The Brief

The State Department is instructing its staff to reject visa applications from people who worked on fact-checking, content moderation or other activities the Trump administration considers "censorship" of Americans' speech.

The directive, sent in an internal memo on Tuesday, is focused on applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, which are frequently used by tech companies, among other sectors. The memo was first reported by Reuters; NPR also obtained a copy.

"If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible" for a visa, the memo says. It refers to a policy announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in May restricting visas from being issued to "foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans."

The Trump administration has been highly critical of tech companies' efforts to police what people are allowed to post on their platforms and of the broader field of trust and safety, the tech industry's term for teams that focus on preventing abuse, fraud, illegal content, and other harmful behavior online.

President Trump was banned from multiple social media platforms in the aftermath of his supporters' attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While those bans have since been lifted, the president and members of his administration frequently cite that experience as evidence for their claims that tech companies unfairly target conservatives — even as many tech leaders have eased their policies in the face of that backlash.

Tuesday's memo calls out H-1B visa applicants in particular "as many work in or have worked in the tech sector, including in social media or financial services companies involved in the suppression of protected expression."

It directs consular officers to "thoroughly explore" the work histories of applicants, both new and returning, by reviewing their resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and appearances in media articles for activities including combatting misinformation, disinformation or false narratives, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety.

"I'm alarmed that trust and safety work is being conflated with 'censorship'," said Alice Goguen Hunsberger, who has worked in trust and safety at tech companies including OpenAI and Grindr.

"Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it," she said. "Bad actors that target Americans come from all over the world and it's so important to have people who understand different languages and cultures on trust and safety teams — having global workers at tech companies in [trust and safety] absolutely keeps Americans safer."

In a statement, a State Department spokesperson who declined to give their name said the department does not comment on "allegedly leaked documents," but added: "the Administration has made clear that it defends Americans' freedom of expression against foreigners who wish to censor them. We do not support aliens coming to the United States to work as censors muzzling Americans."

The statement continued: "In the past, the President himself was the victim of this kind of abuse when social media companies locked his accounts. He does not want other Americans to suffer this way. Allowing foreigners to lead this type of censorship would both insult and injure the American people."

First Amendment experts criticized the memo's guidance as itself a potential violation of free speech rights.

"People who study misinformation and work on content-moderation teams aren't engaged in 'censorship'— they're engaged in activities that the First Amendment was designed to protect. This policy is incoherent and unconstitutional," said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney and legislative advisor at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement.

Even as the administration has targeted those it claims are engaged in censoring Americans, it has also tightened its own scrutiny of visa applicants' online speech.

On Wednesday, the State Department announced it would require H-1B visa applicants and their dependents to set their social media profiles to "public" so they can be reviewed by U.S. officials.

NPR's Bobby Allyn and Michele Kelemen contributed reporting.
Copyright 2025 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Inglewood police will get drones, automated license plate readers and body-worn cameras after the City Council approved purchasing up to $6.3 million in new tech. 

The Inglewood City Council unanimously approved the tech package during its meeting Tuesday, clearing the way for city staff to finalize a contract with police tech company Axon. Mayor James Butts said the city’s public safety has come a long way in recent decades, but that the new equipment will help the city modernize.

“We have to continue to move to the future. We are an international destination,” Butts said.

Inglewood will host a string of international mega-events over the next few years, including this summer’s FIFA World Cup, the 2027 NFL Super Bowl and 2028 Olympic Games. Butts told The LA Local the tech package is the result of months of city research and negotiations with potential tech suppliers dating to last summer. 

The introduction of police body cameras, though, follows a more local controversy: Bryan Bostic’s still-unexplained March 10 death in Inglewood police custody. 

Activists have redoubled calls for body cams in Inglewood since Bostic died; unlike other L.A.-area police agencies, Inglewood officers are not outfitted with cameras. 

Bystander video from Bostic’s arrest shows police forcibly pinning him to the street after a traffic stop, but it remains unclear what caused his death. Investigations by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office into the police use of force during Bostic’s arrest and by the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s office are ongoing. 

Marie Darden, Bostic’s aunt, said after the council meeting she believes the city only moved the tech package forward because family and activists have pressed the issue.

“They’re doing this to try to silence us,” Darden said. 

