The Brief

Enforcement of the federal REAL ID law starts May 7, nearly 20 years after its passage. That means travelers will need an identification card that complies with the REAL ID law in order to board a domestic flight and enter certain federal facilities.

Standard driver's licenses and state IDs will no longer be accepted at airport security, according to the Department of Homeland Security. REAL IDs resemble regular driver's licenses but require more documentation, like a valid Social Security number, more security screening and feature a golden star. Rules vary by state.

"It's a way for the government to have unified standards for every state ID," said Clint Henderson, managing editor at The Points Guy, a travel magazine.

Though passed after 9/11, Congress' concerns about unreliable IDs go back even earlier, to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "Because the Oklahoma City bombers bought their fertilizer using a counterfeit ID made by a wife of one of them on an ironing board," said Brian Zimmer, who helped draft the law while working as researcher for the House Judiciary committee, in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered. 

States differ in how they've implemented the law. Some, like Washington, offer enhanced driver's licenses, but only to U.S. citizens. Noncitizens with legal status can often obtain a REAL ID with extra documentation, but those living in the U.S. without legal status cannot. "It will make it more difficult for people to come up with an acceptable ID," said Tanya Broder of the National Immigration Law Center.

While the deadline is almost here, the national system remains a work in progress. As NPR's Martin Kaste reports, the TSA has begun auditing compliance, starting with the most prepared states and giving others more time to meet federal standards.

Henderson offered these tips for travelers ahead of the change:

What to do if you don't have a REAL ID

Don't panic. The good news, Henderson said, is there's about a two-year "wiggle room period" that gives airports discretion, on a case-by-case basis, to subject travelers to additional screening instead of requiring a REAL ID. You could still be turned away, but systems are expected to allow passage with extra screening.

Henderson said you should expect some backups when the policy takes effect May 7.

What you can bring instead

Passports and passport cards are compliant, as are Global Entry, NEXUS, FAST, SENTRI, DoD IDs, green cards, and enhanced driver's licenses issued by some states, Henderson said.

You can see the full list of accepted IDs on the TSA website.

Consider flying from a smaller airport 

TSA agents at larger airports may have more training on REAL ID, Henderson said, but they're also going to be dealing with so many more passengers — and likely more headaches during this transition.

"If you can start from a smaller airport, you're going to find that it's much easier to get through," Henderson said.

Claire Murashima produced the radio version of this story. It was adapted for the web and edited by Majd Al-Waheidi and Obed Manuel.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The California governor’s race has forced a couple of mea culpas.

Former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter apologized for yelling at a staffer in a years-old incident revealed in a viral video that fueled blowback about her temperament. Investor Tom Steyer said he was wrong to have made his billions in part by investing in fossil fuels and private prisons.

But for frontrunner Xavier Becerra, facing criticism about elements of his long record in state and federal government, the answer is to dodge.

He bristled in recent debates when opponents criticized the way he handled a surge of unaccompanied migrant children when he was U.S. health secretary under President Biden. He dismissed the attack as a “MAGA talking point” even though the allegations are based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation on child labor. In a television interview this week with KTLA, he sought to convince a reporter not to ask “only tough questions” and produce a “profile piece … not a ‘gotcha’ piece.” The reporter later asked about the migrant children.

Becerra, a former health secretary and former California attorney general, shot into the lead among Democrats after ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out in early April over sexual assault allegations. Since then, opponents have spent weeks criticizing his record and questioning his judgment as an executive.

The attacks are coming during a sensitive time for Becerra. Democratic strategist Dana Williamson is due in federal court Thursday on charges that she conspired with other strategists to steal $10,000 a month from Becerra’s dormant campaign account to pay his longtime former chief of staff Sean McCluskie on top of his federal government salary.

Becerra has not been implicated in the federal indictment and prosecutors have considered him a victim in the case, but opponents have criticized his judgment and said his connection to it makes him unfit for office. Asked by reporters about the case over the past several months, Becerra has said he approved the payments believing they were for account maintenance and legal compliance.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said during a CNN debate last week. On the same network this week, Porter said the unsettled case makes Becerra a risk for Democratic voters.

