WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan moment, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend temporary protections for Haitian immigrants, a long-shot effort fighting back against President Trump’s attempts to end the program.
The bill, pushed forward by House Democrats with a group of Republicans over the objections of the GOP leadership, would require a three-year extension of temporary protected status for Haitians by the Trump administration. That would allow hundreds of thousands of qualifying immigrants to remain in the United States without fear of deportation.
The vote was 224-204, drawing applause in the chamber. But it faces uncertainty in the Senate, and the Republican president would almost certainly seek to veto it.
“I know firsthand how important our Haitian neighbors are to our communities, to our civic life, to our culture, to our workforce, to our economy,” said Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who is co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus and represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the country.
During the debate, she recounted the number of Haitian immigrants working in healthcare, housing construction and other industries. Haitians with temporary legal status “are not the problem, quite the contrary, they are part of the solution,” she said.
Pressley has said deporting Haitians back to the troubled Caribbean country would be a “death sentence,” given the effects of natural disasters and gang violence. “Congress can do the right thing,” she said.
Ten Republicans, many from districts with large numbers of Haitian residents, joined all Democrats and one independent in voting for passage.
Congress tries to act before the Supreme Court does
The effort to help 350,000 Haitians living lawfully in the United States comes as the administration is working to end the temporary legal status for several groups, exposing them to deportation.
In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court is prepared to consider a fast-track case that would end the protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants in a challenge widely seen as threatening the broader program. The administration filed emergency appeals after lower courts stopped the immediate end of the program.
It is part of the administration’s efforts to strip certain immigrant groups of legal status as the White House works to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of conducting the largest mass deportation operation in history. Some 1.3 million people fleeing countries around the world have been granted temporary protected status in the U.S.
The protections for Haiti, first approved after a devastating 2010 earthquake, have been extended multiple times. The State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest.”
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy organization, fought back tears as she described the fear of deportations coursing through the community.
“We are asking, where will you be? On the right side of history?” she said at a news conference outside the Capitol. “Or continuing to cause trauma to people who are asking for nothing other than safety and protection?”
Trump has described migrants from poorer countries in vulgar terms, and he has falsely accused Haitian migrants in Ohio of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.
The conservative majority court has allowed the end of temporary legal status for a total of 600,000 people from Venezuela while lawsuits play out, leaving them to face potential deportation.
Lawmakers debate whether to help Haitians or stick with Trump
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) whose district includes Long Island’s Haitian community, said she promised constituents she would work to protect their status. She introduced the legislation with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York as soon as she took office last year.
“It’s cruel to expect Haitians to be forced to return to these deadly, dangerous conditions,” she said at a news conference. “Human lives are at risk.”
Lawler said there are differences of opinion on immigration policy, but that Haitian immigrants have become vital to his community and forcing them out would be unjust and unwise.
“They are small business owners, they are nurses, they are caregivers, they participate in our economy and take care of American citizens,” he said. “Congress has a responsibility to act.”
But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) decried the number of immigrants, including Haitians, who have entered the U.S., and cited Democratic efforts to halt funding for enforcement and deportation efforts.
“Make temporary permanent,” he said, “that’s their plan.”
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said the program was “backdoor amnesty” for foreigners.
To Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), the temporary status first granted under the Obama administration has become “an open-ended invitation” for immigrants to enter the country, including some illegally, and remain.
“The Trump administration has heeded the cries of the American people,” he said.
Using a discharge petition to force votes
The vote was the latest effort by House Democrats to maneuver past the Republican majority using a discharge petition — once a rare tool, but now used increasingly to form bipartisan coalitions.
The discharge petition process forces the bill to the House floor for consideration, powering past House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leaders. It was used to help pass legislation that required the Justice Department to release the files of the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.
Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and are typically able to swat back such efforts from Democrats. But Democrats and Republicans have formed bipartisan alliances to reach the majority needed on the discharge petitions.
Pressley’s effort to discharge the bill won support from four Republicans on the initial petition, and several more once it came to the floor vote.
WASHINGTON — It was hard to miss President Trump’s very public spat with Pope Leo XIV this week.
The split was the first time in modern memory that an American president has so openly badmouthed a sitting pontiff, or, for that matter, distributed an image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Critics cried “blasphemy!” even as supporters continued to stand behind the man whose presidency, some argue, was God sent.
Students of American history will recall an earlier incident that pitted papal and presidential authority against each other. The concern: that a president would align himself too closely to the church, or even take orders from the pope.
That anxiety seeped into the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, whose eventual victory would make him the first Catholic president.
Back then, Kennedy was constantly fending off accusations from Protestant ecclesiastic types who were wary that his nomination meant the pontiff, John XXIII, was already packing his bags for a move into the White House.
President John F. Kennedy meets with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in July 1963, one month after Paul succeeded John XXIII as pontiff.
(Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
The issue was so pronounced that 150 clergymen and laypeople formed Citizens for Religious Freedom, which in a pamphlet warned, “It is inconceivable to us that a Roman Catholic President would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies and demands.”
One particularly loud voice among the ministers was the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, a popular and influential pastor and author. Peale was especially disturbed by Kennedy’s prospects.
“Our American culture is at stake,” he said at a meeting of the ministers. “I don’t say it won’t survive, but it won’t be what it was.”
The group asked Kennedy to “drop by Houston” to make clear his views on faith and government. He agreed, making a televised speech at the Rice Hotel, where he famously spelled out his firm opinions on the separation of church and state.
“I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy told the group. “I am the Democratic Party’s nominee for president who happens to be Catholic.”
Time magazine reflected on the address some years later, concluding that the speech had gone so well for Kennedy “that many felt the dramatic moment was an important part of his victory.”
Since then, modern presidents have occasionally found themselves at odds with the Vatican. Typically Republican presidents would hear from the pope about foreign wars, while Democratic presidents were derided over abortion policies.
But such disagreements tended to be handled with the decorous language of diplomacy.
President George W. Bush presents Pope John Paul II with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Rome on June 4 , 2004. The pope reminded Bush of the Vatican’s opposition to the war in Iraq. Bush praised him as a “devoted servant of God.”
(Eric Vandeville/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Then came Trump, who is now being accused of openly mocking the Catholic faith and the 1st Amendment. He called Leo weak on crime and foreign policy, among other things. A self-described nondenominational Christian who says his favorite book is the Bible, Trump’s hasn’t shied from bashing the pontiff, nor has he hesitated to blur the line separating church and state.
Where Kennedy argued for an absolute separation, Trump has advanced a model of religious resurgence, promising “pews will be fuller, younger and more faithful than they have been in years.” Through initiatives including the “America Prays” program launched last year, the White House has sought to bring “bring back God” by inviting millions of Americans to prayer sessions. The webpage for the program focuses features only Christian Scripture.
“From the earliest days of the republic, faith in God has been the ultimate source of the nation’s strength,” Trump said at a National Prayer Breakfast in February.
President Trump, then-Vice President Mike Pence and faith leaders say a prayer during the signing of a proclamation in the Oval Office on Sept. 1, 2017. .
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
In the United States, the Catholic Church historically has “loved the 1st Amendment” and its guarantee of religious liberty and, as a result, largely kept some distance from government, according to Tom Reese, a Jesuit priest and religious commentator. After its failures attempting to influence monarchs and politicians in Europe, the Catholic Church “didn’t want the government interfering with them and knew that it wasn’t their right to interfere with the government,” Reese said.
Kennedy loved the 1st Amendment too. He put it above his own religious beliefs, and said as much on his way to the White House.
“I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the 1st Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty,” he said. “Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so.”
Pope Leo XIV meets with members of the community in Algiers at the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa on April 13, 2026.
Meet Mick Cronin’s nightmare, a 7-foot-3 indictment of his embattled program, a monumental mistake that has spent three weeks eating at the heart of even the most dedicated Bruin loyalists.
In Michigan’s overpowering run in this tournament, Mara was everywhere.
Playing the previous two seasons at UCLA, Mara was nowhere.
In six tournament games, Mara had at least two blocks in five, scored in double figures in four and racked up 26 points with nine rebounds in the semifinal win against Arizona.
In his last 11 appearances as a Bruin last season, Mara never played more than half the game.
“One Shining Moment” is another man’s darkness, and so it was that after Michigan’s 69-63 title victory over UConn Monday night, Mara unwittingly milked his co-starring role in the tournament’s annual music video compilation.
In a brief closeup from an earlier tournament game, Mara was shown wagging his tongue in celebration … or was that in revenge?
It sure felt like the latter, as Mara’s nationally televised presence this spring repeatedly summoned one question about the current UCLA basketball culture.
How could the Bruins allow the cornerstone of the program’s future to just walk out the door?
Yes, Cronin isn’t the first coach to lose a star to the transfer portal, as Michigan became the first champion for which all five starters were transfers.
But Mara was more than a transfer, he was transformative, and everyone who had watched him roaming the Pauley floor during his sporadic appearances knew it. If Mara had stayed with the Bruins this season, they could have been at least a Sweet 16 team, maybe advancing to the Elite Eight, and who knows how much further, his presence alone changing so many things about the team in so many different ways.
Michigan’s Aday Mara dunks while Arizona players watch during the Wolverines Final Four semifinal win Saturday in Indianapolis.
(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)
His rim protection is powerful. His shot-blocking is masterful. His footwork is precise, his shooting touch soft and his overall game has been improving with his maturity.
Bruin fans loved him. Pauley rocked with him. Scouts fawned over him.
But Cronin never seemed sold on him, starting him once in two years, playing him about 13 minutes a game last season.
After which, Mara begrudgingly bolted.