Darden and others in Bostic’s family spoke during the Tuesday meeting — as they have for weeks — and asked the city to share more information, including the names of the officers involved in Bostic’s arrest.

Butts replied in his own comments during the meeting that the city is still waiting on the county medical examiner’s findings.

“No one wants to know more than I and the council do, what was the cause of death,” Butts said. 

Here’s the new gear Inglewood police will get

Axon will kit out Inglewood police officers with body cameras as well as new Tasers. The department has 186 sworn officers, according to the city. 

Cameras will also be installed in twenty-five vehicles. The Fleet 3 devices have capability to automatically read and look up vehicle license plates. 

The Automated License Plate Recognition, or ALPR, tech will also be rolled out via 98 stationary cameras mounted on light posts and in other locations. The devices Inglewood is purchasing also have livestream video capability, according to Axon’s website.

Stationary ALPR devices scan the license plate of passing vehicles and log their location at a given time. Police tout the ability of ALPR networks to rapidly locate stolen vehicles or fleeing suspects. Critics say they lack oversight and that their data can be too broadly shared, including with federal immigration agents.

In a statement on Tuesday, local activist Najee Ali called on the city council to create protections for the public before putting the new equipment into use.

“There are no guarantees that body camera footage will be released. No independent oversight. No clear rules about who controls the data or how it will be used,” he said. “You cannot expand surveillance without expanding accountability.”

Axon will also provide the city with seven camera drones, including the Skydio 10 and its indoor-focused cousin, the Skydio R10, as well as a suite of software to manage it all. 

Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta said the tech package puts Inglewood cops on “the cutting edge” and that the tech is expected to roll out between this summer and the end of the year. 

Councilmember Gloria Gray — who attended the meeting remotely — said she hopes the council and community members will get a chance to discuss police training and policy connected to the new systems.

“Technology alone does not create public trust,” she said.  

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, ruled that Louisiana's 2024 election map, which created a second majority-Black congressional district, was "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."

Although the court kept Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act intact, Wednesday's decision all but guts the landmark law that came out of the Civil Rights Movement and protected the collective voting power of racial minorities when political maps are redrawn.

It isn't yet clear how the decision will affect November's midterms. Primaries are well underway in most states.

Once considered the jewel in the crown of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act has been largely dismembered since 2013 by the increasingly conservative Supreme Court. The major exception was a decision just two years ago that upheld the section of the law aimed at ensuring that minority voters are not shut out of the process of drawing new congressional district lines.

At issue in the case was the redistricting map drawn by the Louisiana legislature after the decennial Census. Following years of litigation, the state, with a 30% Black population, first fought and then finally agreed to draw a second majority-Black district. Two of the state's six House members are African American.

Normally, that would have been the end of the case, but a self-described group of "non-African-American voters" intervened after the new maps were drawn up to object to the legislature's redistricting.

The Trump administration supported them, contending that the Black voters should not have gotten a second majority-minority district.

On Friday, the court agreed.

"Correctly understood, Section 2 does not impose liability at odds with the Constitution, and it should not have imposed liability on Louisiana for its 2022 map," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. "Compliance with Section 2 thus could not justify the State's use of race-based redistricting here."

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that she dissented "because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court's decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Six leading Democratic candidates for governor were seeking a breakout moment Tuesday night in a race that has been dominated by its lack of certainty, with two Republican candidates frequently in the lead.

None of them appeared to find one in a chaotic, combative and often hard-to-follow CBS debate at Pomona College, prompting former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter to declare at one point that “this is worse than my teenagers at dinner.”

With less than a week before ballots are mailed to voters, though, the targets were clear: Billionaire Tom Steyer, who has led fellow Democrats in polling and has already spent at least $132 million of his own money on the race; and Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary who has had a sudden surge in momentum since former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out amid allegations of sexual assault.

Porter, once a rising national progressive star, got in a dig at Steyer, who has consolidated support among many of the party’s most left-wing activists. She criticized the fortune he made in part by investing in fossil fuels when he tried to tout his climate-friendly credentials and policy of “making polluters pay.” Steyer has said that he subsequently divested from those investments and devoted himself to addressing climate change.

“How about profiteers pay?” Porter asked pointedly.

