The Brief

It’s an appealing idea for city officials: Convince drivers to ditch their cars in favor of taking public transit, all while reducing emissions and and gridlock.

That’s how New York Gov. Kathy Hochul praised Manhattan's “congestion pricing” program before she suddenly paused it last month. It was meant to generate funding needed to revive the state’s aging transit system and ease gridlock by charging people $15 to enter the core of the city.

Yes, New York is on the other side of the country, but urban policy experts say the move could have implications here in Southern California.

Could we see something similar? 

L.A. Metro is considering a pilot project for congestion pricing, which could take years to launch.

But what happens next in New York could make or break that pilot program and the agency’s ambitions to raise at least $12 billion from it, according to Michael Manville, who teaches urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He said on LAist’s 89.3’s AirTalk that it always helps if another city like New York has gone first to try and roll something like this out.

“I don't think there's any question that if New York had introduced this, and it had went well, and people came around to liking it, that would have given a boost to L.A.'s program,” Manville said.

What do we know about it? 

L.A. is taking it slow, Manville said. Metro has been taking cues from New York before locking down its own congestion pricing model, opting instead to research it under the Traffic Reduction Study (TRS). It’s anticipated to launch in 2028 and will look at central Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, and westside cities, according to Metro.

Early designs would see drivers charged for using freeways near the Santa Monica Mountains, surface streets in downtown Los Angeles, and at various points along the 10 Freeway, as outlined in the study.

And if the stalled program in the Big Apple eventually launches and becomes a success, Manville said officials here could see it as a path toward creating a similar congestion pricing model.

What’s next?

If the project was so unpopular and even hated in New York, why try?

Manville said there are cities where congestion pricing has found success — like London and Singapore.

“It's a funny thing about congestion pricing,” he said. “In places where it has been implemented, people like it. They tend to not like it before it's implemented.”

Keep in mind, congestion pricing is not officially dead in New York — it's just been indefinitely paused. The New York City comptroller is already leading efforts to get the project back on track.

Flying by the moon, witnessing an eclipse, and traveling farther from Earth than any humans have before: The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission have hit many milestones since launching from Kennedy Space Center nearly 10 days ago.

Now, if all goes according to plan Friday, they'll have completed their most important one: making it home.

The crew's Orion space capsule is scheduled to enter the atmosphere at 7:53 p.m. ET, (4:53 p.m. PT) just southeast of Hawaii. About 13 minutes later, it should splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

To make it there, the spacecraft will first have to punch through the Earth's atmosphere at about 25,000 miles per hour and experience temperatures upwards of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

As mission pilot Victor Glover put it: It's like "riding a fireball through the atmosphere."

The trip home

The Artemis II crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — have been preparing for the return home for the past few days, which includes packing up equipment and reorienting the spacecraft for an ideal trajectory that will land them safely in the Pacific at 8:07 p.m. ET (5:07 p.m. here on the West Coast.)

On return day, the crew will wake up at 11:35 a.m. and begin reconfiguring the Orion capsule for reentry. They will make an additional course correction to fine-tune the return trajectory at 2:53 p.m.

Before entering the atmosphere, the spacecraft will need to ditch its service module — which housed thrusters, solar panels and other spaceflight hardware for the mission. Orion will separate from the service module at 7:33 p.m., which will then fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.

Orion, if all goes well, will avoid that fate. The spacecraft is set to begin its 13-minute plunge through the atmosphere at 7:53 p.m. During that time, it's expected that the crew will lose communication with Mission Control for about six minutes.

As the capsule makes its return, it will deploy a series of parachutes that will slow it from about 25,000 miles per hour to just 20 miles per hour upon splashdown.

The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone and will help recover the crew. A team will head out to the floating capsule and install an inflatable raft just below Orion's side hatch. The crew will be examined by a flight surgeon, then helped out of the capsule. From the transport ship, they will hitch a ride back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Risk of reentry

There's always risk when returning from space. Glover said that he has been thinking about this portion of the mission since he was selected for it back in 2023, and he's been looking forward to it ever since.