“It was a hard decision to leave UCLA,” Mara told former Times staff writer Ben Bolch last spring, “because you saw every game — I was enjoying it, I was super happy because I saw all the crowd cheering for me, helping me a lot. Los Angeles is like a really, really good place, Westwood, so I’m going to miss that and I wanted to say that because it was a hard decision because it’s just after two years it feels like I spent a lot more time than two years, you know?”
When explaining the benchings, Cronin frequently talked about Mara’s matchup problems, conditioning problems, and illness problems. And to be fair, Cronin has often used his tough love with great success, turning marginal players into good ones.
But Mara was a potential superstar, and he wasn’t buying any of it.
“I had expectations when I came here that I didn’t achieve,” said Mara to Bolch. “Also, I think I felt like I was playing good, practicing good, practicing hard, you know, putting in extra work and until Wisconsin I never had the opportunity to show that I was able to play, you know? And once [Cronin] gave me the opportunity, I saw — not a lot, but I saw what I could do, so those are the two reasons.”
Ah, yes, Wisconsin. That game, in January of 2025, could have solidified the Cronin era. Instead, it eventually only served as another eventual milestone of regret.
In the Bruins upset of the Badgers, Mara had 22 points, five rebounds and two blocks in 21 minutes in the best game of his UCLA career.
That finally earned him a place in the rotation after weeks of being lost on the bench, and he played more than 24 minutes in three of the next four games including finding himself in the starting lineup for the first time.
But it was also the last time. Beginning in early February, he didn’t play more than 20 minutes a game the rest of the season, which, after he experienced such success in the Badger beatdown, he found increasingly frustrating.
After the season, there were reports that Mara asked for an inordinate salary increase while demanding that he set his own practice schedule. He denied all those charges to Bolch, saying, “I feel like that’s crazy.”
You want to know what’s really crazy? That UCLA would not work with him no matter what the demands.
One can only guess about the millions of dollars paid to top UCLA athletes, but the Bruin power brokers should have busted the NIL bank for this kid. Certainly, one can also speculate that the Spaniard was considered soft and wasn’t always in great shape, but he was still a teenager and in need of the sort of persistent patience not often shown in Cronin’s world.
Whatever, there was surely a way to put Mara on a path to his seemingly destined greatness. But the hard-nosed Cronin apparently couldn’t reach him while Michigan’s gentler Dusty May could and … hmmmm.
On Monday night, one of those coaches was celebrating while the other one was watching.
Who knows, maybe Cronin and his demanding, sometimes demeaning program will pick up another shiny seven-foot star from this spring’s newly opened portal.
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Last month, images hit the internet showing a very stealthy, extremely long-endurance, very high-altitude intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drone commonly (and unofficially) referred to as the RQ-180, or an evolution thereof, landing at a base in Greece. Many questions remain about the uncrewed aircraft and why it might be operating from Larissa Air Base.
However, as we noted in our initial reporting, the current conflict with Iran would be a very relevant fit for what the RQ-180 was likely designed to do. Furthermore, a secretive late Cold War-era drone program known as Quartz, intended to persistently monitor mobile nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles deep within the Soviet Union, offers a window into exactly why the RQ-180 could be in high demand in the Middle East now. There is no higher-priority standing mission for Operation Epic Fury at this time than finding and destroying Iranian launchers.
In many ways, the shadowy Quartz program from decades ago was a progenitor for what became a very large flying wing uncrewed aircraft that shares the planform of the B-21 (and the original B-2 design) and is likely at least part of the RQ-180’s origin story.
Strange arrival over Greece
To recap quickly, on March 18, local Greek news website onlarissa.gr first published pictures of what it misidentified as a B-2 bomber landing at Larissa Air Base, also known as Larissa National Airport. The base, which belongs to the Hellenic Air Force, but is also known to host U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones, is situated in the city of the same name.
This aircraft seen over Larissa, Greece is not a B-2 like the local Greek news reported or an RQ-170, but is in fact best imagery ever published of the RQ-180, an undisclosed low observable drone used by the USAF. Location suggests use in the Iran conflict https://t.co/Pa9whNlQSVpic.twitter.com/UsDxy9Tc4n
Onlarissa.gr outlet followed up its initial reporting by posting a video of the drone, seen below. Additional and increasingly more detailed imagery has subsequently emerged.
Το αμερικανικό βομβαρδιστικό Β-2 πάνω από τον ουρανό της Λάρισας
Per onlarissa.gr, the highly exotic aircraft had landed at Larissa after experiencing some kind of technical issue, citing unnamed sources. This remains unconfirmed, but it would explain why the drone touched down in broad daylight, rather than coming in under the cover of darkness. It could also have diverted there with an emergency, while operating out of another location, even one in the continental United States. It is worth noting that Larissa Air Base appears to have unique facilities built in recent years that seem to be very well suited for housing an aircraft like this.
TWZ previously reached out to U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and the Pentagon for comment, but has not received any responses as of the time of writing. In a story published on March 24, Air & Space Forces Magazine said U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) also declined to comment.
Attention was also subsequently called to U.S. Air Force cargo planes having been tracked making unusual flights from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Larissa recently. One of those flights came on February 25, while another one occurred on March 9. A C-5M also flew to Larissa from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma on February 25, according to Aviation Week. Whether there is any connection between these flights and the drone spotted at the base has not been confirmed at this time. Edwards is the Air Force’s main hub for aviation test and evaluation efforts, and flight testing of the RQ-180 was reportedly at least managed from there in the 2010s. The Air Force could also have moved other assets to Larissa via Edwards.
These photos are really interesting as they explain the two C-17s which flew from Edwards Air Force Base to Larissa Air Base in Greece in early March and late February.
The current state of the RQ-180, or any designs that have evolved from it, on a programmatic level, is very murky. In addition to testing at Edwards, past reports have said that a unit at Beale Air Force Base in California began flying the drones operationally, at least on a limited level, by 2019. There has been talk of a large flying wing aircraft similar in configuration to the B-21 Raider bomber flying out of Plant 42 in Palmdale, also in California, under the cover of darkness for years.
There are very strong indications that a photograph that appeared on Instagram in October 2020 of an unmanned aircraft flying in the skies over California’s Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force Base was the first sighting of an RQ-180. That picture also notably showed a drone with an overall white paint scheme. That aligned with a report from Aviation Week that the design had gained the nicknames “Great White Bat” and “Shikaka.” The latter of these is the name of a fictional sacred white bat that is at the center of the plot of the 1995 Jim Carrey comedy Ace Ventura 2. The drone seen recently flying over Larissa has an overall black or otherwise dark-colored paint job. TWZ has noted previously that an overall white/cream/light pastel color scheme could help the drone to hide better at high altitudes during the day, but that a dark scheme would be more relevant at night. It is very possible, if not probable, that multiple schemes have been tested for a drone expected to fly sorties lasting multiple days.
A notional rendering of the Northrop Grumman drone commonly referred to as the RQ-180. Hangar B Productions
There certainly has been no clear evidence, at Beale or anywhere else, of the establishment of the kind of infrastructure that one would associate with the RQ-180 reaching a more advanced operational state and serial production. It is possible that the drone could share facilities with the B-21 under the larger umbrella of the Long Range Strike (LRS) family of systems. The RQ-180 is very likely intended, in part, to work in concert with the Raider, and there may even be some commonality between the two aircraft. The RQ-180 and/or related designs very likely played a direct role in risk reduction efforts that helped sell the Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) concept, and possibly the win by Northrop Grumman of that contract.
B-21 Takeoff and Landing
So, where the RQ-180 stands in terms of its overall capacity and its future remains unclear, but they are clearly being used on operational sorties, at least in a limited manner.
Iranian missile threats persist
After more than five weeks of fighting, the conflict with Iran is still grinding on. Despite the United States and Israel having substantially degraded the ability of Iranian forces to launch retaliatory missile and drone strikes, they have not stopped entirely. Iran has been digging out underground missile bases struck by American and Israeli forces and getting them back into operation, sometimes within hours, The New York Times reported just last Friday, citing U.S. intelligence reports. That followed other reports stating that Iran still retains a vast arsenal of missiles and drones, as well as a significant number of launchers to fire them.
U.S. forces drop precision munitions on underground military targets deep inside Iran to further degrade the Iranian regime’s ability to project power in meaningful ways beyond its borders. pic.twitter.com/ciQRbE0KFM
In recent weeks, publicly available data from multiple sources has, at times, shown relatively small, but noticeable upticks in Iran’s launches. There are also signs that more of those threats are evading interception, though whether this has translated to more damage and/or casualties from impacts is unclear.
Iran’s missile and drone arsenal has taken a hit, but what remains is being used more efficiently. Tehran continues fire an average of 21 missiles per week — with an uptick in its hit rate and ability to impose costs.
The talking point of “launches are down 90% since day 1” is true but so is “launches are up since last week”. The latter is the more important indicator at the moment. https://t.co/Oa4sZPOgWx
When it comes to launchers, Iran has invested heavily over the years in road mobile designs for firing ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones. This includes types that can be hard to distinguish from normal civilian trucks, especially those used for launching short-range ballistic missiles.
✈️🎯60+ strike flights: The IAF completed additional waves of strikes in western Iran targeting the Iranian regime’s missile launchers, defense systems, and live-fire arrays. pic.twitter.com/I1rRLBJlUR
Iran also has extensive underground ‘missile cities’ and other hardened sites that launchers can sprint to and from, and even fire from within in some cases. Beyond the main missile storage and launch sites, Iranian authorities have clearly had plans to disperse these weapons across the country. Reports have said that more authority to employ them has been delegated to lower echelons of command to minimize the impacts of separate U.S. and Israeli strikes on command and control nodes, as well.
