The Brief

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as of Thursday, has ended a new mortgage-rescue program that so far has helped about 20,000 veterans avoid foreclosure and keep their homes.

The move leaves millions of military veterans with far worse options than most other American homeowners if they run into trouble paying their home loans. And it comes at a time when nearly 90,000 VA loans are seriously past due, with 33,000 of those already in the foreclosure process, according to the data and analytics firm ICE.

At issue is the VA Servicing Purchase program, or VASP. It was put in place during the Biden administration after missteps by the VA left homeowners with no affordable way to catch up on their VA-backed home loans if they fell behind. VASP rolls the homeowners' missed payments into a new, low-interest rate loan that the VA then owns outright. With today's higher mortgage rates of around 7%, it is often the only affordable option for homeowners with VA loans.

But Republicans in Congress have been critical of the VA Servicing Purchase
program, saying it puts too much taxpayer money at risk. In a statement this week to NPR, the VA said, "[As of May 1,] the program, which was unilaterally created by the Biden Administration and lacks congressional authority, will stop accepting new enrollees."

Mortgage industry groups, housing advocates and veterans organizations have been warning the VA that shutting down VASP without replacing it with something else first would result in large numbers of veterans losing their homes, many of whom are in this financial peril because of the VA's own mistakes.

"With the expiration of VASP, tens of thousands of Veterans and their families are now at significant risk of losing their homes," said Mike Calhoun, president of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for the financial rights of underserved communities, including veterans.

His group is urging Congress to quickly pass legislation to create a new program to fill the gap, and he said, "VA should extend VASP until this program is up and running."

Thousands of vets left stranded, again

Thousands of veterans were left facing foreclosure two years ago after the VA abruptly canceled a key part of a pandemic-era mortgage relief program that allowed veterans to skip mortgage payments if they had trouble paying. When an NPR investigation first uncovered the VA's move in late 2023, there were about 40,000 vets in danger of losing their homes.

Kevin Conlon is one of them.

Conlon and his wife, Jenny, live in upstate New York, not far from where he was stationed with the Army at Fort Drum. After his two combat tours in Iraq, about 12 years ago the couple had a young kid and were struggling to pay rent and save money. Getting a VA loan meant that they could buy a house with no down payment. And they've been there ever since.

"That's the longest I've been in one place," said Conlon.

"Without the VA loan, there was no way that we could have afforded to buy a house," his wife added.

Kevin Conlon and his wife, Jenny, at their home in upstate New York. The couple have owned the house for 12 years and don't know where they would go if they lose it.

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Cindy Schultz for NPR

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The VA home loan has long been a bedrock benefit of the GI Bill, giving vets a leg up into the middle class.

But all that came unraveled for tens of thousands of vets like Conlon who were on what's known as a mortgage forbearance. It was supposed to help them during a time of financial hardship by pausing their monthly payments and then giving them an affordable way to start paying again and get current. After NPR reported that the VA had shut down the only affordable option for veterans to do that, the VA responded by halting foreclosures for a full year while it rolled out its VASP rescue plan.

While they've been waiting to get into VASP, the Conlons have been told not to make payments, so they've been falling further and further behind, and they say their family has nowhere to go if they lose this house.

"I joined right after Sept. 11th," said Conlon, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., and was in Manhattan the day of the attacks.

Conlon's wounds from his time in Iraq aren't visible, but they've taken years to heal. During his two combat tours, roadside bombs hit his convoys repeatedly and left him with traumatic brain injuries. On the second tour, his best friend died when he hugged a suicide bomber to the ground, giving his life to protect his friends. The trauma and survivor's guilt wounded Conlon, he says, as bad as the blast injuries. He struggled with PTSD and thoughts of suicide for more than a decade before finally getting to a stable, healthy place.

"I was willing to die for what I believed in. And for someone [to] ... take away the home that my family lives in? Like we've paid enough, we've really paid enough," he said.

Referring to the VA winding down VASP, VA spokesman Pete Kasperowicz told NPR, "This change is necessary because VA is not set up or intended to be a mortgage loan restructuring service."