McCluskie pleaded guilty to fraud in the case and is scheduled for sentencing in June — after the primary election. Williamson is in talks with prosecutors about a possible plea deal.

Becerra’s dismissals and dodging of tough questions reflect a confident position at the top of the polls as the long-winding primary election nears its end. An Emerson College poll released Wednesday finds Becerra tied for lead with Steyer and Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton. Another poll found he and Hilton have far outstripped Steyer.

Becerra’s fundraising has also surged. He brought in just over $500,000 in campaign donations in the first three months of the year; since Swalwell dropped out on April 12, he’s received at least $2.3 million.

Democratic voters, anxious to rally behind a candidate to prevent two Republicans from winning the top-two primary election on June 2, are largely coalescing behind Becerra as a “safe choice,” said Menlo College political science professor Melissa Michelson. Because he’s in the lead, Becerra has been able to avoid discussing the criticism in detail — and unlike for other candidates who have faced attacks, it’s working, Michelson said.

“The attacks just aren’t hitting,” Michelson said. “He can go to the public and say, ‘They’re only doing this because I’m in the lead,’ and yes, that is true. … It makes it hard for the public to know, how seriously should I take these claims?”

Serious questions about migrant children

No criticism has dogged his campaign more than the 2023 New York Times series detailing the surge in children working dangerous, exploitative jobs in meatpacking plants, construction sites and factories around the country. The report attributed the rise to a record number of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border from Latin America in late 2020 and 2021, the first year of Becerra’s term as Health and Human Services secretary.

According to the report, Becerra, whose agency had custody of the children, was under pressure from the Biden administration to get them out of crowded shelters near the border and undo a Trump-era practice of holding the minors in detention centers. He pushed for them to be placed quickly in the homes of adult sponsors, who were sometimes distant relatives or unrelated to the children and who sent them to work. The investigation found Becerra’s agency missed or ignored warning signs of labor trafficking and failed to stay in contact with the minors.

In one video in the Times report, Becerra is seen telling staff to speed up the placements.

“This is not how you do an assembly line,” he said.

Opponents have seized on the report repeatedly during debates. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has run ads about it since last fall.

“The experience we got from Secretary Becerra didn’t lead to better outcomes,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said during a CNN debate last week. “It led to 85,000 migrant children who were lost.”

Becerra has repeatedly called that a “Trump lie.” On Monday, in a brief press conference after a town hall in Sacramento, he again dismissed the criticism and said he wasn’t responsible for the children’s treatment after they left his agency’s care.

“What employers did after they left our care, after they left our jurisdiction, where the exploitation of children may have occurred, was not on my watch,” he said. “When people tell these Trump lies about kids that are lost, when Democrats repeat those lies, I just say, this campaign is better than that.”

Some Republicans who were critical of Biden’s handling of immigration did claim there were hundreds of thousands of “missing children,” which immigration advocates called misleading at the time.

But a 2024 audit by an independent watchdog validated the Times investigation and concluded Becerra’s agency did miss critical safety checks before releasing children to adult sponsors.

The report by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General found that caseworkers had in 16% of cases failed to document background checks and other vetting of the adults. In other cases they failed to conduct required home visits.

In more than one-fifth of cases the inspector general reviewed, Becerra’s agency failed to contact children one month after they were placed with sponsors, as required by agency policies to ensure the children were safe. In those cases staff didn’t call until four months later, on average, and at times as long as a year after the children were released from federal custody.

Becerra’s campaign did not respond to a CalMatters inquiry about the watchdog report.

Pressed about the warning signs detailed in the investigation, Becerra told a reporter after the town hall this week that she had “conflated a lot of different things that are unrelated.”

He also refused to answer when CalMatters asked whether he was certain Williamson couldn’t implicate him in the campaign fraud case during her court appearance this week.

“I’m moving forward,” he said.

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

After reaching a tentative agreement with University of California negotiators Wednesday night, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 has canceled a strike that was set to start at all campuses on Thursday.