Becerra, meanwhile, was criticized by moderate Democratic San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan for his mixed record as former President Joe Biden’s health secretary and for bristling when pressed for policy specifics. At one point, Becerra argued with one of the five debate moderators over the legality of his proposal to call a state of emergency to freeze home insurance rates.

Becerra entered the debate fresh off a recent boost in polling and fundraising, buoyed by an army of online influencers whose posts adviser Michael Bustamante said are “all organic.” The candidate was eager to spar with his competitors, but his newfound spotlight has also come with scrutiny about his record on immigration and health.

Progressives and Steyer’s campaign have also highlighted Becerra’s support from companies like Chevron and his handling of an influx of unaccompanied migrant children as Biden’s health secretary. A 2023 New York Times investigation found that those children — whom Becerra had pressured officials to process and place as if they were running an “assembly line” — ended up in dangerous child labor jobs.

Becerra later dismissed the criticism as a “MAGA talking point” and said the Department of Homeland Security was responsible for the child labor.

“We did everything we could,” he said.

Republican Chad Bianco, the ornery Riverside County sheriff with a penchant for the conspiratorial, was also on the offensive Tuesday night. He leapt to attack Democratic policies wholesale as “lies” whenever he could. He drew groans from the audience when he interrupted Becerra to state, falsely, that COVID-19 vaccines distributed under Biden had “poisoned” millions of Americans.

His frequent broadsides at state regulations prompted Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to attack Bianco’s recent unprecedented seizure of 650,000 ballots in Riverside County.

Little to differentiate between Democrats

But the Democrats largely failed to differentiate themselves as they tackled questions on the cost of living, health care, education, housing and energy, struggling to promote new policies to address the crushing cost of living. They were careful not to attack the liberal policies of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has declined to endorse any of them.

Even getting a moment in the spotlight was hard in a debate format that seemed to jump from subject to subject and in which candidates frequently interrupted one another.

“They’re all wrong,” Mahan said, as he tried to walk the line between the Republicans supporting a Trump tax policy that will cut up to 2 million people from public health coverage and Democrats calling for publicly funded single-payer health care estimated to cost $392 billion in California.

But Mahan didn’t offer much of an alternative, saying the answer was “incentivizing actual health.”

All eight said they support forcing homeless residents who refuse repeated shelter offers into mandated mental health treatment facilities. Mahan and Thurmond agreed with Republicans Bianco and Steve Hilton that the state gas tax should be suspended; Becerra, Porter, Steyer and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa disagreed.

On energy, Porter agreed with Mahan and Villaraigosa that the state should aim to keep oil refineries open amid skyrocketing gas prices while working toward greater electrification, while Steyer called for more taxes, on oil industry profits. Hilton, who has promised to eliminate many climate goals to lower the price of gas, did not say what he would do to support clean energy. He has dominated most polling in the governor’s race.

“I think I’m more confused on who to vote for now than ever,” said Pomona College politics student Kloi Ogans after the debate. “So I have a lot more researching to do.”

As part of the debate, Ogans was invited to ask the candidates about rebuilding housing in California. She said after the debate that young voters are worried about affordability and concerned about Trump’s immigration enforcement sweeps. She particularly wanted to hear from Becerra and Porter, but the sparring among candidates made her disinterested.

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

Proposition 36, which passed in November 2024, promised California voters a new era of “mass treatment” for people struggling with addiction and a crackdown on repeat petty thieves amid a spike in retail theft.

The debate around the measure, called “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act,” was fueled in part by a series of videotaped smash-and-grab robberies splashed across local TV news and images of unhoused residents shooting up drugs in the streets.

Voters signaled they wanted a crackdown and they approved Prop. 36 with nearly 70% casting ballots in favor of it.

A little more than a year later, the measure is getting mixed reviews.

Supporters say it's been effective in holding repeat offenders accountable. Critics say it's been a return to mass incarceration without the promised treatment for people with substance abuse.

How Prop. 36 works

Prop. 36 stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug offenders.

Here’s how the measure works: If you have been convicted of two misdemeanor thefts of $950 or less, prosecutors have the option of charging your third petty theft as a felony, which carries up to a three-year prison term.

Before Prop. 36, petty theft was a misdemeanor, regardless of how many times you did it.

