The high court ruled Monday that new U.S. Postal Service regulations aimed at restricting mail ballots cannot take effect before the Nov. 3 election. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing in concurrence, stopped short of saying the postal service lacks authority to impose such rules altogether, but he warned that rolling them out now would be “arbitrary and capricious” given how little time states and local election officials would have to adjust.

California was among the states that challenged the postal service rules, building on an earlier legal fight over a Trump executive order targeting mail-in voting. The state relies on a universal vote-by-mail system, automatically sending ballots to every registered voter.

Gov. Gavin Newsom welcomed the ruling as a win for voters heading into the fall election.

“Finally, 50 days out, and the American people have certainty when it comes to our country’s electoral process: Voting is safe, vote-by-mail is accessible to any and all who need it,” Newsom said. “And I encourage every Californian to make their voice heard this November.”

At the heart of the dispute is a Trump administration proposal to build a federal database of registered voters, which the postal service would use to verify eligibility before delivering mail ballots. Under the plan, the agency could have refused to deliver ballots in any state that declined to share its voter information.

California election officials have said the state’s existing ballot procedures already satisfy many of the technical requirements the administration sought, including the use of scannable bar codes on return envelopes. Other states, however, faced the prospect of scrambling to redesign ballots and election procedures on short notice had the rules been allowed to move forward.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the outcome of the case carried enormous weight.

“Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic,” Bonta said.

California counties are set to begin mailing ballots to voters no later than the first week of October, giving residents ample time to cast their votes ahead of Election Day.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Limit Mail-In Voting Ahead of November Election appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

California remains locked in a legal fight with the Trump administration over the president’s push to impose new restrictions on universal mail-in voting. The dispute has left some voters wondering whether mail ballots will even be an option for the November 3 election, and if so, whether it’s still safe to use one.

The short answer from election officials: yes and yes. Mail voting will remain available this year, and it remains a secure and generally reliable method of casting a ballot. Still, county registrars are encouraging voters not to wait until the deadline to return their ballots, given the uncertainty swirling around the U.S. Postal Service’s role in the process.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether President Trump can direct the Postal Service to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. Trump has proposed creating a federal database of registered voters that the Postal Service would use to verify that mail ballots are delivered only to eligible U.S. citizens. Under his plan, the Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t share that voter information.

The legal battle, which has dragged on for months, has left voters — and even some election officials — confused, something voting rights advocates say may be the point.

Despite the uncertainty, California election officials insist the state is prepared to run its elections smoothly no matter how the Supreme Court rules. County registrars are monitoring the litigation closely, but they are also moving forward with plans to mail ballots as usual ahead of the October 5 deadline. State and local officials are encouraging voters worried about postal delays to vote early and take advantage of California’s other options, including official drop boxes and in-person voting centers.

“As we do in every election, we have contingency plans and backup plans in place,” said Tricia Webber, Santa Cruz County’s clerk and registrar of voters and president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.

Some counties, including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, are looking into setting up temporary voting centers where residents could request and drop off ballots in person. In Santa Cruz County, Webber said her office is working on plans to send its mobile voting unit around the county to give residents another way to cast a ballot.

“Until there’s an answer,” Webber said, referring to the pending court ruling, “California counties are going to continue to operate business as usual.”

WHAT TRUMP WANTS THE POSTAL SERVICE TO DO

In March, Trump signed an executive order aiming to give the federal government control over who receives mail ballots. Within days, more than 20 Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, sued the administration, arguing the Constitution gives only Congress and state governments authority over election administration.

Federal district and appellate courts sided with the Democratic-led states, upholding a preliminary injunction that bars the Postal Service from carrying out any part of the plan while the lawsuit continues.

The core legal questions remain unresolved. Last month, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to keep planning how it would carry out the executive order, prompting Democratic-led states to file a new legal challenge against the Postal Service’s implementation plans.

The Postal Service’s proposal, finalized in August, would create a system to track each voter’s ballot using a unique barcode and cross-reference it against a database of eligible registered voters.

While some states worry they may need to reprint ballot envelopes to comply, Webber said the vast majority of California counties already use envelopes that meet the requirements.

The federal government does not currently maintain a comprehensive list of all eligible registered voters and would need states to submit voter information to a federal mail ballot portal that has not yet been built.

It appears unlikely that portal will be ready in time for the 2026 midterms. According to the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Postal Service employee who filed a whistleblower complaint said the rollout has been rushed, risky and disorganized because of an unrealistic timeline.

“In an attempt to meet impossible deadlines, the United States Postal Service has eliminated standard and necessary testing, creating a substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,'” Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, wrote in a late-August letter to Postmaster General David Steiner.

