The Brief

The Trump administration is considering a move that could nearly triple the number of countries subject to a travel ban, according to a State Department memo obtained by NPR. Up to 36 additional nations could be added to the list of 19 that were placed under full or partial restrictions earlier this month.

The memo to diplomats in about two dozen African nations, along with others in Central Asia, the Caribbean and several Pacific Island countries, demands that they detail by this Wednesday, how they will begin to address U.S. concerns and comply with new State Department requirements.

Signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the memo, first reported by The Washington Post, says the 36 countries have been identified as having "vetting and screening information [that] is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension" of entry of their citizens to the U.S. It's the latest move in President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown that has included mass deportations of immigrants accused or convicted of criminal activity and others.

The memo says, some of the nations are designated as state sponsors of terror, or some of their citizens have been "involved with acts of terrorism in the United States." Some lack a credible "government authority to produce reliable identity documents," keep unreliable criminal records, or are beset by "widespread government fraud," according to the memo. Other concerns include claims that the countries have high rates of citizens overstaying visas, or citizens who have been "involved in antisemitic or Anti-American activity in the United States." Countries that do not address concerns could be recommended for a travel ban as soon as August.

Limiting entry of individuals from those countries "will help secure the American homeland and make our communities safer," said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a statement to NPR.

The memo also cites requirements that foreign governments be "fully cooperative" in removing foreign nationals when it is "vital to U.S. national security." And any specific concerns that the U.S. may have with a specific country could be "mitigated," the memo says, if that country is willing to accept deportees from the U.S. who cannot be sent back to their country of origin.

"This is a necessary step to garner cooperation from foreign governments to accept deportation flights of their own citizens, strengthen national security, and help restore integrity to the immigration system," McLaughlin said.

Critics of the travel bans, however, have railed against President Trump's previous bans as racially and religiously discriminatory for targeting many African and Muslim-majority nations.

The countries listed in the memo as facing bans are: Angola; Antigua and Barbuda; Benin; Bhutan; Burkina Faso; Cabo Verde; Cambodia; Cameroon; Côte D'Ivoire; Democratic Republic of Congo; Djibouti; Dominica; Ethiopia; Egypt; Gabon; The Gambia; Ghana; Kyrgyzstan; Liberia; Malawi; Mauritania; Niger; Nigeria; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Sao Tome and Principe; Senegal; South Sudan; Syria; Tanzania; Tonga; Tuvalu; Uganda; Vanuatu; Zambia; and Zimbabwe.

Nations already fully banned on June 4 are: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Those partially banned are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

In his first term in office, Trump banned travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, but the order was rescinded under the Biden administration.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A few weeks ago, Taelyr Vecchione vented her growing frustration with traffic in San Diego.

"Do you remember when traffic started at, like, 5?" she said in this video posted on TikTok. Vecchione filmed herself sitting in her car, lamenting how things in her Southern California hometown have changed.

"Now," she says, "there is always traffic. Always!"

In fact, there is data to back her up on this. San Diego has seen a significant jump in traffic delays, researchers say, as congestion across the U.S. climbed to record levels in 2024.

If it seems like traffic is getting worse where you live, that's because it probably is. After dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say, congestion has equaled — and, in many places, surpassed — pre-pandemic levels. And those delays are spreading to more times of day and more days of the week.

"We are back. But the delay kind of has a different feel to it than it did before," said David Schrank, a senior research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, which has tracked congestion since the 1980s in its annual Urban Mobility Report.

For decades, Schrank says, those patterns barely budged. Then came 2020, when congestion plunged during the pandemic lockdown. Now it's back at record levels, he says, with the average American spending 63 hours per year stuck in traffic.

There are some other notable differences from past years too. The rush-hour peaks are still the worst times to drive, Schrank says, but there's more congestion at other times of day as well.

"It's spread out over more of the day, and thus it's not just a commuter issue," Schrank said in an NPR interview. "Everyone is experiencing more of that delay."

Those aren't the only changes researchers are seeing in the data. Schrank says there's more delay on weekends. Traffic on Mondays tends to be noticeably lighter than on the other weekdays, he said, while Thursday has nearly caught up with Friday as the heaviest traffic day of the week.

