, and it could take up to six months to complete an investigation, Hayes said, but shared that the B-52 was supporting the “radar modernization program.”

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts involving the U.S. military from Vietnam to Iran.

In 2025, a B-52 flew to Edwards with a new, modernized radar system. A test team planned to conduct ground and flight test activities on the aircraft throughout 2026 to feed a production decision, the air force said in a 2025 news release. The modern Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system replaced the aircraft’s antiquated radar for efficacy.

Edwards Air Force Base is home to a large portion of the U.S. Air Force’s aircraft test and development efforts and is about 100 miles (161 km) north of Los Angeles. The 412th Test Wing, which runs the base, also conducts developmental testing of all Air Force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their lifespan.

The vast desert base is also where Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager reached a speed of Mach 1.05 and broke the sound barrier in 1947.

The airfield was closed most of Monday and all inbound aircraft were being diverted, but it reopened by late afternoon. Non-commercial visitor passes for the base were suspended as emergency crews doused the flames.

It’s too soon to say what might have happened.

The way the B-52 crashed so quickly after takeoff without getting very high or going far makes aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti suspect some kind of flight control malfunction.

It’s possible the controls were rigged wrong after maintenance, he said, or a catastrophic engine problem or a failure of a piece of equipment that was being tested.

“I think it was definitely a controllability issue. Now, whether that was tied to an engine failure, a flight control failure, or some new testing device failure, I’m not sure,” said Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Although the Air Force has been flying B-52 bombers for more than 70 years, testing out new equipment on a plane can create new challenges.

“A flight test is always riskier than normal operations, so that’s why you have specially trained test pilots, and you should have other safety protocols,” Guzzetti said.

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Toropin reported from Washington D.C. AP Transportation Writer Josh Funk contributed to this story from Omaha, Nebraska and AP reporter Hallie Golden contributed from Seattle.

Heavy surf, high tides and rip currents have done some damage to the Southern California coast, with potentially dangerous conditions expected to last at least until Thursday.

The conditions already have had devastating consequences. Just last week in Laguna Beach, a 5-year-old girl drowned after she was swept into the ocean by powerful surf. Authorities said they were able to rescue her mother and brother, who were caught in the same swell.

In Crystal Cove State Park, tides over 7 feet and heavy surf damaged part of a historic cabin, and nearly flooded another. A lifeguard tower was nearly pulled into the water.

Heavy surf and high tides pulled sand from beneath a cabin at Crystal Cove Historic District.

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Erin Stone

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'Biggest waves I've ever seen'

“ At the peak of it, just the biggest waves I've ever seen here in my experience as a lifeguard,” said Jake Beckley, who’s been a Crystal Cove lifeguard for six years. “We've lost pretty much the entire beach at certain points.”

The tide reached as high as The Beachcomber restaurant at one point, and pulled chunks of a historic seawall from beneath a cabin nearby.

Sandra and Rigo Garcia of San Dimas have been visiting Crystal Cove to stay in those historic cabins since the late 1990s. They’ve seen the beach change over the decades.

Sandra and Rigo Garcia have been coming to Crystal Cove for decades and have seen the beach change.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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“The tide is just so high that it took all the sand, and we're just like, ‘Oh, where's my beach?’” Sandra Garcia said as they sat under an umbrella on the sand of a small road.

Rigo Garcia pointed to the patch of sand in front of them.

“This spot was always the greatest spot, because I would come early in the morning, set up the easy-ups and chairs, and we always had plenty of real estate,” he said. “The kids would be able to swim maybe 10, 15 yards while they're out there. But now it's so dangerous…too many rocks.”

How we got here

A strong southern swell, combined with high tides, has led to the coastal erosion and flooding. The highest tides of the year, however, usually come in the winter, but over the last week some beaches have seen record high tides for this time of year, according to the National Weather Service.

Riley Pratt, an environmental scientist with California State Parks Orange County District, said these events are a window into the future — as pollution in our atmosphere heats up the planet and melts glaciers, sea levels rise.

“As sea levels rise, things like this are gonna become more common, and their impact is going to be proportionally greater because the baseline is shifting,” he said. “That's going to change what is this just annual cycle into something that's new and that we haven't seen before.”

But for now, the beach is crowded, the sun is shining, and summertime is in the air. And for the Garcias and their fellow beachgoers, there’s no time like the present.

“Earth changes, so you have to go with it,” said Sandra Garcia. “Even though it has changed so much, we still can enjoy it… and be thankful that we have this paradise here.”

What's next

In Orange County, the National Weather Service warns that dangerous surf conditions, including rip currents, are expected to continue through Friday evening.

This creates dangerous conditions for swimming. Anyone caught in a rip current is advised to swim parallel to the shore to clear it. And, as the NWS says, "always swim near a lifeguard."

In L.A. County, conditions are expected to continue through Wednesday night, including coastal flooding, high tides and rip currents.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday accused President Donald Trump of placing him and his wife on a political “hit list” and directing federal investigators to go on a “fishing expedition” for a crime it could use to indict him.

The Democratic governor declared that the president was targeting him because Newsom is considering a run for president in 2028.

“In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees,” Newsom said in the video. “Not because they found a crime, but because they simply are trying to find one.”

Newsom stated that he was “proud” to join Trump’s so-called “enemies list” that has also included former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the former vice presidential candidate.

According to a person in the Department of Justice who is familiar with the investigation, there have been at least two criminal investigations into Newsom ongoing for a year in the Eastern District of California.