In June, the postmaster general told a congressional committee that the Postal Service would withhold mail ballots in states that refuse to share basic voter information, including names, addresses and each ballot’s unique barcode.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s top elections official, has not said whether California would comply with the proposed voter information requirement.

“California election officials will continue to do everything in their power to ensure that every eligible California voter has the right to cast their ballot by mail and that vote is counted,” her office said.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Weber and five other Democratic secretaries of state for refusing to turn over unredacted voter files containing far more sensitive personal information than what the Postal Service rule requires. A federal judge in Southern California dismissed that case in January.

UNCERTAINTY COULD DRIVE MORE VOTERS TO CAST BALLOTS EARLY

In an unexpected twist, concerns about postal reliability may end up accomplishing something election officials and voting advocates have long struggled to achieve: getting more Californians to vote early.

That marks a shift from the run-up to June’s primary, when nervous Democrats urged voters to hold off casting ballots for governor until the last possible moment. Now, social media feeds are filled with posts urging people to vote early and use official drop boxes rather than rely on the mail.

“This whole thing could backfire,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “What you’re seeing now on social media, in response to this legal drama and confusion, is a lot of people encouraging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly the message we’ve been pushing all along.”

Early voting helps county election workers tabulate results faster on election night, allowing news organizations such as the Associated Press to call races sooner. Because mailed ballots take the longest to process, returning them several days ahead of the deadline gives election workers more time to remove ballots from envelopes and prepare them for counting before Election Day itself.

“Fortunately, we give voters a lot of options here, and that’s really going to benefit California,” Alexander said. “Other states don’t have as strong a system offering as many alternatives and pathways for voters to exercise their right to vote.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Mail-In Voting Rules Uncertain? Here’s How Californians Can Prepare to Vote in November appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

As the Trump administration and more than 20 states continue fighting in court over whether the president can direct the U.S. Postal Service to restrict how mail ballots are handled ahead of the Nov. 3 election, a wave of social media posts is urging voters to skip the mail altogether. Instead, users are encouraging friends and family to vote early in person or drop their ballots directly into official drop boxes.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said the uncertainty swirling around the Trump administration’s plans may end up working against the president’s own goals.

“This whole play may backfire,” Alexander said. “What you’re seeing now on social media in response to this court drama and this confusion are lots of people urging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly what we’ve been saying.”

Election officials have long pushed early voting because ballots that arrive by mail take longer to process. Workers must open each envelope, verify signatures and prepare the ballot before it can be counted. When voters submit ballots several days ahead of the deadline, county officials can get a head start on that work, which speeds up results once polls close — and allows race callers to project winners sooner.

The dispute traces back to March, when President Trump signed an executive order attempting to give the federal government oversight of who can receive a mail ballot. To implement that order, the Postal Service last month proposed a system that would assign a unique tracking barcode to every mailed ballot and cross-check it against a database of registered voters.

The catch: no such comprehensive federal voter database currently exists. The plan would rely on individual states voluntarily submitting voter registration data to a so-called “federal ballot mail portal” that has not yet been built. Under Trump’s proposal, the Postal Service would refuse to deliver ballots in any state that declines to share that information.

So far, federal courts have blocked the plan from moving forward, siding with the states that sued to stop it. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, allowed the administration last month to continue preparing for implementation while the justices consider a final ruling.

Until that ruling comes down, California counties are proceeding as usual, according to Tricia Webber, clerk and registrar of voters for Santa Cruz County and president of the California Association of County Election Officials.

Locally, residents can expect county registrars across the Inland Empire and Southern California to continue promoting early voting options — ballot drop boxes, vote centers and mail-in ballots submitted well ahead of the deadline — regardless of how the federal case unfolds.

Community members interested in learning more about ballot security closer to home can attend a public forum hosted by CalMatters and the UC Riverside School of Public Policy on Sept. 24 in Riverside. The event will examine the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s handling of mail ballots and what the incident could mean for future elections in the region.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Trump Factor Could Drive Surge in Early Voting Across California appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The short answer, according to state and county election officials: Yes, voters can still cast ballots by mail, and the process remains safe and dependable. Still, officials are urging Californians not to wait, encouraging early submission ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

At the center of the confusion is a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision that could determine whether President Trump can direct the U.S. Postal Service to restrict mail ballots before the midterms. Trump has proposed creating a federal database of registered voters that the Postal Service would use to verify eligibility before delivering ballots. Under his plan, the agency could refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t share voter data.

The legal fight has dragged on for months, leaving many voters — and even some election officials — confused about what to expect. Voting rights advocates say that confusion may be intentional.