"We have to get back," he said from the Orion capsule Wednesday. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories, and, gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through."

To get back, the capsule must hit the atmosphere at a precise angle.

"Let's not beat around the bush," said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead flight director. "We have to hit that angle correctly. Otherwise, we're not going to have a successful reentry."

All eyes will be on the heat shield — this is the piece of hardware beneath the capsule that protects the crew from the extreme temperatures during reentry. NASA tested it out on Artemis I, the previous, uncrewed mission, and found that the heat shield wasn't performing as designed.

NASA mission planners and the Artemis II team worked on a way to mitigate that risk. Instead of "skipping" through the atmosphere like Artemis I, this mission would hit the atmosphere steeper and faster, limiting the time the spacecraft spends in those fiery, energetic moments of reentry.

"It's 13 minutes of things that have to go right," said Radigan. "I have a whole checklist in my head that we're going through of all the things that have to happen."

Mission success

The Artemis II mission is a key flight test for Orion, and thus far, mission managers have been pleased with the results. The spacecraft has taken humans farther from Earth than they've ever been, breaking a record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The crew tested the manual control of the spacecraft, which will be needed for future missions that will dock with a lunar landing system. The mission tested the spacecraft's life support systems and ability to keep four astronauts comfortable within the confined space.

Artemis II returned humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program over 50 years ago. And while some astronauts back then did see the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew was able to observe it from a vantage point never before seen by humans. Their images and geological notes will help better determine what the moon is made of and where it came from.

While some of the astronauts' observations may help scientists understand the distant past, others will help mission managers better plan for the future. Case in point: The crew tested out the very first toilet to go to the moon, and it quickly ran into issues during flight. Multiple times during the trip, the crew had to use manual urinals instead. The issue, NASA said, was not with the toilet itself, but the system that dumps the urine overboard when it gets full.

The Orion capsule will return to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the mission, where engineers will examine the spacecraft after its flight, including a closer look at the spacecraft's plumbing. The team will be picking apart the spacecraft to see how it performed — and make any necessary changes ahead of the next mission, Artemis III, set to launch next year.
Copyright 2026 NPR

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

Last year, Long Beach made a deal with an oil-drilling company. The company would convert some of its land into public wetlands in exchange for the right to drill somewhere else. Then a state law meant to keep wells away from homes and schools thwarted the company’s plan for more drilling. Now that pact has become fodder for the Trump administration’s war against California Democratic energy policies.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to the property, owned by Synergy Oil & Gas, on Wednesday with a message to Gov. Gavin Newsom: state policies are increasing costs for Californians, and the Trump administration will be challenging them.

Wright’s visit to the Synergy site comes just a week after a U.S. district court denied the U.S. Department of Interior’s request to stop enforcement of California’s setback law while a broader legal challenge is pending.

“When you make energy expensive by importing it and putting ridiculous regulations on it, you not only make it more expensive to pay your bills, but you make it so businesses that consume energy aren't going to locate (in) your state,” Wright said, standing between lines of Synergy-owned oil jack pumps near coastal wetlands.

Wright’s visit points up the active fight on multiple fronts between California and the White House over energy prices, especially gasoline. The state’s gas prices are the highest in the nation, a gap that has widened in the wake of global oil market disruptions following U.S. military strikes on Iran.

“California’s gas prices were stable – and below $5 a gallon – for about two years before Trump launched his reckless war on Iran that closed the Strait of Hormuz and sent crude oil prices through the roof in red and blue states,” said Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for the governor. “Today, (Wright is) in California pointing the finger to distract from the fact that Americans have paid $10 billion more on gasoline since the start of this war.”

California’s setback law 

Announced nearly a year ago, Long Beach and Synergy intended a deal to be mutually beneficial. Synergy would be able to drill new wells nearby and the city would gain public space and a cut from Synergy’s new revenue.