When it comes to drug offenses under Prop 36, if you have been convicted of two possessions of a small amount of hard drugs (fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine), prosecutors have the option of charging your third possession as a felony. But you don’t have to go to prison if you agree to go into drug treatment.

In 2025, California prosecutors filed more than 19,000 Prop. 36 felony drug cases and more than 15,500 felony theft cases, according to a study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice released in March. Most people were released on bail pending the outcome of their case.

Nearly 900 Californians have been sent to state prison under Prop. 36, since it went into effect in December 2024. County jail populations have grown by nearly 3,000 since the measure passed, driven by a surge in felony bookings of people who have not yet been sentenced.

In Los Angeles County alone, there are about 1,150 individuals in jail because of Prop. 36 — about a 9% increase in the jail population, according to county Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. The surge in defendants is adding caseloads to his already overworked attorneys, he said.

The same is happening across the state.

“This is really compounding the workload crisis,” said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association.

The data represents a reversal of yearslong declines in incarceration, and they are occurring amid all-time lows in California’s crime rate.

“It really is a return to mass incarceration,” Chatfield argued.

Black people overrepresented

Black people are dramatically overrepresented in Prop. 36 charges, according to the study. In Contra Costa County, for example, Black residents account for more than half of all Proposition 36 theft charges, despite making up less than one-tenth of the population.

Prosecutors say the law has been effective.

“It’s been a valuable tool to go after chronic and repeat thieves,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

Hochman said his office brought more than 3,300 Prop. 36 felony cases against people charged with their third petty theft in 2025.

He said his office brought over 1,900 felony cases against people charged with their third possession of hard drugs.

He said he couldn’t immediately provide numbers on how many of the drug defendants opted for rehabilitation over prison.

Statewide, fewer than 1 in 5 people arrested on Prop. 36 drug charges have been ordered to treatment, and fewer than 1 in 100 have completed a program, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study.

Lack of treatment beds

One reason for the low treatment numbers is a scarcity of treatment beds throughout the state.

“There just isn’t enough treatment to meet the need,” said the center’s Maureen Washburn. “People aren’t getting connected to treatment. They aren’t succeeding in treatment programs once they’re in them.”

Treatment, a major promise of Prop. 36, has been an “abject failure,” she said.

Hochman agreed treatment is lacking.

“We do not have anywhere close to enough drug treatment and mental illness beds in a county of 10 million people,” he said.

The district attorney argued the state needs to provide more funding for treatment beds.

“Sacramento has not funded at any meaningful level,” he said.

In a March letter to the chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, the co-author of Prop. 36 — Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) — said at least $400 million dollars in new funding is needed for treatment facilities.

“I think spending taxpayer dollars on drug treatment — both in the short term and in the long term — is a smart way to address public safety issues,” Umberg told LAist.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested in his budget $100 million dollars for treatment over three years.

But Chatfield said people facing Prop. 36 charges shouldn't be locked up in the first place. Drug offenses should be handled as a public health issue, she argued.

“Even the low level misdemeanors for theft are economic crimes,” she said. “These are crimes of poverty.”

Unequal application of Prop. 36

In addition to a paucity of treatment beds, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study found charging rates vary dramatically by county. Orange County alone accounted for nearly 20% of Prop. 36 drug charges and 40% of theft convictions in 2025 despite representing just 8% of the state’s population.

“This inconsistency across counties exacerbates California’s longstanding problem of providing differing ”justice by geography,” the report stated.

Empirical evidence of the effect of Prop. 36 on the crime rate is lacking. But Umberg said he believes it has reduced retail theft.

“I have been told by a huge number of folks in law enforcement and also in the business community — particularly in the retail community — that it has had an effect on retail theft,” Umberg said.

Hochman said it's too early to tell if people are being deterred by Proposition 36.

“We’re waiting on statistics that we’ll probably get sometime this year to see if the deterrent aspect is also working — that we actually have fewer people going ahead and committing these crimes,” Hochman said.

But crime was on the way down before Proposition 36 passed. Violent crime fell 6% and property crime dropped 8.4% in California in 2024 — the year Prop. 36 passed.

Chatfield of the California Public Defenders Association maintains voters were “sold a bill of goods” on the measure.

“They were told this was about homelessness. They were told this was about treatment. And it absolutely was not," she said. "It was about increasing incarceration.”