Despite the uncertainty, California election officials insist the state is ready to run its election smoothly no matter how the courts rule. County registrars are tracking the litigation closely, but they’re also moving ahead with plans to mail ballots by the state’s Oct. 5 deadline. Officials are encouraging residents to prepare early and consider alternatives to the mail, such as ballot drop boxes and in-person voting locations, if they have concerns about postal delivery.

“Like we do for all of our elections, we have contingency plans or disaster plans put into place,” said Tricia Webber, Santa Cruz County’s clerk and registrar of voters, who also leads the California Association of County Election Officials.

Some counties — including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles — are looking into setting up temporary voting stations where residents could request and turn in ballots on the spot. In Santa Cruz County, Webber said officials are also considering deploying their mobile voting unit to give residents another way to cast a ballot.

“Until there’s an answer,” Webber said, referring to the pending Supreme Court decision, “California counties are doing business as usual.”

**What Trump wants USPS to do**

The controversy dates back to March, when Trump signed an executive order attempting to give the federal government oversight of who receives mail ballots. More than 20 Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, quickly sued, arguing the Constitution grants election authority to states and Congress — not the executive branch.

Lower federal courts sided with the Democratic-led states, issuing a temporary injunction that has so far blocked the Postal Service from acting on the president’s directive. But the broader legal questions remain unsettled. Last month, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to continue developing its implementation plan, prompting Democratic states to file a new round of legal challenges.

The Postal Service’s finalized proposal, released in August, calls for tracking each mailed ballot using a unique barcode that would be checked against a database of eligible voters.

While some states worry they may need to redesign ballot envelopes if the rule survives legal challenges, Webber said most California counties already use compliant envelopes.

A major hurdle remains: the federal government doesn’t currently maintain a complete list of eligible voters and would depend on states voluntarily submitting data to a so-called “federal ballot mail portal” that hasn’t yet been built.

Whether that system could even be operational in time for this year’s midterms is in question. According to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office, a Postal Service whistleblower described the rollout as rushed and warned that skipped testing procedures could lead to a “catastrophic failure” capable of disrupting the midterm elections.

“In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,'” Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner in late August.

Steiner told a congressional committee in June that the Postal Service intends to withhold ballots in states that refuse to share basic voter information — including names, addresses and ballot barcodes.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s top elections official, has not indicated whether California would comply with such a request.

“California’s elections officials will continue to do everything within our power to ensure that every eligible California voter has the right to cast a mail ballot and have that vote count,” Weber said.

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department sued Weber and five other Democratic secretaries of state after they declined to hand over unredacted voter files — information far more sensitive than what the Postal Service rule would require. A federal judge in Southern California dismissed that lawsuit in January.

**Confusion could push more voters to act early**

In an unexpected twist, anxiety over the Postal Service’s reliability may accomplish something election officials have long hoped for: convincing more Californians to vote earlier rather than waiting until the final days.

That marks a shift from the run-up to June’s primary, when nervous Democratic voters were urged to hold off on choosing a gubernatorial candidate until the last possible moment. Now, social media is filled with posts encouraging people to vote as soon as possible and to rely on drop boxes instead of the mail.

“This whole play may backfire,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “What you’re seeing now on social media in response to this court drama and this confusion are lots of people urging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly what we’ve been saying.”

Earlier voting helps county election workers process ballots more quickly on election night, which in turn allows outlets like The Associated Press to call races sooner. Because ballots that arrive by mail take longer to process than those dropped off in person, submitting them several days before the deadline gives election workers a head start on removing ballots from envelopes and preparing them for tabulation.

“Fortunately, we give voters lots of options, and that’s really going to work to California’s benefit,” Alexander said. “Other states do not have the kind of robust process that creates lots of redundancies and avenues for voters to vote.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Mail-In Voting Rules Still Unclear: How Californians Can Get Ready for November Election appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Wednesday that California has joined 21 other states in filing two separate lawsuits challenging the administration’s overhaul of endangered species protections. The legal action adds to a growing list of dozens of lawsuits California has brought against the administration’s broader push to loosen federal regulations.

The lawsuits take aim at revisions to the landmark conservation law, which was signed by Republican President Richard Nixon — himself a Californian — in 1973.

“Caring for our wildlife and our environment is part of caring for our future, yet President Trump seems to care only for himself and his industry friends,” Bonta said in a statement. “The Trump Administration has continuously sought to put our ecosystems in danger, which is why we continue to take them to court.”

At the heart of the dispute is a rule change finalized in July that eliminates a long-standing definition making it illegal to damage or destroy habitat that endangered species depend on for shelter, food and breeding. Critics say the rollback effectively clears the way for mining, logging and other development in areas once considered off-limits.