On top of all this, Iran still has longer-ranged ballistic missiles that it can fire from areas further to the east, where the volume of U.S. and Israeli strikes has only more recently begun to grow. What’s left of Iran’s air defenses, which presents a real threat, is therefore likely to be more intact in those regions. In general, many of Iran’s air defense systems are also road mobile and can pop-up suddenly. All of this creates challenges for finding and fixing Iran’s remaining launch capacity, let alone neutralizing it.
Three weeks of Operation Epic Fury.
The Joint Force owns the skies, but Tehran holds the Strait. Additional U.S. fighter aircraft and naval assets arrived in both theaters, and Marine expeditionary forces are en route.
The Israeli Air Force has dropped over 16,000 bombs in Iran since the start of the war, in over 800 waves of strikes, the military says.
According to the IDF, over 10,000 separate strikes have been carried out on 4,000 targets. pic.twitter.com/gkU4rW4s8T
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 1, 2026
In this context, there is a clear need to be able to readily detect launchers, which can pop out suddenly and unexpectedly from cover, across vast areas. Known missile storage sites and launch areas around them also need to be persistently surveilled. The ability to find launchers faster opens up new options for striking them. Just tracking and recording their typical movements would also help further refine interdiction and intelligence-gathering strategies going forward.
As TWZ has previously explored in great depth, the RQ-180 is best understood as a very high-flying, very long-endurance, and very stealthy intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance platform that is capable of penetrating and persisting deep into enemy airspace. Its primary means of achieving that mission would be a radar with ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities, but radar would be just the primary component of a larger sensor package, which would likely include powerful electro-optical sensors and passive radiofrequency ones.
At its most basic, GMTI allows battle managers to see the enemy’s ground movements in real-time and then quickly adapt their game plan to counter those enemy forces before they can ever attack, or even pose a threat to friendly forces. GMTI is also a critical capability for detecting changes in force posture, establishing patterns of enemy movements over time, and identifying new targets of interest. Modern GMTI products can also be looped into a ‘kill web’ for rapid targeting purposes.
Some of this is also achieved through the aforementioned SAR mode, which basically provides a satellite-like image of a target area using radar. It also has the ability to see some things optical systems cannot, and, like GMTI, it can work under nearly all atmospheric conditions, day or night. When paired with GMTI, SAR can be used to help positively identify targets, as well as gain better situational awareness about the targets being tracked.
A generic example of GMTI tracks overlaid on top of a SAR image. Public Domain
Passive electronic intelligence collection that allows for radiofrequency-emitters to be quickly detected and geolocated via onboard antennas and interferometry-based computing is another part of the equation. Long-range optical sensors can also provide higher-fidelity intelligence and spot movements of infrared signatures over large areas. You can imagine how fuzing all these capabilities together, combined with advanced networking, on a single platform could be incredibly potent. Basically, detecting a target or target group of interest, and then training advanced sensors on it to rapidly build up a high-quality understanding of what is going on and even to provide real-time targeting data to ‘shooters’ would be this aircraft’s bread and butter.
All of these are capabilities that would be ideally suited to the very high-priority task at hand of searching for Iranian launchers across the country’s vast terrain.
This all brings us back to Quartz and the very specific mission set that drove that program. Quartz is the best-known codename for a drone conceived as part of what was officially dubbed the Advanced Airborne Reconnaissance System, or AARS program.
The lead-up to Quartz
AARS/Quartz was itself born out of a succession of earlier developments. Proving that using a stealth platform to penetrate enemy air defenses and to stay over contested territory for hours on end while transmitting data collected without being detected is one of the biggest revolutions in warfare of the 20th Century. This capability was demonstrated on the tactical side at the dawn of stealth technology by Northrop’s Tacit Blue. That aircraft was developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) highly classified Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft-Experimental (BSAX) program, which began in the late 1970s.
The Tacit Blue demonstrator. Northrop Grumman
Tacit Blue notably served as a periphery risk reduction effort for the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program that would result in the B-2. However, its reason for being was to show that a stealthy aircraft carrying a huge radar can penetrate enemy air defenses and loiter for prolonged periods of time, collecting GMTI radar data and other intelligence information.
The radar for BSAX was a low probability of intercept design that had come from Pave Mover, another DARPA effort. Pave Mover ultimately led to the non-stealthy and now-retired E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft, but offshoots of that radar technology did end up elsewhere, including on the B-2. Low probability of intercept/low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) radars and communications suites are now key tenets of stealth aircraft design, in general. Keeping signal emissions, which an enemy can use to spot and track threats, to a minimum is critical for low-observable (stealthy) aircraft designs. Pave Mover was also tied into DARPA’s Assault Breaker program, which focused on proving out various technologies to enable standoff targeting of enemy forces, especially large Soviet armored formations on the move, deep behind the front lines.
An E-8C JSTARS aircraft. USAF/Senior Airman Jared Lovett
The famously ugly Tacit Blue, also nicknamed the “Whale,” produced results that were revolutionary, as you can read more about here. Even the most capable existing penetrating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft available at the time, like the SR-71 Blackbird, could only take a snapshot in time of the enemy and its posture. Satellites were far more predictable and could only provide the same ‘moment in time’ intelligence, and in a much less flexible manner. Tacit Blue could watch for hours with the enemy not even knowing it was there.
An SR-71 Blackbird. Courtesy photo via USAF
This meant the quality of intelligence Tacit Blue was capable of collecting was of far greater value. Metaphorically speaking, the SR-71 was like documenting a wedding by loudly running through a crowd and snapping a few photos. Tacit Blue was like rolling hours of videotape at the same wedding by an invisible cameraman. It was an absolute game-changer. The information was also transmitted securely using a LPI data link in near-real-time so that it could be rapidly exploited, not once the aircraft returned to base.
A drone to hunt Soviet mobile ballistic missiles
AARS/Quartz can be seen as something of a strategic parallel to the more tactically-minded BSAX effort and the Tacit Blue demonstrator. It was conceived as a cooperative effort between the U.S. Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). NRO, the very existence of which was only declassified in 1992, is and has historically been responsible primarily for intelligence-gathering via satellite. However, it was also involved in ISR drone operations in the 1960s and 1970s.
The supersonic D-21 drone, seen here atop an M-21 mothership aircraft during a test, is one of the uncrewed aircraft programs NRO was involved in during the 1960s and 1970s. USAF
In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration grew concerned about a gap in reconnaissance assets, in the air and in space, to persistently track and monitor Soviet mobile nuclear-armed intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“As spy satellite systems came on line in the 1960s, they shared the same fundamental operational scheme as the SR-71. Both conducted reconnaissance with relative impunity but were so fast that they only provided episodic coverage. The Soviet system of fixed air bases, missile silos, and command centers of the Cold War’s first 30 years favored ‘fast pass’ reconnaissance, however, so its weaknesses were not evident until the strategic equation shifted in the late 1970s,” Thomas Ehrhard wrote in a monograph, titled Air Force UAVs: The Secret History, which the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies published in 2010. “Soviet mobile missiles (both nuclear and air-to-air) and the advance of aviation technology opened the door for a true loitering surveillance UAV called AARS.”
Ehrhard pointed to three missiles as particular drivers behind the AARS program. The first of these was the road-mobile RSD-10 Pioneer, known in the West as the SS-20 Saber, a nuclear-armed intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with three warheads in a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) configuration. The SS-20 had an immensely destabilizing impact on the security environment in Europe. Its appearance was a central factor in the United States and the Soviet Union ultimately signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987.
A Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer/SS-20 Saber IRBM, at left, alongside a U.S. Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM), at right, on display at the National Air and Space Museum. The INF treaty allowed for the preservation of a small number of demilitarized RSD-10/SS-20s and Pershing IIs, but the rest were destroyed. National Air and Space Museum
The other Soviet missiles that helped make the case for AARS/Quartz were two ICBMs, the rail-mobile RT-23 Molodets (SS-24 Scalpel) and the road-mobile RT-2PM/RS-12M Topol (SS-25 Sickle).
RT-23/SS-24 SCALPEL MOD 1 ICBM
RT-2PM/SS-25 SICKLE ICBM
In his 2010 monograph, Ehrhard describes the Reagan-era view of the resulting problem set as follows:
“The technological problem of holding these mobile missiles at risk, one that NATO had never solved with the SS-20, now became vastly more complex [with the inclusion of the SS-24 and SS-25]. U.S. forces had to constantly monitor their movement and electronic emissions, something neither fast-pass satellites, U-2s, nor the SR-71 could accomplish. The mission also entailed breaking the over two decade-long declaratory policy of not overflying the Soviet Union, a prospect the Reagan Administration apparently felt was worth the gain. To complicate matters further, they needed a platform that could track those missiles in a nuclear detonation environment while flying from remote bases in the continental US. Operating and receiving imagery from such a craft beyond line-of-sight using space relays would prove daunting. The political and design challenges loomed large, but in the end the Air Force/NRO/CIA consortium opted for a leap-ahead system.”
With all this in mind, AARS/Quartz was seen as a national imperative. The very long-endurance drone, penetrating deep into Soviet airspace, would be able to locate many of these threats, allowing them to be targeted during the opening throes of a potential apocalypse – something we will come back to later on.