"There's more variability day to day than there was pre-pandemic. The day of the week matters, and the time of the day matters," Schrank said.

Trucks are causing more congestion as well, according to the Texas A&M report. While some truck traffic shifted toward off-peak hours during 2020 and 2021, the most recent data shows that truck-related delays during rush hour are climbing back toward their pre-pandemic level.

Schrank and his colleagues ranked every metropolitan area in the U.S. by hours of traffic delay. San Diego saw the largest percentage jump in hours of delay per commuter since 2019, at more than 37%. Miami, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area saw significant jumps too.

But no city caught up to Greater Los Angeles, where the average commuter lost 137 hours to delays last year, according to the Texas A&M report.

Traffic on Interstate 210 during the morning commute in Pasadena, Calif., this month. Researchers say the average driver in Los Angeles lost 137 hours to traffic delays in 2024, the most of any U.S. city.

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That came as no great surprise to Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He warns against reading too much into the individual city rankings but says the overall findings make sense.

"Congestion moves largely in sync with broader patterns in regional economies. And so if you have the economy doing well, congestion tends to be worse. If you have a recession, it tends to be a little bit better," Manville said.

Researchers at Texas A&M also identified a few regions where congestion is down compared with before the pandemic — most notably, Washington, D.C. That could be linked to the persistence of remote work in the federal government in 2024. And it might also have something to do with regional efforts to fight congestion, including a tolling strategy known as dynamic pricing.

"If you're going to contribute to the excessive congestion during the peak and the evening rush hours perhaps, you're going to be paying more for the tolls," said Robert Puentes, a vice president and transportation expert at the Brookings Institution.

Puentes lives in Northern Virginia, which has adopted an extensive system of tolls on major highways that charge different prices at different times. And he says that this seems to help reduce congestion.

"It's something that really could be applicable in other metropolitan areas. We see places in Texas and California, in other places, that are using it. I think it has a real future in this country," Puentes said.

Another ambitious effort to fight congestion is happening in New York City, where car drivers now pay as much as $9 to enter Lower Manhattan.

That congestion pricing plan has already cut traffic in the toll zone since its launch in January. But it's still too early to say how much it's changing commuting patterns across the region.
Copyright 2025 NPR

It's one of the most anticipated events ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

On Friday, FIFA will conduct the draw for the top men's soccer tournament, taking place across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The draw — at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. — will determine which opponents all 48 teams participating in the World Cup will eventually face in the initial group stage.

The draw will be attended by the three leaders of the countries hosting the event, including President Trump, in an event that has become quite the spectacle over the years.

Here's what to know about the draw for the World Cup, with the ceremony set to kick off at 9 a.m. PT.

What is the draw for?

Next year's tournament is the biggest ever, with 48 teams set to be split among 12 groups of four.

These groups make up the first stage of the tournament, which determines which teams advance to the knockout rounds. The top two sides of each group automatically qualify, along with the eight best third-place teams.

Not all teams that will take part in the 2026 World Cup are known, though. So far, 42 countries have qualified, with the remaining six — including Italy — set to compete in playoffs next March to determine the final list of participants.

How will the teams be drawn?

Ahead of the draw, all teams have been placed in four pots, primarily based on their most recent FIFA rankings.

Pot 1 will include top-ranked teams such as Spain and Brazil, along with the three hosts. Pot 4 will include the lowest-ranked teams, including World Cup debutants Cape Verde, Curaçao and Jordan, as well as placeholders for the six teams that have yet to qualify.

Teams will be drawn randomly from each pot — but there are a few rules.

There can be only up to two European teams per group and only one team per group from each of the remaining five continental confederations under FIFA. That means, for example, that an African team such as Tunisia cannot be drawn into the same group as Ghana, even if they are in two separate pots.

In addition, in a quirk for this year's tournament, FIFA has determined that the top two-ranked teams — Spain and Argentina — will be placed in groups that would end up on opposite sides of the tournament bracket should they each win their respective groups. That ensures these two early favorites would not meet until the final.

The same rule will apply to France and England, the third- and fourth-best ranked teams according to FIFA.

When will we know where teams will play?

In another quirk, teams will not know at Friday's draw where or when they will play. The locations and kickoff times for each team across all 16 host cities will be determined on Saturday, at a separate event.