The Interior Department has defended the change, saying in a statement that it “will end years of federal overreach” and deliver “long overdue financial and regulatory relief to citizens who faced unpredictable delays and unnecessary costs” tied to what officials described as overly broad interpretations of the law.

But the coalition of attorneys general characterized the shift differently in its federal court filing, calling it “a reversal of staggering proportions.”

Beyond the habitat definition, the administration’s changes also make it easier for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to sidestep designating “critical habitat” — a label that restricts federal and federally permitted development. Additionally, the revisions do away with a rule that automatically extended protections to species listed as threatened, meaning wildlife officials must now craft individualized protection plans for each newly listed species.

That added workload comes as the agency grapples with steep staffing losses. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has lost more than a third of its workforce since 2024, even as roughly 400 species await decisions on federal protection. Only three species have been granted protections under the current administration, said Noah Greenwald, the organization’s endangered species co-director.

Conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, have already filed their own legal challenges against the rule changes. But Greenwald said having state attorneys general enter the fight carries added weight.

“It really signals that the chief legal officer of almost half the states don’t agree with these changes,” he said. “To have the states weigh in is really powerful.”

The stakes are particularly high for California, which trails only Hawaii in the number of threatened and endangered species found within its borders, according to the attorney general’s office.

California does have its own endangered species law, first passed in 1970 and substantially rewritten in the 1980s. But that state law has notable gaps. At least 140 species currently protected under the federal Endangered Species Act have no corresponding protection under California’s version, according to state wildlife officials. A spokesperson for Bonta’s office told CalMatters that those species “could potentially obtain protections” under state law, but the process to add them can take considerable time. The federal law also covers migratory species that pass through multiple states, something California’s law cannot fully replicate on its own.

There’s a deeper legal wrinkle as well. Unlike its federal counterpart, California’s Endangered Species Act does not explicitly treat habitat destruction as a protected concern, according to Eric Biber, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law — though he noted there remains some legal debate over how the state law should be interpreted. That ambiguity raises questions about whether California’s law alone can compensate for the habitat protections stripped away at the federal level.

Habitat loss remains the leading threat to most endangered species nationwide, according to a Stanford Law School analysis. Biber said the rollback fits into a broader pattern by the Trump administration, pointing to recent efforts to weaken wetland protections as well.

“This is one further step in this administration’s efforts to roll back protections for habitat for endangered species,” he said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trump Administration Rollback of Endangered Species Protections appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Reporters from six newsrooms across six Western states, including CalMatters’ Rachel Becker, examined the shift in federal wildfire strategy in a pair of collaborative reports published this week. Their reporting found that the Trump administration has merged wildland firefighting crews from four federal agencies under a single command, part of a broader push toward what officials call a “suppression-first” approach — attacking fires immediately and aggressively rather than allowing some to burn under controlled conditions.

Federal officials argue the strategy better protects both communities and firefighters. But critics, including forestry experts and some state officials, say it abandons a more preventive approach that relies on prescribed burns and allowing low-intensity fires to clear out dry brush and dead vegetation that fuel bigger blazes later. Without that kind of fuel reduction, they warn, landscapes across the West will keep accumulating tinder for the next major fire.

Some observers have compared the administration’s new posture to the so-called “10 a.m. rule,” a decades-old Forest Service policy that required crews to extinguish every fire by the following morning. That approach was largely abandoned decades ago after research showed it contributed to unnaturally dense, fire-prone forests.

Reaction from Western states has been mixed. Jamie Barnes of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources said she backs a full-suppression strategy given the region’s prolonged drought and increasingly volatile fuel conditions, arguing it’s the safest option for both firefighters and residents.

California, however, has raised concerns — not over suppression tactics themselves, but over the administration’s broader plan to consolidate federal fire agencies. In a May letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot warned that reorganizing federal firefighting operations could weaken the state’s wildfire preparedness and increase public safety risks, even as he acknowledged the goal of improving efficiency.

California’s stake in the debate is significant. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, remains the largest firefighting agency of any state in the nation, giving Sacramento outsized influence in shaping how the state responds to federal policy changes.

In other Inland Empire news, the California Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments today on a case with deep roots in Riverside County. Justices will consider whether former Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law when his office seized roughly 650,000 ballots cast during last year’s statewide vote on redistricting.

The hearing merges two related lawsuits. In one, California Attorney General Rob Bonta accuses Bianco of unlawfully seizing and recounting ballots. Bianco, who later ran unsuccessfully for governor, maintains that his actions were legal because he had obtained judicial warrants to investigate alleged irregularities in the vote. Bonta counters that those warrants did not authorize the sheriff’s actions. Central to the case is a broader question: whether a county sheriff must halt election-related enforcement actions when directed to do so by the state attorney general.