Republicans have their own plan, but it's not in place yet 

Republican critics in Congress don't like that VASP buys the rescued loans from the mortgage industry and then holds the loans on the VA's own books. They say the VA would lose too much money if the homeowners fall behind again.

"The Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA's VASP program," said a joint statement from Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, when VA announced its plan to end VASP.

Van Orden has sponsored a bill to replace VASP with what's known as a "partial claim" program that experts say would help vets struggling to keep their homes by moving their missed payments to the back of their loan term so they would pay them back down the road.

But between VASP ending and Van Orden's bill possibly becoming law is a chasm that could swallow thousands of VA home loans.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin arrives at the U.S. Capitol in 2023.

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Chip Somodevilla

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Getty Images

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"Veteran borrowers will face otherwise preventable foreclosures, which harm the government through increased payouts as well as harm Veteran homeowners," warned the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center and the Center for Responsible lending in a letter to Congress last month.

"Without VASP or immediate access to alternative policy tools that provide relief … many of these homeowners will be forced to sell their homes and move or face foreclosure," the letter said.

In the wake of the move by the VA, Democrats and Republicans in Congress both say they want to pass legislation to give veterans with VA loans better options for avoiding foreclosure. But it's unclear how long that will take.

In the meantime, veterans behind on their mortgages have far worse options than most other Americans who have loans backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Federal Housing Administration. Those entities all have loss mitigation options that allow homeowners to catch up on missed payments without being forced into a new modified loan at today's high interest rates.

Vets left in limbo and disbelief

For their part, veterans interviewed by NPR feel like the VA has now repeatedly stranded them by first offering them a lifeline and then cutting the rope once they grabbed hold.

"I feel let down and deceived," said Samuel McCrary, a Marine Corps vet with three young kids in Loganville, Ga. The new VASP program looked like it was going to save his house, but now the VA has ended new enrollments in it and he says his mortgage company can only tell him his application for VASP is "pending."

"I believe that we are going to lose the house," McCrary said. "Losing my house and having to go rent — it makes me sick to my stomach to think about."

Even veterans who have made it into the VASP program aren't sure if they'll be OK. That's because many of those vets are in a VASP three-month trial payment period. The VA says vets who have entered that process can continue it through August, "subject to VA's determination that funds remain available for VASP."

The VA did not respond to NPR's request for information about how much funding is available or how many more veterans in these trial periods will in fact be placed into affordable VASP loans.

Veterans also tell NPR they feel like they're scapegoated and paying the price for the VA's mistakes.

At a recent House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Van Orden criticized VASP this way:

"I understand the whole developmental process of this, and it was moronic," Van Orden said. "It gets rid of a bum loan, and it passes it off to the American taxpayers."

That comment did not sit well with fellow Iraq veteran Conlon and his wife, Jenny.

"That's a hell of a thing to say about his brothers and sisters," said Conlon.

Iraq war veteran Kevin Conlon is among tens of thousands of veterans left facing foreclosure because of a debacle in the VA home loan program.

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Cindy Schultz for NPR

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"That was so hurtful because these are not bum loans, and they're making the veterans and their families out to sound like irresponsible people," his wife added.

The couple says Kevin took the forbearance so he could get treatment for PTSD.  "That's why we needed it, so he could go inpatient at a veterans program," Jenny said.

The Conlons say they followed the VA's instructions and then got stuck when the VA shut off part of its forbearance program in 2022. Then they followed the VA's instructions again by applying for the new rescue program, VASP. And the VA now says it's shutting that off. Their mortgage company tells them they are enrolled in the VASP trial payment plan, but it's unclear whether the VA will determine it has funding to help all the veterans on those trial plans with permanent new VASP loans.

"The level of just mistrust I have — I mean, I get they're trying to cut spending and all that, but it's like, how do you justify cutting something that is to help the vets who were basically put in this position because of you?" Conlon said.

NPR asked the VA if it's concerned about veterans losing their homes after it shuts down VASP with no replacement ready yet. A VA spokesman has not answered that question but at one point referred our reporters to Congress.