FIFA has said it wants to try to take travel times for teams in mind, while also ensuring that teams are drawn into kickoff times that are more favorable for spectators in their respective countries. For example, evening start times would likely be better for Asian sides, ensuring games are taking place when it's roughly the following day for spectators back home.

Spain is considered one of the early favorites to win the 2026 World Cup. Pictured here is star player Lamine Yamal, celebrating a goal against France in the semifinal of the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament, which Spain eventually won.

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Does this all matter?

The draw helps determine how easy — or difficult — the path to the knockout rounds will be for most teams.

Just like in any tournament, all teams would prefer to face the ones they view as weaker and avoid being placed in the "Group of Death," the moniker given to the group perceived to be the most difficult in a tournament.

"You don't want to be one of these heroes — like, 'give me the best,'" says Herculez Gomez, who played for the U.S. in the 2010 World Cup and now hosts the Men in Blazers podcast Vamos. "That's not how it works. Even the best don't want the best at the World Cup."

But World Cups are unpredictable. Strong soccer powerhouses have failed to advance past the World Cup's group stage before, including Germany in 2018 and 2022, and Spain in 2014.

That said, this year's tournament is bigger. Even finishing third in a four-team group can ensure qualification, although where each team ends up within its group will determine its path through the knockout rounds.

Which are the early favorites and the teams to watch?

Predictably, among the early favorites are recent global soccer powerhouses such as Spain, England and France, along with South American teams, such as Argentina and Brazil.

But there will be interesting storylines to watch outside the favorites, including Curaçao, which became the smallest country to qualify for the World Cup, with a population of just over 150,000 people.

And, of course, there will be enormous interest in which teams the three hosts will end up facing in their respective groups.

The U.S. men's national team, for example, is approaching the World Cup draw with some momentum after staying undefeated in the past five games. Its most recent record marks a big improvement after a rocky period under coach Mauricio Pochettino and previous coach Gregg Berhalter, which included an early exit from last year's Copa America regional tournament.

NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 NPR

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Despite watching one after another of his state’s tech titans head to the White House to seek President Donald Trump’s favor, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he doesn’t begrudge the industry’s rightward swing — mostly.

“It’s very situational with a lot of these guys,” he said when asked about tech businessmen going to “the other side.” “They are and they aren’t. … I don’t see it as as big a shift as perhaps others do.”

His comments at a New York Times finance summit underscored the governor’s balancing act with the tech industry, even as his relationship with its major businesses has been strained by Trump this year. Though he has excoriated law firms and universities for “selling out” to Trump administration demands this year — even threatening to pull state funding from California universities that sign certain agreements with the president — Newsom has walked a finer line when it comes to tech.

“I think it’s a little bit more, I don’t want to say the word transactional, but it’s fiduciary,” he said of tech leaders’ decisions to curry favor with Trump.

Newsom, who was San Francisco mayor in the 2000s, has long been close with tech leaders. As governor, he counts on the industry’s outsized gains to keep a massive state budget balanced. As a possible 2028 presidential contender, he could find Silicon Valley’s deep-pocketed donors helpful.

The relationship has made Newsom a reliable politician in the industry’s corner as lawmakers in his own party increasingly push for regulations on social media and its effects on children, data centers’ use of environmental resources and artificial intelligence’s proliferation into workplaces, adolescent relationships and daily life.

While Newsom has signed some of those bills, particularly ones in which advocates negotiated with tech companies, he’s also vetoed several out of concern that overregulating a nascent industry would drive it out of state. And he’s vehemently opposing a proposed wealth tax that would undoubtedly touch tech executives.

Tech titans cozy up to Trump

That’s been the case this year despite Silicon Valley’s increasing coziness with Trump, whom Newsom has criticized for threatening industries with tariffs to extract concessions and demanding loyalty from private business executives. The relationship has affected California in a number of ways, from Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s aggressive pursuit of federal firings and cost-cuttings earlier this year to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s suggestion that Trump send the National Guard to San Francisco, precipitating a nervous few days in October as the president moved to start immigration raids there. Benioff later walked back his statements and Trump said he relented after talking with him and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Peter Leroe-Muñoz, a senior vice president at the industry group Bay Area Council, praised Newsom for nevertheless understanding “the value of the innovation our member companies produce.”