By the mid-1980s, contracts were doled out to Lockheed and Boeing to develop what at the time could be seen as the most ambitious ‘silver bullet’ aerospace program of its time, albeit one that had very few eyes on it as it was deeply buried in the classified realm. Ehrhard writes:
“To accomplish the loitering surveillance mission, this UAV needed autonomous (i.e., not remote controlled), highly reliable flight controls, and a design capable of intercontinental ranges from bases in the US zone of the interior with extreme high altitude capability (long wingspan with sailplane-type lift and multi-engine propulsion to reach altitudes more than 70,000 feet). Moreover, it had to carry an array of high-resolution sensors, high-capacity satellite communications capabilities, and various antennas—all in a package that was stealthy to the point of being covert. The cost of developing each technology piece alone would be staggering, but integrating them presented an even greater challenge – thus the project became a magnet for the best and most starry-eyed technologists in the black world. As one CIA engineer said in an anonymous interview, this project was ‘the cat’s pajamas,’ and ‘the single most fun project I ever worked on’ because it stretched every conceivable technology area.”
Ehrhard does not elaborate on the expected sensor package, but an LPI/LPD radar with GMTI and SAR modes, as well as other sensors, would have been needed for a stealthy platform tasked with this mission set. As noted earlier, electronic emissions, which can be detected passively, were also seen at this time as a key way to spot and track mobile missile launchers.
A highly ambitious undertaking
By all indications, AARS/Quartz was seen as a very ambitious effort from the start, but one that could yield impressive capabilities needed to address a mission requirement critical to national security. It should be noted that the U.S. military was pursuing a host of advanced stealth aviation technology programs at around the same time. Many of the efforts would go on to produce real results, if they hadn’t already by the mid-1980s, and this is just based on what is known publicly. Northrop’s stealthy Tacit Blue demonstrator flew for the first time in 1982. Lockheed’s F-117 Nighthawk reached an initial operational capability the following year. The Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program that would lead to the B-2 was well underway by this time, too.
Another look at the Tacit Blue demonstrator, as viewed from below. Northrop Grumman
In the end, AARS/Quartz did not fare as well as many of its contemporaries, at least from what we know. The program ran through the end of the Reagan years and into the 1990s under the administration of President George H.W. Bush. It morphed and changed hands considerably from a smaller ‘bleeding-edge’ NRO-led program into one that was integrated into a new national unmanned aircraft strategy. This, in turn, caused its mission set to balloon as a maelstrom of stakeholders demanded many capabilities out of a single platform that was already beyond the available technology of the era.
Ehrhard’s 2010 monograph sums up just how bloated AARS became by the 1990s:
“[David A.] Kier[, NRO’s Deputy Director from 1997 to 2001] said the large version of AARS, which according to some reports had a wingspan of 250 feet, cost less than a B-2, but more than $1 billion a copy. Reportedly, the production plan called for only eight vehicles at a cost of $10 billion, each of the vehicles capable of an amazing 40 hours on station after flying to the area of interest.”
“Air Force officials were so leery of the UAV’s autonomous flight concept (no pilot had moment-to-moment control) that they reportedly insisted the flying prototype carry a pilot to handle in-flight anomalies and that the final design include a modular, two-place cockpit insert to make it optionally piloted. ‘By the time everyone got their wishes included,’ Kier said, ‘it [AARS] had to do everything but milk the cow and communicate with the world while doing it.’”
“With all of AARS’s leading-edge sensors and communications links, each of which posed substantial technical challenges in its own right, flight reliability quickly became the biggest design hurdle, according to Kier. The technologies were so secret, and the value of the payload and the air vehicle was so great that its loss over unfriendly territory was unthinkable. One defense official remarked, ‘If one had crashed, it would have been so classified we would have had to bomb it to ensure it was destroyed.’”
“Sailing along on the glut of black money in the late 1980s, AARS kept moving forward despite its continually expanding, problematic requirements list. As happened with [the] D-21 and Compass Arrow [drone programs] in the early 1970s, however, AARS was about to have its most vital mission curtailed.”
A D-21 reconnaissance drone, also known by the codename Tagboard. USAF
“The end of the Cold War brought the expensive program to a halt. An Air Force general familiar with the project said: ‘When AARS was invented, there was more money than they [the NRO] could spend. After the Cold War, the money went away and projects like that could not possibly survive.’ Like predators stalking a wounded animal, manned alternatives to AARS emerged. One proposal would put a sophisticated target acquisition system on the B-2 stealth bomber –the so-called RB-2 configuration. The proposal had value as a terminal tracking system, but the RB-2 lacked a method of off-board cueing to direct it to a search area.”
…
“As it turned out, none of the alternative programs made the cut, for not only was the Cold War officially over with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the venerable Strategic Air Command was disbanded in June 1992. With that move, AARS lost its primary military constituent and the AARS alliance began to crumble.”
“…The Air Force pulled funding on AARS, and it was terminated in December 1992 by the intelligence community hierarchy just as it was to enter full scale development. AARS was, in the final analysis, a misfit. It was a major aircraft program backed by a satellite organization (the NRO), and a risky unmanned surveillance platform slated for a combat pilot-led Air Force—hardly an edifice solid enough to survive the removal of its strategic underpinnings. No one organization provided focus or advocacy for the program. As a result, the “perfect” surveillance UAV faded away even as the ultimate Cold War satellite system, Milstar, and the equally exotic B-2 stealth bomber managed to survive, backed as they were by one service, and powerful sub-groups within that service, who were culturally and operationally attuned to those configurations.”
A view of the official rollout ceremony for the B-2 bomber in 1988. USAF
Kier, who Ehrhard also identifies as the last AARS program manager, says the drone’s design ultimately evolved into something that “resembled a substantially scaled-up version of DARPA’s DarkStar.” Lockheed’s DarkStar, which eventually received the designation RQ-3, was a stealthy tailless design with an ovoid central fuselage and with very long, slender, and straight main wings. Boeing was also a major subcontractor for the RQ-3.
The RQ-3 DarkStar. USAF
DarkStar was also referred to as “Tier III-minus,” a moniker that reflected the requirements for the drone, which were truncated compared to a planned Tier III type. Tier III was a more direct follow-on to AARS, but was already envisioned as a smaller and less capable, and one would imagine less expensive, uncrewed aircraft. There were also additional lower capability tiers, one of which ultimately led to the RQ-4 Global Hawk. Ehrhard says some members of Congress and of industry did attempt to drum up support for a true successor to AARS/Quartz, unofficially referred to as Tier IV, but without success.
With regard to the RQ-3, at least two flying examples were built, the first of which crashed in 1996 after suffering a control system malfunction. DarkStar had vanished completely from the public eye by 1999, but it has since emerged that a direct line can be traced between it and the stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel via another secretive drone called the X-44A, which TWZ was first to report on back in 2019.
An RQ-170 Sentinel at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. USAF via FOIA
When it comes to AARS/Quartz, the full scale and scope of what exactly came out of the hundreds of millions, and possibly billions, spent on the program over at least a decade, remains unclear. Clearly, major leaps were made in the critical communications, command and control, structural, and sensor technologies needed to make the system a reality. There are rumors that sub-scale risk-reduction test articles were flown, but details surrounding the program remain highly secretive.
A mission requirement that rhymes
As we noted earlier, many questions remain about the RQ-180, as well as the overall status of that program. At the same time, fast forward some three decades or so from the end of AARS (and its immediate successors), and there are now echoes of the Cold War mission requirements that prompted that program, including in the current conflict with Iran.
The Iranian arsenal of conventionally-armed missiles is not anywhere near the same kind of threat as Soviet nuclear-tipped IRBMs and ICBMs. Still, they do present very real threats, especially for strikes on large critical infrastructure targets and as terror weapons when loaded with cluster munition payloads. The current conflict has demonstrated that strategy also puts immense strain on Israeli missile defenses, which could have broader ramifications, as you can read more about here. Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles offer additional flexibility against targets on land or at sea. In addition, it has been clear for years now that Iran is very willing to launch conventional ballistic missile attacks.
As already noted, the launchers for these missiles are mobile, and some are configured to look like typical civilian-style trucks at a casual glance. Some operate from hardened and underground bases. A number of those facilities were even built with ports that allow missiles to be fired from within, though it is unclear how extensively Iran has made use of that capability in the current conflict. These apertures have likely been repeatedly struck by the U.S. and Israel.
The underlying challenge of finding Iran’s ballistic missiles, and doing so with enough time to attempt to strike them before they launch, has clear similarities to the mission that drove AARS/Quartz. The Iranian case is perhaps more complex in certain respects, given the larger number of smaller missiles, many of which could be dispersed over a broad area. Still, the long-range weapons that threaten Israel are clearly the top priority and would be the easiest to spot for an asset like the RQ-180.
CENTCOM:
The Iranian regime is using mobile launchers to indiscriminately fire missiles in an attempt to inflict maximum harm across the region.
U.S. forces are hunting these threats down and without apology or hesitation, we are taking them out.pic.twitter.com/l4lxbTlAf4
🚨 WATCH: CENTCOM releases footage of strikes on fortified missile bases in southern Iran. The first footage includes hits on tunnel entrances and on mobile and stationary launchers at the missile base in Hajjiabad, Iran. pic.twitter.com/wuoi5GEhqp
— Major Sammer Pal Toorr (Infantry Combat Veteran) (@samartoor3086) March 22, 2026
Iran is responding to external threats by releasing a new video showcasing one of its underground missile tunnel systems, packed with missile engines, mobile launchers, and a range of advanced weaponry. The footage prominently features the Paveh cruise missile, the Ghadr-380… pic.twitter.com/ILsdlrPtQy
Furthermore, Iran’s air defenses have been significantly degraded after some five weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes, on top of the losses during the 12 Day War last year, but threats remain. As noted, the northeastern end of the country has seen fewer strikes compared to other areas, overall. Total air supremacy over Iran has yet to be achieved.