NPR asked the Republican House VA committee leadership the same question; that office referred our reporters back to the VA.
Copyright 2025 NPR

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Neighbors in North Long Beach rushed out of their homes on Saturday and blocked federal immigration agents from detaining a man they had just violently knocked to the ground, according to first-hand accounts from four residents who spoke to the Long Beach Post.

The man is a U.S. citizen named Ricardo Gonzalez who lives near where he was detained, according to neighbors and an online fundraiser started by his family. He was riding an e-bike near Elm Avenue and 56th Street on Saturday afternoon when an agent jumped out of an unmarked car and tackled him, according to a neighbor who asked to be identified only by his first name, Joe. (Other accounts online said agents rammed Gonzalez with their car. The Post could not locate any video of this or anyone who said they witnessed it first-hand.)

The agent then accused Gonzalez of throwing something at their car, Joe said.

Agents tased Gonzalez twice while he was on the ground, and one agent knelt on his back while Gonzalez yelled in pain and said his arm was broken, according to two neighbors who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

As residents came outside to see what was going on, they started yelling and honking, alerting more neighbors.

The area was already on edge, Joe said, because eight or so unmarked law enforcement vehicles had been parked in the neighborhood since early that morning. He said his wife at one point had even called 911 to report the vehicles and ask if they could move because they were blocking multiple one-way streets.

Volunteers with anti-ICE rapid response groups had also brought loudspeakers to warn about the vehicles and urge everyone to stay inside. Instead, when neighbors heard the growing confrontation with agents, many intervened.

“If they try to take one of us, they’re going to have to take all of Long Beach,” said Patricia Velazquez, who has lived in the area for more than three decades.

Cellphone video shows roughly 50 people yelling expletives at masked agents who were carrying handguns and wearing vests that said “ICE.” Neighbors demanded to see a warrant, dragged trash cans behind the agents’ vehicles or stood in front of them, blocking them from driving off.

One agent made racist comments to the mostly Latino crowd, saying they didn’t “look legal,”  according to Joe. They also used pepper spray on the crowd, neighbors said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the confrontation.

At one point during the roughly hour-long standoff, agents grabbed two women — both U.S. citizens — and put them in the backs of different vehicles, according to two neighbors. They were soon freed, according to Joe. He described the crowd distracting agents while people sneaked behind their vehicles to open their doors.

Long Beach police soon showed up. In a statement, they said federal agents had called for help providing medical aid to someone and dealing with a crowd that had vandalized vehicles.

One officer attempted to step in immediately but was held back by his partner, one neighbor said. Video shows federal agents then allowed Gonzalez to leave with the Long Beach officers after agents searched his wallet and looked at his identification.

An LBPD officer uncuffed Gonzalez and took him to a nearby fire station. Paramedics then took him to a hospital. 

Gonzalez is a Long Beach resident who, until recently, worked for the city, Long Beach City Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk said in a statement. He was riding through his own neighborhood, she said, “when he was racially profiled and violently assaulted by ICE agents—leaving him with broken bones and crushing medical bills.”

In their online fundraiser, Gonzalez’s family says he is a hardworking man who supports his family. He is still recovering, they said, and asked for help spreading the word about what agents did to him.

Long Beach Congressman Robert Garcia said he was “proud of the neighbors who documented and stood up for the family being terrorized by ICE.”

“ICE agents brutally attacked and broke the arm of a North Long Beach resident and U.S. citizen,” he said in a statement. “The videos are horrific and should concern not just our community but the country.”

Mayor Rex Richardson said he is outraged by agents’ actions and is demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security.

One of the first major signs of this year's "Super El Niño" has reached the U.S. It's called a Kelvin wave – a deep ocean wave that's currently raising sea levels along the West Coast.

Scientists have long known about Kelvin waves, but this year, the phenomena grabbed the public's attention with video explanations receiving thousands of views across TikTok and X.