The ballot fight traces back to last year’s statewide vote on Proposition 50, which California voters approved after Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers sought to counter Texas Republicans’ redrawing of congressional districts to favor GOP candidates. California’s redistricting measure was designed to help Democrats in the fight for control of the U.S. House. Several other states have waged their own redistricting battles this election cycle, adding uncertainty to forecasts about which party will control the chamber after November.

Elsewhere in the state, a rural Sierra Nevada county is grappling with a very different kind of legal complication — one involving artificial intelligence. A California appeals court has appointed a judge to investigate how AI-generated errors may have affected criminal cases in Nevada County, where prosecutors used generative AI tools to help draft legal filings.

According to reporting by CalMatters’ Khari Johnson, prosecutors in the county of about 100,000 residents filed inaccurate information in at least four criminal cases last fall after relying on AI systems for writing or proofreading. A former prosecutor involved in some of the errors said in a sworn declaration that a supervisor blocked her from immediately notifying the court, defense attorneys and defendants once the mistakes were discovered. She also said the office had no formal AI policy in place, even though staff were encouraged to use the technology — tools that other studies have shown are prone to generating false or fabricated information.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Trump’s Approach to Wildfire Management Sparks Debate Over Let-It-Burn Policy appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Since spring, seven people have died fighting fires in Colorado, Utah and Oregon: four firefighters killed in a burnover on Colorado’s Knowles Fire, two helicopter pilots lost in a crash in Utah, and a bulldozer contractor killed while cutting fireline in Oregon. Fires have scorched millions of acres and destroyed hundreds of structures throughout the region.

California, meanwhile, has been sending its own engines and crews out of state to help battle blazes in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. But even with its deep bench of resources, the state isn’t immune to the strain being felt nationwide. The country has been operating at Preparedness Level 5 — the highest tier of wildfire response — since mid-July, meaning virtually every available firefighting asset is already committed. Requests for additional crews and equipment are increasingly going unmet.

**A shift toward full suppression**

The backdrop to this fire season is a significant restructuring at the federal level. The administration has merged wildland firefighting crews from four Interior Department agencies — the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs — into a newly formed U.S. Wildland Fire Service. That agency, along with the U.S. Forest Service, is now pursuing what officials call “full suppression,” meaning nearly every new wildfire is targeted for rapid extinguishment rather than being allowed to burn under controlled conditions for ecological benefit.

Administration officials describe the approach as a necessary response to a summer marked by extreme heat, drought and dangerous fire behavior. Brian Fennessy, the former Orange County Fire Authority chief who now leads the new Wildland Fire Service, said the agency’s fire officials — not land managers — now have final say on whether a fire is left to burn.

“When it was a fire for resource benefit, fire (officials) may have had a say, but they did not hold the final decision,” Fennessy said, describing the previous system under the Interior Department. “Now, we hold, on the fire side, that final decision.”

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said his agency has not formally reinstated the old “10 a.m. rule” — a Depression-era policy requiring fires to be extinguished by the next morning — but acknowledged that the practical effect this summer has been much the same: aggressive knockdown of new fires rather than managed burns.

“We aren’t making any commitment to that time frame,” Schultz said, “but in terms of this time of the year, right now, we are not going to just sit back and let fire go and achieve other objectives. We’re going to be aggressively suppressing.”

Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman, who is based in California, said the calculus ultimately comes down to available resources. With national firefighting capacity stretched thin, there’s little room to manage fires for forest health right now.

“If something goes funny, we don’t know if we’re going to get the resources to manage it — and we pretty much know we aren’t because that’s not where houses are,” Freeman said.

**Concerns about long-term consequences**

Critics warn that treating full suppression as the default strategy — rather than one tool among several — could backfire over time. Decades of aggressive firefighting, combined with climate-driven drought, have already left many Western forests choked with dry, overgrown vegetation. Suppressing every fire without exception, some experts argue, only adds to that fuel buildup, setting the stage for future blazes that are harder to control.

Johanna Nosal, a forester who spent 15 years with the U.S. Forest Service in California, Colorado and Montana before taking a federal buyout in 2025, said prescribed burns can’t come close to matching the scale of what’s needed.

“We’re putting these fires out, and sometimes we’re successful at it… but it’s just a year-to-year Band-Aid,” Nosal said. “What eventually happens is you have a lack of resources and these weather periods that will create these huge blazes that no matter what you will do will keep spreading.”

Bobbie Scopa, a firefighter with 45 years of experience across local, state and federal agencies, estimates the government would need 30,000 to 40,000 more firefighters to actually make full suppression work — and even then, she said, “you still wouldn’t be successful.”