Why it matters

The union represents some 40,000 service and hospital workers across the UC system. Members include custodians, food service workers, patient care assistants and hospital technicians. The workers— some of whom are parents of UC students — said their wages had failed to keep pace with inflation, and that they’d been priced out of local housing markets.

The backstory

AFSCME 3299 has been negotiating with UC for over two years. Prior to the looming open-ended strike, the union had staged a two-day strike and filed unfair labor practice charges with the Public Employment Relations Board, formally accusing the UC system of violating California labor law. UC disputed the charges.

What AFSCME said: “[We] have reached a tentative agreement ... that makes historic progress and delivers long-overdue security to the frontline service and patient care professionals who make UC run,” said Michael Avant, president of AFSCME Local 3299, in an email statement. “Under the terms agreed upon [last night] the lowest paid workers in the UC system will have won their largest wage increase ever and the most affordable healthcare rates at UC.”

What UC said: In an email statement, Missy Matella, UC’s associate vice president for systemwide employee and labor relations, said: “We’re glad to have reached an agreement with AFSCME that recognizes the important work these employees do every day ... This contract delivers meaningful pay increases and addresses some of the real affordability pressures our employees are facing, while allowing us to move forward together focused on UC’s mission of patient care, teaching and research.”

What's next

Union members will vote on ratification May 19-21. Union leaders are encouraging members to vote yes.

Editor's note: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Richard Choi spent much of the past nearly 37 years waking up at 3 a.m. to make it to Radio Korea in time to give the morning broadcast.

For years, Choi’s commute to the station on Wilshire Boulevard took only a few minutes from his home near Hancock Park, but when the station moved its main operations to La Palma in Orange County last December, he would have needed to wake up an hour earlier to make the drive.

“That just wasn’t realistic,” Choi said. “So I decided it was time to retire. If the office had stayed in Koreatown, I probably would have continued broadcasting.”

The move hasn’t sat well with some longtime listeners and former employees who saw the station as inseparable from Koreatown.

Choi, 78, added that several longtime employees left the news outlet rather than make the commute to Orange County.

By the time he retired last year, Choi was one of the station’s most recognizable voices, particularly during the 1992 L.A. civil unrest, when Korean immigrants across the city turned to Korean-language radio for updates and information.

When management first floated the idea of leaving Koreatown, Choi told them to reconsider. 

The station’s headquarters became such a fixture in the neighborhood that many in the Korean-speaking community referred to 3700 Wilshire Blvd as the “Radio Korea building,” and the area in front of it, the “Radio Korea lawn.”

Now, the large Radio Korea sign in big, white block letters are gone, with just a shadow of an imprint.

The company spent years searching for another space in Koreatown after landlord Jamison Properties notified tenants in the Wilshire building that they would eventually need to vacate, Radio Korea CEO Michael Kim said.

The developers plan to redevelop the commercial space into affordable housing.

Radio Korea looked at multiple sites, including one near Hancock Park, but repeatedly ran into issues involving parking and cost. 

“We wanted to stay in L.A. We really tried hard to stay, because of 1992 and all that,” Kim said. “If Jamison was going to renew our lease, we would’ve stayed.” 

He admitted, though, that he also believes the center of Southern California’s Korean community has been gradually shifting beyond L.A.

“I understand how people in L.A. might feel about this stuff,” Kim said. “But I noticed Koreatown was starting to become less and less Korean, and I started thinking, ‘Is Koreatown going to die?’ I certainly hope not, but what if it ends up like Chinatown, where all the Chinese people moved to the San Gabriel Valley?”

“We had to move. There is a good Korean community here,” he added.

Orange County now has two officially designated Koreatowns, one in Garden Grove that received city recognition in 2019, and another in Buena Park that was designated in 2023.

Radio Korea still operates a small satellite office in Koreatown, and Kim insists its reporting in L.A. remains the same.

“We’re not trying to abandon L.A.,” he said. “The only difference is that we are broadcasting from Orange County and not Los Angeles.”