This is not a hypothetical assessment either, as underscored by the recent loss of a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle. In the ensuing efforts to recover the F-15E’s crew, an A-10 Warthog crashed after being hit by hostile fire and two rescue helicopters were also damaged. American forces deliberately destroyed additional aircraft – reportedly two MC-130J special operations tanker transports and four Little Bird helicopters – inside Iran to prevent the capture of sensitive material. This came after the MC-130Js had become disabled after touching down at an austere operating location during the final mission to retrieve the downed Strike Eagle’s Weapon System Officer.
A picture showing a destroyed Little Bird, on the right, and the hulk of a C-130, to the left. via X
This is exactly the environment where a very high-flying, extremely long-endurance, and very stealthy drone, like the RQ-180, would be valuable, if not critical, to perform the aforementioned mission. The drone would simply fly outside the range of Iranian defenses if need be and likely fly nearly directly over most of them without fear of being shot down. From that perch, which could be far above where normal jet aircraft fly (60,000-70,000+ feet is possible) it would be able to monitor massive swathes of Iranian territory for movement of launchers and indications of launches, especially around known launch areas and storage sites.
AARS/Quartz was never intended to exist in a vacuum. It was explicitly seen as a part of an ecosystem that also included the B-2 bomber (to strike the targets the drone found) and the Milstar communications satellite constellation (to help transmit relevant data). The B-2 and Milstar did enter service, although the former did so on a very truncated level due to post-Cold War drawdowns. The U.S. military has made further investments since then in advanced networking capabilities as part of integrated kill web architectures. The B-2 and other relevant capabilities that could directly tie in with the RQ-180 are being employed publicly in the current conflict with Iran. It is possible, if not highly plausible, that this integration has already existed for years, in part as a result of the development of the LRS family of systems.
Another rendering of a notional ‘RQ-180’ design. Hangar B Productions
There is a degree of precedent here already, with regard to Iran specifically, with the RQ-170 Sentinel. RQ-170s are understood to have conducted extensive flights over Iran in the 2000s and into the very early 2010s, particularly to provide persistent monitoring of nuclear sites. Those missions were thrust into the public eye in 2011, when an RQ-170 went down in Iran and was captured largely intact.
The fact that the Sentinel has been flying operationally for nearly two decades, at least, also just underscores the degree to which stealthy, persistent drone surveillance capabilities had already advanced decades ago. That being said, the RQ-170 is a medium-altitude platform that was developed as a more tactical-level asset for surveillance of smaller areas. It does not fulfill the continued requirements for something like the RQ-180, able to fly at much higher altitudes over far greater distances for much longer periods of time, while carrying huge sensors, and was never intended to do so.
It’s also worth noting here that any decision to employ a highly secretive and sensitive asset like the RQ-180 over Iran would still carry major risks. Stealth aircraft aren’t invisible or completely immune to threats, and accidents do happen. As noted earlier, a technical issue of some kind may well be the only reason why we got a clear look at the drone during the day at Larissa in Greece, to begin with. At the same time, there is something of a precedent for taking these kinds of risks with regard to Iran, specifically, even outside of the demands of open conflict. After the RQ-170 went down in Iran, it is very likely that Russia and China had opportunities to analyze the drone in detail. But the technologies in the RQ-170, and its very design, are understood to be far less exquisite than what would be found in the RQ-180.
But even as an RQ-180 would have an even more pressing use case against a peer competitor like China, which is drastically expanding its nuclear arsenal and has thousands of road-mobile ballistic missiles, risking such a sensitive asset over Iran is paired with the high stakes involved with this operation, especially in regard to Israel. Iran’s massive and rapidly growing number of long-range missiles were a stated reason Trump decided he had to act now. The administration has said that soon Iran would be able to oversaturate any defenses if action wasn’t taken. It is this same threat that would be a major factor in using such a prized asset for Epic Fury, to do whatever possible to limit the damage to Israel, and to America’s Arab allies as well.
When the secretive drone first emerged at Larissa, comparisons were also drawn to an Israeli design referred to as the RA-01. That uncrewed stealth aircraft has a roughly similar planform, but is a smaller overall design that likely falls between the RQ-170 and the RQ-180. It has been very active during the conflict, being seen in videos. It would be of no surprise if it were tasked with hunting Iranian missile launchers, as well.
It should be stressed that we still do not know for sure why the secretive drone is at Larissa and what operations it might have been conducting, or still is, from the Greek base. As mentioned at the start of this piece, U.S. authorities have, so far, declined to comment on the uncrewed aircraft’s presence there at all.
At the same time, its emergence does come at a time when the capabilities of the RQ-180, or an evolution thereof, would be in extremely high demand to support current operations over Iran, and specifically to address the urgent need to counter Iran’s long-range weapons, just as the progenitor of the concept was meant to do nearly four decades ago.
It was a risky move and Jonathan Torres knew it, but he did it anyway. He let an out-of-town guest stay with him in his room.
Torres, 40, had been living at the Highland Park Motel as part of Inside Safe, Mayor Karen Bass’ flagship program to combat homelessness. He and his neighbors, many of them from a downtown encampment, were told that visitors were not allowed.
Still, Torres kept having people over. After the third violation, he said, the facility kicked him out.
Jonathan Torres spent about two years in a city-leased motel in Highland Park. He told The Times he was kicked out of the facility in December.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s nobody’s fault but my own, but I just feel it’s unfair,” said Torres, who now lives in a tent in Chinatown. “In the real world, you’re allowed to have people come over. You have visitors. That’s part of keeping your sanity, you know?”
Los Angeles has spent more than $300 million on Inside Safe since Bass launched the program in December 2022, clearing scores of homeless encampments and moving about 5,800 people into interim housing — mostly hotels and motels. The goal was to get each of those people into permanent housing, typically taxpayer-funded apartments.
But even as the mayor’s initiative brings more people indoors, a growing number are winding up back on the street.
About This Story
The Times’ reporting on Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program was undertaken as part of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 Data Fellowship.
The longer the program exists, the greater the share of participants who have returned to “unsheltered” homelessness, according to monthly dashboards which were posted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, and analyzed by The Times.
Jeremiah Flores, center, packs up his belongings during an Inside Safe operation in North Hollywood last month.
In 2023, at the program’s one-year mark, nearly 20% had returned to the street, according to numbers posted by LAHSA at the time.
Halfway into Bass’ four-year term, the figure had climbed above 30%.
In December, as the program finished its third year, about 40% of the people who had gone indoors — 2,300 of the 5,800 — were back on the street, according to LAHSA’s dashboard. That includes people who were kicked out of their housing or disappeared from the system altogether.
The growing exodus reflects the challenges Bass faces while trying to help some of the city’s neediest residents, many of whom struggle with mental health conditions, substance use issues or major physical ailments.
Workers with Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program clean up a homeless encampment along Hollywood Boulevard in 2024.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Bass, asked about the worrisome trend, said she believes that Inside Safe participants need more services to address those issues. She also said she suspects that the longer people stay, the more likely they are to violate the rules and face expulsion.
The goal of Inside Safe is to find permanent homes within 90 days, with a maximum stay of six months, according to the written agreement issued by the city to each participant.
At this point, the average stay is 362 days — just shy of a year, according to recent LAHSA figures.
Bass did not offer any definitive conclusions, saying the city now has outside researchers assessing the problem.
“It’s critically important that we look at the people who left, why they left [and] what do we need to do strengthen the interim housing that we have,” she said. “I have my opinions about it, but the opinions have to be based in science.”
Bass has staked much of her reelection campaign on her handling of the homelessness crisis, which she made a top priority as soon as she took office. She credits Inside Safe with producing a 17.5% drop in “unsheltered homelessness” — people living outdoors or in their vehicles — over a two-year span. That number fell from about 33,000 to nearly 27,000, according to the most recent homeless count.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass prepares to leave a homeless encampment along the San Diego (405) Freeway in Van Nuys targeted by Inside Safe in July. “The homeless should never be living in these conditions,” she said.
By clearing encampments, Inside Safe also benefits the surrounding community, making sidewalks more accessible and reducing the number of encampment fires, Bass said.
UCLA Law School professor emeritus Gary Blasi, an expert on homelessness, said the program has become too expensive to justify the results — and is in need of “a thorough re-engineering.”
Blasi said there were never enough vouchers and low-cost apartments to provide permanent housing to Inside Safe participants in a timely way. As a result, the city has been paying for them to live in expensive motel rooms for long stretches, he said.
“Once they started having people in interim housing for nine months or a year, that should have rang some alarm bells, because that’s just not sustainable,” he said.
Last summer, the Inside Safe program cleared away a large homeless encampment next to the San Diego Freeway in Van Nuys. Some residents went to the Budget Inn in North Hills.
Inside Safe participants also face a wide array of rules. They are barred from leaving the premises for three consecutive days without prior approval. Alcohol and illegal drugs are prohibited in their rooms, which are inspected multiple times a day.
Participants also are frequently barred from bringing in outside food, to keep from attracting roaches, mice and other pests.
“The rules are dumb. They treat houseless people like children. They don’t give people agency,” said Paisley Mares, who lives in an RV in the San Fernando Valley and has several friends who took part in the program.
Executives with the nonprofit groups that run the Inside Safe facilities said the restrictions are needed to protect residents, keeping them on track to find permanent housing.
Violence, threats of violence and property damage are prohibited, and can result in immediate removal from the program. The ban on guests is designed to prevent people from being physically attacked, sexually assaulted or engaging in high-risk behavior, such as drug use, behind closed doors, those nonprofit leaders said.
“We are bringing people indoors, mostly from encampments, where drugs are often the trade of the street. There is also often physical violence. That’s the way people survive on the streets,” said John Maceri, chief executive officer of the nonprofit the People Concern, which runs two Inside Safe motels in Hollywood. “All of those behaviors don’t stop when people come into an Inside Safe setting.”