Reflecting the strain, incident commanders on Utah’s Widemouth 2 Fire, which has burned nearly 130,000 acres, say repeated requests for hand crews and engines have gone unfilled, forcing reliance on international assistance.

**California’s advantage — and its worries**

Few states are as well-positioned to absorb these federal changes as California, which has invested heavily in its own firefighting capacity over the years, including the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet. Cal Fire now employs more than 12,000 people, making it the largest state fire agency in the country and second in size only to the U.S. Forest Service among wildland firefighting forces worldwide.

Cal Fire officials, including spokesperson Emily Kilgore in the Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit, say they haven’t noticed disruptions in coordination with federal partners so far this season, including during the recent Dove Fire near Yosemite.

Still, state leaders are wary of what federal cutbacks could mean down the line. California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot warned in a May letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins that the state has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars — nearly half a billion since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office — covering wildfire safety projects on federal lands that the Forest Service has historically underfunded.

“While I understand the intention to operate a more efficient federal agency, many of these changes could impact our state’s wildfire readiness and create added public safety risks,” Crowfoot wrote.

Federal agencies remain responsible for protecting roughly half of California’s land, with Cal Fire handling mostly rural, privately owned wildlands that make up about a third of the state. The stakes of getting that partnership right were made painfully clear last year, when catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles killed 31 people, contributed to hundreds of additional deaths, and caused up to $131 billion in property and economic losses, according to a UCLA analysis.

**An agency in transition**

The Forest Service itself is undergoing sweeping changes, including relocating its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and consolidating research operations in Fort Collins, Colorado. The agency has shed 16% of its workforce since 2024, according to U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, an Oregon Democrat who has pressed Schultz on the reorganization’s risks.

Salinas and others worry that separating fire crews from the land management agencies they once worked alongside could sever critical lines of communication — for instance, warnings about not bulldozing firelines through habitat for endangered species or culturally sensitive sites.

Fennessy disputes that concern, saying fire personnel and land managers remain co-located and in daily contact. “I question the motive or intent of those that want to make that argument,” he said.

Investigators are also still examining whether the broader reorganization played any role in the deaths of the firefighters killed on Colorado’s Knowles Fire in late June. Fennessy called any suggestion of a connection “ludicrous” and said he’s confident, based on his knowledge of the ongoing investigation, that “there is absolutely zero connection.”

For now, officials across the West acknowledge there’s no tidy resolution to the tension between protecting lives and property today and maintaining healthier forests for tomorrow.

“There’s no simple answer,” Scopa said. “We’re not gonna put out all the fires. We’re never going to be successful… The environment is not conducive to that, the fuels are not conducive to that, the staffing is not conducive to that.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Trump Administration’s Wildfire Policy Overhaul Leaves California Bracing for Impact appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The proposal, unveiled Tuesday, targets the so-called roadless rule, a two-decade-old federal protection that has barred road construction and commercial logging in undeveloped sections of national forests. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who first floated the repeal last year, said the change is meant to clear the way for more aggressive forest management and reduce wildfire risk.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of acres of forest out of reach of the treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said in a statement announcing the proposal and an accompanying environmental review.

But the U.S. Forest Service’s own research complicates that argument, particularly in California, where roads themselves have repeatedly been identified as a major driver of wildfire ignitions on public land.

Agency scientists examined 26 years of wildfire data along roughly 850 miles of roadways running through the Angeles, San Bernardino, Los Padres and Cleveland national forests — all of which include roadless sections. Their findings showed that nearly two-thirds of human-caused fires in those forests started near roads, places where people, sparks and dry, invasive vegetation frequently intersect.

Human ignition sources vary widely. A hiker might burn toilet paper in a remote area. A hot tub could have faulty wiring. A dragging trailer chain or an overheated engine parked on dry grass can be enough to spark a blaze. Most California wildfires, including those on federal land, trace back to human activity rather than lightning.

California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot has pushed back against the administration’s characterization of the rule as an obstacle to fire prevention work. In a letter sent to Rollins last September, Crowfoot noted that more than 240,000 acres of roadless land in California have already undergone vegetation treatment to reduce fire danger, all without the rule getting in the way. He pointed to the Caples Creek roadless area south of Lake Tahoe, which he said helped shield nearby communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire.

Opening these lands to logging, mining and new roads, Crowfoot warned, “may increase wildfire risk to rural communities and significantly increase the cost of wildfire suppression in California.”

The pattern extends well beyond the state. A peer-reviewed study released earlier this year by scientists with The Wilderness Society found that wildfire likelihood across national forests nationwide is four times higher near roads. Looking at data from 1992 through 2024, researchers found the lowest fire density in protected wilderness areas, followed by roadless zones, with the highest concentration of fires occurring within about 150 feet of roads.