But a recent setback law – which bans new oil wells within six-tenths of a mile of homes, schools and other populated areas – has made it nearly impossible to get permits, said Synergy owner John McKeown. The site where Wright spoke should be capable of extracting 6,000 oil barrels daily. It is only producing 100 barrels because of state limits, he said.

“What I'm trying to do is save 35 employees, and I'm trying to produce (the oil) we own,” he said on Wednesday.

The Synergy Oil and Gas production site in Long Beach on April 8, 2026.

(

Ariana Drehsler

/

CalMatters

)

Long Beach Councilmember Kristina Duggan, who helped reach the agreement with Synergy, said the setback law harms city finances. The city gets 8.5% of local revenue from oil production, funds designated for coastal infrastructure.

“We have wells off of the coast of Long Beach on our oil island where we can't drill new wells, and it is so far from sensitive areas,” Duggan said. “It really makes a difference. We rely on oil production for revenue in Long Beach.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration sued California over the setback law, arguing it illegally blocks business that the federal government oversees. The administration cited two land management laws, the Mineral Leasing Act and the Federal Land and Policy Management Act, that authorize public lands for oil, gas and coal development.

While the lawsuit is pending, the U.S. Department of Interior requested a preliminary injunction that would bar the state from enforcing the setback law. A U.S. district court judge denied that request, and called California’s setback law “reasonable environmental regulation” that doesn’t bar alternative methods of accessing oil in the state.

The U.S. district court judge said the U.S. Department of Interior has so far not demonstrated it’s likely to succeed in proving the law conflicts with federal law.

The judge is also weighing whether to let community groups, represented by Earthjustice, and the Center for Biological Diversity to intervene in the case.

Synergy Oil and Gas production site in Seal Beach on April 8, 2026.

(

Ariana Drehsler

/

CalMatters

)

The setback law's reach extends beyond private landowners like Synergy. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, it would make invalid about a third of federally authorized oil and gas leases in California.

The setback in California “has absolutely nothing to do with public health,” Wright said on Wednesday. “These setbacks get set at the number that will kill the industry.”

Newsom caught in the middle

The setback law is just one front in a wider political battle that has put Newsom in an increasingly difficult position.

Newsom has sought to blame the White House for gas price increases, arguing that Trump’s actions are responsible. At the same time, he has pushed back against growing criticism that California’s own environmental regulations are contributing to the cost of fuel. But his administration’s actions tell a more complicated story.

Oil companies have shut refineries in recent months, causing the state to lose nearly 20% of its refining capacity. In response, California has increasingly relied on importing more crude oil and gasoline. The governor last year orchestrated a deal to boost production in California’s oil-drilling hub of Kern County. The California Energy Commission also quietly set aside a law that gave state regulators the power to cap refinery profits and penalize oil companies for price gouging.

Newsom in 2024 pushed to delay parts of the oil well setback law, arguing regulators needed more time to implement it. Lawmakers approved a compromise extending the deadline to monitor wells near homes and schools for leaks by three and a half years, to July 2030, while keeping the core buffer-zone restrictions in place. Newsom signed the measure, delaying leak detection at oil wells.

Rising federal pressure

The Trump administration has shown no interest in giving Newsom room to maneuver. It’s pushing to expand oil production in California, including plans to revive offshore drilling along the coast at the site of the 2015 Refugio oil spill, where a pipeline, now owned by Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp., ruptured.

Secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy Chris Wright speaks to Synergy employees at the Synergy Oil and Gas production site in Long Beach on April 8, 2026.

(

Ariana Drehsler

/

CalMatters

)

Wright invoked the Defense Production Act to order the restart of operations — overriding local courts — arguing the oil was 'vital to our national security and defense. Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued Wright arguing he overstepped his authority.

Wright said he hopes to meet Gov. Newsom in the next few weeks to make his plea for more oil production in the state.

A blueprint for wider battles

The stakes of that legal confrontation extend well beyond a single pipeline.