Executives at the People Concern estimate that 50% to 65% of the shelter clients they work with — not just for Inside Safe, but other homeless housing programs — have serious issues with drugs or alcohol. The number with serious mental health issues, particularly trauma, is also “very high,” they said.
Inside Safe providers acknowledged that motel rooms can be a huge adjustment, leaving people feeling lonely and isolated. They said they work closely with participants to improve their behavior — and turn to expulsion only as a last resort.
“My goal is never to exit anyone to the streets,” said Joseph Bradford III, chief executive officer of BARE Truth, which runs two Inside Safe motels on the Eastside. “I want to keep people inside until they find permanent housing.”
By now, Inside Safe operations are a well-oiled machine. Sanitation trucks roll up to encampments. Traffic officers cordon off the sidewalk with yellow tape. Encampment residents lug their bags onto a bus and head to their destinations.
Robert Martinez, 40, moved to a Budget Inn in North Hills last summer from an encampment near the 405 Freeway. He had been homeless for about five years and jobless even longer, he said.
Martinez, who used to work at a water filtration company, said the Inside Safe motel was better than the street. Still, he chafed at the rules. He wanted his children to visit, which was not permitted.
In November, after learning that a beloved uncle had died, Martinez left the motel for several days — and didn’t “want to be around anybody.”
When he returned, he said, program staffers informed him he’d been away more than 72 hours and would have to leave.
“I had 30 minutes to get my stuff,” said Martinez, who has been living on a sidewalk in Van Nuys.
Erica Y. Pena, left, and Jose Monteon at a homeless encampment in Van Nuys. Monteon told The Times he spent about two months in an Inside Safe motel last year.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Jose Monteon, 29, moved into the same motel as part of the same Inside Safe operation. He said he was kicked out two months later, after program managers accused him of fighting and making threats.
Monteon, who has spent some nights sleeping his car, denied getting physical. But he admitted expressing frustration over the theft of his bicycle and other possessions.
“Yes, I said some s—. But I never said it to a specific person,” he said. “I said ‘Whoever I find out is taking my s—, I’m going to stab their b— ass.’”
Monteon corrected himself. “My bad — poke. I didn’t say stab, I said poke.”
Ken Craft, whose nonprofit supervises the Budget Inn, declined to discuss specific cases. But he said his staff gives Inside Safe participants three chances — unless they have engaged in threats or violence — and tries to find another place for them to go.
“We’re trying to end homelessness, not have people recycle back to homelessness,” he said.
Even with its challenges, Inside Safe has been gradually moving a greater percentage of its residents into permanent housing, where they are no longer governed by such a wide array of rules.
In December, about one out of every four people who participated in Inside Safe since its inception was in permanent housing, according to that month’s LAHSA dashboard. Two years earlier, that figure was about 15%.
Once the program’s hotels, motels and other temporary lodging are factored in, about 55% were in some form of housing.
Bass said those facilities are a vast improvement over the street, providing bathrooms, heating, air conditioning, hot showers, three meals a day and doors that lock. The program is one of several reasons why Los Angeles County officials reported a double-digit reduction in the homeless mortality rate in 2024, she said.
“The value of the interim housing, number one, is to save lives,” Bass said.
Torres, the Inside Safe participant now in a tent in Chinatown, experienced the difference. He entered the program with a history of gastrointestinal issues and abdominal surgeries.
Jonathan Torres walks his dog in November. At the time, he was living in an Inside Safe motel in Highland Park.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“The whole time I had my housing, not once did I get sick or have to be hospitalized,” said Torres, who grew up in Redlands and Baldwin Park.
Torres said he was in the program for nearly two years. The longer he stayed, the more frustrated he grew over the wait for permanent housing.
In November, Torres told The Times he had received a notice stating that he had violated the motel’s prohibition on guests and was in danger of being expelled.
By then, he was worried about his health and his dog Waku, a Belgian Malinois/Akita mix. (The program allows “emotional support” animals.)
First To Serve, the nonprofit that supervises the hotel, did not respond to inquiries from The Times.
Even after the written notice, Torres struggled to comply with the rules. He said he allowed a woman from out of state to stay in his room for more than a week during last year’s rains.
The day after Christmas, he was back on the street.
In February, his dog was struck and killed by a car. Days later, sanitation workers cleared the encampment where he’d been living. Soon afterward, he was in the hospital, receiving treatment for a blockage in his bowels.
He eventually returned to Chinatown, setting up another tent. He’s been using meth, saying it helps with his medical issues.
For now, Torres has found some of the companionship he craved. In recent days, he’s been sharing his tent with his new girlfriend.
WASHINGTON — President Trump is singling out the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority as a cautionary tale about Democratic mismanagement of publicly funded programs, using it to justify proposed cuts to homeless assistance services across the country.
Trump’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, released Friday, asks Congress to eliminate the Continuum of Care — a federal program that funds housing and services for homeless Americans — citing concerns about “fraud and corruption” among local agencies that administer it.
The White House points to LAHSA, which manages many homeless services for the city and county, as the example of why the program needs to go.
“LAHSA has an abysmal record of reducing what is the highest number of street homeless individuals in the United States, and an independent audit issued in March 2025 found that the authority failed to accurately track billions of Federal and local dollars,” the budget says.
The local agency pushed back in a statement after the budget was released.
“Cutting this funding or destabilizing the Continuum of Care program would directly result in more tents on our streets, not fewer,” said Gita O’Neill, the agency’s interim chief executive, adding that under its leadership unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles has fallen 15% and that 90% of the program’s funding goes “directly to rental assistance.”
Local officials are already grappling with homeless service cuts at the state and county level given budget constraints and LAHSA warned Trump’s proposal would make matters worse.
“If anything, we need additional funding to cover rising costs, not fewer, to maintain our current momentum,” the agency said Friday.
The funding dispute over homelessness services is one front in a broader budget assault on California programs by the Trump administration.
Trump’s proposal also asks Congress to eliminate millions in funding from state initiatives the White House is characterizing as wasteful, ineffective or “woke.”
The cuts, if enacted, would cancel $4 billion in unspent funding for the state’s high-speed rail project, which the White house called a “boondoggle,” and strip grants from the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, which the budget criticized for “actively working to dismantle systems of power and privilege that favor whiteness.”
Smaller items are also targeted on the White House’s chopping block: a Los Angeles gelato festival, a dance building in Santa Cruz — which the White House dubs “one of the richest cities in the nation” — and a $3-million grant for a playground tied to an unspecified performing arts center in California.
Trump’s proposed cuts to California projects are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape federal spending priorities, largely by trading social programs for a massive military buildup.
The president is asking Congress to approve $1.5 trillion for defense and to slash $73 billion from domestic programs, a massive restructuring that would leave states, including California, to absorb costs Washington no longer wants to carry.
Trump made that vision explicit at a private Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday, telling guests that the federal government should no longer be responsible for funding social programs that many Americans rely on.
“We can’t take care of daycare. We are a big country,” Trump said. “We are fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare.”
If states want to offer those services, Trump said, they should raise taxes to pay for them.
“Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis,” he said. “We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”
His proposed budget reflects that priority, which lawmakers will need to contend with as they grapple with the mounting costs of the Iran war and an economic fallout from a military operation that has left Americans paying more items, including gas pump.
Under the proposed budget, Trump is also seeking to make some investments in California projects.
The White House, for example, is seeking $152 million from Congress to turn Alcatraz back into a maximum-security prison, an idea the president has talked about for several years.
He also called on Congress to establish a National Center for Warrior Independence at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.
Times staff writer Andrew Khouri, in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.
Last week, a woman filed a civil lawsuit against Nacua, alleging that on New Year’s Eve he made an antisemitic statement during a group dinner and later bit her shoulder. Attorney Levi McCathern told The Times before the lawsuit was filed that Nacua denied the allegations and that Nacua would “pursue all available legal remedies in response to these false and damaging statements.”
The California Post reported Wednesday that Nacua had checked into a Malibu rehab facility. A Rams official declined to comment.
In a statement to The Times on Wednesday, McCathern said Nacua “voluntarily entered a private facility to focus on his health, personal growth, and overall development — and I’m really proud of him for doing that ahead of his upcoming season.
“He is committed to using this time constructively so that he can return in the best possible position — both personally and professionally — to continue contributing to his team and the game he loves.”
The Rams are scheduled to begin offseason workouts under coach Sean McVay on April 20. In the statement, McCathern said that Nacua would complete the program in time to participate in Rams organized team activities. That part of the offseason program begins several weeks into the offseason.
“Puka is deeply grateful for the support he has received from his family, friends, Coach McVay, and his teammates,” McCathern said. “It is unfortunate that a trivial lawsuit has drawn attention to him during a time when he is committed to becoming a better person. I am excited to see what the future holds for this exceptionally talented young man.”
The lawsuit was the latest situation involving Nacua that cast a spotlight on the fourth-year pro.
During a livestream last December, Nacua criticized NFL officials and made a gesture regarded as antisemitic. Nacua apologized, and the Rams and the NFL issued statements condemning antisemitism and discrimination. But after the Rams’ loss to the Seattle Seahawks, Nacua criticized officials in a social media post from the locker room. The NFL fined him $25,000.
Nacua, 24, led the NFL with 129 receptions last season, was voted All-Pro and was a finalist for NFL offensive player of the year. He is entering the final year of his rookie contract, and he is eligible for an extension that could equal or surpass the deal Seattle Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba recently signed that includes $120 million in guarantees.
On Monday, at the NFL owners meetings, McVay repeatedly said, “I trust this kid’s heart,” and later said “he understands what the responsibility is, not exclusive to just the production on the field.”