"It does surprise me – I mean, here it's been around all this time," says Mark Cane, who created one of the first models to forecast and predict El Niño. "I'm sure Lord Kelvin is happy in his grave."

(Lord Kelvin, the British physicist who also developed the Kelvin temperature scale, first described the wave back in the late 1800s.)

Kelvin waves can develop along the equator during El Niño years, when a vast region of water in the Pacific Ocean becomes much warmer than usual.

Some of this warm water, in the form of a Kelvin wave that stretches thousands of miles, moves slowly east beneath the ocean's surface until it reaches South America. Then it splits, traveling north along the West Coast and as far south as Chile.

"It's like an enormous bathtub sloshing around," Cane says, professor emeritus of earth and climate sciences at Columbia University. "But the slosh is very peculiar, because it only goes west to east along the equator in a Kelvin wave."

These are not the massive, highly visible waves that crash into shorelines during major storms and hurricanes.

"It's not a wall of water, it's not a tsunami, it's not a wave you can surf," says Dillon Amaya, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University. "It's a planetary-scale wave."

A Kelvin wave's impact is gradual, raising sea levels as it moves up the coast, and bringing with it an elevated risk of floods and warmer water temperatures.

What's the impact? 

Kelvin waves can increase the risk of flooding and coastal erosion.

By themselves, Kelvin waves don't cause flooding, Amaya says. Instead, they load the dice, making flooding more likely by raising sea levels.

"It makes the background conditions more favorable towards coastal flooding, but what you need are triggering factors," Amaya said, such as a major storm or very high tides.

Josh Willis, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says Kelvin waves raise the chances of a "triple whammy" along the California coast: "El Nino, the high tide and the storm surge all coming at once."

That's exactly what some Southern California communities experienced in early October. Sea levels were already higher than normal because of the Kelvin wave – about six to eight inches, Amaya says. Then, when Tropical Storm Rachel hit, a storm surge flooded neighborhoods and left oceanfront homes partially submerged.

"That storm surge was almost certainly made more devastating because of the Kelvin wave," Amaya says.

Warmer water temperatures

Kelvin waves move slowly east beneath the ocean's surface until they reach South America. Then they split, traveling north along the West Coast and south as far as Chile. The dark red represents higher than normal sea levels.<br>

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Dillon J. Amaya

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North Carolina State University

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Kelvin waves also bring warmer water up the coast, which can be disruptive and put stress on marine life.

"We've seen tropical fishes in places that we don't normally see them," Amaya says. "Like a whale shark was spotted off the coast of San Diego."

The Kelvin wave can push down nutrient-dense cold waters that support productive marine ecosystems. Amaya says researchers have already seen evidence of sea birds dying in response to warmer water temperatures along the coast.

When is the next Kelvin wave? 

There are usually five to six Kelvin waves during a strong El Niño year, Amaya says.

Amaya predicts the next Kelvin wave will reach San Diego in late October or early November. Several more waves are expected through the fall and early winter, he says. Kelvin waves usually subside before the peak of El Niño.

The El Niño pattern typically peaks late in the year or early January. This year, NOAA researchers predict the El Niño will remain strong through early 2027.
Copyright 2026 NPR

When California voters open their ballots this November, they will find 14 statewide measures on issues such as immunology research funding, voter ID requirements and billionaire taxes. Add in various city and county propositions, and it’s — a lot.

How do Californians feel about all these propositions padding out the ballot? When pollsters ask, they tend to get mixed signals. People say the measures are too complicated. There are too many. And they can’t get enough of them.

The state’s love-hate relationship with direct democracy is on full display in surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said recently there are too many ballot measures, and 89% said the wording of propositions is too confusing.

But two years ago, 79% of those surveyed also said propositions are a “good thing,” and 87% agreed that they “bring up important public policy issues that the governor and legislature have not adequately addressed.”

Feeling both overwhelmed and empowered by all this decision-making is a byproduct of deeply rooted California political traditions.

Other states ask voters to weigh in on far fewer contests. About half have no initiative process. Even those that do tend to use it far less often than California does.