The station’s role in 1992

For many Korean Americans, it is almost impossible to talk about Radio Korea without also talking about the 1992 unrest. The station became a critical source of information as chaos spread through Koreatown after the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police Department officers filmed beating Rodney King.

More than 2,000 Korean-owned businesses were damaged or destroyed during the unrest, according to some community estimates cited in the years since. 

Radio Korea executive director Richard Choi gestures at his Los Angeles studios in 1992.

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Nick Ut

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AP Photo

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“Radio Korea played a major role in helping the Korean community rebuild,” Choi said, “and the riots became the turning point that transformed the Korean community into true Korean Americans. Before that, people came here chasing the vague idea of the ‘American Dream.’ People suffered and worked endlessly, but after the riots, they realized that the lives they had been living in America were not truly immigrant lives in the full sense.”

At the time, many Korean immigrants spoke limited English and relied heavily on Korean-language media for information. The radio station became an emergency information network as Koreatown residents felt left without police protection during the unrest.

Choi and other broadcasters remained on air through the night taking calls from neighbors reporting everything unfolding across the city.

Younger staff members leaned on Choi, who had already spent nearly two decades living in L.A. by then. According to station accounts, Choi sometimes stayed on air for more than 20 hours a day during the height of the unrest.

Yong-ho Kim started working in Radio Korea’s advertising department a month after immigrating to the United States in February 1990, two years before the unrest. That time still remains vivid in his memory. 

“My oldest child was only two years old,” Kim said. “I heard helicopters overhead, saw fires everywhere, heard looting and gunshots through the night. I was terrified.” 

He remained hunkered down at the station for several days, which at the time operated out of a building near Alvarado Street and Olympic Boulevard. 

The advertising department was removed from the station’s editorial side, but he said everyone at Radio Korea pitched in during the unrest. He eventually left the station and went into the restaurant business, opening Arado Japanese Restaurant in 1995. 

“Radio Korea was my first real job in America. At the time, I didn’t speak English well, didn’t fully understand the culture, and they still gave me an opportunity,” he said. “That experience shaped my business career afterward. Even now, I feel like Radio Korea runs through my blood. I love that station deeply.” 

Kim admitted he misses the in-person interaction at the station.

“In the past, when I recorded radio ads for my restaurant, I would go directly into the studio,” he said. “Now everything gets sent by phone.”

He added L.A. remains the “emotional center” of Korean American life, even as more Korean families move to Orange County and other suburbs.

“That’s why there’s an attachment to keeping Korean-language media rooted in Koreatown,” he said.

Radio Korea leaves Koreatown

Jamison, the largest commercial office landlord in Koreatown and one of the neighborhood’s most prolific developers, declined to comment on several questions related to the future of the Wilshire building where Radio Korea called home. It’s unclear when the company notified tenants on when they would need to leave or the timeline for the planned residential conversion.

Radio Korea ultimately purchased a building in La Palma, where Kim said expenses were lower at a difficult moment for Korean-language media outlets already dealing with declining advertising revenue and lingering financial struggles following the pandemic. 

The move is a bittersweet moment for the Korean community.

Hyepin Im was a graduate student at the University of Southern California during the unrest in 1992. The destruction in Koreatown and the experience of watching Korean American business owners struggle in its aftermath helped shape her later work in community advocacy. 

Wilshire Park Place once played host to Radio Korea in Koreatown. The building’s owners plan to repurpose the site into housing.

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Brian Feinzimer

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The LA Local

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Ethnic media organizations depend heavily on physical relationships inside the communities they serve, Im said.

“The fact that they were here in 1992 made a difference,” Im said. “I think the lack of their presence here will be a loss to the community.” 

Im, whose nonprofit work with Faith and Community Empowerment has focused for decades on immigrant and underserved communities in LA, argued that L.A. still carries unique weight within Korean communities nationally, even as Korean populations continue growing in Orange County and elsewhere.

“I could recognize that perhaps in Orange County, some of the things that I could see why they may choose there is a lot more Korean leadership in politics,” she said. “And as such, just like the Chinese community moved to the San Gabriel Valley from Chinatown, perhaps there is going to be a shift that is happening.” 