They originated from whistleblowers and people in Sacramento regarding Siebel Newsom's taxes and the separate investigation into Newsom's former chief of staff Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty in May in a corruption scandal that has not implicated the governor.

The governor claimed that federal agents were demanding records and “abusing the grand jury process” by “digging through years and years of random documents.” Neither the governor nor first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom have received subpoenas yet, Newsom’s office said, but he “looks forward” to receiving them.

First partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom in Sacramento, on Feb. 11, 2026. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters Newsom came to office with a successful hospitality company called PlumpJack, which he has placed in a blind trust. Siebel Newsom is a filmmaker who leads nonprofit groups called the California Partners Project and the Representation Project.

Newsom solicited at least $1.9 million in charitable payments known as ‘behested payments’ in 2024 and 2025 for Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project, which champions gender equity, including $1 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, according to disclosure reports filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission.

His office said federal agents have contacted more than a dozen friends, former employees, business associates, donors, and organizations connected to the Newsoms but did not specify further.

The accusations first came in a fiery video statement released Monday, but provided no concrete evidence that the president had orchestrated such a probe and did not identify any of the associated groups or people he said the Justice Department was looking into.

Newsom’s office suggested that the Justice Department was hunting for a new crime to pin on him after coming up empty-handed following its arrest of Williamson. However, that probe was first opened under the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.

Williamson was indicted on wire fraud charges for funneling money from a dormant campaign account belonging to Xavier Becerra, the former Biden health secretary and the frontrunner to succeed Newsom as governor.

An attorney for Williamson, Matthew Rowan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The White House referred questions about Newsom’s comments to the Department of Justice. A Department of Justice spokesperson did not immediately respond.

“You can subpoena my records. You can investigate me. You can harass me. Put my name on any and every enemies list that you have,” Newsom said. “But leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta!”

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

A year ago, California officials had to report under a new state law how they used automated systems to make important decisions about people’s lives.

They said they never did — a startling answer for a number of reasons, sources told CalMatters at the time, including that there were several prominent examples to the contrary.

Now, the state has issued a more expansive answer: It is currently using six automated systems to make consequential decisions about the lives of Californians.

The systems are used to do things like:

• Predict whether incarcerated people will re-offend 
• Evaluate whether unemployment claims are fraudulent
• Remotely administer exams for California State University students 
• Detect when college students use generative AI to write assignments.

That's according to a report released Friday by the state's technology department. The report is required under a 2023 law mandating that that state agencies annually disclose their use of “high-risk automated decision systems,” which the law defines as systems “used to assist or replace human discretionary decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect, including decisions that materially impact access to, or approval for, housing or accommodations, education, employment, credit, health care, and criminal justice.”

The law was pushed by civil rights, privacy, and civil liberties groups concerned about harms from AI-like systems. Numerous such systems have been shown to produce results biased against marginalized groups, including those used for high-stakes testing, predicting recidivism, and detecting AI-generated texts.

CalMatters flagged last year’s report as surprising, noting that the state corrections department had reported using software to predict post-release behavior and that the employment department used a fraud detection system that paused benefits for 600,000 Californians between Christmas and New Years in 2020, according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report.

Though the report names six high-risk systems in use today, state agencies have used some for several years now. Those include COMPAS, which has been used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to assign recidivism scores to inmates for at least a decade.

The technology department said in the report that it found more systems for its report this year because it evaluated responses from state agencies more thoroughly, including by meeting with agencies and questioning them about their systems.

In addition to the six high-risk systems, the department’s report disclosed an additional six systems initially flagged as high risk but later determined not to be. One was AI used for legislative bill analysis by the California Department of Finance.

The report also notes two high-risk systems that are not currently in use: the Department of Cannabis Control is developing artificial intelligence to analyze whether marijuana packaging violates a law against appealing to children and California State University discontinued use of a language model for reviewing job applications.

Results of the second annual survey come after cities like San Jose and San Francisco released their first AI inventories in recent months. They also come at a time when California-based AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are going public and seeking government contracts. Americans are split on whether they trust AI and surveys last year by TechEquity and Carnegie California found that the majority of Californians want safety over innovation. A Gallup poll to evaluate the opinions of Americans found similar results.

Senate Bill 1248, a bill that would have prohibited state employees from using automated decision systems as the sole basis for decisionmaking, was killed last month in the state’s rapid-fire appropriations process.

What’s missing

While the newly-released report shares more information than last year’s, several questions remain about the state’s use of artificial intelligence and other automated systems.

The report does not include generative AI pilot projects underway with support from the governor’s office to do things like help businesses file taxes, support state employees who work on homelessness, and an AI assistant named Poppy that uses language models like Anthropic’s Claude to do things like draft documents, research policy, or build custom AI tools, according to a state website. The website says that 67 state departments provided input during the pilot phase and statewide rollout of Poppy begins next month.

A California State University contract with OpenAI to provide a version of ChatGPT is also not mentioned, though surveys of AI use in educational settings have found that the technology can do more harm than good.

The 2023 law mandating the annual high-risk systems report excludes reporting by a number of state agencies, including the judicial branch and the University of California college system. Reporting by CalMatters last month found that a majority of the roughly 60 courts that operate statewide have adopted generative AI use policies. Courts in Los Angeles and Riverside counties have begun testing an AI tool to act as a clerk, drafting orders and producing research memos.

CalMatters is compiling an inventory of automated decisionmaking systems in use by state and local agencies throughout California in order to provide transparency into how governments are using decisionmaking systems and AI. Know about an AI system in use by a state or local agency? Email khari@calmatters.org.

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