Even if the Sable project itself wouldn’t meaningfully change California’s oil supply, legal experts say the bigger story is what precedents the fights establish. The case could open a window on how far federal officials can go in using national security or emergency powers to override state authority — not just for pipelines, but for new oil development more broadly.

“I have no doubt they're going to now extend it to try to apply the same theory about a national emergency, about national security, to leasing everywhere,” said Deborah Sivas, a Stanford environmental law expert. “They're going to use that same rationale.”

But Ethan Elkind, a climate law expert at UC Berkeley, said that strategy faces long odds in California, where the politics of oil and gas have shifted sharply against new development.

“California has really been going in the opposite direction,” said Elkind. “The idea of trying to really expand oil and gas production in the state, is really at odds with where the politics are and the economic realities are in the state at this moment.”

In Long Beach, work to remove old wells on Synergy Oil & Gas property continues. For Kristina Duggan, the city councilmember, the larger battles are secondary. She's still watching the city's bottom line.

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

Southern California skies will be filled with clouds and pockets of sunshine today before rain moves into the region this weekend.

Temperatures at the beaches are going to stick around the upper 60s, up to around 70 degrees in Long Beach.

In the valleys, we're looking at high temperatures in the mid-70s, up to 78 degrees over in the Inland Empire.

Meanwhile, warm weather will embrace festival-goers for the first day of Coachella. Temperatures there are expected to reach 87 to 92 degrees.

Looking ahead to the weekend, the rain starts coming in late Friday night. SoCal could get between a half-inch to an inch of rain tonight through Sunday. There will be some brief pockets of sunshine in between showers and there's a 15% to 30% chance of thunderstorms — that means look out for short, heavy downpours.

It's possible the mountains could get up to 6 inches of snow at elevations 6,000 feet or higher.

L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez warned this week that Los Angeles could face bankruptcy if it doesn't make an airtight deal with Olympics organizers over how it will be reimbursed for its expenses during the coming 2028 Summer Games.

The Olympics have long been promoted as a "no cost" deal for taxpayers that will be hosted by the city, but funded and orchestrated by private organizing committee LA28.

But a key agreement outlining what city services Los Angeles will provide for the Games – like policing and traffic control – and how the cash-strapped city will be reimbursed for its extra work is now more than six months late.

In a letter to LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover sent Tuesday, Rodriguez warned that if it isn't changed, the current draft agreement could leave L.A. vulnerable to spending hundreds of millions even if LA28 turns a profit.

"Every dollar owed to the City must be reconciled and paid before any surplus is retained or repurposed," Rodriguez wrote. "Bankruptcy cannot be the legacy of these Games."

The major concern is who will pay security costs for the Olympics, including LAPD overtime. The federal government has allocated one billion dollars to security costs for the mega-event, and has put the Secret Service in charge of security planning.

Despite those plans, city officials are concerned about who will be left with the bag if the federal funding doesn't come through, or if it doesn't cover all of the city's security costs.

LA28 has not included security spending in its $7.1 billion budget – a point that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto raised in a March report sent to the city council. The billion dollars in federal funding will also be allocated across all the law enforcement agencies that police the Games – meaning the actual amount the city of L.A. will receive is unclear.

"What happens if the City's actual extraordinary expenses exceed $1 billion?" Feldstein Soto wrote in her report.

The city made a gamble when it agreed to host the Olympics. To score the host bid, L.A. agreed to be the financial backstop for the Olympic Games, meaning if the organizing committee runs into the red, L.A. will pick up the bill, along with the state of California.

In their missives over Olympic expenses, both the city attorney and Councilmember Rodriguez raised a new potential nightmare scenario for the city: that the Olympics could make a surplus, and L.A. could still be left in debt.

"The City requires unambiguous language in the [agreement] to foreclose any scenario in which funds might go back to the wealthy backers and investors of the LA28 organization without reimbursing taxpayer-funded extraordinary costs," the city attorney wrote.

LA28 did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Next Tuesday, the city council's ad-hoc committee on the Olympic Games will meet for the first time since January.