“Opening our remote forests to more roads and development, and therefore more fires, is not a wildfire solution, and it never will be,” said Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director for The Wilderness Society.

Federal officials insist the repeal wouldn’t automatically trigger logging or road-building, saying such decisions would be left to local forest managers. The Department of Agriculture said future land-use choices “will be based on the conditions and needs of natural resources and will be informed by input from states, tribes and communities.”

Still, environmental advocates remain wary, especially given a 2025 executive order from the Trump administration calling for an “immediate expansion of American timber production.” The existing roadless rule already allows for road construction or reconstruction when necessary to address wildfire threats to public health and safety — a provision that raises questions among critics about why a full repeal is needed.

A group of retired U.S. Forest Service chiefs, including one who served during Trump’s first term, argued in an opinion piece last year that eliminating the rule threatens critical watersheds and wildlife habitat. “Why build more roads if the agency, with its limited resources, cannot even maintain the roads it has already got?” they wrote. “Let’s not forget why these roadless areas lack roads in the first place. The high-value, easily accessible timber in national forests has already been harvested. What remains in these roadless areas is difficult and expensive to reach.”

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael and the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, blasted the timing of the move, coming as it does during a punishing wildfire season and following Forest Service budget cuts under the same administration. He vowed to fight the repeal in Congress.

“The Trump administration is back at it again, selling off our public lands to polluting corporations while ignoring the loud objections of the American people,” Huffman said in a statement. “It’s reckless.”

The public has until midnight on Sept. 21 to submit comments on the proposal.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Wildfires Are Spreading Along Highways. The Trump Administration Wants to Build More in Protected Areas appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The exhibit, titled “Help Wanted/Leave Now,” examines the mass deportation campaign carried out under President Eisenhower in 1954 and 1955 — an operation historians say removed roughly one million people, mostly from Latino communities across the Southwest, and remains the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. The federal government at the time gave the campaign an official name using a racial slur against Mexican immigrants.

The idea for the exhibit came from Pablo Espinoza, a former television journalist and Capitol staffer who now sits on the California Museum’s board. Years ago, while touring the museum’s exhibit on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans with his son, Espinoza had a realization: he wanted to use that same kind of storytelling to document the 1950s deportation campaign, a piece of history he felt had largely been forgotten.

Espinoza, who immigrated from Ecuador on a student visa before building a career in Spanish-language television and later working for the Assembly Speaker’s office, said he believed he could easily have been swept up in the 1950s raids had he been living in California at the time.

“That could have happened to me. That could have happened to my son. We look the part,” he said.

For years, the timing never felt right to pitch the exhibit. Now, museum officials say, it couldn’t be more relevant.

The exhibit pairs video testimony from people deported in the 1950s with accounts from immigrants detained and removed from the country within the past year, drawing striking parallels between the two eras. Visitors will see firsthand accounts of families torn apart, aggressive detentions based on appearance, and federal agents using slurs against the people they were removing — practices that mirror recent reporting on immigration enforcement tactics in Los Angeles, where leaked texts and audio last month revealed agents using similar language during raids.

The Eisenhower-era campaign came about a decade after wartime labor shortages had prompted the federal government to expand the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican workers into the U.S. to fill agricultural jobs. But amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment — echoed decades later in Trump’s own 2024 campaign rhetoric about immigrants “taking jobs” from Americans — officials reversed course and launched sweeping deportation raids. Detainees were often crammed onto ships and trucks under brutal conditions; some died of heatstroke during transport. Today’s immigrant advocates report similarly overcrowded detention facilities with inadequate medical care.

Among the personal stories featured is that of Victor Ochoa, a longtime San Diego artist and activist who was deported as a 7-year-old U.S. citizen in 1954. Ochoa’s mother had urged the family to avoid speaking Spanish in public as deportations intensified, fearing it would draw attention. Federal agents nonetheless showed up at the family’s East Los Angeles home and gave them three days to leave the country voluntarily or face forced removal. Though Ochoa was born in the U.S., his parents were Mexican nationals, and the family chose to leave rather than risk a more violent deportation.

“I remember they scared my mother so much, and she cried after they left,” Ochoa told CalMatters.

The experience shaped the rest of his life, pushing him into decades of activism, including his role in the creation of San Diego’s Chicano Park. He credits the schools he attended in Tijuana with instilling in him a critical perspective on the United States that later influenced his work as a muralist. Ochoa said he now volunteers with groups supporting undocumented immigrants and is troubled by reports of agents detaining parents near San Diego schools, calling the current enforcement climate “more aggressive” than what he witnessed as a child.