Between 1904 and 2024, California put 396 initiatives before voters, more than any other state.

“We set up a system where we wanted to vote on things,” said John Matsusaka, executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

“People just believe that if they think there's something wrong with what the government's doing, they have a right to bring it before their fellow citizens and get an opinion on that,” he said. “It's just in the DNA of the state.”

Where did all these propositions come from? 

Ballot initiatives have become a big business in California. Collecting signatures, producing ads, paying political consultants — an entire industry depends on this system. Between 2020 and 2024, nearly $1.9 billion was spent on California ballot measure campaigns.

But the system was initially supposed to be a check on monied interests.

California’s adoption of citizen initiatives, referendums and recalls dates back to the early 20th-century Progressive Era. At the time, states across the Western U.S. expanded direct democracy in the hopes of countering dominant political machines and corporate monopolies.

Ed Lascher, a public policy professor emeritus at Cal State University, Sacramento, said he believes Progressive Era reformers probably would not recognize their vision in today’s initiative system.

“It’s doubtful to me that they would, because of the amount of money involved, the fact that decisions are made basically through advertising and the sort of overwhelming nature of things,” he said.

Then there’s the question of whether asking voters to decide complex issues makes for good policy. Over the years, Californians have approved some dubious, regrettable and ultimately illegal initiatives. Some have a whiff of absurdity, such as 1964’s Proposition 15, which sought to ban cable television. The California Supreme Court overturned it on First Amendment grounds.

Others reveal a darker side of the Golden State. Now a hotbed of resistance to federal ICE raids and deportation efforts, California passed Prop. 187 in 1994. Though it was quickly ruled unconstitutional, the law sought to ban undocumented immigrants from receiving public education, healthcare and other social services.

Less than two decades ago, Californians voted to outlaw same-sex marriage through Prop. 8, an outcome many would find unthinkable just a few years later. And in 1964, nearly two-thirds of Californian voters opted to allow racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals through Prop. 14.

“Most initiatives fail,” Lascher said. “But most initiatives that have targeted minorities in the state have passed. … If you look at things like gay rights, if you look at civil rights in the early '60s, these have been, generally, better protected by the Legislature than by the ballot initiative.”

Should California have fewer ballot measures? 

There have been various attempts to rein in the initiative process. Lascher himself supported making it harder to amend the California Constitution by initiative. That proposal sought to raise the voter approval threshold from a simple majority to two-thirds support. Such a reform would’ve doomed Prop. 8.

But there hasn’t been a groundswell of support for chipping away at the power held by voters.

“Most Californians — and we know this from polls — value having this opportunity,” Matsusaka said.

Though many say the number of ballot measures is too high, research shows it’s not driving Californians away from the polls. Political scientists say initiatives typically have the opposite effect, increasing turnout by about 3% to 8% compared with states that lack initiatives.

Matsusaka said this slight boost could be the result of certain measures turning out voters who care deeply about a particular topic. “When there's an issue they care about, I think it is valuable for them to have the opportunity to vote on it,” he said.

Voters may turn out more in initiative states, but Lascher said research suggests they often feel conflicted. He co-wrote a 2019 book on this topic called Initiatives Without Engagement.

“The bottom line is, voters aren't feeling more efficacious or more ability to control things in states that make heavy use of initiatives,” he said. “They're actually somewhat less trusting.”

Critics argue that today, rather than empowering citizens to directly enact popular political changes, California’s initiative process has evolved into an expensive tool for deep-pocketed interest groups to carry out their agendas.

In some cases, interest groups don’t intend to get their initiatives on the ballot, instead using the process as leverage to get what they want from elected leaders. They’re essentially saying: Cut a deal with us, or we’ll drag you into a costly ballot measure fight.

Other measures end up on the ballot because legislators are required to put them there. Lawmakers cannot pass bonds without approval by a majority of voters. They also cannot amend the state constitution or alter previous voter initiatives without a new ballot measure.

Could technology change how Californians handle confusion?

Matsusaka said despite feeling overwhelmed, most Californians are able to cut through the confusion and make up their minds.