“While the governor may not always agree with innovation companies and how they choose to operate or conduct themselves, at the end of the day the governor recognizes that we all have a stake in the success of California and so not cutting off ties or undermining those industry players is in the long term success of the Golden State,” Leroe-Muñoz said last month.

Still, Newsom offered some criticism of the industry’s relationship with Trump on Wednesday, calling it “self-dealing” that the president’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks, along with many other investors and chipmakers, have reportedly been in line to profit from Trump’s AI directives.

“There needs to be levels of ethics that are demanded of these leaders,” he said. “That entire ecosystem has benefited from it. California has benefited from it. But I do not think it’s healthy for capitalism.”

And he called Apple CEO Tim Cook’s ability to strike a deal with Trump to get tariff exemptions for critical parts of the iPhone supply chain “by definition, crony capitalism.”

“How about the farmers and ranchers in California, how about all the small businesses that can’t pick up the phone and get an exemption on their tariffs?” Newsom said. “It breaks my heart.”

But he acknowledged Cook was serving his shareholders: “Do I begrudge that? Yes. Do I begrudge him? Not as much.”

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

From demogorgons clasping onto a white truck to a decibel reader device, much of the props in Stranger Things were designed with the intention to feel vintage and authentic.

Much of that is thanks to Shane Dzicek, a special effects designer based out of Burbank. Beyond Stranger Things, Dzicek worked on the Faztalker device in the most recent Five Nights at Freddy’s film, the jets on Top Gun: Maverick and the Roomba-esque vacuum cleaner shoes in Hocus Pocus 2.

LAist’s Julia Paskin talked with Dzicek about working on this latest season of Stranger Things and what it’s like to design special effects in the age of AI.

The process of designing the props in “Stranger Things”

Julia Paskin: What can you share on this date in terms of anything that you worked on in the new season?

Shane Dzicek:  One of the things that I was excited to work on was a device that Steve actually has in the squawk van. It's this great device that counts from zero to 99.

 I put in an alpha numerical display. Back in the ‘80s, they might have used different tech…And the original one weighed like 35, 40 pounds. So I hollowed the ones that we remade from scratch. So that way, Steve [Harrington] could have this thing with him and not have to worry about the weight.

A screengrab from the "Stranger Things" season 5 trailer. Special effects designer Shane Dzicek created the decibel system device to the right of Joe Keery's character Steve Harrington.

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Julia Paskin: In the trailer, there's the truck with demogorgons on top of it. And you did some work on that. Can you tell us about that as well?

Shane Dzicek:  Murray [Bauman] was driving the truck. [The actors inside] need to be able to act. They need to have cameras right there, so you can't always have this all strapped on a big truck or on a process trailer moving down the road. So we built rigs that we can move the trucks around [and] be able to do any type of heavy riding, if there's big bumps they gotta go over, if you gotta move and flip the truck over any of that type.

A screengrab from the trailer for "Stranger Things" Season 5. Special effects designer Shane Dzicek rigged the truck to withstand heavy riding.

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The impact of AI on the SFX industry

Two years ago, actors and writers in Hollywood went on strike, demanding protections from AI in TV and film writing. Last year, those same fears creeped into labor negotiations between the Animation Guild and studios and streaming companies, with the Guild calling generative AI a top concern.

But when it comes to special effects, Dzicek is optimistic about his field withstanding AI’s threats to job security.

Julia Paskin:  Are you dealing with the same kind of AI anxiety that other industries are fearful of, including myself?

Shane Dzicek: [AI] is a powerful tool. I'll probably end up seeing directors and producers and creative people that might be using it as references, being like: "Hey, I AI generated a thing now. I need you to make this come to life and be physical and practical." So I don't see AI necessarily taking that practical part of making this a real thing. That takes a lot of just ingenuity and years of education on how to fabricate and build things and bring all these elements together to create a working prop.

The other thing is you gotta train AI on the knowledge that we have. And [this] kind of knowledge is all handed by word of mouth. It's not written down anywhere. So good luck trying to protect that. Good luck trying to get the information out of all of us.

These excerpts have been condensed and edited for clarity. Watch the full interview below.