General manager Les Snead described Nacua as “ young man, becoming,” who is “continuing to evolve” as a person and player. Snead and Tony Pastoors, the Rams’ chief operating officer both said on-the-field performance is not the only factor that is taken into account when making decisions regarding contract extensions.
“It isn’t just, ‘OK, turn it on on Sundays and make decisions from there,’” Pastoors said. “We have to take in every data point we can.”
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
A slightly shorter and lighter-weight carbine version of the U.S. Army’s new 6.8x51mm M7 service rifle has now gotten its own designation: XM8. This choice of moniker is somewhat interesting, given that the service previously applied this designation to an abortive modular family of firearms designed to ape the looks of the guns in the 1997 movie Starship Troopers. The M7 had faced some significant criticisms of its own previously over its weight, ergonomics, and other aspects of the design, which the Army and manufacturer Sig pushed back strenuously against. At the same time, the design has continued to evolve and has been fielded more widely, as evidenced by the carbine version.
The Army chose what is now designated the M7 as its standard service rifle back in 2022. That year, the service chose Sig as the winner of its Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) competition. The NGSW also includes a new 6.8x51mm light machine gun from Sig, designated the M250, as well as a suite of accompanying ammunition types for both guns. The NGSW ‘system’ also includes computerized XM157 optics, which the Army is procuring separately from Vortex Optics.
What Is the New Army XM-7 Rifle Like? | GOARMY
“The XM8 is just over 32 inches long overall, compared to 37 inches for the M7, with a barrel length dropped from 13 to 11 inches and its suppressor from 7 to 6 inches,” according to Task & Purpose, citing Sig Sauer’s product manager for rifles and suppressors Joshua Shoemaker. “Without the suppressor, the XM8 weighs 7.33 pounds while the M7 weighs 8.36 pounds. The carbine’s suppressor shaves down to 1.31 pounds from the M7’s 1.46 pounds.”
“The carbine also comes with a fixed stock after soldiers said they preferred it to the M7’s folding stock,” Task & Purpose‘s piece adds. “The carbine also has a softer butt pad and a more rigid handguard for optics and other mounted equipment.”
The XM8 builds on what the Army had originally referred to as the product-improved or PIE version of the M7. This is one of two lighter-weight versions of the rifle that Sig had on display at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium last September, both of which are seen in the picture at the top of this story.
“There’s basically two combined efforts going on within the M7,” Jason St. John, senior director of strategic products for the Defense Strategies Group at Sig Sauer, told TWZ at that time. “We have a carbine version, and then we have a lightened, improved version of the M7. And so when you look at the standard M7 that’s been issued to the troops, the overall weight of the firearm was 8.3 pounds. Now, the improved M7 is 7.6 pounds, and the carbine version weighs 7.3 pounds. So we’re getting closer and closer to [a] rifle weight system similar to the M4.”
The carbine variation Sig had previously presented then had a 10-inch barrel. Past reports have said that the PIE M7 had a 10.5-inch barrel. The baseline M7 has a 13.5-inch barrel. The 5.56x45mm M4A1 has a 14.5-inch barrel and weighs 8.63 pounds (including a sling and loaded magazine), according to the Army. It should be noted that optics and other accessories add appreciable weight to any firearm. The XM157 is heavier, as well as physically larger, than the types the Army has historically issued with M4A1s.
A US Army soldier fires an M4A1 in training. US Army
In terms of how the PIE M7 was lightened, “there’s the upper receiver, we’ve redesigned and taken some weight out of it. We’ve lessened the barrel profile slightly to get some weight out of it,” Sig’s St. John had also told us. “We’ve done some lightening efforts within the operating system, as well as remove the folding stock hinge. By removing that hinge, we save some weight.”
The XM8’s configuration could well evolve further as early testing by operational Army units gets underway, which Task & Purpose says could happen as soon as October.
Regardless, as noted, this is not the first XM8 ‘carbine’ the Army has tried to adopt. For a time in the early 2000s, the service looked set to replace all of its existing M16 rifles and M4 carbines with a new family of 5.56x45mm rifles and carbines known collectively as the XM8, developed by famed German gunmaker Heckler & Koch.
An infographic showing the proposed XM8 family for the US Army. Heckler & Koch
The previous XM8 had evolved from an earlier and more ambitious Army small arms program that envisioned future soldiers carrying a single weapon that combined a compact 5.56mm gun with a highly computerized 20mm grenade launcher firing programmable ammunition. That gun, called the XM29 Objective Infantry Combat Weapon, was beset by technical and other issues. In 2004, the Army decided to pursue the rifle and grenade launcher components as separate programs. The grenade launcher evolved into a 25mm design designated the XM25 and eventually nicknamed “the Punisher.”
The standalone XM8 family was based on Heckler & Koch’s G36, which the German armed forces had adopted as its standard infantry rifle in the late 1990s. However, U.S. Army officials specifically asked if the gun could be made to look “more Starship Troopers,” in reference to the 1997 film, which is a very loose adaptation of the 1959 Robert Heinlein science fiction novel of the same name, according to firearms researcher Ian McCollum, who runs the website ForgottenWeapons.com. As a result, the XM8 evolved to have a much sleeker and futuristic-looking appearance externally.
STARSHIP TROOPERS [1997]– Official Trailer (HD) | Get the 25th Anniversary 4K Ultra HD SteelBook Now
Testing of the XM8 proceeded relatively well by all accounts. Versions of guns also gained a foothold in popular culture, appearing in several video games in the 2000s. Replicas were also featured in the movies Children of Men and District 13: Ultimatum.
In the end, though, a future Army with soldiers carrying “Starship Troopers” rifles was not to be. The program was cancelled in 2005. Continually evolving requirements and domestic U.S. political factors, together with broad questions about whether the cost, not to mention the time and effort, of adopting a new standard infantry weapon was justified by the reliability and improvements the XM8 was expected to offer over the existing M16/M4 family, were key factors.
A US Army soldier with an XM8 carbine with a 40mm under-barrel grenade launcher, at left, and one with a full-length rifle variant, at bottom. US Army
In the late 2000s, elements of the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) and the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) evaluated the XM8. The Royal Malaysian Navy’s Pasukan Khas Laut naval special warfare unit, or PAKSAL, subsequently adopted multiple variants of the gun, but on a very limited level. The extent to which those guns remain in sevice today is unclear. There are no other known users anywhere else globally. You can read more about the full story of Heckler & Koch’s XM8 here.
Rare Unicorn Gun – H&K XM8 Compact PDW
The Army’s selection and fielding of the M7 have not been entirely smooth, either. As mentioned, the rifle has been the subject of criticism in the past. Army Capt. Braden Trent drew particular attention with a presentation that slammed the rifle at the annual Modern Day Marine conference last year. That assessment was based on the findings of a report written while he was a student at the Expeditionary Warfare School, which is part of the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Both the Army and Sig had vehemently disputed his claims, as you can read more about here.
Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll fires an M7 rifle. US Army US Army
It still remains to be seen how widespread the adoption of any variation on the M7, including the XM8 carbine, might be across the rest of the U.S. military. In February, the U.S. Marine Corps notably told Task & Purpose that the service had no intention currently of adopting a version of the Army’s new 6.8mm rifle, and would instead stick with its 5.56x45mm M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR).
“We will continue to monitor development of the M7 [Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle] to inform future requirements,” a Marine Corps spokesperson told that outlet.
In the meantime, at least some Army soldiers now look to be in line to finally carry XM8 carbines, but not the “Starship Trooper” rifles they were once promised.
SACRAMENTO — Cori Close’s candid remarks about the growing challenges of coaching in modern college athletics sparked a reaction nationwide among her peers.
On Thursday, the UCLA women’s basketball coach was asked about the rapid changes shaping college sports ahead of her Bruins’ Sweet 16 matchup against Minnesota on Friday night. The No. 1-seeded Bruins (33-1) entered the Sweet 16 round considered a strong Final Four contender, powered by one of the deepest starting lineups in the nation.
“I’ve never been as tired as I’ve been in the last two years, and it’s made me think how much longer I can do this,” Close said. “And I’m just being transparent with you about that. There are so many things that are harder, and we keep losing incredible people on the men’s and the women’s side.”
UCLA has dominated throughout the season, entering the Sweet 16 on a 27-game winning streak that dates to late November. Three starters — Lauren Betts, Charlisse Leger-Walker and Gianna Kneepkens — began their college careers elsewhere before transferring into the program.
“How do we now figure out this transfer portal? Let’s not complain about it,” Close said. “Let’s have solutions about what’s right and what adjustments need to be made. … I’m a huge advocate for NIL. It should have happened 20 years ago. And we need boundaries. We need infrastructure. We need competitive equity. We need transparency.”
In contrast, Louisville coach Jeff Walz offered a more critical perspective when addressing the same topic during a NCAA news conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
UCLA guard Kiki Rice points across the court while talking with Bruins coach Cori Close during an NCAA tournament win over California Baptist at Pauley Pavilion on March 21.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m friends with Cori,” Walz said. “My favorite line, I would tell her, if you don’t like your job, find a new job. I mean, I’m listening this morning at 4:20 as the workers outside my window at the hotel in the street are working. I mean, you choose your profession. If you don’t like it, find a new profession.”
No. 3-seeded Louisville will face No. 2 Michigan on Saturday after falling short against Duke in the ACC championship game.
Close, who has spent 33 years in coaching, including 15 at UCLA, has navigated an evolving landscape shaped by name, image and likeness compensation policies and the transfer portal, just like everyone else. Last season, she earned national coach of the year and led the Bruins to the program’s first Final Four. UCLA has now reached at least the Sweet 16 during four consecutive seasons and eight times during Close’s tenure in Westwood.