Voters may lack the time or expertise needed to fully research every ballot measure, but they know how to turn to ideological groups for cues on how to vote. Others consult non-partisan guides written by fact-based journalists, such as the LAist Voter Game Plan (shameless plug).

Matsusaka said he believes busy Californians could increasingly offload their decision-making to another time-saving resource: AI chatbots.

“You have an app on your phone, and it reads the text for you, and it also knows your party, and it knows your political affiliations and your issue positions, and it says, here's how you should vote,” he said. “We're not quite there yet, but I don't actually think we're very far.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

It’s Thursday night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown, and the place is packed with about 300 people chatting under sparkling disco lights. Haystacks, wooden guitars and retro beer signs decorate the space. In the center, a metal stool holds a Mac laptop, and a big screen displays a visual sales presentation, or pitch deck. A beaming young woman steps to the mic and begins her slideshow pitch. But she’s not selling anything. She’s trying to get someone in the audience to date her friend.

This is Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles, one of LA’s hottest dating events, where singles looking for a match rely on a good friend with great slideshow skills as their wingman.

The goal is to connect people to dates in real life, but the unique concept also allows singles to see their friends say nice things about them in creative ways, Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles organizer Jackson Wise told The LA Local.

“I get to see best friends kind of hype each other up and talk about their friends’ characteristics and sometimes that’s not always spoken,” Wise said. He added that he often notices the friend being pitched sitting in the audience and getting teary-eyed from all the encouragement.

Wise began the LA offshoot of Pitch-A-Friend nearly two years ago. The original event began in Philadelphia. After spending several years struggling in LA’s notoriously difficult dating scene, Wise scrolled past the Instagram account for a Philly-hosted event of Pitch-A-Friend. “I reached out to them, and they said I should start it in Los Angeles,” Wise recalled.

He said his LA offshoot was not very successful early on, drawing small crowds. But he kept at it, relying on social media and word of mouth to grow the event, which now draws crowds in the hundreds.

Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles leader Jackson Wise opens the night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown.

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Cristabell Fierros

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The LA Local

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What is Pitch-A-Friend?

The concept is simple: Instead of single people promoting themselves on a dating app, their friends do it for them, live, in front of a room full of strangers. Each presenter gets four to five minutes and a slide deck, usually made in Canva or Google Slides, to show off a single friend’s best qualities, quirks and what they’re looking for. Singles in the crowd who like what they see can find that person afterward, in the room or through the Hooked Up app.

The LA Local got a front-row seat to an LGBTQ+ singles event at Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles. Here’s how it went down.

Half an hour before presentations, Wise made sure all participating friends were signed up. He checked that their five-minute Canva or Google Slides decks were good to go. Soon after, he energized the crowd with lively announcements like: “At the end of every presentation, I get, ‘Hey, I didn’t meet anybody.’ My first question is, ‘Did you talk to anybody?’ It’s usually no.”

Then he encouraged everyone to scan the QR code for the Hooked Up app or to break out of their circles, mingle and help their friends connect. He introduced stickers to help direct singles on queer night: green for women or friends, red for men and white for both or nonbinary.

Among the crowd was Elektra Armenta. “We don’t really get many mixers or dating events for queer folks in LA. So, I was really excited to be here, to experience all of us,” Armenta said.

The first presenter used colorful and playful multimedia slides to hype up her 23-year-old gay male roommate as someone who is intelligent, supportive and attentive and, above all, has a gift for listening.

Next, two young women took to the stage to introduce their accomplished friend, a 35-year-old retired three-time Olympian now thriving in tech at LA28. “Lauren is looking for something serious,” one of them declared. Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Yeah, we don’t play.”

As the night went on, each presenter was greeted with cheers and applause for their creativity, thoroughness and appreciation of their friends’ achievements. More importantly, singles were finding potential matches.

“Getting to know people through their friends is actually a really special experience,” first-time attendee Brex Garay told The LA Local. “It’s been really impressive to see people’s creative sides on pitching their friends.”