“I think proximity is always important and I would say it’s still what happens in L.A. that impacts the rest of the country, especially the Korean community,” she added. 

For Choi, Koreatown is inseparable from Radio Korea and the station’s role during the unrest, which pushed many Korean immigrants to engage more deeply with American civic and political life.

“No matter how many Koreans move to Orange County,” Choi said, “the symbolic center of the Korean community is still Koreatown.” 

A group of volunteers in Hollywood say they are conducting their own homeless count in the area next week because they don't trust the results of the official regional one.

The effort is organized by Hollywood 4WRD, a coalition of nonprofit service providers, businesses and residents. About 60 volunteers, mostly staff from Hollywood service provider organizations, are expected to fan out across 30 census tracts Tuesday.

Results will be made public a week later May 27, according to organizers.

The neighborhood count comes amid growing questions about the accuracy of the official regional homeless tally.

The city of L.A.'s unhoused population decreased by 5.5% between 2023 and 2025, according to official estimates from the annual count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. But a 2025 analysis by the RAND Corporation found that LAHSA undercounted people living outside in certain areas, including Hollywood.

Hollywood 4WRD executive director Brittney Weissman said the organization’s own experience volunteering for the LAHSA count this year raised even more questions about accuracy.

“Our experience was so confounding, perplexing and inefficient that we've been really deeply questioning the value, utility and accuracy of the count for a couple of years now,” Weissman said.

Organizers said the Hollywood count will use methodology developed by RAND researchers, who ran their own professional counts in Hollywood, Skid Row and Venice from 2021 until earlier this year.

That research effort, known as LA LEADS, has since lost funding.

“If LA LEADS was continuously funded into the future, we would not be doing this effort,” Weissman said. "Because it's no longer funded, we felt we needed to take our own initiative to understand the lay of the land here.”

What's at stake?

More than $300 million in federal and county dollars are allocated annually based on homeless count results. That includes $220 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and nearly $100 million from L.A. County's Measure A sales tax.

LAHSA conducted its most recent official homeless count in January. The agency said it hopes to release the results this summer but has not confirmed a release date.

In her reelection campaign, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass takes credit for reducing homelessness in the city. The official count underpinning her claim is the same one RAND found was missing nearly a third of unsheltered people in key neighborhoods.

Weissman said Hollywood service providers need to know now whether more people are living in vehicles or sleeping outside, so they can adjust how they're doing outreach.

Organizers timed the May 27 release to influence budget negotiations still underway at City Hall, according to Weissman.

She noted that Bass' proposed budget does not include funding for Safe Parking LA, a program that allows unhoused Angelenos to live legally in their vehicles within sanctioned parking lots.

"If we find that vehicular homelessness is on the rise here and we need it badly, this gives us evidence with which to petition decisionmakers for that resource in our community," she said.

What RAND found

RAND's LA LEADS project ran bimonthly counts in Hollywood, Skid Row and Venice from 2021 until this January.

Comparing LAHSA’s official counts to its own, a RAND report found the 2025 homeless count captured 68% of the unsheltered population across those three neighborhoods.

RAND found the population of unsheltered people in Hollywood dropped 49% in 2024, a decline it linked to the city’s Inside Safe program. But the official LAHSA count still captured only 81% of what RAND found in the neighborhood.

The people being missed were mostly vehicle dwellers and “rough sleepers” — people living with no shelter, RAND said.

Skid Row's official tally fared worse, capturing 61% of what RAND found there.

Hollywood 4WRD said its methodology follows RAND’s LA LEADS methodology, which the group said is more precise than LAHSA’s approach.

Each census tract will be covered by at least two independent volunteers, a quality-control measure that helps organizers flag areas that might need to be recounted.

Volunteers will also use pens and paper to record their observations, instead of a mobile app. LAHSA has used an app for its count since 2022 and has acknowledged repeated technical problems with it.

The unofficial homeless count this month is limited to Hollywood, unlike LAHSA's countywide effort. Weissman said she hopes the effort will encourage other neighborhoods to check their own local data.