The exhibit also features Vilma Palacios, 23, who was detained by immigration agents in June 2025 — just about a week before she was set to begin a nursing job at a hospital in New Orleans. Palacios came to the U.S. at age 6 and spent much of her childhood in Orange County before finishing high school in Louisiana and graduating from Louisiana State University. After spending six months in detention fighting her case, she ultimately agreed to be deported to Honduras.

“They said they were going after criminals and people with records, not people who have dedicated their whole lives to this country and their careers to serving the community. I never thought it would go this far,” she told CalMatters.

Palacios’ story didn’t end in Central America, however. Professional contacts from her nursing career helped her secure a hospital job in British Columbia, where she now lives. She said she views the current crackdown as a loss for the country. “These are good people being deported. There are good people in America who just want to contribute and make the country better, and they’re being sent away.”

Espinoza said his own views on immigration shifted over the years after meeting people who crossed the border simply to support their families, with no realistic path to legal status. In those situations, he said, immigration “isn’t really a choice at all — it exposes the injustice of a system that offers no path to citizenship for people who are economically vulnerable but who provide an important service to this country.”

He hopes the exhibit will move visitors the way the Japanese American incarceration exhibit once moved him and his son, Adrian, who died in 2024 at age 25. The two used to debate politics together, something Espinoza said his son claimed to dislike even though “he was always engaged.”

As the exhibit opens, Espinoza said he keeps thinking of his son. “In the end, I hope people see this with their kids and think, ‘What else can I do?'”

Original source: CalMatters

The post New Exhibit Highlights Californians Caught in Mass Deportation Raids, Decades Apart appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs quietly posted a notice in late May signaling its intent to “significantly reduce regulatory requirements” governing Head Start. The proposal is expected to go through a formal review process before taking effect sometime in 2027, but advocates say the implications could reshape the program dramatically.

Federal officials have not released a detailed list of which rules would be eliminated. However, published reports suggest the changes could strip away many of the safeguards that have made Head Start distinctive since it was created in 1965 — including caps on class sizes, minimum qualifications for teachers, and requirements that programs accept all eligible children regardless of disability status or their parents’ immigration status.

The agency also floated the idea of shifting Head Start funding to individual states, though it offered no timeline or specifics on how such a transition might work.

“The complete gutting of these goals ignores what we know really works in early childhood education,” said Deborah Stipek, a former dean of the Stanford School of Education who has studied the program extensively. “If you’re going to spend money on something, wouldn’t you want it to have positive effects?”

In its notice, the federal office argued that Head Start providers would welcome the changes, saying reduced paperwork and more local flexibility would ease administrative burdens. Officials also said individual programs could continue enforcing certain standards if they felt it served their communities’ needs.

But Melanee Cottrill, executive director of Head Start California — a nonprofit representing the state’s 1,813 Head Start centers — said that assumption doesn’t reflect reality. Local programs under pressure to enroll more children are unlikely to maintain standards that are no longer mandatory, she said.

The same announcement indicated the administration wants to strengthen nutrition and physical activity components of Head Start, though no further details were provided.

A Program Facing Uncertainty

Head Start has largely avoided major funding cuts so far. A small number of California programs did close temporarily during last fall’s federal government shutdown, but reopened once lawmakers reached a budget agreement.

Still, Cottrill warned that scaling back program standards — even without direct funding cuts — would eventually erode the quality of care and education Head Start provides. She anticipates larger class sizes, less qualified staff and diminished opportunities for parents to stay involved.

“Those standards are what make Head Start a high-quality program,” Cottrill said. “Head Start will still exist, but it will be very different from what it is today.”

Established under President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty initiative, Head Start provides free early education, health screenings, meals and family support services to households earning less than $33,000 annually for a family of four. The federal government funds the program through grants to school districts, nonprofits and other local organizations, sometimes paired with additional funding streams.

Research shows the benefits can last a lifetime. A 2022 Brookings Institution study found that children who attended Head Start were more likely to graduate college and secure professional careers as adults.

In California, enrollment could be even higher if not for staffing shortages. Early childhood educators often earn wages lower than fast food workers, Cottrill said, contributing to high turnover that limits how many children programs can serve.

The High Cost of Cutting Disability Screenings

Among the standards most at risk is early disability screening, which experts say could prove especially costly to lose. Catching conditions such as dyslexia early allows for intervention that can reduce the need for costly special education services down the road, according to Stipek.

Beth Meloy, an early childhood education consultant who helped craft the current Head Start standards, acknowledged that some simplification could benefit local providers overwhelmed by regulatory demands. But she said eliminating the standards altogether would be reckless.

“Head Start is built around a mission of giving low-income children a path to sustained education and life outcomes,” Meloy said. “These changes lack the thoughtfulness that these children deserve.”

Original source: CalMatters

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