This year, the Bruins swept through Big Ten play undefeated and once again secured a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
“I mean, of course, it’s a lot of work, but we chose to do it and we get compensated for it,” Walz said. “I don’t think anybody is going to feel too sorry for us that you might be tired. I’m tired, too, but who is not?”
Several longtime coaches have stepped away from the game in recent years, amid, though not always directly attributed to, the sport’s ongoing transformation. Hall of Fame Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer retired in 2025, while Georgia Tech’s Nell Fortner, Iowa’s Lisa Bluder and Harvard’s Kathy Delaney-Smith stepped down during the past three seasons.
“It’s ever-changing, and that’s the frustrating part, because you can never get a grasp on any of it,” Kentucky coach Kenny Brooks said. “You think that you have it. Then all of a sudden, it’s like somebody pulls a rug out and says, ‘No, we’re changing it,’ and now it’s going to be this way now. We want to get out ahead of everything, but we can’t. We always seem like we’re one step behind because there are so many changes.”
Ultimately, Close’s message centered on the need for structural support in a rapidly shifting environment.
“If there’s one thing I would ask of our governing bodies and the NCAA and our administrations is please develop infrastructure and boundaries that create an opportunity to have sustained excellence and sustainable pace,” she said. “Otherwise, we are going to continue to lose some of our best coaches, and I do not think our game can afford to do that.”
Kaleena Smith averaged 31 points, seven assists and four steals a game this season while playing for the No. 1 program in the Southland, but her expanded leadership role is what earns her the honor of The Times’ girls’ basketball player of the year.
The 5-foot-6 junior point guard marshaled Ontario Christian to the CIF state championships in Sacramento for the first time in the program’s history and along the way her voice spoke almost as loudly as her game — surprising for someone who is not talkative by nature.
“Her numbers speak for themselves but the biggest difference in Kaleena this season has been her leadership,” Knights coach Aundre Cummings, said. “She’s always coming to practice first and leaving last, which teammates respect, but also knowing when to speak up.”
Smith has been nicknamed “Special K” for her talent and charisma, traits that make her one of the top national recruits in the class of 2027. She is garnering attention from multiple college programs. USC women’s coach Lindsay Gottlieb was even on hand to witness Smith score 23 points and contribute six assists in the Southern California regional semifinals against Etiwanda on March 8 and the state championship game against Archbishop Mitty at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
“I’m being more vocal, yes, because I’m gonna have to do that in college,” said Smith, who spent countless hours refining her mid-range jumper this winter. “As captain it’s one of my responsibilities.”
One hundred games into her high school career, Smith is living up to the hype thrust upon her when she was named MaxPreps’ national freshman of the Year in 2024. She passed the 2,000-point plateau when she scored 51 points against Esperanza in November.
Smith paced Ontario Christian to the Southern Section Open Division title as a sophomore and although the Knights were denied a repeat (she had 30 points and five assists in a finals defeat to Sierra Canyon) her stats are better in every significant category. Intertwined with her competitive spirit and winning mindset is the maturity and confidence of an upperclassman.
“Her leadership is what stands out,” sophomore teammate Tatianna Griffin said. “She’s a very quiet person. I’m not sure it comes naturally or not but when she says something we listen.”
Griffin’s own game has blossomed because of Smith’s willingness to give her the ball in clutch situations, and Smith has been a mentor to freshman Chloe Jenkins, who led the team in rebounds (11.3 per game).
Adding leadership to her basketball IQ, court vision, defense, quickness, shooting, passing and dribbling has made Smith a complete player, one who is poised for a senior season worth talking about.
In a stunning move, CBS News is shutting down its radio division, getting out of the medium where its storied history began nearly 100 years ago.
CBS News Radio will stop offering its service to its 700 affiliate stations on May 22.
“While this was a necessary decision, it was not an easy one,” the company said in a memo obtained by The Times. “A shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service.”
CBS sold its own radio stations in 2017, but continued to offer hourly network newscasts to affiliate stations, including “World News Roundup,” which has been on the air since 1938. Legendary CBS News journalist Edward R. Murrow delivered his first report on the program.
The news of the shutdown comes as dozens of CBS News employees are learning Friday if they have a future at the struggling news division.
A morning email from CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss that was obtained by The Times said staff affected by a new round of job reductions will be notified by the end of the day. About 6% of the 1,000 CBS News employees will be affected.
The cuts had been hinted at earlier this year by Weiss, when she said her business goal for the division is to expand its reach on digital platforms. Weiss and Cibrowski raised the same issue in their note informing employees of the cuts.
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” they wrote. “New audiences are burgeoning in new places and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them.”
CBS News has been dealing with a decline in revenue for its TV programs, as viewers have gravitated toward streaming platforms and social media.
The network’s daily programs “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” and “CBS Mornings,” both run well behind their competition in the ratings. It does have two strong weekend franchises in “60 Minutes” and “CBS Sunday Morning.”
CBS News is expected to be under the same corporate ownership as CNN once parent company Paramount closes its $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. The two divisions are likely to share news gathering costs, which could lead to the closure of bureaus and a reduction of personnel.
Weiss had joined CBS News earlier that month and was not directly involved in the staff reductions. She is said to be more personally involved in the cuts occurring Friday.
MS NOW is making sweeping changes to its daytime programming, moving hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Alicia Menendez to new time slots.
The changes include the departure of Ana Cabrera, who told viewers about her plans Wednesday. Carbera joined MS NOW — formerly MSNBC — from CNN in 2023. Chris Jansing, the current 11 a.m. Eastern host, will become chief political correspondent.
Stephanie Ruhle is the new anchor for MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour.”
(MSNBC)
The moves announced by MS NOW President Rebecca Kutler are aimed at improving daytime ratings on the network, which changed its name from MSNBC after being spun off from Comcast into a new company called Versant.
MS NOW has seen improved ratings in prime time with opinion programming since the network was re-branded in November. The politically progressive-leaning network will have hosts with a point-of-view in the daytime hours as well once the programming changes take effect in June.
In a memo to staff obtained by The Times, Kutler said the daytime programming will “still be rooted in hard news.”
Ana Cabrera speaks at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2018 at The Common Good Forum on May 21, 2018 in New York City.
(Sylvain Gaboury / Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Ruhle will move from her 11 p.m. Eastern program “The 11th Hour” to a daytime shift from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Eastern. Her program will focus on money and politics.
Menendez will host two hours in the afternoon starting at noon Eastern.
The schedule changes will take effect in June.
Alicia Menendez, Michael Steele and Symone Sanders Townsend of MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”
(MSNBC/Virginia Sherwood/MSNBC)
Once Ruhle’s new program debuts, “Morning Joe” will return to a three-hour format. The program co-hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expanded to four hours in 2022. Although the expansion improved ratings, the hosts have asked to scale back so they can pursue other projects at the network.
Menendez has been part of the trio on “The Weeknight,” with Michael Steele and Simone Sanders-Townsend. Luke Russert will take her seat on the program as he returns to an on-air role. Russert had been part of the daytime MSNBC show “The Cycle,” and recently served as creative director for MS NOW’s live event series.
Ruhle will be replaced on “The 11th Hour” by Ali Velshi, who recently served as a weekend anchor. Jacob Soboroff, the network’s national correspondent, will take over Velshi’s anchor duties from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern.
Kutler said there will be no job reductions related to the schedule changes, saying she expects to have “more people working at MS NOW by the end of 2026 than we do today.”
MS NOW is the second most-watched cable news network behind Fox News while leading CNN.
A dispute over the city of Los Angeles’ eviction defense program came to an end Tuesday when the City Council approved millions of dollars in funding for the next 15 months.
The program, Stay Housed L.A., started in 2021 and provides thousands of renters with legal representation in eviction proceedings as well as other services.
Tenant advocates feared that the new contract, which passed 12 to 1 and funds an initial portion of a three-year, $177-million contract, was under threat after City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto urged the council to reconsider it in a confidential memo last week.
Feldstein Soto said she had concerns about awarding such a large contract to Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which frequently sues the city over homelessness issues.
Legal Aid is the main legal service provider under the Stay Housed L.A. contract, which also funds Southern California Housing Rights Center for short-term emergency rental assistance, Liberty Hill Foundation for tenant outreach and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy to protect tenants from harassment.
The city’s Housing Department had recommended a three-year contract, but the council opted for a shorter period that can be extended.
Legal Aid has argued that its lawsuits against the city are unrelated to its eviction defense work under the Stay Housed L.A. contract.
“We are very relieved that our services can continue uninterrupted,” said Barbara Schultz, director of housing justice for Legal Aid, in an interview after the vote.
Feldstein Soto, who is running for reelection, said in a statement that her office wanted to make sure the city wasn’t giving a “blank check” to Legal Aid without requiring detailed reporting of finances and outcomes.
“The eviction defense program is a city program and is in zero jeopardy,” she said. “What is in question is a $177-million blank check to [Legal Aid] and its partners without the reports and invoice review that is required by law. That is an amount that exceeds the budget of numerous city departments.”
On Tuesday, the City Council added a requirement that the nonprofits in the program provide “performance metrics” including the number of tenants served, case outcomes and demographic data.
Schultz said that Legal Aid already provides monthly data to the city.
John Lee was the only councilmember who voted against the new contract, saying he was not comfortable with the new “transparency requirements.”
Since its inception, Stay Housed L.A. has opened about 26,000 cases overall, providing full representation for 6,150 cases and working on nearly 20,000 “limited scope” cases, according to data from Legal Aid. The original contract, which is set to lapse at the end of the month, was for about $90 million.
The program is funded by Measure ULA, the “mansion tax” passed by city voters in 2022. On Tuesday, the council included a provision that would allow it to cease funding the eviction defense program if Measure ULA were overturned.
